Over the course of the last three years I have met with hundreds of companies to talk about onboarding. Consistently, every organization is feeling the need to move the needle here albeit with varying degrees of sophistication. Some are ready to just automate their new hire paperwork and revel in the short-term ROI from that for a while. Others see onboarding as an exceptionally strategic process, key to their success. Unilaterally, everyone is on board with a desire to make this process better, right up until I indicate that true success is based on the hiring manager having a stake in the game. Then the chin drops.

As HR professionals we have spent more than a decade automating and perfecting ways to take busy-work away from the hiring manager. So why are we now indicating that we want them to take an active investment in bringing their new hires on board? Because they told us they want to! Our interviews with managers around the world indicated that they want to move away from babysitting the process (is the PC ready yet?) and focus back on establishing rapport with their new hire.

We have also interviewed hundreds of new hires and the message they bring us is consistent. Relationships matter. They want to feel welcomed, needed, and they want to know that the skills they’ve spent a lifetime perfecting will be utilized and appreciated. They want to make a difference quickly.

As the manager, you spent countless hours bringing this candidate in the door.  You provided the business case for the headcount, you reviewed dozens of resumes, you screened and interviewed until you found the perfect match. This is the person you selected to help move the needle for your team, so why now that you have them would you risk losing them? Why is sending a welcome note an annoyance? Why is two minutes to identify the people in the organization they need to meet too much time to spare? Why is spending five minutes on these simple tasks too much to ask? New hires leave when they don’t feel valued, welcomed, or part of the team. As the manager, you are largely responsible for those first impressions.

I recently had the opportunity to spend time with a large European pharmaceutical company talking about this very topic. They are anxious to bring their managers back into the process and are actively seeking great ways to incent their involvement. We talked about gamification’s role in this along with many other ideas for where technology can play a part in bringing people together. Other companies are holding lunch-and-learn sessions to train their managers on the importance of early engagement with the new hire. They realize relationships matter.

One by one, companies are seeing the value in bringing the personal touch back. They want their managers to be accountable for being good managers. They’re willing to invest in relationships. These will be the successful organizations of the future because they foster loyalty and engagement.

What are you doing in your organization to make onboarding more personal? Do you encourage hiring manager engagement, or allow delegation to other team members?  How will you hold your managers accountable for reducing attrition and improving new hire satisfaction? We’d love to hear from you!

I have recently completed SuccessFactors Recruitment Data Migration for a client and I would like to put forward my experiences and lessons learnt in this blog post. Person reading this article must have an idea about SF Recruitment module. I have included the average time taken to load each Recruitment object. This time might vary depending on Data Centre’s performance at a given point of the day. Workaround per object for the system limitations like Internal Candidate Application load, Background Elements for Internal Candidates is also included.

Data Objects for Recruitment Load

The following data objects can be migrated to SuccessFactors system as part of Recruitment Load

1. Candidate Profiles
2. Candidate Background Elements
3. Candidate Tags and Candidate Tag Assignments
4. Candidate Attachments
5. Job Requisitions
6. Applications
7. Application Attachments

Jobs are scheduled in Provisioning to initiate each load. More details about setting up job and preparing data load files is available in Recruitment Handbook.

Manual Correction of Data

Recruitment data once loaded cannot be updated or deleted through the load process. Updating and deleting will be a manual activity and can be only done record by record. Hence a pre-load validation of data is very important to ensure that the data loaded in the system is accurate. Enough time must be allocated to perform a thorough check on the transformed and ready to load data.

Best Time to Migrate Data

The best time to load the data is during week days and business hours. SuccessFactors systems usually undergo maintenance during Friday-Saturday, and Saturday-Sunday midnight to early hours in the morning. The data load jobs must not run during this period as either the jobs are interrupted or the data will be loaded incorrectly.

Journey of Data Migration

I used the word ‘Journey’ as we did go through lot of hitches and learnt many lessons before loading the data in the production instance. At least 5 dry runs were initiated in multiple test instances to improve the data quality, load time and handle load errors before doing the final production load. The story of loading each Recruitment object goes as follows.

