SAP SuccessFactors Reviews

The product is used for the whole suite of HSM, covering all HR services.

It forced a standardized procedure across various business units, improving organizational discipline.

The standardized procedures and best practices embedded in the system are very valuable. The tool enforces a standard procedure which aligns with industry best practices.

The user experience and interface are not user-friendly. It does not invite the user to interact with it, unlike Oracle or Workday. The learning curve is sizable due to the complexity.

I have used it for five years.

It is stable, but in regions like Latin America, particularly in Mexico, custom fields can cause issues. However, in other regions like the USA, it is very stable.

Scalability is very good. It is suitable for large companies or companies experiencing significant growth.

With the premium service of SAP, customer service is top-notch. Issues are resolved quickly, and the support team is very responsive.

Positive

I used SAP SuccessFactors previously and am involved in evaluating Oracle HSM and Workday as potential new solutions.

The initial setup was difficult, mainly due to the complexities involved in standardizing procedures across different business units.

The return on investment is realized over a period of about five years.

The solution is expensive. However, it increases the company's value, making the cost worthwhile in the long run.

I have evaluated Oracle HSM and Workday. Oracle and Workday both have more user-friendly interfaces compared to SAP SuccessFactors.

Depending on whether you have the whole suite, both Oracle and Workday are more user-friendly compared to SAP SuccessFactors. If you have the complete suite, SAP may be advantageous.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

I have the longest experience with a module named SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting (RCM), which was five years ago. My company is currently in the process of implementing the rest of the modules of SAP SuccessFactors in our company.

Presently, the most valuable feature of the product is related to the recruitment module that the product offers since it is a module that I have recently started to use. I feel that the product has improved, and the tool has introduced AI to help with areas like job description. The tool is also integrated with Microsoft Teams, which helps with the scheduling of interviews. The most recent features introduced in the product have been very valuable.

Compared to the other tools in the market, I feel that SAP SuccessFactors should improve more in the area of employee experience (EX) in the cloud, where there are some shortcomings.

The product doesn't have a modernized look and is not very user-friendly like other products. In the future, the product needs to have a more modernized look, and it should be made more user-friendly.

I have been using SAP SuccessFactors for four years. My company is a customer of the product.

All my company employees, including around 2,000 people, will start using the product in April.

I have contacted the technical support for the solution. The response from the solution's technical support was fast. The solution's support team has been good so far.

My company chose SAP SuccessFactors over other products in the market, considering the system's capabilities to meet our company's requirements.

The solution was deployed over a period of six months.

The product is expensive. The product is worth the money you pay for it.

I recommend the product to those who plan to use it because it can be used in big companies with a lot of complexities since it is a flexible product that is scalable. For big companies or global organizations, SAP SuccessFactors is good.

Considering the flexibility of the system and its ability to accommodate complex business processes, the product is ready to be used in multiple industries.

I rate the tool a seven to eight out of ten.

My organization began using SuccessFactors as two separate components for performance management and succession in 2019. However, there was no roadmap. When I joined in 2020, I created a roadmap for the implementation of a full ERP platform that focused on the human experience manager. This was aligned with our business strategy to digitize HR and provide a superior employee experience from hiring to retirement. We identified the various employee touchpoints and began implementing SuccessFactors in 2020, including EC, job profile builder, recruitment, onboarding, offboarding, performance, succession, LMS, career, mentorship, coaching, and compensation components. Our EC Payroll is currently on a hybrid server and on-premise, so we are working to move it over. We originally had 23 payrolls, so we first needed to harmonize the benefit structures and the payroll environment before we could design a future payroll functionality for the company.

Technology is not a core skill of HR, and HR is having difficulty adapting to digitization. SAP has done something great by introducing a new enablement platform in the middle of last year. This platform allows us to transfer our skills to an HR information system environment so that we don't need to rely on certified consultants for all of our needs. A lot of the templates and transactions need to be maintained internally, and SAP's platform has given my team an advantage. My team was previously one HR administrator and two payroll administrators, and now I have a team of three people that support the implementation of SAP SuccessFactors from a business perspective. The enablement platform that SAP provided has given my team the knowledge to use the various functionalities. However, for a normal HR end user, the gap between where HR is and where it needs to be in terms of digitalization is very large. HR is struggling with this.

