Gartner Reprint

12/12/23, 2:15 AM Gartner Reprint
Licensed for Distribution
Magic Quadrant for Cloud HCM Suites for 1,000+

Employee Enterprises
18 October 2023 - ID G00781594 - 51 min read
By Ranadip Chandra, Sam Grinter, and 10 more
The market for cloud HCM suites is responding to HR leaders’ need to focus on delivering
business outcomes while keeping a close watch on innovation catalysts such as generative
AI. This research helps HR technology leaders in enterprises with more than 1,000 employees
identify suitable vendors.
Strategic Planning Assumption

By 2026, 75% of global midsize and large enterprises will have invested in a cloud-deployed
human capital management (HCM) suite for administrative HR and talent management, but will
still need to use other solutions for 20% to 30% of their HR requirements.
Market Definition/Description
Gartner defines cloud HCM suites for 1,000+ employee enterprises as cloud application suites
that deliver functionality for attracting, developing, engaging, retaining and managing workers.
The core functional capabilities of cloud HCM suites for enterprises with more than 1,000
employees include:
Administrative HR — Employee data, organization structure, employment life cycle transaction,

role-based self-service, payroll and benefits administration. It may also include absence
management, health and safety administration and other value-added capabilities.
Talent management — Recruiting, onboarding, performance management, compensation

planning, career and succession planning, and learning and skills development.
Integrated HR service management (IHRSM) — Personalized direct access to policy, procedure

and program guidance for employees and managers. It may also include integrated case
management, knowledge bases, digital document management, virtual assistants and
workflow management.
The optional functional capabilities for this market include:
https://www.gartner.com/doc/reprints?id=1-2FCTK5NT&ct=231018&st=sb 1/29
Workforce management (WFM) — Time and attendance administration and workforce

scheduling. It may also include task and activity tracking, budgeting and forecasting, fatigue
management, and capabilities supporting the experience of frontline workers.
Employee experience (EX) and engagement management — Includes functions designed to

support the experience of employees, including voice of the employee (VoE), employee well-
being, employee campaigns, and recognition and rewards.
Cross-functional enabling capabilities — These capabilities (which are often emerging) use
data from and interact with the above capabilities, and they are increasingly embedded in HCM
suites. They include talent analytics, workforce planning and internal talent marketplace
capabilities.
This market continues to mature and attract investment. Since the last iteration of this research,
vendors have responded to customer demands by delivering improvements in the following areas:
Diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) dashboards now include more granular visibility into less-
obvious diversity groups and new measures that are coming to the fore, such as the attrition
effect of having an inclusion index.
API-driven headless integrations have primarily replaced the complex middleware or SFTP
integration channels, enabling real-time integration and streamlined data exchange.
Vendors that are founded on ERP architecture have moved their hosting infrastructure to
hyperscaler clouds that offer a wider choice of data residences.
Vendors that target organizations with a large hourly workforce have enhanced the frontline
worker experience, partially eliminating the need to invest in a separate application(s) beside
cloud HCM suite.
Yet, some improvements are progressing more slowly than the pace of customer expectations:
Native localizations for payroll are being developed at a very slow pace, limiting the options for
integrated core HR and payroll operations for large global organizations. A few vendors further
delayed the deadlines for payroll localization releases that were promised for 2023.
Extensibility of the platforms through PaaS remains emergent, and the process of extension
remains cumbersome and heavily dependent on systems integrators. Cloud HCM suites are
much behind their other enterprise application counterparts in terms of low-code platform
accessibility for citizen developers.
HR technology leaders also recognize the importance of a vendor’s ability to blend AI capabilities
across the breadth of the HCM suite. The continuing shift toward applying AI use cases is based
on the gains observed in functions such as skills management, talent analytics and HR service
management.
There is significant hype around generative AI and its applicability in cloud HCM suites. While
transformation is theoretically possible, roadmap execution is currently in a nascent state. In the
past, AI has certainly enriched HR technology but has also shown the importance of ethical
guidelines to harness its power. Gartner predicts that generative AI will augment cloud HCM
suites to improve the user experience, but the tangible impact will only be realized in the mid to
long term. Current experiments in summarizing conversations or generating simple HR
documents will result in minimal efficiency and employee experience gains over the short term.
As observed in past HCM-centric innovations, some generative AI use cases may first be
developed in agile point solutions before being adopted into suites.
We expect that this market will have limited new entrants over the next few years due to the high
barriers to entry and the number of entrenched competitors. Market consolidation will continue
with increasing merger and acquisition (M&A) activities. Acquisitions may come in the form of
niche vendors combining to achieve scale, ERP or business application vendors looking to enter
the space, and close partnership among HCM and payroll vendors.
Recent M&A activity in this space includes:
UKG signs an agreement to acquire multicountry payroll solution Immedis.
UKG also completed the acquisition of Quorbit, aiming to enhance its workforce planning
capability.
Cornerstone completed the acquisition of SumTotal, a learning, talent and WFM provider.
Oracle completed the acquisition of Cerner, integrating Cerner’s healthcare-oriented capabilities

