SAP SuccessFactors Reviews

We primarily use the solution for the performance management system. Under the performance management system we monitor the target, the objective of the employee, and have the assessment on the employee as well as the final result in order to track employee performance.

The performance management system of SuccessFactors is very valuable. We can set the goals and then the business process flow.

We can have goals reviewed and approved and then we can submit them to the system. We can review things and get self-assessments. Managers can add comments.

We can track and measure our goals from mid-year reviews to progress. We can calculate excess money in relation to goals and can self-calibrate. Overall, it's excellent performance management. 

The deployment process is easy.

The business processes on offer are excellent.

The solution needs to offer more languages. Many in Indonesia, for example, are not so good at English. In this product, English is the default language. We need to translate it to our main languages, which is difficult. 

The pricing of SAP is quite high.

It would be good to have tutorials for employees. If we had something to distribute to them to help with a general understanding of the solution, it would be quite helpful.

I've been using the solution for around two years or so.

The stability of the solution is very good. I don't have any downtime and the solution offers very good availability. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's very reliable. 

The scalability of the solution is quite good. It can provide services to many companies and many business units.

In Indonesia, we have 250 employees that are on SuccessFactors. Globally we have about 4,000 users, however, I can't speak to how or if it is used elsewhere.

Currently, the solution is only for the supervisor, manager, and the head of business. However, we are considering expanding to more staff in the future.  

In Indonesia, we mostly deal with Hong Kong. There's a team member in Hong Kong that works closely with our SAP consultant. I'm not sure of how responsive the consultant is as I don't deal with them directly. However, our project manager is quite good and understands this product well. When there are issues, he usually can handle them.

While I only have experience with this solution, in the last company I worked for, we also use OrangeHRM.

The initial setup is easy, however, we need to explain to the employee about the process of the performance system due to the fact that, for the most part, they don't know how much is processed in their performance management system. We'll give direction and then it's easy for them to handle. We'll also follow up to make sure they understand and everything makes sense. 

It's my understanding that the licensing is paid on a yearly basis, however, I cannot speak to the cost. The project manager handles that aspect of the product.

It's my understanding that SAP as a solution is quite expensive.

I did evaluate other options. Typically, I look at local offerings. However, due to the fact that our company is multi-national, I've only really looked at SuccessFactors for this particular work. We don't really have the capacity to decide locally. 

We are using the latest version of the solution. 

I would recommend the solution to other users.

The main pain point, however, is the price. It may be why not all employees in Indonesia end up using it. However, the business processes are very good.

I'd rate the solution at a nine out of ten. We're mostly quite satisfied with the solution and its capabilities. 

I use SAP SuccessFactors for workforce management, in order to gain visibility into the employees in my company. 

I'm working with the latest version currently and it is one of several similar products that I have used in the Middle East, including Oracle Cloud Fusion, Oracle EBS on-prem, and the regional software from Naya Tech (which has a good position in the Middle East, and which is fantastic, by the way).

The conceptual structure of Core HR enables us to build whatever we need when it comes to the data that we need to collect from our employees. Overall, SuccessFactors allows us to monitor the progress of our objectives throughout the year, and gives us good visibility into the performance of the company and the different departments.

First of all, I must mention that SuccessFactors has many modules. The main modules are the Core HR and Payroll modules. Payroll is based on the concept that you can create whatever you need in terms of fields, or the characteristics of a field. You can change field types and the names of every field. And with Core HR, the structure of the software allows us the flexibility to build whatever we need in terms of the data we need to collect from our employees.

The second part of this is the integration points between the Core HR module and all the task management areas. This integration is very good and it gives management full visibility regarding performance and performance management. It's built on financial scorecards, so managers can assign the objectives of the company and they can cascade these objectives down from companies to departments, and then to individuals. It lets you monitor the progress of objectives all the way until the end of the year.

I think it's perfect that every requirement has flexibility in how it is handled, and that there are several workarounds for any problem we are looking to solve. Each problem has multiple solutions, so it gives us a lot of flexibility in terms of processes.

Given these features, SuccessFactors is suitable for medium-sized companies as well as larger companies, assuming that the larger companies have simple enough enough processes in terms of workforce management. For very comprehensive processes, SuccessFactors might not be appropriate.

There is now also an overnight shift option. So it can work for blue collar workers, for manufacturing, or for any kind of industry that requires people to stay overnight till the second day. Users of SuccessFactors can manage all of this in terms of attendance or absence.

