Market Perspectives

Ventana Research is sharing insights about Ascentis, drawn from our latest Value Index research, which assesses how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements. The 2022 Ventana Research Value Index: Workforce Management is a distillation of a year of market and product research efforts.

Ascentis Time provides time and attendance solutions to ensure you only spend seconds tracking hours and can put an end to manual timesheet entry tracking. Ascentis Time is also available in a mobile app that provides workers the ability to perform tasks. Ascentis provides a range of its time clocks to be used in a variety of environments.

In all of our Value Indexes, we utilize a structured research methodology that includes evaluation categories designed to reflect real-world criteria incorporated in a request for proposal and vendor selection process for workforce management. We evaluated Ascentis and 12 other vendors in seven categories, five relevant to the product (Adaptability, Capability, Manageability, Reliability and Usability) and two related to the vendor (Total Cost of Ownership/Return on Investment and Vendor Validation). To arrive at the Value Index rating for a given vendor, we weighted each category to reflect its relative importance in an RFP process, with the weightings based on our experience and on data derived from our Benchmark Research on Workforce Management.

Ascentis was categorized as a Vendor of Assurance, ranking ninth overall in this Value Index evaluation. It ranked 11th in Product Experience, where it performed best in Adaptability. It ranked fifth in Customer Experience, and performed best in TCO/ROI. Its overall performance was impacted by its lower rankings in Capability and Usability, which represent 40% of the weighting in the overall Value Index.

Our assessment finds that Ascentis could perform better in Capability — where it ranked 11th — in the areas of analytics and collaboration for workforce management. In Usability, where it also ranked 11th, Ascentis could examine opportunities for depth in accessibility, like embedding HR service delivery or virtual assistants. Ascentis actively participated in the Value Index process. This assessment was based on Ascentis Time products available in July of 2021. Since the publishing of the Value Index, Ascentis has been acquired by UKG, and the future of Ascentis Workforce Management products is not readily clear and its customers should begin to evaluate alternatives including UKG.

Unlike many IT analyst firms that rank vendors from an IT-only perspective or consider futures or vision over what is available in the products today, Ventana Research has designed the Value Index to provide a balanced perspective of vendors and products that is rooted in an understanding of business drivers and needs. This approach not only reduces cost and time but also minimizes the risk of making a decision that is bad for the business. Using the Value Index will enable your organization to achieve the levels of efficiency and effectiveness expected and hoped for when investing in workforce management technology.

This research-based index is the most comprehensive assessment of the value of workforce management software in the industry. Technology buyers can learn more about how to use our Value Index by clicking here, and included vendors that wish to learn more can click here. Read the report here.