Pay technology has always mattered. In 2026 it matters more visibly than ever. The EU Pay Transparency Directive's transposition deadline passed on 7 June 2026. Only a handful of member states had national laws in place by then, with most still legislating, but the direction of travel is fixed: employers will need to disclose pay criteria, share salary ranges at the point of hire, and, for organisations with 150 or more employees, report on gender pay gaps from June 2027 usin

The first 90 days of employment have always mattered but it's now critical that they make a super-fast start. With hybrid and distributed workforces now the norm, organisations that rely on ad hoc onboarding - a stack of paperwork, a laptop courier, and a calendar invite - are seeing the consequences in higher early attrition, slower time-to-productivity, and poor employee experience scores. The cost of a failed hire is well documented; the cost of a disengaged one who stays

Most HR leaders would agree that the systems holding their people data together are overdue for a rethink. Whether you are running a patchwork of legacy tools, a spreadsheet-heavy process, or an HRIS that has simply grown too rigid for the way your business operates today, the pressure to modernise core HR is real - and growing. In 2026, the market has never offered more credible options: cloud-native platforms have matured, AI-powered automation is transforming routine HR ad

AI has moved faster in HR than in almost any other part of the enterprise software market. It should be no surprise, though, as this is an obvious place to target the improvements that AI surely will bring. Two years ago, most HR teams were experimenting with an intranet chatbot or a writing assistant for job adverts. Today a new group of vendors is putting AI agents to work across hiring, skills, internal mobility, employee service, coaching and workforce planning, and the l

When organisations outgrow fragmented HR and payroll systems, they start looking for a single platform that can handle the full employee lifecycle without the usual patchwork of integrations. Dayforce is one of the most established answers to that problem. Built from the ground up as a unified cloud platform, it serves thousands of organisations across more than 50 countries, from mid-market businesses to large global enterprises with complex workforce structures. Dayforce ha

Choosing compensation management software is an interesting decision that straddles the border between HR and the finance team. It's also changing in real time - with the EU Pay Transparency Directive becoming enforceable in June 2026 across all 27 member states, and several US states adding their own pay transparency requirements in 2025, the platform you choose now needs to stand up to regulatory scrutiny as well as run a smooth annual merit cycle. Getting the selection wro

Degreed is one of the better-known names in learning experience and workforce skills technology, and its shift from a learning content aggregator to what it now positions as an AI-powered system for workforce transformation is worth understanding beyond vendor marketing alone. Viewpoint Analysis is a Technology Matchmaker, helping businesses to quickly find and select new enterprise technology. Our aim is to be the place enterprise buyers go to understand the software and tec

If you are about to buy new HR software, whether that's a full HCM platform, a payroll replacement, or a specialist point solution, at some stage you will need to write a Request for Proposal (RFP). This is the document that turns “we're looking at HR systems” into a structured, comparable set of vendor responses you can actually decide between. Viewpoint Analysis is a Technology Matchmaker: we help HR leaders find and select the right technology fast. We run HR software sele

Gloat was one of the earliest companies to build an internal talent marketplace, and over the past decade it has pushed that idea a long way beyond its original scope. The business now positions itself as an AI native platform for what it calls Agentic HR, using autonomous AI agents to act on workforce decisions rather than simply presenting employees with a list of open roles. For enterprise IT and HR buyers trying to make sense of where the workforce technology market is he

Rippling has built one of the most talked about propositions in HR technology: a single platform combining HR, IT device management, payroll, and finance operations on top of what it calls an "employee graph." For many fast-growing, US-headquartered companies, it delivers exactly what it promises. But the same breadth that makes Rippling compelling also makes it a genuinely significant piece of infrastructure to run, and the decision to look at alternatives comes up more ofte

Viewpoint Analysis is a Technology Matchmaker, we sit between HR vendors and enterprise buyers, researching the HR market and helping the wider IT buyer community understand their HR software options. A key part of what we do is help buyers not only understand a busy technology marketplace, but also navigate the selection process. As an HR Software Selection Consultant, we provide a range of services all designed to take the weight off the purchasing team and get the right so

Oracle Taleo was, for a long time, the enterprise standard for applicant tracking, and it still runs recruiting for a large number of established organisations today. But the platform's position has changed. Oracle launched Oracle Recruiting Cloud as a native module of Oracle Fusion HCM back in 2018, and its own commercial and product focus has shifted firmly towards that newer platform, leaving Taleo in a support-only holding pattern rather than active development. That alon

ADP is one of the best-known names in payroll, with a product range that stretches from RUN Powered by ADP for small businesses through to ADP Workforce Now and ADP Vantage HCM for larger, more complex organizations. That scale is exactly why so many businesses end up looking elsewhere. Some have outgrown the tier they started on and find themselves paying for capability they never use, others are frustrated by implementation timelines, support response, or the cost of add-on

Open enrollment has become one of the big annual events on the HR calendar, and it is happening against a backdrop of rising healthcare costs, more voluntary benefit choices, and employees who expect the same guided, self-service experience from their benefits portal that they get from a consumer app. Getting eligibility rules, carrier feeds, and compliance reporting wrong at scale creates real cost and real employee frustration, which is why benefits administration has becom

Dayforce, known to many buyers by its former name, Ceridian, is a global Human Capital Management platform built around a single, continuous payroll calculation engine and a unified data model spanning HR, payroll, benefits, workforce management, and talent. It has long been positioned as one of the strongest options for organisations with complex scheduling, labour compliance, or multi-country payroll requirements. Even so, organisations look at alternatives to Dayforce for

Payroll is one of our most popular reports, not just because it is so common, but because it is a complicated, busy market with lots of options, and getting the right solution and a trusted vendor is perhaps more critical than almost every other software choice. This guide covers the leading payroll software options for UK organisations in 2026, from global enterprise HCM suites through to UK-built specialists and SME-focused platforms. Viewpoint Analysis is a Technology Matc

Cornerstone OnDemand is one of the original dedicated talent management platforms, and its acquisition of Saba extended its depth in learning and compliance training considerably. For organisations with heavy learning and development requirements, particularly in regulated sectors, it remains one of the most established names in the market. But it is not the right fit for every organisation. Whether the concern is cost, the complexity of running two integrated but historicall

Who Are Eightfold AI? If you have spent any time researching AI powered recruiting or talent management platforms, the name Eightfold AI has almost certainly come up. Eightfold is one of the best known providers of what it calls a Talent Intelligence Platform, using deep learning and, more recently, agentic AI to help large employers find, hire, develop, and redeploy talent based on skills rather than job titles or resumes. It has built a strong reputation among enterprise HR

Skello is a French workforce management and HR software provider built specifically for businesses that run on shift-based teams, rather than the standard nine-to-five office. Restaurants, retailers, healthcare sites, construction firms, and other frontline employers use Skello to build schedules, track time, prepare payroll, and handle day-to-day HR administration from one platform. If you are on the lookout for a new workforce management solution, Skello might be the soluti

If your business has ever juggled separate systems for payroll, IT device management, and HR records, only to watch a new hire's laptop arrive a week after their start date, you have felt the exact problem Rippling was built to solve. The San Francisco based company has grown into one of the most prominent names in workforce management software, built around the idea that HR, IT, payroll, and finance should run on one shared employee data layer rather than four disconnected s