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IBM Kenexa vs UKG comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 4, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM Kenexa
Ranking in Benefits Administration
16th
Ranking in Talent Management
17th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.3
Number of Reviews
30
Ranking in other categories
Applicant Tracking and Recruiting Software (10th)
UKG
Ranking in Benefits Administration
2nd
Ranking in Talent Management
5th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
125
Ranking in other categories
Employee Scheduling Software (1st), Cloud HCM (6th), Employee Time Tracking Software (2nd), HR Analytics Software (2nd), Talent Acquisition (5th), AI-Agents for HR (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Benefits Administration category, the mindshare of IBM Kenexa is 1.8%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of UKG is 6.9%, down from 7.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Benefits Administration Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
UKG6.9%
IBM Kenexa1.8%
Other91.3%
Benefits Administration
 

Featured Reviews

Karan Grover - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Suitable for larger-scale companies aiming to streamline and automate their processes digitally
The deployment of the solution took between six to eight months. When we introduced BrassRing at my company, we encountered several challenges. First, moving data from our old system to BrassRing was tough because it needed reformatting. Second, connecting BrassRing with our HR data was tricky due to manual processes for roles and departments. Third, setting up the workflow in BrassRing was complex. Fourth, configuring user access and approval levels was a detailed task. We also had to manage the change process, including running both old and new systems in parallel, communicating changes, and training users. Lastly, monitoring and reporting were needed to ensure data accuracy and proper system usage once everything was in place. We had a team of six to eight people managing the project from our side during the BrassRing deployment. I'm not sure about the size of the BrassRing team, and we also had our own technical team, which had three to four members. The solution required maintenance, particularly from my side as the administrator. Maintenance responsibilities were divided into two parts: some tasks we, as end-users, could control, while others were the responsibility of the BrassRing team. Payment-related tasks were a regular part of our responsibilities. I wasn't the only person maintaining the solution. There were three power users from Infosys, each responsible for a specific geography. My counterpart managed it in the US, and I, along with my colleague in India, managed it for other geographies.
Streamlined time tracking boosts operational efficiency across multiple regions
The time tracking feature is the most effective for employee management. UKG is used in Europe, the United States, Australia, and East Asian countries for HR activities like payroll. The application is like an ERP, providing comprehensive features for organizations, simplifying their processes, and reducing the need to use multiple software solutions.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Great value and flexibility in an ATS, mainly through the automation and the configuration through Workbench you can do to manipulate the candidate experience to really be something that candidates like and allows them to apply to your site easily and put them in a pipeline for recruiters to access and move through a process and get somebody hired."
"I would definitely and highly recommend the applicant tracking system."
"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."
"We acquired a pharmacy retailer three years ago, and Kenexa enabled us to actually standardize our employee engagement across both of those organizations, helping us understand at an enterprise level what was going on and, most importantly, how people were starting to feel about being acquired and joining the broader company space."
"BrassRing, the applicant tracking system, has brought a high level of automation, specifically for our mass-volume hourly processes."
"We use the Viewpoint and that is an absolutely powerful tool; it is extremely helpful to get more insights, and to start a conversation with our employees to grow and improve."
"The most important features are that the instrument can be customized, that we can get important and relevant data about our employees, and the responsiveness of our client team from IBM has been phenomenal."
"It is extremely user friendly. It is very flexible in managing recruitment, especially when you have thousands of applicants as we did. We easily had over 20,000 applicants within a year for some of our positions, so it made it very easy to manage a large application pool. It was very easy to customize by recruiter preference. When you open up someone's profile to see their experience, education, or other things, you can customize that for yourself. It was flexible in that, and each recruiter could set up their preferences. It didn't have to be set up so that everyone had to have the same landing platform, which was very helpful. As someone who trained other HR people on how to use the system, it was very easy to pick up and learn."
"Customer service has been good."
"We are very pleased with the Ultimate partnership!"
"The intuitive interface, reporting capabilities, and the fact that it really offers the full suite of HCM."
"The price for the product is high but it has a lot of functionality."
"Increased productivity in HR and Payroll departments."
"Saved thousand of trees and cut down the turnaround time to get things done."
"We went from tracking our recruiting on an excel spreadsheet to have a well-functioning, process-oriented recruiting program in place!"
"Pricing and licensing met the needs of the company."
 

Cons

"We're really looking forward to some of their enhancements to their onboarding portal, specifically for recruiters and hiring managers."
"There are tools that actually are not there where clients need them, especially the survey analytics to analyze verbatim in different languages."
"The reason I’m not rating it with five stars is because of its sheer size."
"We have about 50 requests for enhancements in the system right now."
"My rating is not higher because of the support, honestly; the global service center model."
"I would like to have a better and more user-friendly interface."
"There were functions we couldn't customize and needed to."
"Being in a silo of my own world, my wish would be that everything that's available in their legacy views would be moved into their new Talent Suite products, so we could move over to that."
"Implementation was incomplete."
"I would love to see a Text Box added to the Status page."
"One area where UKG could improve is in its ability to understand its own competency and then work hard to improve it."
"Pricing is high for a limited license."
"We have encountered deployment issues; communication was very poor."
"In-house scale of 1-10, 5."
"The solution could use better reporting with standard reports."
"Technical support is 4/10."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Kenexa was fairly priced. However, in 2019, before I left my previous organization, they significantly increased their pricing. It can be affordable, but their pricing is going up. It is not just licensing; it is how many applicants you have in your system on the database side."
"The platform is not affordable but also not the most expensive."
"UKG's pricing and licensing model involves ongoing expenses based on the number of employees paid. The initial implementation cost is low when UKG implements it directly. However, when partners handle the implementation, it becomes more expensive since partners don't receive the monthly recurring fees."
"If you're going for the full suite, it can be fairly pricey."
"The pricing depends on the number of licenses we buy."
"I wasn't involved in the pricing part. I'm a user, and I believe it is based on the user count. One thing that is nice about Ultimate is that you can learn how to use the system without additional fees. The learning aspect is the life of a product, and the training was a huge reason why we went with Ultimate. We did have some integration costs. They were a part of the implementation because of the integrations to other systems that we included in our implementation."
"While I am unsure of the licensing cost itself, the total cost of implementation and licensing for a company with over 5000 employees would be around 6,00,000. So, there are additional costs beyond licensing."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Construction Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise28
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business48
Midsize Enterprise43
Large Enterprise48
 

Questions from the Community

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Earn 20 points
What needs improvement with UKG?
UKG needs more publicity. It is a productive ERP ( /categories/erp ) application, but many people in the IT market are not aware of it. Greater awareness could increase its adoption.
What is your primary use case for UKG?
I worked for a healthcare organization and a university. Most organizations use UKG ( /products/ukg-reviews ) to track employee timesheets, capturing accurate swipe-in and swipe-out data. UKG ( /pr...
What advice do you have for others considering UKG?
Publicity is very important for any software. If people aren't aware of UKG, despite its productivity, they won't use it. Expanding the awareness is essential for greater adoption. Overall, I would...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

IBM Smarter Workforce, Outstart
UKG Pro, UKG Dimensons, UKG Ready
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Sweet Spot International (SSI), Leo Burnett Worldwide (LBW), Sika AG, Legacy Health, Apollo Group Inc., Regeneron, Transurban Group, National Health Service, New Zealand Police, Overland Footwear, Yealands, Johnson Controls, Allscripts, Kerry Foods, Masterpet, AMD, Balfour Beatty
Tesla, Marriott, Yamaha, Aramark, Feeding America, Samsung, Sony Music, Dave & Buster's, Revlon
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Kenexa vs. UKG and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,221 professionals have used our research since 2012.