When it comes to evaluating HR software, which option stands out as the better choice — Workday or SuccessFactors? In our unbiased analysis across 12 core HR modules, SuccessFactors took the winning title with a more comprehensive set of features.
It’s easy to feel overwhelmed when stacking these solutions against each other, so we’re here to help. Let’s see the Workday vs. SuccessFactors breakdown!
Compare Workday and SuccessFactors Against Your Needs
Article Roadmap:
Workday vs. SuccessFactors Overview
Workday and SuccessFactors are major players in the HR software arena, with Workday users noting the ease of time and attendance management and SuccessFactors users praising its performance management capabilities.
When comparing Workday vs. SuccessFactors, it’s essential to consider available features, pricing and company size to ensure a good fit.
| Product |  |
 |
|---|---|---|
| Analyst Rating | 77 | 79 |
| User Sentiment Score | 86% | 80% |
| Free Trial | No | Yes |
| Deployment | Cloud | Cloud |
| Company Size | M L | M L |
| Starting Price | N/A | N/A |
Compare Workday and SuccessFactors Against Your Needs
Features Comparison
Here’s a breakdown of the key features of Workday and SuccessFactors:
Applicant Tracking and Recruiting
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|---|---|
| Analyst Score: 86/100 | Analyst Score: 95/100 |
| Winner: While both tools offer applicant tracking and recruiting functionality, SuccessFactors provides added flexibility through mobile recruiting and native apps for Android and iOS. | |
Workday HCM is fairly comprehensive in its offerings. under applicant tracking and recruiting. Its fully supported capabilities include a talent pool search for filtering candidates from a community in the past, interview management to take care of interview schedules, employee referrals for present employees and a career portal to apply for jobs manually. It also provides a career portal, LinkedIn applicant prospecting and automatic job postings.
Workday Talent Acquisition.
However, if accessibility is a key priority for you, Workday HCM lacks mobile recruiting and native mobile apps for Android and iOS. Workday also doesn’t currently include options to create and maintain recruitment agency records or assign job postings to recruitment agencies.
In comparison, SuccessFactors is slightly more well-equipped and accessible with its applicant tracking and recruiting capabilities, like LinkedIn applicant prospecting, job postings and AI-based candidate scoring with partner integrations. It stands out with its native Android and iOS apps, letting users post job vacancies and review candidates on the go using mobile recruiting. It also fully supports a career portal for employees, employee referrals and interview management.
It’s also worth noting that SuccessFactors facilitates managing records with recruitment agencies, enabling the allocation of job postings to these agencies and monitoring for status updates.
Benefits Management
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| Analyst Score: 62/100 | Analyst Score: 73/100 |
| Winner: In this round of Workday vs. SuccessFactors, both products have mobile benefits access, life event management and E-filing 1094-C and 1095-C forms. SuccessFactors stands out with more fully supported benefits management capabilities – including benefits analytics. | |
One of the main challenges for HR administrators is benefits enrollment, especially depending on the size of your organization.
How do Workday and SuccessFactors simplify benefits administration?
Workday fully supports basic benefits management through consolidated benefits statements and automated evidence of insurability with updates on payroll deduction. Rule-based eligibility lets administrators create rules to ensure employees match with eligible plans and benefits. The ACA Dashboard monitors employee eligibility statuses, and ACA Eligibility Calculations automatically calculate full-time employees’ Affordable Care Act (ACA) eligibility. It also allows COBRA administration with partner integrations.
Workday doesn’t let HR administrators make benefits elections on behalf of employees. It also doesn’t include penalty alerts, broker assistance or benefits plan recommendations..
Benefits management in Successfactors. Source
Conversely, SuccessFactors is comparatively more inclusive with its benefits management offerings by fully supporting benefits statements, COBRA administration and benefits plan recommendations.
It also allows HR administrators to make benefits elections for employees right after installation without requiring additional modules. Users can access benefits analytics without any workarounds or custom development. It currently doesn’t include ACA eligibility Calculations or an ACA dashboard.
Compensation Management
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| Analyst Score: 96/100 | Analyst Score: 82/100 |
| Winner: Workday dominates this aspect with more fully supported compensation management attributes. | |
Efficient compensation management is an absolute business necessity, ensuring employee productivity, clarifying compensation structures and policies (like pay transparency) and supporting engagement.
Workday offers a comprehensive compensation management solution. Its attributes include fully supported anonymized salary data, automation rules for compensation-related events like promotions or transfers, and customized compensation plans.
It also fully supports compensation grids, compensation dashboards, automatic payroll updates and compensation survey management.
A summary of department compensation in Workday. Source
Compared to Workday, SuccessFactors is fairly basic with its compensation management capabilities. It fully supports automatic rules to process various compensation-related events, compensation planning, reward letters from employers and generate reports related to various aspects of compensation.
