A couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of speaking with Jon Reed and Jyoti Sharma about SuccessFactors Employee Central in a 58 minute video conversation. We touched on a number of topics around Cloud HCM and, specifically, SuccessFactors Employee Central including trends, implementation, the future of consulting, customer empowerment, managing quarterly releases, and the impact of the executive changes that recently took place. Below you can find the video and the key talking points from the video. An audio-only version is available here and on iTunes here.

Enjoy!

01:34 Jon: What are you seeing with this whole Cloud versus on-premise HCM? Is there a clear trend towards the Cloud that you’re seeing, or is it still more of a case-by-case at this point?

01:53 Luke: Definitely on-premise is beginning a decline. I think deals are definitely drying up. There’s not a lot of investment – at least not net new investment – there’s some investment still in existing core HR, certainly customers are not going out and investing in a new on-premise core HR system. Some are choosing to stick with what they’ve got for a while, while the Cloud matures. I’ve seen a lot more customers look at rip-and-replace.

14:15 Jon: What is really dictating this trend towards more customer HCM deployments? Where are they finding the value?

14:30 Jyoti: I think the biggest value they are finding is in usability and also supporting and maintaining the system. Usability because so far the HR has been doing stuff, they’ve been doing all of the administrative work. However, the employees and managers have always wanted to do it, even with the SAP portal it wasn’t as user-friendly, it wasn’t as intuitive as it is with the Cloud. So that’s definitely one of the unique selling propositions. And the second item that I said around maintaining and supporting the system. It’s easier to maintain, users have more control over it, they have to rely less on implementation partners, so that helps them make quicker decisions and execute those decisions.

Configuration and the role of IT

22:53 Jon: I would think the UI-based configurations are going to be a pretty attractive feature, right?

22:58 Jyoti: Yes, it is. It is very attractive because we’ve been with customers where they’ve said “we need this additional field and we’re waiting for 5 days for approval from IT so a developer can come and re-labels a field or hides it or makes it visible” and that’s a matter of seconds in Employee Central.

23:19 Luke: It actually raises an important point around IT’s role in governance, which I think we could spend a whole other session talking about. It’s a very valid point that customers can be like “ok, I need to wait for IT approval and then someone has come and do it, they have to do it, then we have to test, and then we have to transport, and then we have to test, and then we have to transport, and then hopefully it works in Production”. This is quite a long period. The whole process can be very quick in Employee Central. “I want a new field”, you just go into the GUI, you add it, it’s there, you test. I mean, the team that actually wants to add the field and does the testing actually adds it, so you’re removing a lot of blockage out of the way. On the other hand, without having the governance and control of, say, IT – who are used to doing that kind of thing – it can be easy for customers to get a bit carried away and start doing things which could be detrimental. So although it has got this strong and powerful capability, organizations need to ensure that they actually manage this sort of thing quite well.

24:53 Jon: So there’s some danger in setting the user free on too much of their own configuration, there’s still some issues that still need a little guidance?

25:01 Luke: You make it that easy and people are more likely to do it. You want them to do it when there’s a good business case and a good reason, but you also want them to do it right when they do it.

Consulting and customer empowerment

30:44 Jon: I like that you laid down the challenge, Jyoti, to consulting firms as well, because to me Luke is spot on that consulting and expertise is still going to be needed, but the model is going to change a lot. I think consulting firms are going to have to rethink this notion of the sort of “milk the cow” dependency of having a ton of consultants’ on-site billing at a consistent rate year over year. It seems to me that customers more and more are going to want a path to autonomy, and the Cloud reinforces that by focusing on business expertise but once that’s transferred then you’re not needed as much. You’re going to be needed for upgrades, and that’s where Luke’s point about the long-term relationship comes in.

32:01 Luke: It’s about empowerment really. It’s about empowering the customer to drive their implementation, because they’re the ones that are going to be managing this system in the long-term. Although they might need support from a partner, they want to be able to do it themselves.

35:04 Jyoti: Unlike SAP, where a customer would see a system only when they get to end-to-end testing or UAT, you are actually seeing the solution as it is being built. That is your opportunity to really validate that “oh, this is how it looks on screen. Ok, I made that decision, maybe that needs to change”, things like that. As you get to iteration 2 and 3, the number of changes should ideally become less if you’ve done a good job upfront of business requirements testing.

Foundation for success

38:27 Jon: I’m going to make a guess that part of the super skill needed here is those early sessions: requirements gatherings, managing expectations around what functionality is available within the system, what might be custom add-ons or extensions, what a customer might need to really give up, like Luke referred to, a process that might not have competitive advantage, it’s better to shift to a standard, what that would take. It sounds to me like a lot of those sessions need to be handled really well.

39:01 Jyoti: Yes, you’re absolutely spot on Jon. If you haven’t done that well then you’re not on the path to success.

47:46 Luke: Customers – particularly those who are used to SAP – often look at HR as if we have core HR, we have talent, we have analytics, we have mobile. Customers need to put it all together and have a more holistic view at Human Capital Management. Customers need to identify what their vision is for HR. What are they actually trying to get out what they are doing? How do they want Human Capital Management to look at the organization? Where do they want to be as an organization, in terms of talent? I think that has a big impact on how you approach the Cloud and I think if customers can build that Cloud strategy and can have that vision in place then they are going to have a really fruitful journey into the Cloud.

48:46 Jon: If you each could pick one other thing that you think SAP should enhance or improve in SuccessFactors; it could the product, it could be the support, the services, whatever it is – what would be the one thing you would like to see from SAP.

49:08 Jyoti: For me, SAP has a very slick transport mechanism when you come to on-premise implementations. You do not have that in SuccessFactors, they are building it out. You do have configuration settings that can be moved from one instance to the other, but I think it’s not where it needs to be. That will really shorten the implementation timelines and will also add a lot of value to the customer experience.

51:07 Jyoti: There are a lot of customers not in the know until they are in the conferences, they see things like what we are doing now. They need some assistance from SAP for partner evaluation. Every partner is out there touting “oh we have certified consultants, we have experience, blah blah blah” but I think that SAP – as an honorous company that they are – owe it to their customers to have some level of influence when customers are doing partner evaluation.

At the recent HR2014 conference in Nice I had the opportunity to catch-up with Kevin Haus, Global Alliances Manager at WorkForce Software. WorkForce Software is a provider of enterprise-grade Time & Attendance and Workforce Scheduling software. In this Q&A, I chatted with Kevin about WorkForce Software’s EmpCenter offering, where this sits in the SuccessFactors Employee Central landscape, and what sets it apart from other offerings in the market.

Thanks for joining me Kevin. Could you take a brief moment to introduce yourself and your role at WorkForce Software?

Thank you Luke for this opportunity.  My name is Kevin Haus, and I am Global Alliances Manager at WorkForce Software. I work with a variety of partners in many different capacities, such as sales, marketing, integrations, support, etc.  I end up wearing many hats depending on what is needed, which is really fun and exciting.

Can you tell us a bit about WorkForce Software and what they offer?

WorkForce Software was founded in 1999 and has emerged as a key player in the competitive workforce management landscape.  Since the company’s inception, we have continually grown in many aspects —from the number of clients we serve, to the number of professionals we employ, to the revenues we generate and reinvestments in our solutions.  Our success has led to fantastic employee and client growth, which has earned us several awards such as a Top Global SaaS provider.  It’s an amazing ride.

We specialize in developing and delivering the most versatile and flexible workforce management solutions available today and our technology is deployed in a diverse array of industries and organizations across the globe.  Our goal is to meet 100% of the client’s needs, not just the easy 80%.  We can do that via our phenomenal configuration capabilities.

Can you give us some more details on your EmpCenter offering?

EmpCenter solution is our flagship workforce management solution that has seen tremendous growth for the last number of years.

EmpCenter helps large employers track employee hours and absences, assign tasks, manage schedules, streamline labor law compliance, and mitigate the risk of employee fatigue. But that’s just the start. With EmpCenter, organizations are able to tackle more strategic workforce management goals – like controlling labor costs through eliminating unearned absences, minimizing unplanned overtime, and increasing productivity by optimizing schedules and labor.

So how does this tie into SuccessFactors Employee Central?

We have a very clean and powerful integration into SuccessFactors.  Our goal for this integration with SuccessFactors was to merge two best of breed solutions into one great offering, and I think we have done just that.  We built a standard iFlow integration into SuccessFactors’ Employee Central and Employee Central Payroll to simplify the daily user’s life by only having to do things once.  With Single Sign On and direct link between the applications, users are just logging onto 1 system and doing the activities that they need to do without worrying what application they need to be in.  It’s nice and easy.  With a number of ecstatic clients already leveraging this easy solution, we know that we hit our goal.

