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IBM Kenexa vs Workday 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 (9th)
Workday
Ranking in Benefits Administration
1st
Ranking in Talent Management
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
58
Ranking in other categories
Cloud HCM (2nd), Talent Acquisition (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2026, in the Benefits Administration category, the mindshare of IBM Kenexa is 1.9%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Workday is 9.0%, down from 18.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Benefits Administration Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Workday9.0%
IBM Kenexa1.9%
Other89.1%
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.
Eslam Abo Elnaga - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior people and systems analyst at B_labs & Mylo
Has improved HR process efficiency through intuitive workflows and responsive support
There is something that could be improved in Workday, specifically in the time tracking module. While I am not working on Workday now, I was a regional HRIS working for Egypt, Malta, India, and China. I mention these countries to relate to high population countries and companies. In our company, we use assigned work schedules for our teams. Because we work with the time tracking module, we need to assign shifts. In the manufacturing industry, we might need to change shifts every day or week. Manufacturing teams are huge, approximately 50 to 200 people in one team. If this team has one leader, the leader needs to assign a work schedule for each person individually. While there is mass upload functionality where we can load shifts for all people or specific groups, we need to select multiple people and assign them to a schedule from the interface itself. I have requested this functionality many times. When extracting business processes awaiting actions report, I can select different processes in one box, hit okay, and the report comes up. However, the same functionality does not work for work schedule assigning. If implemented, it would help many people in companies with high populations and big teams.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable features are that we can upload documents and download them on demand."
"Kenexa’s scalability has been great, as we can grow and expand our use no matter what and seamlessly incorporate our business process for new launches."
"The ability now to be able to take data, load it yourself, ask the business questions and get the answers on your own process with the business just made it a lot faster, and the cognitive solution gives us some insights for us to think about."
"We like IBM; IBM has been great partners for us, they're really invested in our success, and they see us as a valuable client."
"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."
"As I said, IBM are doing a great job with us at the moment, but we're always looking and speaking and open to having conversations with other people because the market's changing and IBM are aware of that."
"For us in particular, I love how configurable the system is; I can use the same technology for different parts of my business."
"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 helps the users to enroll for the benefits automatically and update their life events without the involvement of HR individuals or back-office staff. It enables a person to take action on their own. It reduces the administrative burden on HR and puts the ownership on the person that is going through the life event, whether it is having a child, taking a leave of absence, or something else. There are easy ways to integrate Workday with your common benefits. At least in the USA, it can be integrated with common benefits providers such as Fidelity, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Aetna, etc. It has got a connector that is able to connect with the vendor or the third party to which you are trying to send the eligibility file. It basically allows us to automate or set up the tool, and the integration with the provider is a lot quicker than competing tools. When it comes to reporting on just eligibility and SLSA, it is a lot more user-intuitive. Depending on the purpose of what you are doing, you can grant security rights or roles, for example, you can control whether someone is a benefits administrator doing an independent audit. Workday makes it very easy to do that. It significantly simplifies the reporting process."
"It's actually a cloud-native solution and based on the community for development, with a very good open architecture that is able to interconnect with other systems, and it is very stable and very fast in terms of response."
"It is a leading talent management tool, and it has got the largest market share."
"Provides flexibility to integrate with the product. It has several tools, out-of-the-box, for integrations. It delivers pre-built interfaces for specific vendors, pre-built generic integrations to extract or push data into Workday through configuration."
"I like that it's easy to use and flexible."
"The solution is easy to use and provides great flexibility and security."
"I would recommend the solution to others, owing to its stability."
"This is a reliable solution."
 

Cons

"It needs to update its reporting and analytics tools."
"In the past year, there has been a significant increase in the amount of internal errors that are displayed."
"The reporting feature currently is our biggest struggle point; getting the data we need and in the fashion that we need it is a current struggle point for us."
"There are tools that actually are not there where clients need them, especially the survey analytics to analyze verbatim in different languages."
"Improved integrations: There are all kinds of issues with integrations, hires failing."
"The user interface could do with an overhaul."
"I'm just taking over the account, so I'm still pretty new to the whole system."
"Improvements can be made from the back end, with the workbench."
"Workday could improve its custom reporting for beginners."
"There is so much information floating around Workday that it becomes overwhelming to digest all of it."
"They can work on getting the clients to work on their support model."
"The user interface could be better. Everything else was fine."
"One area that could be improved with Workday is the analytics side."
"Workday is an expensive solution."
"I'm not sure they have added this feature yet, but there should be a cellphone version, so we do not need to do it on a laptop. I'd like to log in on a cellphone and have the same features. I'm not sure if that is already available or if it's on the roadmap, but that would be a great feature."
"Workday could give us industry-specific or vertical-specific solutions."
 

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."
"With a bigger budget, I would recommend SAP."
"By and large, Workday is expensive. It is based on the headcount. I'd probably rate it a three or four out of five in terms of pricing. It'd be like buying a Mercedes or a high-end car. It's expensive, but there's a specific value that you're getting with additional features and things of that nature. Using that metaphor, Workday probably tends to be more of a luxury. There are others like ADP that can do your payroll, your time off, and other things, but they don't do it as well."
"Workday is moderately priced - I'd rate its pricing three out of five."
"Workday is an expensive solution."
"The solution is flexible in terms of pricing."
"You have the license fee per module, and then you have a kind of annual training fee, which is a kind of add-on. I wouldn't say it is exhaustive; it is minor. Licensing is pretty transparent for most of the part."
"It's very, very expensive."
"I would rate the solution’s pricing a six out of ten."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
6%
University
6%
 

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 Business17
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise43
 

Questions from the Community

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What are the biggest differences between Workday, Oracle Cloud and SAP SuccessFactors?
Differences between Workday, Oracle Cloud,w and SAP SuccessFactors:w Oracle: "simple interface and deep customization to suit the purpose." SAP: Multiple functionalities that increase process effi...
How easy is to maintain Workday, Oracle Cloud, and SuccessFactors?
I implemented Workday in 2024 and without having previous Workday experience, it was very challenging. I spent most of 2025 putting out fires and cleaning up the business processes that came with l...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Workday?
If you go with the launch implementation approach, the solution is generally not very expensive. If you want to add more features to your subscription, Workday becomes expensive. The solution is fl...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

IBM Smarter Workforce, Outstart
No data available
 

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
AAA, Allied Global, Avago Technologies Limited, Aviva, Cardinal Health, CareFusion, Chiquita Brands International, Equifax, Flextronics, HP, Life Time Fitness, McKee Foods, MGM Resorts International, Sanofi, ServiceSource International, Symantec, TripAdvisor, Yahoo!
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Kenexa vs. Workday and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
904,836 professionals have used our research since 2012.