SumTotal vs UKG Ready

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Our analysts compared SumTotal vs UKG Ready based on data from our 400+ point analysis of HR Management Software, user reviews and our own crowdsourced data from our free software selection platform.

SumTotal Software Tool
UKG Ready Software Tool

Product Basics

SumTotal is a cloud-based HR Management software catering to mid-sized to large organizations. It packs a comprehensive suite of features covering talent acquisition, learning & development, workforce management, and performance management. Users praise its robust reporting & analytics, rich learning library, and mobile-friendly accessibility. However, the extensive customization options and powerful tools come with a steeper learning curve for administrators. Additionally, SumTotal's potential for high integration costs and higher price point compared to basic solutions make it less suitable for smaller companies. While some users struggle with complex content creation tools and limited instructor-led options, SumTotal shines in its ability to scale and adapt to dynamic needs, making it a strong contender for organizations seeking a feature-rich, customizable HR management platform, especially those with substantial training requirements and a dispersed workforce.

Pros
  • Comprehensive learning library
  • Robust reporting & analytics
  • Scalable for large organizations
  • Mobile-friendly learning
  • Customizable user experience
Cons
  • Steep learning curve for admins
  • Limited instructor-led options
  • Complex content creation tools
  • Potentially high integration costs
  • Pricey for smaller companies
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UKG Ready delivers essential HR capabilities like payroll, talent acquisition and management, benefits, scheduling and attendance management via a core suite. It also offers an ACA module, accruals, attestation and mobile functionality. Companies can leverage it to address needs across the employee lifecycle.

Employing automated data collection, it simplifies the task of aggregating workforce information from multiple sources including mobile, timeclock and web interface. Analytics features give users insights into the workforce to make decisions based on data. Payroll services are also available.
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$5/User, Monthly
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$21/Employee, Monthly
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Product Insights