There are a few features that are valuable to me. The first is that SAP SuccessFactors integrated solution, allows us to start the process from a recruitment marketing perspective and have our career site and candidate profile pull through into each other. We have designed it correctly from a design principles perspective, linked our external job sites to the appropriate source tracking, and brought 18,000 applicants or candidate profiles onto our portal in the last three years. We have also worked closely with LinkedIn to improve our talent acquisition. Additionally, our recruitment process flows seamlessly into onboarding, performance management, succession process, LMS process, career pathing, and planning. We have also taken advantage of the integration between SuccessFactors and Microsoft platforms, utilizing the full Microsoft functionality and rebuilding some of it back into SuccessFactors. The second valuable feature is the ability to set up various compliance elements and business rules that automate manual checking and controls. This helps us to identify red flags before they become an issue and keeps our HR system data clean. The third feature is that SuccessFactors does the checking for us when they make enhancements to their modules. They have two upgrades a year, in March and October, and they check and confirm the impact on the other environments and manage it for us, saving us time and energy. This ensures that our systems don't break when we do upgrades.

SuccessFactors has a best practices model for HR across the board, but there are multiple industries. For example, the pharmaceutical, engineering, and professional services industries may have different processes based on their business requirements and operations. SAP and Workday have one approach across industries. As employee experience becomes increasingly important, the kind of employees appointed in an engineering environment, a pharmaceutical environment, and a professional service environment are very different, meaning their experience touchpoints may differ and require adjustments. SuccessFactors should consider building their best practices around critical industries to help companies become more differentiated in the markets they operate in.

As a company, we have 118,000 followers on LinkedIn, and the unemployment rate in South Africa is quite high, at more than 30 percent. When we advertise a job, the number of CVs and applications we receive from people who want to work for us is overwhelming, we can get up to 600 CVs for a single vacancy. To make the process more efficient, we need to use artificial intelligence to identify the key elements of the job profile and match them to the CVs of the applicants. The pre-selection questions are helpful in reducing the number of applicants, but they don't measure the suitability of the CVs and profiles. This is something that needs to be built into the system, but it doesn't currently exist in the market. We have a good pre-selection program, but it doesn't take into account experience, qualifications, professional memberships, work experience, or critical performance indicators. We have enough information from CVs and LinkedIn profiles for the system to match the vacancy profile with the applicant's information and rank them from most suitable to least suitable.

I have been using the solution for over two years.

The solution is very reliable. We receive advanced warnings when upgrades are going to be made, usually on a Friday or Saturday night. This gives us plenty of time to inform our team that the system will be down for approximately 24 hours, usually over the weekend. Since 2020, we have been using the system full-time and have only had two outages, one of which was our fault. An employee in our implementation department mistakenly deleted items they should not have, resulting in a 24-hour outage. Fortunately, since we are in the cloud, we were able to log a priority one call with SAP and they restored our entire system within 24 hours using the previous night's backup.

We are part of a larger business. We are a distinct legal entity within this business, and we initially shared the platform with our parent company, which had over 13,000 employees. Last March, we split the business and the instances and the company went its separate ways as we could not manage multiple domains securely. We completed the tenant split with SAP support in eight weeks, which is much faster than the usual three to six months. We have had no issues since then, even with our go-lives over the last three years. We have not had to use Hypercare once with SAP since our go-live. Therefore, scalability is essential, and we need to consider the current and future needs of the business. If we need to purchase additional licenses, we can do so within 36 hours, allowing us to scale up quickly.

I communicate with technical support on a regular basis. I have an account manager located in Spain whom I can contact via WhatsApp. I tell him that we have an issue and provide him with the call number and details of the problem. He then escalates it to priority one and, since SAP is a global company, they have 24-hour support. Even if the call is worked on in South Africa and needs to continue into the night for us, the team in America will take over and ensure we don't lose any time. This usually results in the call being solved quickly since everyone is familiar with the platform and any potential issues.

Positive

Implementing SuccessFactors has been easy for me, but this is more of a general trend. 

Our HR team and employees are the most valuable assets to our business. Our team and staff are essential for success. Even if we have the best strategies and ideas, if our team is not aligned and we don't have a differentiated talent platform that makes people happy, we will continue to lose people. Our people will not be motivated to train or develop their skills. Therefore, the value of SuccessFactors is not just a platform, but it provides our employees with a differentiated experience that makes them want to work for the brand, be part of the company, and recommend it to their colleagues and friends. I would never skimp on a platform that provides that to the business, as it is our people and how we manage them that will drive revenue and make our business successful.

