SAP HCM Reviews

I like the talent, recruitment, and learning features the most.

I would like it to move more towards a single data space or a single data source. SAP as a platform relies on multiple data sources because traditionally, it has been bolted together by the acquisition of other products rather than a single database. That's why there are a lot of points of failure and a lot of required points of integration. They need a single integration point.

We are using SAP SuccessFactors. I know of and have been exposed to SAP for about 10 years.

I work with companies to determine whether SAP needs to be replaced or not. I do transformation programs. These transformation programs determine whether the existing system is SAP, whether it's fit for the purpose, and whether it should be changed to something like Workday because of the features Workday has. I don't physically use the product.

I wouldn't say so. We, as a company, experience regular problems with it.

It is scalable.

I have not personally dealt with them.

SAP is extremely expensive. The integration costs and customization costs are also a lot.

I would recommend a more modern version of it. My experience of SAP is with earlier versions. SAP is an aging system, so it doesn't stack up against tools like Workday.

I would rate SAP HCM a seven out of ten, but it really depends on the use cases. It depends on why and for what a company is implementing SAP. There are many elements of SAP.

I don't think it would ever get to a ten in my view because there are other products that are better than this and work in a much easier, simpler fashion. As a product, SAP is very complicated and complex to use. The only thing to do is to move towards a more modern architecture for SAP. I don't think that's ever going to happen, so I wouldn't ever give it a 10.

I'm an SAP consultant and I have companies in Egypt and France that do SAP consultancy. We are specialists in SAP activities, SAP implementation, network building for HCM finance controlling, warehouse management, SAP retail plus migration of projects, BI, and strategic management. We have all these capabilities in our company and use them to help clients make the most of their SAP HCM implementations.  

Human Capital Management is a powerful tool for organization management. It helps to define the organizational structure and support the company. It helps with the administration of things like maintaining employee information, tracking education and learning, administering insurance and healthcare, and all other facets of human resources. It helps monitor a lot of things that would otherwise take a lot of time and effort to make them not just easier, but automated.  

One of the most powerful tools in SAP is its integration with finance and other modules. Some of the capabilities are self-service for the employees which cut down on administrative time. For example, scheduling vacation leaves is done by the employee directly and the notification process and approval are all automated.  

The most interesting change to SAP is that it is now all available on the cloud. Before it was only on-premises. Cloud offers a lot more opportunity as well as potential cost reduction.  

My partners in the company were already leading HR consultants in the market in the Middle East when we formed our company. They were working with HCM locally in the Gulf and the Middle East. Our company has around six to seven permanently employed HR consultants. We sometimes use freelancers depending on the volume of our work and commitments.  

The most valuable features have to do with finance and payroll. Some organizations — like banking, insurance, and the government — are regulated and can not or do not want to host their critical financial data and employee data on the cloud. What we are doing right now for clients of this sort is we split the implementation to their advantage. We put financial and personal information management on-premises and the other information which is not critical — like learning, performance and setting goals — goes on cloud and we integrate those solutions. We use the cloud when data is not critical for security purposes and when it is not confidential. This can save the client money.  

This product has a lot of features that are much improved and more advanced than other solutions. In our area of the Gulf region and the Middle East, a lot of organizations depend on it because it meets with regulation compliance and security concerns. So government and banking depend on the SAP HCM solution for administration on-premises.  

SAP had developed new screens for the latest release of SAP HANA for HR on the cloud. They are doing the most innovation for HR on the cloud. So, there are some screens right now for both on-premises and cloud but the company is focused mostly on cloud development. A lot of the clients who deal with regulations must currently stay with on-premises solutions for critical data. SAP needs to continue trying from time-to-time to develop and release some new screens and new tools for HR on-premise that facilitate the working and interaction with the interface. They should do this in parallel with the cloud. Instead, they are leaving the on-premises customers behind.  

For the next release of HCM, I would like to see more interactive screens and parallel development for on-prem and cloud. SAP now does the most innovation for the cloud solution and less innovation for the on-premises client. In our experience and with our clients almost all customers depend on the on-premises solution for sensitive data — either by choice or regulation. It would be nice to see a mobile interface as well.  

We have been using the solution collectively since before we opened our HR company in 2015. One of my partners started working in HR in 2003 and the other one started in 2006. We are all experienced in SAP HCM.  

We have never had any issues with the stability. We have no complaints as users and I have never heard any complaints from my customers.  

It seems to me that it should be obvious that this product is very scalable just because it is made by SAP.  

It is easy to contact technical support and get help. Within the license model, you are paying 22% of your license fees per year to SAP for their support. There is a marketplace for SAP that you will have access to. You will go to that marketplace with any issue to open your tickets. You can set the severity and urgency of the issue by selecting it on the form. Then you submit the ticket to SAP and according to the severity, SAP will contact you and try to solve the issue with you.  

The initial setup is not just the installation. It is also the business process configuration. This is what will take more time. An expert is required to set up many things properly. Someone who expert in HR and knows the business of HR and the business processes, but also has to know the region. If the person doing the configuration knows the laws and how to perfect configuration for the user group, it will be easy for him and better for the company after implementation. But if the person doing the configuration is not an expert, does not know the laws and how the HR process works, it will be difficult for him, it will take longer, and the customer will not be happy with the results.  

