SAP SuccessFactors Reviews

I mainly use SuccessFactors for employee and performance management.

SuccessFactors' most valuable feature is performance management.

The integration module is an area that could be improved. In addition, SAP needs to better manage the overlap between HANA, the ERP HR module, and SuccessFactors.

I've been using SuccessFactors for over four years.

We run SuccessFactors on the SAP cloud, so we have no problems other than those typical of cloud technology e.g. interconnection problems.

We use the cloud version of SuccessFactors, so there are no problems with scalability.

There are some problems with SAP's technical support because they're not always very responsive.

Negative

Previously, we used SAP HR.

The initial setup was quite complex, and implementation took a long time, about two years, because of the amount of customization we had to do.

We used an in-house team.

I don't feel we get any ROI from SuccessFactors.

The pricing for SuccessFactors is ridiculously high, and there are costs in addition to the license fee for some features.

I don't think SuccessFactors is quite fit for use as an employee database, and SAP HR may be more suitable. There seems to be some overlap between these two solutions, but neither one has all the capabilities of the other. I would rate SuccessFactors as three out of ten.

We are using it for a lot of things: HR, performance management, and learning management. There are a lot of features embedded in SuccessFactors.

The solution was implemented on the old platform, and we cut it over to S/4HANA.

Under SuccessFactors, you have the HANA performance management, Headcount. You have Headcount by gender, employee Headcount by location, and employee Headcount by company code. There are personal profiles of the individual staff. They have their leave management, development plan, and learning activities. They can review their performance.

There are a lot of features in SuccessFactors that HR can actually explore. We recently implemented a learning platform that employs the individual staff to actually manage their own learning. They can subscribe to courses and then, when they renew to get approval from there, that's where they can seek and get approval through the course. They can do it at their own pace. SuccessFactors allows you to manage your team, have calibration for promotion, and you can generate reports and see how you're doing.

There is a pack called Fiori. It's user-friendly because the way it is laid out, you can easily see what you want to do. Once you use it frequently and interact with it, you get the feel of it.

The price could be lower.

I have been using this solution for almost five years.

So far, the stability has been good.

The product is scalable. We can add more things, and it doesn't interfere with the solution. We do a test run and quality assurance before the production environment.

We have in-house support. Calling technical support sometimes takes a while, but we have some people who have the experience. We already have them employed, so when we need anything, we go to them. If it is beyond them, then we escalate to SAP.

The setup is a matter of planning. If you get your planning right, the deployment of SAP or any part of the module will look very easy. With the proper planning, you will have the right skills and the right SAP partner that can partner with you in the rollout, and you'll be able to deliver with little or no hitch.

For SAP, the product is pricey, both CAPEX and the OPEX. It's something that could be improved.

I would rate this solution 8 out of 10. 

The product is stable, scalable, and addresses a lot of issues. You can add more modules onto various factors as you go along. But it is a pricey solution.

I would recommend this solution for large enterprises because of the cost. I would like to see them come up with products for small enterprises.

We use SAP SuccessFactors for our performance management, goal setting, performance evaluation, and employee confirmation, e.g. employee letters. We also use it as an employee self-service tool for personal data updates, life cycle events, and learning management.

It's the performance management feature that I find most valuable in this product. As for the product itself, I like its flexibility and configurability. It can handle different types of performance management from one organization to another, and this is one of its best features.

What needs to be improved in this product is the user experience. In general, for SAP products including SuccessFactors, the user experience is not so great, particularly the whole user interface. A lot of new age products beat them on that.

While SAP products are great from functionality and feature standpoints, the whole user experience element is always lacking. That's one area SAP should focus on.

There are other areas where we have not liked SuccessFactors. For example, as a recruitment solution, it's not great for onboarding and exit. Two years ago, we decided to use a different product for recruitment, onboarding, and exit. We're no longer using SAP SuccessFactors for those activities.

I've been using this solution for 10 years.

This solution is extremely stable.

I found this solution absolutely scalable.

SAP has implementation partners, so the technical support is given by the implementation partner. We have not contacted SAP for support, but as far as SuccessFactors is concerned, any product level support and response is very good. It's very well-structured and well-governed. They have a knowledge-rich library that you could always go to. There's also some forums where you can go and ask questions and get answers to your problems. The ecosystem itself is quite strong, including their responses as far as support is concerned.