However, SuccessFactors currently doesn’t include automatic payroll updates, and compensation survey management and accessing anonymized compensation data require partner integrations and workarounds, respectively.
Document Management
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| Analyst Score: 70/100 | Analyst Score: 100/100 |
| Winner: SuccessFactors is the clear winner, offering more comprehensive document management capabilities than Workday. | |
Document management is more than organizing files, it’s essential for safeguarding confidential data.
So, in this round of Workday vs. SuccessFactors, how do these products help keep your info in order?
While Workday fully supports the automatic generation of tax documents like I-9, W-4 and 1099s and offers a centralized repository to store, update and print company documents, it lacks some key features in document management.
Workday requires workarounds and partner integrations for various attributes, including searching and sharing documents and restricting access to modify and view documents based on their sensitivity. Workday doesn’t allow organizations to handle and store any record of company policies and employee handbooks.
SuccessFactors Document Management Preview. Source
In comparison, SuccessFactors has more comprehensive document management capabilities. It fully supports access control for sensitive documents, automatic generation of tax documents, a centralized repository for storing documents and document searching, sharing, and printing.
In this module comparing Workday to SuccessFactors, SuccessFactors also has an advantage, enabling businesses to generate, store, and upload company policies and employee handbooks into the system.
Employee Onboarding and Administration
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|---|---|
| Analyst Score: 92/100 | Analyst Score: 86/100 |
| Winner: While it’s a close call, Workday wins with added capabilities that help streamline onboarding, like personalized, AI-based HR recommendations based on relevant data from demographics. | |
When you consider that you only have 44 days to shape the long-term retention of new hires (according to BambooHR), it underscores the importance of onbarding and admin tools.
How do Workday and SuccessFactors stack up here?
Workday has a lot to offer regarding employee onboarding and administration capabilities — from fully supported automated email updates, recording of employee information in a centralized location, a job application dashboard, and an onboarding checklist.
Workday also enables admins to define termination reasons, capture digital signatures, facilitate account provisions for new hires and employ web-based forms to simplify collecting and updating information through partner integrations.
Onboarding dashboard in SuccessFactors. Source
SuccessFactors includes letter creation, web-based forms and real-time data synchronization.
SuccessFactors is nearly neck and neck with Workday on this module, fully supporting a centralized dashboard for job applications, automated email notifications, employee information recording and org charts.
However, unlike Workday SuccessFactors requires partner integration for background screening and workarounds for real-time notifications. It also currently doesn’t support employees’ resignation forms.
Employee Self-Service
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|---|---|
| Analyst Score: 98/100 | Analyst Score: 87/100 |
| Winner: Workday offers more for employee self-service, especially with fully supported benefits elections and expense requests. | |
If your HR team is overwhelmed by their workload (and seeking a way to reduce paperwork), employee self-service is the answer.
As a part of its comprehensive set of attributes for employee self-service, Workday offers fully supported benefits election and enrollment for new hires to self-enroll, the ability to view, apply and monitor for internal job postings and the capability for employees to securely maintain records of their personal details.
It also allows employees to request, update and track their time off from work without requiring any additional modules.
Snapshot of Workday’s assistant interface for employees. Source
SuccessFactors, compared to Workday, covers employee self-service basics. It moderately supports self-service benefit elections and enrollment without additional modules after installation.
Its other employee self-service capabilities include applications for internal job postings, tracking time off and maintaining personal records.
Learning Management
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|---|---|
| Analyst Score: 63/100 | Analyst Score: 84/100 |
| Winner: SuccessFactors wins for fully supporting all key learning management capabilities. It also adds convenience through offline course access, where users can pre-download content on their mobile device and access info without an internet connection. | |
What’s your company’s biggest asset? Well-informed employees. Efficient learning management fosters adaptability and minimizes turnover.
Workday is more limited in its learning management capabilities. While it fully supports creating learning plans, content sharing and course catalogs for various learning styles, it moderately supports scheduling and tracking training progress, course dashboard and assessments right after installation. It can only automate the assignment of training tasks via workarounds.
The fundamental learning management aspect that Workday doesn’t offer is access to real-time email alerts for updates on training.
SuccessFactors expansive learning management preview. Source
On the other hand, SuccessFactors fully supports Workday’s attributes, automatic assignment of training courses, course catalogs, content sharing, real-time email alerts for training updates and a centralized course dashboard. Learning plans are moderately supported.
Payroll Management
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|---|---|
| Analyst Score: 81/100 | Analyst Score: 73/100 |
| Winner: Workday wins for offering more comprehensive payroll management attributes. | |
In 2022, Ernst & Young (EY) conducted a study on payroll errors in HR processing, assessing companies with 250 to 10,000 employees and collecting responses from 508 individuals responsible for day-to-day payroll decisions in U.S. based companies. They found on average, every payroll error incurred an average cost of $291 for companies.
How can Workday and SuccessFactors reduce your risk for these errors?