1. Candidate Profiles

As part of Recruitment load only External Candidates’ data can be migrated. Internal Candidates are users in the system. Their Candidate Profile gets created automatically whenever their users are created in the system.

While loading Candidate Profile data, the candidate’s CV can also be loaded. The system does not support to load the Cover Letter of the candidates. As per SuccessFactors documentation, the system supports loading CVs of type .doc, .txt and .pdf only. But, in reality the system supports more than the above 3 types. We could load .docx, .rtf, .jpg, .HTML, .xls .xlsx, .PNG as well.

Loading the Candidate Profile data is the most challenging and time consuming part in Recruitment. Our client had 80,000 Candidates to be migrated along with a CV for each candidate. After many trials and failed attempts we came up with the best number of candidate records per file. The CVs of the candidates must be distributed in different folders. The ideal number of records per file is 5000 and number of CVs per folder is 500. These numbers have also been recommended by SuccessFactors.

If the load file size is big, i.e. has more than 5000 records, the job stops abruptly after a while. To the consultant it seems that the job status is ‘In Progress’. But in the backend the program gets struck and doesn’t run. In such cases we had to rerun the job. Luckily the system does not create duplicate Candidate Profile records. It errors out saying candidate already exists. So there is no harm in running the same job any number of times.

If the number of CV files per folder is more than 500, the system times out while finding the correct resume. Hence the number successful candidate records loaded in the system will be very less. Another major issue we found, which is independent of the number of files in a folder, while loading candidates with their resumes is a weird error that says ‘Error in importing resume’. We could not figure out the reason as why this issue occurs. The error occurs even if the resume exists in the right folder and the correct folder path is mentioned in the load file. Also the filename has simple alphanumeric characters with an underscore. Sometimes the same records the fall out in previous run will load when the job is run for the second time. But this is not consistent either.

After all the unsuccessful attempts we have finally reached out to SuccessFactors to load all the Candidate Profiles (only). They loaded 2 files of 5000 records each at a time by running some script in the backend. This is the most efficient method of getting the profiles loaded in the system. The time taken to load data per file is approximately 3 hours. In spite of encountering the same error (Error in importing resume) the number of fallouts now is less than 1%, which is pretty good when compared to 60% – 80% fallouts when we tried through Provisioning.

On the contrary, if the Candidates are loaded without a resume, the success rate is 100%. Such a load can be carried out by the client/consultant independently without SuccessFactors help. Also the time taken is less than 30 mins for 3000 candidates.

2. Candidate Background Elements

Loading Background Elements is pretty smooth after completing the herculean Candidate Profiles task. Background Elements for External Candidates is part of the Recruitment load. There is no way to load the Background Elements for Internal Candidates through Recruitment. The workaround we got is to define the same Background Element in Succession Data model. Then load the data through Import Extended User Information in Admin Tools of the instance. This data is first loaded to Employee Profile and then automatically syncs with Internal Candidate Profiles. The sm-mapping for the background elements must be maintained in Candidate Profile XML template.

The only care to be taken is not to run the same job more than once. Unlike Candidate Profiles, running the same job multiple times would create duplicate records. We have also noticed that time taken to load 150000 Background Elements records in one file takes more than 5 hours. Hence we split the load file in smaller files of 30000 records each and then loaded all the small files at once in parallel. The load time then was less than an hour for all the files.

3. Candidate Tags and Candidate Tag Assignments

Loading Candidate Tags and Candidate Tag Assignments is straight forward. Did not face any issues but is supported only for External Candidates through the load. Reloading the same file more than once does not create any duplicates. The load time is less than a minute for 300 records.

4. Candidate Attachment

An additional document, besides CV, can be loaded against an External Candidate through Candidate Attachment Load. This additional document is visible only in the screen that is displayed when searching for a candidate in the Instance. It is only visible to the Recruiters or whoever has got permission to search for the Candidates. The Candidate themselves cannot see the document.

Through the Candidate Attachment Load only one document can be loaded for a candidate. Loading the second document for the same candidate replaces the first document.

The job takes around 15 mins to load 2500 attachments. We have stored 500 documents in each folder.

