On average, enterprises implementing unified HR SaaS software architectures will realize an approximate 34% reduction in the manual processing time associated with HR functions and a reduction of up to 80% in the administrative workload for HR staff.
The ten leading platforms were systematically analyzed to determine their total cost of ownership, payroll deployment model, and complexity of structure required to implement them.
How the HR SaaS Software Market Works
There is often not enough data available to buyers of HR software to make good vendor comparisons among vendors in the marketplace for HR software. Many vendor comparisons list standard features offered but do not disclose the actual costs associated with implementing the software, integrating it into other systems, and complying with global laws and regulations.
As a result, in the current HR software market, the buyer is forced to choose between simple electronic file-based systems and large complex data architecture systems. A list of standard features associated with a particular HR platform does not mean that this HR platform is a functional system.
In order to verify the true value of an HR system, you must measure how easily an employee can move from being a new hire or job applicant to receiving his/her first paycheck, receiving computer access (if applicable), and being tracked as a performing employee throughout the entire HR process without having to manually enter any data.
When evaluating a particular HR platform, the vendor's marketing materials must be removed from consideration. The focus must be on the structural capabilities of the platform, the rules governing data residency, and the outcome of actual operations (i.e., employee paychecks) of the platform.
For example, a global start-up company will not be able to use the same HR platform as a large manufacturing company with hourly employees, even if both HR platforms advertise themselves as capable of managing payroll. The logic behind tracking employees' shifts, calculating payroll taxes, and ensuring compliance with legal requirements is based on the model of workforce employed (i.e., hourly workers versus salaried employees).
Comparing the Top Platforms
The following summary lists the ten most frequently used HR platforms, which have been designed as pathways to modern business infrastructures. We have assessed the companies and services according to the following:
Public pricing limits
Verified customer processing metrics
Structure and use cases
1. Rippling
Rippling is a comprehensive software system that provides complete human resources (HR), payroll, software, and device support for employees. The company provides all these services as one integrated solution to allow employee data to flow through the entire ecosystem of connected systems.
Rippling charges customers $8 per employee per month and requires a base fee of $35, which raises the overall cost of ownership for very small teams, but significantly lowers that same cost as the customer scales and reduces redundant software using this platform. Additionally, customers may wish to request a custom quote for module pricing or enterprise packages.
Customers who utilized Rippling have experienced a sharp decrease in the amount of time spent performing administrative functions. Superhuman experienced a 75% reduction in time spent on HR and IT duties (a saving of 15 hours a month) and has doubled the speed of onboarding employees.
Morning Consult saved 500 hours per year, did not need to hire 3 additional employees, and was able to process payroll 84% faster than before. Finally, ODI saved 65% on their overall platform fees by consolidating five different software systems into one Rippling software system.
In addition to the reduction in administrative time, the Rippling software stores employee data and seamlessly transforms it into accounts that enable automatic access to their IT systems for onboarding, allowing for reduced manual delays.
2. Deel
Deel is a global workforce solution that provides an all-in-one solution for employees working in multiple geographical areas around the world.
Deel was developed specifically for companies that employ remote workers, look for specialized HR SaaS software, and have employees who work outside their home country and need to classify those workers in accordance with applicable laws.
Deel also has a highly modular pricing structure. Human resources management system (HRMS) services typically begin at $5 per month per employee, depending on your organization's needs, while an additional Recruit module can be added for $14; the Develop module for $22; and the complete solution of HRM and payroll is $56 per month per employee.
An organization's choice of which modules to utilize can be made depending on where the organization needs coverage geographically or functionally. Organizations that utilize HRMS should see significant reductions in time spent administering global operations.
Jon Eggleston, President of DevBase, stated that "by automating over 20 distinct global processes, we reduced our overall workload by 80% and returned just shy of 278 hours per month to our organization."
Cohabs reported they saved over 960 hours each month managing employees across seven countries and predicted they would eliminate half of the time they used to spend on payroll administration. Deel allows companies to "package" their international operations by providing their clients with centralized international contracts, thereby allowing their clients to operate in multiple countries without needing to hire a local legal team in each country.
