SAP SuccessFactors Reviews

The administration parts and PA modules are on-prem but the talent management recruitment part is on the cloud. We have 22 different companies and we selected this solution so every employee can have a main point of connection. 

The interface is really useful and it's very easy to combine different information. For example, we can easily get reports that we need. It's very easy to create reports. 

Some of the screens aren't that user-friendly, older employees especially have a hard time with it. They have some problems with it. 

Challenge management parts should be improved. Also, the recruitment part module should be improved to help managers to select the right person without an HR. 

It is stable. 

We don't have problems with scalability. 

We haven't needed to use support yet. 

Before using this solution we used Excel.

The initial setup was straightforward. It's very easy on the cloud. 

We used a consultant for the deployment. 

Be sure about your processes. If you know how to plan your processes and needs, it's very easy to deploy it. 

I would rate it a nine out of ten. 

SAP is our ERP. On the cloud we only have SuccessFactors for the recruitment.

We are currently looking for a better solution enabling us to better analytics. So SAP on-premise is pretty old and while it allows a lot of flexibility, it doesn't give us the flexibility to integrate to other modules. We have many interruptions and disconnection points into processes, which is why we are looking to another solution. We are not so happy with the system. We believe we have in the market better solution, so we are looking for alternatives but so far the system has been used a lot. It's brought to our organization a big big improvement. We would give it a good rating. 

The analytics part could be improved. Analytics are pretty poor plus some usability parts need improvement but in the end, the process is covered. In some cases, we don't have the possibilities to reverse the workflow. Overall, the product is a good product, I'm not saying it's bad. We are just looking for an integrated platform and of course, SuccessFactors is one of the possibilities. We are evaluating several alternatives.

In the next release, I would like to have the possibility to reverse workflows. There should be better automation. On the scoring, it's pretty fine. It really depends on the way you manage your recruiting. We are a wide organization so we have these type of issues. But for the normal recruiting process, it's more than enough.

The system is pretty stable. We have not had big issues with that. 

Scalability needs improvement. 

I would definitely recommend SuccessFactors but I think the roadmap for a better product needs to happen. Our overall rating is good but I think there is space for improvement.

I would rate it a seven out of ten. 

We use the cloud version to maintain all the employee records, payroll, etc. We use everything that comes with the HR suite.

I like that everything is delivered to the employee.

Analytics could use some work.

There are regular updates and obviously you have to keep it up yourself on a quarterly basis. That's a bit of pain, but at the end of the day it's all about digitalization and HR transformation.

It's currently fine. It depends upon your client base. You could have 5,000, 10,000, 20,000, 30,000, or more users.

Their technical support is good.

The initial setup was straightforward. It's not that complex.

I would definitely recommend this product. I would rate it as seven out of ten.

We use this solution for Performance Management, Talent Acquisition, and Learning.

This core functionality in this solution is solid. We use it daily at Micron for various HR functions.

Talent Acquisition and Learning features are best in class.

The Reporting/Analytics and User Interface need improvement.

SuccessFactors is a cloud HCM solution, though still missing out-of-the-box (OOB) integration.

It need improvement on its integration side. Plus it should have some mature cloud solutions for Time, Benefits, and Payroll, which are still missing parts in SuccessFactors.

More than three years.

SuccessFactors was down completely for one day. All the companies which were using the Amsterdam datacenter were down from 8:00 in the morning to 18:00 in the evening. Production, QA, Training, and Dev with all their instances were down.

SuccessFactors has some limitations when it comes to scalability. SAP On-Premise was more scalable.

SAP is doing well for support.

Initial setup was straightforward.

Workday was evaluated with SuccessFactors. Workday was not able to accommodate some of our customizations, so the company decided to go with SuccessFactors, which gives you more configuration options.

Integration is challenging and companies are struggling when it comes to integration between SuccessFactors and other systems. I will recommend to put more thought and effort for integration and make an intelligent decision.

A. SAP is making a firm commitment to creating a new single unified platform for every app it owns, based on the top of Hana in Memory Platform. In the future I aspect HR connected with IOT with Leonardo platform.

