SAP HCM Reviews

We have an on-premises deployment.

The level of exception reporting has improved the process by helping to avoid errors. You can see where there is a lack of knowledge of the system because people are not updating the data correctly.

The most valuable feature, in my view, is the level of exceptions or error messages that come back when something goes wrong. 

One of the valuable features is that it is integrated with a finance system, with journal and ledger integration. When you process, for example, payroll or costing then it can be posted directed into the finance system.

There are lots of good features, including the reporting, as long as you know what to look for.

The interface is data-based and outdated, without many features, so it could be modernized.

This solution is sufficiently complex that many end-users do not know how to operate it.

It takes a long time to apply an update patch to the system. It is a headache for any functional users because it requires a lot of IT involvement. This is unlike other solutions where either I can do it, or for cloud-based deployments, the vendor can do it online. With the time required for patching and testing, the internal IT teams sometimes try to avoid it and then perform patching only once or twice a year. In the meantime, the business is doing things manually. 

I recall that SAP was not that flexible when it came to creating the interface, or new tables,  because there were limitations when we were developing one of the new pension schemes. I remember that they were struggling to get things done. Also, when you do this, the internal business has to manually connect and configure whatever they've developed.

This is a very costly solution.

There were a lot of defects that I had to deal with because patches were coming out on a regular basis and it required a lot of time.

I was heavily involved in UAT and there were lots of configuration issues. There were development requests and I had to deal with the developers directly, which was a bit of a headache.

When I dealt with SAP directly, they were a little bit resistant to accepting the client's request for development. They said that it was due to lack of resources. The market share was small, so they didn't want to waste a lot of time.

Eventually, after pushing them in the right directions, technical support was good and created what I needed. In general, it's not the system that fails, it's the people who are using the system.

In the end, technical support does what needs to be done.

I have used other solutions including Resourcelink and Agresso, and the differences between them depend on what the clients are looking for. For example, I have dealt with clients who are moving from SAP to Itron, and other clients moving from Itron to SAP.

SAP costs a lot of money. In my view, this product is a waste of money for SMB because there are much better products available and licensing is an issue.

I don't know how they come up with this pricing, but it is ridiculous. For example, if you want to have self-service for employees and managers then you need to pay for additional licenses.

The performance is based on the user's knowledge of the system. It has to do with making sure that all of the features are enabled and all of the patches are there. There were quite a few defects that were patched by the IT team, and it was a lengthy process.

This solution is for an enterprise-level business, and I would never recommend SAP for SMB. SAP ByDesign, which is a different product, is better for small business.

Suitability of this system depends on a lot of variables. You would have to ask about ten thousand questions to consider the entire system and what is required. It comes down to whether the system is capable of adapting to the latest changes with legislation to do various things.

Also, it depends on how many skilled employees you need to have. There are business analysists, for example, and others who spend hours, and years, learning the system and understanding all of the settings and permissions. There are profiles, wage types, and info types, that decide who can access work and workflows, batches, and stuff like this. It's like driving a ship, where there are lot of things to do and lots of details. On top of this, you will need a development person who can do some coding. It all depends, really, on what the business is trying to achieve. It is for these reasons that I say it is not for the small business. If they can afford it then fair enough, but it will cost them a lot, and it is not cost-effective.

The biggest lesson that I have learned from using this solution is that you can trust no one. You can't trust the business, and you can't trust the people who support the system. I had to read a lot to prove that the system is capable of delivering certain functionality. People were objecting to this because they didn't want to get involved themselves.

This is a huge product and you have to always be up to date. It requires a lot of time in learning the system and doing the testing of new developments.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

Our primary use case of SAP HCM is for administration benefits and talent management.

The integration between the different models like personnel administration, work management, payroll, and time management are the most valuable and key features. It's also very important to make sure that the data is correct as well, to make sure that you get the best out of the solution. 

The interface is simple to use. It is quite easy. The dashboards are also user-friendly. 

The management side needs improvement. To me, I think people have underestimated this solution because we know what consists of all the objects in regards to the organizational structures, positions, departments, training, there could be better improvement on that. 

On the personnel administration side, it's very difficult to do custom development. You're always dependent on your editors to do that. And now again, I'm comparing it to SuccessFactors because on SuccessFactors it's very easy to do. Any additional fields or stuff you want, they have the ability to apply all those changes. I would say that's where this solution really falls short. It makes the maintenance and the support of the system very complicated as well. There needs to be more support for the HCM solution. 

The current on-prem solution is not that stable anymore because there is so much more work that the cloud offering has and you cannot do that with an on-prem solution. Very soon everybody is going to have to move to the cloud. 

I believe that the on-prem solution is going to have to phase out. SAP is focusing now on the cloud solution. And that's the reason why I feel obscure on Employee Central.

Technical support needs improvement. 

The initial setup is not complex. It will mostly depend on your consultant. I wouldn't say it's that difficult. I probably also would give it a six out of a 10. It's not as easy as SuccessFactors. 