5. Job Requisitions

We did face a few glitches while loading Job Requisitions, but they were manageable. The major issue we had for which we didn’t know the reason, even till date, is for the error “Department is not mapped to values in the system.” We did a thorough check to make sure the department is assigned to the user and the department’s creation and assignment date start from 01/01/1900, but it still didn’t work. We had to load the Requisitions by blanking out the department. This field is maintained manually in all the Requisitions as part of data remediation. We faced a similar issue for 2 to 3 Locations and Divisions also.

Though SuccessFactors documentation does not explicitly state, the fields for Hiring Manager (hiringManagerName), Recruiter (recruiterName) and Coordinator (coordinatorName) are mandatory. The import fails if these fields are not filled in.

If Job Profiles are used to maintain the Job Descriptions in the Requisition, all Families, Roles and Job Profiles must be first maintained in the Instance before the Requisitions are loaded. If they maintained prior to the load, the system automatically links the Requisitions with the Job Profiles. Otherwise, it is going to be a manual activity to connect the Job Profiles with Requisitions. The data in the jobRole field must be maintained in <Job Family Name>|<Job Role Name> format in the load file.

If EC is implemented and users are also loaded in the system at the same time of Recruitment load, Job Requisitions load must wait until all the users, their organization data are imported in the system and HRIS sync job is completed. The reason for HRIS Sync job to be completed prior to the load is because only then the Department, Division and Location of an Employee is copied to Employee Profile. Recruitment recognizes only those Departments, Divisions and Locations that are assigned to users and populated in Employee Profile. If a Department is created in the system but is not assigned to any user, then Recruitment does not recognize that Department. The same holds true for Division and Location as well.

Another point to take care of before loading Requisitions is to comment out all the Team Recruiting (operatorTeam) fields in the Requisition XML Template. Uncomment the fields after the load gets completed. The import fails if the teams are present in the template.

The job takes less than 20 mins to load 300 Requisitions. No duplicates will be created if the same job runs twice.

6. Applications

The standard Recruitment load supports only External Applications and not Internal Applications. But to the Business, migrating Internal Candidate Applications is as crucial as migrating External Candidate Applications. We came up with the below workaround.

a. Prepare and load a file to load all the Internal Candidates that have applications as External Candidates through the Candidate Profile load. Make sure the email id for Internal and External Candidate remains the same. This will help later in sending notifications to the candidate during the recruit process.

b. Load all the applications for Internal Candidates who are being loaded as Externals.

c. Use Manage Potential Duplicates tool to merge the Internal Candidate with External Candidate. While doing so, the Internal Candidate Profile replaces the External Candidate Profile and all the applications linked to External Profile will now move to Internal Candidate.

The biggest win in this approach is that the client is able to get all the Internal Candidate Applications migrated. Another good news is that the after merging of Candidates, the candidate’s application is identified as an Internal one.

One of the disadvantages is that the merging step is a manual activity. It can be carried out as a part of data remediation process after the load. The time taken to merge does not take more than 2 minutes for each candidate, which is better than not having the applications at all.

Another minor issue is sometimes the Internal Candidates could not be searched under Manage Potential Duplicates. In such a case the person who does merging activity might have to perform an additional step to search for the Candidate under Recruiting -> Candidates tab. Open the Candidate Profile and click on the ‘Save’ button.

I agree that this is a little clunky process but with this limitation we do not have another choice. Our load process happened prior to 1508 release. With 1508 release, we have ODATA API available for Applications. It is worth exploring this option to load the Internal Candidate Applications for future loads.

The load time for Application is quick as well. On an average the load time is less than 20 mins for 3000 applications

7. Application Attachments

We did not load any attachments for Applications. My thought is to use this option to load the CV as part of application instead of loading CVs against their profiles due to the problems mentioned above.

At the end of this journey, we had a very successful data migration. It is a huge team work by the Data Team, Business, Process Analyst, Functional Consultants and of course SuccessFactors.

SAP, in the Asia Pacific Japan region, has identified the need to grow the Cloud resource market by 300% over the next 12 months. We are looking for innovative and strategic cloud partners who are leading the way in up-skilling and re-skilling their resources in SAP Cloud & Cloud Certification.

We at SAP, are pro-actively reaching out to our partners who are going to lead this change with us now!

