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HR managers are increasingly reliant on analytics in SaaS to make quick and confident decisions. However, the stakes are high for HR. For example, the cost of a wrong hire could be 5 to 27 times the hiring cost!
But how do users really feel about the reporting and insights available in popular HR Tech products?
We have analyzed the user reviews of multiple HR software products on G2, a popular software review site. Spoiler alert: very few HR platforms have flawless analytics. Almost 8 in 10 products received one or more negative reviews.
But what does that observation mean? And why should you care? Learn about the most common hits and misses in HR analytics. That way you can build an experience your users love.
For this study, we analyzed the user reviews of 50 HR Tech platforms. HR Tech spans multiple software categories. So we selected vendors from the 3 biggest HR software categories on G2:
The research only includes vendors with at least one review mentioning analytics. The 50 selected vendors are balanced across all G2 quadrants, ranging from category leaders to niche software.
For this research, we categorized over 1,000 reviews with keywords like ‘reports,’ ‘dashboard’ and ‘analytics’ into positive, negative or neutral sentiment. We analyzed a sample of 125 recent reviews in more detail to map the common concerns.
Besides user reviews, we assessed how each vendor advertises and monetizes their analytical features by looking at:
Here’s what we found.
HR Tech Leaders may dominate the market, but they aren’t necessarily better at analytics. A striking 95% of G2 Leaders received at least one negative analytics review. Meanwhile, more than half of the High Performers did not receive any negative feedback, even though products in that quadrant have a lower market presence.
The critical readers among you are now thinking: “Leading platforms probably have much more reviews than lesser-known tools. So isn’t it more likely that at least one review is negative?”
Fair point. But after further digging, even the ratio of total negative vs positive reviews is significantly higher. Across all reviews, Leaders got almost 10% more negative reviews than High Performers. Overall, users have more concerns about the analytics in market-leading HR SaaS platforms.
HR Tech with lower market presence are the winning underdogs. By investing time in an engaging analytics experience, they have an opportunity to win market share. High performers already score better than leaders. If they continue to improve, they can eventually take the lead over their popular competitors.
In our sample of 125 reviews, most users expressed similar complaints. The most common grievance is clunky, confusing or difficult-to-use analytics. 72% of HR tools make it too difficult for users to find the information they need, requiring too many clicks.
For 44% of HR tools, their analytics don’t present the data their users need. There are multiple reasons why. While some users wish for more customization to find the insights they need, others blame the difficult interfaces and lack of certain functionality.
Finally, in 30% of the tools, customers have problems with pulling data & reports. Reviews expose many users still rely on Excel exports for reporting and insights. This manual and tedious process harms the customer experience. If users already complain about the raw data exports, the visual reporting layers clearly leave something to be desired.
Some other concerns came up in the sample of 125 reviews:
Overall, the customer feedback reveals a lack of control for the user to easily explore and tailor insights to their own needs.
Now that we’ve addressed the complaints, you may wonder what a good analytics experience looks like. Luckily, there is a lot to learn from raving reviews as well.
Users enjoy straightforward analytics that don’t require training to get started. HR platforms with easy-to-use reporting and an appealing look and feel receive praise from their customers. Users want insights that adapt to their changing needs, with as few clicks as possible.
Besides user reviews, we also researched vendor websites to assess how they advertise and sell their analytics feature set. Every vendor on the list uses reporting as a selling point on their website. 3 in 4 HR tools even have a full page dedicated to analytics.
This statistic is a wake-up call for product managers who treat analytics as an afterthought. While your competitors are using analytics as a visual marketing aid, your HR software may miss an extra wow factor to pull in and convince prospects.
While analytics are strongly used in marketing, only 38% of the researched tools use analytics to drive upsell. Many HR Tech vendors offer analytics to customers in their lowest pricing tier.
This data point only strengthens our presumption that HR users expect insights as part of their most basic platform needs. Reporting and analytics are table stakes for any modern HR Tech platform.
Even though most HR Tech tools have reporting features, a lot of users struggle to analyze their HR data. Either the analytics are too difficult to use or they don’t reveal the insights they need.
For product managers in HR Tech, this struggle presents a massive opportunity. By offering an engaging analytics experience, you can turn a basic insights module into a competitive advantage your customers will keep coming back for.
With the help of an embedded analytics platform, you can start building better SaaS analytics today. And our team is here to help! Schedule a free consultation or product demo today.
Experience the power of Luzmo. Talk to our product experts for a guided demo or get your hands dirty with a free 10-day trial.
