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ADP Workforce Now vs SAP SuccessFactors comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 3, 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

ADP Workforce Now
Ranking in Talent Management
13th
Ranking in Cloud HCM
12th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
Benefits Administration (10th), HR Analytics Software (6th)
SAP SuccessFactors
Ranking in Talent Management
1st
Ranking in Cloud HCM
1st
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
93
Ranking in other categories
Talent Acquisition (1st), Global Payroll (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Cloud HCM category, the mindshare of ADP Workforce Now is 1.1%, down from 1.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP SuccessFactors is 21.8%, down from 22.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud HCM
 

Featured Reviews

Vineeth John - PeerSpot reviewer
Custom reporting tool with field grabber, easy modules for recruitment and provides numerous options for integration
The complexity is the key challenge with a tool like ADP because it has all the bells and whistles and all the key features you can possibly think of. If it isn't there, there's always a third-party vendor you can integrate that way. But the only issue is that because it's complex, there needs to be some sort of system, at least on the back end, for the admins to understand what leads to what. We expect AI to improve multiple things with HR processes. The most obvious and common one would be the self-service function for employees, like a chatbot to help with FAQs. We are also building an AI tool that can possibly help managers make better talent management decisions. This tool will pull from the performance management tool, the talent profile, and the reports that we generally have to score employees across all different dimensions.
Marissa Schwan - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to deploy, stable, and scalable
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The platform is on a private cloud that is fully secure with no way for hacker penetration."
"The most interesting feature for me on ADP is the custom reporting tool. It's got something called a field grabber, which makes it so much easier to generate your own custom reports simply by pulling tabs from any feature."
"The most valuable feature to me is performance management because we just started using that."
"The most valuable features are the reporting and benefits piece."
"It is a scalable solution."
"In my day-to-day work, attendance tracking would be most important. That's because I have a really diverse group of employees, and I have a subset of younger folks who are struggling with their attendance. So, that's the thing that I'm most involved with currently."
"The way that ADP helped us improve our organization is by making the payroll process clean and efficient because if you make a mistake there, you're in big trouble."
"This solution has automatic linking and reporting features. Upgrades are hassle-free because you don't need to change everything from scratch, when compared to Meta4."
"The functionality and user friendliness are constantly improving."
"The most valuable feature of SAP SuccessFactors is analytics."
"SAP SuccessFactors is a very reliable and stable solution."
"The feature I like the most is the notification bar where we can see upcoming courses that the organization requires from time to time. It's easy to track any pending courses. I also like the search feature in SuccessFactors. We can search for newly available courses that are updated in the system for completion."
"Overall, it's excellent performance management."
"The self-service part is most valuable. Employees and managers can do a lot of things on their own, and they are not dependent on the HR organization."
"All of SuccessFactors' features are useful, but there are several modules within SuccessFactors that I find handy. You have Employee Central, which manages employee records within the system. It manages all the information about an employee, including names, addresses, account numbers, positions, org charts, etc. It also handles performance reviews and KPIs for employees within an organization. Then you have succession planning and development as well."
 

Cons

"When I'm not working with the implementation team and I'm just talking to customer service or something, they're just not a lot of help. They don't understand how it works. They'll tell you to do something that I know would affect something else. So, it's less about the software and more about just training their folks to a higher level."
"I would like to see the payroll side improved and there are a few kinks that need to be worked out."
"Its benefits portal could be user-friendly."
"The ease of developing and creating reports could definitely use some improvement."
"The report functionality is not as good as competitive products."
"The complexity is the key challenge with a tool like ADP ."
"The Reporting/Analytics and User Interface need improvement."
"LMS, Learning Management Systems, needs improvement because there were some stability problems."
"I would like to be able to configure objects from instances, not from import and export files."
"SAP SuccessFactors is working on making beneficial changes but they are not fast enough. They can improve by making the improvements or updates quicker. Additionally, the user interface could improve, it is not something you want to return to when compared to a solution similar to Instagram."
"The product doesn't have a modernized look and is not very user-friendly like other products."
"Language settings in the solution need to be improved."
"The price of the solution could improve, it is too high."
"Overall, the documentation could be improved, and I think the learning management module needs to include more capabilities when it comes to matching an organization's particular learning approach."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I know some of what we're currently paying. Most customers would say it's too high, but I don't have a comparison to know that."
"The solution is expensive."
"I give the pricing a seven out of ten."
"It is expensive."
"The solution is expensive and everyone complains about the price."
"The pricing is expensive and I would say it is below average for the value it provides based on the high cost."
"I rate the tool's pricing a seven to eight out of ten."
"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."
"SAP SuccessFactors requires an annual subscription."
"Due to the way in which we purchased SuccessFactors as a module along with other SAP modules, we were able to procure it at a slightly better price than usual. I would rate their pricing 5/5 stars."
"The pricing for SuccessFactors is ridiculously high, and there are costs in addition to the license fee for some features."
"This is a more costly solution than comparable products, and training is not available in the open-market, so this has to be purchased separately from the vendor."
"The price of the solution is highly expensive."
"The price of the solution depends on too many factors to provide an estimate. However, the price of SAP SuccessFactors is competitive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Healthcare Company
8%
Educational Organization
51%
Computer Software Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ADP Workforce Now?
The licensing is on the pricer side, given that there aren't a lot of other tools out there that are applicable, we just decided to go ahead with ADP anyway. I would definitely recommend ADP to oth...
What needs improvement with ADP Workforce Now?
The complexity is the key challenge with a tool like ADP because it has all the bells and whistles and all the key features you can possibly think of. If it isn't there, there's always a third-part...
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...
What do you like most about SAP SuccessFactors?
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 ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
SuccessFactors
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Lawrence and Schiller, The Children's Center, The Kansas City Royals
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 ADP Workforce Now vs. SAP SuccessFactors and other solutions. Updated: February 2025.
842,296 professionals have used our research since 2012.