SAP Platinum Academy

SAP Global Partners Organisation in conjunction with SAP Education, has developed the SAPPlatinum Academies for Cloud Solutions to address the current cloud skills gap. The highly subsidised program consists of the following 2 development tracks:

• Condensed workshops + SAP Learning Hub + SAP Cloud Certification

or

• SAP Learning Hub (self-study) + SAP Cloud Certification.

To book your SAP Learning Hub, Partner Edition reach out to the SAP contacts listed at the end of this blog post!

Benefits to partners:

• Up to 70% discount on retail offering
• 100% self-study option to minimise disruption from ongoing commitments
• Workshop style enablement, reducing the overall study days
• Expert led workshop that augment the learning experience

SAP Learning Hub, the 24*7, cloud based content platform is the foundation for the SAP Platinum Academies. SAP Learning Rooms support the collaborative learning experience during and post Academies. To optimise the learning experience, we recommend that individuals who are taking part in the SAP Platinum Academies already have some project experience and some foundational knowledge in business processes or solution processes in the selected area.

SAP Cloud Certification

SAP Certification is our ‘stamp of quality’. We highly encourage all partner resources to pass SAP Cloud Certification within 6 months of the Platinum Academy. We are currently releasing new cloud certifications. We highly encourage all certified individuals to post their SAP Certification Credentials in the SAP Credential Manager.  This opt-in searchable database gives companies a way to verify and search for certified consultants.  More than 11,000 individuals have already registered in SAP Credentials Managers across Asia Pacific and Japan.

Get Started

Below you see the current schedule. For any questions in regards to the SAP Platinum Academy & SAP Learning Hub contact your local SAP Education partner:

IndiaSuccessfactors Employee Central Platinum Academy

India contact for registrations: Movin Crasto, <movin.crasto@sap.com>

Nov 23– Dec 2: Bangalore, India

South East Asia Successfactors Employee Central Platinum Academy

SEA contact for registrations: Lucia Stocker, <lucia.stocker@sap.com>

Nov 30 - Dec 9: Singapore

Korea Successfactors Employee Central Platinum Academy

APJ contact for registrations: Chris Nikitianos, <chris.nikitianos@sap.com>

Nov 30 - Dec 9:  Seoul, Korea

IndiaAriba Sourcing Platinum Academy

India contact for registrations: Movin Crasto, <movin.crasto@sap.com>

Dec 7-8 : Mumbai, India

AustraliaSuccessfactors Employee Central Platinum Academy

Australia contact for registrations: Lorraine Lee, <lorraine.lee@sap.com>

Dec 7-16: Sydney, Australia

Book your SAP Platinum Academy early, we have a limited number of seats and sessions planned! For other market units, please reach out to Anette Karlsson anette.karlsson@sap.com or myself.

Lead the change to cloud with SAP!

1)    Source: Digital Enterprise Whitepaper, SAP, August 2015

Introduction to SuccessFactors – Intelligent Services!

Being always at the top of Gartner’s chart, automatically raises customer’s expectation around SuccessFactors and with such great expectations I am sure all of us have encountered questions during requirement gathering workshops:

• How intelligent is the system?
• When manager goes on a leave of absence:
• Are the job requisitions automatically reassigned?
• Is the system intelligent enough to postpone the learnings assigned?
• Does system alert to adjust the goals?

     - For new hire can system assign some default learnings?

     - And the list goes on as we all know…

If we think from a consumer’s point of view all these questions sounded valid every single time and me being associated with the SAP products for so many years, I have always wished for these additions to be built in the system to make it more robust and versatile. Most importantly, to have efficient and effective manpower at work, we always wish for a system that would be intelligent enough to prompt for actions. And these intelligent services are not luxury anymore but necessity of time.

Like I have already mentioned in my previous blog - Wow features with SuccessFactors Q3 release, introduction to intelligent services would be a great achievement with SuccessFactors Q3 release.