I give the solution a ten out of ten. I would rate SuccessFactors as the best based on our support, experience with them, and their enablement functionality to build a supportive team. If we get stuck, they are only a WhatsApp message away. They partner with us through implementation and provide support throughout, and they continually look for ways to improve. Twice a year, SAP users can submit proposals and recommendations for changes to the system in a global voting environment. This allows clients to suggest changes to their experience with the platform, which can be tested and opted out of if desired. There is a great deal of flexibility and innovation in this process which we appreciate.

We are a services business and an SAP partner. We sell and implement SAP SuccessFactors for other companies. We need our own take on this product so that we can show our clients that we support it. We looked at the functionality of various systems and found that SAP SuccessFactors was the best fit for our requirements in terms of digitalization. The solution has a component that feeds into S/4HANA from a finance perspective, such as for expense claims. We use timesheets in S/4HANA as it allows us to bill across multiple profit centers and cost centers, which is not possible in SuccessFactors. The integration between S/4HANA and SuccessFactors is seamless, as it is based on standard integrations that have already been built.

For those planning to transition to digital HR, it is important to first identify the essential components of the lifecycle. This includes processes such as recruitment, onboarding, and offboarding. We can then map out the business requirements and present them to the client in terms of how they would be implemented in SAP SuccessFactors. Once the client is satisfied, we can then provide a proposal and a roadmap based on their priorities. However, for the successful adoption of the technology, both a technical and cultural shift is needed. We must ensure that our HR team and business people understand the changes to their processes, practices, and mindsets that will be required. Otherwise, the implementation is likely to fail.

Regarding SAP SuccessFactors' use cases, if you happen to use it, you can renew the process of moving the whole updates, as we call it, the retail portion, onto a sync. We also use it for management. And in using performance management, I only forward the little portion on what we call the pilot option, and there's a little bit of subscription. Now for me, a subscription would let you know if we've got the top architecture, gradings, and everything of one hundred percent with proper career planning. So there's a lot of HR management and strategic thinking. And once that's completed, obviously, then I discussed it with what they call the SAP team, which is where I'm falling under. And then, we advise and start to do these little projects to implement or change the functionality.

I love SAP, and I like SuccessFactors, but I think at the end of the day, some people like SuccessFactors while some like another environment. But I think most users prefer SuccessFactors as they become more comfortable with it. I think the biggest challenge for a lot of people is coming out of an SAP EC environment, or HCM environment, coming into SuccessFactors, and you have to navigate your program. That is not something that happens within a month or two, or three months. Sometimes it takes like a year before they are quite comfortable using the system. Because you put it at the change management portion, and I think a lot of times the information didn't happen the way it should have happened, and that's why you have this anti-system storage. And maybe you would sign they would rather go for Workday or they would rather go for this or that. So they used the base, but I saw on our site, which I actually wanted, and I would love to have a panel like that where you can just tap in and say, okay, because it's not a very good platform. And what a lot of clients would like to have a discussion on is to speak on what the difference is because a lot of people are opting for other solutions, and we need to prevent that because I'm also on the staff committee, and I need to work at preventing that. We don't want to lose customers to another product. We need to retain our clients. SAP is allowing a partner, SAP implementing partner, to also sell other products. That doesn't make sense. You can't tell me. You can't use it on the platform. But by the same token, you are allowing people to sell both products. Isn't that a contradiction to what you're saying? That is something that I wish I could get my hands on because at the moment, after high reviews and jobs, it's just pushing a little bit since I'm thinking that we're in a different world, we're in a different digitalization era, and we need these things for customers to make an informed decision. Then, we always remember it's about the customer. It is about their needs and requirements. So if a salesperson has a top ten garbage and you have a platform where they actually have to listen to a bit, I can't even realize what the pros and cons are because anyone has to rely on the pros and cons of a product. I'm talking about running the one down and uplifting the other. It's about what was good for you because I can say to you that, for example, to me, what was nice in retail may not be good for you. SAP SuccessFactors could be wonderful in the education industry. So to me, they expect to actually focus on it. It's got more leverage and more fundamental value to the different industries and their processes. And that is something that hasn't always come out. We are in retail. Our requirements are totally different. So when we make these comparisons, we must actually compare apples and apples. Somebody who's got in this industry, but I'm very positive. And you can't sell that positive and say, oh, you know, this is very positive. What products suit the industry that you're in? And they take it from there. And that is something that Salesforce is not doing. Salesforce is just getting numbers and getting the money and getting the profit. And implementing the process is just about taking the money, making the process, and that's it. It's not about the client. I have worked with a lot of big improving partners on projects, and always, at the same scheme in half, it's we're not doing justice to the clients. Even though we had it as part of the values, your value may be against what clients experience.