The decision on which solution to use happened between 2010 to 2011. When we made the decision, it was not with SAP. SuccessFactors was a different organization.

During that time, the reason for moving to SuccessFactors was because we were looking for a SaaS-based product in performance management and there was nothing better than SAP SuccessFactors then.

If I look at the last three, four, or five years, and why we have stayed with SuccessFactors and continued with it, it was because of global scalability. We are a global organization. When you are an India-based company and headquartered in India, the only options you have are Oracle and SuccessFactors.

Performance and talent are the main focus areas for us and even today, SuccessFactors is much better in performance management and talent modules than Oracle, so we've stayed on. The other reason for staying with this solution is change management. Why change unless something is significantly better?

I wasn't there during the setup, but I don't think the setup was complex because there were a few things we've implemented and implementation of those weren't complex.

We have a yearly license for this solution. Any additional costs we pay to the implementation partner, to the support partner, but not to SAP.

This solution is a SaaS. It is deployed on the cloud.

I might have gone to your site out of curiosity, but we already have SAP SuccessFactors. We are using SAP SuccessFactors.

We have 7,500 users for this solution in our organization. We don't need much staff for its maintenance. We are using SAP SuccessFactors extensively. As for plans for increasing its usage, we definitely want to if the business and our headcount grows: We will use it for more users. As of now, no plans of increasing usage of this solution.

My advice to anybody implementing this product is to first have a SaaS mindset. It's a SaaS product, so you can't have an on-premise mindset of "I'll give whatever requirements and the product should do it." Having a SaaS mindset is my first advice.

My second advice is to keep in mind that these products give recommended practices based on which the product is built. If you could tweak your processes to embrace the recommended practices by SuccessFactors, then your chances of becoming successful, or embracing the product is going to be much higher.

My third advice is to stay with SAP SuccessFactors and use all the modules together. For example, there are modules for recruitment or onboarding where you may have certain functionalities missing, but if you could keep as many HR processes on the same product integrated, then the employee experience is going to be much better, compared to trying to use SuccessFactors for a particular purpose, then another product for performance, another product for learning, etc. It's better if you could be on an integrated solution, so your user experience and your adoption at the end of the day will be much better.

I would give this product an eight out of ten rating.

I mainly use SuccessFactors as an onboarding solution, and we're also implementing it for compensation and benefits administration.

The most valuable feature is the onboarding module, which enables candidates to fill in their details online and smoothly transitions data from the recruitment module into the SAP database.

SuccessFactors could be improved by making it usable on mobile and making its features less rigid. Right now, if we make a customization and then SuccessFactors issues an upgrade, we get stuck because our customization doesn't come over from the previous version.

I've been using this solution since 2020.

It's stable.

SuccessFactors is scalable.

Accenture gives good technical support.

My company previously used Taleo.

The initial setup was very straightforward and hardly took any time - we were up within a few weeks.

We used Accenture as our implementation partner. Their performance was good, and they continue to maintain the system post-implementation.

We evaluated Oracle Fusion, PeopleSoft Fluid, and Darwinbox.

SuccessFactors is intuitive and easy to use. When implementing, go for all the modules instead of implementing a half-strategy, as this will be better for the company and the employees. I would rate this solution ten out of ten.

I use SAP SuccessFactors for workforce management, in order to gain visibility into the employees in my company. 

I'm working with the latest version currently and it is one of several similar products that I have used in the Middle East, including Oracle Cloud Fusion, Oracle EBS on-prem, and the regional software from Naya Tech (which has a good position in the Middle East, and which is fantastic, by the way).

The conceptual structure of Core HR enables us to build whatever we need when it comes to the data that we need to collect from our employees. Overall, SuccessFactors allows us to monitor the progress of our objectives throughout the year, and gives us good visibility into the performance of the company and the different departments.

First of all, I must mention that SuccessFactors has many modules. The main modules are the Core HR and Payroll modules. Payroll is based on the concept that you can create whatever you need in terms of fields, or the characteristics of a field. You can change field types and the names of every field. And with Core HR, the structure of the software allows us the flexibility to build whatever we need in terms of the data we need to collect from our employees.

