Oracle HCM Cloud alternatives and competitors

We first deployed the employee center: It's all the data related to the HR master data. We also embedded inside SuccessFactors all that is related to work permits because we have around seven countries in the Gulf area e.g. Oman, Qatar, and UAE. In terms of module, we care about the residency visa and labor card because it impacts the payment methods.

For our recruitment module, we also deployed this solution and we tried to consolidate the recruitment process across all our branches, because each branch has its own process. They can skip one step, but we defined it. We defined the rules in a unique way that caters to all our branches.

We also deployed the performance operator where we cleaned up all our job titles and assigned the correct competency in coordination with our HR directors. I did all of this inside the SuccessFactors system. Now, we are ready to go live once the top management decides to launch the performance operator. It can be the end of this year. If they're not yet ready for this system, the launch will be next year.

We also deployed the time management module for the leaves. It can be accrued or credited at the beginning of the year depending on each branch. We deployed this module to be able to track the vacation balance, sick leave balance, maternity leave, etc.

The last module we deployed is the talent and development module for setting the performance goal for each employee. We also defined the succession plan and development. We still need to identify our employees. We have 6,000 employees across all the geographies, but the platform is ready and configured.

This is only from the SuccessFactors side. From the payroll side, we deployed in UAE, Qatar, Oman, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt. IBM developed for us for Lebanon and Iraq because they are not standard. We also deployed it in India. These are the countries in our project scope.

From the HR side on which features were most valuable in this solution because I was responsible for the HR and payroll modules. During the payroll in Meta4, I used to write an outside API to read the result of the payroll and dump it to another software: the accounting software. There is a GL posting that hits from GL after each payroll.

Now, in SAP, which is connected to SuccessFactors, this interlinking and posting is automatic. I don't have to follow up with each branch on the rules and variables to do it. It's embedded. We defined it once and once the payroll cycle is finished, it hits the final module on the corresponding GL that we defined and mapped. This is the first feature I found valuable.

Another feature I found valuable was in the project module system because we also bought and utilized the project modules in SAP. It read from the HR side all the components that can constitute the cost of an employee. It means we used to calculate the dry cost manually based on some data that existed inside Meta4 and I used to prepare it for Meta4, but when we shifted to SAP, we required that all data should go out of SAP only, so no more Excel and other files.

We set up this solution to automatically calculate the dry cost based on the employee's salary, the cost of the employee's and his family's visas, the medical insurance, life insurance, etc. We calculate the dry cost by discipline and by employee category or job level so that the calculations reflect on the project module. When the employee fills in the timesheet, his hourly rate reflects immediately from this intermediate calculation.

These two features are automatic.

The process for long modules needs to be improved, because compared to how it's done with a competitor (Meta4), the competitor's process was simpler.

I am satisfied with SuccessFactors, at least 85% satisfied. As for additional features that could be included in the next release, I developed a portal for life insurance. I asked for the medical insurance, but they did it for me in the HCM side, from the payroll side. It would be nice to have it in SuccessFactors because some branches, countries, or companies may need this info in case they want to go up to the cost of the employee, and usually any insurance cost is part of your employee cost as well.

Another feature I was asking for which they asked me to develop outside as they can only extract the data for me, is the CV builder: the CV for mass builder, not the CV content because they have the data and I added two screens only. I asked to have a CV like the World Bank format which has a columnar way, but they weren't able to achieve it.

I don't know if it's because we didn't buy the business intelligence module, or because the reporting tool in SuccessFactors is cloud-based, it's always limited and you need to build your own sophisticated report layout outside.

I used it with IBM and we tested it in each branch, with all the HR users and payroll users, but effectively it was used from August 2021.

In the HR module, yes this solution is stable. It has been three months since we ran the payroll from SuccessFactors. We are not facing any software issues. We are facing issues with a change mind of our users in some branches, but not in all the branches.

For payroll in terms of stability, I built the payroll engine for the Gulf area so when you're the developer, you're able to help the end user and you keep on developing the solution the way they want it.