into Oracle’s workforce scheduling.
As Gartner projects ahead three years, we expect over 10 mainstream vendors to likely remain, yet
we anticipate a growing distinction between the top five or six vendors from the rest of the
market.
Magic Quadrant
Figure 1: Magic Quadrant for Cloud HCM Suites for 1,000+
Employee Enterprises
Source: Gartner (October 2023)
Vendor Strengths and Cautions
ADP
ADP is a Challenger in this Magic Quadrant.
ADP Workforce Now targets organizations based in North America with a workforce of less than
2,500 employees that are looking for a configurable, comparatively lower total cost of ownership
(TCO) integrated HCM suite with strong WFM and payroll compliance. ADP has over 80,000
clients on ADP Workforce Now. The product is sold only in the U.S. and Canada, and 98% of clients
have fewer than 1,000 employees. Approximately 1,800 clients have between 1,000 and 2,500
employees.
In 2023, the vendor registered significant customer acquisition (over 300 organizations with more
than 1,000 employees) and focused on its product strategy to close previous functional gaps.
Highlights include the release of succession planning, HR case management support for
employees and practitioners, and development of learning plans and recommendations in the
learning management system (LMS) module.
Strengths
Payroll: ADP has progressed further than many other vendors in this research to realize synergy
in its payroll engine and processing services across payroll, taxes and regulations.
Enhancements such as ADP Pay Anytime to enable flexible earned wage access (FEWA) and
ADP Wisely paycard to support bankless payments are compliant with federal guidelines. ADP
Workforce Now includes reports to highlight metrics such as workforce cost summary and pay
distribution that can be configured to run in a range of different cadences.
Analytics: ADP has comprehensive reporting and analytics capabilities that present insights
with specific action recommendations tied to key insights in a simple format. Trademarked as
Storyboards, ADP Workforce Now analytics processes HR and manager queries in natural
language formats.
Alliances: ADP has an extensive partner network that shares technology and solutions in a
bidirectional format with ADP. ADP Marketplace has many prominent names in the HR
technology industry whose solutions are accessible to ADP customers through standard
agreements.
Cautions
Geographic coverage: ADP Workforce Now is sold exclusively in the U.S. and Canada.
Organizations with operations outside these areas can use ADP Workforce Now as an
employee system of record and to support talent management processes. However, for
functions such as payroll and absence management, additional products are required to deliver
compliance and necessary localization.
Limited talent management: ADP’s evaluations in talent management modules are low
compared to the competition’s. Low evaluations in performance management and onboarding
offset some of the gains in payroll and WFM in the product category aggregate. The vendor’s
evaluation in recruitment is low due to limited key elements such as recruitment marketing,
multiple candidate selection workflows and mobile application support for hiring teams.
Workforce planning and career planning: ADP Workforce Now does not currently support the
functions of workforce planning or career planning (although workforce planning is scheduled
for a late-2023 release).
Cegid
Cegid is a Niche Player in this Magic Quadrant.
Cegid HCM is best suited for organizations headquartered in Europe seeking an integrated HCM
suite with localized payroll support for France, DACH, the Nordics and Benelux. The vendor has
around 1,400 live HCM suite customers with a strong base in the public sector/semigovernment
and retail segments.
Cegid has made several acquisitions in the recent past, including Meta4, Talentsoft, VisualTime,
Grupo Primavera and DigitalRecruiters. The last two were the most recent acquisitions, completed
in 2022. Cegid HCM is sold to organizations with 1,000-plus employees, with a specific focus on
the 5,000 to 20,000 segment, although it does support larger clients (especially in the French
market). Cegid HCM is primarily sold in Western Europe, predominantly as part of its broader ERP
suite.
In 2023, Cegid focused on maintaining its European midmarket customer base and upgraded its
reporting platform through a partnership with Qlik Sense. Additional enhancements were added to
comply with GDPR and data residency support.
Strengths
Learning management: Learning is Cegid HCM’s strongest function, as evaluated by Gartner
during this research. High points include a robust learning content management system
(LCMS) and an integrated web conferencing platform for virtual learning that includes
whiteboards, chat and document sharing. The connection between the learning, performance,
succession and career planning functions is beneficial.
Performance management: Following the Talentsoft acquisition in 2021, Cegid has integrated
Talentsoft’s flexible performance management capabilities, including features that support
continuous performance appraisals, goal cascading, reporting, and objectives and key results in
the unified HCM suite.
Succession management and career planning: Cegid HCM supports skills and experience
analysis to help determine suitable successors for key roles and skills. It also offers an internal
mobility feature as part of career planning and talent development.
Cautions
Market responsiveness and product strategy: Several of Cegid’s product modules — including
talent acquisition, onboarding and employee experience — were evaluated low compared to the
other vendors for lacking the latest market-driven features. These capabilities are fast-evolving,
and Cegid risks falling further behind the benchmark if the stagnation continues. Cegid also
had limited market momentum based on our customer inquiry volume data.
Technology and UX: Cegid HCM is the combination of Talentsoft and Meta4 PeopleNet
solutions. While it is initially presented as a single UX, a deeper view of the product shows
some non-Cegid HCM screens, such as Talentsoft for talent management functions and
VisualTime for WFM, thus creating an inconsistent end-user experience.
Customer experience: Gartner Peer Insights evaluations of Cegid HCM customer experience
are below average compared to other vendors in this research. Furthermore, customers will
experience changes to the look and feel of the products as Cegid works to unify its product
offering. However, longer-term changes may result in improved customer experience.
Ceridian
Ceridian is a Leader in this Magic Quadrant.
Ceridian is a global HCM solution and payroll services vendor, with annual revenue of
approximately $1.25 billion. Ceridian’s Dayforce suite has over 6,200 customers, with 95% of the
existing Dayforce customer base headquartered in North America. However, over 45% of new
Dayforce customer count added in 2022 is outside of North America, reflecting the vendor’s
growth in Asia/Pacific and Western Europe.
In 2023, Ceridian added payroll localization for Germany, Mexico and Singapore, and launched two
new features — a reporting platform called Operational Data Store (ODS) and a career pathing and
skills development platform called Dayforce Career Explorer. The vendor has also integrated AI
capabilities from the acquisition of Ideal in 2021.
Note: After the evaluation period for this Magic Quadrant closed, Ceridian announced that it was
rebranding to Dayforce, effective January 2024. This analysis reflects the company name at the
time of evaluation.
Strengths
Payroll and benefits administration: Ceridian is evaluated among the highest for payroll and
benefits administration. Notable enhancements include sophisticated scenario planning and
forecasting that handle questions like, “What will be the labor cost to be open an hour longer or
to be open on a holiday?” and automated election rules for 401(k). Dayforce Wallet (Ceridian’s
FEWA solution) is now available in the U.K.
WFM: Ceridian has further enhanced its already strong WFM offering by introducing a rate
calculation engine that helps resolve complex, industry-specific compliance requirements.
Additionally, Ceridian has opened the Dayforce platform to enable partners to add customer-
specific schedules and compliance rules to the central repository. The vendor released a
telecommuter option targeted to hybrid workers to ensure wage and taxation calculation
accuracy.
Market understanding: Ceridian received the highest vendor rating for this criterion. Proof
points include Ceridian’s success in selling to increasingly large and global organizations, and
responding to market drivers such as skills management and generative AI in its features
roadmap.
Cautions
Workforce planning: Ceridian Dayforce’s native workforce planning capabilities are limited and
insufficient for handling complex headcount budgeting for large organizations. Ceridian
partners with Accenture to deliver this functionality.
IHRSM and employee experience: Ceridian Dayforce still lacks a comprehensive HR service
management functionality, missing key differentiators such as EXTech journey workflows that
are now a mainstream offering by other Leaders. It has rolled out enhancements through
inclusion surveys, but the functionality does not currently offer recommendations to managers
to take corrective action based on the results. Despite some incremental gains from last year,
Ceridian’s overall employee experience capabilities still lag when compared to other Leaders’.
Learning: Ceridian Dayforce Learning has not received much product development attention
over the past year, and currently remains evaluated lower than other Magic Quadrant
competitors’ learning products. Ceridian Dayforce partners with Docebo for extended
capabilities.
Cornerstone
Cornerstone is a Niche Player in this Magic Quadrant.
Cornerstone is a global HR technology vendor, with annual revenue of over $1.025 billion.
Cornerstone has a history of learning and talent management technology development, and
designed its core HR functionality to complement its posthire talent management capabilities.
Cornerstone’s HCM was initially developed with midsize multinational European customers in
mind, but it is increasingly being sold in the U.S. and Asia. The majority of sales are to
organizations that have between 1,000 and 5,000 employees, although Cornerstone’s HCM also
has clients with 5,000-plus employees.
In 2023, Cornerstone launched an internal talent marketplace that leverages AI-based skills
management, and productized VoE data collected from over 7,000 customers as an employee
engagement benchmark. The vendor also integrated a ChatGPT-based virtual assistant in its
recruitment and position data modules to generate job requisitions and position descriptions.
Strengths
Learning: Cornerstone offers a market-leading learning platform. The user experience of its
learning function incorporates a personalized guided path based on AI-enabled
recommendation engines. Following its EdCast acquisition in 2022, Cornerstone has integrated
EdCast’s content studio and other capabilities into the broader HCM suite.
Performance management: Gartner finds that Cornerstone’s HCM delivers comprehensive