Beyond that, I think the recruitment features are good. In fact, more than good. And in the latest version there has been great improvements in the time management side of things. There is now a new module called Time Tracking, and this was something we sorely missed from the beginning of SuccessFactors. Now we can integrate SuccessFactors with a time attendance machine or biometric machine and I can assign clock-in and clock-out schedules to the GUI. Meanwhile, the databases that link to the biometric machine for time valuations connect with the data in the Payroll module. This is a great feature that has always been missing and now it's included.

To explain one feature that I would like to see in SuccessFactors, I must describe a similar feature as seen in Oracle. In Oracle, there's a feature called Workforce Prediction, and with this feature, we can predict some of the behaviors of any employee. For example, the software can attempt to predict whether the employee might resign in future, or perhaps if they will start to perform better. This is something that is missing in SuccessFactors.

Another thing that can be improved with SuccessFactors is that, although the reporting tool is not bad, there are often separate reports for different areas of the software. For management and other processes like onboarding, this is not ideal. For example, you may have separate technologies being used in the different modules, so the Payroll module may have a reporting system that is distinct from that used by the more basic modules.

What we are looking for is some way to unify the reporting tools with one technology because otherwise it gives us difficulties when we need to generate a more complete and encompassing report. How it works now is that if we need to get the report from the Payroll module, we must first ask someone with Payroll experience. And if we want to get data from the basic performance or recruitment modules, we must ask another person for that info.

I think that unifying the reporting features is the most important thing for us, which we hope to see in future versions. However, at least for standard processes, it does give us what we are looking for. We can work with cybernetics cloud integration, and that gives us very good insights. So it's not necessarily about making up a gap in the technology, it's more of a matter of being able to better handle who is responsible for what inside the organization.

I have been using SAP SuccessFactors for more than three years.

It is stable. 

It's scalable and very easy to do so.

My experience with the technical support has been good. There's something new with their support called Wizard Guide which is a type of knowledge base where you can search for a specific issue and it will give you some notes about it. If the notes aren't enough, you can then simply open an incident.

There are several tools for opening an incident. You can have a quick chat with a technical person directly, who you can exchange ideas with. This is usually for how-to questions.

Then, there's the ability to schedule meetings with the technical support. In a meeting, you can explain the problem you are facing, and they will either support you on the spot or you will have to open an additional incident ticket. For the new incident process, you need to classify which area of which module you're having a problem with and then wait for a response.

Within a maximum of three days, they will have an answer for you. If you need faster support, there's high priority support which is able to respond in one to two hours, but this isn't something we have used yet. High priority support is more for situations where a system cannot be reached at all, or where something has been greatly affected in the production system and you don't have any workarounds at hand.

They offer their support 24/7, answer very quickly, and they even call you to make sure that you are doing well. Sometimes, when you are enabling new features or facing issues, and you haven't even opened a ticket or anything, they will detect the issue and send an email to you directly to make sure you that you are coming along. For example, they'll tell you, "Please go to steps 1 to 3 to fix your issue." So they are very good and cooperative when it comes to technical support.

I have worked with Oracle before, but in Oracle OTL, Oracle Fusion, and Oracle Cloud, there's a lot missing in terms of time management. In SuccessFactors, it is much better, and even though there is still a way to go, they have already made some significant improvements in this area.

The initial setup can be easy or hard, depending on how you go about it. If you go with the best practices, then you hardly need any setup. You simply adopt the existing processes and this is very easy and straightforward.

If you go without the best practices, such as when the company asks for new processes that are not included, or if you have to do a complex setup right from the beginning, then it will take some effort. But overall, the setup is still very easy.

It all starts with the data model, and obviously this requires someone experienced in Excel, etc., but once it is up and running, you will have screens that can be managed through the SuccessFactors' system without using any XML process. This makes things much more flexible in terms of setup compared to before. For any new processes you'd like to add, you can go directly to the upgrade center and select whichever optional upgrades you want. Thus, enhancing the software is very easy and doesn't take much time.

If you go by best practices and do it right from the outset, the setup won't be a costly endeavor. In terms of setup, there is a lot of flexibility compared to three years ago.

For any new process or for something already added to the SuccessFactors or SAP library, you can just go directly to the upgrade center, see the optional upgrade, and select it. Once you upgrade it, you have your setup, and you can work right away.

They say nothing is perfect, but honestly, the SuccessFactors product is essentially perfect in my eyes. It fits all the requirements we have and solves every problem we encounter. Whenever there is a problem we need to overcome, we can easily find a similar solution and adapt it to our situation. It's rare finding software that gives you lots of solutions for any particular problem you are thinking about.

The only reason I would not rate SuccessFactors a perfect ten is because if you do find yourself missing some feature that is relevant for your organization, you will have to go develop it yourself.

