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SAP HCM vs SAP SuccessFactors vs UKG comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Cloud HCM category, the mindshare of SAP HCM is 10.5%, down from 16.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP SuccessFactors is 19.9%, down from 22.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of UKG is 5.5%, up from 5.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud HCM
 

Featured Reviews

Renelia Villanueva - PeerSpot reviewer
Efficient payroll processing with comprehensive attendance management
I am currently heading the payroll benefits and HRIS team here in Manila. We are using SAP HCM on-premises, and we implemented SuccessFactors focusing on Employee Central and GMPM SAP HCM has helped a lot due to the always changing government regulations pertaining to taxation, social security…
Renelia Villanueva - PeerSpot reviewer
Moving to a cloud-based employee portal has improved experience but user interface requires attention
I am currently handling SAP sub-modules, particularly in HR. I interface with SAP SuccessFactors modules such as Employee Central, Goals and Performance, and Talent Moving from an in-house developed employee self-service portal to a cloud-based internet solution is an improvement for us.…
Talia Jean Paul - PeerSpot reviewer
Affordable but needs to improve its stability
Our company is testing the UKG Ready Mobile App, but there are some glitches. I feel that in the system when you log on to Kronos, UKG Dimensions, and UKG Workforce Central, we have different modules in different versions. With regards to the newer version, I feel the older version, which was UKG Workforce Central, was more user-friendly for the end user as opposed to the newer version, which looks a bit more complicated. When training someone who wants implementations to be done, it would be easier if you could hover above certain things, and it shows you or tells you exactly what it is. There are certain SAP modules that can be audible. If you click on it if someone is being a bit slow with regards to training, the tool will tell you what needs to be done and what needs not to be done by you, but for us, it is fine because we are in the back end with configuration and the administrators. I am talking about the need for improvements in the tool for the benefit of the end users. The explanation on UKG's community consists of training manuals and some of the other stuff that we use, and we send to our supervisors at the site. With the tool in place, catching onto white-collared employees is quicker. The tool is not quick to catch onto certain blue-collared employees in the plant or supervisors who are actually working with machinery and stuff because they are not as computer-centric as white-collared employees. If I could scan the tool across the globe with our site supervisors, there are a few loopholes in the tool. There are some issues with the tool's stability. For me, I would like someone who is building the system in the back end to know if a front-end user can manipulate the system. I am not going to rate the tool's scalability to be high. I would rate the tool's scalability to be at a mediocre level or at something like 50 percent, so there is a lot of room for improvement.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Scalability is excellent, and I would rate it ten out of ten."
"SAP HCM has a good performance."
"It is a pretty stable solution."
"All of the core processes are very valuable aspects of the solution. These include personnel, administration, organizational structure, and payroll."
"They have some interesting features in the learning space."
"The platform is simple to use and has a user-friendly dashboard and integration features."
"It has the best data management features."
"SAP HCM is a powerful program that can greatly benefit organizations with its comprehensive features and integrations."
"The tool is easy to use for performance management. We haven't experienced any issues with SAP SuccessFactors for performance management, which is great. However, since we're still learning to use it fully, we might not utilize all its available features yet."
"This solution offers good flexibility and configurability. It can handle different types of performance management."
"This solution is very user-friendly, and supports 60 plus languages."
"Compared to other on-premise solutions, the first advantage of SAP SuccessFactors is that it is a SaaS-based solution."
"Easy to use and user-friendly."
"Considering the flexibility of the system and its ability to accommodate complex business processes, the product is ready to be used in multiple industries."
"The performance goals and learning management solutions are the product's most valuable features."
"It's brought to our organization a big big improvement. We would give it a good rating."
"The employee self-service feature is most valuable. This is the restaurant industry, and they have a mobile app that allows employees to go in and manage their data. So, employees can manage direct deposit accounts, emergency contacts, and other things in the app. That's definitely the biggest benefit."
"Overall, I would rate UKG nine out of ten."
"The solution's UI is good. Also, it is very easy to use."
"The solution has improved our organization by helping us cut hours and lessen our labor force. It saved us probably over $100,000 in just the last couple of years."
"The solution's employee experience is pretty good."
"We use the tool for various functions, including payroll, HR, recruiting, onboarding, and workforce management. We've implemented all these modules across all the clients I've worked with."
"It enables us to manage the system ourselves. We don't need an additional team to do a lot of maintenance and add the things that we want."
"The fact that I can see the whole HR information in a single point is valuable. There is a unified view of everything, which is good. Previously, we had many different systems for each part of the information. Now, it is all centralized. It is very good."
 