3. Workday
Workday is positioned as a high-end enterprise software that consolidates financial, talent, and workforce planning into a single cloud-based solution. Workday has designed its capabilities to meet the needs of larger, more complex, multinational companies with many different operational locations.
Workday's pricing is custom and is based on the number of global employees a company has and what modules they choose to purchase. Implementation requires significant effort and normally necessitates third-party technical partners to implement correctly.
When companies implement Workday successfully, they can expect substantial returns on their investment. Elekta, for example, has eliminated 20 legacy systems and improved their process efficiency by 105%; Elekta can now complete the integration of newly acquired companies in one month instead of six because of Workday.
Veepee replaced five French-based systems with one Workday system and reduced their total cost of ownership by 62%—this allows them to establish their business in a new country in only two days. Choice Hotels has automated 70 processes and saved an estimated $600,000 annually. Workday requires extensive preparation for data cleaning and technical planning but once implemented properly will run the entire back office function of a worldwide business.
4. UKG Pro
UKG Pro is designed especially for managing complex hourly tracking, highly advanced scheduling, and workforce analytics on the frontlines. It is considered the most popular option for industries such as healthcare, manufacturing, and retail, which consist of a large hourly workforce, creating and trading shifts, and maintaining strict compliance with labor laws.
Like many enterprise solutions, UKG Pro's pricing is highly customized. However, the platform's distinguishing feature is its ability to model exceptions with respect to employee timekeeping and pay, as opposed to simply processing employee statutory wages.
UKG Pro provides customer examples supporting the need for a specialized approach to hourly timekeeping. In the case of 2 Sisters Food Group, the company's timekeeping processes allowed for savings of 5,000 hours of time per year, and its combination of over 600 hours of standard timekeeping and nearly 4,300 hours of exception timekeeping processes was eliminated.
In addition, Simpson Manufacturing's time savings per week in the scheduling of employees was up to 80%, along with the ability to fill over 600 work openings in less than a 2-hour period.
Forrester's composite analysis indicated over $34 million worth of user benefits to be derived in three years from its use of UKG Pro solutions. For any business with a physical hourly workforce, UKG Pro is the solution to the math challenge of hourly timekeeping and salary processing.
5. Personio
Personio has an explicit focus on the European small to mid-sized sector. The platform supports localized management of the entire employee life cycle from recruiting to employee basic information, tracking of employee absence, and providing reports to all users while remaining compliant with all regional labor and data privacy laws.
Personio's pricing structure is a custom solution based upon selected modules and the total number of headcount. Personio thrives by possessing a much better understanding of local works council and data protection laws within the European Union than traditional solutions created for the United States marketplace.
According to customer benchmarks generated by a recent study, organizations can expect an overall decrease in time spent performing general HR processes by 34%, as well as a decrease in hiring time of 27%, which results in an overall average of 15% efficiency-based savings via direct cost savings.
Customer Kiron reported a 25%-30% decrease in administrative time, and companies in Europe must legally comply with their local data residency and compliance requirements as part of operating their business in that region. Therefore, Personio designs its database architectures based on these specific regional requirements.
6. Gusto
Gusto is a payroll-first platform catering specifically to U.S.-based small businesses. It streamlines the administration of benefits, the standardization of hiring, and the payment to basic contractors into a simple and easy-to-use interface.
Gusto has very transparent pricing. Standard plans begin at a base fee of $40 per month, plus $6 per user per month. Buyers should verify their state's contribution limits before purchasing.
Gusto helps eliminate the use of manual paperwork for smaller teams. Starkel Nutrition reduced their annual health insurance administrative time by more than 94%, dropping from nearly 45-minute administrative times per month to only 20 total minutes for the entire year, while Rise Marketing grew their customer base by 125% while efficiently processing payroll for both their U.S.-based employees and international contractors.
While Gusto is not intended for use by complex multinational companies, it has been built to handle the easiest of payroll processes for small businesses operating within a single country.
7. BambooHR
BambooHR can be considered a general record-keeping tool for both small and mid-sized businesses. It takes the place of a basic spreadsheet by automating workflows for time off, performance reviews, and applicant tracking.