Tell me a bit about your partnership with SuccessFactors

Our companies are great partners.  It is not often in business that you can build a truly symbiotic relationship. From our development, sales, professional services, support teams, etc… We mutually help each other in a number of different ways, and our teams work together as one joint team with our one goal in mind; client success.  We at WorkForce Software want the happiest clients possible, and our clients are not just numbers… So we wanted to partner with a company that can help us achieve that goal across the entire HCM suite, and we are doing just that with SuccessFactors.

SuccessFactors are planning to introduce some “lightweight” Time Management functionality into Employee Central in the next 12 or so months. What impact – if any – does this have on WorkForce Software?

It does not really have an impact to us or the partnership.  We focus on clients that are looking for true workforce management capabilities.  With the functionality that SuccessFactors will be releasing, it is really targeted at a different type of client profile.  It is for clients that haves a very specific basic time needs, which is very different from what we provide.  It may cause some confusion at first, but it really doesn’t impact us or our partnership.

SAP ERP HCM customers are used to having Time & Attendance as part of their ERP system and closely linked to HR. What is the value proposition for a customer to license both Employee Central and WorkForce Software EmpCenter?

All we do is Workforce Management, we are the experts. The majority of ERP systems cannot handle the complexity that EmpCenter can (not even close). The integration between SuccessFactors Employee Central, WorkForce Software, and Employee Central Payroll makes it an easy choice for clients because they get the best of both worlds.

What sets EmpCenter apart from some of the competition?

The biggest is our flexibility.  We have the best configuration tools in the market that allows us to meet our clients’ needs without any costly customization.  It’s great to have a product that you can honestly go into a client and say “give me your most complicated union contract and lets us show you how we can handle it.” We don’t have to dance around complexity.  We can take it head on, and prospects and clients love it.

The major factor that sets WorkForce apart is our culture.  I know it is a cheesy answer, but it is true.  Prospects, clients, and partners feel it on a regular basis. They understand that we care.  We want to help people and businesses, and we do it primarily through workforce management solutions.  A great example of what I am talking about is what we did at HR Tech last year.  Instead of spending money on random stuff that we would hand to people, who stopped by booth, we did a campaign called “WFS Helping Hands,” where we had attendees assembled over 500 care packages in our booth that we delivered to the Nevada Partnership for Homeless Youth after the show.  It was big success.  It is those types of things that we do make you proud to work here.  It makes you want to go that extra mile in everything that you do, which our clients see and feel.

Do you have any tips, recommendations, or best practice guidance on Time & Attendance for the readers?

We actually have a webinar coming up on May 28^th that will discuss nine essential tips for selecting a Time & Attendance solution.  For those that are interested in attending I encourage them to register through our website.  I think there will be some really valuable information shared. Without spoiling the webinar I think the most important things for people to remember are:

1. Time & Attendance processes can seem simple… but they rarely are

1. Automation is king and will drive greater return on your investment
2. Choose a flexible platform for continual refinement and longer useful life

Is there anything else you would like to add?

The other week we announced that we’ve signed an agreement with Insight Venture Partners to invest in WorkForce Software and take a major equity stake in the company.  Insight Venture Partners is the premier growth oriented private equity fund and they deliver the ideal mix of financial and intellectual resources that will continue to propel WorkForce Software – and our clients – to greater levels of success. We are all very excited about this announcement.  You can find the official press release on our website if you are interested in learning more.

Thanks for joining me Kevin, it’s been a pleasure to talking to you.

Thank you, Luke for taking the time.  I always enjoy speaking with you.

More information on WorkForce Software can be found here and they can be followed on Twitter via @WorkForceSW.

Do you make decisions about your people with the same rigor and confidence as you make decisions about finances, customers, technology, or business development?

Most people would answer “no” to that question. Typically, leaders and managers rely on their experience and gut feel and do not apply as much analysis to critical talent decisions as they would for decisions that more directly affect their companies’ profitability. 

Workforce analytics can drive actionable insights and enable better talent management decision making to support business objectives and help plan for the future. The challenge is getting to the data that drives the analytics – and that’s where a workforce analytics solution comes in.

A robust workforce analytics solution can significantly enhance an organization’s drive and success with its talent strategies. It can enable the insightful application of Big Data through the amalgamation of core HR and talent data with financial, CRM, and other business and operational data. With a greater understanding of its talent management efforts, an organization can make more informed decisions about workforce challenges and create winning workforce initiatives and programs.

For instance… did you know that a workforce analytics solution can:

• Deliver predefined metrics and analyses across common HR and talent management processes to help accelerate talent decisions?
• Be customized to deliver strategic reporting specific to your business and its unique talent challenges?
• Help you uncover powerful insights across your integrated people and business data with compelling visualizations, standardized metrics, and world-class benchmarks?
• Build confidence in knowing what to measure and making better talent decisions based on analytics?

Take the example shown in this graphic here. With a solution such as SuccessFactors Workforce Analytics, you can use predefined metrics for termination rates to recognize that the voluntary termination for a specific department in your organization is too high. You can then go deeper into the issue to get answers to more complex questions. You’ll gain a better understanding of the situation, so you can develop a perspective on where the greatest risks are.

For instance, for the organization depicted here, the rate of termination is in fact higher than average for people in their first year of employment. Data such as this can help you more quickly find out why retention rates are low so you can take steps to remedy the root causes.

Drive impactful decisions with solid business data

SuccessFactors Workforce Analytics also provides profile reports on common issues and concerns such as diversity, age, and retirement patterns. You can also utilize mobility reports that help you understand how movement impacts hiring decisions, cost models, and risk management. In addition, the solution has a wide range of analysis tools covering topics such as leadership development effectiveness, internal pay equity, planning for corporate roles, and performance drivers.

With data from a solution like this, you can drive insights such as:

• How the voluntary turnover rates among top performers impacts enterprise goals and objectives
• How the performance of employees participating in optional training programs compares to those not participating
• Which business units or regions have the highest – or lowest – goal achievement percentage
• What the profit per employee is and how it compares to competitors and industry leaders
• What impact HR programs have on overall business performance

With greater visibility and insights into your workforce, you can fine tune your decision making to boost retention rates, improve hiring capabilities, cultivate future leaders, and optimize workforce performance.

To learn more about how workforce analytics can empower talent decisions in your organization, check out this great webinar series from SuccessFactors on workforce analytics covering a range of topics, including recruiting and onboarding, learning, performance, and diversity. Click here to register and listen to recordings of the recent webinars available from the archives.

To learn more about how workforce analytics can support your HR strategy, click here to download: Your Roadmap to High Value HR Analytics.

Dear All,

I thought of creating a one stop shop for all my knowledge artifacts so that it will be easily available and accessible for all SAP HCM consultants. Going forward, any document or blog I will create, I will update the below list too.

I have updated the links which were not working earlier.

Happy reading!!!

Warm regards,

Vivek Barnwal,

vianshu@gmail.com

Wow, we are halfway through Spring and approaching Summer. Not sure about you, but as I look forward to the warm days of Summer, I start to look at more efficient ways to accomplish tasks – leaving me more time to play ultimate and hang out with my friends. To that end, there are some amazing tools offered by SuccessFactors in the May 2014 release that folks should definitely take advantage of.  To start, I ask myself 3 key questions:

#1:  Which experts can help me? 

Beyond our active network, it’s often hard to find the right experts. Usually employee skills are more up-to-date and reliable on professional network sites such as LinkedIn, than in the internal system. With our new extension “Who can help me,” finding expert help - whenever you need them - has never been easier. “Who can help me” allows you to search for skills and talent data wherever that data resides in the SuccessFactors solution and incorporates data from social professional network sites such as LinkedIn. The beauty is that the results are ranked and visualized in this cool graph.

[ Me, surrounded by experts - woot!]

#2  How can I collaborate with my peers anytime and anywhere?

SAP Jam offers  an add-in for Microsoft Office Outlook capabilities to simplify collaboration while on the go, for both online and offline scenarios. You can post feed updates to groups or create a blog, a wiki, and forum and post them directly from Outlook messages. It’s so easy to use, there is no time lost thinking about how to structure content for a group.

#3 What are the latest features or enhancements that brings efficiency to my role as a hiring manager?

Presentations, which launched last quarter, delivers more time saving features.  With people search capability, users can pull up any employee talent card immediately. Also, a new manager dashboard provides a summary view of the employee career worksheets for the manager’s team by graphically displaying the team’s targeted roles and their readiness. To learn more, check out this video.

Hiring managers or recruiterscan nowpresent offer letters to their candidates in a secure online portal. Candidates can accept or decline an offer, and the activities are time-stamped. Candidates can also contact the recruiter, print the offer letter, or view previous offers they received.

Succession planning made easier.

The new position tile view gives succession planners the ability to assess and adjust successor readiness and nominate new successors. View candidates side by side for quick & easy reference. Update or delete nominations easily all within one place making succession planning easier to manage than ever before.

