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SAP SuccessFactors HCM vs Workday HCM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 21, 2026

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
7th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
4.3
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Workday HCM
Ranking in Cloud HCM
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
66
Ranking in other categories
Benefits Administration (1st), Talent Management (2nd), Talent Acquisition (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Cloud HCM category, the mindshare of SAP SuccessFactors HCM is 1.2%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Workday HCM is 9.6%, down from 18.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud HCM Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Workday HCM9.6%
SAP SuccessFactors HCM1.2%
Other89.2%
Cloud HCM
 

Featured Reviews

Stuti Ghosh - PeerSpot reviewer
VP – Skills Architecture And Management at Standard Chartered Bank
Unified talent workflows have streamlined performance reviews and continuous feedback
Based on my experience with SAP SuccessFactors HCM, there are a lot of improvements needed. They are improving definitely, but SAP SuccessFactors HCM needs a lot more integrated flow of data and information across different modules because it is sitting in a lot of places. The biggest improvement is that SAP SuccessFactors HCM is very plain and vanilla and is not very engaging in terms of UI/UX. From a UI/UX perspective, it is not very intuitive. You need to know where to go and navigate and what information is sitting there. Therefore, we have to do a lot of change management education, a lot of guidance work, and a lot of change management to get higher adoption and engagement on the platform. Something that would be really intuitive could fit better with the flow.
Eslam Abo Elnaga - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The SAP SuccessFactors HCM tool is a fantastic platform to work with, offering end-to-end employee lifecycle coverage."
"The feature I appreciate the most about this solution is the integration with SAP S/4HANA system."
"The employee experience management tools have had a very positive impact on employee satisfaction and well-being within our organization."
"Using SAP SuccessFactors HCM analytics and insights helps my customers in data-driven decision-making."
"Regarding how SAP SuccessFactors HCM has helped my organization, we have timelines that work with the platform in terms of when we set up our goals and record them, performance reviews, check-ins, and everything work seamlessly."
"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 most valuable feature of the solution is that it is a cloud-based system and easy to use."
"The solution is stable."
"Workday's best features are planning and finance."
"It's a fully consolidated system. All the transactions and configuration are co-located in one fully in-memory system, so there is no need to go to different data sources (multiple DBs) to pull data; it’s all in one place."
"It is easy to use and straightforward."
"The most valuable features of the solution are the usability, learning, and compliance tools."
"I like its UI and UX. When we were using Oracle or SAP, the UI/UX wasn't very user-friendly for the employees."
"Overall, this solution provides a good user experience and is very easy to use."
 

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."
"Based on my experience with SAP SuccessFactors HCM, there are a lot of improvements needed."
"The pricing of the solution is very high concerning pricing, setup cost, and licensing of this tool."
"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 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."
"The ability to drive more analytics on a customizable level would be helpful."
"It does not integrate with some of the career management softwares, like LinkedIn."
"They do a great job of selling the tool, but for support, you are kind of on your own."
"The navigation of Workday is good but could be better."
"In terms of reporting, we have to rely on a consultant to do the report customization. The most important thing is to be able to do your own reporting, which it can't do. We rely so much on our consultant to customize reports for us."
"Workday does have a community site where people can go on and off for suggestions. They call them Brainstorms, and you can vote them up. That is something that they do well, but oftentimes, they seem to be racing to deliver something based on what a competitor is delivering. For example, if they hear SAP has this new functionality and learning that's going to be coming out, they prioritize there, which makes sense, but unfortunately, some of these Brainstorms may get neglected where the product might not be improved as quickly or as needed for the customers. You might be waiting for a year or two to get a feature that you'd like released. They should pay more attention to customer feedback and ensure that customer feedback is an essential part of their product roadmap."
"The cost of Workday is certainly not inexpensive. It's very pricey."
"This solution could be improved by providing user-level access to customization capabilities. Users currently rely on more technical teams to customize reports, for example."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"With a bigger budget, I would recommend SAP."
"I rate the product’s pricing a ten out of ten."
"Its price is pretty high. It is more expensive than what is offered by other competitors in the market."
"It has an annual subscription rate, but I'm not sure how it will work."
"It's very, very expensive."
"It is on a yearly basis."
"I need to pay for a license. It is expensive."
"I would rate the solution’s pricing a six out of ten."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
14%
Educational Organization
12%
Construction Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business18
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise50
 

Questions from the Community

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?
Based on my experience with SAP SuccessFactors HCM, there are a lot of improvements needed. They are improving definitely, but SAP SuccessFactors HCM needs a lot more integrated flow of data and in...
What is your primary use case for SAP SuccessFactors HCM?
I have hands-on experience with SAP SuccessFactors HCM and we use different modules. As an HR person, I work from that side of the platform. I am the customer of SAP SuccessFactors HCM. We utilize ...
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...
How easy is to maintain Workday, Oracle Cloud, and SuccessFactors?
I implemented Workday in 2024 and without having previous Workday experience, it was very challenging. I spent most of 2025 putting out fires and cleaning up the business processes that came with l...
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...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Workday Human Capital Management
 

Overview

 

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!
Find out what your peers are saying about SAP SuccessFactors HCM vs. Workday HCM and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
908,745 professionals have used our research since 2012.