B. SAP is asking to professional to rethink HR, less transactional and more "Conversational". In SF, the architecture of the system allows to have very structured vertical functionalities (Learning, Performance, Compensation, etc.), but you can draw new service models using together the individual modules (you can design a “Pay per performance” process for example with Performance Goal Compensation)

C. SAP SF includes libraries of free contents (different data structure in Employee Central according to local laws, competencies libraries, goals libraries, etc.)

D. The usage of HCI and HCP (from HANA Cloud family) will extend the functionality of the product connecting with third-parties software or by extending the features of the individual modules. SAP has created a market place with dozen of 3rd parties apps

E. Artificial Intelligence is the new horizon:

Intelligent Services can automatically connect all actions that the system must take when an event occurs: have a new assignment. In less than two years, SF has released 40 predefined services.

In "Business Beyond Bias" against gender and race discrimination. The recruiting module has a feature that highlights a discriminatory language for example in the job description.

BOT. I saw some test where is possible interact with the system in natural language where for instance you can require to the system a Time OFF and the system will run all the appropriate actions.

F. Collaboration with Microsoft, Apple, Slack

Microsoft, with its technology Azure, is one of the partners to improve the data center services, I suppose also that we will see a better integration with Office world.

Apple, mobile first is the claim, is working to redesign the mobile user experience. At the end of June 2017 FIORI for IOS available.

Slack, we have already discussed about the bot: in the future I assume that the interaction will be made by voice with Siri or Cortana, or Google As.

We can design a “quick & dirty solution” or “very complex services”, we can manage small enterprise projects (in our experience 150 users) as the big organization (in our experience 40000 users), all with the same solution. This is a big saving of time, costs, and team usage optimization.

Employee Central made an incredible improvement, but still is behind the SAP HCM “On Prem” solution.

5 years - the full suite. 10+ years Learning Management System module (formerly Plateau Software).

Not on the platform side. At the end of 2015 there are been issues in the Data Center based in Germany with access problems.

No.

On a scale from 1-10: 7/10

a. 10 years ago we used SABA, due to a cut costing program they moved all the developers from US to India, the result was a release with hundreds of bugs.

b. 3 years ago we tested Cornestone for a premiere Insurance and we recorded some issues when the new releases went live and a weak technical support service in Europe.

a. Employee Central is critical, you need to have a good experience to work on it. Is very powerful because the choices will impact also on the other modules. We are called to support some projects that were in fact blocked for wrong configurations due to limited product knowledge by other partners.

a. Price is based on: Number of users and number of modules. Other companies like Oracle or Cornestone are very aggressive, but it’s only is a business practice that cannot go on forever. For instance, Cornestone is under pressure to be sold to investors.

Invest the right time on Employee Central, looking for a competent partner with a proven experience on real projects.

User Interface - Gives a polished look for both users and administrators when they login and access the system.

Workflow configuration - Can configure any level of workflow for approval process with functionalities such as dynamic group, dynamic role concepts.

Role-based permissions - Can define a very clear role-based permission based on portlets or fields level permission.

The implementation has helped the organization by having a unified process across all locations.

Configuration transportation functionality is not available in SuccessFactor. If this functionality is introduced, a lot of time can be saved configuring individual systems.

I have been using it for three years.

We haven’t had any specific issues except for few issues related to the upgrade, which was resolved by SAP.

No specific scalability issues have been found.

I would rate technical support average to good.

We used legacy human resource systems in which there was no employee self-service functionality, as well as no workflow for the approval process. The authorization part was so rigid that it was very hard to maintain. Hence, we switched to SAP SuccessFactors.

The setup is straightforward and SAP provided adequate and updated version documents for reference.

There is room for negotiation with reference to pricing and licensing, which SAP supports.

There were other products evaluated, but we found SAP SuccessFactors to be more promising with reference to functionality and from an implementation perspective.

The first activity any company should do is to streamline their policies and procedures, set a clear authority matrix and identify their reporting requirement before going for implementation. A good policy can add real value during the implementation.

