Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

PeopleSoft vs SAP SuccessFactors vs Workday comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
6.4
PeopleSoft offers a strong ROI with cost-effective implementation and maintenance compared to alternatives like Oracle and SAP.
Sentiment score
5.3
SAP SuccessFactors offers ROI in 1-2 years, with varying outcomes depending on previous systems, enhancing employee experience and cost-effectiveness.
Sentiment score
7.3
Organizations report improved engagement and satisfaction with Workday, experiencing significant time savings and positive ROI through effective streamlining.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
5.7
PeopleSoft's customer service is satisfactory, with responsive support, varying quality, and improvement needed in speed and expertise.
Sentiment score
6.2
SAP SuccessFactors customer service experiences vary, with efficiency issues in urgent cases and a need for technical improvement.
Sentiment score
6.9
Workday customer service gets mixed reviews; appreciated for responsiveness, but lacks speed and expertise in regional needs.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
PeopleSoft is praised for its scalability, seamless integration, stability, and adaptability, effectively supporting diverse organizational needs and growth.
Sentiment score
7.8
SAP SuccessFactors is scalable, effectively supporting large companies with cloud infrastructure, though some modules have limitations.
Sentiment score
7.9
Workday's scalability and customization effectively support diverse organizations, ensuring adaptability and integration across departments and locations.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
PeopleSoft is stable and reliable, with occasional bugs, earning high marks for stability despite minor infrastructure challenges.
Sentiment score
7.5
SAP SuccessFactors is generally stable, with occasional regional challenges primarily related to data centers and integration.
Sentiment score
8.1
Workday is praised for its reliability, achieving 97% uptime, with most users rating stability between seven and ten.
I hardly ever encounter any stability issues, as SAP SuccessFactors is very good and stable.
 

Room For Improvement

PeopleSoft needs improvements in user interface, performance, integration, support, customization, and documentation to address current challenges.
SAP SuccessFactors requires better analytics, integration, UI, localization, flexible pricing, and advanced mobile features to compete effectively.
Workday needs improvements in analytics, global payroll, UI, integration, customization, support responsiveness, and cost-effectiveness to enhance user experience.
Advisories can only be placed at the bottom, which is less effective as employees may not scroll down to see them.
The change management process during the initial launch was not effectively handled, leading to a poor user experience.
 

Setup Cost

PeopleSoft's pricing is substantial, influenced by users and modules, offering significant value through customization and flexible agreements.
SAP SuccessFactors offers a comprehensive suite but is costly, suited for medium to large enterprises with flexible pricing options.
Workday's high pricing is justified by comprehensive features and support, though smaller organizations may find it costly.
The licensing costs are quite high, which is a typical scenario for such solutions.
 

Valuable Features

PeopleSoft offers customizable, robust features for HR and finance, seamless integration, reliable reporting, and strong security, enhancing business appeal.
SAP SuccessFactors excels in HR management with integration, customization, AI features, and collaboration, ensuring flexibility and usability.
Workday offers user-friendly navigation, integration tools, and HR capabilities, enhancing efficiency through customization, analytics, and secure data management.
It aids me from an auditing perspective, as it's all system-driven, and cannot be altered.
Employees can view their goals, performance, ratings, and employee information, which enhances the employee experience.
SAP SuccessFactors has advantages in providing AI-driven initiatives such as candidate screening and matching features within the recruitment module.
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Talent Management category, the mindshare of PeopleSoft is 6.0%, down from 8.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP SuccessFactors is 20.1%, up from 18.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Workday is 18.1%, up from 16.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Talent Management
 

