My advice to people who are considering implementing BrassRing is to assess your company's needs. If you are a larger-scale company aiming to streamline and automate your processes digitally, BrassRing can work well for you. However, if you are seeking innovation and more advanced features, there may be better products available on the market. Overall, I would rate the solution a six out of ten.

If you're going to purchase this, it's awesome, and it can do pretty much anything you could imagine. Don't over-engineer it. Start simple. Start clean. If you want to add more later, you can. I'd say that the ability to dramatically customize this tool is a blessing and a curse. If the people involved don't understand how to do it, you're going to do it wrong. Get the right talent on board to be able to do it right.

During a presentation at a conference, somebody said, First optimize your process, then systematize it; don't systematize a process, that isn't ideal. Take that time, before you implement the system, to get it as clean as possible, and then make sure you've got experts involved in your implementation, and you're not over complicating it.

As far as selecting a vendor, I think there are two pieces to consider. Number one is we want them to care as much about our success as we do; it's not just a matter of, they get the contract paid, and then we're on our own.

Number two is seeing that they're evolving the product. We don't want to invest a ton into implementing them, and then have them stagnate. We need them to continue to evolve with the industry. Beyond that, we also need them to really prioritize our success, and if we're not successful, they view that as a failure by them and they will help us resolve that.

My rating reflects the technology; there are always opportunities. I think their commitment to doing something special and their commitment to taking a care of their customers supports the four-star rating.

I would be concerned. IBM has a different legacy than Kenexa has, and I hope that Kenexa keeps its identity, because if it does, it will maintain that really customer-focused mentality, and stay at four stars. I would be concerned that it would get a little too big business, if it gets more IBMified – if you get what I mean by that.

Know what you want, because when you are taking a look at a whole bunch of different companies, it all starts to look the same. You have to be able to ask those in-depth questions, and be able to probe and better understand what they're presenting to you, because it's a shiny object. Even with our other business partners, as we were going through this, they were distracted by the shiny objects. You have to dig behind those and understand. There have been people in the past that have said, “Oh, this looks like a great system. Here is the PowerPoint.” Unless I can actually look at a live demo of something, I'm not really interested. It's interesting how some people still use sales and use PowerPoint slides.

It's a great company to work with. I've been using the Kenexa BrassRing since 2007, so I've been using the product for quite a long time, and seen how far it's come. I just think it's a good tool, with great flexibility.

I’m giving it a high rating because, whenever we do run across critical issues or things that we need to get addressed right away, they always seem to rise to the occasion, have our back, chip in, and do their part to help us get the task accomplished on time.

Make sure you work with the data scientists via your sales representative to examine your data set availability within your organization. If you are a mega multi-national, you could run into data protection regimes, pockets of isolated data that haven't been connected to global corporate data, and other similar challenges where systems are not fully integrated. Again – these are your hold ups – and the more you understand what a task it will be to unlock these data sets, the better.

You will also need executive sponsorship to help support the implementation of this stuff across the organization (which you should have for any big, multi-departmental implementation). It can help to have well-placed advocates, superusers trained and ready. Don't forget to share those insights when you get them because they will open doors all over the company to leaders, managers and employees looking for more insights as to how they can do things better, smarter, faster, and more intelligently.

The best piece of advice I could give is understand what your users truly need and what they don't need. Don't buy the entire kitchen sink because it's hard to leverage all those tools until you've actually been able to test them in a sandbox environment and be able to do proof of concept. I think the product leads and the support staff at Kenexa are great at leading you down a path, so listening to that guidance as opposed to coming forth with your own vision and not wavering off of that is probably another piece of advice I'd give.

Think about what your business needs, talk to your customers. What do your customers want? Do process mapping, do some Lean Six Sigma sessions with those customers and really find out what the core needs are. Then provide those to the customer. Kenexa may not be the option you want based on those needs, but I think it's very likely that it could be.

I think stability is an important criteria when selecting a vendor to work with. How long have they been around? Who do they work with? You don't want to get somebody on their first shop or their first job. You really would like to have somebody else be the guinea pig. The vendor should have that experience, so you need something there for that.

I think Kenexa's history, along with IBM, is a great point for them on that. Then you need somebody that does the work. You need them in the presentation to be able to really look at your business requirements that you give in the RFP, be able to answer those questions thoughtfully and correctly, and provide some information for you to make a decision on that product based on what they can do for you.

I would definitely and highly recommend the applicant tracking system. It's a very good system. I would not recommend RPO, honestly.

