I don't think we evaluated other solutions before going with Workday. 

We considered all the top leading HCM solutions, such as SuccessFactors, Oracle HCM, and UltiPro. It was a $5 million to $10 million investment for us.

Our clients like to look at some of the bigger names like PeopleSoft, Ceridian's Dayforce, and maybe a few other major competing products. Workday beats them all. In my opinion, they are leaps and bounds above the competition. Part of the reason is that it is built with modern technology. It has no legacy coding in it at all.

I looked at a lot of different options. There are 850 different HRS EOP platforms in the United States right now. It took me two years to narrow it down to 150, and then from there really looked at 15. I presented those to the executive board and we further narrowed it down to six.

It was a long list of vendors, and we had taken demos from all. It was like a four-month journey for us before we arrived at a conclusion. As compared to other solutions, Workday is on the costlier side. It is costlier than what is being offered for similar products from Oracle and other vendors, but from the stability perspective, it has got good credibility. What we saw from the demo matched what we were looking for.

We looked at SAP SuccessFactors and in terms of the functional checklists, they're very similar. So if you've got a company and if you look at the functional requirements list or business requirements list, generally they will both meet the requirements of their customer. Workday definitely has the edge in terms of the user experience side of things. If you want to be a bit more flexible in terms of your customizations, then success factors are definitely more flexible and there are a lot more opportunities to customize your requirements, but that's not always a good thing. I would say that, in terms of collaboration with other customers' work, they've probably got the edge on that. SAP's success factors isn't quite as good with a full team, although they are good from the reporting side of it. So I think it really depends on each customer or each client's needs. It depends on what your requirements are and what you're looking for in terms of maintenance going forward, and in having a simple a fit. 

With Workday you know there's one source of data that works and you literally have one pocket of data that you can pull from, and that makes reporting a lot easier. The user experience is better because of this one source of data. 

But Workday is very expensive. So the question I always ask, is if there is really that much more that you're getting from Workday based on how much you're spending.  

We did not have other options, as it is a group decision. If I had an option, I would choose PeopleSoft, because HCM and payroll could be in one system.

I actually preferred SAP HCM. Comparatively, I felt that SAP HCM is more comprehensive, cost competitive, and the salary and payroll in the country is available. It has more in-depth functions that you can actually use, including doing a hot query in SAP. You can even use the data within the system to turn up a report easily without having to depend on a technical consultant to do the customization for you.

Other cloud apps like Salesforce, Fusion, etc., but nothing stood a chance against this product.

I have used SAP HCM and Oracle Taleo.