I would rate SAP SuccessFactors a nine out of ten. 

It is a personnel administration tool. As a normal associate, I use it for performance dialogues and training management. I also use it for reporting on the LMS module. We are using the SaaS version of this solution.

It has a global database, and it is globally accessible. By using this solution, we have moved away from paper, which is a big step for us.

Its overall integration and user experience can be improved. SuccessFactors is a system that is built out of three different systems. The elements part was bought from Plateau, and the original performance dialogue was built by SuccessFactors itself. After that, SAP bought it, and it hasn't improved in the last few years. 

SuccessFactors is a perfect tool if you use it the way it is meant to be, but if you start building custom sessions and try to use it differently, then it is a total mess. It is not agile. It is like an old Mastodon truck or whatever. 

We don't have the Employee Central and Competence Management modules. Our company made the choice to not implement the Employee Central module. We also didn't implement the Competence Management module. We use the learning module to do some competence management, but I am not that fond of it. It would have been best to have the whole suite. SAP should never sell this without selling the whole suite because it just doesn't work. 

The biggest gain for me would be having the possibility of doing strategic personnel planning and managing internal mobility. If it could be used for social purposes, such as creating communities and connecting with media channels, that would be perfect. It should also have the possibilities for local admin and agile product development.

I have been using this solution for four years.

It is stable enough. It has around 98% stability. There are accessibility issues, but they could be because of any reason, such as our network.

If you count associates, we are a 450,000 associate company. About one-third of them are not active users. We have roughly 300,000 users in all kinds of roles, such as managers, FMs, and associates.

Our company doesn't want to spend any more money on SuccessFactors. We are not really extending the solution. It would be wise if we could use it better. We don't do any strategic personnel planning.

I can't really evaluate SAP's technical support because there is so much bureaucracy in our support model. Support is not necessarily done in our country, and there is a really bureaucratic ticketing system behind it. We have national application specialists in every country. They are the guys who think about the right and proper text for the support tickets and how can a group in India or Stuttgart solve the problem. 

From another perspective, because I am also in a group of global specialists, I know that SuccessFactors or SAP does not necessarily react quickly to the issues of their customers, which is logical because they need to scale as well.

We did use some local systems, but they are not comparable to this product. The biggest pro of SuccessFactors has to be the global database, and it is globally accessible with the integration with the management. I would always prefer a global solution instead of a local solution, but a local solution is like a Pappa and Mamma store on the corner. It is always more flexible, and it is logical.

We didn't have a good data set, so the personal master data was a mess. It was a lot of work, especially on the data side. After one or two years, we kind of fixed it. 

It took about nine months to roll it out. We rolled it out in parts because we are a company that is active in 38 countries, with 450,000 associates. On our site, we had around 5,000 associates at that time. Currently, we have 4,000 associates because we are shrinking. 

In terms of the implementation strategy, we are tech equipped company. It was designed without any negotiation or input from the end-user. It was a technology push if you want to see it like that.

We have our own SAP Competence center for its implementation. Its maintenance is handled by SAP. 

Our release notes are every three months, but from a central department, we only implement them once a year. So, everything is collected somewhere in June or July. There is a big update instead of different small updates. The global application specialists are responsible for updates.

I won't recommend this solution. I would say, "Don't do it." Cornerstone or Workday is way better.

I would rate SAP SuccessFactors a five out of ten. 

We primarily provide this solution to our clients. It's an HTM solution and talent management is included within it.

Generally, it is quite an integrated product.  

In terms of user experience, it is quite good. 

There are quite a few features, such as AI, machine learning, et cetera, which are embedded right in the solution. The solution can interact with the cloud and you can do app development and tasks like that with it. 

It's pretty good for reporting. It's done pretty easily. 

I really like the integrity of the solution.

There are a few features that are missing. There are specific features on the HTM, such as telecom safety, that just isn't there. It's not a very detailed solution in that sense. However, it is maybe not expected to have those kinds of features on the surface level of the product.

We haven't used the solution for too long. We've only really used it for about a year or so now.

The solution is very stable. We haven't faced any issues in regards to bugs, glitches or crashes. We find it reliable.

We haven't heard anything about problems related to the scalability of the solution. It is quite scalable, in fact. Being on the cloud, the solution is definitely scalable. I believe Success Factors are implemented in many multi-national companies with large numbers of users. It's know to be a scalable solution.

Since it is on the cloud, the technical support required is pretty minimum for us. The technical support is provided by SAP and SAP Solutions it is generally okay. 

They don't need any technical people from their partners or the implementation company, due to the fact that it is provided by the product, which is the vendor who supplies the product.

