SuccessFactors vs Ascentis

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Our analysts compared SuccessFactors vs Ascentis based on data from our 400+ point analysis of HR Management Software, user reviews and our own crowdsourced data from our free software selection platform.

Ascentis Software Tool

Product Basics

SuccessFactors HR by SAP is a comprehensive human capital management (HCM) solution designed for businesses of all sizes across various industries.

This cloud-based software is ideal for organizations looking to streamline basic HR functions while also driving strategic initiatives and planning. Users appreciate its advanced features for recruitment management, onboarding, time off tracking, time off planning, and goal structure flexibility, which enhance employee engagement and streamline HR processes.

In contrast, some users find the overall user interface to be outdated and clunky on certain pages. Additionally, the software’s extensive capabilities can make it complex to learn and require a time investment to fully understand and leverage its sophisticated features.

Regardless of your industry, finding and hiring the right talent quickly is a major challenge. SuccessFactors HR tackles this with advanced recruitment tools that streamline the hiring process, from job requisition to candidate selection.

SuccessFactors ranks in our list of the top five overall HR products and the top ten for applicant tracking, benefits management, compensation management, document management, onboarding, self service, learning management, performance management and more.

It uses AI and machine learning to enhance candidate matching and speed up recruitment, making it easier to find and onboard top talent.

Flexible goal structures and comprehensive onboarding solutions boost employee engagement and retention. These features help set clear performance objectives, track progress, and create a more engaging onboarding experience, contributing to a positive workplace culture and better retention.

SuccessFactors HR simplifies time off management with its accessible tracking and planning features, allowing employees to easily request and manage leave.

Benefits scenario modeling is available with workarounds, compared to some competitors like UKG Pro and Oracle HCM Cloud that don’t currently support it. As a leader in document management, it earns our highest score for tax document automatic generation, access controls and document sharing.

SuccessFactors HR pricing varies based on organization size, the specific modules required and the level of customization needed. SAP typically provides customized pricing based on the organization's needs and the scale of implementation.

For an accurate quote, businesses should contact SAP or an authorized SAP partner to discuss their specific requirements and receive a tailored pricing proposal.

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Ascentis offers HCM services to companies of all industries via its cloud-based suite. Its five modules include time and attendance, payroll, HR and benefits, talent, and recruiting. Users can choose to pick individual functionalities or the entire package of services, depending upon their needs.

It facilitates process automation for several complex business processes and transactions, reduces the probability of errors, offers real-time analytics, eliminates manual work, and helps talent managers and organizations cater to their human resources and talent management requirements. It also provides ease-of-use through an interface that can be accessed anytime, anywhere on a desktop, tablet or smartphone.
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$10/User, Monthly
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$16/Employee, Monthly
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Product Assistance