I think the improvement would be, you know, when the first thing that I'm not feeling is right, it's not right. You have a certification, and you can't lose it. They only block them down the site. You can only implement it to that level. And then just have to not refuse to get a person certified. That is absolutely unacceptable because it is SAP who made a mistake in operation. Are you telling me to enroll in university now for another seven years because it might have an attack in operation just to qualify and get a doctorate? That's absolute nonsense. SAP has a lot of consultants, and I'm one of them. We've been seeing projects for many years. And to scan the academies and the certification, what is the certification? It's like a driver's license. Once you've got it, you can't say, "I'm done driving my car all the time." They should rather look at such things. And now they have deltas which are books. So what are you really measuring? Because I can look at the four answers out of the delta and the manual. So I've got the answers now. I then state it on file, and I stay certified. That is something that really has to be worked on. And the fact that when implementing partners, put in junior, I mean, a person who has never even worked in the HR business environment or in a business itself. And then you put them on there since now they're a senior because they certify, and the people underneath them are not certified. But the people under them know SAP on-prem. They've been around the house many times. That doesn't gel. There have been cases involving a lot of re-implementations and frustrations within clients where they have the workbook sessions, the workbook workshops and things like that. And I think that doesn't really go down well because the workbooks are very technical and, a lot of times, very confusing for the client. And I think that doesn't really go down well because the workbooks are very technical and, a lot of times, very confusing for the client. And the fact that the business processes are not discussed upfront at any go. It's only discussed here and there when they open the workbook. And they say, "Right, now we stop. This is the workbook. This is the field. This is for the Employee Central. This is support." They do not have the language between the old SAP and the new SuccessFactors. Those are for clients that are moving from on-prem to SuccessFactors. If you have a new client, the induction should actually be a proper one-week session with them where you're actually taken through the demo client, and they then play with the look and feel and understand where the data comes from and actually have a country-specific demo where they can actually play, and they can relate, where they can see the payroll, where they can see the integration and things. That is not happening. Implementing partners tell clients that we can do it for them within six weeks. And the thing that I think is a downfall for us is implementing partners that have these express and golden clients. The expectation is later on, the client wants more functionality, and now it's more costly. And I think that is a killer because if the client doesn't understand the implications, because it's never spelled out, what are the implications when you want to move into more functionality within SuccessFactors, for example? You know, what is going to be needed? That's not changed up front. It only heats them up because they've been on the system for a while. The investment is there. Now you're obliged to carry on. I asked the implementing partners questions, and they said, "Oh, no. There are no issues around. There's no issue." So the question now is, I want to add some things. Now you have to switch it on. I said, "Okay. Now I have to switch it on. So what are the implications for me?" "No, we'll have to see." And now, what do you want to see? Do you see? So, one thing I've noticed is that no proper business process taken from the client actually mapped back into SuccessFactors and said, "Right, this is how it's going to work." Now after a while, you have a process, and you want to bring this in. No, no. You have to bring in the business rule. "Oh, no. Now you have to bring in the workflow. Oh, this workflow is not going to work for this." There's no proper setup, there's understanding, and there are only 200 other rules for them. By the way, are they relevant? Regarding the reports, there are only limited reports that can be downloaded. Why? Because you're using MyExpress. Does MyExpress belong to SuccessFactors? And that is the thing that I find that's not, but there are a lot of underlying things happening with SAP allowing the partners to do that. And what's actually happening out there? And I can tell you ninety percent of the clients that are going to move from SAP to Workday are because of that. The templates are not working for them, and they do not understand how they can move to what we call the EC portion, and now it's better for them to rather implement a new product and carry on with that.

I have experience with SAP SuccessFactors since 1994, and I was certified in SAP SuccessFactors, which I lost, so I have to redo that. Currently, I am a customer of SAP SuccessFactors. We also consult with them because when they want to have changes within the business, they have to knock on our door, and we have to sit with them and ask them questions to check its architecture and viability.

I don't think it is a stable product. Also, its stability depends on the industry it is used. So, it depends on how you use it, the industry, and in the business process. A business process should never be bent on what the system tells you and the system's limitations. If you do so, then the product is not right for your business. So, you need to get another product that's right for your business. There's already a product here that is beating down SAP in South Africa. So, they're busy now building the market data and the performance contract. I can tell you that in another maybe three years, all clients are going to leave SAP and move on to that local product.

Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a six out of ten. We only have a few users at the moment as I sit on the pilot. So we've got around 600 users on the pilot. If we bring in retail, there are, like, 21,000 employees coming in to use the solution. When you say to me SuccessFactors, I think we also have to be honest with each other and say which modules we are referring to because, you know, when I use SuccessFactors, I know it's got more than one module, and I don't just think that it is SAP's EC. Other people might just think of SAP EC because they only have experience with EC or only the EC module, or they can only think of LMS because they only have the LMS module, or they can do anything related to performance because they only have the performance portioning.

Regarding the scalability, it's to have to take that out and then have it per module because your module scalability can have different interpretations and different results. I think it doesn't justify us discussing the scalability of SuccessFactors. So, we are using it for EC performance, while another client may only use it for performance management. So in such scenarios, I can say that the scalability was three.

At the end of the day, a lot of things happen on the config within production, and I don't like that. We're going to push now to actually have and follow the three-tier. You can do that in a certain space, and then you go to production. My manager that I'm reporting to is going to make a few plans, and we're going to have a stage integration because integration is done too late in production since, after that, one sits with lots of data in there, along with issues, errors and with things stopping. SAP is also going against the own development methodology of their three-tier, which involves one to develop, realize, and deploy. Fundamentally, clients now have to pay for the stage, and that shouldn't be like that. If one moves from an on-prem tool, SuccessFactors should give that person exactly the like-for-like. And as I say, the like for like, it means from the architecture, they should give one development. They should also give that person the stage, along with the provisioning. In short, one shouldn't pay for the stage. Because once the things are in production, it's too late. After that, where do you do testing? In development? How can one do testing in development? So, now one has to configure in the config causing SAP's golden client, as we call it, to not go through configuration anymore. It's now changed. I think that is something SAP has to look at in the future.

When you have an on-prem environment with payroll, people don't want to move the payroll from finance because, in South Africa, in many companies, payroll resides within the finance module. 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. If SAP wants to be a game changer, SAP seriously has to look at its pricing. So people are also moving because of the pricing. If a person is on-prem, that person should not pay for the on-premises licenses but only for the SuccessFactors licenses. But then, it means all your people-only payroll is on-prem. So then you also get your money back because now you're forcing them to put all the people on EC because they don't need to pay the on-prem license since you're using it only for payroll. You see, so SAP also has to come to the table. I must tell you, many clients, and I know many European companies, are saying to SAP that if you force me to do that and I go to another product, SAP has to be very careful about this. I have colleagues that used to be pro-SAP that have gone into Workday, and they say to me, Workday is actually better than on-prem and SuccessFactors. How can I argue with them? I've never worked on Workday, but they have, and they're implementing it, and they say it's cheaper, better, quicker, and easier. SAP can only benefit from the CRM and finance modules. In the HR environment, HR is becoming null and void. There are too many free apps available that can handle HR tasks. In an ideal world, people will start to have a product for master data and an app for learning, an app for performance, and a different app for whatever they want to do. So you might end up in a situation where you actually have an HR system using different apps to manage HR, as it is still cheaper than SAP. SAP is killing us with its certification and all the related expenses. So many dedicated independent consultants are out there, and it's becoming so expensive. But for them, it's been enough to join a company like Workday or whatever and start working there and training there because you don't need to certify every year, and that's the problem. That is a killer, the certification, the certification. I've been on projects where we had certified consultants who knew absolutely nothing. But you have to pay them and pay them in hours, which is only a thousand per hour.

Given my experience with SAP, without prejudices, I rate the overall solution an eight out of ten.

We use Performance and Goals Management and the Succession and Development modules.

The performance is okay. The reporting and analytics feature is very important for decision-making. The product helps with our company’s compliance and regulation needs. The tool has a unique talent management platform. It is responsive. It provides evaluation, recruiting, learning and development, and compensation processes. It is easy to navigate through the platform.

The Onboarding module must be improved. It doesn’t have many features.

I have been using the solution for three years.

The tool has good scalability. Our clients are medium-level businesses.

The technical support is slow. We generally have low and medium-level incidents. I rate the technical support a three or four out of ten.

Negative

The initial setup is easy. The deployment takes two weeks. The product is deployed on the cloud. We use a public cloud provider.

We do implementations. I will recommend the tool to others. Overall, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

I use SAP SuccessFactors for various HR applications, including payroll, HRIS, onboarding, recruiting, learning management, talent management, and other HRA applications.

