For large organizations managing high-volume hiring, the problem isn’t attracting enough applicants; it’s everything that comes after: sorting through the sea of submissions, finding the most promising candidates, and ushering them through each step of the hiring process. And then it's back to the job boards to post a new listing, starting the whole recruiting process over again.

An enterprise applicant tracking system streamlines the administrative side of hiring and gives recruiters, hiring managers, and leadership across departments and locations one shared view of every candidate. However, enterprise applicant tracking systems aren’t ideal for all companies or situations. 

This article provides a breakdown of enterprise applicant tracking systems, who needs them, their core features, costs, and how to compare potential vendors. 

What is an enterprise applicant tracking system?

An enterprise applicant tracking system (ATS) is centralized recruiting software designed to help large organizations manage candidates, job requisitions, workflows, and visibility across departments and locations. Although standard applicant-tracking tools can perform many of the same core functions, they lack the scalability and advanced capabilities needed to manage the volume and complexity of enterprise hiring.

Top-tier enterprise ATS platforms typically offer robust automation, integrations, and compliance controls, which are critical features when recruiting across large, complex organizations. While automated processes reduce manual demands, integrations create a channel between the ATS and systems in the HR tech stack, allowing recruitment data to flow smoothly between the people and systems that depend on it, from hiring managers to your HRIS and payroll. 

With robust compliance controls, enterprise applicant tracking systems also help large organizations protect candidate data, stay consistent in hiring practices, and maintain compliance requirements across different teams, locations, and jurisdictions. 

Who needs an enterprise ATS?

Large organizations often reap the most benefits from an enterprise ATS, particularly organizations that frequently hire for multiple roles across different departments and locations. However, a company’s size isn’t the only determining factor; high-volume hiring and operational complexity can also indicate the need for an enterprise system. 

Ultimately, you know when an organization has outgrown basic ATS tools because its recruitment processes begin creating bottlenecks rather than relieving them. This could look like:

• Manual overload: Recruiters spending too much time on candidate sourcing (posting on job boards, managing job postings on the career site, etc.), candidate tracking, resume parsing, interview scheduling, sending updates to applicants, etc.

• Fragmented collaboration: Inconsistency in tools and workflows between recruiters, hiring managers, and other departments; incompatibilities in hiring processes across locations.

• Compliance complexity: Increased difficulty meeting regulatory requirements amid rapid growth, expansion, and hiring.

• Lack of visibility: Leaders struggle to assess their hiring teams' performance or harness analytics to identify bottlenecks across the organization.

If these pain points sound familiar, it may be time to upgrade from basic ATS tools to an enterprise platform that supports your organization's expanding needs. 

Enterprise ATS features that make an impact

A long list of features can make a platform enticing to prospective buyers, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good fit for your organization. The most important enterprise ATS features are those that can support high hiring volumes across multiple teams and locations. These features should provide the scale, control, and consistency needed to keep complex hiring operations running smoothly and work effectively within the organization’s broader recruiting technology stack. 

Core recruiting workflow features

At minimum, an enterprise ATS should reduce recruiters’ manual burden and ease the flow of daily tasks. Features to look for include: 

• Resume parsing: The ability to extract key information from resumes and organize it into searchable, easily accessible candidate profiles.

• Candidate screening: Automatically filtering candidates whose resumes meet job descriptions and qualifications, prioritizing the most qualified applicants for review.

• Automation: Automating repetitive, time-consuming tasks, such as sending automated emails, updating applicant statuses, and triggering next steps in the hiring process.

• Interview scheduling: Finding shared availability in candidate and hiring managers' schedules, coordinating in-person and video interviews.

• Offer management: assisting in the creation, approval, and sending of job offers, tracking status of offers from within the hiring workflow.

• Collaborative feedback tools: Providing a centralized place to record interview evaluations, share feedback, and make hiring decisions.

Together, these features streamline daily tasks and the overall recruiting workflow. That said, enterprise organizations also require a broader set of ATS capabilities in order to effectively manage workforce hiring at scale. 

Enterprise-grade platform capabilities

Beyond streamlining the day-to-day aspects of the recruitment process, an ATS for enterprise should also support the broader complexity of hiring across a large organization. Platform-level features should be able to accomplish the following: 

• Customization: Helping organizations configure optimal workflows, approval processes, etc., in a way that accommodates various hiring needs across teams and locations.

