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SAP SuccessFactors HCM vs Workday comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 16, 2025

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

SAP SuccessFactors HCM
Ranking in Cloud HCM
7th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
5.9
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Workday
Ranking in Cloud HCM
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
58
Ranking in other categories
Benefits Administration (1st), Talent Management (2nd), Talent Acquisition (2nd)
 

Featured Reviews

MS
Enterprise Architecht at RS Group plc
Increased onboarding efficiency and enhanced user engagement with comprehensive performance management
All features have been valuable, particularly as we are investigating whether to connect it with Talent Management. Currently, we have a solution with Degree, and we are considering moving it to SAP Talent Management. This would provide a single location to house everything, allowing all employees to use the same platform rather than two separate platforms. This also reduces integration expense and management costs. Different stakeholders benefit from various aspects of the interface and dashboards. Managers can examine their team members' skill sets. From an employee perspective, they can track their progress and match it with their objectives and goals. From an organizational perspective, we can maintain a comprehensive view when considering upskilling or other resource-related decisions. The dashboards are highly effective. The employee experience management tools have had a very positive impact on employee satisfaction and well-being within our organization.
Eslam Abo Elnaga - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior people and systems analyst at B_labs & Mylo
Has improved HR process efficiency through intuitive workflows and responsive support
There is something that could be improved in Workday, specifically in the time tracking module. While I am not working on Workday now, I was a regional HRIS working for Egypt, Malta, India, and China. I mention these countries to relate to high population countries and companies. In our company, we use assigned work schedules for our teams. Because we work with the time tracking module, we need to assign shifts. In the manufacturing industry, we might need to change shifts every day or week. Manufacturing teams are huge, approximately 50 to 200 people in one team. If this team has one leader, the leader needs to assign a work schedule for each person individually. While there is mass upload functionality where we can load shifts for all people or specific groups, we need to select multiple people and assign them to a schedule from the interface itself. I have requested this functionality many times. When extracting business processes awaiting actions report, I can select different processes in one box, hit okay, and the report comes up. However, the same functionality does not work for work schedule assigning. If implemented, it would help many people in companies with high populations and big teams.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"SAP SuccessFactors HCM has positively impacted my customer's environment by ensuring they are digital; we promote using DocuSign for document signing and ensuring effective onboarding, and post-implementation we provide hyper-care and digital adoption reports after six months or a year to show how much more paperless and workflow-enabled their organization has become after SAP SuccessFactors HCM implementation."
"The SAP SuccessFactors HCM tool is a fantastic platform to work with, offering end-to-end employee lifecycle coverage."
"The feature I appreciate the most about this solution is the integration with SAP S/4HANA system."
"Using SAP SuccessFactors HCM analytics and insights helps my customers in data-driven decision-making."
"The employee experience management tools have had a very positive impact on employee satisfaction and well-being within our organization."
"In terms of customization, while it may not be fully customizable, you can configure the features based on the foundation that Workday offers. This allows you to take the basic features and tailor them to the specific needs of your company or business. It provides a lot of configuration flexibility."
"I found the analysis features to be very useful for our company. I also found the modules installed to be aligned with our company's KPIs. These were the two features that stood out."
"We use this solution to manage financials, payroll and recruiting."
"I like that it's easy to use and flexible."
"The solution is stable."
"Workday is highly intuitive from a customer experience perspective. It was effortless for us to understand what to do even though we didn't have any related training. It was easy to use without guidance."
"Workday is a secure product."
"Workday is easy to use. Timesheet and resource management are also easy."
 

Cons

"The pricing of the solution is very high concerning pricing, setup cost, and licensing of this tool."
"The main area for improvement would be implementing a better pricing model. It is expensive, and with people discussing Workday more frequently, SAP needs to compete by becoming more free-flowing and dynamic compared to traditional SAP systems."
"It is very difficult to purchase SAP SuccessFactors HCM over here for smaller or medium-sized organizations, mainly because of the price."
"The SAP SuccessFactors HCM has room for improvement in terms of product development nimbleness. Additionally, the speed of the application platform occasionally reduces, primarily due to data center related issues."
"The user interface could be modernized somehow."
"The solution can be improved by speeding up the load time when pulling up information."
"This solution could be improved by providing user-level access to customization capabilities. Users currently rely on more technical teams to customize reports, for example."
"The expenses and reimbursements module could be improved. Creating expense reports is time consuming and inefficient compared to other expense solutions."
"The product must include payroll features."
"They could improve the product areas such as enhancing the interview scheduling module to support more flexible online assessments within the platform."
"There is so much information floating around Workday that it becomes overwhelming to digest all of it."
"The solution needs to be updated with generative UI."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"By and large, Workday is expensive. It is based on the headcount. I'd probably rate it a three or four out of five in terms of pricing. It'd be like buying a Mercedes or a high-end car. It's expensive, but there's a specific value that you're getting with additional features and things of that nature. Using that metaphor, Workday probably tends to be more of a luxury. There are others like ADP that can do your payroll, your time off, and other things, but they don't do it as well."
"Workday is an expensive solution."
"It's very, very expensive."
"I need to pay for a license. It is expensive."
"Workday is moderately priced - I'd rate its pricing three out of five."
"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."
"It has an annual subscription rate, but I'm not sure how it will work."
"The pricing for this solution is fairly high. It is not affordable for small and mid-sized companies."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
University
8%
Healthcare Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise42
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SAP SuccessFactors HCM?
The pricing of SAP SuccessFactors HCM is a bit expensive; its HCM without SuccessFactors was reasonable when it was on-site, but SuccessFactors is very expensive. On-premise HCM was good regarding ...
What needs improvement with SAP SuccessFactors HCM?
Pakistani policies need most of the customizations for SAP SuccessFactors HCM. I don't think Pakistanis should improve; our systems are not right. We should improve, not SAP. There should be some a...
What is your primary use case for SAP SuccessFactors HCM?
I researched SAP SuccessFactors HCM products on your website. I was the project manager for the implementation of SAP SuccessFactors HCM in my university. The implementation partner was Telemarks. ...
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 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 more features to your subscription, Workday becomes expensive. The solution is fl...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
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 SuccessFactors HCM vs. Workday and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,757 professionals have used our research since 2012.