performance management functionality; high points include enabling employees to seek
feedback on specific skills, linking performance with compensations and aiding succession
planning.
Career planning: Cornerstone’s HCM supports robust career planning. This is also integrated
with its learning platform and the talent marketplace; employees can opt for learning courses
based on skills gaps or career-development opportunities.
Cautions
Payroll, benefits and WFM: Cornerstone’s HCM doesn’t offer native payroll, benefits
administration or WFM functionality. Cornerstone’s approach is to leave these functions to the
customer’s discretion, which ostensibly offers flexibility at the expense of convenience and
tight integrations.
IHRSM: Cornerstone’s HCM offers some limited workflow creation and management; however,
it primarily relies on its partner ServiceNow to deliver full IHRSM functionality.
Marketing execution: Cornerstone primarily focuses on marketing and selling learning and
wider talent management functions. The core HR function continues to be a lower product
investment priority, which inhibits its appeal and potential success in the cloud HCM suite
market, where core HR is the functional foundation. Marketing execution is further complicated
by possessing a portfolio of multiple acquired products.
Darwinbox
Darwinbox is a Niche Player in this Magic Quadrant.
Darwinbox is an HR technology provider headquartered in India that was established in 2014, and
has approximately 900 customers. Its solution was initially developed to serve customers in India
and Southeast Asia, but it continues to gain wider geographical and local adoption. Half of its
clients have between 1,000 and 5,000 employees; 20% are 5,000-plus-employee organizations.
Darwinbox is best suited for mid- to large-size organizations that primarily operate in Asia and
seek an HCM suite with regional contextualized TCO.
In 2023, Darwinbox secured a round of funding from Microsoft, enhanced the extensibility of the
platform and launched workforce planning capabilities. Besides developing a ChatGPT-based
assistant in HR service management, the vendor has built a proprietary large language model
(LLM) called PROSE (People Relational and Organizational Semantic Engine). It has also piloted
some use cases in career planning, candidate matching and talent marketplace.
Strengths
Product strategy: Darwinbox is becoming a high-performing midsize vendor. It received a higher
evaluation for almost all product modules compared to last year, because the product
development strategy aligns with the market direction.
Recruitment: Darwinbox has strong CRM and ATS capabilities that include targeted candidate
messaging, managing recruitment campaigns and multichannel communication. Its roadmap
to apply generative AI goes beyond creating simple job descriptions to include suggestions for
bias mitigation, key-skills highlights in candidate profiles and a dedicated virtual assistant for
hiring managers.
Onboarding: Darwinbox has built a comprehensive onboarding module that incorporates

specific workflows, personalized learning paths and targeted messaging for new hires.
Additionally, the tool provides a dashboard for specialists who are handling high onboarding
volumes, allowing them to track progress and send nudges.
Cautions
Learning: Darwinbox offers LMS and LXP through its partner network. Because learning is
delivered via partners, the lack of a native feature represents a potential weakness, as the
vendor has limited control over the product roadmap and business direction of its partners.
Payroll: Darwinbox payroll is currently localized only for India and depends on partners for
additional localizations. This limits the vendor’s ability to support integrated HCM operations in
multicountry organizations.
Geographic strategy: Darwinbox’s geographic strategy remains largely focused on Asia/Pacific.
However, the vendor is expanding its geographic footprint in regions like North America and
Europe through alliance network partners.
Infor
Infor is a Niche Player in this Magic Quadrant.
Infor is a large, global technology provider that offers Infor HCM, as well as other ERP products for
finance, field service, sales, asset management and supply chain management. Infor HCM has an
estimated 1,250 customers and is aimed at large enterprises. Over 94% of its customers have
more than 1,000 employees, and 30% have more than 10,000 employees. Infor has been owned by
Koch Industries since 2020.
Infor product capabilities are best aligned with organizations in asset-intensive industries that
need dynamic workforce scheduling and deep integration between WFM and asset management,
logistics network or manufacturing execution systems. Thirty-two percent of Infor’s customer
base belongs to healthcare and social assistance, and 24% belongs to manufacturing. These are
the highest customer-base percentage splits for said industries among all participating vendors in
this research.
In 2023, Infor added capabilities in career planning, a low-code/no-code platform for reporting and
enhancements to its UX.
Strengths
WFM: Infor offers robust WFM functionality, and contextualized features and configuration for
retail and healthcare customers. High points of the WFM module include a shift-swapping and
board feature called Shift Billboard, and a scheduling view of departments that facilitates staff
movement during peak and slow demand times.
Vertical strategy: Infor is the highest-performing vendor in this evaluation for vertical strategy. It
is heavily focused on the healthcare sector and also supports industry requirements for the
retail, manufacturing and public sectors. The suite integrates with the electronic health record
system (EHRS) of healthcare organizations and leverages customer acuity data to schedule
work assignments with health attendants that provide better continuity of care.
Geographical expansion: In the past two years, Infor has grown its customer base in the Middle
East and North Africa (MENA) and the U.K. The vendor has also added payroll localizations for
the UAE and Qatar.
Cautions
Employee experience: Infor HCM offers some functionality to support employee experience,
such as enabling employee surveys and pay equity insights. However, relative to its peers, Infor
underperforms in this capability — lacking advanced VoE capability and employee resource
groups curation.
Talent analytics: Infor offers relatively limited capabilities for talent analytics and planning.
While Infor does offer Talent Science to predict and categorize employee behavior preferences,
this capability now lags behind many of its HCM suite competitors.
Product module maturity: Infor HCM has a narrow product development strategy, with a focus
on industry-specific HR administration and WFM-driven use cases. Other modules receive
sporadic attention and remain at varying degrees of maturity. Recruitment, workforce planning
and performance management are evaluated lower compared to the previous year.
Oracle
Oracle is a Leader in this Magic Quadrant.
Oracle is a global technology provider with annual revenue of approximately $50 billion. It offers
Oracle Fusion Cloud HCM (Oracle Cloud HCM) as a unified part of the Oracle Fusion Cloud
Applications suite that includes customer experience, enterprise performance management,
finance, sales, services, and supply chain and manufacturing management. Gartner estimates that
Oracle Cloud HCM has over 3,850 customers; it is sold to midsize and large enterprises
worldwide. The majority of customers have more than 1,000 employees, although the full range
spans from under 500 employees to above 750,000.
In 2023, Oracle focused on product enhancement with new releases in the areas of frontline
workforce scheduling, skills management and career planning. It also experimented with
generative AI use cases in HR.
Strengths
Prehire talent management: Oracle received the highest ratings for both recruitment and
onboarding. Oracle HCM recruitment is further enhanced by an advanced digital assistant that
helps in job discovery for a candidate, a skills library to create a new requisition and the ability
to support different recruitment types (high volume vs. niche). Preboarding and onboarding are
offered through personalized workflow journeys with an advanced dashboard for specialists.
Employee experience: Oracle Cloud HCM is a high performer in support of employee

experience. Oracle ME (the employee experience platform) is augmented with its recent launch
of Oracle Grow, a centralized platform combining learning, internal talent marketplace and
mobility.
Innovation around AI: Oracle received the highest ratings in innovation among all vendors in
this research. Oracle has augmented AI capabilities in the flow of work to ensure higher
adoption of the use cases. Examples include AI-based skills management supporting internal
mobility and AI-based nudges to assign journeys based on employee work-life events. Planned
development leveraging generative AI techniques includes job requisition creation, and skill
recommendation advice that takes into account the context of the request (such as the role and
career goals of the requester) rather than relying on keywords.
Cautions
Payroll localizations: Oracle Cloud HCM payroll is localized for 12 countries and has France in
the roadmap for 2024. Oracle payroll is suitable for large organizations that have an appropriate
team of internal resources to manage the complexity. Oracle’s current number of payroll
localizations is fewer than two of the other Leaders’.
Vertical strategy: Following its Cerner acquisition in June 2022, Oracle has strengthened its
vertical strategy with more focused sales alignment, notably in healthcare. But Oracle needs a
deeper product strategy aligned to specific verticals besides healthcare to outdistance the
competition.
Workforce scheduling: Oracle has responded to the previously existing shortcoming of