Cons

"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 talent modules are lacking in HCM, so I would recommend switching to SuccessFactors for talent management, but HCM excels at time management and payroll."
"Reports need to be added on the time management side."
"SAP HCM needs to improve its UI."
"SAP HCM needs to be more customizable to fit unique organizational processes."
"The product significantly improved our organization by automating many processes, which reduced paperwork and provided clearer, more accurate goals and competencies."
"The product's learning and development features could be better, including new exclusive LMS tools."
"There are already success factors for the cloud solution which cannot be integrated into S/4 HANA."
"The Onboarding module must be improved."
"The organization is planning to move to Darwinbox from SAP SuccessFactors, primarily due to pricing considerations."
"The Reporting/Analytics and User Interface need improvement."
"SAP SuccessFactors' pricing structure could be improved."
"There are a few features that are missing. There are specific features on the HTM, such as telecom safety, that just isn't there. It's not a very detailed solution in that sense. However, it is maybe not expected to have those kinds of features on the surface level of the product."
"SuccessFactors could be improved by making it usable on mobile and making its features less rigid."
"SAP SuccessFactors could improve the integration. It is not simple to integrate and it needs to be made easier."
"One area of improvement is the time taken to configure changes, such as taxation rules, which can take several months."
"The solution could improve by simplifying it even more core reports, such as more sample reports, more generic reports that you can edit and improve on yourself."
"The product's integration features need improvement."
"The system is slow sometimes."
"UKG has complex clock-in and clock-out features. It changes things too often, and it feels like the tool is constantly changing things without testing before implementing changes in production. Additionally, it doesn't communicate these changes very well."
"The tool needs improvement on the configuration side."
"UKG could be a little more flexible in some areas."
"I would like the capability to use UKG as a single platform without the need to alternate between systems."
"The platform's features need enhancement while being used as a recruiting tool."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"You pay per license. There not any costs in addition to the standard licensing fees."
"The solution is cheap."
"SAP is extremely expensive. The integration costs and customization costs are also a lot."
"The pricing is really high."
"The pricing is not reasonable at all."
"In my view, this product is a waste of money for SMB because there are much better products available and licensing is an issue."
"I believe HCM is a little expensive, but I don't know the exact price because I'm involved with the sales team. However, I think the price must be reasonable because many organizations are migrating their current ERPs to SAP. It's excellent software, and the price is competitive."
"Be careful and guard against future changes in licensing."
"I don't want to comment on the license cost, to be honest. It could be about $1,000 approximately per customer. However, it's very flexible in terms of the licensing costs depending on the volume and depending on the deal of installation."
"We are on an annual subscription to use SAP SuccessFactors. The pricing model is something that they could restructure a bit better. If it was based differently on the type of usage it would help."
"We don't utilize even half of the licenses because not everyone uses them. With SAP SuccessFactors, though, we're now conducting all our performance evaluations within the system, so I suppose we're making better use of those licenses. As for SAP for employee services and internal benefits processing, we do have licenses for those but don't utilize them."
"I think the pricing is a little better than most solutions out there. There are reasonable prices when it comes to some of the modules such as the Payroll module, and for the remaining modules I believe the pricing is fair in comparison to the rest of the market."
"The solution is on the expensive side but is definitely worth the money."
"The price of the solution is highly expensive."
"We have a yearly license. There are no additional costs."
"It is not expensive because it is a complete suite with a module-based cost."
"While I am unsure of the licensing cost itself, the total cost of implementation and licensing for a company with over 5000 employees would be around 6,00,000. So, there are additional costs beyond licensing."
"If you're going for the full suite, it can be fairly pricey."
"The platform is not affordable but also not the most expensive."
"UKG's pricing and licensing model involves ongoing expenses based on the number of employees paid. The initial implementation cost is low when UKG implements it directly. However, when partners handle the implementation, it becomes more expensive since partners don't receive the monthly recurring fees."
"The pricing depends on the number of licenses we buy."
"I wasn't involved in the pricing part. I'm a user, and I believe it is based on the user count. One thing that is nice about Ultimate is that you can learn how to use the system without additional fees. The learning aspect is the life of a product, and the training was a huge reason why we went with Ultimate. We did have some integration costs. They were a part of the implementation because of the integrations to other systems that we included in our implementation."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Computer Software Company
11%
Educational Organization
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Educational Organization
29%
Computer Software Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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 efficien...
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 ...
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 expe...
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 customizatio...
What do you like most about SAP SuccessFactors?
The tool is easy to use for performance management. We haven't experienced any issues with SAP SuccessFactors for per...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SAP SuccessFactors?
The licensing costs are quite high, which is a typical scenario for such solutions.
What needs improvement with UKG?
UKG needs more publicity. It is a productive ERP ( /categories/erp ) application, but many people in the IT market ar...
What is your primary use case for UKG?
I worked for a healthcare organization and a university. Most organizations use UKG ( /products/ukg-reviews ) to trac...
What advice do you have for others considering UKG?
Publicity is very important for any software. If people aren't aware of UKG, despite its productivity, they won't use...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

SAP Human Capital Management
SuccessFactors
UKG Pro, UKG Dimensons, UKG Ready
 

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.
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, Skril
Tesla, Marriott, Yamaha, Aramark, Feeding America, Samsung, Sony Music, Dave & Buster's, Revlon
Find out what your peers are saying about Workday, SAP, Oracle and others in Cloud HCM. Updated: July 2025.
862,514 professionals have used our research since 2012.