Im back at Manadaly Bay amd looking for folks who might be here - I cant be the only here! Hit me up if you’re here this week!
You could have told me. We have UKG, I could have went!
Lat minute thing for me
I would have come to Vegas just for fun!
We have UKG too! Sorry to miss you. You will have to let us know how it is different from Insights
Got a controller there
Yes, that’s what I was hoping they would implement if they hadn’t already.
I read that you can required Entra ID for employees but use basic auth for candidates and former employees. Sounds good so far. 
We’ve got the UKG Ready product, not Pro, so not so much of the good stuff for us.
And I’ll tell you, this conference is different, but I’d also have to say it’s not as good as Insights. Although Insights could benefit from a few things. I’ll do a more detailed synopsis when I get some time - for those who care to know 
Yeah that’s a good start.
Nice! We (@Blake_Martin @the_other_jkane) are on our journey to be with UKG by the end of the year! Let us know what you learn!
Nice man, lots of people now!
Sorry it’s been a few weeks, but life and all….
UKG is certainly a different beast than Epicor, but if I found one gold nugget, it’s that they are exactly the same when it comes to engaging with customers at the event - and that some of them like to drink. I won’t say this applies all year long outside of the event as I’ve had a spot of trouble finding the right folks but let’s just say I had drinks with the VP of Technology, the UKG Ready lead architect, and the PM’s for Integrations and APIs. So it was a worthwhile trip, because…
The UKG Ready API’s don’t work well, some not at all, and they had NO CLUE. Hence the targeted reconnaissance mission and fact filled ‘discovery’ on their part - so much so that they all ran back to their rooms and looked up all my tickets (they told me so at breakfast the next morning - and that’s the kind of support we like)
Overall the event was nice. Very marketing centric, and very AI centric this year. But less demo than ‘potential’ - so I give Epicor kudos for that part of the AI trend wave. The classes went from 9am to 3pm with 1/2 hour in between. It seemed like we were all standing around waiting for the next thing to do -so kudos to Epicor for running a tight ship! And a few other things - the food was the same each day, wasn’t great, and lunch was a ‘grab and go’ packaged meal which wasn’t great and generated a HGUE amount of trash. The drinking receptions had very limited drink selections - so Kudos to Epicor for that - especially that one.
They utilized the arena for the big presentations - a long walk to sit in uncomfortable seats, with your neck at an odd angle the whole time. The entertainment was interesting - the rented the field in the Raider’s stadium for the concert and had food stations around the perimeter - anyone remember the failure Epicor had with that concept? I didn’t make it to the concert, but I understand the walk was LONG…
A few other things of note - UKG Ready and UKG Pro (suite) products are very separate inside UKG. Different PMs, different support groups, etc. Think Epicor and HCM - where HCM got the short end of the stick at Perspectives. UKG ready had maybe 25% of the classes apply to the product, so I wasted a LOT of my time at this conference.I’m sure I could drone on about little things, but I’ll finish with space utilization. The used the whole room for the expo hall and had a puppy cage match and massage chairs, amongst other things. But they had breakfast and lunch on different floors - seemed silly. And worst of all, the best sessions (hands on style) had pre-registration that filled up in less than 15 minutes, imposed room occupancy restrictions (folks were turned away from rooms), did not have specific training sessions, and had a very limited ‘lab’ on the expo floor.
Registration was OK, but they printed badges in real time, so you had to WAIT. And then they give you a bag with substantial swag - all easily worth a whopping $5 total - you know the standard “4Imprint” catalog of booth giveaways. Oh - and EVERY booth had at least one, mostly 2 or 3, swag items too. I saw people collecting a small suitcase full of shite “for my kids back home”.
All in all, it seemed to be very ‘party’ focused, whereas Insights is much more business oriented. I get it - it’s HR - how technical can it be? But I managed to get a group of IT people together and we all had the same comment - “Probably won’t be here again.”
Anyway, if anyone here knows anyone at the Insights control group - I’d be happy to give them the positive pointers to improve things.
As a UKG Pro user, I’m kind of glad that they are separate. The UKG Ready side was hit by a few breaches since 2021. The 2021 incident prevented payroll from being run for a few weeks and resulted in a $6M fine to the UKG Group. Ultimate started as a Payroll/HR company while Kronos as a timeclock manufacturer. I hope the Kronos side has learned a few things over the years.
Yeah, we don’t need the ‘extra’ that the Pro suite has, and it’s light years better than Paycom and Paylocity. So we’ll take our chances. (I was a Kronos customer for many years before the merger and liked it a lot).
My understanding is that there will be no single code base (I asked), ever, but new feature/functions such as AI, will be built as ‘shared’ features. The UKG Pro web API is well documented and functions great. Lot’s of discussion in one session about what people are doing with it. Us poor Ready folks need a champion, and it looks like it’s me.
I forgot to mention - the VP of Tech and I talked about doing a development partnership on a 360-degree Kinetic interface. Once I explained all the synch and automations I want to do, he thought it might be good to focus on that - might be that I told him it’ll make money and that we have a handful of folks here willing to particiapte.