SuccessFactors enables an HR transformation from self-services.That is:

• Integrated – An HR transaction that no longer begins and ends with a Core HR system, but extends across all impacted modules to create an end-to-end, complete process. 
• Intelligent – Each capability is aware of the smallest changes that happen in another and automatically responds to them with intelligence. It predicts the next step in the change, guiding users to the right place according to existing rules based on groups, role-based permissions and notifications.
• Efficient – Intuitive software fills the gaps instead of the HR, shared services, or business process outsources, reducing the time and expense spent on tasks that don’t drive value to the business. HR professionals can easily configure workforce changes based on rules and settings, allowing the right steps to be presented at the right time.

Any SuccessFactors product can raise and publish an event. Any other product, either SuccessFactors or third-party, can subscribe to any published event. Whenever that event is triggered by the publishing product, those subscribed products automatically receive notification of the event, along with information relevant to the change.

I have described some of these events in this blog to help you all.

In addition, administrators can use the new Intelligent Services dashboard to view event details and monitor event status. Administrators can also configure and manage the external event notifications to facilitate data integration with third-party systems.

Below is the current framework of Intelligent Service involving various modules

Detailed view on some of the most commonly awaited functionalities:

A.      Recruitment and On Boarding

• Update of Job Requisition / Job Application / Offer Detail

We are all aware that the On Boarding module is built in a way to pick up some data from Recruitment (i.e Job requisition, Application or offer). Now SAP has tried to make it intelligent on the event of whenever any update to Requisition, Application or Offer is actively synced with On-boarding. Which also means that any change even after On-boarding is initiated gets reflected. Also, system is capable of sending email notifications to new hire and hiring manager.

B.      Employee Central Events

• New Hire
  • Some default Learning Activities can be assigned with notifications to learning administrators
  • Event notification can be sent to Employee central payroll with effective dated data
  • Event notification can be sent to any third party with relevant data via API with effective date

• Rehire / Termination
  • Event notification can be sent to Employee central payroll with effective dated data
  • Event notification can be sent to any third party with relevant data via API with effective date

• Change in Division/Department/Location/Business unit/Job Classification
  • Event notification can be sent to any third party with relevant data via API with effective date. These are nothing but automatic trigger points that could be set on initiation of these events, through which relevant data could be passed.

• Change in Manager

This event is raised after a job information change for an employee has been made who has been assigned to a new manager.

• Learning activities are assigned to the new manager and are added to their learning plan. Learning administrators can decide whether to receive this event and can also manage which of the learning activities are associated with a change in manager.
• Succession planner would receive a notification in their To-Do list to review the succession plan when an incumbent changes managers.
• If the change in manager happens during active calibration session while subject is part of calibration session, notification is sent to the facilitator(s) for review.
• New manager would receive a notification in their To-Do list to review team goals.
• Event notification can be sent to any third party with relevant data via API with effective date

C.      Employee Time Off

• Employee and Manager would receive notification to adjust their goals accordingly, if necessary
• Email notification is sent to the employee, manager and administrator, so that the administrator can route forms appropriately.
• On the user’s profile in SAP JAM, all planned and approved absences are listed.
• Event notification can be sent to any third party with relevant data via API with effective date.

There’s more coming up with intelligent services in SuccessFactors Q4 2015 release and I am sure you’ll be amazed to see the pace with which SAP is adding more to it.

Stay tuned! Don’t forget to let us know your thoughts on this blog in the comments section below. We would love to hear from you!

A client of mine had a requirement to pay their employees overtime once they had completed their weekly contractual hours. There is a standard SAP sub schema, TW30, which can be utilised to convert any excess worked time above the weekly contractual hours into unapproved overtime.

Consider the example below where the working week is Monday to Sunday. TW30 would correctly convert the last two hours of Friday into unapproved overtime hours.

However if the employee has an absence at the end of the working week this is not converted as, although certain absences can contribute towards the weekly working hours, the absence cannot, and should not, be split into part absence and part overtime records. After being processed by TW30 the records would look like the table below.

This is an error and would result in the employee not being paid correctly. As you can see in the table above the employee is being paid 34 regular hours (highlighted in RED) and 8 hours absence which is incorrect.

The solution was to create a new sub schema with several Personnel Calculation Rules (PCR). The first PCR is used to store the number of hours worked and any absence that counts towards weekly working hours in time types. At the end of the working week, in this case Sunday, another PCR would total the number of hours worked and the absences and check against the employees weekly working hours from IT0007.