The May 2014 release went live May 23rd for Enterprise Edition customers. This posting only represents a sample. Don’t miss out on all the great innovations and enhancements. You can learn more on the SuccessFactors Customer Community(login required).

I’m really excited. I will be attending and presenting sessions at SAPPHIRE NOW 2014, it’s my first time participating and I’ve heard that it’s a huge event with tons of customers attending. Over the course of my career, I’ve probably attended over 100 conferences and I still love going! It’s energizing to be in a central place with like-minded people in your line of business, all vying to learn about the latest and greatest products and solutions for their business.

Before I take off, let me tell you about some of the cool things we have just announced for Employee Central in the May Release.

SuccessFactors Employee Central globalization expands to more countries, including: Kosovo, South Sudan and Kazakhstan. This brings our total country count to 71.  Luke Marson - it’s time for you to update your lists

Employee Central Payroll now includes Venezuela to our offering, increasing our total count to 28 country support.

Another new announcement related to Employee Central is that we launched Benefits!  This is an efficient benefits solution that delivers control for administrators, efficiency for employees and supports global benefit events.  This is our first public release of benefits to support global customers.  Work, life events and other forms of benefits in kind are supported in this May release. 

Ease of use for Employees and Administrators is very important to us and we continue to introduce functionality to support this.  Employee Central Benefits also integrates seamlessly with Employee Central Payroll.

[Easy access to Benefits from Employee Central]

So, if you are attending SAPPHIRE NOW 2014, please look me up in the show guide and come to my session on Side by Side integration or preview something new from Employee Central.  However, if you would rather hear from one of our customers, Meggit and Triumph Foods will also be presenting.  Oh, and you did not see me at Universal Studios

Hopefully you’ve already heard exciting news about the recent SAP Payroll Processing enhancements, namely the SAP Payroll control center add-on, which will shortly generally available as part of the HR Renewal 2.0. Frans Smolders wrote a few great blogs about the topic (see de-clustering or Payroll control center add-on). If you didn’t have a chance to read these posts, now is a perfect time because SAP Payroll control center add-on is making its first appearance in Orlando at the SAP America’s User Group and Sapphire annual conference. 

You will have an opportunity to see a live demo and get familiar with SAP roadmap for innovating payroll end-to-end processing on Wednesday, June 4^th at 1:45 pm at session 1807 SAP Suite on HANA: Payroll Control Center - Johnson & Johnson and SAP Journey Innovating End-to-End Payroll Processinghttp://sessioncatalog.sapevents.com/go/agendabuilder.sessions/?l=80&sid=14477_40068&locale=en_US in room S330B: S. Concourse, L3.

The Johnson & Johnson team will share their experience on being co-innovation partners, conducting testing, and implementing the Payroll control center add-on. You learn what strategy the team used to gather the requirements for
Payroll control center and what benefits they expect from implementation.

Your payroll experience will not stop there. The following day you can get an introduction to Payroll control center for Payroll Process Manager that will become a new HANA-based Payroll Workbench. This session 1712 SAP Payroll on HANA: Payroll Control Center Influence Council is in room S330A: S. Concourse, L3. SAP plans to deliver this functionality with HR Renewal 2.0 Feature Pack 1. SAP Product and Development is looking for the wide customer feedback. During this session the participants will get the first look at enhanced user experience with a consumer-grade UI. We want to have a discussion that helps to determine and prioritize common business requirements, use cases,and user interface requirements. So embrace the challenge and come to learn and share your thoughts!

We want to add up one column to display Org Levels automatically.

After consulting SAP, here goes our solution, hope it will be helpful to you all.

1. Take PPOME for example, we would like to add up a new column

2. To do this, The configuration of the new column to hierarchy framework is through T-code OOCOLFRAMCUST, or SM31->T77COL.

Then locate to "Column Definition" and create or copy to generate a new entry.

3. With the new entry, assign function module name for getting column contents.  SAP recommend us to use RH_STRUC_GET. However, if we directly use this FM, we will run into ABAP dump. So we compile a customized FM with slight change but still based on RH_STRUC_GET

4. Here goes our codes in SE37

FUNCTION ZRH_STRUCTURE_GET.

*"----------------------------------------------------------------------

*"*"Local Interface:

*"  IMPORTING

*"    VALUE(COL_KEY) TYPE  TV_ITMNAME OPTIONAL

*"    VALUE(TREE_HANDLE) TYPE REF TO  CL_GUI_COLUMN_TREE OPTIONAL

*"    VALUE(KEY_DATE) TYPE  BEGDATUM OPTIONAL

*"    VALUE(BEGDA) TYPE  BEGDATUM OPTIONAL

*"    VALUE(ENDDA) TYPE  ENDDATUM OPTIONAL

*"  TABLES

*"      TREE_OBJECTS STRUCTURE  TREE_OBJEC OPTIONAL

*"      TREE_STRUCTURE STRUCTURE  TREE_STRUC OPTIONAL

*"      COLUMN_CONTENT STRUCTURE  ORGNODECON OPTIONAL

*"      LEGEND_ICON_TEXT STRUCTURE  TREELEGEND OPTIONAL

*"  EXCEPTIONS

*"      NO_PLVAR_FOUND

*"      NO_ENTRY_FOUND

*"----------------------------------------------------------------------

*

*  DATA tmp_vbegda      TYPE datum.

*  DATA tmp_vendda      TYPE datum.

*  DATA content_vbegda  TYPE datum.

*  DATA content_vendda  TYPE datum.

*  DATA tmp_node_key    LIKE treev_nkey-node_key.

*  DATA mod_realo      TYPE realo.

*  DATA prev_content    LIKE orgnodecon.

*  DATA prev_colinfo    LIKE omcolinfo.

*

*  DATA: lt_result_structure TYPE struc_t.

*  DATA: lw_result_structure TYPE LINE OF struc_t.

*  data: lv_root_level      type i.

*

*  STATICS: st_icon_in  TYPE tv_image,

*          st_icon_out TYPE tv_image.

*

*

*  FIELD-SYMBOLS: <structure> TYPE tree_struc,

*                <objects>  TYPE tree_objec.

  DATA: COUNT_LINES    LIKE SY-TABIX.

  DATA: ROOT          LIKE GDSTR.

  DATA: STRU_SUBRC    LIKE STRUC-SUBRC.

  CLEAR: COLUMN_CONTENT[], COLUMN_CONTENT.

*

  DATA : I_CNT TYPE I, I_LIN TYPE I.

  I_CNT = 0.

  DATA : TV_SHOW TYPE BLANZ.

  SORT TREE_OBJECTS ASCENDING BY OTYPE.

  DATA LT_TAB TYPE TABLE OF SWHACTOR WITH HEADER LINE.

  IF TREE_OBJECTS IS NOT INITIAL.

    LOOP AT TREE_OBJECTS WHERE OTYPE EQ 'O' .

      MOVE-CORRESPONDING TREE_OBJECTS TO COLUMN_CONTENT.

      IF TREE_OBJECTS-OTYPE EQ 'O'.

        I_CNT = I_CNT + 1.

        CALL FUNCTION 'RH_STRUC_GET'

          EXPORTING

            ACT_OTYPE              = TREE_OBJECTS-OTYPE

            ACT_OBJID              = TREE_OBJECTS-OBJID

            ACT_PLVAR              = TREE_OBJECTS-PLVAR

            ACT_WEGID              = 'A002'

            ACT_BEGDA              = TREE_OBJECTS-BEGDA

            ACT_ENDDA              = TREE_OBJECTS-ENDDA

          TABLES

            RESULT_TAB            = LT_TAB

          EXCEPTIONS

            NO_PLVAR_FOUND        = 1

            NO_ENTRY_FOUND        = 2

            OTHERS                = 3.

        DESCRIBE TABLE LT_TAB LINES I_LIN.

        I_CNT = I_CNT + I_LIN.

        TV_SHOW = I_CNT.

        COLUMN_CONTENT-CONTENT = TV_SHOW.

      ENDIF.

      APPEND COLUMN_CONTENT.

      CLEAR : I_CNT, I_LIN.

    ENDLOOP.

  ENDIF.

*  REFRESH column_content.

*

*  CASE col_key.

*    WHEN 'ZORG_VBEGD1'.

*      READ TABLE tree_objects ASSIGNING <objects> INDEX 1.

*      CALL FUNCTION 'HR_STRUCTURE_GET'

*        EXPORTING

*          root_plvar          = <objects>-plvar

*          root_otype          = <objects>-otype

*          root_objid          = <objects>-objid

**        ROOT_OBJECTS        =

**        BEGDA              = SY-DATUM

**        ENDDA              = SY-DATUM

*          pathid              = 'O-O'

*        IMPORTING

**        result_objects      = lt_result_tmp

*          result_structure    = lt_result_structure

**        ROOT_COPY          =

*        EXCEPTIONS

*          plvar_not_found    = 1

*          root_not_found      = 2

*          path_not_found      = 3

*          internal_error      = 4

*          OTHERS              = 5.