To deploy HCM, getting the setup right depends on the organization and attention to detail. If it is an organization with 500 employees and the solution will be used for payroll, personal administration and organization management, it could take something like four months to install this and configure it properly. This is if the guys doing the installation are experts in HR and the configuration of SAP.  

We are the people who do the implementation and consultation and that is because we have worked a long time in the field and have become experts. Almost every customer who is coming to this product without knowing it well and what the capabilities are needs to seek the help of an integrator or consultant.  

The cost may differ from region to region, but here in the Middle East, you pay per license. There not any costs in addition to the standard licensing fees. 

SAP HCM is on-prem. SAP has another solution which is called SuccessFactors. It is on the cloud and by subscription only. So SAP has two solutions, the one on cloud is SuccessFactors and HCM on-prem. SAP is pushing for clients to go to SuccessFactors right now. The cloud solution may save some people money.  

At this time in the competitive business world, HCM is a very important module that each organization should want to use. It will help any organization to calculate and control the cost of their human resources. Human capital management allows control of when you want employees to work when you don't want them to work and keeps you aware of when they will be on leave so that their responsibilities will be covered by someone else. Businesses have to plan for things like this. A lot of things affect human capital and that can affect the course of an organization.  

On a scale from one to ten where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate HCM around nine out of ten. It is not a ten because of the issues with the interface development.  

We primarily use the solution for company payroll, evaluations, and assessments.

The user interface is the solution's most valuable feature. It makes it easy for us to use.

The implementation of the solution can be a bit difficult. They should make it easier. If it could be as simple as the SuccessFactors implementation that would be ideal.

There should be integration with iOS products. It would be nice if we could integrate it into the field currently, but it's not active.

I've been using the solution for about 2.5 years.

The solution isn't too stable.

We have about 300 people on the solution currently.

Technical support could be more helpful.

We use the on-premises deployment model. We will switch to SuccessFactors and it should be on the cloud. I'm a certified SAP consultant.

I'd recommend the product. It's a good solution. If I was comparing it to SuccessFactors, I'd rate it seven out of ten.

The product overall is very good.

SAP is not ready to sell any licenses in the Middle East.

SAP is not ready to sell the license on time and delays the progress of projects. It's better to work with a competitor like Oracle. Those that are selling the product just go through powerpoints and don't have the knowledge necessary to sell. They can't answer any questions.

I've been using the solution since 2013.

The stability of the solution is good.

The scalability of the solution is good.

We use the on-premises deployment model. We don't extensively use the solution in our organization. It's not a core module for us.

I'd rate the solution one out of ten. It doesn't allow licensing in our region, and they need people on the ground here. Product-wise, I'd rate it good, but in general, SAP needs to work with the customers to sell licenses and sell according to the customer's requirements.

I wouldn't recommend anyone implement SAP at this time.

The solution is primarily used for managing all the HR related processes including personnel, administration, employees, master data, organizational structure, and payroll.

All of the core processes are very valuable aspects of the solution. These include personnel, administration, organizational structure, and payroll.

The organizational structure visualization could be improved in future releases. The solution has a very poor interface.

The solution is very stable. I've never faced any issues in unpredictability.

The scalability of the solution is similar to other SAP products. It's okay. You can expand a license to include more customers, even if you've started with only a few users. 

The solution is stable, so I didn't need to reach out to technical support very often. When I did, they were helpful.

In the normal process, you need to open a ticket with SAP and view a response or search on the marketplace for any SAP notes for fixing certain problems. That's normal process for all SAP modules; it's not HCM specific.

I typically come into the picture after the solution has been implemented, so I can't speak to how straightforward or complex the setup is. How long deployment takes depends on customer requirements. For us, I believe it took about two months. I believe you'd need a team of three for the initial deployment of the solution and two people to handle the maintenance if you are a medium-sized company.

I used to be an HCM consultant.

In terms of advice I would give to others considering the product, I'd say that implementation needs dedication from the customers. They need to share their requirements from the beginning. Key requirements shared at the beginning will ensure a smooth implementation. 

I would rate the solution eight out of ten. With better visualization and a better interface, I would rate the solution higher.

I was using it mostly to keep the employee data and employee qualifications.

We were using the on-premise version.

We were able to pull a report this year that included region and status. We were able to give that report to the head of our HR.

The master data where most of the reports were run from was the most valuable. We were quite satisfied with this module.

It is a bit tedious and manual to work with.

At first, it was impossible for us to pull up a report of employees by status and region, though this was eventually fixed. Going forward, they should fix more things in the reports. E.g., I want to see on the reports the age of the employees, their position, their salary with their salary scales, and any promotions that they have had. People want to see these reports.

The stability was nice.

It was easy to scale out to three different regions.

There were about 50 users, but about 10 to 15 users were executives approving the subworkflow in the system.

The support wasn't that good. The implementation team didn't want to respond to issues. It took about three days to come and help us understand the system. 

I think they used the SAP acceleration methodology for setup, but I joined the organization after the setup.

The deployment took a year to make it fully work.

Go for SuccessFactors. It is the easiest to run, quite flexible, and user friendly.

By the time I was leaving the company, they were planning on buying new equipment (probably SuccessFactors). This depends on government budget though.

It can be used for personnel demonstration, time management, and business development.

Without systems nowadays, especially in HR, I've a problem because most decisions in HR are made based on data. If you don't have data to report on, that means the business' success will not be supported by data.

We have an on-premises deployment.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is a very costly solution.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Technical support needs improvement. 

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

I would rate it a seven out of ten. 

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