I would rate it a seven out of ten. 

The biggest lesson I have learned from using this solution is that integration is so important. You must understand integration, even within HCM between the different module.

I have used SAP HCM with Oracle Database for about 13 years and SAP HCM with HANA database for about a year.

We have managed to consolidate our payroll for all India operations on this platform.

• Core HR data management for employee and organizational data is very stable and flexible. 
• Customers can create custom infotypes to store any custom data points.
• Time/payroll management is a very stable, sturdy product.

• System usability is a challenge.
• It needs a lot of end user training as it is not intuitive at all.

No stability issues.

No scalability issues.

SAP technical support is good. However, for HANA, they still have to go a long way to go.

We did not use a previous solution.

For implementation, SAP offers little support unless you buy SAP Safeguarding from SAP Consulting.

Licensing is pretty complex. SAP does not have a straight forward way of licensing, and it differs from client to client.

The terms on which you buy licenses might change due to the way they license in a particular product.

Be careful and guard against future changes in licensing.

We evaluated PeopleSoft.

Choose a good implementation partner. 80% of the project's success depends on the skill level of the implementation partner.

• OOB integration between different modules. 
• SAP Payroll module is one of the best in the market and is integrated with benefits, time, etc.

Integration is challenging and companies are struggling when it comes to integration between HCM and other systems.

• SAP HCM: More than 10 years.
• SAP HCM Integration with SharePoint: More than 10 years.

Previously, SAP HCM On-Premise was more scalable.

SAP does its technical support very well.

Not a different solution, but previously HCM was all decentralized and in some countries, manual. The goal was to bring all the countries/employees into one system.

The initial setup was straightforward.

Workday was evaluated with SuccessFactors. 

I would recommend to put more thoughts and efforts into integration and make intelligent decisions.

• Breadth of services
• Ties to enterprise Finance and Supply Chain

Ensures a single source of data for downstream systems use.

Service support.

15 years.

It is used globally for more than 80 countries.

Responses for enhancements can be slow.

PeopleSoft. We switched due to a move to global single instance across HR, Finance, Supply Chain and Project Management.

The initial setup was complex due to the ties across the enterprise and a global implementation.

Be careful to not overly customize, because this drives a high cost of ownership to maintain.

• Ease of use
• Improved productivity of personnel, because we use SAP for our inventory

It's intuitive, but not as intuitive or user-friendly as it should be. It's 2017, and I should be able to click once and just breeze through it. It's far more complicated than it should be.

I was not involved in the deployment of the product.

I think it's extremely stable. That's one of the reasons why we like it so much. I've had some problems, as it has jammed up on me before.

Generally speaking, I think it's exceptionally reliable. The glitches that I've encountered may have been due to a user error, because it's not so user-friendly and it's not so intuitive.

As far as I know, there is limitless scalability.

The technical support is a little slow, like 24 hours. I feel since it is 2017, if I have a problem, I should be able to make a phone call or send an email and get a response within minutes, an hour at the most. When things take a day, it slows me down. The problem resolution itself is OK.

I was not involved in the evaluation of any other products.

• Take your time.
• Learn it as well as you can so that you don't encounter problems.
• Try to learn as much as you can prior to jumping into it.
• Have contact information for when you have a problem.
• Just know what you're doing because it's good. It's just not so user-friendly and the response time on a problem is slow.

It provides payroll solutions across the world; there is no other solution that can provide payroll calculation for more 50 countries.

There has been a significant productivity increase in HR due to reduction of manual work and data consistency improvement.

Talent management: SAP has acquired SuccessFactors and does not invest in the SAP HCM Talent Management module any more.

I have used it for 15 years.

Yes, finding good consultants.

No.

I have not encountered any stability issues.

Medium.

I rate the level of technical support as high.

We previously used a different solution; we switched due to potential Y2K risks.

Initial setup was complex due to system requirements.

Both.

• More transparency

Before choosing this product, I evaluated PeopleSoft.

Find good consultants.

Integration with all business processes, standard features, flexibility in configuration, full scalability.

Integrating Information systems between different business processes allows in my opinion the increase of efficiency in the organization. This is because data coming from HR is directly available to other processes. Extra HR (imagine Posting of Travel Expenses, Reports on Subordinates, Hours posting to WBS Elements or different Cost Centers, Employee's Master Data as Vendors or Customers of the Company etc.)

Graphic interface and usability for end users.

SAP is not a last generation system. Users experience the use of the system as it was in 1998. I started working then and nothing has changed until now. Nowadays, people are used to web interfaces, user-friendly screens and rapid deployment functionalities. A different way of using the system in my opinion could avoid the thought that this system is not up-to-date.

18 years

Some during the first years, but nothing blocking.

There could be cases where the first configuration is not done in the most perfect way, in these cases some issues arise.

7.5/10

I managed very different kinds of projects. The product can be configured in lots of ways, everything depends on the customer and their desired processes to be designed.

Don't think it will be costless or effortless.