Companies may need them near the beginning of the implementation, for setup purposes to discuss items with the client. However, once it's established, the need for technical support of any kind drops off.

The initial setup is quite straight forward. It's not complex due to the fact that it deploys to the cloud.

For us, it was what they expected, and it was very straight forward. 

We have our own team that manages the solution in house. For Success Factors, generally, if we use the standard solution, and there are not too many customizations, then it requires maybe a maximum of five people to maintain everything. Generally, maybe more in the beginning, it may be a few more people. However, as the system stabilizes, it's probably five maximum. Five to ten people, maximum, are needed.  That's quite a large acknowledgement, I would say, if I'm honest.

We are using a cloud service that has been assisting us. In our case, we just asked for the system and they deployed it for us.

I don't want to comment on the license cost, to be honest. It could be about $1,000 approximately per customer. However, it's very flexible in terms of the licensing costs depending on the volume and depending on the deal of installation. 

If people don't really accept the discount, they've always got other businesses that will discount, so pricing is very fluid and flexible for companies.

We are a platinum partner with the company.

The solution is a very good product. It's very stable. It has lots of great features and lots of support available from SAP. The product vendor has a great system connected to a lot of SAP systems overall. It's open to connectivity with other systems. 

I would recommend Success Factors any day.

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten. There are a few features missing overall. If they had a few more, I'd rate them higher.

We primarily use the solution for many things including performance management, Goal Management, Employee Central, Compensation Management, and SAP Jam, Recruitment, Onboarding.

SuccessFactors has a really solid process for talent management, starting with Goal Management which helps managers and employees build smart goals aligned with business goals. Unique Continues performance management provides another tool for managers to facilitate communication between employees and managers and ensure having high alignment between employees and managers. This helps to have effective performance and better optimize performance process. CPM helps managers to have an accurate picture of their employee's performance to evaluate employee performance all year daily.

From the moment you are evaluating the candidate through recruitment, the process related to review employee performance using Job profile builder will help to have a connecting process between Recruitment and performance.

Having an LMS and Compensation module helps you to have the complete process, where you can use LMS learning to improve weaknesses and reward top performers using compensation.

The performance management and learning management solutions are the product's most valuable features.

There are updates and new tools for measuring employees all the time. There's also a mobile application that can be used by anyone within the process.

Analytic reports are also provided, so you don't need another tool to handle reporting. It has its own dashboard and reporting tools that give you a good overview of everything.

The solution is losing a lot of utilization capabilities because most companies don't function in just one country; they operate in many around the world. It seems to have issues with handling the master data. One module is not the same across all countries. For example, in one case you will see the coverage of all of the localization processes related to the USA, but when it comes to the UK, it's covering maybe 50%. It's worse in other countries. In the Middle East, you might only get 10% coverage, for example. We were surprised at the level of variance from country to country.

The solution needs more localization, especially for the Middle East and Russia and Germany. 

There needs to be more end-user training.

I've been using the solution since 2012.

The stability of the solution is good, but I would not say it's perfect. Sometimes it's not 100%. There are occasions when you want to do some technical updates and it will shut down the server for eight to ten hours. Usually, there will be an agreement between SAP and the customer and we try to shut down the server during off-hours. This means, however, that the availability is not 100%. Still, it is, on average, quite stable.  

The scalability of the solution is good but not perfect. In our company, we have around 200 users and we use it for 16,000 employees. We plan to increase usage to cover 20,000 employees and have plans to roll out the solution to some of our countries in Europe.

The solution's technical support is weak. 

They have not taken care to put in place any certified consultants that understand the system very well to support you when there are incidents. They seem to just add people that are new, fresh, and don't have a lot of information about the system. They don't have the real capability to solve technical issues. It makes the customers suffer.

We previously used Microsoft Dynamics.

The initial setup was straightforward. Deployment times will vary from country to country according to the numbers, but most companies can implement it within three to six months.

You need to have some technical people on your team with you. You need one or two just to hand you each module and to help you understand the standard process so you can deploy and not forget any important features. From the business side, you also need from one to two people to be available during the implementation just to ensure that the user acceptance testing is done very well. It's a good idea to have a consultant visit with your team during implementation to check what was implemented inside of the business processes. They will help you understand the limitation of the space.

You need to have a consultant for deployment. Maybe later on in the process, if you are expanding, you don't need help, but you certainly need a consultant at the beginning.

Without having consultants and partners you will not be able to implement it. There is special access required to get to the backend of the system. We call it the low vision indexes. It's only provided to select consultants. Some features that you want to update also may require access to the provisioning. 