Functionality, I think, is the number one criteria for me when selecting a vendor to work with, but a very close second would be the customer relationship – really, the relationships and partnerships that we have as a client, and knowing that if we have a problem or a question, we'll have somebody that's there to answer it for us and to help us on our journey.

When I'm speaking to my peers and other organizations, what's interesting is that I get asked, "Can I see a copy of your survey questions?" As if that's the absolute answer that they kind of need. I always challenge them to say, "Well, not really. I don't really see that you're going to get much value from that. It's not about designing the perfect question. For us, you take a step back. It's, what do you want to know? The questions that I've got in my organization are aligned to my strategy, my objectives, my purpose, my vision and my values. They may or may not be right and relevant for your business."

What I would say first of all is, understand the framework in which you're going to operate, how are you going to construct and design research that's relevant for you? There's no perfect answer. I don't think there's another company out there that's got my perfect survey. I think I've got it within our team and my business to be able to develop that. What IBM bring is the framework, so that the high-performance engagement model is really important and the tools that help us to understand the relationship between emotional and rational engagement are really important, a portal that enables line managers to prepare for the conversations they're having with colleagues that provide sample action sets and focus existing questions.

On the one hand, they encourage the conversation. Secondly, they help drive the right actions in the right way. I think having a framework is about applying the science, but most importantly it's about developing an approach that absolutely supports your strategy and your business objectives. That would be my biggest advice. Talk to another person, another company tomorrow, it would be, "Where's your strategy? Where's your vision? Where are your values? What behaviors underpin them? Right, let's get to work. We've got a high-performance engagement model. We've got the relationship." Who's to say that Kenexa or IBM are right for them? I think whatever your strategy, you'll need to find the partner that best reflects where you are in your journey and can help you as well.

As I said, IBM are doing a great job with us at the moment, but we're always looking and speaking and open to having conversations with other people because the market's changing and IBM are aware of that. It's an increasingly competitive market, particularly as the solutions become more technology-focused.

I think in the past, the relationship organizations had with survey partners or research partners would be based more around the relationship you have with that particular team, but now it's much more in the solutions. It's the same as banking. The banking industry or the banking sector has got new and emerging players. People in our space now, with Apple Pay and PayPal, they're not typically what you would kind of call the traditional banks. I think the same is going to happen in the survey space as well. I think you're going to see new and emerging players who have got better, stronger technology solutions and that's what I'm really excited about as well because that's going to push IBM and Kenexa. It's going to push others as well. More importantly, it's going to open up spaces for me to play in. It's going to help me get from that analysis to insight to the so what much quicker.

Try to keep it simple. Don't over engineer things. Kenexa comes with a lot of customization ability, so it's easy to configure something that is highly complex and more complex than you need. It's difficult to undo some of that later.

Make sure you spend plenty of time testing, because the tool is always evolving. There is always going to be room for changes or issues that you want to make sure you catch before you launch.

I would advise other customers to link this solution to your other systems for a streamlined ATS.

When selecting a vendor to work with, I think the most important criteria, first and foremost, is that the technology has been well thought through. It's been tested. It's ready to launch. What's really important to me is the relationship side. Do we understand each other? Do we trust each other and are we on the same side, in terms of the values of both organizations and what it is we're looking to achieve?

I would not recommend IBM Kenexa to others. On a scale of one to 10, with one being the best and 10 being the worst, I would give IBM Kenexa a three. 

The most important criteria for me when selecting a vendor are transparency, reliability, and also reputation.

Basically, for what I use Kenexa, it's good for me for right now. It's perfect for me right now, if I have any opportunities as far as from a technical standpoint, I know I'm going to answer within a day or so.

Overall, from a recruiter's perspective, it is an excellent product. It is probably one of the best recruitment products out there in terms of usability, ease of understanding, and management of large applicant pools. However, the person who is trained on the backend to manage the site should likely be maybe more of an IT person with an understanding of managing websites from a backend perspective. Although Kenexa  Brassring tries to make it easy by using an easy-to-understand language, it is still very complex if you are not experienced.

I would rate IBM Kenexa Brassring a seven out of ten overall.

Definitely get onboard with the newest released versions, to stay current with all the different offerings.

The most important criteria for me when selecting a vendor to work with are data security and ease of contracting. Those are our two big pain points.

My rating reflects the fact that I am still learning about the system and what it's capable of doing.

Make sure it can fit your needs. Do a mapping and an outline of your end-to-end process, and make sure that BrassRing or Kenexa can meet those needs.
The most important criteria for me when selecting a vendor is compatibility with other systems; to be able to integrate seamlessly.