The tool's most valuable feature is its integration capabilities with on-premise ERPs and other systems. 

One area for improvement is making SuccessFactors more compatible with other countries, especially in terms of payroll and other functionalities.

I have worked on 15 projects with the product. 

The solution is stable.

My company has 300 admin users and 200,000 employees. The product is scalable. 

We've encountered issues with connectivity, integration, and occasional service downtime, leading to ticket submissions.

Neutral

The tool's deployment is complex due to various dependencies. The steps included user training, documentation, configuration, and aligning training for end-users. Around 25-30 resources were involved in the deployment. The overall deployment rollout takes two days to complete. If it is a complex project, it can take around four days. 

I recommend carefully considering other products before committing to a big ERP system like SuccessFactors. Once implemented, switching can be challenging, so it's crucial to assess the real need for such a large system. I rate the product a seven out of ten. 

I use SAP SuccessFactors for recruitment and performance management. 

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 it fully, we might not utilize all its available features yet.

One of the features of SAP SuccessFactors that we find most beneficial for managing our workforce is its document recording capability. It's essential because applicants can store all their documents in one place when applying for jobs. This facilitates easy monitoring of application statuses and tracking their progress. It is easy to search and find what you are looking for. 

We encountered challenges with the tool's integration with third-party applications and deployments. 

I have been working with the product since 2018. 

SAP SuccessFactors is stable. 

We don't get SAP support for the product. 

Neutral

The tool's deployment took a couple of weeks to complete. 

The solution's maintenance is handled by our partner. 

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.

From my perspective, SAP SuccessFactors has a lot of potential. Honestly, if fully utilized, it could be quite impactful. So, if we were to use it fully, I would rate it a seven or eight out of ten. I would enjoy using SAP SuccessFactors, especially considering our plans to transition everything from onboarding to offboarding onto the platform. 

We first deployed the employee center: It's all the data related to the HR master data. We also embedded inside SuccessFactors all that is related to work permits because we have around seven countries in the Gulf area e.g. Oman, Qatar, and UAE. In terms of module, we care about the residency visa and labor card because it impacts the payment methods.

For our recruitment module, we also deployed this solution and we tried to consolidate the recruitment process across all our branches, because each branch has its own process. They can skip one step, but we defined it. We defined the rules in a unique way that caters to all our branches.

We also deployed the performance operator where we cleaned up all our job titles and assigned the correct competency in coordination with our HR directors. I did all of this inside the SuccessFactors system. Now, we are ready to go live once the top management decides to launch the performance operator. It can be the end of this year. If they're not yet ready for this system, the launch will be next year.

We also deployed the time management module for the leaves. It can be accrued or credited at the beginning of the year depending on each branch. We deployed this module to be able to track the vacation balance, sick leave balance, maternity leave, etc.

The last module we deployed is the talent and development module for setting the performance goal for each employee. We also defined the succession plan and development. We still need to identify our employees. We have 6,000 employees across all the geographies, but the platform is ready and configured.

This is only from the SuccessFactors side. From the payroll side, we deployed in UAE, Qatar, Oman, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt. IBM developed for us for Lebanon and Iraq because they are not standard. We also deployed it in India. These are the countries in our project scope.

From the HR side on which features were most valuable in this solution because I was responsible for the HR and payroll modules. During the payroll in Meta4, I used to write an outside API to read the result of the payroll and dump it to another software: the accounting software. There is a GL posting that hits from GL after each payroll.

Now, in SAP, which is connected to SuccessFactors, this interlinking and posting is automatic. I don't have to follow up with each branch on the rules and variables to do it. It's embedded. We defined it once and once the payroll cycle is finished, it hits the final module on the corresponding GL that we defined and mapped. This is the first feature I found valuable.

Another feature I found valuable was in the project module system because we also bought and utilized the project modules in SAP. It read from the HR side all the components that can constitute the cost of an employee. It means we used to calculate the dry cost manually based on some data that existed inside Meta4 and I used to prepare it for Meta4, but when we shifted to SAP, we required that all data should go out of SAP only, so no more Excel and other files.

We set up this solution to automatically calculate the dry cost based on the employee's salary, the cost of the employee's and his family's visas, the medical insurance, life insurance, etc. We calculate the dry cost by discipline and by employee category or job level so that the calculations reflect on the project module. When the employee fills in the timesheet, his hourly rate reflects immediately from this intermediate calculation.

These two features are automatic.

