20 Best Succession Planning Software of 2025 to Build Future Leaders

Deel Engage is a talent development platform that integrates tools for learning management, performance evaluation, and career progression. It is designed to meet the needs of organizations looking to cultivate their future leaders through structured and strategic succession planning.

Deel is an excellent succession planning software because of its AI-powered career progression frameworks and advanced performance management tools. These features allow companies to define clear career paths and competencies, making it easier to identify employees with leadership potential.

The platform’s customizable performance reviews and 360° feedback system provide in-depth insights into employee capabilities, ensuring that future leaders are recognized and developed based on accurate and comprehensive data.

Additionally, integration with advanced analytics tools, such as heatmaps and 9-box grids, enables organizations to visually map out talent and identify skill gaps, ensuring that potential leaders are equipped with the necessary skills and experiences. 

Deel Engage also offers an extensive library of training resources and a learning management system for employees to access high-quality learning materials that support their growth and development.

Deel integrates with Deel HR, and other HR systems like BambooHR, Workday, and Personio. You can also integrate with Slack or access custom integrations with its open API.

Qooper is an employee learning platform with the capacity to create personalized learning plans for employees and pair mentors and mentees for coaching and development. Organizations can use the software to create role-specific growth plans for individual contributors and to match potential leaders with mentors they can work with towards their goals.

Learning programs can include video content and assessments as well as podcasts and articles. All learning materials can be stored and organized within the software, making it easy to repurpose items for multiple learning programs and keep content up-to-date. Groups can be established in the software for cohorts of employees to partake in specific training or learning initiatives together, at the same time.

As for leadership development, the standout feature offered in the system is its mentorship matching tool. Employees can be paired with a senior staff member or someone external who has expertise in their job function. Mentors and mentees can conduct their coaching sessions directly in the software, using its meeting agendas, icebreakers, and mentorship activities to guide them. Goal setting and tracking is also available in the platform.

The software integrates with several other SaaS tools including ADP, BambooHR, Google Workspace, Microsoft Teams, Oracle, Outlook, Slack, Workday, and Zoom. Pricing is available upon request.

Agentnoon is an AI-powered organizational design and workforce planning platform that helps you drive effective transformations within your company. By integrating financial and operational data, it enables you to model various business scenarios and assess their impacts in real time. 

I like Agentnoon's robust scenario modeling feature. This allows you to create and compare multiple organizational structures, helping you visualize potential leadership transitions and their effects on your company's performance. By modeling different succession scenarios, you can proactively address potential challenges and ensure a seamless leadership pipeline.

Another unique aspect is Agentnoon's Intelligent Design capability. This feature leverages AI to provide data-driven insights into your organizational structure, identifying areas that may benefit from leadership development or restructuring. With this information, you can make informed decisions about talent development and succession planning, ensuring your leadership team is well-prepared for future challenges.

Some integrations include Workday, Oracle, SAP, UKG, Dayforce, and ADP.

PerformYard is a performance management software that provides flexible features for HR teams to support an effective succession planning strategy. HR teams get the tools they need to identify high-performing team members for future opportunities, while employees get a streamlined experience so they can focus on development.

With PerformYard, you can customize the software to fit the strategy that’s right for your organization's succession planning needs. For example, their performance management tools, including 360-degree reviews, project-based reviews, rating scales, continuous feedback, and cascading goals can be customized to include long-term career development prompts to tap into future advancement potential and goals.

PerformYard's simplified employee experience helps facilitate useful feedback and quality conversations. They also provide dedicated customer success managers for every customer to manage their implementation from onboarding to employee training, to ongoing support.

PerformYard integrates with most major HRIS/Payroll systems including ADP, BambooHR, Gusto, Rippling, UKG, Paycom, Workday, and Paylocity.

Cornerstone is a data-driven workforce planning software that helps businesses align employees with their organizational goals. Their platform aggregates workforce data into visual formats that make it easy for key stakeholders to digest. As well, their system links details such as staff headcount, budget, performance and organizational structure together so you can make decisions quickly if your business environment changes unexpectedly.

The Cornerstone system supports succession planning through their scenario modeling feature. Using their “what if” models, you can create scenarios and run through potential changes to your organizational structure depending on a variety of factors. You can also compare past organization structures with the future, to see how your structure has evolved over time.

Cornerstone is technically an HCM (human capital management) platform. In addition to their deep workforce planning features, their platform has modules to support recruiting and onboarding, learning and development, performance management, engagement, and core HR data management.

Integrations with Cornerstone are not noted on their website, though they do have an API to support them.

Built for businesses of all sizes, PeopleFluent helps companies hire, develop, engage, and upskill their employees through a combination of key tools. In addition to succession planning tools, their system also has features for recruitment, performance, compensation, learning, talent mobility, and organizational charting.

