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SAP HCM vs UKG vs Workday 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 August 2025, in the Cloud HCM category, the mindshare of SAP HCM is 10.2%, down from 17.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of UKG is 5.6%, up from 5.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Workday is 17.9%, up from 17.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud HCM Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Workday17.9%
SAP HCM10.2%
UKG5.6%
Other66.30000000000001%
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…
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.
Sarvesh Kumar Jha - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to use and provides great flexibility and security
Implementing the solution is generally not easy because it depends on our client's landscape. In the last one and a half years, Workday has started a new implementation approach called launch implementation. This approach allows you, as a client organization, to implement Workday in a shorter amount of time, given that you fulfill certain criteria. It depends on the number of subsidiaries and employees you have and their compensation structure. If it's not too complex, Workday provides its clients with this new approach called launch, where they can quickly onboard with the Workday without many complex requirements. The general implementation for Fortune 500 companies is always complex.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"They provide the most stable and powerful technology in the areas of human resources, information systems, and ERP."
"When you maintain your data in SAP, you can generate any kind of HR report with one click."
"It simplifies everything for human capital management, and all users can do self-enrollment for leaves and those kinds of things. The employee self-service feature is quite a powerful feature for me. You can install it on your mobile phone or iPad and do your employee service activity there."
"SAP HCM has a good performance."
"The setup was straightforward."
"We have managed to consolidate our payroll for all India operations on this platform."
"The valuable features of SAP HCM include managing employee data from hiring to retirement."
"All of the core processes are very valuable aspects of the solution. These include personnel, administration, organizational structure, and payroll."
"The product's most valuable feature is the ability to establish connectivity between the front and the back end, particularly the single point of data entry, to minimize mistakes."
"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."
"It is much easier to use and the customer service is better than our previous solution."
"The most valuable feature is being able to get time management reports which break out reclassified jobs and departments to separate areas of the company. This allows for better tracking of hours spent in certain jobs and where more hours may be needed."
"The solution's UI is good. Also, it is very easy to use."
"I like UKG's integration."
"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."
"UKG allows us to customize our home screen so that we can easily monitor important items on a daily basis."
"What I appreciate best about Workday is the recruiting component."
"The most valuable feature is the ease of reporting."
"The solution is easy to use and provides great flexibility and security."
"The solution is stable."
"It stores everything for the employee. It has also been able to store the information that we use for our payroll demand."
"There is a lot of scope for customization with this solution"
"It is fairly easy to set up"
"The technical support services are excellent."
 

Cons

"SAP HCM needs to improve its UI."
"We are able to optimize a lot of processes but there is always room for improvement."
"It is a bit tedious and manual to work with."
"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'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."
"SAP HCM cannot integrate with other third-party applications. One of the drawbacks we encounter with SAP HCM, specifically in payroll management, is the limitation regarding changing payroll areas within the same month. For instance, if an employee transitions from staff to non-staff status during the month, we face difficulties because the system doesn't allow us to change the payroll."
"The breadth of functionality offered by SAP HCM comes at a cost."
"The speed of technical support can be improved."
"The system is slow sometimes."
"The product's integration features need improvement."
"Since UKG is a SaaS software, other parts of the application or add-on solutions are not the best in class or very configurable."
"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."
"The navigation on the screen could be better. Sometimes, I have to dig a little bit deep to find what I need. Everything is there. It just needs to be a little bit smoother."
"Reporting is always a hurdle for any user just because it is so extensive. They provide a lot of out-of-the-box reports, but it is something that you always need to work on because you need more advanced writing of reports."
"I would like the capability to use UKG as a single platform without the need to alternate between systems."
"For time management, it does not have a calendar generator. For example, if you want to have a shift calendar for an entire year, you need to push the entire year's calendar into the system instead of being able to generate it using a time management pattern."
"It's possible that the way things are integrated could be improved"
"The UI, UX (user experience) is very bad. It is not very interactive."
"Workday does not support many Korean language features. So, it will be great if they have some development on the Korean language side – then it will be really powerful in our market."
"This solution could be made easier to use by continuing to release new improvements."
"The finance module of this solution is not great and needs improvement."
"Setting up reports can be a bit tricky."
"The expenses and reimbursements module could be improved. Creating expense reports is time consuming and inefficient compared to other expense solutions."
 

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 solution is a little expensive and we are charged per user for the license. The solution can be paid monthly or annually."
"Licensing fees are paid yearly."
"SAP is extremely expensive. The integration costs and customization costs are also a lot."
"Be careful and guard against future changes in licensing."
"The pricing is around the middle, at a five out of ten. But it depends on the number of licenses. More licenses mean lower per-user costs. You need to understand how to play the volume game and the growth."
"The product is expensive."
"The solution is cheap."
"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."
"The platform is not affordable but also not the most expensive."
"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."
"The pricing depends on the number of licenses we buy."
"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."
"If you're going for the full suite, it can be fairly pricey."
"With a bigger budget, I would recommend SAP."
"It has an annual subscription rate, but I'm not sure how it will work."
"The pricing is good from an HR perspective, although management gets upset after spending $500,000 a year, every year."
"Workday is an expensive solution."
"It is on a yearly basis."
"Its price is pretty high. It is more expensive than what is offered by other competitors in the market."
"The pricing for this solution is fairly high. It is not affordable for small and mid-sized companies."
"It's very, very expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
University
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise38
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business48
Midsize Enterprise43
Large Enterprise48
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise41
 

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 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...
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 Workday?
I like its UI and UX. When we were using Oracle or SAP, the UI/UX wasn't very user-friendly for the employees.
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 m...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

SAP Human Capital Management
UKG Pro, UKG Dimensons, UKG Ready
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.
Tesla, Marriott, Yamaha, Aramark, Feeding America, Samsung, Sony Music, Dave & Buster's, Revlon
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 Workday, SAP, Oracle and others in Cloud HCM. Updated: August 2025.
865,738 professionals have used our research since 2012.