The process for long modules needs to be improved, because compared to how it's done with a competitor (Meta4), the competitor's process was simpler.

I am satisfied with SuccessFactors, at least 85% satisfied. As for additional features that could be included in the next release, I developed a portal for life insurance. I asked for the medical insurance, but they did it for me in the HCM side, from the payroll side. It would be nice to have it in SuccessFactors because some branches, countries, or companies may need this info in case they want to go up to the cost of the employee, and usually any insurance cost is part of your employee cost as well.

Another feature I was asking for which they asked me to develop outside as they can only extract the data for me, is the CV builder: the CV for mass builder, not the CV content because they have the data and I added two screens only. I asked to have a CV like the World Bank format which has a columnar way, but they weren't able to achieve it.

I don't know if it's because we didn't buy the business intelligence module, or because the reporting tool in SuccessFactors is cloud-based, it's always limited and you need to build your own sophisticated report layout outside.

I used it with IBM and we tested it in each branch, with all the HR users and payroll users, but effectively it was used from August 2021.

In the HR module, yes this solution is stable. It has been three months since we ran the payroll from SuccessFactors. We are not facing any software issues. We are facing issues with a change mind of our users in some branches, but not in all the branches.

For payroll in terms of stability, I built the payroll engine for the Gulf area so when you're the developer, you're able to help the end user and you keep on developing the solution the way they want it.

Now we deployed it the standard way and we just added some small configurations for the countries in scope, except for Iran and Lebanon.

We stuck to the standard as much as possible so if any new version comes, or if there's any new enhancement to the software, we won't need to change much during upgrades. To be frank, in Meta4, when I used to develop based on our end user requirements and when the service pack used to come with each upgrade, it took me multiple months to analyze what I've changed and what objects I've touched. Here, we apply around 85% on that, so I think we will not face this issue.

For the configurable countries like Lebanon and Iraq which we built from scratch, the system will not be scalable because any change will need to be done inside the development. I think IBM did it in a modular way, to only add the new changes, not to change everything from scratch.

Generally the IBM team's technical support was very friendly. Even after they left and went on to other projects, they still answered me in a friendly way. They are no longer on contract with us, but whenever I face any issues, they're still helping me. They are friendly. Now, if they want to take it up to SAP, it's very typical that we have to escalate by priority. It can be low, medium, etc., but similarly, we didn't face issues with their technical support.

I used Meta4. It taught me a major lesson. I liked the solution and I know now that the new version may be similar to SAP because they have the performance calibration which didn't exist before. I developed it with two guys and embedded in the solution, but now I understand that the feel and look changed. I think if the company didn't decide to go buy an ERP solution to have multiple modules, I would have suggested to upgrade to Meta4 if we want to keep the HR solution as the standard one. I liked it so much.

The initial setup of this solution is hybrid. I don't know if it's complex because I'm not a technical person to judge, but I can tell it's hybrid. We have a cloud solution which is SuccessFactors, and we have an on-premise payroll.

SAP has an integration module called HCI that IBM helped build between these two separate solutions, one being on cloud and one being on-premises.

We implemented it through IBM. I like the team. They are very professional, and I feel that they're number one, to be frank. I used to work with seven consultants on the HR module and their leader on the HR module, even the project manager, all of them are very lovely. We had to make changes many times, but they accepted it with a lovely attitude. They have a high level of professionalism. I don't know if it is just my luck, or if they are really up to this level.

I evaluated Meta4 and was able to use it for three years.

We also evaluated four software. One of them was Microsoft, but from day one, they didn't arrive and they didn't come to the demo, so it was out from day one during the vendor assessment session. We also compared Oracle, SAP, and Deltek.

We did a comparison matrix on the various requirements that we asked for from the three vendors and we evaluated those three and we compared the scores. Other modules were also compared in their scope like the project module, CRM, and finance. The highest marks went to SAP. We did the comparison mathematically.

I was in the blueprint phase since 2019, then during 2020, we did the implementation with IBM systems integrator. I was the lead on the HR modules but as functional lead, not as technical, because I played double roles. The role from my company's side is to give all the business requirements and do the testing with the IBM team. Being in the subleader role, I need to give them the requirements in their terminology because I didn't work before on SuccessFactors. I wasn't a user. I was learning while providing all the requirements, and testing.

During 2020 up to mid 2021, in August, we went live. Allow me to highlight that we went live for eight countries in scope for the Payroll HCM, and also went live for more than 12 countries in terms of SuccessFactors employee data. I am now supporting our company's HR users.