If the total is greater than the weekly work hours another PCR would trigger a retro calculation using a reduced weekly hours target. In the above example this would be the weekly planned hours of 40 minus the absence hours of 8 giving a target of 32 hours.

After processing the records would now look like the table below.

Want to find out more? Please contact me at steve.williams@epiuse.com 

I think we have all suffered from SAP work schedulitis? You know the symptoms. You started off with a reasonable number of work schedules in your SAP system but over time they have multiplied so that there are now thousands, possibly even tens of thousands, in your system.

Initially there was probably a logical system to the naming convention but that too has long gone by the wayside meaning that when allocating a work schedule to infotype 0007 a user will struggle to find an existing pattern that matches the requirements. In some cases this leads to a new work schedule being requested that may already exist!

As work schedules are configuration items a new schedule will take time to create and test so will use up valuable resources from your SAP support team.

This had happened to one of our clients and they asked us if we could help.

We developed a series of bespoke tables, input screens and programs that would allow an employee’s line manager to accurately create the working pattern for the employee whilst inbuilt validation would ensure that the new pattern did not differ from the employees contractual hours held on IT0007 Planned Working Time. 

This approach allowed the client to reduce the number of work schedules to a minimum and give the responsibility of maintaining accurate work schedules to an employees line manager.

The line manager can also create a rotating schedule of up to 12 weeks if required. The total hours per week can be more or less than the weekly working hours in IT0007 so long as the average DOES equal.

It is also very useful when it comes to part time employees. If two employees both wanted to work 20 hours per week but with different patterns this would require the creation of two separate work schedule rules in SAP. Now the employees can be allocated the standard Full Time Equivalent work schedule rule, change the weekly working hours to 20 and the detail of the 20 hours entered by the line manager.

There is a knock on benefit to this approach as the percentage utilisation value will be transferred to IT0008 and if the employee is allocated to a pay scale with set rates the pro ration will take place automatically.

Below is a screen shot where a manager would create the required shift pattern using start and end times, including any breaks.

Once the pattern has been created, validated and stored in the bespoke tables one of the programs, which is a scheduled job, will process the record and create IT2003 Substitutions records from the start date of the record. The number of IT2003 records created will be based on the end date of the record.  The program will also re-evaluate any IT2001 Absences or IT2002 Attendances records that fall within the date range.

Since being developed for the original client we have provided a similar solution to several other clients in the UK and USA.

If you would like to know more details then I am happy to share.

Please contact me at steve.williams@epiuse.com for further information.

As already announced in August in my blog Become an Expert in the Area of Employee Central / SAP ERP Integrations!, there are two additional classroom sessions offered now for the Employee Central / SAP ERP Integration Training. After the two workshops in EMEA (Walldorf) and US (NEW York), we now offer two trainings in the APAC region: Singapore & Gurgaon (India)

Make sure to be there and/or spread the news to colleagues & partners who might be interested
(click on links below for further information & registration):

Singapore:

Gurgaon (Delhi - India):

This is quite simple but found useful for CE environment changes done by SAP during Upgrade. Thought this might be helpful sharing.

During Upgarde we found that option of having Person Id on the selection screen disappeared from standard SAP reports like Time Balances, Quota accrual and Wage Type Reporter.

For example: Time Balance Report  selection after upgrade and no configuration changes.

Before Upgrade SAP program used to just check CE environment and hardcode all the programs with <program>_CE to remove this hardcoding SAP introduced new table I think.

After Upgrade the Code which looks for CE vs Non-CE reports is changed ( Function module: HRCCE_GET_REPORTNAME ), After upgrade it looks in table which is new T77CCE_PRG_PRGCE. When the entries are maintained for the view then the screen is changed to show CE environement selection screen.

Same transaction code PT_BAL00 for example changes as follows:

Relevant Note: 1925170 - SAP menu: Instead of a report, the corresponding CE report is called

I've been implementing SuccessFactors for many years, but only a few times for Job Profile Builder (JPB). But I'm proof an old dog can learn new tricks!

