Understanding Data Sheet for Current Gain of BJT
You will notice that the table gives values at Vce = 1V, but saturation is Vce ~100mV, which changes things. Hfe falls as the device approaches saturation due to the Early effect, so for a bipolar transistor a reasonable rule of thumb is to run Ib=10% of Ic if you want it to switch hard. 

Note that current gain in bipolar transistors is very badly controlled an unbinned part having a factor of 6 between different samples, the trick is to design so that this does not matter.