*      IF sy-subrc = 0.

*        DESCRIBE TABLE lt_result_structure LINES I_LIN .

*        I_CNT = 1 .

*      ENDIF.

*

*      LOOP AT tree_structure ASSIGNING <structure>.

*        READ TABLE tree_objects

*                  WITH KEY node_key = <structure>-node_key.

*        IF sy-subrc EQ 0.

*          CLEAR column_content.

*          MOVE-CORRESPONDING tree_objects TO column_content.

**          IF NOT <structure>-vbegda IS INITIAL.

*            column_content-content = lv_root_level + 1 .

**          ENDIF.

*          APPEND column_content.

*        ENDIF.

*      ENDLOOP.

*  ENDCASE.

ENDFUNCTION.

5. Check your result via PPOME, the new column will display org level now.

*Just one more tip for your reference, we have met the "active plan version" issue. If we change the plan version via PPOME, the system will not be able to display org level correctly for in-active plan version orgs. So we consult SAP and enhance above code with ACT_PLVAR = TREE_OBJECTS-PLVAR

Below is the screenshot for example.

If you find this Blog helpful, please pass your appreciation to Michael Fruechtl from SAP HCM Development team and my ABAP guy Kerry Chou.

Without their help, we can't get this solution work.

Last but not the least, I have enclose all content into attached pdf & doc. Last time when SCN updated from SDN, many contents were lost. Hope it will convenient somebody's work in future. Opps, this website doesn't support attachment in pdf&doc format, so in case the pics or some contents are missing, feel free to ask me @ allina.yi@gmail.com

Hello everyone!

In this new blog I’d like to update you on SuccessFactors Compensation Management in the 1405 release. Amy Dines, Senior Product Manager has offered to share those highlights with us. Amy is a recognized Compensation expert working on the global Product Management team and is based in Boston. She will give us her thoughts on the design and benefits of the two major enhancements available with the 1405 release. We will focus on the further improvement of the user experience with the new compensation worksheet and the benefits of the new decentralized administration. In addition, Amy will share with us her vision and the mission for the SuccessFactors Compensation.

First of all let’s talk about the V12 Compensation Worksheet. This release brings it to the next level of flexibility and navigation-ability. Amy can you let us know about the advantages of those enhancement and how they better meet end-users requirements?

Amy Dines: The V12 Worksheet was a collaborative effort between SuccessFactors and a number of customers who shared our passion for providing Compensation Planners with a great user experience. Early adopters enabled the Beta Release worksheet in late 2013, allowing them to try it out and provide feedback. We used the next two releases to incorporate their feature and usability suggestions into the newly released V12 worksheet in 1405..

YP: What functionalities have been concretely added with 1405?

Amy Dines: The V12 worksheet makes much better use of real estate on the page.  Pods for budget, worksheet instructions, workflow route map, and analytics may now be expanded and collapsed as needed; a worksheet filter allows Planners to quickly drill down to view employees by a number of attributes including name, job title, grade, and performance rating.  All worksheet pages were enhanced with new CSS styling.

New functionality was added to VRP worksheet (see picture 1)

• Planner can vertically scroll with the column headers fixed on the page;
• A worksheet filter has been added, which scans all pages for up to seven commonly used filter attributes;
• Ability to plan incentive bonus by amount or percent;
• The promotion job selector is accessible from each employee’s Compensation Profile. Previously it had been available on both the worksheet and profile, but involved excessive scrolling on the worksheet;
• The Actions button is removed from end of each row, and notes are now accessible from the employee name;
• Refresh buttons removed from salary and stock tabs and included in the Save button.

Picture 1: Compensation Worksheet in 1405 with enhanced navigation (click to enlarge)

Picture 2: V12 Worksheet, Variable Pay Tab (click to enlarge)

YP: The second major enhancement is called “Decentralized Administration” and is completely changing the way global companies will deliver compensation planning with SuccessFactors. Here is the situation before: permissions at the local admin level are not available. Now with 1405, each local compensation admin team can manage guidelines for their region, and it is restricted from viewing guidelines for other regions. Amy, is there as special target group if customer for this functionalities or can it be used to added flexibility to smaller organization as well?

Amy Dines: For global companies with local HR Teams, attracting and retaining top talent is a challenge that is best managed locally, with central guidance and oversight. SuccessFactor’s new decentralized administration option allows local HR Teams to independently set up and administer compensation programs that are designed to optimize for local market goals and objectives for the country, region and/or business unit. Decentralized administration enables two roles: the local admin role, and the super admin role. Each local admin sets up and manages guidelines, and bonus plan structure for their region or country, and does not have access to other region or country setups unless specifically enabled. The Super Admin is provided with insight into all local admins program configurations.

YP: What are the key elements for the de-centralized admin of the compensation process?

Amy Dines: those elements are:

1. Comp & Varpay Guidelines
2. Varpay Bonus Plans
3. Varpay Business Goals
4. Varpay Business Goal Weights

Picture 3: Decentralized administration and management of administrator groups (click to enlarge)

Picture 4: Decentralized administration and formula assignment to groups (click to enlarge)

YP: this sounds like many global customers will love it because they needed it so much. Do you have any tips and tricks for the deployment of the decentralized administration? Where to start for example?

Amy Dines: Decentralized administration can be deployed in a variety of ways.  HR organizations will need to decide on which local country/regions to create, and roles & responsibilities of the local administrator vs the central administrator. We plan to schedule some webinars for later this year on recommended best practices.

YP: Without going into the details, what is next on your roadmap when it comes to globalization versus localization?

Amy Dines: We will be extending the decentralized administration approach to salary structures, compensation history management and compensation statement production in upcoming releases, to provide companies with additional local administrator options.

YP: thanks a lot Amy for sharing those details with us. I am sure our customers will appreciates all the insights.

Follow Yannick: @ypeterschmitt
Follow Amy: @dinesAL

This blog post is based on the the white paper written on the same topic by Prashanth Padmanabhan Padmanabhan, the solution manager for SAP SuccessFactors Hybrid Solutions and Ganesh Kudva, the engineering product owner for these packaged integrations.

1. Introduction

1.1 The Business Need

SAP ERP customers in multiple industries use employee qualifications stored in the Employee Qualifications Profile in SAP to make day-to-day operational decisions. For example, a supervisor working for an SAP customer in the oil and gas industry, may refer to the Qualifications Profile of an employee in SAP before giving that employee a particular work assignment.

An employee acquires a qualification, in most cases, by completing a training program. These training programs are managed in a learning management system. Hundreds of SAP customers use SuccessFactors Learning, SAP’s learning management system in the cloud, to manage such learning. Before June 2014, when an employee acquired a qualification as a result of a course completion in SuccessFactors Learning, that information was not sent to the Employee Qualifications Profile in SAP.

In some cases changes in an employee’s qualification might come from a system that is not a learning management system. For example a performance management system could update an employee’s qualifications. Hundreds of SAP customers use the SuccessFactors Talent Solutions suite which has applications that influence or directly update an employee's qualifications. Before June 2014, when an employee acquired a qualification as a result of such an update, that information was not sent to the Employee Qualifications Profile in SAP.

1.3 Terminology

1.4 Pre-requisites and Assumptions

The packaged integration makes some assumptions about the customer’s landscape and business requirements. This section talks about those assumptions and pre-requisites.

SAP HCM supports the implementation of Qualifications either in Personnel Administration (PA) or in Personnel Development (PD) modules. SAP supports the migration of Qualifications from one module to the other. If customers migrate Qualifications from one module to the other, they need to re-implement the packaged integrations discussed in this document.

Both integrations require the packaged master data integration between SAP and SuccessFactors to be in place.

2. SuccessFactors Competencies integration with SAP Qualifications

This integration is planned for release in June 2014.

The SuccessFactors HCM suite has a competency library where an employee’s competencies are maintained. Applications such as SuccessFactors Performance and Goals, SuccessFactors Learning and SuccessFactors Succession and Development utilize the competency library for talent management processes. SAP ERP has a Qualifications Catalog, where employee qualifications are maintained. Several ERP applications make use of this qualifications catalog and the qualifications assigned to individual employees for business processes.

Why “Competencies Integration with SAP Qualifications”?

Customers who use the talent hybrid deployment model  need a single source of truth for their competency library and the competencies of their employees.

2.1 Data Flow from SAP to SuccessFactors

2.1.1 Transfer of SAP Qualifications to SuccessFactors Competency Catalog

Customers who currently have an SAP ERP Qualifications catalog can export the qualifications into a file using a program provided as part of the prepackaged integration. This file can be then used by the customer’s SuccessFactors administrators to populate the SuccessFactors competency library. This is a one-time manual upload. There is no middleware technology used.