Now we deployed it the standard way and we just added some small configurations for the countries in scope, except for Iran and Lebanon.

We stuck to the standard as much as possible so if any new version comes, or if there's any new enhancement to the software, we won't need to change much during upgrades. To be frank, in Meta4, when I used to develop based on our end user requirements and when the service pack used to come with each upgrade, it took me multiple months to analyze what I've changed and what objects I've touched. Here, we apply around 85% on that, so I think we will not face this issue.

For the configurable countries like Lebanon and Iraq which we built from scratch, the system will not be scalable because any change will need to be done inside the development. I think IBM did it in a modular way, to only add the new changes, not to change everything from scratch.

Generally the IBM team's technical support was very friendly. Even after they left and went on to other projects, they still answered me in a friendly way. They are no longer on contract with us, but whenever I face any issues, they're still helping me. They are friendly. Now, if they want to take it up to SAP, it's very typical that we have to escalate by priority. It can be low, medium, etc., but similarly, we didn't face issues with their technical support.

I used Meta4. It taught me a major lesson. I liked the solution and I know now that the new version may be similar to SAP because they have the performance calibration which didn't exist before. I developed it with two guys and embedded in the solution, but now I understand that the feel and look changed. I think if the company didn't decide to go buy an ERP solution to have multiple modules, I would have suggested to upgrade to Meta4 if we want to keep the HR solution as the standard one. I liked it so much.

The initial setup of this solution is hybrid. I don't know if it's complex because I'm not a technical person to judge, but I can tell it's hybrid. We have a cloud solution which is SuccessFactors, and we have an on-premise payroll.

SAP has an integration module called HCI that IBM helped build between these two separate solutions, one being on cloud and one being on-premises.

We implemented it through IBM. I like the team. They are very professional, and I feel that they're number one, to be frank. I used to work with seven consultants on the HR module and their leader on the HR module, even the project manager, all of them are very lovely. We had to make changes many times, but they accepted it with a lovely attitude. They have a high level of professionalism. I don't know if it is just my luck, or if they are really up to this level.

I evaluated Meta4 and was able to use it for three years.

We also evaluated four software. One of them was Microsoft, but from day one, they didn't arrive and they didn't come to the demo, so it was out from day one during the vendor assessment session. We also compared Oracle, SAP, and Deltek.

We did a comparison matrix on the various requirements that we asked for from the three vendors and we evaluated those three and we compared the scores. Other modules were also compared in their scope like the project module, CRM, and finance. The highest marks went to SAP. We did the comparison mathematically.

I was in the blueprint phase since 2019, then during 2020, we did the implementation with IBM systems integrator. I was the lead on the HR modules but as functional lead, not as technical, because I played double roles. The role from my company's side is to give all the business requirements and do the testing with the IBM team. Being in the subleader role, I need to give them the requirements in their terminology because I didn't work before on SuccessFactors. I wasn't a user. I was learning while providing all the requirements, and testing.

During 2020 up to mid 2021, in August, we went live. Allow me to highlight that we went live for eight countries in scope for the Payroll HCM, and also went live for more than 12 countries in terms of SuccessFactors employee data. I am now supporting our company's HR users.

It's on cloud and I don't have access to the cloud to know which version. I need to go back to shared document. I don't have it in front of me. I think it was the most recent version because to be frank, even during the UAT (user acceptance testing), they stopped us for a couple of days to upgrade. I think they installed the latest version on cloud.

We have defined four or five roles as the users of this solution. The HR manager who has access to everything and all the modules. The recruiter who only has access to the recruitment module. In terms of the employee data, we defined four roles. We defined the time administrator role who's responsible for checking the leaves and following up with the leaves. The line manager is the one who approves the leave for his employee, not HR, because he is the one who knows his team more and we have people onsite for the engineering company.

We also created the HR officer role who can help in filling information related to the new hires, or the visas, or the CVs, but he doesn't have access to the salary data. Then, we created the HR admin, who can access the salary data on top of the previous role that I listed. The last role is the payroll manager who has access to a specific screen in SuccessFactors called One Time Payment, which usually hits the payroll in the other side. For this we planned it only for the top layer, or top role, which is the HR payroll manager. This is how we manage it.