scheduling by building an integrated capability in this area. While Oracle has shortened the gap
with other Leaders, it needs to prove its commitment to enhanced breadth and depth beyond
healthcare.
SAP
SAP is a Leader in this Magic Quadrant.
SAP is a global provider of business software with annual revenue of approximately $28.5 billion.
It offers the SAP SuccessFactors HXM Suite alongside SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Ariba, Customer
Experience (SAP CX) and Fieldglass, which support functions such as finance, services, sourcing
and procurement, supply chain, and manufacturing management. Gartner estimates that SAP
SuccessFactors has over 11,000 customers, and the SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central
solution has more than 6,000 customers.
In 2023, SAP SuccessFactors focused on product enhancements and closed some of its previous
functional gaps. New product features include dynamic teams that aim to recognize
achievements of nontraditional reporting structures; SAP SuccessFactors People Analytics that
aggregates employee data from external sources; and SAP SuccessFactors Talent Intelligence
Hub, a centralized platform that maintains skill libraries. SAP will also continue to partner with
Microsoft to build generative AI applications in HR. SAP Analytics Cloud will provide workforce
planning capabilities in the future, succeeding the current inbuilt SAP SuccessFactors workforce
planning.
Strengths
Product development: SAP received higher evaluations for its product components compared
to last year. The breakthrough is the result of improvements in SAP Work Zone workflows, SAP
Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) integrations and the launch of an internal talent
marketplace. The category gain has brought SAP vertically closer to its main competitors in the
Leaders quadrant.
Alliances: SAP SuccessFactors HXM Suite has cultivated a strong network of over 500 partners
that work to deliver enhanced value to the overall product proposition from SAP. SAP
SuccessFactors has more than 300 apps developed by third parties. SAP has strategic
partnerships with WorkForce Software (for WFM) and Benefitfocus (for U.S. benefits
administration).
Geographic coverage: SuccessFactors is localized for core HR in 104 countries, and SAP
actively monitors compliance changes via a network of HR and legal experts. Its
SuccessFactors Employee Central Payroll solution also has the most localizations (49) of
vendors featured in this research.
Cautions
Customer transition from on-premises: With the inclusion of H4S4 (SAP S/4HANA for HCM on-
premises), along with existing SAP S/4HANA Private Cloud Edition (PCE), SAP now has a
diverse HCM suite portfolio. SAP on-premises customers may find it difficult to arrive at a
decision on the way forward. Customers will need to assess carefully how much support is
provided by SAP for their transition with SAP’s complex set of acquired and developed
products.
Payroll modernization: SAP’s SuccessFactors Employee Central Payroll has comprehensive

functionality and a high number of localizations. However, the product lacks next-generation
payroll capabilities. Clients with specific requirements such as FEWA should validate that the
functionality is sufficient to meet their needs.
Analytics: Based on Gartner customer inquiries, SAP Analytics Cloud has lower adoption
compared to other Leaders. While the tool could be powerful, the feedback suggests that it is
less intuitive to use and more challenging to implement compared to market standards.
UKG
UKG is a Leader in this Magic Quadrant.
UKG is a global vendor of HCM technology, with annual revenue of approximately $3.9 billion. UKG
Pro targets mid- to large-size organizations that are headquartered in North America (the U.S. or
Canada), and has over 8,250 customers. Over 40% of UKG Pro customers are large enterprises
with over 1,000 employees. The vendor has a bifurcated strategy where it markets UKG Pro for
customers with 500 employees and above, and UKG Ready for the small and midsize business
(SMB) segment.
In 2023, UKG released UKG Pro Career Designer, which utilizes skill ontology graphs to
recommend potential career paths. It also enhanced its Great Place To Work Hub to include
insights to help build an inclusive culture, and launched capabilities for strategic workforce
planning specifically for the frontline workforce. UKG plans to extend its global footprint
significantly in the next three years, with proposals to establish in-country support beyond North
America. Its innovation roadmap includes establishing UKG FleX as a platform based on
generative AI for enhancing the employee experience. These product enhancements and planned
developments remove the caution on innovation from last year.
Strengths
WFM: UKG is evaluated highest for its strength in the WFM category. Long-term planning and
forecasting were added to enhance its previously strong WFM component offering industry-
specific capabilities for use in complex, regulated or unionized industries such as retail,
manufacturing and healthcare. UKG Pro WFM capabilities are delivered through a separate
product called UKG Pro Workforce Management, integrated in the HCM suite.
IHRSM: Gartner found that UKG Pro was the highest-performing product for the IHRSM
function. UKG has augmented the IHRSM component with UKG Talk — a feature to create
dynamic co-worker groups and facilitate channels for targeted communication. Additionally,
IHRSM is enabled for frontline worker notifications.
Growth and execution: The vendor registered healthy year-over-year (YoY) growth of 16%, with
over 850 net new customer acquisitions and 1,200 upgrades. This growth in customers is the
highest for a vendor in the Leaders quadrant.
Cautions
Geographic coverage: UKG Pro is actively sold only to organizations operating in the U.S. and
Canada. Likewise, native payroll is only available in the U.S. and Canada. UKG Pro can be used
as a global system of record, although clients will need to engage third-party vendors to satisfy
certain areas of administrative HR and compliance. However, UKG announced the acquisition of
Immedis in June 2023, a multicountry payroll solution provider, which may alleviate this
shortcoming over time.
Vertical strategy for federal government: Although the product is aligned to key vertical