SAP ERP customers may have Employee Qualifications stored in the SAP ERP system. When such customers decide to start using the SuccessFactors competency catalog, they can migrate the Employee Qualifications data from SAP ERP to SuccessFactors using the packaged integration. The data migrated will be available for viewing in the SuccessFactors Competency Profile.

Once the SuccessFactors competency catalog is populated, customers are required to maintain the catalog in SuccessFactors. Changes made to the SuccessFactors competency catalog will be sent to SAP ERP Qualifications catalog periodically. Competencies associated with a person are also sent to the SAP Qualifications Profile.

The packaged master data integration between SAP ERP HCM and SuccessFactors Talent Suite should be in place.

• The SuccessFactors Platform has two versions of Competencies. The newer version is built using a technology called the Meta Data Framework. The packaged integration does not use this version of competencies.
• Competency data object in the SuccessFactors Platform has relationships with multiple objects. For example, it has a relationship with the Job object. This packaged integration only supports the relationship between a competency and an employee.
• The SuccessFactors competency Library has objects such as Skills, Behaviours, Teasers and Tuners. These are not supported.
• There are multiple instances of competency ratings in SuccessFactors. Employee Competency ratings from multiple sources are stored individually in SuccessFactors. However, SAP Qualifications stores just one rating per employee qualification. So ratings from SuccessFactors are coverted into a single rating. Customers need to configure this conversion during the implementation phase.
• In SuccessFactors, the Competency rating of employee does not come with a validity period.
• Replication of the deletion of a Competency is not supported by the packaged integration. If a Competency is deleted in SuccessFactors, the packaged integration will not delete the corresponding SAP Qualification.

This integration is planned for release in June 2014.

Some SuccessFactors customers use sources other than the SuccessFactors competency library to track the competencies of their employees. The prepackaged integration is flexible enough to accommodate the integration of data from sources other than the SuccessFactors competency library.

Why “SuccessFactors Learning Curricula Integration with SAP Qualifications”?

Customers who use SAP ERP HCM in combination with SuccessFactors learning sometimes use the curricula feature instead of the competency library to track the competencies of their employees.

3.1 Data Flow from SAP to SuccessFactors

No data is sent from SAP to SuccessFactors Learning. The curriculum is created and maintained in SuccessFactors learning.

3.2 Integration Data Flow from SuccessFactors Learning to SAP ERP

Once the SuccessFactors Learning Curricula is populated, customers are required to maintain the curricula in SuccessFactors. Changes made to the SuccessFactors curricula will be sent to SAP ERP Qualifications catalog periodically. Competencies associated with a person are also sent to the SAP Qualifications Profile.

3.3 Prerequisites

The packaged master data integration between SAP ERP HCM and SuccessFactors Talent Suite should be in place.

• There is no support for a one-time upload of the SAP Qualifications Catalog to SuccessFactors Learning.
• While the SuccessFactors Learning Curricula is mapped to SAP Qualifications, SuccessFactors Learning Item is not mapped to SAP Qualifications.
• Deletion of Curricula is not supported by the packaged integration. If a Curricula is deleted in SuccessFactors Learning, the packaged integration will not delete the corresponding SAP Qualifications.
• Determination of the validity period incase of SuccessFactors Learning is derived.The Curriculum contains Items that have an expiry dates. Each item can have a separate expiry date. To arrive at the validity end date of a Curriculum, all the items within a Curriculum are processed and the earliest expiry date among them is interpreted as the Curriculum validity end date. If Items do not have end date specified, its assumed that the Skill will never expire (31st December 9999).There is no begin date supplied. Current date is considered as begin date. In every replication, the data for Employee skill is updated to start with current date.

Both the packaged integrations use SAP HANA Cloud Integration as the integration middleware technology.

SAP NetWeaver PI on-premise integration middleware technology will be supported in the upcoming releases.

The one-time upload of SAP Qualifications is done as a manual file upload as part of the implementation.

The detailed administration guide will be available in Service Market Place at service.sap.com as part of the release.

A rapid knowledge transfer session will be conducted by product managers to enable implementers. A recording of the session will be made available in service market place.

Help.sap.com will be updated with the appropriate help documentation as part of the release.

There are no Rapid Deployment solutions covering these packaged integrations as of June 2014.

5.5 Additional Learning about SAP Qualifications and SuccessFactors Competencies

Julien Tuerlinckx has written an excellent blog post on the topic of leveraging SAP Qualifications. A second blog post by him on the same topic is here.

A primer in SuccessFactors Competencies is available here.

SAP ERP customers use employee qualifications stored in the Employee Qualifications Profile in SAP to make day-to-day operational decisions.

An employee acquires a qualification, in most cases, by completing a training program. These training programs are managed by many SAP customers in SuccessFactors Learning, SAP’s learning management system in the cloud. The SuccessFactors Learning Curricula integration with SAP Qualifications integrates the Curricula and the Curricula completion status of an employee with the SAP Qualifications Catalog and the Employee Qualifications Profile in SAP, respectively.

In some cases changes in an employee’s qualification might come from a system that is not a learning management system. For example a performance management system could update an employee’s qualifications. Hundreds of SAP customers use the SuccessFactors Talent Solutions suite which has applications that influence or directly update an employees qualifications. The SuccessFactors Competencies integration with SAP Qualifications integrates the SuccessFactors Competency Catalog and the Employee Competencies with SAP Qualifications Catalog and the Employee Qualifications Profile in SAP, respectively.

I would like to share My first  experience at SAP training course and share knowledge which I get.

Company where I work have recently implemented SAP ERP system and  we rich to end user training .

I am working at IT department but I asked company to share me in end user training to get strong view

about SAP ERP concept as I am totally new in this domain.

I completed  personal administration module.I was lucky to have good implementer & trainer, who give us good overview about SAP hr and how data is linked under one system. I am sure know that SAP is great and solid ERP solution.

First, I  would to explain main concept of SAP HR personal administration module.

This module is consist of number of  infotype like (personal data, contract element, personal IDs, comunication , ...) depending on business blue print document

some of info type has subinfotype like communication has many sub infotype like (address , email , ...)

then u can apply many action on employee like (Hireing, promotion, transfare, re-hiring, ....)

1- End user can implement action on employee by using transaction code PA40

then enter start date and select action name from list after that click execute button

SAP system display interface enable user to fill infotype of employee

2- End user can change infotype (like address) of employee at any time using transaction code PA30

3- End user can view only infotype with out change option (like address) of employee at any time using transaction code PA20

With the b1405 release for SuccessFactors Learning, a major new piece of functionality is being introduced to the product, albeit in a ‘Preview’ release (i.e. - beta).  This new concept of Programs in the LMS presents learning administrators with a fresh way to structure learning and tailor packages of learning for different groups and needs.  Curriculum have been in the LMS for a while and provide a nice way to structure various learning elements (Items/Requirements/Sub-curricula), but Programs provide a different way to think about your structured learning offerings for your organization.

For anyone who reads my blogs, you know I like to compare SuccessFactors functionality to on-premise SAP HCM, and today will be no different.  For those familiar with SAP Learning Solution, SAP has a concept of Curricula and Course Programs already.  In true SAP fashion though, I’ve found over the years the use of the two in SAP seem backwards to a person’s assumed meaning of ‘curricula’ vs ‘program’.  Curricula in SAP are meant to have defined start and end points, with course offerings that are meant to be taken by the learner in a structured manner with respect to the overall timing of the curriculum.  Many people in the US equate the term ‘curriculum’ to a University curriculum.  Curriculum in SAP are not nearly as flexible as one may think when making this comparison as they are meant to drive learners through specific training and offerings in a set time frame.  This can lead to some confusion for users of SAP LSO, as the Course Program concept in SAP is much more similar to the University curriculum concept that people are more familiar with.

The use of Programs in SuccessFactors Learning is conceptually similar to the use of Course Programs in SAP LSO, however, SuccessFactors Learning has a much bigger vision for Programs in the LMS than what is possible in Course Programs within SAP LSO.  If you read the b1405 release notes from SuccessFactors on the topic of Programs, you will see they are designed to deliver simple and intuitive learning that spans over time and can be comprised of differing types of learning activities. This is very similar to Course Programs in SAP LSO, with one key difference.  Course Programs in LSO provide a similar ‘learning map’ so to speak through learning courses, but that’s all it provides within the program (courses only).  One of the great things about Programs in SuccessFactors Learning is the content (called Activities) of the Program does not have to just be learning items. There are several options in the preview release with b1405 for the activities that can make up a Program, and more are to come in the roadmap for the functionality.