• Integrations: Connecting with other systems in the HR tech stack (HRIS, HRMS, payroll, onboarding, crm, etc.) to allow recruiting data to travel between platforms.

• Reporting and analytics: Providing recruiting teams and leadership with essential data on hiring metrics, bottlenecks, performance, and trends across the organization.

• Role-based access: Managing which employees can view sensitive applicant information and how much of it they can access.

• Compliance: Managing candidate data and hiring processes in alignment with regulatory requirements and organizational policies.

• AI capabilities: Harnessing AI to assist tasks such as candidate matching, screening, automated workflows, and recruitment insights and analytics.

• Candidate portals: Providing applicants with a centralized hub in which they can submit applications, manage their personal information, track statuses, and interact with the hiring processes.

These features provide for greater control and visibility over the recruitment process while allowing the platform to adapt to changing hiring needs, teams, and technologies. 

Enterprise ATS cost and deployment

The true cost of implementing an enterprise ATS extends beyond the price of the software platform itself. When budgeting, organizations should include the costs of licensing, implementation, data migration, integrations, employee training, and ongoing maintenance. The size and complexity of an organization should also be considered, as they will inevitably affect the level of customization a system requires.

Pricing models and budget expectations

The pricing model for an enterprise ATS depends on the vendor, many of whom provide custom quotes according to the organization’s needs, size, and hiring demands. Pricing models vary and could be: 

• Custom/quote based: The vendor creates a custom quote to your requirements after a sales conversation.

• Per-seat: Cost scales with the number of users. Prices rise as teams grow.

• Tiered packages: Fixed tiered bundles group features and user counts into levels, and you move up as your needs become more extensive.

• Usage- or credit-based: Some vendors measure usage with credits that you spend to perform certain tasks, like running searches or sending messages. Costs rise based on how much users use the tool’s features.

Although some pricing models can help you offset a portion of the upfront costs, the reality is that a top enterprise ATS will be a continued investment rather than a one-time software purchase.

Deployment architecture and rollout realities

Rolling out an enterprise ATS is much more involved than simply installing new software. The deployment strategy you choose can drastically affect overall cost, level of control, implementation speed, and ease of adoption among employees. Here are a few deployment models to know:

• Cloud-based: The ATS is hosted online by the vendor, reducing the need for a company to manage its own software and infrastructure.

• On-premises: The ATS is hosted on a company’s own servers, offering it more control but also requiring more internal IT resources.

• Standalone ATS: The ATS acts as a separate recruiting system that connects to other HR tools through integrations.

• HCM-embedded: The ATS is built into a larger HR/HCM platform, making it easier to connect recruiting with other HR data and processes.

Regardless of architecture, implementation will likely require a coordinated effort between talent acquisition, HR, IT, and other departments and stakeholders. An organization’s rollout timeline should allow for configuring workflows, integrating systems, migrating legacy data, testing, and training. 

How to choose and roll out an enterprise ATS

The implementation strategy that works best for one company may not work for another. When choosing the best ATS system for your organization, consider what rollout would look like with this particular platform. It's critical that the platform you choose can meet technical requirements and be effectively adopted by employees who will use it.

Selection criteria and vendor validation

The first step is identifying the needs of the people and teams who will use, manage, and maintain the ATS. Before contacting vendors, involve stakeholders from relevant teams to help establish requirements. Your key selection criteria should include:

• Architecture fit: Whether the platform’s deployment model is compatible with existing infrastructure and technology.

• Integrations: Whether the ATS can connect with your HCM, CRM, HRIS, payroll systems, calendars, etc.

• Security: How a vendor protects candidate data and safeguards sensitive information.

• User experience: How intuitive the platform is for various parties, including talent acquisition, hiring managers, administrators, and candidates.

• Scalability: How well the system accommodates increases in hiring volume, users, and departments, and multi-location hiring.

• Reporting: Whether the platform provides the recruiting data and analytics that stakeholders need.

• Total cost of ownership: How much it will realistically cost to implement the enterprise system, set up integrations, complete migration, and train employees; the price of ongoing administration and support.

Prioritizing these criteria will help you narrow down your vendor list to a top few choices. Then, you can ask remaining contenders to demonstrate how their platforms handle your organization’s actual recruiting workflows and use cases. This request can reveal real-life limitations that weren't explored in the sales demo.

Pilot, migration, and adoption

Running a controlled pilot of the platform can help you identify potential issues before a company-wide rollout. Testing the ATS with a limited group of users or workflows can give you invaluable insights into its configuration, integrations, and usability. Then, if problems arise, you have the opportunity to correct them before the full deployment. 

