Ventana Research Analyst Perspectives

Oracle’s Payroll Software is a Ventana Research Value Index Leader

Written by Ventana Research | Mar 31, 2020 10:00:00 AM

Here are some insights on Oracle drawn from our latest Value Index research, which provides an analytic assessment of how well payroll software vendor offerings address buyers’ requirements. The Ventana Research Value Index on Payroll Software 2020 is the distillation of a year of market and product research efforts by Ventana Research. We evaluated Oracle and seven other vendors in seven categories, five product-related (adaptability, capability, manageability, reliability and usability) and two concerning the vendor (TCO/ROI and vendor validation). To arrive at the Value Index rating for a given vendor, we weighted each of the seven categories to reflect its relative importance in an RFP process, with the weightings based on data derived from our benchmark research on payroll software.

Oracle offers a strong payroll product; it places second in this Value Index, earning the vendor Leader status overall and in both the aggregated Product and Customer Assurance categories. It performed especially well in the Validation, Adaptability and Capability categories.

Overall the product delivers a streamlined mobile experience for front-to-back payroll operations. The vendor’s payroll product provides a superior user experience that includes natural language processing of text and voice and a personalized newsfeed. This also allows the company’s chatbot to “learn” from communication patterns in supporting employee and manager queries. Oracle performs best in the Validation category because of the quantity and quality of customer references and clearly conveyed product roadmap themes. In addition, eight new payroll localizations in recent years indicates strong commitment to the product.

Cloud Payroll provides only core analytics, but organizations can augment them through Oracle or third-party analytics tools. Also, organizations must integrate payroll with Oracle’s Workforce Management Systems using APIs rather than being able to access a unified platform. And clients in the United States must use a third party for tax remittance and filing, though international clients can use HCM Cloud. Oracle would have scored higher in TCO/ROI with more robust business case collateral and ROI tools.

This research-based index is the most comprehensive assessment of the value of payroll software in the industry. You can learn more about our Value Index as an effective vendor selection and RFI/RFP tool here. Participating vendors can learn more about how to use the Value Index here.