Executive Summary
Key Takeaways
Workforce management basics establish the operational foundation for accurate pay, consistent scheduling and employee trust. Enterprises are prioritizing reliability in time capture, rule enforcement and absence tracking to reduce downstream payroll corrections and administrative overhead. Even limited forecasting and scheduling capabilities are expected to prevent avoidable staffing gaps and late changes. Adoption remains critical, as consistent system use determines data quality and operational stability.
Software Provider Summary
The ISG Buyers Guide™ for Workforce Management Basics evaluates 10 software providers offering products that support time capture, scheduling and core labor compliance. The research ranked the top three overall leaders as isolved, Deltek and OneAdvanced. Providers were classified using weighted performance in Product Experience and Customer Experience for ISG quadrant placement. Deltek, isolved, Paycor and Zebra were rated Exemplary, with OneAdvanced rated Innovative. Rippling was rated as Assurance, while Paychex, Paycom, Paylocity and TCP Software were rated as Merit.
Product Experience Insights
Product Experience, representing 80% of the evaluation, focuses on Capability (30%) and Platform (50%), which includes adaptability, manageability, reliability and usability. isolved, Deltek and OneAdvanced achieved the highest performance as Leaders in this category, supported by reliable core timekeeping, scheduling execution and strong platform foundations enabling consistent rule application and scalable system management. Leaders demonstrated enterprise-grade platform capabilities supporting varied roles and operational contexts.
Customer Experience Value
Customer Experience, representing 20% of the evaluation, focuses on validation and TCO/ROI. Deltek, isolved and Rippling were the Leaders in this category, demonstrating strong customer advocacy and a clear investment in successful outcomes. Providers with lower performance often lacked publicly available customer validation or failed to demonstrate structured ROI measurement and proactive lifecycle engagement.
Strategic Recommendations
Enterprises should prioritize platforms that deliver consistent time capture and predictable rule enforcement across all environments. Validate that scheduling and forecasting capabilities reduce exceptions and late adjustments. Assess integration stability with payroll and workforce systems to minimize manual reconciliation. Ensure mobile and self-service experiences support sustained adoption and accurate data capture.
The Findings
The software providers and products evaluated in this research offer product and customer experiences, but not every feature is equally valuable to every enterprise or is needed to support the relevant business processes and use cases. Moreover, having too many product capabilities may be a negative factor for an enterprise if it introduces unnecessary complexity. Nonetheless, you may decide that a more comprehensive set of capabilities is important and meets your enterprise’s requirements.
An effective customer relationship with a software provider is vital to the success of any investment. The overall customer experience and the full lifecycle of engagement play a key role in ensuring satisfaction and long-term success. Providers with dedicated customer leadership, such as chief customer officers, tend to invest more deeply in these relationships and prioritize customer outcomes in line with TCO and ROI expectations. It is equally important that this commitment to customer success is evident throughout the provider’s website, the buying process and the customer journey.
Overall Scoring of Software Providers Across Categories
The research finds isolved atop the list, followed by Deltek and OneAdvanced. Providers that place in the top three of a category earn the designation of Leader. isolved has done so in five categories, Deltek in four, OneAdvanced in three categories and Rippling in two, and TCP Software in one category.
The quadrant chart below presents ratings for Product Experience and Customer Experience on the x- and y-axes, respectively, to visually classify software providers. Those providers whose Product Experience has above-median weighted performance on the axis, in aggregate across the two product categories, place farther to the right. The performance and weighting for the Customer Experience category determine placement on the vertical axis. In short, software providers that place closer to the upper-right on this chart performed better than those closer to the lower-left.
The research categorizes and rates software providers into one of four categories: Assurance, Exemplary, Merit or Innovative. Placement represents the software providers’ weighted performance in meeting the requirements of product and customer experience.
Exemplary: This rating (upper right) applies to those providers that performed above the median on Product and Customer Experience requirements. The providers rated Exemplary are: Deltek, isolved, Paycor and Zebra.
Innovative: This rating (lower right) applies to those that performed above median in Product Experience but not in Customer Experience. The provider rated Innovative is: OneAdvanced.
Assurance: This rating (upper left) applies to those that performed above median in Customer Experience but not in Product Experience. The provider rated Assurance is: Rippling.
Merit: This rating (lower left) applies to those that did not surpass the median in Customer or Product Experience. The providers rated Merit are: Paychex, Paycom, Paylocity and TCP Software.
We advise enterprises to use this research as a supplement to their own evaluations, recognizing that ratings or rankings do not solely represent a provider’s value nor indicate universal suitability of a set of products.
