VIDEO: SumTotal Product Spotlight

Welcome to this week’s product spotlight, where we highlight different technology companies each week. This video is produced by TechnologyAdvice where we Educate, Advise, and Connect buyers and sellers of business technology. In this week’s spotlight we have Teena Lyons, the Senior Director of Product Marketing at SumTotal. I asked Teena to describe SumTotal in one sentence. This is what he had to say. At SumTotal we work with companies across the globe to make it very simple to connect their people to opportunities for development and career progression.

We make it easy for them to engage their employees, improve the performance of people, and expand overall workforce capabilities. We are truly passionate about working with organizations to unlock potential of what they can achieve through their people. I followed up with a question about what differentiates SumTotal from similar products. I can sum this up in three words: Simple, personal, and proven. First, we are reimagining how companies achieve success.

People today have an entirely new set of expectations for the technology they use at work. We expect the consumer driven simplicity and familiarity of our favorite personal apps. So, we are driving simplicity to the core of our design. Second, we recognize that a one size fits all approach to development simply doesn’t work anymore. Every person has their own distinct interests, needs, and career aspirations. If you aren’t addressing this, your people probably aren’t as engaged as they could be.

We pride ourselves in being a leader in the industry for over thirty years. We continue to deliver measurable improvements and results for many of the best places to work around the globe. Next, I asked Teena to talk about the ideal customers for SumTotal. Because our solutions are scalable, we work with organizations, across the globe, of all sizes and industries. Our ideal customers are those that really understand and want to harness the power of their people.

Whether they are looking to support or transform existing processes, or take an entirely new approach to expanding the capabilities of their people. I followed with a question about pricing. This is how they broke it down for us. Sum Total offers a full talent suite, configurable for each client’s needs. Obviously there are price implications as customers grow the solution with their needs. For example, we have basic talent functionality that a customer may choose to start with.

They may choose to grow the solution into succession, recruiting, on-boarding, and different modules that grow with their practices , and as they grow they are obviously incur licensing fees. They might grow the solution across a broader user base as well. They may also choose to work with our professional services team. I asked Teena what a limitations for SumTotal was, and this is what he told us. Traditionally we found that our recruiting and onboarding area of our talent suite tends to be one of our weaker areas.

We do find that some of our more complex global clients need a more complex recruiting solution. We took steps to remedy this last year by partnering with iCIMS, a onboarding and recruiting provider. We have an integration and partnership with iCIMS. Now we are coming up on our Summer release where we are going to be launching an entire talent acquisition module, which will have recruiting, onboarding, applicant tracking, and internal mobility capabilities.

Finally, I asked him to talk about a best practice for implementing SumTotal One of the best ways that you ensure that you get the best value from using SumTotal, is to take advantage of the number of resources we provide for our customers. We have a dedicated customer services team, that leverages all of their years of practice with other customers, and will share some of the insight with you. We also have a very active user community, both online and virtual sessions help you connect with other customers, learn from their practices, and we also deliver a number of key product insight, news, product documentation, and even complimentary on-demand training of all of our products available, just for our customers online.

If you would like to find out more about SumTotal or other HR software, check out our website, TechnologyAdvice.com, where we can help you find the best technology for your business.