Programs are an opt-in feature with the b1405 release, and keep in mind it is a preview/beta release, so you will see some functionality around them still yet to come, plus don’t be surprised to find a bug or two if you play around with it now (I already have). You have to opt-in to the use of Programs in the LMS, which as an admin in the LMS you can do so by following the steps below.

1. In the System Configuration files, in the LMS_ADMIN file, set the parameter for enableBetaProgramsFeature to ‘true’
   1. Prerequisites in the LMS_ADMIN file include
      1. Set parameter enableCatalogFilteredSearchAndIntegratedSocialContent to ‘true’
      2. Also you must be using the latest UI display (‘Recommended’ setting in the User Settings configuration of the LMS)
2. There are new security workflows for admins for the use of Programs.  Check to ensure your admin roles contain these.

Once you have activated Programs in SuccessFactors Learning, you should see menu options for them within the Learning area of the administrator portal.  You can create Programs much like you create any other entity/objects in the LMS.  The screen shot below demonstrates the options available when creating a Program. For the purpose of this blog, I am creating a Program for a New Manager Training Program to help give us some context.

1. Type – Programs in the LMS can be one of three types, which dictate the structure and timing of the program in general.
   1. Scheduled– Programs of this type have a set Start/End Date and Time.  This can be compared to Curriculums in SAP LSO, which are meant to be taken during a specific period.
   2. Duration-Based– Programs of this type have a fixed duration overall, but learners can start the program at different times.  More flexibility is given to learners here, allowing the Program to be started at any point in time while dictating that the program should be completed within a certain duration.
   3. Open-Ended– Programs of this type provide the most flexibility, dictating no start/end date and times or fixed duration.
2. Progress Restriction – Within the Program, admins can restrict the progress through the various activities in a couple of ways
   1. By Completion– Selecting this option for progress restriction requires users to complete previous sections before starting the next section of activities.
   2. By Schedule– Selecting this option for progress restriction requires users to wait until the scheduled time before starting a section with respect to the overall timing and duration of the program and sections within it.
      1. Note – This option can only be used for progress restriction if the Type is set to ‘Scheduled’

Once an admin specifies the base information to create a Program, the main maintenance screen for Programs is displayed.  First thing you should notice if you are familiar with the LMS from the admin side is the UI here is completely different than the typical screen that is shown to an admin when maintaining various entities in the system. Maintaining a Program here provides a tile-based look and feel similar to the end user UI of the LMS and the rest of SuccessFactors and BizX in general (maybe a sign of things to come in the rest of the Admin portal within the LMS…who knows).  The main maintenance screen is broken down into the various tiles below.

1. Description – Text based description of Program, visible to learners when looking at the Program details.  Can have different translations based on locales as needed.
2. Agenda – The agenda is the structure of the Program, made up of various Sections and Activities.
3. Settings – Various differing settings for the Program, including the program type, status, domain assignment, program group, and progress restriction.
4. Assignment – Reflects the number of Assignment Profiles that contain the program.
5. Publishing – Reflects the number of Catalogs and Subject Areas that are related to the program.

The following sections provide further details on maintaining Programs within SuccessFactors Learning.

Agenda

As mentioned before, the Agenda of the Program forms the overall structure of the Program.  It is broken down into Sections, and each Section can contain various Activities.  Within the Agenda maintenance area of a Program, the right hand side provides admins with the ability to add Sections and Activities to the Program as desired.

You can add numerous sections at one time to the Program via the ‘Add Sections’ area.  Up to 30 sections are allowed for a program, and when you add sections, you can specify the default period of time for each section (in days, weeks, or no duration).  After Sections are added you can adjust their titles and durations accordingly.  Every section in the Program does not have to have the same duration.

After you have added Sections to the Program, you can then add Activities to desired section.  Activities are basically tasks for the user to complete when going through the program.  Presently a Program can have the following Activities, but note not all of these Activities are truly available as of the b1405 release even though they are shown here (remember this is just a preview release for now).

• Ready for use now with b1405 Preview Release
  • Item– An Activity can represent a learning Item, which would require the individual to complete the item successfully in order for it to be marked as complete within the Program.
  • Link– An Activity can be a link to anything you may want it to be, within SuccessFactors or not.  You can provide your own text description for the link and its purpose within the Program as desired.
    • Note – Users will mark this type of Activity as Complete on their own when done.
  • Text– This type of activity is sort of a catch-all.  From a technical standpoint it’s nothing more than just a text description of an activity/action that needs to be done.
    • Note – Users will mark this type of Activity as Complete on their own when done.
• Not available as of b1405, coming soon
  • Jam– Activities of this type can be associated with an existing Jam group or allow you to create a new Jam group directly from the Agenda maintenance screen, similar to how you can do so presently for Items.  For now, you can use a Link activity to provide a direct URL to a desired Jam group.
  • Document– Activities of this type can be associated to documents that you can upload directly.  For now, you can store the document somewhere online and provide a Link activity to the document if desired.
  • Survey– Activities of this type can be associated to a questionnaire survey created in the LMS.

As you add Activities to your agenda, you will see in the tile interface how the structure is coming along and make adjustments as needed.  The screen shot below provides an example of reviewing the more complete Agenda within a Program.

Publishing a Program

After you create a Program, the next step is getting it out to your users.  Currently there are two methods for doing so, very similar to how you would assign Items out to users in your organization.  You can add the Program to desired Catalogs to make the Program available to users when searching the catalog.  Alternatively, if you want to directly assign the Program to users so it is automatically on their learning plan, you can do so via an Assignment Profile.  The ‘Publishing’ section of the Program maintenance screen will allow you to make assignments for Catalogs (and Subject Areas).  The ‘Assignment’ section of the Program maintenance screen will not allow you to make Program assignments to Assignment Profiles, but will reflect any existing relationships that do exist.  In order to add a Program to an Assignment Profile (or create one), you will have to go through the Assignment Profile maintenance process.

Viewing Programs as a User

An end user within the LMS can then view Programs available in Catalogs they are assigned via the catalog search, or if a Program is already assigned to a user via an Assignment Profile, the user will see the Program already on his/her learning plan.  The screen shot below shows how a program will look to a user within the catalog search.  Also note a filter under the Category area of the catalog search is available for 'Program'.

The screen shot below shows how a Program is displayed to a user once assigned to his/her learning plan.  A user can filter here by Program as well.

After enrolling in a Program, a user can then manage his/her progress through the Program accordingly. As mentioned previously, Activities within the Program that are not Items (i.e. – Link or Text) will not be systematically determined for their completion for the user.  A user will mark his/her completion for these types of Activities as desired.  As a user progresses through the Program, a completion % bar reflects his/her progress accordingly.

Roadmap for Programs

While the Program functionality is a major part of the b1405 release for SuccessFactors Learning, keep in mind it is only in preview/beta presently.  While in theory you can turn it on now and use it if you want, I would not recommend doing so in your production environment.  For now I would get familiar with the functionality in your staging environment, discuss how you see Programs being utilized within your organization, and have a plan ready for roll-out when the bugs and additional functionality for Programs comes in the next release or two.  Below is a summary of what is still yet to come for Programs so you are aware.

• Not currently supported
  • Reporting
  • Notifications
    • I expect notifications to be available for assignment of programs, plus notification around Activities within Programs that are schedule/duration based, meaning they should be completed by a certain time.
  • Supervisor functionality
  • Commerce
  • Delete/Copy/Bookmarks/Recent
    • You create a Program now, you can’t delete it (at least not yet)
    • If you’re like me and you use your Recent bar to bounce back and forth between objects in the LMS you are currently working on, you won’t see your recent Programs for now
  • Live edits to already assigned programs
    • Except for titles/descriptions.  This means you add an Activity to an existing Program that is already assigned to users, they will not see that addition.
• Roadmap for Future Releases
  • Closing functionality gaps above
  • Multi-purpose scheduler
  • Flexibility with settings
  • Jam and BizX integration
    • Jam integration as mentioned before, tying an Activity to a Jam group or creating one from the Program maintenance.
    • BizX integration I imagine in the sense of having assigned Programs for users on the To-Do list in BizX when applicable.

Summary

Overall I think the introduction of the Program concept in SuccessFactors Learning is a great piece of new functionality for organizations to leverage in the future.  Be patient as SuccessFactors fills in the gaps in functionality.  Take it for what it is right now, which is a beta release of functionality, not meant for true production use.  Once the kinks are worked out, Programs should complement Curricula in the LMS very well, similar to how Course Programs and Curricula complement each other in SAP Learning Solution.  The functionality of Programs in SuccessFactors Learning though will be much greater than what is available in Course Programs in SAP LSO, which is exciting for anyone familiar with the two applications.  I will try to update this blog accordingly as future releases expound on the functionality for Programs within the LMS.  For now, please feel free to share your thoughts and comments on the functionality, especially if you get a chance to play around with it now that it is available to Learning customers as of the b1405 release.