For anyone implementing Recruiting and using JBP to populate Job Descriptions and data, I think this little known fact is very important to know for any customer who already has Performance or Development and may be using Coaching Advisor or Writing Assistant (WACA).

It turns out that enabling Job Profile Builder (JPB), which is very useful for Recruiting requisitions, eliminates the ability to update WACA content in Admin tools. This might upset some customers who are editing their WACA content.

However, even though your admin links are gone for updating coaching advisor, it is still possible to get the content updated through export and import in provisioning. As long as you do not change the library name or GUID IDs, updating the WACA content in Provisioning doesn’t affect your JPB mappings or competency name, description, or behavior changes completed in admin tools.

Hope this helps! --Margaret

In 2014, for the first time in history, the number of global mobile users was higher than the number of desktop users. Add the fact that the total activity on smartphones and tablets account for an astounding 60 percent of digital media time spent in the U.S. (ComScore, 2014), and it becomes obvious that Mobile technology has swiftly risen to become the leading digital platform.

We at SuccessFactors jumped on that bandwagon very early on with our mobile application that helps employees, managers and executives become more productive and achieve greater business success. Our mobile offering covers a full spectrum of tasks across our entire HCM suite of solutions – from recruiting, new hire onboarding, performance & goals management, learning and analytics, to social collaboration and a powerful people profile and org chart. We provide your people with the tools they need, when they need it and where they need it.

Today we’re not blowing our own horn; we’re letting others do it:

We’re proud to be recognized as winner of the 2015 Ventana Research Mobile Technology Award.

As Mark Smith, CEO and Chief Research Officer of Ventana Research put it:

SuccessFactors has innovated its mobile enablement of its applications to make it simple to achieve tasks that are relevant to every employee like requesting time off or make changes to information providing self-service but also provide access to goals / tasks, organizational chart and people. Congrats to SuccessFactors for making mobile easy and productive with your applications.

And it doesn’t stop there. We continue our dedication with innovations that will support our customers through their journey and will make their people even more successful such as:

• New employee self-services / manager self-services – to name just a few: Mobile pay statements, flexible time-off requests, time sheet, performance reviews, spot awards, and many more to come in the next months.
• Security improvements like broader support for more MDM solutions, and several options to require more complex passwords.
• Brand new mobile app for Android – delivering the same delightful user experience as our iOS apps for iPhone and iPad.

We are honored and humbled to receive this recognition. It proves that our Mobile strategy is right and it provides another reason for every single SuccessFactors customer to consider rolling out SuccessFactors Mobile to their people.

I think we have all suffered from SAP work schedulitis? You know the symptoms. You started off with a reasonable number of work schedules in your SAP system but over time they have multiplied so that there are now thousands, possibly even tens of thousands, in your system.

Initially there was probably a logical system to the naming convention but that too has long gone by the wayside meaning that when allocating a work schedule to infotype 0007 a user will struggle to find an existing pattern that matches the requirements. In some cases this leads to a new work schedule being requested that may already exist!

As work schedules are configuration items a new schedule will take time to create and test so will use up valuable resources from your SAP support team.

This had happened to one of our clients and they asked us if we could help.

We developed a series of bespoke tables, input screens and programs that would allow an employee’s line manager to accurately create the working pattern for the employee whilst inbuilt validation would ensure that the new pattern did not differ from the employees contractual hours held on IT0007 Planned Working Time.

This approach allowed the client to reduce the number of work schedules to a minimum and give the responsibility of maintaining accurate work schedules to an employees line manager.

The line manager can also create a rotating schedule of up to 12 weeks if required. The total hours per week can be more or less than the weekly working hours in IT0007 so long as the average DOES equal.

It is also very useful when it comes to part time employees. If two employees both wanted to work 20 hours per week but with different patterns this would require the creation of two separate work schedule rules in SAP. Now the employees can be allocated the standard Full Time Equivalent work schedule rule, change the weekly working hours to 20 and the detail of the 20 hours entered by the line manager.

There is a knock on benefit to this approach as the percentage utilisation value will be transferred to IT0008 and if the employee is allocated to a pay scale with set rates the pro ration will take place automatically.