The second part of this is the integration points between the Core HR module and all the task management areas. This integration is very good and it gives management full visibility regarding performance and performance management. It's built on financial scorecards, so managers can assign the objectives of the company and they can cascade these objectives down from companies to departments, and then to individuals. It lets you monitor the progress of objectives all the way until the end of the year.

I think it's perfect that every requirement has flexibility in how it is handled, and that there are several workarounds for any problem we are looking to solve. Each problem has multiple solutions, so it gives us a lot of flexibility in terms of processes.

Given these features, SuccessFactors is suitable for medium-sized companies as well as larger companies, assuming that the larger companies have simple enough enough processes in terms of workforce management. For very comprehensive processes, SuccessFactors might not be appropriate.

There is now also an overnight shift option. So it can work for blue collar workers, for manufacturing, or for any kind of industry that requires people to stay overnight till the second day. Users of SuccessFactors can manage all of this in terms of attendance or absence.

Beyond that, I think the recruitment features are good. In fact, more than good. And in the latest version there has been great improvements in the time management side of things. There is now a new module called Time Tracking, and this was something we sorely missed from the beginning of SuccessFactors. Now we can integrate SuccessFactors with a time attendance machine or biometric machine and I can assign clock-in and clock-out schedules to the GUI. Meanwhile, the databases that link to the biometric machine for time valuations connect with the data in the Payroll module. This is a great feature that has always been missing and now it's included.

To explain one feature that I would like to see in SuccessFactors, I must describe a similar feature as seen in Oracle. In Oracle, there's a feature called Workforce Prediction, and with this feature, we can predict some of the behaviors of any employee. For example, the software can attempt to predict whether the employee might resign in future, or perhaps if they will start to perform better. This is something that is missing in SuccessFactors.

Another thing that can be improved with SuccessFactors is that, although the reporting tool is not bad, there are often separate reports for different areas of the software. For management and other processes like onboarding, this is not ideal. For example, you may have separate technologies being used in the different modules, so the Payroll module may have a reporting system that is distinct from that used by the more basic modules.

What we are looking for is some way to unify the reporting tools with one technology because otherwise it gives us difficulties when we need to generate a more complete and encompassing report. How it works now is that if we need to get the report from the Payroll module, we must first ask someone with Payroll experience. And if we want to get data from the basic performance or recruitment modules, we must ask another person for that info.

I think that unifying the reporting features is the most important thing for us, which we hope to see in future versions. However, at least for standard processes, it does give us what we are looking for. We can work with cybernetics cloud integration, and that gives us very good insights. So it's not necessarily about making up a gap in the technology, it's more of a matter of being able to better handle who is responsible for what inside the organization.

I have been using SAP SuccessFactors for more than three years.

It is stable. 

It's scalable and very easy to do so.

My experience with the technical support has been good. There's something new with their support called Wizard Guide which is a type of knowledge base where you can search for a specific issue and it will give you some notes about it. If the notes aren't enough, you can then simply open an incident.

There are several tools for opening an incident. You can have a quick chat with a technical person directly, who you can exchange ideas with. This is usually for how-to questions.

Then, there's the ability to schedule meetings with the technical support. In a meeting, you can explain the problem you are facing, and they will either support you on the spot or you will have to open an additional incident ticket. For the new incident process, you need to classify which area of which module you're having a problem with and then wait for a response.

Within a maximum of three days, they will have an answer for you. If you need faster support, there's high priority support which is able to respond in one to two hours, but this isn't something we have used yet. High priority support is more for situations where a system cannot be reached at all, or where something has been greatly affected in the production system and you don't have any workarounds at hand.

They offer their support 24/7, answer very quickly, and they even call you to make sure that you are doing well. Sometimes, when you are enabling new features or facing issues, and you haven't even opened a ticket or anything, they will detect the issue and send an email to you directly to make sure you that you are coming along. For example, they'll tell you, "Please go to steps 1 to 3 to fix your issue." So they are very good and cooperative when it comes to technical support.

I have worked with Oracle before, but in Oracle OTL, Oracle Fusion, and Oracle Cloud, there's a lot missing in terms of time management. In SuccessFactors, it is much better, and even though there is still a way to go, they have already made some significant improvements in this area.

