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SAP HCM vs SAP SuccessFactors HCM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 16, 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

SAP HCM
Ranking in Cloud HCM
2nd
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
59
Ranking in other categories
Benefits Administration (3rd), Talent Management (3rd)
SAP SuccessFactors HCM
Ranking in Cloud HCM
6th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
5.9
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Featured Reviews

SS
Assistant Manager at Kashiv Biosciences
Centralized global HR data has improved expense control and supports secure employee management
The features of SAP HCM are valued by me as it had a clear idea about what was expected from the user point. The person or the application has a lot of features and it had actually all the information needed from our part. That aspect is nice. Apart from that, the T-codes are really helpful to understand which particular option we need when we put the T-code in the search box. The stability and reliability of SAP HCM product are really nice, very helpful, and secured. It has no point of leakage and is mostly reliable, as most companies and organizations prefer SAP over many tools. As for security, it's already secured from the beginning itself, and that is the only reason our organization relies on it. Since it's very useful at a global scale, it is a very useful tool and is very easy to access and handle.
MS
Enterprise Architecht at RS Group plc
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

"The stability and reliability of SAP HCM product are really nice, very helpful, and secured."
"The main benefit SAP HCM provides is that we have all the information in one place; it is basically one centralized system with all the information rather than having multiple systems across the organization."
"I feel SAP HCM is very competitive and worth the investment given its capability to integrate modules and provide comprehensive value."
"When you maintain your data in SAP, you can generate any kind of HR report with one click."
"SAP HCM has valuable features for analytics data management."
"The technical support is quite good."
"I think HCM was the most stable for me...It is a very scalable product."
"The functions are really important in the product in ReadyNodes."
"The employee experience management tools have had a very positive impact on employee satisfaction and well-being within our organization."
"The SAP SuccessFactors HCM tool is a fantastic platform to work with, offering end-to-end employee lifecycle coverage."
"Using SAP SuccessFactors HCM analytics and insights helps my customers in data-driven decision-making."
"The feature I appreciate the most about this solution is the integration with SAP S/4HANA system."
"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."
 

Cons

"SAP HCM could improve by having more resources and making it more user-friendly. It is complex."
"There's still room for improvement. We need end-to-end systems. Only the HR team uses HCM, but employees don't have access to their data. With Employee Central, employees can see their ratings, increment cycles, and other details, making things more transparent."
"I would say the speed of SAP HCM tool might need some optimization."
"I'm currently working for a state-owned government company, and we need to follow some standards and regulations. We also have a strategy to be followed. Sometimes the template and the format are not available in the SAP HCM, so we have to work around this limitation. The tax also sometimes changes in my country, and we have to redo everything to change the payroll calculations, benefits, and things like that. The talent management feature can be improved. It is currently very simple in SAP HCM. SAP is also very hard to integrate. In terms of monitoring, there are no monitoring tools, but as long as we take care of the disk capacity, there is no problem."
"The extensibility of the integration could be improved."
"The product's learning and development features could be better, including new exclusive LMS tools."
"It would be very helpful for our company if a new version was released with the ability to contain all of the things that we have newly introduced in our company."
"The implementation of the solution can be a bit difficult. They should make it easier. If it could be as simple as the SuccessFactors implementation that would be ideal."
"It is very difficult to purchase SAP SuccessFactors HCM over here for smaller or medium-sized organizations, mainly because of the price."
"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."
"The pricing of the solution is very high concerning pricing, setup cost, and licensing of this tool."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost depends on the size of the organization. Compared to others, I'd say Oracle is number one, followed by Workday and SAP HCM."
"The pricing is really high."
"Licensing is pretty complex. SAP does not have a straight forward way of licensing, and it differs from client to client."
"You pay per license. There not any costs in addition to the standard licensing fees."
"Be careful and guard against future changes in licensing."
"The product is expensive."
"The solution is a little expensive and we are charged per user for the license. The solution can be paid monthly or annually."
"The cost of SAP HCM is high, the license should be reduced. SAP HCM has a lot of hidden costs."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business19
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise39
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about SAP HCM?
SAP HCM is the one of the best ERP for an organization with a small to large scale business. It has the most efficient payroll functionality. Regards : SAP HR classes in pune
What do you like most about SAP HCM?
HCM is a very important module that each organization should want to use. It will help any organization to calculate and control the cost of their human resources.
What is better, SAP HCM or SAP SuccessFactors?
When it comes to user experience, SuccessFactors is unquestionably superior, as it provides end users with a new experience and an advanced user interface. Additionally, the entire concept of SF is...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SAP SuccessFactors HCM?
The pricing of SAP SuccessFactors HCM is a bit expensive; its HCM without SuccessFactors was reasonable when it was on-site, but SuccessFactors is very expensive. On-premise HCM was good regarding ...
What needs improvement with SAP SuccessFactors HCM?
Pakistani policies need most of the customizations for SAP SuccessFactors HCM. I don't think Pakistanis should improve; our systems are not right. We should improve, not SAP. There should be some a...
What is your primary use case for SAP SuccessFactors HCM?
I researched SAP SuccessFactors HCM products on your website. I was the project manager for the implementation of SAP SuccessFactors HCM in my university. The implementation partner was Telemarks. ...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

SAP Human Capital Management
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

City of Cape Town, ADAMA Agricultural Solutions Ltd., TransAlta Corporation, Keolis, PT XL Axiata Tbk, National Football League (NFL), Plan International, Yoh, A Day & Zimmermann Company, China Talent Group (CTG TMO), Umicore S.A., Butterfield Bank, Skrill Group Ltd.
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881,114 professionals have used our research since 2012.