You will probably see an ROI after a year or two. It's great for auditing and there's a lot of reporting built-in so that you can really focus on processes. It will help you reduce manpower which saves money. And, because it can cover and support many companies and countries, it's perfect for multinationals that can now have one overarching system that covers basically everything.

The solution is subscription-based but companies do need to consider other ancillary costs, including upgrades, training, and general implementation costs.

We evaluated Origin and Workday before ultimately choosing this solution. In 2012, Origin was more on the cloud and Workday mostly just covered America rather than the rest of the world. They also didn't have any classes at the time.

We use the public cloud deployment model with SAP as the provider.

I'd advise others to schedule training for the team that will be handling implementation. It's important to have a reference case and go to other companies familiar with your business to check how it was implemented for them and to see how successful they have been overall. They may have good best practices you can learn from. 

Look for a good implementation partner who can take the time to work with you and choose wisely. Some may charge a lot of money and provide low-quality assistance.

You have to know the process before implementation. 

It's important to not purchase the license until you decide what you will use the system for and when you will implement it. It will help you avoid paying for a subscription without yet being able to use it or purchasing too large of a license.

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten.

We use the private deployment model of this solution. 

It was much easier than the previous system. It made things a lot easier and operations much smoother.

The best models we used were the Goal Management and Performance Management. They were the most useful. We use three modules in our company, the Goal Management and Performance, the Talent Acquisition, and there's the LMS, the training. The best features that were working well for us was the Goal Management and Performance Management. They were the most valuable to our organization.

They should improve the reports. We had a problem with the reporting. If we compare it to Oracle products, Oracle has much more comprehensive and a better reporting system all in all. They really should work on the reports and making it more user-friendly. There's room for more customization in the reporting. This is the feedback I received, that the main edge that all Oracle products have is the reporting system, which is the main reason why I'm using the system in the first place.

In the next release, I would like for them to make the system have a slot for regular, back and forth feedback. It should have a feedback form on the system. 

It is stable. We haven't had any problems. 

Scalability is good. We can easily expand it. We were able to integrate it with a couple of our systems.

We were not happy with their after-sales support. Whenever we had an issue it was really difficult to get in touch with them. There was a problem with asking them about a feature or other things. They weren't as responsive as we would have hoped. During the installation of the system, they replied 24/7. However, after we deployed the system, it was not that easy to get a response.

We previously used Oracle. We switched because SAP is much more user-friendly. We weren't using Taleo or Fusion, we were using Oracle Basic. SAP was user-friendly for our employees.

The initial setup was straightforward. SAP was really supportive during this time.

We used a consultant for the deployment and they were very supportive during the time. 

I would advise someone considering this solution that they need to really look into their requirements and be very specific regarding the requirements when getting their orientation on the system and creating the requirement documents. They really need to to be very specific and very detailed in their requirements. Make sure to understand all the features and capabilities of the system.

I would rate it a seven out of ten. 

We use it in our company as an HRIS database for everything related to our employees. It's only for HR purposes, and no one else can access it. So, our colleagues aren't in touch with the data or anything.

It's a bit complicated to make a change in the tool. So, basically, you have to change the position first and then go to the person's profile to ensure the change was recorded there. And if it wasn't, you have to make the change there as well. So it is double work for us. It is time-consuming. Also, if you want to make a change, for example, if you have mistakenly inserted something in the past or inserted it incorrectly, then you need to go back to the exact date when you made the change and make the same change to everything else that has been modified after that specific update. If there is just one issue, then it won't show the correct change.

As of now, I have used SAP SuccessFactors for four months only. I am probably using the solution's latest version. I am a customer of the solution.

It is a stable solution.

Scalability-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

I haven't contacted the technical support team. We have a team of experts, so we go to them if we face any issues. So if there's anything that they don't know, they will contact SAP's customer support team. I usually approach our internal expert team.

It is suitable for larger enterprises. I don't think we use it at full capacity. So, we only use a portion of it in HR. The solution can be time-consuming whenever I want to make a change. I would definitely recommend the solution to those planning to use it and be patient when using it. Overall, I rate the solution a six out of ten.

My primary use case is the HR package. 

There is room for improvement in the pricing model. 

I have been using SAP SuccessFactors for one year. I am using the latest version. 

It is a stable solution. I would rate the stability a ten out of ten. 

It is a scalable solution. I would rate it a ten out of ten. 

The initial setup was easy. It is a user-friendly solution. 

It is not cheap, but it is reasonable. I would rate it a five out of ten. 

Overall, I would rate the solution a ten out of ten. I would definitely recommend using the product.