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Paylocity vs SAP SuccessFactors HCM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 10, 2025

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

Paylocity
Ranking in Cloud HCM
30th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.9
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Benefits Administration (26th), Talent Management (48th)
SAP SuccessFactors HCM
Ranking in Cloud HCM
14th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
8.1
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Featured Reviews

RP
Has a comprehensive and intuitive knowledge base, and time saving payroll administration features
Paylocity is not great at communicating customer support related issues such as account manager changes. They claim to provide concierge level of support, but it has not been great. Some of the Paylocity systems are limited. For example, I can't create custom offer letters. I can create generic offer letters with a logo, but I can't edit them or create sections. It does not read like a MS Word document and needs to be more robust. At present, I can't send attachments, add hyperlinks to videos, or embed questions in videos. Also, the number of notifications regarding benefits needs to be increased so that new employees get reminders more than once.
MS
Increased onboarding efficiency and enhanced user engagement with comprehensive performance management
All features have been valuable, particularly as we are investigating whether to connect it with Talent Management. Currently, we have a solution with Degree, and we are considering moving it to SAP Talent Management. This would provide a single location to house everything, allowing all employees to use the same platform rather than two separate platforms. This also reduces integration expense and management costs. Different stakeholders benefit from various aspects of the interface and dashboards. Managers can examine their team members' skill sets. From an employee perspective, they can track their progress and match it with their objectives and goals. From an organizational perspective, we can maintain a comprehensive view when considering upskilling or other resource-related decisions. The dashboards are highly effective. The employee experience management tools have had a very positive impact on employee satisfaction and well-being within our organization.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"My favorite feature is payroll administration, which has been awesome. You can import as many batches as you want to and run them synchronously or asynchronously. Since I work in a finance company with commissions, bonuses, and distribution, it's great to be able to do that. I can upload multiple things. Also, I can upload different sets of commission lists into the same payroll batch and upload the time card imports and overtime imports if I want to and separate them. I can create multiple batches around an individual or one one set of audit backing, and then I can approve them or leave them open. The way that Paylocity has set up their payroll system is really good and saves us a lot of time. It's very specific and helpful."
"SAP SuccessFactors HCM has positively impacted my customer's environment by ensuring they are digital; we promote using DocuSign for document signing and ensuring effective onboarding, and post-implementation we provide hyper-care and digital adoption reports after six months or a year to show how much more paperless and workflow-enabled their organization has become after SAP SuccessFactors HCM implementation."
"The SAP SuccessFactors HCM tool is a fantastic platform to work with, offering end-to-end employee lifecycle coverage."
"The employee experience management tools have had a very positive impact on employee satisfaction and well-being within our organization."
 

Cons

"Some of the Paylocity systems are limited. For example, I can't create custom offer letters. I can create generic offer letters with a logo, but I can't edit them or create sections. It does not read like a MS Word document and needs to be more robust."
"The SAP SuccessFactors HCM has room for improvement in terms of product development nimbleness. Additionally, the speed of the application platform occasionally reduces, primarily due to data center related issues."
"The main area for improvement would be implementing a better pricing model. It is expensive, and with people discussing Workday more frequently, SAP needs to compete by becoming more free-flowing and dynamic compared to traditional SAP systems."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
20%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Construction Company
9%
Retailer
9%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SAP SuccessFactors HCM?
I find the licensing cost, setup cost, and overall pricing of SAP SuccessFactors HCM to be not expensive. The pricing is not a bottleneck when considering the kind of value it provides.
What needs improvement with SAP SuccessFactors HCM?
The main area for improvement would be implementing a better pricing model. It is expensive, and with people discussing Workday more frequently, SAP needs to compete by becoming more free-flowing a...
What is your primary use case for SAP SuccessFactors HCM?
I started with S/4HANA with a utilities company at British Gas. It was focused on service contracts and billing domain. After that, I have used S/4HANA in order to cash, record to report processes,...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

POLYWOOD, University Clinical Healthcare, New England Authentic Eats, Revere Plastics, Stonewall Kitchen, Circuit Transit, Powerhouse Retail, Mountainside Fitness, Crafton Tull, Noble House Hotels & Resorts, Gurley Leep Automotive, Taco Johns
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