We can upload image of employee in HR personal administrator module using transaction code: "OAAD"

click Store and Assign button

enter value

Business object : PREL

Document type : HRICOLOFOTO

click ENTER then click Create button

popup window will appear "Key for SAP document"

Personnel Number : enter personal number that you want to add photo to his personal data

for infotype  choose "personal data"

then click continue

After that choose image from your computer. SAP will save this image in employee file and give message of conformation

if you want to check image use Transaction Code PA10 or PA20

I which this article is helpful

Simplified administration and configuration has been a theme for reporting and analytics in SuccessFactors reporting and analytics so far this year.

The Headlines capability in SuccessFactors Workforce Analytics continues to evolve and advance.

As described in an earlier blog, the Headlines capability of SuccessFactors Workforce Analytics takes a fresh approach to changing the paradigm of how workforce data is communicated within companies.

In the latest release, the enhanced administrative tool set provides greater self-support to configure and deploy the Headlines. Headlines can be “pushed” to end users by administrators; end users can choose Headlines for themselves, or a combination of both.  Administrators can assign feed subscriptions to roles in addition to specific users, which help to scale up the roll out of Headlines to end users.

When subscribing to Headlines, users can quickly and easily choose one or more (multi-select) headlines to include in the Headlines feed.  For this, they have access to the full measure catalogue in Headlines Designer, enabling them to add new Headlines for any measure in the SuccessFactors Workforce Analytics library (of course that’s if they have data for the measure and the security to view) without a need for additional support.

Certain users, such as HR business partners, need to see Headlines from the same perspective as the leaders and managers they support. Now these users (if they have the proper permissions) can navigate through the hierarchy structure to the target group and view their Headlines.

These capabilities and enhancements make administration and utilization of Headlines more straightforward and are vital in making the roll out of Headlines as simple as flipping of a switch, thus accelerating the deployment of Headlines with ready access to common stories such as high-performer turnover, diversity in management, and internal mobility.

Build and deliver engaging experiences with dashboards.

Love the home page tiles? With this release, you can run your favorite reports and dashboards directly from Quick Links on your home page.

A single page for all dashboard administration simplifies and streamlines dashboard management.  Administrators now have the flexibility to create and deliver new and custom analytic tiles on dashboards beyond the delivered fixed set of charts. A wizard-like tool empowers administrators to rapidly build tiles, activate them for the home page and the iPad with the same drill-down and filtering capabilities, create tile-based dashboards, and share the dashboards.

On the iPad the filter panel provides same options as on the web, and native charts allow pinch zoom, tooltips and drill down.

Furthermore, the ability to edit from the theme manager lets administrators set the color palette in standard dashboards. All tiles and standard dashboards now use colors from the theme manager.

For more information on the SuccessFactors February and May releases, please visit the SuccessFactors Customer Community (registration required):

To learn more about how workforce analytics can support your HR strategy, click here to download:Your Roadmap to High Value HR Analytics.

Follow SuccessFactors on twitter: @successfactors.

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We may think that opposites attract, but study after study shows otherwise: people around the world prefer to associate with others like themselves. It’s called the “affinity effect” and it holds even in the dating scene – an analysis of 1 million eHarmony matches shows that while people may say they’re looking for “complimentary” partners, they reallywant someone just like themselves. (It also shows that there’s no end to the uses of data analysis.) What’s more, when we’re surrounded by lots of different kinds of people, we apparently seek out “our” people even more. Which may explain why, when I was in Amsterdam, I took my life in my hands to sprint across three lanes of traffic when I saw a guy wearing a Giants cap. In San Francisco I never would have noticed him and his wife, but in that city filled with crazed bicyclists fueled by bitterballen, coming from the same place and rooting for the same team made us instant friends.

The affinity effect may sound like bad news for organizations trying to reap the benefits of workforce diversity, but maybe that’s true only when if diversity is defined in instantly visible “traditional” categories such as race, age, and gender. In reality, each of us is a combination of many different characteristics that include personality, whether we’re parents, sexual orientation, religion, language, and so on – and that’s just from a North American perspective. Depending on our surroundings, we’ll be drawn to people with whom we share one or more of the characteristics that makes each of us unique. Designers are likely to have at least a passing interest in others who have an opinion on Helvetica. Anyone living in a foreign country for an extended period will seek out those who speak their language. And parents across any diversity spectrum will share similar hopes and fears for their children.

In his TED talk Upside-down Diversity, Andres Tapia explores diversity in the context of multi-dimensional identities and focuses on “inclusion” as the magic ingredient that makes the mix of diversity work. Here’s an image from his presentation showing the many possible layers and combinations of diversity.

So what’s a company that wants to benefit from diversity to do? As in almost any other area, managers play a critical role when it comes to fostering the inclusion necessary to make diversity work. in the background, these efforts are probably reinforced by the so-called “mere exposure effect,” which says we prefer things we’ve experienced before, whether we know it or not. It doesn’t matter whether those things are pictures or lyrics or melodies; people like them more the second or third time around.In addition to explaining why so many of us like oysters, this effect kicks in when we’re repeatedly exposed to “different” people at work, which of course also gives us the opportunity to discover what we have in common despite our differences.

Although the basic challenges of workplace diversity are based on human nature and hold across cultures, just what makes up “diversity” and the motivations to achieve it vary widely around the world. To explore these differences, you’re invited to join a webinar with Gilda Stahl of the Economist magazine on July 9, at 10 a.m. PT. Gilda will share the findings of a survey and in-depth interviews (conducted by The Economist Intelligence Unit on behalf of SuccessFactors) with global executives and experts on important demographic groups such as millennials and women. Find out more about why diversity can be so hard, how diversity challenges differ by region, and the strategies global companies are using to achieve it.

A couple of weeks ago I attended a mobile conference in downtown San Francisco. Many companies that have made a name for themselves thanks to their mobile apps and a mobile-first approach were there either as speakers or attendees. And throughout the sessions and the conversations I had, the message that kept on repeating over and over was very clear: mobile apps are key to achieve high user engagement.

Let’s take Pinterest as an example. 75% from their traffic comes from mobile. Their mobile users use the service twice as often as the desktop web users, and most importantly they report 60% higher satisfaction when using the product. What’s not to like about this?

And if you look at the global mobile market it is undeniable that mobile apps are the way to go if you want to engage the majority your users: 86% of time spent on mobile devices is done on mobile apps versus a 14% on a mobile browser.  [source: "The Age of living mobile" by Flurry]

Does this breakneck mobile adoption anticipate the demise of the browser as a way to access cloud applications? Absolutely not. What we are seeing nowadays is a diversification of access to computing. Desktop web apps will still be the preferred option for power users because of the richness of features. Mobile apps will be the preferred choice for casual users because their simplicity and immediacy. Contrary to what many mobile zealots believe, mobile is not going to replace the desktop web app. Mobile is here to extend the user experience to more users, situations and devices.

Closing the HR engagement gap with mobile

And how does this impact the enterprise? At the risk of sounding hyperbolic, we are going to say that mobility is probably the best opportunity companies have ever had to engage their employees with enterprise software.

Let’s look at HR more specifically. In any company with more than 500 employees, people working in the HR department are approximately 1% of the total employee count [source: SHRM]. Let’s call them ‘power HR users’. They are the ones that have traditionally benefited the most from HR solutions because they are the primary users and because the features with most business value are designed for them.

On the other side we have the 99% of your employees. They are the ‘casual HR users’: people for whom HR systems are not their primary business tool and only use it sporadically. They are the ones that have felt underserved by HR for the longest time and they are the reason why companies have suffered from the ‘HR engagement gap’ – a failure to engage employees and increase their satisfaction through HR technology.

The causes behind these lack of engagement are multiple: they are usually overwhelmed by all the complexity and options offered in HR portals, they forget how HR systems work because of lack of frequency of use, and they are usually reluctant to follow any boring training for HR tasks that anyway they will only do several times a year. This engagement gap has terrible consequences for companies: it lowers the productivity of the entire organization and as a consequence HR ends up spending to much time supporting employees with basic HR tasks rather than spending precious time on strategic HR activities.

Mobility has the power to close this engagement gap. Its simplicity, ease of use, and immediacy makes it the ideal tool for casual HR users, which, let’s not forget, they are practically *all* of your HR user base. For them, when they can access HR with a mobile device things can’t get easier. No need to get into the employee portal to do a leave request.  No need to open your laptop to approve a new hire. Just pull out your smartphone and get it done in seconds. As a result employees are more engaged, more productive and they are much smarter about the way they work.