Deployment and maintenance of this solution is handled by me and two colleagues. They help me with the data migration for all the countries and we distributed the countries for payroll testing. Our contract was eight countries in scope. I took four countries and they took four countries. For the recruitment module, performance appraisal, and succession plan, I was handling it in parallel to the follow-up on data migration and on the payroll configuration.

As for plans to increase usage of this solution in the future, it has only been three months from the time we went live. We are still focusing mainly on what is related to payroll, especially because we are approaching the end of this year and some branches have annual taxation e.g. India, Lebanon, and Egypt. We first need them to practice the payroll side very well, plus, they've still been committing some errors not because of the system, but because of their old ways. They're used to recalculating and deleting the result in the payroll archive. Now it's forbidden, so we are facing the issue mainly in Saudi Arabia and Iraq to change the end users' ways.

Some other branches, they are understanding. They are on track and they now ask for reports e.g. headcount reports. They are on track from month two. The next stage, maybe next year, my plan is to increase the level, particularly the HR user level to start to be responsible for their tasks, plus, to start to prepare for the performance appraisal, which mainly is not handled by the regular HR user. It will be handled just by HR managers and directors.

We need to prepare the KPIs with these HR directors. This will be the plan for next year because the top management asked for it.

Everything related to contract terms or money, it's our IT director who deals with it. My section is under IT corporate services. I'm aware from the communication that we have professional licenses for some, while for some, we have the regular licenses. I know this because they keep on asking me to reduce my HR users who have professional licenses, while other users will have a different license. In terms of licensing costs, I don't have that info.

I will tell anyone who needs to implement SuccessFactors that they first need to be familiar with the terminology used in SuccessFactors. Our company helped us by sending us to a training that served as our introduction to SuccessFactors before we started the implementation, so when we started the implementation, I was already familiar with the terminology used by IBM. People looking into implementing this solution should at least receive preliminary training.

Another advice I'd like to give is for them to really be ready for the blueprinting when preparing the solution document and the design document, because what happened to us was we went for five months during this phase parallel to the training so everything came in a rush e.g. information overload. I was the only one who attended the training for three months and in the end, I had to ask for help. That's why I asked for two people to help me because I cannot handle it all the time and I cannot attend two classes at the same time. This is my recommendation: to really have their team ready and to be familiar with all of the HR modules.

I am familiar with Meta4 and what I've been asked, so I am familiar with the business processes, but I only need the technical terminology and the screen names in the new software like SuccessFactors. I know what my company needs and I want to replicate it in SuccessFactors in case it was not clear, so let them be ready in terms of processes and be very detailed during the preparation of the solution documents.

You'll discover during the implementation, during the explore phase or the document preparation, that usually an implementer can only go by the book. He doesn't accept change, even when you are not sure about the explanation.

We worked with SAP India. SAP prepared the document for the solution while the implementer was IBM. Because the IBM team was very friendly, we were analyzing again that maybe we committed a mistake because there was a misunderstanding with SAP India and we want this requirement. They were open to revalidating the requirement. This is a very critical stage.

The last point which I faced in my country is that it's important to have mature HR users. What made this project hectic for me was that the HR users themselves weren't matured enough to do the testing themselves in their branches. You need to be present in each session. My recommendation for any other country or any other company is to have mature HR end users in case of multiple branches.

I'm rating this solution an eight. It's used worldwide and meets all our requirements.

We bought the whole package except for recruiting. We use it for performance, case management, file management, learning, payroll, reporting, etc.

It is a software-as-a-service.

It is very agile. There are some custom fields that we need, and we're able to add them ourselves. We have two people on our team, and if someone comes to us and says, "Hey, I need a new field on this particular page," we're able to do that without anybody else's assistance.

It is mobile-ready, and you can do everything on your phone. Everything that you can do on a desktop can be done on your phone. It helps with self-service because we're pushing people to utilize the system to their best ability.