markets with specific packages for specific industries, UKG Pro is not FedRAMP certified, which
limits its ability to serve federal government sectors.
Recruitment: UKG was evaluated lower than its peers in the Leaders quadrant for recruitment.
This is a fast-evolving space, and UKG Pro is limited in its ability to offer advanced tools and
capabilities within the sourcing and hiring function — which puts it at a risk of falling further
behind.
Workday
Workday is a Leader in this Magic Quadrant.
Workday is a global technology provider with an annual revenue of $6.13 billion. It offers Workday
Human Capital Management Suite alongside other products for ERP functions such as planning,
finance, procurement and professional service automation. Workday HCM is sold to midsize and
large enterprises and has more than 4,650 customers worldwide. Gartner estimates that
approximately 71% of Workday customer organizations have more than 1,000 employees, and
roughly 9% have over 25,000.
In 2023, focus areas for investments include enhancements to skills management, the launch of
Manager Insights Hub (aiming to aid managers in the career development of employees),
enhancements to Workday Extend (an application extension builder) and improved capabilities in
frontline workforce experience.
Strengths
Employee experience: Gartner found Workday to be the best-performing vendor for this
capability. Differentiating features include the Value Inclusion Belonging and Equity (VIBE)
Index for DEI capabilities, the availability of an extensive library of prebuilt EXTech templates for
Workday Journeys, and Workday Everywhere for productivity tool integration.
Analytics: Gartner found Workday to be the highest-performing vendor for reporting, analytics
and workforce planning. Workday core reporting, Workday People Analytics and Workday
Peakon combine to provide comprehensive analytics capabilities related to skills, DEI,
organization composition and talent.
Technology and generative AI direction: The Workday technology stack — based on Workday
Extend, Workday Studio (configurability) and Workday Integration Cloud — is evaluated highly.
Planned development in the short term includes leveraging a natively built LLM to augment
skills management, generate job descriptions, produce knowledge articles and embed
generative AI capabilities in the conversational UI.
Cautions
Payroll localization development: Workday currently offers payroll localization in four countries
(the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and France), which is behind the number of localizations offered by
several competitors. Payroll for Australia is scheduled for a 4Q23 release, and Germany is in
development. Although a recently announced close partnership with Alight addresses the
payroll coverage demand in European countries (Germany, Spain, Benelux and the Nordics),
Workday’s pace of development for additional native payroll localization continues to be slow.
Sales strategy: Workday’s largest customer base remains service-based industries. The vendor
has developed WFM capabilities that keep in mind retail-specific requirements. But it could do
more to expand in product-based industries by empowering partners or creating a vertical-
specific sales strategy rather than solely depending on direct sales.
Total operating cost and value: Workday’s licensing costs tend to be higher than its
competitors’ due to a variety of advanced capabilities and add-on SKUs that need to be
purchased to attain the highest value. This makes Workday a secondary choice in TCO-driven
HCM initiatives.
Yonyou
Yonyou is a Niche Player in this Magic Quadrant.
Founded in 1988, Yonyou is one of the largest enterprise application software vendors in China.
Yonyou has a strong customer base among large local enterprises and SMBs. Additionally, the
vendor provides digital transformation for overseas enterprises entering China’s market and
Chinese enterprises going global. Yonyou offers ERP (called YonBIP) in all core business
functions, including accounting and finance, procurement, supply chain, manufacturing,
marketing, and HR.
Yonyou’s HR solution was launched in 1995, and the current product, YonBIP, is part of a unified
applications suite that also includes financial management and financial accounting. YonBIP has
more than 7,500 HCM suite customers. Eighty percent of YonBIP customers have more than 1,000
employees, and the largest of that segment (42%) is within the range of 5,000 and 25,000.
Although the largest customer share is based in China (60%), YonBIP is increasingly deployed by
organizations in MENA (8%) and mature Asia/Pacific (6%).
In 2023, Yonyou released an enhanced analytics offering, Yonyou BIP Human Numerical Analysis,
that supports organizational effectiveness analysis, talent structure analysis, talent flow analysis
and salary cost analysis, among other metrics.
Strengths
Payroll localization: Yonyou has payroll localizations for regions known for difficult data
residency compliance statutes and unscheduled legislation changes — Singapore, Vietnam and
Greater China (China, Hong Kong and Taiwan).
Analytics: Yonyou includes multiple prebuilt configurable dashboards for talent performance
analysis, talent allocation analysis and many other subtopics. One such measure is “cadre
digital intelligence analysis” that is important for organizations in China to measure an
employee’s social contribution but is generally not available in other mainstream solutions.
WFM: Yonyou is evaluated higher for WFM than the majority of other Niche Players. Yonyou’s
WFM module supports both salaried and hourly workforce with a broad range of functionalities
such as task and activity planning, long-term demand forecasting, and workforce scheduling.
The solution additionally enables custom rule configuration for the line manager persona.
Cautions
Product strategy: Yonyou is evaluated below average for some of the advanced functionalities
covered by cloud HCM suite, such as career planning and IHRSM. Support for career pathing is
a gap, and this parameter is evaluated lowest in the category compared to the competition. Its
IHRSM includes support for a set of preconfigured events but lacks a fully developed case
management solution.
Geographic strategy: Yonyou primarily concentrates on serving organizations based in China,

