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Cornerstone HR Suite vs SAP SuccessFactors comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 3, 2024

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

Cornerstone HR Suite
Ranking in Talent Management
48th
Ranking in Cloud HCM
31st
Average Rating
6.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
HR Analytics Software (10th)
SAP SuccessFactors
Ranking in Talent Management
1st
Ranking in Cloud HCM
1st
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
100
Ranking in other categories
Talent Acquisition (1st), Global Payroll (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Cloud HCM category, the mindshare of Cornerstone HR Suite is 0.8%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP SuccessFactors is 10.5%, down from 22.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud HCM Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
SAP SuccessFactors10.5%
Cornerstone HR Suite0.8%
Other88.7%
Cloud HCM
 

Featured Reviews

AM
Manager, BO Transformation at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
A easy-to-use solution for onboarding and training that needs to let its users locate information easily
The most concerning point about these applications is that they offer cloud solutions, and everything goes and works well. But they are not committed or involved in the connection activity. We need to run those applications on the cloud. Since we are a company, We have a lot of information on on-premise platforms. So they are not responsible for building any connection, interconnection, or interface between those legacy systems. And most of the time, the company must consider the proposed plans in making the interfaces. And building the interfaces is something we need to do on our own, and it's separate from the solution. I rate this solution a seven out of ten.
SS
Assistant Manager at Kashiv Biosciences
HR has gained clear analytics for attrition, goals, and appraisals and manages talent efficiently
SAP SuccessFactors has a low error rate. We had many ad hoc reports that we needed to generate, and it was very easy to do so in SAP SuccessFactors. We also created many in-house reports according to our specific requirements with the help of this tool, which was a really big game changer for us. We did not depend on advanced Excel in those cases. We generated a lot of detailed reports whenever we needed them during emergency cases or board meetings. A lot of usefulness and time were saved in those cases. I will also mention that we conducted a comparative study for some recruitment cases. We had a recruitment model where we were looking for a very niche profile. Since the job profile was really different and rare, we had to depend on analytics to understand and shortlist from a large pool of candidates that we already had in our database. Analytics was really helpful in this situation.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The advantage of choosing Cornerstone HR Suite is that if a company does not have an existing tool and plans to adopt automation, then there is a chance to gain from implementing this solution."
"The flexibility and the fact that it covers all different HR modules is the most valuable aspect of Cornerstone. They did organically built, so all modules are integrated with the same way of managing the configuration, contextualization, availability, and reporting across all of the modules."
"Cornerstone is easy to use...Cornerstone is used for playing training courses and short videos based on company requirements."
"The most valuable feature of SAP SuccessFactors is analytics."
"In terms of user experience, it is quite good."
"They have succeeded in sustaining a powerful system supporting their philosophy."
"This solution can be used for reporting related to employee information and contacts"
"Considering the flexibility of the system and its ability to accommodate complex business processes, the product is ready to be used in multiple industries."
"The most valuable feature of SAP SuccessFactors is that it is a full suite of applications to enable your employees. Additionally, it has good integration with S4 HANA. Our payroll solution is from SAP and the integration becomes much easier when using SAP SuccessFactors."
"HR and managers can use the onboarding tool to help new employees prepare for their first day on the job, which can help them acclimate to the company culture and reduce anxiety."
"There were no major technical issues or downtimes reported with SAP SuccessFactors."
 

Cons

"The recruitment module can be improved and also the general reporting can be improved."
"The solution's interface is really, really old and requires improvements...Cornerstone should use newer technologies to improve its UI, UX, and content."
"We're using different tools like tracking systems, exploring workforce management, and also using payroll, which is another tool, so we need to know where exactly the information is present. This feature needs improvement in the next release."
"The initial setup could be simplified."
"The graphical user interface (GUI) is not very friendly. On the homepage, it is not possible to place advisories or announcements at the top."
"The Onboarding module must be improved."
"The organization is planning to move to Darwinbox from SAP SuccessFactors, primarily due to pricing considerations."
"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."
"The solution needs more localization, especially for the Middle East and Russia."
"One area of improvement is the time taken to configure changes, such as taxation rules, which can take several months."
"Pricing is a bit high and on the higher side."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product can be considered as not being on the high-end side of the price spectrum, as many other products are much more expensive. However, it cannot be said that it is cheap either."
"The product is expensive. The product is worth the money you pay for it."
"This is a more costly solution than comparable products, and training is not available in the open-market, so this has to be purchased separately from the vendor."
"We have a yearly license. There are no additional costs."
"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."
"The solution is on the expensive side but is definitely worth the money."
"It is not expensive because it is a complete suite with a module-based cost."
"The cost of SAP SuccessFactors is reasonable."
"We don't utilize even half of the licenses because not everyone uses them. With SAP SuccessFactors, though, we're now conducting all our performance evaluations within the system, so I suppose we're making better use of those licenses. As for SAP for employee services and internal benefits processing, we do have licenses for those but don't utilize them."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Comms Service Provider
15%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Computer Software Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business23
Midsize Enterprise13
Large Enterprise69
 

Questions from the Community

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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 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 experience and an advanced user interface. Additionally, the entire concept of SF is...
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 performance management, which is great. However, since we're still learning to use ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
SuccessFactors
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Wendys, RSM, Nestle, New Belgium
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
Find out what your peers are saying about Cornerstone HR Suite vs. SAP SuccessFactors and other solutions. Updated: January 2026.
881,757 professionals have used our research since 2012.