The initial setup can be easy or hard, depending on how you go about it. If you go with the best practices, then you hardly need any setup. You simply adopt the existing processes and this is very easy and straightforward.

If you go without the best practices, such as when the company asks for new processes that are not included, or if you have to do a complex setup right from the beginning, then it will take some effort. But overall, the setup is still very easy.

It all starts with the data model, and obviously this requires someone experienced in Excel, etc., but once it is up and running, you will have screens that can be managed through the SuccessFactors' system without using any XML process. This makes things much more flexible in terms of setup compared to before. For any new processes you'd like to add, you can go directly to the upgrade center and select whichever optional upgrades you want. Thus, enhancing the software is very easy and doesn't take much time.

If you go by best practices and do it right from the outset, the setup won't be a costly endeavor. In terms of setup, there is a lot of flexibility compared to three years ago.

For any new process or for something already added to the SuccessFactors or SAP library, you can just go directly to the upgrade center, see the optional upgrade, and select it. Once you upgrade it, you have your setup, and you can work right away.

They say nothing is perfect, but honestly, the SuccessFactors product is essentially perfect in my eyes. It fits all the requirements we have and solves every problem we encounter. Whenever there is a problem we need to overcome, we can easily find a similar solution and adapt it to our situation. It's rare finding software that gives you lots of solutions for any particular problem you are thinking about.

The only reason I would not rate SuccessFactors a perfect ten is because if you do find yourself missing some feature that is relevant for your organization, you will have to go develop it yourself.

I would rate SAP SuccessFactors a nine out of ten. 

The tool allows us to consolidate many review processes into one process. We had a lot of processes and everybody was doing their own thing. This tool has streamlined that succession management process.

We have multiple offices in different countries. This solution allowed us to consolidate all that data together without having to send spreadsheets and emails.

There are opportunities in every piece of software. It's not 100%. It's hard to find developers. That's the only problem we really have with this solution. It's hard to find people who can manage it.

In terms of stability, so far so good.

It's our first year of implementation and we haven't had any scalability issues yet.

We have used technical support. I would rate their support as average. They are not as fast as we want them to be. They help us with backend technical interfacing between other systems. We're taking data from other systems and pushing it in.

We didn’t have a previous solution. We have lots of employees and we're growing very fast. Selecting this solution was something that needed to happen.

I was not involved in setting it up. I was involved with the data integrations, which were very complex. They have a set of web services and connections to them. The libraries were not up-to-date and this contributed to the complexity.

Start with a small implementation first and then work from there.

When looking for a vendor, the cost is the most important factor. The next factor is scalability. We want to be able to grow with the product.

Compared to other on-premise solutions, the first advantage of SAP SuccessFactors is that it is a SaaS-based solution. It means that everything is managed on the cloud. HR applications contain confidential and sensitive information, and SAP SuccessFactors has better security measures than other solutions available.

I have only used the Employee Center component of SAP SuccessFactors, and it has worked fine for me.

There is an area of improvement in integrating SuccessFactors with different platforms. There are other HR solutions, such as Mercer and Oracle, that companies are using, so integrating SuccessFactors with these products would be good. Oracle and other HR solutions are present in the market, so we can offer the customers the option to continue using their old HR system but integrated with SAP SuccessFactors.

I have been working with SAP SuccessFactors for almost three months.

The new version is quite stable. I would rate it an eight out of ten.

It is quite scalable. We can also do customization. It's flexible. We had around seven to eight customers on SuccessFactors with different modules.

The initial setup is straightforward. For deployment, if we are going for just one module, it takes around three to four months.

The deployment procedures are being handled efficiently by our technical team. Two to three people should be enough for the deployment and maintenance. One should be the administrator, and the rest should be specific to the module consultant.

Our clients used a yearly subscription model. I have not seen customers complaining about the price of SuccessFactors because of the benefits they are getting. It's more about the value than the cost, and the cost of SAP SuccessFactors is reasonable.

I advise the customers to proceed with SAP SuccessFactors if they're using traditional solutions.

Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten.

I use this solution for reporting related to employee information and contacts. 

This solution could be improved if it offered the ability to generate reports automatically.

I have been using this solution for one year. 

I would rate this solution a five out of ten.