which is reflected in the solution’s focus being HR administration. YonBIP would find it difficult
to support organizations with a large population based outside of China that are seeking deeper
talent management functionality or appropriate data residency.
Innovation: As the vendor is focused on compliance, its innovation roadmap is behind the
benchmark set by the competition. Yonyou invests in R&D but it needs to apply innovative
methods to improve some key areas such as internal mobility, career development and AI-
based skills management in order to differentiate itself from competitors.
Vendors Added and Dropped
We review and adjust our inclusion criteria for Magic Quadrants as markets change. As a result of
these adjustments, the mix of vendors in any Magic Quadrant may change over time. A vendor's
appearance in a Magic Quadrant one year and not the next does not necessarily indicate that we
have changed our opinion of that vendor. It may be a reflection of a change in the market and,
therefore, changed evaluation criteria, or of a change of focus by that vendor.
Added
Yonyou was added because it met the qualifications listed in the inclusion criteria section of this
report.
Dropped
UKG Ready is now targeted mainly toward organizations with fewer than 1,000 employees, and
subsequently no longer meets the inclusion criteria.
Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria
To be included in this Magic Quadrant, each vendor had to:
1. Deliver core HR administrative transaction support and reporting/analytics capabilities, plus at

least three talent management functions (out of recruiting/onboarding, performance
management, career/succession management, learning, compensation and workforce
planning) or a combination of WFM and at least one talent management function.
2. Deploy their solution(s) on a cloud architecture.
3. Have at least 150 customers, each with more than 1,000 employees, that use their core HR
capabilities and at least two talent management functions in a production environment in
either a community cloud or a public cloud.
4. Actively market, sell and implement an HCM suite on a stand-alone basis, regardless of any
additional bundling with ERP suites or other applications.
5. Provide evidence of market momentum by documenting at least 50 net new deals during the
previous four fiscal quarters (31 March 2022 through 31 March 2023) — each with more than
1,000 employees — for its core HR capabilities and either two or more TM functions or one TM
function and WFM.
6. Be regularly identified by Gartner clients and prospective customers as a notable vendor in the
HCM market.
Evaluation Criteria
Ability to Execute
Product or service: Core goods and services that compete in and/or serve the defined market.
This includes current product and service capabilities, quality, feature sets, skills, etc. This can be
offered natively or through OEM agreements/partnerships as defined in the Market Definition and
detailed in the subcriteria. This includes the vendor’s capabilities in admin HR, TM, WFM and HR
service delivery (refer to the Market Definition/Description section for a detailed list of functions).
These areas are assessed for functional breadth and ease of use. How well the vendor integrates
the components is also important. Reporting and analytics receive considerable attention,
because they have been major customer concerns. The architecture, delivery models, and use of
mobile and social capabilities are also rated. The focus is on the vendor’s current functionality,
although enhancements and/or new modules on the verge of general availability are also taken
into consideration.
Overall viability (business unit, financial, strategy, organization): Viability includes an assessment
of the organization’s overall financial health, as well as the financial and practical success of the
business unit. It views the likelihood of the organization to continue to offer and invest in the
product as well as the product position in the current portfolio. Key aspects of this criterion are
the vendor’s ability to ensure the continued vitality of a product, including support for current and
future releases, and a clear roadmap for the next three years. The vendor must have the cash on
hand and consistent revenue growth during the past four quarters to fund current and future
employee burn rates, and to generate profits. The vendor is also rated on its commitment to the
specific product being evaluated, and the ability to leverage it to generate revenue and profits in
the cloud HCM suite market.
Sales execution/pricing: The organization’s capabilities in all presales activities and the structure
that supports them. This includes deal management, pricing and negotiation, presales support,
and the overall effectiveness of the sales channel. The vendor must provide multicountry regional
and/or global sales and distribution coverage that aligns with its marketing messages. It must
have specific experience and success in selling cloud HCM suite solutions to HCM buying
centers. This includes deal management, partnering, pricing and negotiations, presales support,
and the overall effectiveness of the sales channels.
Market responsiveness/record: This refers to the vendor’s ability to respond, change direction,
build alliances, be flexible and achieve competitive success as opportunities develop, competitors
act, customer needs evolve, and market dynamics change. This criterion also considers the
vendor’s history of responsiveness, as this market has developed during the past seven to 10
years.
Marketing execution: This criterion assesses the clarity, quality, creativity and efficacy of
programs designed to deliver the vendor’s message. It assesses how these have influenced the
market, promoted its brand and business, increased awareness of its products, and established a
positive identification with the vendor’s product or brand in the minds of buyers. This mind share
can be driven by a combination of publicity, promotions, thought leadership, word of mouth and
sales activities.
Customer experience: Products and services and/or programs that enable customers to achieve
anticipated results with the products evaluated. Specifically, this includes quality supplier/buyer
interactions, technical support or account support. This may also include ancillary tools, customer
support programs, availability of user groups and service-level agreements, etc. This criterion
assesses relationships, resources and programs that enable customers to be successful with the
products and services offered. It includes feedback from active customers on generally available
releases during the past 12 to 18 months. This can also include the existence and quality of such
customer resources as ancillary tools, support programs, the availability of user groups and SLAs.
Sources of feedback also include analyst-validated customer reviews from Gartner Peer Insights,
relevant to the audience and criteria for this research. Additional data sources include Gartner
inquiries and other customer-facing interactions taking place at Gartner and industry conferences.
Operations: The ability of the organization to meet goals and commitments. Factors include
quality of the organizational structure, skills, experiences, programs, systems, and other vehicles
that enable the organization to operate effectively and efficiently on an ongoing basis.
Table 1: Ability to Execute Evaluation Criteria
Evaluation Criteria Weighting
Product or Service High
Overall Viability Medium
Sales Execution/Pricing High
Market Responsiveness/Record High
Marketing Execution High
Customer Experience High
Operations High
Completeness of Vision
Market understanding: This refers to the vendor’s ability to understand buyers’ needs and
translate them into products and services. Vendors that show the highest degree of vision listen
and understand buyers’ wants and needs and can shape or enhance them with their added vision.
We specifically looked for how vendors described the integrated market and opportunity for their
cloud HCM suites as a whole, not merely that of the component products.
Marketing strategy: This criterion assesses whether the vendor has a clearly differentiated
marketing strategy with a set of messages. These messages must appeal to HR organizations
and leaders and be consistently communicated throughout the organization and externalized
through the vendor’s website, customer programs and positioning statements.
Sales strategy: A sound strategy for selling that uses the appropriate networks, including direct
and indirect sales, marketing, service, and communication. The vendor should have a strategy for
selling cloud HCM suite software that uses the appropriate network of direct and indirect sales,
marketing, and service and communications affiliates. The strategy should extend the scope and
depth of market reach, skills, expertise, technologies, services and the customer base. Key
elements of the strategy include a sales and distribution plan, internal investment prioritization
and timing, and partner alliances.
Offering (product) strategy: An approach to product development and delivery that emphasizes
market differentiation, functionality, methodology and features as they map to current and future
requirements. The vendor should demonstrate a vision for application functionality across the
breadth and depth of the cloud HCM suite. We focus beyond the functional scope listed in the
Ability to Execute section. We place additional focus on the vendor’s vision for the use of
emerging technologies; advanced analytics; relevant social, geographic or industry use cases;
integration and ease of use; and support for process transformations enabling the digital
workforce. The product strategy can be a combination of organic development, acquisition and/or
ecosystems. For ecosystems, we pay close attention to the quality and support of third-party
partners. For those that acquire functionality, we pay close attention to integration strategy and
roadmaps.
Business model: The design, logic and execution of the organization’s business proposition to
achieve continued success. The vendor needs to have a clear business plan for how it will be
successful in the cloud HCM suite market. This plan should include appropriate levels of
investment to achieve healthy growth during the next three to five years.
Vertical/industry strategy: The strategy to direct resources (sales, product, development), skills
and products to meet the specific needs of individual market segments, including verticals. May
also include relevant compliance certification/authorization (such as FedRAMP).
Innovation: Direct, related, complementary and synergistic layouts of resources, expertise or

