SAP SuccessFactors HCM vs Workday comparison

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SAP SuccessFactors HCM

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 10, 2025

Workday and SAP SuccessFactors HCM both compete in the human capital management space, offering unique features. Workday seems to have the upper hand in integration and analytics, while SAP SuccessFactors HCM is preferred for global reach and scalability.

Features: Workday offers real-time reporting, an intuitive experience, and enhanced data insights. SAP SuccessFactors HCM provides robust talent management, global compliance solutions, and comprehensive HR functionalities for international operations.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Workday typically provides a streamlined deployment process with strong support and efficient client service. SAP SuccessFactors HCM has a more complex deployment process with extensive customization and is recognized for its training resources.

Pricing and ROI: Workday often has a higher initial setup cost but promises substantial long-term returns with its analytics and integration. SAP SuccessFactors HCM offers potentially lower upfront costs with savings in global applications, appealing to businesses seeking cost-effective reach.

To learn more, read our detailed SAP SuccessFactors HCM vs. Workday Report (Updated: September 2025).

SAP SuccessFactors HCM vs. Workday

September 2025

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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 SuccessFactors HCM

Ranking in Cloud HCM

14th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

5.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Workday

Ranking in Cloud HCM

2nd

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Benefits Administration (1st), Talent Management (2nd), Talent Acquisition (1st)

Featured Reviews

ManujGupta

Chief Executive Officer at Orane Consulting Pvt Ltd

Streamlined HR and enhanced user engagement with comprehensive insights and seamless mobile access

The reporting part is quite weak in SAP SuccessFactors HCM because the drill-down capabilities are not what a customer wants compared to what it offers. The dashboard is fine but comes with limitations, especially when combining two or three modules. Employees need to improve their usage of SAP SuccessFactors employee experience management tools, as they largely use it only for leave and attendance functions, desiring more functionality such as downloading their salary slip or seeing full-year tax calculations. The employee app lacks functionalities and needs tremendous improvement across engagement, news boards, and AI. Personalization is not prevalent in AI tools provided, which complicates integration because customers often request combining various systems into one reporting target.

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Eslam Abo Elnaga

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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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 feature I appreciate the most about this solution is the integration with SAP S/4HANA system."

"Using SAP SuccessFactors HCM analytics and insights helps my customers in data-driven decision-making."

"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."

"The payroll and benefits engine is the most valuable Workday solution in my opinion. It is also easy to access."

"I would say that we have definitely seen a return on investment."

"Performance and good usability are the two most valuable features of this solution."

"The most valuable feature is the ease of reporting."

"Workday's best features are planning and finance."

"The technical support services are excellent."

"We use this solution to manage financials, payroll and recruiting."

"The solution is extremely stable."

More Workday pros

Cons

"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."

"It is very difficult to purchase SAP SuccessFactors HCM over here for smaller or medium-sized organizations, mainly because of the price."

"We would like to see improvement in the mobile app variant of this solution. The time sheet entry and approval, and the geo-tagging features all need to have their functionality updated, in order to be comparable with other products on the market."

"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."

"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."

"In a future release we could like to have access to asset, supply and treasury management functionalities."

"I would be happy if it was faster. Currently, when I try to navigate within the solution itself, it is a bit slow in terms of the page load time. When I click on something, it usually takes time to load. When you click on different icons or areas on the website, it is slow. Even when you navigate between different models, it is a bit slow. I would like to see a bit faster performance and a better user experience."

"Reporting systems should be improved. If you want to report it on paper, if you want something more BI oriented, more high level predictive or more data-driven, it should be improved."

"The user interface could be better. Everything else was fine."

"Workday would be improved with more API connectors."

More Workday cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"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."

"Its price is pretty high. It is more expensive than what is offered by other competitors in the market."

"Workday is an expensive solution."

"With a bigger budget, I would recommend SAP."

"It's very, very expensive."

"It is on a yearly basis."

"Workday is moderately priced - I'd rate its pricing three out of five."

"I need to pay for a license. It is expensive."

More Workday pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

No data available

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

University

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	16
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	41

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SAP SuccessFactors HCM?

The pricing of the solution is very high concerning pricing, setup cost, and licensing of this tool.

What needs improvement with SAP SuccessFactors HCM?

The area of SAP SuccessFactors HCM that has room for improvement is the user interface. We are using performance management and the performance goals module, and its analytics features need to be i...