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. 

It is very user-friendly, and the configuration is relatively easy to do. Its user interface is very easy to use. 

They also have surveys. They have a feature called Focus that has artificial intelligence that you can use for analysis or surveys for engagement. They're continuing to push the envelope for new advancements with features like AI. They keep on making leaps and bounds. They have rolled out additional features that help with all of the mandates. They did that quickly and provided that service for all of those different states that have different requirements for vaccine mandates. They continue to make different things to help us be more agile. They are constantly making things available to their users.

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. 

It went live in October 2020, and we are currently using it.

It is very stable. We've had some outages, but they're very responsive. Because the two systems merged, they had their own growing pains, but we've had great success with them so far.

It is very scalable. We have a thousand users at max who use the system today. We have all kinds of roles from general users to payroll administrators, etc. We have 18 different solutions in it for performance, case management, file management, learning, payroll, reporting, etc.

We have been trying to improve adaptability since we went live. Over 90% of our user base have walked in and used the system. So, it has been successful. We're trying to improve our customer base and keep exploring its capabilities.

They have always been very friendly and very resourceful. They have good SLAs and the ability to increase a ticket if there is something that you need assistance with. They have a 24/7 rapid response team that you can call on any issue. It could be a current or a new issue.

We had Oracle for payroll and Taleo was our performance and learning solution. It was mostly on-premise setup, and we had a ginormous team that was offshore. They did all of the maintenance. We were looking for a system that we could manage ourselves. We needed to upgrade or implement a new solution. We decided to do our RFP. We narrowed down our scope of solutions, and we went with UKG. It is more agile.

We started our implementation process in May and went live in October of 2020. We had overlapping modules. There were 18 different solutions that we were able to put in UKG. 

We did have a delay on the time entry tool. It was because Ultimate and Kronos merged in October last year, so we didn't go live with the payroll functionality system, which was Kronos, until May of 2021. These two companies were merging, so they had to align their systems. They worked hand-in-hand with us with their hurdles because we were one of the first clients to go live with both systems. It was very successful.

UKG provided an implementation team that helped us. For its deployment and maintenance, there are two core people. There are also different teams, and the two of us help support anything that they are working on. Each subject matter expert is also able to manage things on his or her own, and we are always a resource. We are a very small team, and it seems like more people are trying to go to this model.

It definitely saves cost because there is no overhead of having the offshore maintenance team. We have been able to reduce costs there. The cost of Oracle was quite a bit more than UKG's ongoing cost. We no longer have on-premise servers, so we've been able to save a bunch with this new system.

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. 

We did a request for a proposal, and we did our own analysis. We looked at places like Software Advice and a couple of other websites to help us identify our wishlist and things that were requirements for the solution. After we narrowed down our top five, we had demos. Workday was one of them, and we also looked at Oracle's cloud solution for HRMS. After our demos, we decided to go with UKG. 

Workday was a little too rigid for what our user base was used to. UKG was more agile for what we were looking for. We liked the Oracle solution, but we had been with Oracle for a long time. Based on our needs, we went with Ultimate Software.

It is a huge time investment. All of these systems are very extensive. While implementing, a lot of other groups have had additional resources to help with the day-to-day things. We were fortunate to be able to do the implementation during COVID. Everyone was working from home, and that was the best time to do an implementation. We were able to see all hands on deck and put in the required hours for its implementation. My boss was amazing, and she had put in a lot of hours scrubbing the data to make sure we have good, clean data in our new system. I can't thank her enough for all of the time that our team put in on this implementation. There were just three of us who were helping everyone else with their pieces. There is a learning curve depending on what you're trying to do, but that's with any of such solutions. 

I would rate it a 10 out of 10. It has the ability to be very agile, and it is robust. 

Workday is an HR management or a talent management tool. It is basically the full suite of HR core processes. It has got modules within it for benefits for HR administration and talent acquisition. 

We have been able to reduce the administrative burden of HR so that HR can focus more on strategic activities rather than administrative work. It also provides better visibility in reporting on benefits.