capital for investment, consolidation, defensive or preemptive purposes. The vendor must show a
marshaling of resources, expertise and/or capital for competitive advantage or investments in
new areas. Potential areas include advanced analytics, ML, DEI, service delivery and engagement
measurement. The vendor must also show UX improvements or new access methods, such as
conversational UIs, chatbots and virtual assistants.
Geographic strategy: The provider’s strategy to direct resources, skills and offerings to meet the
specific needs of geographies outside the “home” or native geography, either directly or through
partners, channels and subsidiaries, as appropriate for that geography and market. Examples of
criteria to include are core HR locations, payroll localizations, number of existing languages
supported and local compliance (for example, with GDPR).
Table 2: Completeness of Vision Evaluation Criteria
Evaluation Criteria Weighting
Market Understanding High
Marketing Strategy High
Sales Strategy Medium
Offering (Product) Strategy High
Business Model Low
Vertical/Industry Strategy Medium
Innovation High
Geographic Strategy High
Quadrant Descriptions
Leaders
Leaders demonstrate a market-defining vision for how HCM technology can help HR leaders
achieve business objectives. Leaders have the ability to work toward that vision through products
and services, and have demonstrated solid business results in the form of revenue and earnings.
Leaders use cutting-edge technologies in effective ways. In the cloud HCM suite market, Leaders
show a consistent ability to win deals. These deals include the foundational elements of
administrative HR (with many country-specific HR localizations) and result in high attach rates for
talent management, WFM and HR service delivery capabilities. Leaders have multiple proofs of
successful global and regional implementations by organizations of different sizes (judged by
number of employees) with workforces in multiple regions and a wide variety of industries.
Leaders are often the companies that other providers measure themselves against.ns and a wide
variety of industries. Leaders are often the companies that other providers measure themselves
against.
Challengers
Challengers have a broader addressable market than Niche Players. They have developed a
substantial presence in one market and have a growing presence in multiple submarkets, but they
are unable to execute consistently or equally well in all geographies. They understand the evolving
needs of HR organizations, but may not lead customers into new functional areas with a strong
functional vision. Challengers tend to have a good technology vision for architecture and other
considerations of IT organizations, but are not as operationally mature as Leaders. They have
strong customer growth and momentum, financial health and sustained product investment.
Challengers are distinguished from Leaders primarily by their reduced ability to execute
consistently throughout the full range of cloud HCM suite functionality for large and complex
global enterprises.
Visionaries
Visionaries are ahead of most competitors in delivering innovative products and/or delivery
models. They anticipate emerging and changing market needs, and can lead the market into new
areas. Although Visionaries have a strong potential to influence the direction of the cloud HCM
suite market, they are limited in execution and/or a demonstrable track record. There are no
Visionaries in this edition of the Magic Quadrant, mainly due to the greater emphasis on the
execution of administrative HR functions (including cost-effective and reliable delivery of
standardized processes) that are less subject to innovation. Much of the innovation in the field of
HCM has been in niche talent management and analytics applications, which do not constitute an
HCM suite.
Niche Players
Niche Players offer cloud HCM suite functionality, but they may lack some functional components,
focus on a limited geographic or workforce scale, or lack strong business execution in their
chosen niche. They may offer complete portfolios for a specific industry or workforce size, but
they cannot fully support cross-industry requirements for several HCM functions, such as WFM,
recruiting and learning. They may offer only limited localizations for administrative HR. From an
execution standpoint, Niche Players may lack the ability to support large-enterprise requirements
or complex global deployments. Nevertheless, Niche Players can offer the best solutions for HR
organizations whose requirements align with their market focus and capabilities. The price-to-
value ratio for these vendors is often attractive. They may win consistently in a certain region or
industry, but do not consistently win in multiple regions. This may be due to limitations of
execution or maturity, or it may simply reflect their market focus.
Context
The market for cloud HCM suites for enterprises with more than 1,000 employees includes a
diverse range of vendors. Each vendor has not only unique strengths but also weaknesses in
terms of functionality or service, or challenges in relation to cost of ownership. In most cases, no
vendor will be a perfect fit for an organization, but one or two vendors are likely to be a better fit
than others.
Gartner recommends that HR technology leaders in enterprises with more than 1,000 employees
who are pursuing a cloud HCM suite strategy should:
Use this Magic Quadrant and the accompanying Critical Capabilities for Cloud HCM Suites for
1,000+ Employee Enterprises to create a shortlist of potentially suitable vendors. They should
also consult the Market Guide for Cloud HCM Suites for Regional and/or Sub-1,000 Employee
Enterprises if they want to expand their list by including smaller and more local vendors.
Develop a sense of functional and capability priorities using Toolkit: HR Business Capability
Modeling for Technology Strategy.
Conduct an RFI or RFP based on their shortlist to identify the most suitable vendor. Leverage
the “vendor demonstration” phase after the RFI to examine the vendors regarding remaining
questions and doubts, and use this step as the final “tie breaker” (see Critical Steps to Lead HR
Technology Vendor Demonstrations).
Market Overview
In 2022, the HCM technology market grew at a healthy YoY rate of 11.7% and stood at $22.7
billion in annual spend. This is the highest growth percentage and largest category in the broader
ERP market. North America prevailed with 50% share (up from 47.6% in 2021) of the total spend.
While economic uncertainties impacted buying decisions in the first half of 2023, that did not stop
investments in cloud HCM suites. Rather, it shifted the objectives toward more pragmatic
proficiencies and practical use cases. In Gartner’s 2022 HR Technologies Client Survey, 1 44% of
HR leaders indicated “driving better business outcomes” as their top priority for HR technology
investments. In response to HR leaders shifting their priorities toward the pragmatic and practical,
vendors are rapidly innovating and expanding their capabilities to provide more comprehensive
solutions. As a result, the cloud HCM suite market has become increasingly competitive and
consolidated. Looking ahead, vendors must prioritize the measurement support they provide for
technology and customer success to allow clients to quantify and explain impact.
A significant milestone in technology innovation during the last year was the rapid adoption of
generative AI in the consumer space, which then crossed over to enterprise applications and
spurred numerous pilots in the HR technology landscape. Although many such pilots are still in
the experimentation stage, early signs indicate exceptional potential. Generative AI will not
fundamentally create a superseding market of new solutions, but it will fuel further innovation to
an already solid amount of AI product features in many existing products. However, concerns
around data privacy, reliability and ethical guidelines will need to be addressed in the future
roadmap.
Below is a summary of four trends in the cloud HCM suites for 1,000+ employee enterprises
market.
Growing maturity and consolidation of the market: There is a clear divergence between the
strategies of vendors in the Leaders quadrant and others. We estimate that the top five vendors
make up almost 70% of the market (see Market Share: Enterprise Resource Planning, Worldwide,
2022). The Leaders continue to close functional gaps, address a broad set of use cases across
the market, and focus on feature breadth in a more horizontal approach. Challengers and Niche
Players are focusing on feature depth for a specific use case or two in a certain set of verticals
and/or preserving their presence in certain geographies.
This also means there is a widening gap between the Leaders and others in terms of overall global
viability, customer acquisition pace and maturity of the products. As a result, many global
organizations would have to choose one of the Leaders compulsorily if they cross a tipping point
of employee volume and geographic footprint.
Skills at the center of the talent strategy: In Gartner’s 2022 HR Technologies Client Survey, 51% of
participants indicated that they view skills management as an innovative function that is
important to their role. 1 Responding to this demand, most of the participating vendors have
further invested in abilities to embed skills management in career pathing, talent acquisition and
talent marketplaces. Skills management in cloud HCM suites is maturing from simply sourcing a
suitable external or internal candidate for an open position based on matching. It is now
rewarding and paying for skills expertise and upskilling behaviors, supporting equitable
compensation, discovering personalized skill suggestions for team development, and recognizing
team accomplishments.
Generative AI pilots: To include generative AI in the innovation roadmap is an almost ubiquitous

response to the market imperative by all of the vendors covered in this research. However, the
vision differs considerably. The majority of them are going the simple route by integrating a
ChatGPT-based conversation simulator in the HR service desk. But some of them are building
native LLMs and experimenting with relatively more substantive use cases in career planning
recommendations, candidate experience, job requisition creation and complex HR policy drafting.
Overall, cloud HCM suites are in a state of, “Generative AI is the solution, but what is the
problem?.” As GenAI adoption grows, the low-value, low-yielding use cases in HR that were
shoehorned in will phase out, and the high-value cases will gain fast adoption in both the suites
and broad-ranging functional point solutions. Organizational readiness and transparency into
training datasets will play a much more important role in the adoption of generative AI in HR
technology than commercially available tools augmenting creative work or aiding business
opportunities in consumer technology.
An inclusive employee experience: In the past few years, the focus has been on providing a
positive employee experience centered around hybrid work practices. The aspiration is now to go
a step beyond to provide a more inclusive, human-centric experience. Many participating vendors
have responded to this customer demand by facilitating mandatory checks before onboarding to
know about an employee’s preferred names and pronouns, helping managers create dynamic
teams and employee resource groups based on nonwork topics. Some vendors are also piloting
an adaptive UX that learns from every transaction in real time.
The dots have changed positions from last year, with a vendor entering from a niche regional
market and another vendor, focusing more on the <1K market, making an exit. A Challenger last
year found its way back to the Leaders quadrant, and a Niche Player rose to close the gap with
Challengers. These activities confirm that the market for cloud HCM suites for 1,000+ employee
enterprises is competitive, and the vendors are aiming to improve execution and leverage
innovation as a differentiator.
Acronym Key and Glossary Terms
AI Artificial intelligence
ATS Applicant tracking system
ERP Enterprise resource planning
EXTech A hyperpersonalized workflow that is designed to help an employee