  • Employee Retention: Provide tools for employee development, management and learning practices that encourage employee retention. 
  • Enhanced Productivity: Talent managers can continuously onboarding to speed up overall productivity. 
  • Organizational Stability: Learning-centered employee development builds an agile workforce that is adaptable to changing business environments. 
  • Learning Ecosystem: Invest in research and development on the latest learning trends, which managers can leverage to enhance employees' learning experience. 
  • Talent Engagement: Engage top talent while moving through the recruitment process, understand the workforce, identify the best talent and build a seamless experience for candidates as well as hiring teams. 
  • Enhanced Candidate Experience: Offer smartphone-optimized sites with intelligent and automated interview tools, candidate matching, and an easy-to-use mobile app interface. Keep applicants informed about upcoming interview details via a user dashboard. 
  • Accelerated Time-to-Performance: Seamless onboarding training helps new hires get up to speed quickly. Provide unique company policies and work culture for them to become familiar with the company. 
  • Smooth Role Switch: Access onboarding plans for new roles that include defined goals, new teams and KPI’s that ensure a more seamless transition to new responsibilities. 
  • Robust Manager and Admin Capabilities: Managers and administrators can easily view, schedule, filter, mark up and share reports from a mobile dashboard. Leverage reporting tools, advanced reports and dashboards at a single click. 
  • Informed Compensation Plans: Create smart, data-driven compensation plans according to preset or custom parameters. Real-time performance insights and budget modeling make compensation informed, fair and cost-effective. 
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  • Less Admin Work: Eliminate physical paperwork, maintain all HR operations digitally and integrate core activities. 
  • Better Engagement With Employees: Saving time allows managers to provide regular feedback and interact consistently. 
  • Strategic Focus: Reduced workloads and greater task efficiency allow HR to focus on leadership development, culture building and other strategic initiatives. 
  • Reduced Complexity: Remove manual processes surrounding ACA compliance, automating a large part of the process to save time. 
  • Mobile Access: Provide greater convenience with access to information on any mobile device. Managers can complete tasks like approvals and check reports, while employees can turn in timesheets, request leaves, check schedules and clock in and out. 
  • Improved Planning: Build data-based strategies and boost performance by spotting trends across the workforce using predictive tools and AI. 
  • Centralized HR: Simplify work, minimize errors and streamline the user experience with data, features and connected modules available in one unified platform. 
  • Less Compliance Risk: Reduce the potential for fines and legal issues by leveraging proactive compliance for FLSA and ACA. 
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  • Talent Development: Provides combined functionality of talent onboarding, talent management and learning management solutions to cater to talent development requirements. 
  • Talent Acquisition: Helps create a streamlined hiring cycle, hire the right talent, engage fresh recruits and drive productivity from day one. 
  • Learning Management:  
    •  Helps provide a customized, personalized and engaging learning experience tailored to the skill and competency of individuals rather than the whole team. 
    •  Ease of access on all devices, along with an offline mode, ensures seamless and consistent access to content and courses. 
  • Talent Management: Personalized and intuitive tools help employees pursue career growth and development. Capabilities include performance management, 360-degree feedback, succession planning and compensation management. 
  • Performance Management: Provides comprehensive feedback and tools that make feedback actionable, constructive and insightful. Measures workforce productivity, progress and priorities in real time. 
  • Succession Planning: Enables talent managers to identify and assess skill gaps, build agile talent pools, and align employee success with business goals and objectives. 
  • Compensation Management: Simplifies and streamline compensation plans, and helps build competitive packages to attract and retain top recruits. Workflow automation and compensation management tools aid compliance with complex global policies. 
  • Workforce Management: Bundled payroll, benefits and expense management minimize time, cost and efforts while maximizing accuracy. Features include automated scheduling, time and attendance, absence management, and compliance. 
  • Applicant Tracking System: Includes real-time alerts and notifications for offer approvals, a unique dashboard and reports widgets, customizable requisitions, and a consolidated requisition workspace. 
  • Mobility: Provides access to tools and reporting capabilities at all times and from any location. The dashboard can be operated using a tablet, desktop, mobile app or a phone browser. 
  • Growth Edition: Caters to the needs of fast-growing small and medium-sized businesses. Includes webinars, instructor-led training, approvals, and additional learning resources that users can access and configure anytime. 
  • Extended Enterprise: Helps build a brand image, accelerate growth and drive new sources of potential revenue. Facilitates an enriched and optimized learning experience for distributors, partners and customers. 
  • Gamified and Collaborative Learning: Helps: 
    •  Assess and accelerate learning with gamification capabilities that include leaderboards, points, levels and badges. 
    •  Enhance employee engagement by identifying and rewarding the right learning behaviors. 
    •  Enrich the knowledge of new hires with collaborative learning, up-to-date content, feedback and social ratings. 
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  • Payroll: Supports unlimited payroll runs, ensures information is always up to date, manages a variety of components like tax considerations and garnishment processing, and provides self-service access for employees. Surfaces relevant data via standard and ad-hoc reporting, equipped with filters, grouping and customization. 
  • HR Management: Access a unified database for tracking and managing employee information. Configuration settings and the ability to build processes help workflows match internal requirements. Also offers: 
    • Onboarding: Streamlines processes with checklists, task assignments, automated reminders, forms with e-signature and more. 
    • Benefits: Includes employee self-service tools for selecting plans and updating information, configurable reports, and support for multiple plan types. Also shows data on costs, enrollment statuses and more. 
    • Training: Enables building courses, scheduling internal classes, reporting on learning outcomes, assigning training to employees, tracking completion and more. 
  • Workforce Analytics: Improves decisions and strategies by collecting and visualizing real-time workforce data. Uses AI to assess trends and identify risks to make predictive recommendations. 
  • Talent Acquisition: Simplifies the application process with custom application options, including populating from a LinkedIn profile. Also helps: 
    • Create a career site and integrate with more than 8,000 free and premium job boards.
    • Set up workflow approvals for job requisitions.
    • Manage recruitment processes in one place and sort candidates using criteria-based filters.
    • Configure email templates and pre-screening questions.
  • Employee Development: System administrators can define training courses, schedule classes and assign employees to take the classes. Managers are able to monitor open seats and gain visibility into employee participation and performance within the courses. 
  • Time Keeping: Automates many time and attendance processes, including alerts when employees cross leave limits and breach company policies related to attendance. Real-time data updates support accurate payroll and compliance. 
  • Performance Management: Delivers performance data that aids employee development efforts. Also includes: 
    • Goals tied to organizational objectives.
    • Unlimited profile types for the company, department or job level, offering weighted or numerical ratings and customizable criteria.
    • Automated review cycles, which include alerts, real-time status tracking and configuration options to set review dates and frequency.
    • Custom reports showing employee skills and required training, which aid succession planning.
  • Scheduling: Provides auto-generated schedules based on company needs, along with automatic employee sorting using preset conditions such as skills and availability. Other features include call lists for filling unexpected openings, employee self-scheduling, automated workflows and forecasts to anticipate demand. 
  • Compensation (Add-On): Simplifies compensation tasks by removing the need for manual tools and processes. Offers configurable cycles, automatic approval workflows, a budgeting interface, security settings and mass finalization of proposals. 
  • Attestation: Sends prompts to employees reminding them to confirm they’ve taken mandatory breaks for purposes of legal and internal compliance. Also offers: 
    •  Several course options: build-your-own courses, over 400 premade courses from the library and third-party content thanks to SCORM compatibility. 
    • Configuration of prompts to capture relevant information.
    • Automatic notifications alerting employees if they’ve missed attestation.
    • Reports that help validate compliance and aid attestation tracking.
    • Ability to attest time from the mobile or web time tracking app.
  • Accruals: Reduces errors through automated accrual tracking. A variety of criteria are available to configure accruals. Reports show thorough summaries of each employee’s accrual data for every type of PTO. 
  • ACA Management: Dashboards show real-time and historical data, with the ability to view individual employees for full visibility. Alerts help managers track schedules and employment changes, as well as let employees know about benefits eligibility. 
  • Payroll Service: Seamlessly integrates with the payroll module to ensure compliance, process garnishments, remove the need to manage tax paperwork and provide accurate information for tax filing. 
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Product Ranking

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#73

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User Sentiment Summary

Fair User Sentiment 132 reviews
Great User Sentiment 2859 reviews
69%
of users recommend this product

SumTotal has a 'fair' User Satisfaction Rating of 69% when considering 132 user reviews from 4 recognized software review sites.