It helps the users to enroll for the benefits automatically and update their life events without the involvement of HR individuals or back-office staff. It enables a person to take action on their own. It reduces the administrative burden on HR and puts the ownership on the person that is going through the life event, whether it is having a child, taking a leave of absence, or something else. 

There are easy ways to integrate Workday with your common benefits. At least in the USA, it can be integrated with common benefits providers such as Fidelity, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Aetna, etc. It has got a connector that is able to connect with the vendor or the third party to which you are trying to send the eligibility file. It basically allows us to automate or set up the tool, and the integration with the provider is a lot quicker than competing tools. 

When it comes to reporting on just eligibility and SLSA, it is a lot more user-intuitive. Depending on the purpose of what you are doing, you can grant security rights or roles, for example, you can control whether someone is a benefits administrator doing an independent audit. Workday makes it very easy to do that. It significantly simplifies the reporting process. 

It is very unique as compared to other tools in terms of the employee master data and how it is organized. That's why sometimes the information needs to sit in two different systems because, in Workday, it is organized differently. This issue is not related to benefits. It is more or so related to how you categorize employees. I don't think this is a problem that could be solved. Workday is aware of this. It is one of those kinds of situations that you just got to live with.

I have been using Workday since 2013.

It is very stable, but obviously, it is all about how you set it up and configure it. At the end of the day, the technology works. It is all about setting it up the right way.

We use it across the organization for all 10,000 employees. As we hire more or acquire more companies, it is definitely going to be used more.

We have around 10,000 users, and about 4,000 of them are back-office employees. That would be HR, finance, supply chain, and IT. The other half of the organization is using it sparingly, but this is the revenue-generating workforce that is sitting in the field. These could be plant workers, plant supervisors, and craft labor. Basically, we just log in to look at their paycheck and other things, but we use the app to look at their leave balances.

They do a great job of selling the tool, but for support, you are kind of on your own. You either decide to go with a vendor to support you, or you build capabilities in-house. It is a common model. I know it sounds like they are leaving you out to dry, but in today's day and age, this is a common model with most providers.

If we need additional stuff that we are not getting, they are great at providing that. In terms of supporting the application, I can't even rank them because, frankly, they don't do it. It is something for which we have to pay an external vendor to provide the service.

We went from Legacy ERP to Workday. We switched because of its simplicity, ease of use, and a lot simpler and easier user interface.

The initial setup was complex but manageable. I have worked on a couple of deployments. The last one within the last year was supposed to take eight months, but it took a year and a half. That was mainly because of the integrations taking a lot longer than I anticipated and problems with the vendor who was implementing it. The vendor did a series of missteps that didn't help.

We had an implementation partner who didn't do a very good job. We have 10 to 20 people to maintain it, but it depends on the complexity of your configuration and builds. 

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.

We considered all the top leading HCM solutions, such as SuccessFactors, Oracle HCM, and UltiPro. It was a $5 million to $10 million investment for us.

I would advise making sure that your HR data is clean. Take your time. Everybody is eager to implement a new shiny toy, but a lot of cleanups are required to get your house in order. You have got to clean up your HR data and make sure that there are no duplicate employees, people are assigned to the right job descriptions, and there are no such people who are terminated but still sit in your organization. When you actually migrate the data, all such issues will create a lot of problems. 

It is a leading talent management tool, and it has got the largest market share. I would rate Workday a ten out of ten.

We have been using this as an enterprise solution for many things including for financials, for supply chain, for sales, for maintenance, for manufacturing, et cetera. You name it. It helps us with many business processes.  

As we have been using this for the past nine years we have had the opportunity to explore the product. Really everything has worked well and all the modules are very good. The financial parts are very good, the sales part is also very good, the maintenance of our supply-chain is meeting our requirements. It has been very helpful and it is hard to separate out one thing that is better.  

After the announcement of the cloud products, the on-premises products from Oracle are not garnering as much development attention. Some of the new features that used to come to us earlier before the cloud product are now coming at a slow pace. So we want Oracle to work on the on-premises product in parallel with their cloud product. E-Business Suite should not fall behind.  