The Admin Tools functionality in Employee Central is great. For a technical/functional associate within our IT team, we can accomplish many (but not all) of the requests from our business partners.

The role-based permissions functionality is beyond great (in my opinion) and is honestly more robust and flexible than any other security setup/process that we have with other business software that we use (and have the ability to maintain security roles with).

Prior to implementing SuccessFactors, we had nowhere to go for a single snapshot of our entire company. Today, we have our entire North America, Europe and Hong Kong businesses in the system and therefore easily accessible.

SuccessFactors allows us to have an online performance/review process that is consistent across the organization.

SuccessFactors has a workflow/approval process in place to ensure that updates are made/approved by the official ‘manager’ and 2nd level ‘manager’ for that associate. Prior, everything was done on paper and faxed to payroll for entry into the legacy JDE system.

All department/store leads now have the ability to see employee information for those reporting through them (initial level and cascaded down).

All department/store leads now have the ability to make change requests for anyone in their reporting tree without having to fill out a form and faxing to payroll.

The entire company now has a tool to view basic information (including associate photos) on their fellow associates.

I think the integration methods can be more user-friendly.

SuccessFactors modules must become more integrated than they are today (i.e., EC with Performance, Goals, Onboarding, Compensation, etc.).

SuccessFactors modules must become more integrated with other SAP products (i.e., SAP ERP, Concur, Fieldglass, etc.).

Would be nice to have more standard integrations created for SuccessFactors. Currently, we are aware of standard integrations with WorkForce Software Time & Attendance and BenefitFocus. Others would be good to have (i.e., ADP).

The new hire process should have direct deposit entry as part of the initial step; we had to custom build this to ensure that every associate had at least one direct deposit record upon hire (we are 100% direct deposit company).

We went live with EC, Performance, Goals and Compensation in May 2014; a little over 2 ½ years ago.

We have not really had any stability issues. During performance review time (i.e., August/September) there seemed to be data center issues where associates were all having system timeout issues, data was being lost from Performance Reviews documents, etc. This has been resolved, but was an issue at one time.

I am not aware of any scalability issues.

Technical support has been an issue since day one. We have made our concerns quite apparent. We pay extra for Premium Support (SAP Preferred Care) and honestly cannot see what we are really getting at times. We have an assigned CSM, but this is our 3rd one (although we like our CSM now). When a priority issue is sent to ‘Engineering’, it becomes a black hole of sorts. The priority of our case is no longer relevant as the CSM (and team) cannot do anything once it gets sent to the Engineering Team. This is a problem, since for us, SuccessFactors support is SuccessFactors support, regardless of what department/level the case sits in.

More direct interaction with the case specialist would be very helpful. When we occasionally have the ability to speak with the person actually working on the case (i.e., not CSM or initial support team), we find it extremely helpful (but unfortunately, doesn’t always happen).

We had no specific HR system. Employee data was housed in the payroll system and not available to anyone outside of HR Payroll. Performance reviews and comp were all manual with Excel and other Microsoft tools. The organizational chart was basically Excel and not always accurate.

Setup was straightforward, but that was only because our implementation team (IBM) did all of that for us and walked us through everything. Eventually, we realized how intuitive the process actually is.

The only other product we were going to use was SAP HCM On-Premise for HR and payroll with a connection to SuccessFactors for the Talent Management suite (i.e., Performance & Goals, etc.). That project never got started and once we saw Employee Central as a SaaS offering, we determined to keep the existing payroll process (it has since been upgraded to ADP) and go forward with the Employee Central/SuccessFactors integration (especially since SAP purchased SuccessFactors and should’ve had SuccessFactors/Employee Central fully integrated, which it wasn’t).

I would make sure they do their homework on an implementation partner, as that can make all the difference in the world.

I would make sure that all potential business changes are reviewed ahead of time so that the implementation partner can incorporate accordingly. For example, organization hierarchy changes, performance/goals modifications, job code changes (if necessary), etc.

Inquire about what all of your integration and reporting options are within SuccessFactors.

Inquire about how much you, as a customer, can do (i.e., Admin Tools) once implementation is completed.