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IBM Kenexa vs SAP SuccessFactors comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 4, 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

IBM Kenexa
Ranking in Talent Management
17th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.3
Number of Reviews
30
Ranking in other categories
Benefits Administration (16th), Applicant Tracking and Recruiting Software (10th)
SAP SuccessFactors
Ranking in Talent Management
1st
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
100
Ranking in other categories
Cloud HCM (1st), Talent Acquisition (1st), Global Payroll (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Talent Management category, the mindshare of IBM Kenexa is 1.6%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP SuccessFactors is 8.6%, down from 19.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Talent Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SAP SuccessFactors8.6%
IBM Kenexa1.6%
Other89.8%
Talent Management
 

Featured Reviews

Karan Grover - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Suitable for larger-scale companies aiming to streamline and automate their processes digitally
The deployment of the solution took between six to eight months. When we introduced BrassRing at my company, we encountered several challenges. First, moving data from our old system to BrassRing was tough because it needed reformatting. Second, connecting BrassRing with our HR data was tricky due to manual processes for roles and departments. Third, setting up the workflow in BrassRing was complex. Fourth, configuring user access and approval levels was a detailed task. We also had to manage the change process, including running both old and new systems in parallel, communicating changes, and training users. Lastly, monitoring and reporting were needed to ensure data accuracy and proper system usage once everything was in place. We had a team of six to eight people managing the project from our side during the BrassRing deployment. I'm not sure about the size of the BrassRing team, and we also had our own technical team, which had three to four members. The solution required maintenance, particularly from my side as the administrator. Maintenance responsibilities were divided into two parts: some tasks we, as end-users, could control, while others were the responsibility of the BrassRing team. Payment-related tasks were a regular part of our responsibilities. I wasn't the only person maintaining the solution. There were three power users from Infosys, each responsible for a specific geography. My counterpart managed it in the US, and I, along with my colleague in India, managed it for other geographies.
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 ability now to be able to take data, load it yourself, ask the business questions and get the answers on your own process with the business just made it a lot faster, and the cognitive solution gives us some insights for us to think about."
"We acquired a pharmacy retailer three years ago, and Kenexa enabled us to actually standardize our employee engagement across both of those organizations, helping us understand at an enterprise level what was going on and, most importantly, how people were starting to feel about being acquired and joining the broader company space."
"I think one of the biggest benefits that Kenexa brings is the scalability."
"It allowed for truly global listing for all open positions."
"We felt like Kenexa was robust enough and dynamic enough that it met our needs, so it didn't make sense for us to disrupt 700 locations and reteach them something."
"From everything I’ve seen and heard, I would think Kenxea is probably one of the top three, if not the best, in the business that they do and the things that we use them for."
"Now, having provided this, amongst many other things, we have a much closer relationship to the business."
"I like how we can copy a req as we have many duplicates, which saved a lot of time when opening reqs."
"The initial setup was pretty simple."
"They have succeeded in sustaining a powerful system supporting their philosophy."
"It's brought to our organization a big big improvement. We would give it a good rating."
"The functionality and user friendliness are constantly improving."
"The standardized procedures and best practices embedded in the system are very valuable."
"The main advantage of SuccessFactors is its ability to add many types of integrations within the SAP Cloud platform, where many useful modules can be implemented alongside SuccessFactors as third-party integrations, and this capability to extend the system is a big plus."
"Flexible with a lot of good features."
"The most valuable feature is the onboarding module, which enables candidates to fill in their details online and smoothly transitions data from the recruitment module into the SAP database."
 

Cons

"I would say that it could likely be made slightly easier to consume and work with - less scientific or engineering oriented - but IBM Kenexa Talent Insights is about the most powerful and useful tool I've seen."
"The reporting feature currently is our biggest struggle point; getting the data we need and in the fashion that we need it is a current struggle point for us."
"Being in a silo of my own world, my wish would be that everything that's available in their legacy views would be moved into their new Talent Suite products, so we could move over to that."
"We have about 50 requests for enhancements in the system right now."
"There are tools that actually are not there where clients need them, especially the survey analytics to analyze verbatim in different languages."
"I would like to have a better and more user-friendly interface."
"Maybe there's some room for improvement in the functionality around the actual tools that we build with."
"If you happen to be an early adopter of enhancements, it can be a frustrating process, as it is hard to decipher together with their support whether an issue is a bug or working as intended (a change in the way something works)."
"Integration between Employee Central and Compensation in SAP SuccessFactors is one area of the solution that has room for improvement."
"The SAP SuccessFactors updates need to be more industry-specific because every industry has specific modules. What I want to be added to SAP SuccessFactors is a chat box where SAP staff can give support to users."
"We had stability issues multiple times; sometimes disturbing and in a few cases, it caused blocks for business."
"SAP SuccessFactors functionality doesn't meet the expectation of our end users. There are other solutions that have better functionality, such as Workday, which is one of the top applications. Additionally, the solution could be easier to use."
"The user interface could be improved."
"Some of the screens aren't that user-friendly, older employees especially have a hard time with it. They have some problems with it."
"They should be more user friendly and give us more tools to make it more flexible."
"Visual representations, in the form of graphs and charts, can be added. This is beneficial for both management and employees. Upon accessing the system, they should generate graphical representations on their dashboard. These visuals illustrate aspects such as company-wide training progress and current company training status. The information encompasses both company-related data and personal profiles. This approach makes it convenient to grasp the company's profile along with individual information."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Kenexa was fairly priced. However, in 2019, before I left my previous organization, they significantly increased their pricing. It can be affordable, but their pricing is going up. It is not just licensing; it is how many applicants you have in your system on the database side."
"The price of the solution depends on too many factors to provide an estimate. However, the price of SAP SuccessFactors is competitive."
"The solution is on the expensive side but is definitely worth the money."
"SAP SuccessFactors requires an annual subscription."
"So now, SAP charges me 300 Euros for 14,000 employees. I still have to pay 2,000 euros because I'm using SAP on-prem."
"It is not expensive because it is a complete suite with a module-based cost."
"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 licensing fees are based on the number of modules that are being used, and the number of users."
"I rate the tool's pricing a seven to eight out of ten."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Comms Service Provider
15%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Construction Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise28
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business23
Midsize Enterprise13
Large Enterprise70
 

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...
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...
 

Also Known As

IBM Smarter Workforce, Outstart
SuccessFactors
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Sweet Spot International (SSI), Leo Burnett Worldwide (LBW), Sika AG, Legacy Health, Apollo Group Inc., Regeneron, Transurban Group, National Health Service, New Zealand Police, Overland Footwear, Yealands, Johnson Controls, Allscripts, Kerry Foods, Masterpet, AMD, Balfour Beatty
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 IBM Kenexa vs. SAP SuccessFactors and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,838 professionals have used our research since 2012.