HRIS: ADP vs. ABRA?

Caroliso · February 2005

Our 130-person, single site company is looking to upgrade its HRIS from a homegrown FM Pro database to a commercial product. We currently use ADP for payroll.

We are looking closely at ADP (Benefits Expert and Portal Solutions) and ABRA (ABRA HR/Suite) for: HRIS, intranet, employee election of benefits, FSA administration. We will likely not use the recruitment packages, and will only use the attendance package for recordkeeping (as opposed to attedance management).

If you use either, what do you like or dislike about the systems? If you considered either and didn't elect them, why not?

Any feedback is appreciated. The salespeople on both sides are GREAT. Now I need to hear from actual users who haven't been selected by the vendor.

marc · February 2005

I am replying just so I can get the email notice of other replies to this thread.

I am looking at ADP's portal with respect to benefit administration and EEs being able to access certain data for information purposes. Trying to reduce some of the workload by empowering the EEs.

DB · February 2005

I used ABRA about 10 years ago at a 400-person gov't office and loved it. We did not use the payroll or recruitment portions. Our HR dept did not have an IT person so after the software was installed we were on our own. The ABRA support staff was incredible and very patient.

Please ask if you have any specific questions.

Obviously 10 years is a long time so hopefully someone will jump in with more recent data.

Caroliso · February 2005

I'm surprised not to hear from more people on this. Was my question too broad? Is this posted on the wrong Forum perhaps? Do people not use either ADP or ABRA HRIS's?

Carol

E Wart · February 2005

I used ADP about 10 years ago.. only payroll. I got out of this and went to Ceridian. Had terrible service with ADP and was nickled and dimed to death. Every time you asked them something they charged you $100. Also wouldn't even try to do anything... just said they couldn't do it. I understand they have improved since I used them. We changed to Certidian which I loved. They were wonderful. However, in the last 3 years, their customer service has had ups and downs and they are getting more like ADP with their charges. I am not sure I would recommend them at this time. (Even though they are ok.)
Good luck. Payroll changes aren't fun. I wouldn't recommend doing unless at beginning of the year. Otherwise lots of challenges and more work, but can be done.
E Wart

Gendaisy · March 2005

My company uses ADP's HR Perspective. We have liked almost everything about it so far, except the report writing feature. If you use ADP for your payroll, you may have heard of ReportSmith which is very user friendly. HRP's Toolbox is more Access-based and much harder to use. However, ADP's PCPW and HRP work very well together and has saved a lot of dual-entry as you may have to do if you process payroll with one system and your HRIS is another.

Good luck!

rlk · March 2005

We started using ADP's product Total Choice in 2002 and have been very pleased with it. We were in the beta group of companies that first used the product. Total Choice is an internet based product. They are continually updating and improving both the payroll and HR side of the product. (We use both.) I like that you only have to enter employee information in one place and it rolls through the system. They are very responsive and open to ways to improve the product. Some of the suggestions I have submitted have been incorporated in updates. The only thing I don't really like is the report writing feature. I have not had much experience with writing my own reports so maybe it is just me! They use Crystal Reports. They do include a large number of canned reports. I would be happy to discuss this further with you if you are interested.

Becky

LAB · March 2005

It may be too late for my two cents but here goes. In a previous life I have used both products. Agree that ADP used to nickel and dime us to death and we finally took payroll in house with ABRApay for that reason. We had been using ABRA HR suite for some time and were even Beta site for applicant tracking. Company and ABRA kind of grew up together. We went from 120 to 600 employees while I was with them.

With Current company we are about to outsource payroll. Our go live date is 4/29. We are going to use PayMaxx (cost, service, products). We are going to use their internet version so they will host everything. We are also picking up the ABRA suite through them. They are partnered and by them hosting I do not have to purchase ABRA it is part of our annual service agreement. So here is athird option if not too late.

Dutch2 · March 2005

We too are currently shopping around. We have an older ABRA system now. It was our only system that had problems with Y2K. It really has trouble keeping track with anyone hired since Dec. 31, 1999.
We are now using multiple systems developed in-house to track our HR info. and this is becoming a tremendous burden having to go to several places to get what we need. There is a chance we may be nearly doubling our number of ee's this year so we must come up with something soon.
Good luck...

Mentel · April 2005

[font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON 04-06-05 AT 09:57AM (CST)[/font][br][br]I have been using ABRA as a stand alone HRIS. I do not use it with payroll. We outsource payroll processing to the Payroll Company out of Madison, WI. They have been a big improvement over both ADP and PayChex. We had service problems with both companies. We have ABRA with 80+ employees for 9 years and it works great. Their customer service is excellent. We are looking at changing our accounting/project management software to Deltek Vision which interfaces with ABRA and will eliminate the entering of employees into ABRA and the accounting system. I have been very satisfied with ABRA. Their new Query function is very easy to work with in running new reports.

HRIS: ADP vs. ABRA?

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