To start, Workday allows pay previews before finalizing pay runs after installation without additional modules.
It fully supports multiple payment schedules on a timely basis, pay stub creation to access employees’ paycheck information, payroll reports and automated tax filing.
Workday’s payroll management doesn’t include tax recommendations for automating the appropriate tax amount based on the employee’s location, and garnishments require support with partner integrations.
A view of the payroll analytics by Workday. Source
SuccessFactors lags slightly behind Workday in its payroll management attributes. It fully supports automated tax filing, multiple payment schedules, pay stub creation for employees’ paycheck information, garnishments, and payroll reporting. However, it doesn’t allow users to access pay previews or journal entries to summarize payroll data or labor costs by multiple labor codes.
Performance Management
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|---|---|
| Analyst Score: 55/100 | Analyst Score: 87/100 |
| Winner: SuccessFactors comes out ahead with its goal monitoring dashboard and reporting attributes. | |
Systematic performance management goes beyond numbers and charts.
Workday is limited in terms of its performance management capabilities. Its basic offerings include AI-based flight risk identification, customized development plans, goal management for various levels of functioning, performance measurement with appraisal forms, and employee reviews.
Manager dashboard for team performance in Workday. Source
It lacks the ability to configure multiple appraisal cycles, provide a centralized goal monitoring dashboard, and gamify and provide feedback reports for better analysis.
In comparison, SuccessFactors offers more with its performance management capabilities. It offers all Workday’s attributes, an efficient goal-monitoring dashboard and performance feedback reports.
SuccessFactors requires partner integrations for gamification, and appraisal reports are available with workarounds.
Succession Management
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|---|---|
| Analyst Score: 83/100 | Analyst Score: 95/100 |
| Winner: SuccessFactors wins with its single-view talent review capability. | |
Succession planning is a major asset for talent management and preparing your business for the future. At its core, succession management ensures that the right people with the right skills are assigned appropriate responsibilities.
How can Workday and SuccessFactors support your succession planning?
Workday has a lot to offer, fully supporting a 9-grid toolbox for performance evaluation, a centralized talent insight dashboard and a talent matrix for comparing employee performance.
However, it can’t evaluate and review multiple employees in a single view.
Succession planning in SuccessFactors. Source
SuccessFactors is highly comprehensive in its succession management attributes. It fully supports all Workday offers and allows users to analyze, compare and review multiple employees in a single view after installation without additional modules.
Time and Attendance Management
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|---|---|
| Analyst Score: 79/100 | Analyst Score: 76/100 |
| Winner: Workday wins with its fully supported leave management, whereas SuccessFactors requires partner integrations for absence management, like PTO and sick leaves. | |
Time and attendance management reduces time tracking errors, prevents time theft and boosts employee accountability.
How can Workday and SuccessFactors support your time and attendance needs?
Workday is well-equipped for time and attendance management, enabling the configuration of employee leave plans, calendar views of team members’ schedules and a dashboard to analyze leave requests.
Among other attributes available right after installation, Workday offers time-tracking methods and the ability to track overtime and receive alerts.
Workday Time and Scheduling Preview. Source
SuccessFactors lags behind a little in its time and attendance features. It fully supports accessing a snapshot view of others’ schedules and a centralized dashboard for time-off requests. It also offers multiple time-tracking options, tracking employees’ working hours and providing reminders to take breaks.
It moderately supports configuring various leave plans by combining different types of time off.
Workforce Management
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|---|---|
| Analyst Score: 50/100 | Analyst Score: 63/100 |
| Winner: SuccessFactors stands out for fully supporting major aspects of workforce management. | |
To put it simply, workforce management assigns the right personnel to the right task at the right time.
How can Workday and SuccessFactors harmonize core aspects of your workforce?
Workday is not as expansive with its workforce management attributes. While most capabilities are available after installation, all its workforce management features need additional modules to be functional.
Some capabilities include project tracking to ensure labor alignment with the budget, task management, labor forecasts and workforce modeling to create and edit planning scenarios.
However, it does not offer the ability to access alerts for overstaffing or unalignment between labor supply and demand.
A snapshot of workforce planning by SuccessFactors. Source
SuccessFactors offers more for workforce management. It fully supports forecasting, workforce modeling and scheduling alerts but requires partner integrations for project tracking, task management and workforce scheduling.
Compare Workday and SuccessFactors Against Your Needs
Next Steps
Both Workday and SuccessFactors stand out as accessible, all-encompassing HR solutions for streamlining core human resource tasks.
If you want to learn more about how Workday and SuccessFactors compare across 177 individual features or against additional products, check out our free comparison report. Consider the additional factors unique to your organization, like price and your requirements template, to guide the final decision on the best human resource management system for your business.
When it comes to Workday vs. SAP SuccessFactors, are you pro-Workday or pro-SuccessFactors? Is there another HR software that works best for your business? Leave a comment below!!
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