Looking ahead within our mobile team there is a shared belief that in a not too distant future, most of HR technology consumption will happen through mobile. Casual HR users will interact with HR through mobile devices while HR power users will continue to use desktop web apps. How long until this happens? If the adoption of SuccessFactors Mobile serves as an indicator of what is happening in the larger enterprise market this will probably happen faster than you think. Looking at our latest metrics we have seen that more than 70% of SuccessFactors customers are currently using SuccessFactors Mobile and in terms of mobile usage we are seeing the total amount of weekly active users (WAU) doubling every five months. Yes, that is quite a high adoption rate.

May 2014 release: fully redesigned iPhone application

Moving on to our May release, we have achieved another milestone towards increasing employee engagement and helping our customers bring HR closer to their employees. SuccessFactors iPhone app users can now enjoy a complete redesign that follows the look-and-feel of the SuccessFactors iPad app http://scn.sap.com/community/erp/hcm/blog/2013/12/05/successfactors-november-release-mobile : cleaner, brighter and friendlier.

The application homescreen has been rethought from the ground up to provide users with a more personalized and insightful experience. The menu adapts based on the user‘s context and provides time-critical information that nudges users to act.

Efficiency has been a big focus of the redesign as well. Tasks that are most often used by users in mobile settings have been streamlined so now it is faster than ever to act on approvals, request vacation or create a Touchbase topic on the spot.

Employee Profile is another area where we have put a lot of ‘mobile-first’ thinking. Beyond the enhanced employee profile that now supports all core employee information, users can now update their profile picture by either selecting a picture from their phone photo album or taking a picture of themselves with their camera phone (commonly known as ‘selfie’).

These are just some highlights of our May 2014 release but you can also expect similar design improvements in the iPhone app related to Jam, search, onboarding and and analytics. If you are already a SuccessFactors Mobile user we recommend you to download the app so you can see for yourself the whole new iPhone experience we have prepared for you.

If you are a SuccessFactors customer but have not deployed Mobile yet we strongly encourage you to give it a try. With the simple but powerful mobile administration panel you can activate and deploy it in minutes. Extra data security and robust access controls guarantee a zero risk deployment. And best of all, SuccessFactors Mobile is included in your SuccessFactors subscription!

Learn more at successfactors.com/mobile or if you are already part of the SuccessFactors Community go to community.successfactors.com/t5/Mobile/ct-p/Mobile

Follow SuccessFactors on twitter: @successfactors

It was once said that “golf is a good walk spoiled”. In contrast, with the million square feet of space on offer to SAP at the Orange County Convention Center, I found my SAPPHIRE walks, while long, to be both productive and enjoyable. Following a well-trodden path from the Media & Analyst Center to the HR LoB demo pods, I spent three intensive days meeting with customers, prospects, analysts, partners, and staff.

Here then, and with the assistance of the photographic memory (and photographs) provided by Tony Ashton, SuccessFactors’VP of Product Management for Workforce Analytics & Planning, are a couple of takeaways from the event.

1. The Event Matched the Message: Simplicity First– From Bill’s opening keynote, SAP is stressing the concept of simplicity in both internal organizational design and external relationships with customers. As an event, SAPPHIRE can be overwhelming but, as a rookie attendee, I was pleasantly surprised by how simple I found the agenda and layout to be – with all of the major sessions in a single room, there was no need - as with other technology conferences - to take a taxi between auditoriums. Kudos to the organizers.
2. Prospective Customers are Excited by the Vision of Workforce Analytics, Yet Share Similar Challenges – Tony ran two Microforums (benchmarking and predictive analytics), with strong levels of engagement and interaction. Pressure is most certainly ramping up on HR to deliver data analysis beyond the simple facts found in transactional reports, yet common hurdles remain: translating executive urgency for analytics into resources on the ground, handling data quality issues, building capability and capacity to deliver insights to leaders, etc. It’s a similar story to one we’ve heard over the last ten years.
3. Applications Offer “Analytics for All” - From the standpoint of SuccessFactors Workforce Analytics & Planning, SAPPHIRE was an opportunity to share more on how we’re extending our purpose-built analytics for HR application, joining forces with SAP HANA, KXEN’s predictive modeling, and Lumira. It does truly offer the potential of analytics for all – pre-built content for managers and ad-hoc analytics for data scientists.
4. Consulting and Data Asset Partners are Investing Heavily in Capabilities for Workforce Analytics & Planning – I had the opportunity to spend time with a couple of Workforce Analytics & Planning certified partners (3D Results, Deloitte, and PwC to name but three) and firms who have completed our mastery training. Additionally, Tony and I met with several firms that have invested in building data assets (surveys, etc.) and unique workforce models. I love how passionate the ecosystem has become about workforce analytics and the level of insight into how we support HR leaders needing to tell a more powerful story about the ROI of talent decisions. The trick will be determining how to prioritize among a wealth of opportunities.
5. Analysts are Cautiously Optimistic About HR as a Data-Driven Function – Across the board, the analysts that we spoke with are reasonably optimistic about how analytics can secure a stronger foothold in the strategic HR agenda. Still, the prevailing message from analysts (which we share) is that analytics will not be successful until the data is actually used for decision-making – going live with an application doesn’t signal the end of the journey.

Finally, I really enjoyed presentations from Rob Delmarco (Comcast) and Rob Arborgast (Timken), both of which featured stories on the importance of workforce analytics to their organizations.  Here are a couple of photos of Rob and Rob onstage, as well as Steve Gregory, Senior Solutions Consultant for SuccessFactors, presenting SuccessFactors Headlines for Workforce Analytics.

What Lies Ahead: SuccessConnect 2014

With a successful SAPPHIRE behind us, our team is now preparing for the upcoming SuccessConnect North America conference on September 10 and 11 in Las Vegas. We already have six sessions confirmed for Workforce Analytics & Planning, including presentations from Royal Bank of Canada, Travelers, and Wawa.

You can read more about the sessions here: http://successconnect2014.com/breakouts. I look forward to sharing some good walks with you there.

Let your voice be heard as a representative for SAP and SuccessFactors in the CedarCrestone HR Systems Survey, now in its 17^th year. This year’s survey is collecting data until June 30^th. Respond and get valuable data for your own internal planning process and an early copy of the results. You can access the survey from the SuccessFactors Community home page under the Announcements.

You may have identified some of your employees , could be new hires  or customer service employees or way of some criterion,  that you would like to predict for possible employee turnover.

For example following test data of 5 active employees

In order to make predictions based on some rules , we can take a look at employee turnover data from  (say)last 2 years and use it as actual historic data that will be used for data mining and create some rules to make decisions.

For example following is snapshot of one such historical records data

Based on the historical data records , Predicted results for possible turnover could be as follows

Value of YES in Turnover column is just indicator of high chance of employee turnover , it does not guarantee that it will happen in actual . It is just indicator of potential or likelihood based on data mining , rather than analyzing all , this smaller data can be used for further analysis or investigation .

Let ‘s cover some background , motivation or rationale behind the working of above described scenario.

HRIS Implementations using SAP HCM solution have  great reporting capabilities which allows users to answer questions about demographics, performance , characteristics or costs of employees. For example Questions like How many employees have started/left ? How many will retire in next 24 months ? Number of Training done last quarter  ?

Such analysis provides business view on what happened and what is currently happening. Though it easily provide answers to questions like how long an employee has been with us , whereas if the questions were which Employees are most likely to leave ?  or how long will employee stay ?  we need Predictive analysis which provides future looking insights on the business. These analysis techniques are based on mathematical statistical  models used in data mining and these models generally work very well specially on large amount of data, predicting what is likely to happen based on historical data. Although predictive analysis addresses outcome or what will happen next , further analysis can be done to answer why it's likely to happen and what if these trends continue ?

The questions requiring predictions in future could be varying in nature and importance to business i.e. which sales representatives are most likely to leave ? instead of how many sales representatives leave us last year ? which employees are most likely to perform or promoted ? who are our most valuable employees ? Traditional HRIS alone can not answer such type of questions.

Predictive analysis are not new and have been in use in various industries  and now SAP HANA Platform has the computing capabilities to build such analysis. Such application can be used as a tool in context of Strategic Workforce Planning.

Anyone who has worked in time and payroll would have often wished to have a means to print PCR or Schema into a PDF. Below are the step by step instructions on how to do it.

Let us try to print PCR TE30.

Go to TCode PE02 and enter PCR TE30 and display it as shown below:

Go to Menu Item Rule and click on Print as shown below:

Below screen comes up where you need to select output device.

In my case, the output device is LP01. In some cases, you may find it as LOCL also.

A spool request gets generated.

Go to TCode SE38 and enter program RSTXPDFT4 and click on execute icon.

Enter the spool number and click on execute.

Save it on Desktop

Click on Allow.

Below is the pdf version of PCR TE30.

I hope this is useful information for all folks.

Thanks and regards,

Vivek Barnwal,

vianshu@gmail.com