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Product Insights

  • Provide a Digital Boardroom: Consolidate data from various sources to get a complete view across departments. Tools for what-if scenarios and ad hoc analysis drive better decisions and shape your business strategy.
  • Close Skills Gaps: Help employees pick up the skills they need to advance and cover any weak points in your company with continuous learning. This capability helps close the skills gap and sets your organization up for success.
  • Operate Globally: Check eligibility, control data according to GDPR, handle work permits and visas, and comply with local labor laws.
  • Enhance Your Employee Experience: Enjoy access to real-time data on overtime, accruals and employee pay info. Employees can also contact the HR department via tickets, phone, email or chat.
  • Integrate HR: Get a one-stop platform for all your core HR needs through Employee Central. It seamlessly connects with other modules, giving you a smooth and consistent HR experience.
  • Work Anywhere: Say hello to HR on the go with mobile options for several of the suite modules. View pay stubs, access training resources, complete timesheets and request time off.
  • Get Feedback: Let your HR team generate and distribute surveys to analyze employee engagement in real time. According to our data, SuccessFactors fully supports 360-degree feedback and feedback reports.
  • Add HR Extensions: Make managing a global workforce easier with the Kronos time management app. It helps boost employee engagement and keeps time management clear and straightforward. It integrates with background screening software, learning management systems and data integration platforms.
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  • Optimized Team Performance: Gather information and feedback for each employee, from all sources. Uncover talent and top-performing employees as well as facilitate planning that results in optimized team performance. 
  • Quality Applicants:  Showcase an employer brand when seeking new employees to encourage the maximum number of quality applicants. 
  • Efficient Employee Onboarding: Eliminate duplicate data entry and leverage the cost saving benefits of switching to an online application process instead of an offline process. Cut costs, make onboarding more efficient and reliable, and gain complete access to data 24/7. 
  • Regulatory Compliance: Stay compliant with all essential employment regulations such as FMLA, FLSA, and other local and state laws that require consistency and vigilance. 
  • Real-Time Payroll Processing: Ensure accurate, efficient payroll processing and audits. Run payroll processing anytime, from any place, as many times as required. 
  • No Tax-Related Penalties: Remove the stress of incurring accidental late filing penalties by ensuring timely payroll deposits and filing. 
  • Complete Customization: Tailor the system in ways that best suit company needs, enabling maximum usage and functionality. 
  • Automated Benefits Administration: Save time and reduce manual effort by automating benefits management, administration and employee enrollment processes. 
  • Data-Driven Decisions: Compare metric goals with data insights to make data-driven decisions that lead to improved overall performance. Leverage more than 300 templates for standard reports or customize reports to suit organizational requirements. 
  • Real-Time Self Learning: Cultivate and encourage self-learning and employee development through training resources that are available in real time. 
  • Enhanced Employee Experience: Users can access upcoming schedules, select open shifts, view and request leaves, check paycheck history and statements, punch in and punch out, find co-workers, receive important notifications and alerts, and much more. 
  • On-the-Go Access for Managers: Stay on top of tasks from anywhere. Manage employee schedules, check notifications for employee requests, and approve or reject leaves and expense reports from the user-friendly mobile app. 
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  • Joule: Use a virtual assistant to guide employees through the feedback process with easy-to-follow steps and prompts. Joule lets employees update their info right away (like location and working hours) without bouncing around multiple screens. It also streamlines promotion requests by guiding managers through the process and setting effective dates.
  • Automatic Tax Document Generation: Generate essential tax documents automatically, reducing administrative workload and ensuring compliance with tax regulations.
  • Payroll: Simplify payroll with automated pay calculations while ensuring compliance with both local and international rules to function globally. Plus, the self-service option lets employees easily access their information.
  • Time and Attendance Management: Automate time-consuming tasks like calculating hours worked and managing absences to make scheduling more efficient.
  • Recruiting and Onboarding: Create profiles, apply for jobs and track applications through a career portal. Employees can share openings and earn rewards for referrals. Recruiters can manage interviews based on candidate availability and location and provide a personalized onboarding experience.
  • Learning and Development: Use the earning management system (LMS) for all your learning needs, from succession planning to career development. It handles assessments, offline courses, training schedules, and tracking employee progress and course completion.
  • Performance and Compensation: Track employee performance to find top talent while providing feedback to help your team set and achieve goals. Reward employees with compensation programs and keep your numbers in line with budget modeling.
  • Workforce Planning: Modeling and analysis features provide insight into financials and scenario-based outcomes. Allocate resources effectively with budget planning, anticipate staffing requirements with workforce forecasting and reduce schedule conflicts with alerts.
  • Personalized Recommendations: The benefits plan recommendation tool offers a personalized ranking of benefits plans, providing employees with tailored recommendations to better meet their specific needs.
  • HR Analytics: Understand your company's data with insights on performance, turnover, diversity and more. Benchmark against peers and analyze HR data in detail. Use dashboards and reports to identify issues and spot trends.
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  • Time and Attendance: Offers several functions such as leave management, time tracking, employee scheduling, advanced scheduling, a mobile app and compliance. 
  • Employee Scheduling: Provides management automation for several key aspects like split shift intervals, leave balances, overtime, expenses and total work hours. 
  • Advanced Scheduling: Helps schedule workflows and optimize all scheduling processes end to end. Evaluates unique rules and requirements within an organization and then auto-generates schedule recommendations based on that information. 
  • Payroll: Payroll processing occurs in real time, offering maximized accuracy, compliance, control and flexibility. 
  • HR and Benefits: Provides functionalities such as benefits management, HR compliance, HR solution customization, employee self-service, reporting and more. 
  • Talent Management: Customizable and user-friendly module. Capabilities include succession planning, compensation planning, performance management, learning management, check-ins, 360-degree assessments and real-time feedback. 
  • Recruiting: Acts as a dynamic career portal, helps with social media outreach, enables efficient onboarding and improves workflow management for HR-related functions. 
  • Ascentis Mobile Application: Two types of access are available — one for employees and another for managers and supervisors. Based on their role, users can share messages, update and access information, and perform other activities, all through a smartphone or a tablet. 
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Product Ranking

#5

among all
HR Management Software

#13

among all
HR Management Software

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Analyst Rating Summary

79
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95
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82
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Analyst Ratings for Functional Requirements Customize This Data Customize This Data

SuccessFactors
Ascentis
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Applicant Tracking And Recruiting Benefits Management Compensation Management Document Management Employee Engagement Employee Onboarding And Administration Employee Self Service Learning Management Payroll Management Performance Management Platform Capabilities Reporting And Dashboard Succession Management Time And Attendance Management Workforce Management 95 73 82 100 28 86 87 84 73 87 88 92 95 76 63 0 25 50 75 100
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Analyst Ratings for Technical Requirements Customize This Data Customize This Data

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Availability And Scalability Deployment Options Integrations And Extensibility Mobile Platform Security 100 50 64 100 0 25 50 75 100
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Analyst Ratings for Vendor Qualification Requirements Customize This Data Customize This Data

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User Sentiment Summary

Great User Sentiment 2892 reviews
Good User Sentiment 626 reviews
82%
of users recommend this product

SuccessFactors has a 'great' User Satisfaction Rating of 82% when considering 2892 user reviews from 5 recognized software review sites.