What is your primary use case for SAP SuccessFactors HCM?

I work with SAP tools, IBM, HP, Microsoft, as we are working with SAP and Microsoft tools. We work with SAP S/4HANA, SAP BW, SAP TDS, SAP IBP, and SuccessFactors, specifically with solutions such a...

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...

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 more features to your subscription, Workday becomes expensive. The solution is fl...

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Product Reports

Download SAP SuccessFactors HCM product report

Cloud HCM

October 2025

Download Workday product report

October 2025

Overview

SAP SuccessFactors HCM provides cloud-based HR solutions covering core HR, payroll, talent management, and more. This suite helps organizations remain agile by focusing on people-centric strategies and AI-powered decision-making tools.

SAP SuccessFactors HCM offers a full suite of HR management tools designed to enhance every HR aspect, from core HR and payroll to comprehensive talent management, sales performance, and workforce planning. As work dynamics shift, the emphasis on placing people at the core of strategic planning helps drive agility and informed decisions, fortifying growth within organizations.

What are the most valuable features of SAP SuccessFactors HCM?

Comprehensive Core HR: Streamlines HR processes, ensuring efficiency and compliance across HR tasks.
Payroll Management: Delivers accurate and timely payroll processing, adaptable to diverse needs.
Talent Management: Empowers nurturing and development of talent, enhancing employee engagement.
People Analytics: Provides actionable insights into workforce trends with advanced analytics.
Workforce Planning: Facilitates strategic planning by forecasting workforce requirements effectively.

What benefits and ROI should be evaluated in SAP SuccessFactors HCM reviews?

Increased Agility: Ability to adapt quickly to changing business environments with flexible HR solutions.
Data-Driven Decision Making: Leveraging AI to make informed HR decisions that support growth.
Scalable Growth: Supports both current needs and future expansion with robust HR capabilities.
Enhanced Employee Engagement: Focus on employee needs leading to improved morale and productivity.

SAP SuccessFactors HCM sees extensive adoption across industries like retail, healthcare, and finance, where managing a diverse workforce and ensuring regulatory compliance are paramount. The suite’s adaptability to industry-specific requirements exemplifies its practical application in different sectors.

SAP

Workday is a cloud-based software solution that specializes in developing applications for capital and finance management applications. The system is built to work in global workforces and is adaptable. The global system ensures that users are up to date and can manage internal career-related information, and everyday business problems like timesheets, payrolls, and time off.

“A Pioneer in Software-as-a-Service”

Workday Human Capital Management tool is designed to simplify and streamline your work. It leverages machine learning to adapt capital management to a changing environment.

The Workday model is based on delivering a single system that uses a single source of data and a single security model to deliver a unique user experience. The system is user-friendly and ensures that employees and management can use it from any and all devices. Workday HCM integrates into a central system that includes financial management, payroll, recruiting, learning, and planning. Managers and employees can provide feedback to one another, too.

Workday’s features include:

Flexible framework that lets you organize your staff according to different criteria. You can group employees by function, hierarchy, or department.
Personalized career guidance: Knowledge management and career guidance that can be easily customized for each staff member and also done at scale.
Augmented reporting and analytics: Configure, change, update, and publish reports, scorecards, and dashboards. The system centralizes the transactional and analytical data so you can act on the data from anywhere.
Compensation tools: Compensatio, payroll, and time tracking are automated and simplified.
Workforce planning allows you to uncover and address talent gaps and get visibility of your staff.
Mobile-first ensign approach: Users can access all resources from any device, and they are always in sync.
Machine learning capabilities enable personalized enterprise experiences and faster business processes.

Workday smart platform consists of the following modules:

Human resource management
Business process management
Reporting and analytics
Benefits administration
Compensation management
Talent management
Survey framework
Employee and management self-service

Reviews from Real Users

Many organizations choose Workday because it provides an all-in-one modular solution for human capital and finance management. Our users say they like the ease of use for time-off requests, career and development segments, and overall HR management. The records and reporting capabilities are another popular feature.

"The solution was very good at reconfiguration and customization of their software. It helped us to meet federal regulations," said one user. Another said that the best feature is the optimization of the work day experience with a unified platform that can be applied across different business units. “You will never find a use case that cannot be covered," said a third.

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

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!