Ventana Research Analyst Perspectives

Here are some insights on SAP SuccessFactors drawn from our latest Value Index research, which provides an analytic assessment of how well payroll software vendor offerings address buyers’ requirements. The Ventana Research Value Index on Payroll Software 2020 is the distillation of a year of market and product research efforts by Ventana Research. We evaluated SAP SuccessFactors and seven other vendors in seven categories, five product-related (adaptability, capability, manageability, reliability and usability) and two concerning the vendor (TCO/ROI and vendor validation). To arrive at the Value Index rating for a given vendor, we weighted each of the seven categories to reflect its relative importance in an RFP process, with the weightings based on data derived from our benchmark research on payroll software.

SAP SuccessFactors provides payroll management through its Employee Central platform and ranks fifth overall in this Value Index evaluation. The vendor is a Value Index Leader in the Usability and Manageability categories.

SAP SuccessFactors was one of the early HCM platforms native to the cloud and is localized to many different countries. A major strength of Employee Central is its conversational user experience. Taking advantage of AI and machine learning technology, part of the SAP Leonardo capability set, the platform includes a bot that integrates with messaging tools such as Slack and collaborative tools such as SAP Jam. The vendor also offers robust analytics and a native mobile application developed in a partnership with Apple and Google.

While SAP SuccessFactors’ cloud offering is strong, migration from the on-premises product could be easier for customers. In addition, the vendor recently partnered with Kronos to enhance the workforce management platform with more sophisticated scheduling and forecasting. While there are integrations for processing time and attendance data, a unified platform for both would be ideal. The vendor would have performed better in the Validation category had it provided customer references.

This research-based index is the most comprehensive assessment of the value of payroll software in the industry. You can learn more about our Value Index as an effective vendor selection and RFI/RFP tool here. Participating vendors can learn more about how to use the Value Index here.