81%
of users recommend this product

UKG Ready has a 'great' User Satisfaction Rating of 81% when considering 2859 user reviews from 5 recognized software review sites.

3.2 (39)
4.0 (846)
2.7 (7)
4.1 (778)
n/a
4.1 (790)
4.0 (56)
4.3 (129)
2.9 (30)
3.9 (316)

Synopsis of User Ratings and Reviews

Robust Tools: All reviews on this feature suggest that SumTotal provides a robust set of talent development and management, payroll, and workforce management solutions.
Effective Tracking: According to 80% of reviews on tracking, the software optimizes talent management by tracking development and career growth.
Self-Service: Managers and employees can access and complete training courses at their convenience, according to all reviews on self-service.
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Streamlined Onboarding: New hires can electronically complete onboarding tasks, such as I-9 and W-4 forms, before their first day, saving time for both HR and employees.
Centralized Employee Data: The platform serves as a single source of truth for employee information, including contact details, job history, performance reviews, and benefits enrollment, reducing the need for multiple systems and spreadsheets.
Efficient Benefits Administration: UKG Ready simplifies benefits enrollment and management, allowing employees to easily compare plans, make selections, and track their coverage.
Time and Attendance Tracking: The system offers various methods for tracking employee time and attendance, including mobile clock-in/out, which can help ensure accurate payroll and compliance with labor laws.
Performance Management: UKG Ready facilitates performance reviews, goal setting, and feedback, enabling managers to track employee progress and development.
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Outdated Course Content: About 70% of reviews on course content reported that some modules aren’t frequently updated, resulting in an outdated learning experience.
Non-Intuitive Functions: Most features and functions aren’t intuitive, making it difficult to navigate, according to all reviews on this aspect.
Access to Reports: Accessing and pulling reports is extremely tedious and slow, according to 100% of reviews on reporting.
Customer Service: All reviews on customer support suggest that customer service is very slow and unresponsive.
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Limited Customization: Users express frustration over the inflexibility of the platform, particularly when it comes to tailoring the system to their specific needs. For example, setting up unique approval workflows or customizing reports can be challenging.
Complex User Interface: Some users find the system difficult to navigate, describing the interface as clunky and unintuitive. This can lead to decreased efficiency and frustration, especially for new users.
Occasional Technical Issues: Users report experiencing occasional glitches and errors, such as system slowdowns or difficulty accessing certain features. These technical hiccups can disrupt workflow and impact productivity.
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SumTotal users paint a mixed picture, praising its robust functionality and mobile accessibility while critiquing its clunky interface and steep learning curve. Many laud its comprehensive suite, encompassing everything from onboarding to performance management, finding it a one-stop shop for HR needs. One user gushes, "It's like having a whole HR department in the cloud!" However, ease of use seems to be a major sticking point. Comments like "The interface feels outdated and unintuitive" and "Learning curve is a mountain, not a hill" pop up frequently. This is often contrasted with praise for competitors like Workday, lauded for its sleek design and user-friendliness. One user sums it up: "SumTotal has the depth, Workday has the polish." Mobile accessibility shines as a bright spot, with users appreciating the ability to manage tasks on the go. This stands out compared to some competitors, making SumTotal a good fit for companies with a mobile workforce. Ultimately, SumTotal seems to be a powerful tool for organizations willing to invest the time and effort in mastering its complexities. As one user puts it, "It's not perfect, but it's incredibly versatile. If you can handle the initial climb, the view from the top is pretty good."

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User reviews from the past year indicate UKG Ready is a comprehensive human resources management software solution best suited for small and mid-sized businesses, but may not be the best fit for every organization. Users praise UKG Ready for its user-friendly interface, robust reporting and analytics, and seamless integration with other business software, such as accounting and CRM software. For example, one user noted the software's intuitive design made it easy to navigate and complete tasks efficiently. Another user highlighted the value of the detailed reports, which provided actionable insights into key HR metrics, enabling data-driven decision-making. However, some users have reported that the software can be expensive and may require a significant upfront investment. Additionally, some users have found the initial setup and implementation process to be somewhat complex and time-consuming. UKG Ready differentiates itself from competitors by offering a mobile app that allows employees to access their information and manage tasks on the go. This feature is particularly beneficial for businesses with remote or mobile workforces. Users also appreciate the strong customer support provided by UKG, noting the team's responsiveness and helpfulness in resolving issues. Overall, UKG Ready is a solid choice for businesses seeking a comprehensive HR solution with a user-friendly interface, robust features, and reliable customer support. However, businesses with limited budgets or those seeking a simple solution with minimal setup may want to consider alternative options.

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