SAP SuccessFactors Reviews

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.

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.

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.

We implement our employee centers with core employee data using the solution. It integrates and stores employee profiles, and our foundation objectives.

The solution's most valuable feature is the metadata framework. It's a good idea to implement such a powerful tool. It is better, easier, and more flexible.

Whenever I have to enable a feature fully, finding the document for guidance to know about that specific feature becomes difficult. Sometimes to activate or enable a particular feature in my instance, I have to enable more than one feature in provisioning. I always face issues in getting the documents or references from SAP itself.

They should include professional documentation. They keep making changes, and incorporating them into documentation needs some time. They should work on a faster way of locating a proper documentation as well. 

Last year, we went for the solution's learning hub professional and support edition training. We gained basic knowledge of the solution and transferred it to our internal team. We have been accelerating the learning internally for SuccessFactors integration since then. We also have a testing environment where we are already testing our cycles and succeeding in the initial data migration.

It is a scalable solution.

The setup was straightforward. Also, SaaS has made a lot of things easier. I rate their implementations as eight out of ten. They have a powerful learning hub. I respect the way they clarify their system and explain their processes.

I do recommend SAP as a solution. I studied SAP in college and have ten years of accumulating knowledge in the ERP field. SAP has succeeded in being number one in the whole world. They have their philosophy about business. They have standardized a lot of business processes and business terminologies. They have succeeded in sustaining a powerful system supporting their philosophy. I rate it as a ten out of ten.

We have a separate ATS, which is currently being integrated for managing external candidates. Internally, job posting is already integrated. We also use it for performance management, compensation benefits, feedback, and reporting. It's a one-stop shop including for our various vendors who provide support in terms of learning, our talent marketplace for internal mobility, etc. We are customers of SAP. 

The solution is very intuitive. Many of the things we need to do are easily accessible. There is support in the form of chatbots. Before we implemented SuccessFactor, it was very difficult for us to implement use of the feedback section. That has now become very intuitive, and usage has increased. The solution is stable and robust. 

Many organizations are very relationship-driven and we're lacking information regarding how to build a network; what you need at what stage of your career journey or employee journey.

We've been using this solution for three months. 

The solution is stable. 

The scalability is good. 

Customer support are reasonably responsive. 

We previously used PeopleSoft and the extra we get with SuccessFactor is access to support using chatbots. 

We are a large organization and implementation has been a massive project. All our resources went into it and it's been a very complex process. We're still having some teething issues that the team is working on. Not all the issues are connected to the solution but in the context of an organization operating in a highly regulated area, the financial industry, and in 60 countries, it's a complex organization. Any solution will be difficult to implement. We had external assistance for the implementation. 

I think this is a good product and rate it eight out of 10. 

We are using SAP SuccessFactors for our mandatory training.

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.

I have been using SAP SuccessFactors for approximately three years.

SAP SuccessFactors is a very reliable and stable solution.

The scalability of SAP SuccessFactors is good. They are many modules that we could use. For example, they have the Employee Center module where we can expand our employee information, such as which skills we have and career aspirations.

We have approximately 20,000 employees using this solution in my organization.

We plan to continue to use the solution in the future. We do not have plans in our roadmap to change solutions.

I have not contacted the support from SAP SuccessFactors.

I have previously used Saga People, which is a learning platform. It's not the same as SAP SuccessFactors, it does not bring the same capabilities.

The implementation of SAP SuccessFactors is highly complex.

We are a pharma company and in this domain, it's very important to have mandatory training. All the inside notes and email that has been sent to the employees are very heavy and it's not easy to modify them because it's part of the suite. It is very complex to use. It's not easy to change things and if you would like to change things, we need to wait six months. We can wait for a long time, and if there are not any other customers that need the changes we will not receive priority.

We used a third-party integrator in Israel named AKT for the deployment.

This is a very heavy solution suitable for large companies, but not agile enough for my design needs to bring learning for employees.

I rate SAP SuccessFactors a six out of ten.

Our organization uses SuccessFactors for employee management. We can look at the organization's structure to find vacancies that need to be filled and training records for courses that must be completed. The company's reporting structure is also fully available on SuccessFactors. All the reporters under me and their user credentials are available as a workflow in SuccessFactors. We have more than 1,800 employees in our region, so everybody uses SuccessFactors to view the organizational structure and complete mandatory training courses. 

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.

I find that the website sometimes has problems loading, but I'm unsure if it's an issue with SuccessFactors. After the login, there are some connection issues. We get some errors telling us that it cannot connect to the host.

I have been using SAP SuccessFactors for a year.

SuccessFactors is a stable product. When a new employee under me joins, I get an email notification from SuccessFactors. The push notifications, etc., work seamlessly. I don't have any complaints about stability. I never experienced any delays with any push notifications or important organizational structures.

I rate SAP support eight out of 10. I had to raise a ticket once because I was unable to complete a course on time. The "complete" button was invisible. The SAP SuccessFactors team had implemented a change. 

The company switched to SuccessFactors worldwide, so all the local branches adopted it.

From a user's perspective, setting up the account was easy. We received the credentials when I joined the organization. We only had to fill in the credentials and get started.

I rate SAP SuccessFactors nine out of 10.  I would recommend it. SuccessFactors does its job. We have a few important things that we need to do. One critical thing is completing the mandatory course. These courses cover essential IT changes and job skills. These courses need to be completed in a timely manner.

From a user perspective, everything is straightforward. After login, we can easily navigate to any of the pages we need. The organization structure, salary details, and training records are all available as drop-downs on the home page.

We use most of the modules for performance goals, recruitment, employed central succession planning, and salary review STI. We'll be using additional features going forward. We are customers of SAP and I'm head of HR tech and operations. 

The best feature is that the solution has an open architecture and provides an open platform so it can coexist with other systems. It allows for a different goal setting system, but still integrates well. SuccessFactors also integrates well at the backend with your core SAP which is also a benefit. My sense is that in the future the solution will evolve into a model similar to Salesforce where you have the core platform from SuccessFactors and plugins for everything else. 

The downside is that SAP resources are expensive and not very common from a tech stack point of view. Anything you want to change or any customization is expensive. Our user experience is not great and we're looking at building a privileged user experience layer on top of what exists.

I've been using this solution for four years. 

In terms of system stability, data integrity is good.

The solution is scalable. 

The technology is changing quickly and the solution requires support but it's not forthcoming. They say, "This is the product, now you figure out what to do with it." Every time we upgrade or implement something, we have to rely on our internal resources, even if we're willing to pay for support. AWS and Microsoft have advisory units that invest in employee-customer success but SF has nothing like that.

It's a good setup but with emerging solutions like Darwinbox, I think there might be challenges ahead because of the user experience and that will dominate things in the next few years. 

ROI depends on your business case. If you're coming from an SAP SCM or IBM implementation, then the return on investment is very low. You won't have a strong business case to move from platform A to platform B because transition costs are three to four times the license fee.

It's important to be clear about how you want to spend your money. No more than 60% should go to the licensing fee because there's a lot of additional work required to get a great user experience and have good infrastructure. You will need interfaces, integration with third-party tools, enhancements, and the like. I would also recommend building some in-house capabilities for platform administration and small modifications. Figure out how you'll interface with local platforms, payroll, time management, etc. They're going to decommission the on-premise version soon so explore their future plans. It may take a couple of years to complete implementation and you need to know where they'll be at that point. 

I would give a higher rating if the user experience was better but for now I rate this product eight out of 10.