It's on cloud and I don't have access to the cloud to know which version. I need to go back to shared document. I don't have it in front of me. I think it was the most recent version because to be frank, even during the UAT (user acceptance testing), they stopped us for a couple of days to upgrade. I think they installed the latest version on cloud.

We have defined four or five roles as the users of this solution. The HR manager who has access to everything and all the modules. The recruiter who only has access to the recruitment module. In terms of the employee data, we defined four roles. We defined the time administrator role who's responsible for checking the leaves and following up with the leaves. The line manager is the one who approves the leave for his employee, not HR, because he is the one who knows his team more and we have people onsite for the engineering company.

We also created the HR officer role who can help in filling information related to the new hires, or the visas, or the CVs, but he doesn't have access to the salary data. Then, we created the HR admin, who can access the salary data on top of the previous role that I listed. The last role is the payroll manager who has access to a specific screen in SuccessFactors called One Time Payment, which usually hits the payroll in the other side. For this we planned it only for the top layer, or top role, which is the HR payroll manager. This is how we manage it.

Deployment and maintenance of this solution is handled by me and two colleagues. They help me with the data migration for all the countries and we distributed the countries for payroll testing. Our contract was eight countries in scope. I took four countries and they took four countries. For the recruitment module, performance appraisal, and succession plan, I was handling it in parallel to the follow-up on data migration and on the payroll configuration.

As for plans to increase usage of this solution in the future, it has only been three months from the time we went live. We are still focusing mainly on what is related to payroll, especially because we are approaching the end of this year and some branches have annual taxation e.g. India, Lebanon, and Egypt. We first need them to practice the payroll side very well, plus, they've still been committing some errors not because of the system, but because of their old ways. They're used to recalculating and deleting the result in the payroll archive. Now it's forbidden, so we are facing the issue mainly in Saudi Arabia and Iraq to change the end users' ways.

Some other branches, they are understanding. They are on track and they now ask for reports e.g. headcount reports. They are on track from month two. The next stage, maybe next year, my plan is to increase the level, particularly the HR user level to start to be responsible for their tasks, plus, to start to prepare for the performance appraisal, which mainly is not handled by the regular HR user. It will be handled just by HR managers and directors.

We need to prepare the KPIs with these HR directors. This will be the plan for next year because the top management asked for it.

Everything related to contract terms or money, it's our IT director who deals with it. My section is under IT corporate services. I'm aware from the communication that we have professional licenses for some, while for some, we have the regular licenses. I know this because they keep on asking me to reduce my HR users who have professional licenses, while other users will have a different license. In terms of licensing costs, I don't have that info.

I will tell anyone who needs to implement SuccessFactors that they first need to be familiar with the terminology used in SuccessFactors. Our company helped us by sending us to a training that served as our introduction to SuccessFactors before we started the implementation, so when we started the implementation, I was already familiar with the terminology used by IBM. People looking into implementing this solution should at least receive preliminary training.

Another advice I'd like to give is for them to really be ready for the blueprinting when preparing the solution document and the design document, because what happened to us was we went for five months during this phase parallel to the training so everything came in a rush e.g. information overload. I was the only one who attended the training for three months and in the end, I had to ask for help. That's why I asked for two people to help me because I cannot handle it all the time and I cannot attend two classes at the same time. This is my recommendation: to really have their team ready and to be familiar with all of the HR modules.

I am familiar with Meta4 and what I've been asked, so I am familiar with the business processes, but I only need the technical terminology and the screen names in the new software like SuccessFactors. I know what my company needs and I want to replicate it in SuccessFactors in case it was not clear, so let them be ready in terms of processes and be very detailed during the preparation of the solution documents.

You'll discover during the implementation, during the explore phase or the document preparation, that usually an implementer can only go by the book. He doesn't accept change, even when you are not sure about the explanation.

We worked with SAP India. SAP prepared the document for the solution while the implementer was IBM. Because the IBM team was very friendly, we were analyzing again that maybe we committed a mistake because there was a misunderstanding with SAP India and we want this requirement. They were open to revalidating the requirement. This is a very critical stage.

The last point which I faced in my country is that it's important to have mature HR users. What made this project hectic for me was that the HR users themselves weren't matured enough to do the testing themselves in their branches. You need to be present in each session. My recommendation for any other country or any other company is to have mature HR end users in case of multiple branches.

I'm rating this solution an eight. It's used worldwide and meets all our requirements.