Journey through a particular work or life transition event with preconfigured tasks
and easy-to-complete action items
FEWA Flexible earned wage access
HCM Human capital management
HR Human resources
Hyperscaler Cloud services platforms that provide infrastructure, networking, security

and operations services at a large scale
LCMS Learning content management system
LLM Large language model
LXP Learning experience platform
SFTP Secure file transfer protocol
UI User interface
UX User experience
VoE Voice of the employee
WFM Workforce management
Evidence
The following sources were used to collect information about the vendors and their cloud HCM
offerings:
Vendor presentations and demonstrations to the Gartner analyst team: Specifically, to support
this research, each vendor is allotted time to present information about its company and
solutions. Each vendor was provided a product demonstration script and allotted time to demo
the various capabilities and functionality. Each vendor is allotted the same amount of time for
this research, but Gartner also conducts interactions with vendors throughout the year as part
of normal and ongoing relationships with user and vendor clients.
Research and data collection: Each vendor is also asked to respond to and fill out a survey that
investigates, in more detail, factual information about its company and HCM offering. Also, as
part of this exercise, Gartner reviews customer references on Gartner Peer Insights submitted
in the past 12 months.
1
2022 Gartner HR Technologies Client Survey: This survey was conducted online from 5 October
through 21 October 2022. In total, 138 clients participated. Clients from North America (n = 94),
EMEA (n = 24), Asia/Pacific (n = 14) and Latin America (n = 3) responded to the survey. Of the 138
clients who participated, 21% identified as chief HR officers, 6% as chief people officers, 12% as
HR vice presidents, 24% as HR directors, 2% as HR IT vice presidents, 12% as HR IT directors and
23% as “other.” Eight percent of respondents were from organizations with more than 50,000
employees, 22% from organizations with 10,001 to 50,000 employees, 12% from organizations
with 5,001 to 10,000 employees, 40% from organizations with 1,001 to 5,000 employees, 12% from
organizations with 501 to 1,000 employees, 4% from organizations with 251 to 500 employees, 1%
from organizations with 101 to 250 employees, and 1% from organizations with 1 to 100
employees. In terms of industry sector, client participants were from the following: financial
services (16%); technology (14%); manufacturing, materials and heavy industry (9%); professional
services (8%); and healthcare (7%). Note: Results of this study are representative of the
respondent base and not necessarily the market as a whole.
Evaluation Criteria Definitions

Ability to Execute
Product/Service: Core goods and services offered by the vendor for the defined market. This
includes current product/service capabilities, quality, feature sets, skills and so on, whether
offered natively or through OEM agreements/partnerships as defined in the market definition and
detailed in the subcriteria.
Overall Viability: Viability includes an assessment of the overall organization's financial health, the
financial and practical success of the business unit, and the likelihood that the individual business
unit will continue investing in the product, will continue offering the product and will advance the
state of the art within the organization's portfolio of products.
Sales Execution/Pricing: The vendor's capabilities in all presales activities and the structure that
supports them. This includes deal management, pricing and negotiation, presales support, and the
overall effectiveness of the sales channel.
Market Responsiveness/Record: Ability to respond, change direction, be flexible and achieve

competitive success as opportunities develop, competitors act, customer needs evolve and
market dynamics change. This criterion also considers the vendor's history of responsiveness.
Marketing Execution: The clarity, quality, creativity and efficacy of programs designed to deliver
the organization's message to influence the market, promote the brand and business, increase
awareness of the products, and establish a positive identification with the product/brand and
organization in the minds of buyers. This "mind share" can be driven by a combination of publicity,
promotional initiatives, thought leadership, word of mouth and sales activities.
Customer Experience: Relationships, products and services/programs that enable clients to be

successful with the products evaluated. Specifically, this includes the ways customers receive
technical support or account support. This can also include ancillary tools, customer support
programs (and the quality thereof), availability of user groups, service-level agreements and so on.
Operations: The ability of the organization to meet its goals and commitments. Factors include
the quality of the organizational structure, including skills, experiences, programs, systems and
other vehicles that enable the organization to operate effectively and efficiently on an ongoing
basis.
Completeness of Vision
Market Understanding: Ability of the vendor to understand buyers' wants and needs and to
translate those into products and services. Vendors that show the highest degree of vision listen
to and understand buyers' wants and needs, and can shape or enhance those with their added
vision.
Marketing Strategy: A clear, differentiated set of messages consistently communicated

throughout the organization and externalized through the website, advertising, customer
programs and positioning statements.
Sales Strategy: The strategy for selling products that uses the appropriate network of direct and
indirect sales, marketing, service, and communication affiliates that extend the scope and depth
of market reach, skills, expertise, technologies, services and the customer base.
Offering (Product) Strategy: The vendor's approach to product development and delivery that
emphasizes differentiation, functionality, methodology and feature sets as they map to current
and future requirements.
Business Model: The soundness and logic of the vendor's underlying business proposition.
Vertical/Industry Strategy: The vendor's strategy to direct resources, skills and offerings to meet
the specific needs of individual market segments, including vertical markets.
Innovation: Direct, related, complementary and synergistic layouts of resources, expertise or

capital for investment, consolidation, defensive or pre-emptive purposes.
Geographic Strategy: The vendor's strategy to direct resources, skills and offerings to meet the
specific needs of geographies outside the "home" or native geography, either directly or through
partners, channels and subsidiaries as appropriate for that geography and market.
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Magic Quadrant for Cloud HCM Suites for 1,000+

By Ranadip Chandra, Sam Grinter, and 10 more

Strategic Planning Assumption

Administrative HR — Employee data, organization structure, employment life cycle transaction,

Talent management — Recruiting, onboarding, performance management, compensation

Integrated HR service management (IHRSM) — Personalized direct access to policy, procedure

The optional functional capabilities for this market include:

Workforce management (WFM) — Time and attendance administration and workforce

Employee experience (EX) and engagement management — Includes functions designed to

Recent M&A activity in this space includes:

UKG signs an agreement to acquire multicountry payroll solution Immedis.

Oracle completed the acquisition of Cerner, integrating Cerner’s healthcare-oriented capabilities

Source: Gartner (October 2023)

Vendor Strengths and Cautions

ADP is a Challenger in this Magic Quadrant.

Cegid is a Niche Player in this Magic Quadrant.

Ceridian is a Leader in this Magic Quadrant.

Cornerstone is a Niche Player in this Magic Quadrant.

Performance management: Gartner finds that Cornerstone’s HCM delivers comprehensive

Darwinbox is a Niche Player in this Magic Quadrant.

Onboarding: Darwinbox has built a comprehensive onboarding module that incorporates

Infor is a Niche Player in this Magic Quadrant.

Oracle is a Leader in this Magic Quadrant.

Employee experience: Oracle Cloud HCM is a high performer in support of employee

Workforce scheduling: Oracle has responded to the previously existing shortcoming of

SAP is a Leader in this Magic Quadrant.

Payroll modernization: SAP’s SuccessFactors Employee Central Payroll has comprehensive

UKG is a Leader in this Magic Quadrant.

Workday is a Leader in this Magic Quadrant.

Yonyou is a Niche Player in this Magic Quadrant.

Geographic strategy: Yonyou primarily concentrates on serving organizations based in China,

Vendors Added and Dropped

1. Deliver core HR administrative transaction support and reporting/analytics capabilities, plus at

2. Deploy their solution(s) on a cloud architecture.

Table 1: Ability to Execute Evaluation Criteria

Evaluation Criteria Weighting

Product or Service High

Overall Viability Medium

Sales Execution/Pricing High

Market Responsiveness/Record High

Marketing Execution High

Customer Experience High

Source: Gartner (October 2023)

Innovation: Direct, related, complementary and synergistic layouts of resources, expertise or

Table 2: Completeness of Vision Evaluation Criteria

Evaluation Criteria Weighting

Market Understanding High

Marketing Strategy High

Sales Strategy Medium

Offering (Product) Strategy High

Business Model Low

Vertical/Industry Strategy Medium

Geographic Strategy High

Source: Gartner (October 2023)

Generative AI pilots: To include generative AI in the innovation roadmap is an almost ubiquitous

ATS Applicant tracking system

ERP Enterprise resource planning

EXTech A hyperpersonalized workflow that is designed to help an employee