What I want to improve about this product is the user interface. In some of the modules compared to recent, cloud module releases do not have a very nice look-and-feel because they are letting the on-premises product age. Compared to the advanced cloud modules, this product has some rigid look-and-feel for the user experience.  

We have been using the Oracle E-Business Suite for about nine years.  

I am satisfied with the stability of most of the Oracle products which we are using right now. The problem is not the stability but a lack of new development.  

I think the E-Business Suite is very highly scalable. Right now in my organization, we have around 1000 total users. We have been increasing usage over the years and have plans to increase usage going into the future. We are going to continue to use the on-premises product in the future because it is not easy for us to migrate to any other products. That is primarily because it is a huge implementation here.  

We do have experience with the product technical support. Whenever the support is assigned to India, we are not satisfied with it because we do not get quality support from teams in India. But whenever that support is assigned to any other country — that may be from the US or any European country — the support is phenomenal. When we reach good support they know the product very well and the experience is good. That is where I think the Indian resources are a bit concerning. The support from them really takes a lot of time.  

We were using another product nine or ten years ago. It was a very old product made by IBM. That was AS/400.  

I think the initial setup is done in a very smart way. It is not very complex. If a person is technical enough to do it, it will be easy for him or her. If someone is not comfortable doing the installation, it will be difficult for him or her. 

The deployment was about nine years back, so I do not remember everything exactly. I think it took us around two to three days. What I consider deployment may have a different definition for some people and may not be the same definition for me. As long as by 'deployment' it means just the installation and initial configuration, then it is just a few days. When it comes to setting up and finalizing all of the business requirements and going live with the system, it took us four to five months.  

We used a consultant for the deployment. It was from an Oracle partner in Pakistan.  

Even though we used the services of a consultant, we have an in-house support team. We do not require any support from outside and no longer require or include any external vendors. So we have a team of around 25 people supporting this application.  

The advice that I would give to others who want to start using this product is that, in this day and age, you need to first evaluate different products. At the very least you would want to compare the E-Business Suite with the other Oracle cloud products.  

On a scale from one to ten where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate the Oracle E-Business product at an eight-out-of-ten.  

This solution is our primary HCM product. We use it for core HR, payroll benefits, time, labor, Regs, and Legs.

You can meet the business needs of any of our Stakeholders.

I love how easy it is to customize. I often say that PeopleSoft's greatest feature is how customizable it is.

We are in the process of migrating from PeopleSoft, Oracle HCM Cloud, and Taleo.

Their greatest challenge is how customizable it is because the more you customize, the more the total cost of ownership increases.

We have already deployed it and we have had it for several years but we are switching to a modern HCM SaaS cloud product. We chose Workday, and we are in the process of implementation.

I have been working with PeopleSoft since 1995.

We are using the most up-to-date version. 

PeopleSoft no longer has true versioning. They do PUM upgrades and we stay current with our PUM upgrades.

We have not experienced any issues with the stability of PeopleSoft.

PeopleSoft is a legacy product and I feel that they have effectively taken care of customers who want to stay on PeopleSoft. From that perspective it is scalable, but certainly not modern. It was created in the early 90s.

I refer to our business partners as clients but they are internal. I am their IT, strategy, and planning. I work with our business strategy teams for the technology enablement of their business needs.

We have 85,000 users.

Because it's on-premises, we don't rely on Oracle for support. We have our internal team for production support.

I am also using Oracle Taleo, Oracle HCM Cloud, and Ceridian.

Ceridian was a great product, but we made a company change and the new company used PeopleSoft. 

The initial setup is straightforward.

Oracle doesn't charge us for all of our customization's but we have an in-house development team that does the customization.

Given that it's a legacy product, there's not a lot of people who are looking to deploy PeopleSoft. We will be moving to a modern solution.

There are no additional features that I would recommend and that it is a legacy product.

Because it is not a modern tool, I would rate PeopleSoft a six out of ten. It was built on 1990s technology.