BambooHR has different levels of pricing. The Core plan costs $10, the Pro plan costs $17, and the Elite plan costs $25 per employee per month. In addition to these monthly fees, there is a $250 monthly flat rate for teams of 25 or fewer employees.
Therefore, the base cost for a large number of employees (greater than 25) would be substantially less than it would be if they have only five employees or ten employees, making this system particularly expensive for teams with five employees or ten employees.
Although the results of the research did not include any specific numerical metrics for BambooHR's customer base, due to the heavy simple interface, BambooHR has a very large user base, making their platform an excellent tool for many organizations currently using email chains and paper files. Pricing for the service should be monitored closely due to the drastic price difference between plans.
8. ADP
ADP has been in business for a long time and is one of the most trusted names in the payroll execution market, which has allowed ADP to create a very comprehensive payroll platform for mid-sized companies.
The company has made it its priority to provide tax compliance, benefits, and strict reporting through its Workforce Now platform.
Due to the nature of the payroll processing and complexity of the payroll processing and high level of compliance that companies have and must follow, the pricing of ADP's Workforce Now will be unique based on the nature and complexity of a company's payroll processes and the business operations that occur during each payroll process of a company.
Many companies choose ADP for their HR SaaS software services because many companies cannot take the risk of having any errors in tax calculations and/or compliance reporting.
9. Oracle Cloud
Oracle Cloud provides best-in-class enterprise-level global human resources logic. For companies with tens of thousands of employees, extreme database complexity and heavy analytics are handled through recruitment at high volume.
Pricing is tailored and based upon an enterprise contract for long-term use. Deploying Oracle requires significant organizational change and dedicated external IT support staff.
Oracle provides rigorous processes. Glens Falls Hospital achieved 95% training compliance and estimated a 5-year cost savings of $262,000. Sofigate reduced new hire registration time by 90%.
Stolt-Nielsen experienced a 50% decrease in average processing time and an 80% decrease in reliance upon external IT support. Oracle develops technology solutions for companies where data mass is a fundamental challenging operational issue.
10. SAP SuccessFactors
SAP SuccessFactors is designed for organizations undergoing large-scale international HR transformations. It has an emphasis on in-depth talent management, complex learning paths, and global employee experience metrics.
SAP, Oracle, and Workday require customized enterprise pricing and a significant deployment strategy. SAP is also incorporating into the broader SAP financial planning and resource planning solutions.
SAP SuccessFactors' success has a broader financial impact on company revenues. Purolator increased employee engagement levels from 71% today to 78% by September of this year, increased survey response rates from 37% to 80%, and has saved over 21 million Canadian dollars in revenue through its focus on improving the entire workforce. SAP doesn't simply store employee data; it forces organizations to completely rethink the manner in which they evaluate human performance.
What to Look For When Moving to a New System
Most organizations make a mistake in how they define their search for a new system: the mistake is in the way they define visual design versus data architecture. The most important factors to consider when making your decision to migrate are structural. You must be certain to evaluate how the software handles money, any local laws, and long-term costs.
A vendor may provide a solution that functions well in one country (U.S.) and provide a full failure in another country (Germany) due to the differences with regards to data storage laws or limitations on how they can process payroll.
Understanding Global Payments
We need to have a clear understanding of how a vendor will actually process payments across borders. Most vendors indicate that they offer global coverage, but it is common that buyers do not fully understand how to execute a payment and will not be able to execute a contract with that vendor if they do not have a good understanding of the various payment mechanisms available.
There are three common ways that vendors will process payments for buyers:
Native Processing: The vendor's software provider will calculate and process local taxes and payments for the buyer directly through their own legal entities in the target market.
Employer of Record: The vendor will be the legal employer for all employees of the buyer and handle everything related to tax compliance and liability for the buyer.
Partner Integration: The main vendor will transfer a flat data file to a separate regional third-party processor that will process the final local payment.
Total Costs and Workflow Structure
Total cost for all employees at a buyer's headcount is another area that often catches buyers off guard. The advertised per-user pricing does not usually represent the total amount that the buyer will actually pay to execute a contract.
Buyers should conduct their calculations based on minimum monthly fees, hidden module fees, and costs for any third-party vendors that will be required. For example, a software tool that has an $8.00 per user price tag could also require a $50,000 implementation project in order to connect to the buyer's existing financial systems.