77%
of users recommend this product

Ascentis has a 'good' User Satisfaction Rating of 77% when considering 626 user reviews from 4 recognized software review sites.

4.7 (21)
n/a
3.9 (665)
4.0 (251)
4.0 (275)
4.2 (51)
4.4 (793)
2.0 (1)
4.0 (1138)
3.7 (323)

Awards

SelectHub research analysts have evaluated SuccessFactors and concluded it earns best-in-class honors for Document Management.

Document Management Award

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Synopsis of User Ratings and Reviews

Support Quality: The support team is highly regarded for its responsiveness and customer service. It’s praised for being helpful and treating customers well, although there can be occasional wait times for resolution.
One-Stop-Shop for HR: Most users appreciate the system's ability to integrate various HR functions into a single platform, which can streamline processes and reduce the total cost of ownership (TCO).
Goal Setting Flexibility: The learning module is seen as robust and flexible, making it easy to set and manage goals. Users can select from a library of goals or add their own, which facilitates effective goal setting and tracking.
Recruitment Management: According to most users, the recruitment module eases the entire process, including job postings, candidate selection, resume evaluation, interview scheduling and offer management. The applicant tracking and AI-assisted screening features were noted for improving time to hire.
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Customer Service: All reviews mentioning this aspect indicated that the customer support services quickly resolve all user issues.
Ease of Use: An easy-to-use interface helps new users to quickly learn and understand its versatile features, according to 85% of reviews on this element.
PTO Calculation: 90% of reviews that mention PTO noted that all employees can send PTO requests via self-service and easily calculate their PTO earned by the end of the fiscal year.
Less Data Input: 100% of reviews on integration noted that the smooth integration between payroll and HR modules allows information to flow easily between systems, without feeding data in multiple times.
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Getting Started: Many find SAP SuccessFactors complex, especially for new users. The system is described as intricate and sophisticated, leading to a steep initial learning curve.
Reporting Woes: Users find the reporting options pretty restricted, with not much room to customize dashboards and reports. This lack of flexibility makes it tough to tailor reports to fit specific needs.
User Experience and Interface: The user interface (UI) has received mixed feedback. Some users feel it's outdated and clunky, with hiccups like confusing time-off calculations and cumbersome goal-setting processes.
Updates: While the support team is effective at troubleshooting integration issues, some users have experienced release-related breakdowns. On the flip side, other users noted recent updates have improved the UI, making it easier to navigate with new icons and better drill-downs.
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Inaccurate Reporting: 100% of reviews on reporting indicated that the software sometimes creates random reports or files that are outside the set criteria, and that it’s time-consuming and confusing to create new reports or look through report history.
Password Reset: Employees are unable to reset their own passwords for the employee self-service functionality, according to 60% of reviews on the element.
Implementation Process: 85% of reviewers who mention this feature indicated that Ascentis has a time-consuming implementation process, due to the numerous features it provides.
Data Entry: All reviews on data entry observed that the ATS feature sometimes has multiple data entries of the same information.
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SuccessFactors provides full integration with all HR modules and can connect to other SAP solutions, such as finance to materials. With extensive customization, integration and analytics, it can be of great use for planning, developing and implementing HR strategies.According to our analysts, SAP SuccessFactors scores a 79, leading in applicant tracking and recruiting, document management, and succession management.It includes AI-assisted screening, LinkedIn applicant prospecting, automated tax documents, succession planning, offline course access and employee lifecycle tracking, helping HR cover core tasks today and plan for the future.It’s gotten praise for its strong support team, which is responsive and customer-focused, although users sometimes experience delays in resolving issues. The platform excels as a comprehensive HR solution, integrating various functions into a single system that streamlines processes and reduces costs.While there's a learning curve for most, the majority found it worth the work to centralize all things HR, especially with its AI capabilities. Recent updates have improved the UI design, though some users indicate growing pains with release-related glitches and complex integrations.SAP SuccessFactors pricing starts at $10 per user per month with a free trial.SuccessFactors makes recruitment easier with tools for job postings, tracking candidates, evaluating resumes and managing interviews. Its AI-assisted screening matches candidates to job requirements more efficiently.The onboarding module speeds up the process for new hires by automating paperwork, setting up training and ensuring a smoother transition into the company. Overall, SuccessFactors helps identify and nurture internal talent for future leadership roles, creating a smooth succession plan and minimizing the impact of turnover.

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Ascentis provides à la carte solutions for human capital and workforce management. It can be a good pick for companies that are looking for software that has an intuitive interface, seamless integration between payroll and HR, PTO, benefits calculation and responsive customer service. However, several reviews mentioned reporting is inaccurate, challenging and cumbersome. There are also issues with duplicate data, and implementation is time-consuming. It can be a good choice depending on company needs and priorities.

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Screenshots

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