Next, identify the legacy candidate data that needs to be cleaned and migrated, as well as which existing workflows must be transferred or rebuilt. Organizations should develop training based on how different teams will interact with the platform, recognizing that certain groups—particularly the recruitment team and ATS administrators—will likely need much more extensive instruction than others. 

Communicating upcoming changes to affected employees before the launch occurs is essential to encouraging adoption of the new system. Explaining what is changing, why it’s necessary, how it will impact them, and when it is slated to take place goes a long way in reducing confusion and promoting a positive outlook among employees. 

Enterprise ATS RFP scorecard

When an organization is considering several vendors, they can hone in on their selection by creating a structured evaluation tool called an RFP scorecard. The scorecard is composed of categories, each of which corresponds to one of the organization’s key requirements and is weighted based on its importance. Vendors are scored in each category, based on how well they are able to fulfill that specific criterion. 

Evaluation categories

There is no universal RFP scorecard for evaluating enterprise ATS platforms. Instead, categories are chosen and weighted according to the organization's highest priorities. Common evaluation categories include: 

• Workflow fit: How well the ATS for enterprise supports existing recruitment processes.

• Integrations: How easily the new platform connects with existing HR software and recruiting systems.

• Security: How effectively the system protects and controls access to sensitive data.

• Analytics: Whether the platform provides the level of reporting, metrics, and visibility the stakeholders require.

• Scalability: How effectively the system keeps up with high-volume hiring, additional users, and new departments or locations.

• Administration: How easy it is to configure, maintain, and manage the platform over time.

By assigning each category a weight based on importance and scoring every vendor using the same criteria, the RFP scorecard offers a consistent comparison while still reflecting the company’s specific priorities. Using this evaluation tool can help prevent an impressive sales demonstration from overshadowing important details.

Decision inputs and evidence

It’s important to note that scores should be based on evidence, not the vendor’s assurances. Organizations should use multiple inputs to inform how each platform is likely to perform. Decision inputs may include: 

• Demo findings: A demonstration of how well each platform handles your organization’s use cases and workflows.

• Implementation scope: An evaluation of the time and resources required to implement each platform and complete integrations, data migration, customization, and training.

• Stakeholder requirements: A comparison of the platform against priorities established by recruiters, HR, IT, security, procurement, and other stakeholders.

• Customer references: Communicating with organizations with similar hiring needs to learn about their implementation process and day-to-day experiences using the platform.

• SLA commitments: A careful review of the vendor’s service-level agreement (SLA) commitments relating to system availability, support, and issue resolution.

Using the same evidence and scoring criteria for every vendor encourages consistency, making it easier to narrow down finalists and justify your selection with confidence. 

Feed your enterprise ATS with better candidates

At the end of the day, even the most effective, cutting-edge ATS is only as effective as the candidate pipeline it helps manage. 

Juicebox works alongside your existing ATS and acts as a sourcing layer, using plain-language search across more than 800 million profiles from over 30 sources to find qualified candidates. Juicebox pulls a ranked shortlist, and then its autonomous AI agents run a personalized cadence so that candidate messaging never falls through the cracks.

Try a free Juicebox search to start building a stronger pipeline.

FAQs

What is an enterprise applicant tracking system?

An enterprise applicant tracking system (ATS) is centralized applicant tracking software designed to help recruiters and hiring teams at large companies and organizations streamline recruitment, candidate tracking, and workflow management, as well as increase visibility across departments and locations.

Who needs an enterprise ATS?

Enterprise applicant tracking systems are typically best suited to organizations with complex recruiting operations, particularly large companies that frequently hire across multiple roles, departments, or locations. 

How much does an enterprise ATS cost?

The true cost of an enterprise ATS depends on many different factors, including the level of customization a system requires. In addition to the cost of the actual ATS software, an organization may need to invest in licensing, implementation, data migration, integrations, employee training, ongoing maintenance, and more. A good rule of thumb is: the larger the organization and the more customization the tool requires, the higher the cost.

What is the difference between an enterprise ATS and a standard ATS?

Standard and enterprise ATS platforms are designed to assist organizations in tracking candidates and managing recruiting workflows. However, enterprise systems are capable of handling larger, more complex hiring operations, and typically offer greater scalability, automated features, customization, integrations, reporting, security, and compliance controls.