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IBM Kenexa vs Workday HCM comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 21, 2026

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
12th
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 (6th)
Workday HCM
Ranking in Benefits Administration
1st
Ranking in Talent Management
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
66
Ranking in other categories
Cloud HCM (1st), Talent Acquisition (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Benefits Administration category, the mindshare of IBM Kenexa is 1.9%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Workday HCM is 9.1%, down from 18.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Benefits Administration Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Workday HCM9.1%
IBM Kenexa1.9%
Other89.0%
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

"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."
"This tool is very powerful and the ability to tweak it in order to meet desired processes and controls is valuable."
"Now, having provided this, amongst many other things, we have a much closer relationship to the business."
"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."
"For us in particular, I love how configurable the system is; I can use the same technology for different parts of my business."
"The ease of scaling is one of BrassRing's biggest strengths, making it a trusted choice for large companies."
"Without this solution, we would have more administrative functions and would need to hire more HR employees."
"Overall, from a recruiter's perspective, it is an excellent product and is probably one of the best recruitment products out there in terms of usability, ease of understanding, and management of large applicant pools."
"The solution is stable."
"The solution has allowed leaders to self-serve, and we have fewer systems, less manual data entry, and less processing."
"Since adopting Workday, we have reduced HR administrative processing time by 45%."
"The most helpful Workday features for our HR processes were in HCM, particularly in areas like talent, compensation, benefits, and learning."
"In the process of obtaining representative sites in NaviNet, it assists us in facilitating decision-making and taking action."
"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."
"Overall, it delivers a really seamless solution that allows for operational efficiencies and operational excellence."
"It's intuitive, a very usable tool and it's easy to find the data you're looking for."
 

Cons

"I would not recommend IBM Kenexa to others."
"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."
"The user interface could do with an overhaul."
"The downside of Kenexa is that they're constantly reinventing, so they have constant releases with new features and upgrades. The downside of that is that they do experience fairly regular issues with stability that they're not always as quick to respond to as we'd like them to."
"Technical support was not always great. They tend to push you towards workbench admins or paid support."
"I would like to have a better and more user-friendly interface."
"We have about 50 requests for enhancements in the system right now."
"The team didn't find the reporting tool that easy to use, in terms of pulling their own data, slicing and dicing it, combining groups."
"This solution could be improved by providing user-level access to customization capabilities. Users currently rely on more technical teams to customize reports, for example."
"The dashboard is fine, but the dashboarding and other aspects could be improved."
"Payroll integration is terrible. It has a lot of limitations."
"The solution should focus more on user experience and less on the technical side."
"The user interface could be modernized somehow."
"The navigation of Workday is good but could be better."
"The product must include payroll features."
"Workday has several helpful features. It has categorized payroll processes into sections, such as CTC separation and pay slips. It also provides detailed information on promotions and salary hikes, showing changes from the previous year to the current year. This includes a clear view of the new CTC and the monthly paycheck breakdown."
 

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 solution is flexible in terms of pricing."
"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 an expensive solution."
"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."
"The pricing is good from an HR perspective, although management gets upset after spending $500,000 a year, every year."
"The pricing for this solution is fairly high. It is not affordable for small and mid-sized companies."
"It has an annual subscription rate, but I'm not sure how it will work."
"With a bigger budget, I would recommend SAP."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
15%
Outsourcing Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

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 Business18
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise50
 

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
Workday Human Capital Management
 

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 HCM and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
911,952 professionals have used our research since 2012.