Kenexa definitely has the customization. The system works however you build it to work; when you set it up, it’s going to work the way you set it up. Generally, if there is an issue, it’s not a Kenexa issue. It’s a setting you have or the way you originally set it up to make it do something. If there is an issue, I would get with whoever your agent is to see a better way to do what you’re wanting to do, rather than looking for another solution in another program or something like that.

The most important criteria for me when selecting a vendor to work with is whether their product can be used across our wide variety of business units effectively and customization, as well as follow-up support, trying to get features to work the way we want or it to work across those business units.

From everything I’ve seen and heard, I would think Kenxea is probably one of the top three, if not the best, in the business that they do and the things that we use them for. Not working with another company, it’s hard to really give them an accurate rating, but from everything we’ve seen, and all the support and work with them, I’d say I’ve given it a fair rating.

Two years after IBM bought Kenexa, we are really starting to see the system evolve for the better. It is the best ATS on the market, and IBM are one of the better vendors to work with.

I would recommend this solution to others, but I would say make sure that you have the basic infrastructure and training for the people. It's essential.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

Do your homework. Make sure you know your own organization, your own processes, your own needs, and that you make sure that the vendor that you're considering fully understands that, can embrace what you're trying to accomplish, can paint a picture for you of where you're going to go, and that they will be there post-implementation in a support capacity and a continuous planning capacity, etc.

In my mind, it’s at the 80th percentile of the solutions out there. I think if there are 20% of solutions that are better, it's probably only because they were invented more recently and engineered with social in mind, with text in mind, with a more modern dynamic user in mind. I think the great thing about it is they've got a lot of invested time, energy, and knowledge. The downside is it's a system that was created many, many years ago and so it just evolves. You think of where it goes next and you add something, but you keep bolting on or adding on. It's probably not as clean or as efficient as something if you start it from scratch and said, "What's the simplest, easiest way to get a person from here to there?"

Don't be afraid to start. The longer you wait, the more money you probably spend on new people leaving. The biggest thing is, if you're looking for faster ways of getting information about your people, about your customers, I would say start with what you have and to grow it. A lot of people are scared to start because they don't think they have enough information. Their information isn't big enough for this to use but the fact of the matter is you can use this on any kind of scale.

My rating is partly because I need to know more and learn more, and also I know there's some things on the roadmap they're looking to develop and once those come in, I think it's going to be even better. I love the idea that they have roadmap ideas. I love their support, but like all of us, we have a little bit of room to grow.

The two most important criteria for me when selecting a vendor are: 1) obviously, the product has to have some kind of nuts and bolts behind it; and 2) also the support. We've seen a lot of sales people come through, but after the deal is signed is when you see the true signs of how they're going to support us. For me, I'll look at the support people before I look at the sales people.

Look at maintenance as well as initial investment, and the ability to work with you after the initial deployment.

There is a need to have a dedicated resource for maintenance and training. The tool is configurable but can also get complex to understand, depending on how the recruiting process is designed.

DON'T BUY KENEXA. Literally any other applicant tracking solution is better. Well, one exception. I would encourage my competitors to use Kenexa. Diverting my competitor to burn up time, money and resources with no return on all this effort would give my company a competitive advantage. That would be the only scenario I would encourage to use Kenexa.

Definitely consider it. I knew Kenexa before they were IBM, and at first I thought, "Oh no, here we go, get swallowed up by this big, mammoth organization." Now I think that being part of IBM just means that I've got a whole rich array of other things to choose from that can plug and play with some of the other solutions. I think there's been real value to having Kenexa be part of IBM, and I think the 2016 IBM HR Summit was one of them.

I think they've got a smart solution. I want to see what else we can do with Kenexa, and I think that they're part of an outstanding culture of customer service.

I think one the bigger advantages is that it is backed by IBM with the ability to bring in a bunch of tools to build an entire platform. It's not just one tool that does the ATS and another tool that does HRIS. Being able to have IBM that supplies all of those and create a platform is, I think, pretty useful.

The most important criteria for me when selecting a vendor to work with is definitely brand recognition. If you see other companies that are in your industry using the same tool, it let’s you know that it can be applied to your business. Something with a proven track record.

There's obviously some room to improve and they're making updates all the time but I think right now, even with talking with some of my colleagues, they say it's better than some of the other solutions that they've used. Drawing from some of their feedback, it seems like it's a good tool. I don't have any previous experience with other tools.

Be open about what you want; be straightforward and challenge.

Customize it and then it is a good product.