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SAP SuccessFactors 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
5.3
SAP SuccessFactors offers efficiency and HR benefits, but high costs and long ROI periods challenge financial justification.
Sentiment score
6.2
UKG users enjoy data integrity and efficiency, but many find ROI unclear despite improved processes and cost savings.
Sentiment score
7.3
Organizations report improved engagement and satisfaction with Workday, experiencing significant time savings and positive ROI through effective streamlining.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.2
SAP SuccessFactors support receives mixed reviews; praised for efficiency yet criticized for bureaucracy, response delays, and offshore handling.
Sentiment score
7.2
UKG's customer service is inconsistent, praised for expertise but criticized for delays and inefficiencies, needing service consistency improvements.
Sentiment score
6.9
Workday customer service gets mixed reviews; appreciated for responsiveness, but lacks speed and expertise in regional needs.
One developer and one functional person can efficiently manage the implementation for a large organization.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.8
SAP SuccessFactors is scalable, supporting diverse user sizes, though some module limitations exist; users generally report satisfaction.
Sentiment score
7.4
UKG is scalable and adaptable across various organization sizes and industries, effectively meeting growth and flexibility requirements.
Sentiment score
7.9
Workday's scalability and customization effectively support diverse organizations, ensuring adaptability and integration across departments and locations.
UKG is scalable, especially for organizations with shift work activities like healthcare, as it can accommodate different shift timings and overlapping schedules efficiently.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.5
SAP SuccessFactors is rated highly for stability despite occasional performance and integration issues during updates or high-demand periods.
Sentiment score
7.1
Users find UKG mostly stable with occasional issues, but appreciate quick responses and effective system integration.
Sentiment score
8.1
Workday is praised for its reliability, achieving 97% uptime, with most users rating stability between seven and ten.
I hardly ever encounter any stability issues, as SAP SuccessFactors is very good and stable.
 

Room For Improvement

SAP SuccessFactors needs analytics, integration, and usability improvements; users face customization, interface, and deployment challenges.
UKG users seek improved implementation, customer service, system integration, platform flexibility, and enhanced features like time management and training.
Workday needs improvements in analytics, global payroll, UI, integration, customization, support responsiveness, and cost-effectiveness to enhance user experience.
The change management process during the initial launch was not effectively handled, leading to a poor user experience.
Advisories can only be placed at the bottom, which is less effective as employees may not scroll down to see them.
It is a productive ERP application, but many people in the IT market are not aware of it.
 

Setup Cost

SAP SuccessFactors provides a flexible pricing model, suited for large enterprises, with annual licensing and negotiable costs.
UKG's pricing, influenced by employees and modules, is high yet justified, with negotiation options and discounts available.
Workday's high pricing is justified by comprehensive features and support, though smaller organizations may find it costly.
The licensing costs are quite high, which is a typical scenario for such solutions.
Compared to other ERPs like Oracle SCM Cloud or SAP, UKG's pricing is standard and not as expensive.
 

Valuable Features

SAP SuccessFactors offers user-friendly HR solutions with strong integration, mobile access, and AI-driven tools for efficient enterprise management.
UKG offers intuitive, customizable HR solutions with seamless integrations, enhancing automation, data management, and employee lifecycle efficiency.
Workday offers user-friendly navigation, integration tools, and HR capabilities, enhancing efficiency through customization, analytics, and secure data management.
SAP SuccessFactors has advantages in providing AI-driven initiatives such as candidate screening and matching features within the recruitment module.
Employees can view their goals, performance, ratings, and employee information, which enhances the employee experience.
The application is like an ERP, providing comprehensive features for organizations, simplifying their processes, and reducing the need to use multiple software solutions.
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Cloud HCM category, the mindshare of SAP SuccessFactors is 21.2%, down from 22.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of UKG is 5.5%, down from 5.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Workday is 18.8%, up from 18.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud HCM
 

Featured Reviews

SandeepKumar7 - PeerSpot reviewer
Useful to manage employee life cycle management but is not very easy to implement
There are quite a few things, like goal management, in terms of transferring goals from manager to subordinates, which is probably not one of the best ways to look at SAP SuccessFactors, making it an area that could have been done better. Route management and template management are pretty good areas. The reporting in the tool is not as great as I would want it to be from a PMGM internal management perspective. I just hope that SAP SuccessFactors comes up with a payroll tool that suits India. I don't see it as one of the best tools for the Indian scenario. I would love to see much better document management in the system, like onboarding. Onboarding has document management, but if I want to report through it, there is not much that I can do about it. DMS in SAP would be great since, in most places, DMS is maintained outside the system. I would have loved to see better DMS in SAP SuccessFactors. In terms of the reporting, I understand that since everything is moving to SAP SAC. Even without SAP SAC, it would be great if we could have better analytics within SAP SuccessFactors.
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.
Akash Nigam - PeerSpot reviewer
User-friendly, well-organized, offering a structured step-by-step process for configuration
I would really like to see a more robust timekeeping solution in Workday. Currently, most organizations are using Kronos for timekeeping and Workday for HR data. They then integrate Workday with Dimensions to manage time-related activities and payroll processing. I think if Workday could enhance its timekeeping solution to match the functionality and flexibility of Dimensions, it would be a really good product. Another area for improvement is payroll. Workday payroll is not very extensively used in the North American market, but it is more widely used in Europe. There is a lot of complexity in payroll processing in North America, but I think there is still a lot of room for improvement in Workday. In the next release, I would like to see pre-built or predefined connectors for Dimensions and other applications. Currently, we have to use Boomi or another middleware application to integrate Workday with these systems. I think pre-built connectors would be very helpful, especially for Dimensions, which we do not currently have a connector for.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
45%
Computer Software Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Comms Service Provider
5%
Educational Organization
84%
Computer Software Company
2%
Healthcare Company
2%
Manufacturing Company
2%
Educational Organization
25%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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 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 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 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 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...
What needs improvement with Workday?
If you want to add more features to your subscription, Workday becomes expensive.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

SuccessFactors
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, Skril
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 SAP, Workday, Oracle and others in Cloud HCM. Updated: May 2025.
851,823 professionals have used our research since 2012.