Q&A Highlights

SS
Feb 04, 2020
 

Featured Reviews

UshaKatyal - PeerSpot reviewer
A mature solution that needs right implementation
I think PeopleSoft HR is pretty good and very mature. The people who built PeopleSoft now work on Workday. Workday has asked me to join them as an employee a few times, but I don't take anyone's employment because Workday isn't very user-friendly. With PeopleSoft, you can do a lot. Oracle now bundles PeopleSoft and calls it Oracle Cloud, but the programs are the same. Recruiters often don't know this and say you're not qualified if you don't have Oracle Cloud experience. However, Oracle has just put PeopleSoft in the cloud and packaged it as Oracle Cloud. Overall, if the solution is implemented correctly, it runs very smoothly. I think people shouldn't customize it. They should use it as is and try to adapt to it. Many people didn't understand PeopleSoft at first. For example, during COVID, some companies hired offshore people who didn't know what they were doing and messed everything up. You need to know the rules and regulations of the country where you're implementing the tool because every country has different rules for HR, benefits, and payroll. Canadian payroll differs from US payroll, but they're on the same platform in the solution. It's a very mature system, but people prefer newer options like Oracle Cloud. I was also involved with SAP S/4HANA. I don't think it's good for the government sector because government workers are a bit lazy about technical things. I understand S/4HANA because I have a technical background. It has a different structure, while PeopleSoft has more of a file and table structure, which is easier. If the tables are set up wrong, things go wrong. But if you know how to set it up correctly, it runs smoothly, and you can adjust it if needed. The problem is that companies are hiring big consulting firms that want money. They hire offshore people who don't know the country's rules and do programming. If you buy a package and still have to do custom programming, why buy the package at all? These days, I'm doing a lot of business process reengineering for people because they don't know how to implement it correctly. If you implement it right, you can reduce manual work. However, it depends on change management and how senior management handles it. It works fine if you implement the tool on-site or hybrid, not cloud and do it correctly. But in a cloud situation, there are problems. Many countries change their payroll and benefits rules often. With the cloud, you can't easily change things. You have to ask the company to make changes, which costs much money. People who don't want an IT department go for the cloud. But I've seen many companies fail with the cloud. The cloud is just everything packaged together. Your data sits in someone else's cloud, and you must accept whatever they do. Payroll is very sensitive. If payroll is wrong, the whole company suffers. I've worked on the financial and school sides, too. I'm comfortable with the tool if it's implemented correctly. But many companies don't implement it right, which is why they might say it is too much. I did a big project for an oil and gas company. I was a program control manager with 51 people under me. We used Oracle, but Oracle isn't as good as PeopleSoft for payroll. If the solution is implemented correctly, it's fine. But you need the right implementer. Big consulting firms often give wrong information and use inexperienced people. For maintenance, PeopleSoft sends updated rules to new tables at year-end. You compile the new tables and start the new year. But you need to know which changes apply to your country. I talk to many senior PeopleSoft people and always get LinkedIn messages about business opportunities. I now help about 50 clients when they have problems, but I'm not traveling. If you know the HR and payroll business well, you can implement anything - PeopleSoft, Oracle, or S/4HANA. I've done all of these. S/4HANA is more complicated and technical. It's similar to an old software called IDMS. You have to be very technical, and if you don't do it right, it won't work. I rate the overall solution a seven out of ten.
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.
Akash Nigam - PeerSpot reviewer
User-friendly, well-organized, offering a structured step-by-step process for configuration
I would really like to see a more robust timekeeping solution in Workday. Currently, most organizations are using Kronos for timekeeping and Workday for HR data. They then integrate Workday with Dimensions to manage time-related activities and payroll processing. I think if Workday could enhance its timekeeping solution to match the functionality and flexibility of Dimensions, it would be a really good product. Another area for improvement is payroll. Workday payroll is not very extensively used in the North American market, but it is more widely used in Europe. There is a lot of complexity in payroll processing in North America, but I think there is still a lot of room for improvement in Workday. In the next release, I would like to see pre-built or predefined connectors for Dimensions and other applications. Currently, we have to use Boomi or another middleware application to integrate Workday with these systems. I think pre-built connectors would be very helpful, especially for Dimensions, which we do not currently have a connector for.
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Talent Management solutions are best for your needs.
848,989 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Answers from the Community

SS
Feb 4, 2020
Feb 4, 2020
Check out our comparison page of Workday vs PeopleSoft vs SAP SuccessFactors: https://www.itcentralstation.com/products/comparisons/peoplesoft_vs_sap-successfactors_vs_workday
2 out of 5 answers
RA
Feb 2, 2020
Check out our comparison page of Workday vs PeopleSoft vs SAP SuccessFactors: https://www.itcentralstation.com/products/comparisons/peoplesoft_vs_sap-successfactors_vs_workday
US
Feb 3, 2020
Workday is excellent for global implementations where you want to have employees from different geographies on the same HCM platform. Workday gives you the comfort of end to end global implementation on the same platform. SAP SuccessFactors has strength in PMS and learning. India payroll is not so strong. PeopleSoft (Oracle HCM) has strength in core HR data management, time and attendance, and recruitment, but their learning module is quite average. I’m sharing my experience based on the evaluation I had conducted two years back.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
10%
University
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
9%
Educational Organization
49%
Computer Software Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
5%
Educational Organization
29%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What are the differences between Oracle HCM Cloud and PeopleSoft?
Although both are solutions to manage HR, their differences make each one suitable for different companies. Oracle C...
What do you like most about PeopleSoft?
I use the reporting feature occasionally to check for potential improvements in timesheets. We have integrated it wit...
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 customizatio...
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 expe...
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 per...
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 m...
What needs improvement with Workday?
If you want to add more features to your subscription, Workday becomes expensive.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
SuccessFactors
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

BMI Healthcare, Lone Star College System, Jefferson County Public Schools, Griffith University, Los Rios Community College District, Tervita Corporation, INFRA S.A. de C.V., ICF Habitat, Central Washington University, Tech Mahindra Limited, Cognizant Technology Solutions, Stanford Childrens Health
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
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, Workday, Oracle and others in Talent Management. Updated: April 2025.
848,989 professionals have used our research since 2012.