SumTotal vs Vibe HCM

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Our analysts compared SumTotal vs Vibe HCM 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
Vibe HCM 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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Vibe HCM unifies core human resources capabilities surrounding transactions and compliance, along with strategic employee engagement. The SaaS-based software includes recruiting, onboarding, core HR, time and attendance, communication and connection, talent development and recognition, payroll, compliance, benefits management and engagement measurement. It’s suitable for medium and large businesses.

There are two different versions of the product available to deploy. Essentials is best for businesses that need to get up and running quickly but want the ability to upgrade in the future. Edge is suitable for those whose complex requirements call for customization and advanced capabilities.
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Tailored to your specific needs
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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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  • Accelerate and Simplify Onboarding: HR admins can configure personalized preboarding and onboarding programs for new recruits. Features include welcome emails, videos, personalized messages, org charts, mentor assignment, live chat, access to new hire communities, online learning, new hire compliance and suggested activities (profile completion, benefits review, etc). This allows new hires to quickly acclimate and become engaged. 
  • Address Talent Gaps: Talent charts enable you to quickly visualize your workforce and identify gaps that you need to address. With this insight, you can assess talent in real time. The solution includes the following charts: performance, engagement, 9-box and succession, diversity, compensation, span of control, social contributions and regrettable turnover. 
  • Analyze Employees in Real Time: Talent cards are similar to talent charts but offer at-a-glance insights at the employee level. They provide individual snapshots of various talent-related metrics like compensation, performance, social contributions, succession and 9-box. 
  • Understand Your Workforce Better: With Vibe Insights’ proprietary algorithm, it’s possible to measure each employee’s engagement level. The program does this by tracking login activity and usage data (i.e., how an employee interacts with other employees, groups, and content throughout the system). In addition to predicting potential satisfaction, this helps you uncover retention issues and identify areas where employees need support. 
  • Make Decisions Backed by Data: Vibe Insights is built to be accessible for all users, even those without extensive technical skills. It allows you to create custom reports from scratch using drag-and-drop and filtering capabilities. Dashboards provide visuals that are easy to share. These tools enable you to analyze data from dozens of critical sources throughout the employee lifecycle so your organization can make data-driven decisions. 
  • Deliver a Seamless Experience Across All Devices: Vibe HCM is built using progressive web app (PWA) technology, which means the HR portal works like a mobile app. Users gain full access to the platform from any browser on any internet-connected device without needing to install an app. This provides a completely seamless user experience. The PWA capabilities ensure the platform is always updated, responsive and accessible offline. 
  • Cultivate Employee Growth: The system supports 360-degree performance evaluation so every employee can receive in-the-moment feedback that’s relevant and actionable. It also provides user-friendly tools that team leads and managers can use to engage in continuous coaching with employees. 
  • Centralize Collaboration: Vibe HCM allows you to create multiple work communities based on roles, tenure, programs and interests. Activity streams within the community hub make it easy for employees to converse and collaborate. It supports advanced features such as tagging, featured posts and multiple media types. 
  • Help New Hires Feel Welcome: The solution lets you embed videos from existing employees and add live chat functionality for new hires to connect with other employees. This helps them become familiar with the organization and feel accepted from day one. 
  • Build a Strong Culture: The solution includes tools for creating wellness, employee support and volunteer programs as part of your employee benefits. This helps your organization stand out as a socially responsible, people-centric company, which attracts employees and increases loyalty. 
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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 Processing: Vibe HCM allows you to execute payroll on time and without errors. Reports, a general ledger you can customize, and wage garnishments are among its features. 
  • Benefits Administration: Capabilities include automated life events and enrollments, benefits programs, total rewards statements and ACA compliance to keep your organization in line with regulations. 
  • Recruiting Management: With Vibe HCM, you can automate the applicant tracking and hiring process. The solution allows you to sync applicant LinkedIn profiles, and it promotes the social sharing of job posts across social networks and communities. You can configure applicant questions, view timelines, manage job postings, schedule interviews, generate reports, source talent internally, make bulk updates and more. Features like I-9, EEO reporting and e-verify ensure compliance. 
  • Organization Management: This feature enables you to organize your company’s departments, teams, jobs and other units via org charts. Drag-and-drop tools and built-in approvals make it easy to manage and update your organization’s structure. 
  • Time and Labor Management: These tools are integrated into the overall platform for more effective tracking. The module delivers mobile access, time-off requests, work schedules, cost tracking at different intervals (monthly, weekly, etc.) and more. Users can record time via punch-in or timesheets. 
  • Training Tools: The LMS module helps your organization support agile learning by offering content development. You can create and publish training materials at any time, as well as build personal networks. Peers can share content and collaborate within communities. Built-in intelligence algorithms can recommend which sessions are most relevant to employees, so they don’t have to guess or search on their own. You can also offer and manage certifications and licenses, if needed. 
  • Employee Surveys: Vibe HCM offers several ways to continuously measure engagement and employee sentiment. Pulse surveys allow you to gather timely feedback whenever needed and can be used at the company or team level. Life cycle surveys automatically trigger when an employee reaches preset milestones or events with your company. 
  • Self-Service: Both managers and employees have access to self-service capabilities. Managers are able to process transactions while employees can view their profile information and make updates as necessary. It also supports automating recurring processes like new hires, terminations, promotions and pay changes. 
  • Branded Career Sites: Your organization can deploy career sites that are both internal- and external-facing. The sites feature a responsive design, making them mobile-friendly. You can incorporate company branding along with photos, videos and company messages to deliver customized content that reflects your organization. 
  • Employee Recognition Banner: The platform includes a rotating banner to help employees gain recognition within your company. The banner displays the most recent messages on the platform homepage. 
  • Global Support: The solution includes the ability to set multiple languages and currencies for organizations that operate globally. 
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Product Ranking

#23

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HR Management Software

#22

among all
HR Management Software

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User Sentiment Summary

Fair User Sentiment 132 reviews
Great User Sentiment 107 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.

88%
of users recommend this product

Vibe HCM has a 'great' User Satisfaction Rating of 88% when considering 107 user reviews from 5 recognized software review sites.

n/a
4.1 (14)
3.2 (39)
4.4 (56)
2.7 (7)
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4.0 (10)
4.0 (56)
4.8 (10)
2.9 (30)
4.5 (17)

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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Easy to Use: 90% of reviewers who mention ease of use feel it’s easy to manage employee information and use features such as payroll and performance evaluations.
Customer Support: All reviewers who refer to customer support observed that queries are taken seriously and technical support is always available via phone or email.
Customizable: The software can be highly personalized, according to 65% of reviewers who mention customization.
Affordable: All reviewers who mention pricing state Vibe HCM is affordable.
Security: The system has robust security features, making it safe and secure to use, according to all users who reference this aspect.
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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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Requires Training: 60% of reviewers who mention usage feel that the learning curve is challenging and the software is a bit complex to understand in the beginning.
Not for Small Companies: The software is not ideal for small or startup organizations due to the skill required, as observed by 80% of reviewers who mention the size of business.
Requires Strong Network: All reviewers who refer to speed asserted that the software requires strong connectivity to run without errors.
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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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Vibe HCM is a unified platform having features such as talent, recruiting, onboarding, engagement, analytics and payroll. Many reviewers noted that the software requires skilled manpower for effective operation, so it may not be ideal for small organizations with limited technical resources. Also, becoming familiar with the application may take a relatively long time. However, the ease of use, strong security, quick customer service and customizable workflows make Vibe HCM a complete package that can provide a fruitful HR experience.

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