Finally, it is important for buyers to evaluate the vendor's workflow data architecture. Is it possible for one employee record to trigger multiple actions?
If a manager clicks the "hire" button, does it automatically generate an employment contract, notify IT to send a laptop, create a payroll profile, and create an onboarding meeting for that employee? If a vendor requires a human being to copy and paste information between any of these steps, it is not automating anything.
The Reality of Deploying New Systems
The complexity of deploying a new human resources information system (HRIS) and how to fill gaps in your company's existing operations is addressed by vendor website content and other materials. However, neither of these sources will describe that when transferring data from either a spreadsheet or a legacy system to the new HRIS, you will have to go through months of painstakingly cleaning (formatting) all the data to ensure that the new HRIS will function correctly.
It is possible to deploy that new HRIS by running payroll in both the legacy and new systems in parallel for at least two cycles (payrolls) to confirm that the payroll data matches exactly in both systems. If there is any difference in how they calculate a tax percentage (for example), even a minor difference in calculation will cause you to stop the deployment until this situation is corrected.
Many vendors promote their HRIS products as having the ability to seamlessly integrate with other software vendors' products, such as Microsoft, Slack, and/or QuickBooks, but this is not always the case.
Often, these vendors simply have a mechanism that enables you to send a simple text alert (to your Slack channel, for example) from your HRIS product, but may not be able to sync complex and detailed payroll information with your accounting application (QuickBooks, for example) or other retail applications. Make sure to test this capability during the evaluation process.
Protecting Your Employee Data
Lastly, when considering your options, you should ask yourself about what will happen to your employee data once your contract is terminated. You want to ensure that the history of employee data is easily transferable (exportable) from your HRIS product.
You should avoid using HRIS products that have a complex process for exporting historical audit logs (e.g., the last five years of payroll tax reports). A quality product should provide you with an easy, instant method for exporting your employee data.
New Trends in HR Platforms
As a result of recent developments in HRIS technology, many human resources tools are no longer sold as independent systems, but will instead combine human resources functionality with the functionality of IT departments. The data available indicates a strong integration between HR, finance, and IT platforms.
In essence, employee data represents the actual data that businesses rely upon. Therefore, as employees change roles or relocate to different countries, these changes have an immediate impact on their system access, spending limits, and tax status.
The Role of Artificial Intelligence
AI is now evolving from being a stand-alone feature to an embedded component of the business. Essentially, machine learning can now be used to scan resumes, infer employee skill sets, and notify managers of potential compliance risks before laws are actually broken.
Unfortunately, regardless of how powerful and advanced AI applications become, the accuracy of AI is directly related to the accuracy of the data being processed through the system. Therefore, if a company operates with poor quality data, that company will simply increase the rate of error associated with their automated processes.
Why Companies Are Combining Software
The final major trend in our quantitative workforce architecture is consolidation. As companies tire of managing ten separate software subscriptions to manage an employee lifecycle, consolidating into a single unified system can greatly reduce costs, as demonstrated by the customer metrics from Rippling and Workday.
However, consolidation carries a risk, as there must be evidence that the quality of the platform being consolidated meets the expectations and needs of all the specialized tools being eliminated.
Final Thoughts on Choosing the Right Software
The evidence from the quantitative workforce architecture confirms that choosing the right company software platform is primarily an exercise in matching the company's architectural complexity with its operational reality. Transitioning to a unified system will provide verified reductions in processing time (>34%) and a significant decrease in the administrative burden associated with maintaining multiple HR SaaS software subscriptions to manage an employee lifecycle.
The most advantageous system for a business varies based on the company's workforce model (e.g., a payroll-first US company would benefit most from Gusto; a remote global team would benefit most from Deel; and a heavy manufacturing company would need a system designed for strict exception processing, like UKG Pro).
Therefore, companies should not purchase systems based solely on generic feature lists, but audit their internal audit logic, identify the workflow events that trigger activities, and require vendors to demonstrate their ability to execute the complexities of multi-country compliance and IT provisions prior to signing a long-term contract.