Their succession dashboard is designed to help HR teams identify their top talent, and make data-driven decisions to guide their development towards fulfilling the next generation of leadership roles. You can develop talent pools for specific key positions, and map out career pathing options to ensure your next-in-line staff will be ready when a vacancy arises.

The system includes tools to facilitate mentoring and create career development plans as well. Plus, their incorporated Learning Experience Platform makes it simple for HR managers to develop key staff and help them acquire the new skills they’ll need to advance.

PeopleFluent integrates with 20+ common HR software solutions including Affirmity, Breezy HR, CognosOnline, CourseWare, e-learnmedia, Gomo Learning, Hit Point, Open Sesame, Stratagile, VectorVMS, Watershed and others.

SAP SuccessFactors supports succession planning at the enterprise level with their Succession & Development software.

Their system helps to ensure you place the right people in the right roles with a built-in tool to uncover hidden talent through a company-wide search of employee talent profiles. Tools to streamline competency and skill assessments, as well as a nine-box matrix rating grid, also help human resources teams identify the top and bottom performers in any team.

The system goes beyond just matching employees with roles and offers more features in the area of strategic succession management. This includes functions like assessing the risk and impact of a key talent loss, identifying employees who are flight risks, and tools for assessing your bench strength.

Their “what if” scenario function also helps users plot the domino effect of proposed succession plans by generating different outcomes in a visually digestible way. Another rich feature I haven’t seen with other platforms is how SAP’s system creates mentoring programs and automatically matches mentors with mentees.

SAP can be set up to integrate with other software, either through their API or via pre-packaged integrations. They also have a full-feature mobile app for iOS and Android users too.

Arcoro’s HR software platform helps HR teams hire, manage and grow their talent. Their system includes everything from an applicant tracking system (ATS) and onboarding tools, to performance management, learning management and succession planning tools. It’s a widely used option across industries with specific compliance, legal, and drug & background screening needs.

Their succession planning module works hand-in-hand with their performance management module, making it easy to assess employee competencies at a glance using their comprehensive employee scorecards. Managers and other decision makers can also assess employees using a 9-box talent matrix, which gives a clear visual of when an individual is ready for a promotion. Performance reviews within the system also feed into actionable development plans, making employees accountable for addressing any skill gaps before they can advance. As well, the platform also hosts a learning management system to help your staff with upskilling too.

Formerly known as BirdDogHR, Arcoro integrates with popular technology platforms such as Indeed, LinkedIn, ZipRecruiter, US.Jobs, Glassdoor, Quickbooks, and others.

Pricing details are available upon request. Via their website, you can also request a free HR Assessment to help you figure out which modules your business needs.

Empxtrack is an HRMS (human resources management system) that has modules for recruitment, performance appraisals, 360-degree feedback, exit management, payroll (India-specific), and strategic HR functions. Their succession planning software—included in their strategic HR package—ensures business continuity by helping organizations identify key leadership roles and giving them the tools to build talent pipelines of potential successors to fill those roles in the long term.

You can get a sense of their detailed process in the screenshot above. Their system helps management teams identify their high potential employees (which they call HIPOs), and evaluate them thoroughly. Performance evaluations for succession planning are completed through a combination of surveys to get feedback from senior staff, and ratings on a 9-point or 12-point performance potential matrix, as shown above. You can also assign a mentor to help coach each future leader into their long-term position.

Empxtrack integrates with many HR tools through their API, but specific software providers are not listed on their website. One nice feature is that they offer online customer support 24x7.

Pricing details for the strategic HR solutions package are available upon request. However, other modules within their system, such as their Employee Portal and HRIS, Performance Appraisals, 360-Degree Feedback, Payroll (India-specific), Leave Management, Attendance, and Exit Management can be used for free with some limitations on users and reports.

Plum is a talent assessment platform that supports objective data-driven decision making throughout the employee lifecycle using predictive psychometric data. Wondering what that means exactly? Basically, their platform is built on decades of proven industrial/organizational (I/O) psychological research, meaning it has a lot more substance behind it than other talent management software solutions.

Beyond just succession planning, their platform offers a holistic suite of other talent assessment features such as tools for workforce planning, internal mobility, quantifying job fit, spotting hidden potential, growing people, and improving team work. The combined force of these modules allows management teams to build deeper succession pipelines by looking across their workforce to spot people with the right skills to succeed in critical roles.

Other helpful succession planning features include the ability to determine role needs and update job criteria for each position quickly and easily as things change. Objective performance measurement tools including a 9-box exercise also help to remove bias and guesswork from decisions around promotion. Lastly, you can create personalized talent development plans for all employees who are identified as potential successors, ensuring they’ll gain the skills and experiences they need to be successful.

Plum integrates with Greenhouse and SAP SuccessFactors right out of the box. However, their API can be used to connect with many other software solutions such as your HRIS (human resources information system), or ATS (applicant tracking system).

Pricing details are available upon request. A free demo and a 14-day free trial are also available.