Below is a screen shot where a manager would create the required shift pattern using start and end times, including any breaks.

Once the pattern has been created, validated and stored in the bespoke tables one of the programs, which is a scheduled job, will process the record and create IT2003 Substitutions records from the start date of the record. The number of IT2003 records created will be based on the end date of the record.  The program will also re-evaluate any IT2001 Absences or IT2002 Attendances records that fall within the date range.

Since being developed for the original client we have provided a similar solution to several other clients in the UK and USA.

If you would like to know more details then I am happy to share. http://scn.sap.com/edit-profile!input.jspa?targetUser=913484

After taking a look at few new functionalities in the SAP HCM PA landscape under the customer connection program, it's now turn to check out this new option that work in a similar way as validity period for personal area/subareas and employee group/subgroups (1883014 - Validity period of HR objects) and well detailed in Sven Ringling's blog Validity Period for SAP HR Enterprise and Employee Structure while applying to action and reasons for actions.

HR objects validity periods has been out to adapt SAP system with the changing nature of every-businesses... Until then it was not possible to limit in time the existence of a business branch or sub-branch that had been closed down or sold aswell as an employee grouping value that had gone unused that could potentially lead to an incorrect selection. Well overtime a reason for action might for the same motto become obsolete in the system; and while in the past you would have developed a customer check to prevent your end-user to potentially select a erroneous value nowadays you can use a standard solution classified with "Idea D6809".

A new table T530_DELIMIT will let you customize time-validity for your corresponding reason for actions entries in T530; activating a switch in T77S0 will route ABAP routine to an evaluation check to prevent an potential inconsistencies to being recorded.

SAP under notes 2162738 - Selection restriction for action types; validity period for action reasons&  2162746 - Interface note: Selection restriction for action types; validity period for action reasons both published late April this year and parts of SP93 for EHP4 & SP21 for EHP8 as enabled this option; however it only applies to PA40 (personal actions) leaving editing in PA30 possible.There is also a part dedicated for HR-Renewal (EA-HRGXX) SP level 44 for EHP7 and 21 for EHP8 to adapt your roadmaps.

If you don't want to wait for the respective SP, you can SNOTE 2162746 in your system (there might be a bit of manual activities on-hand)... anyhow the following object would becomes available in your system:

And if you have HR-Renewal feature switched-on:

SAP note 2162746 - Interface note: Selection restriction for action types; validity period for action reasons only consist of manual activities to activates the functionality and customize your entries.

(1) set a flag in T77S0 table under switch ADMIN and semantic abbreviation DELIA (Activate Limited Validity of Action Types/Reasons)

no need to worry about the warning message

(2) further editing customizing entries in V_T530_DELIMI to limit any of your reason for actions.

New messages #1: MASSG is not valid any more at begin date of the IT record or #2: MASSG is not yet valid at begin date of the IT record will be generated whenever conditions are met.

Dear community,

I bring interesting news for those of you who work with ALE idoc transfers based on HRMD_A or HRMD_ABA message types, specially if you have already done (or soon plan to do) some modifications of the data or to the structure of the default standard idocs.

For those of you who may not know, let me provide a quick recap: ALE integration in HCM is quite flexible and modifiable. HRMD* idocs are generated in the source system(s) with employees or organizational data and are transferred to the target system(s) where they are processed and saved. Already from the source and also in the target, there are many places (outbound/inbound BADIs, exits from RHALE001 enhancement, etc) where customers might add/change/remove any data according to their needs. As far as the ALE integration is flexible, it is also consistent, and in order to guarantee this consistency, some preconditions need to be taken. Sometimes, when customers are dealing with modifications in the idocs, it may happen that some standard precondition is broken, and this will lead to later problems with the idoc processing, and possibly headaches and additional work until the conflict is resolved.

Now, in order to help customers and consultants to detect and control these situations, I am happy to present you the new report:

RHALE_HRMD_ANALYZE (transaction code HRMD_ANALYZE).

Below you can find how the selection screen looks like.

Well, so what is the scope of this new tool?

Currently the tool is capable of automatically searching for 5 possible conflicts in HRMD* idocs which correspond to five commonly well known and documented cases. The main advantage of this is that these conflicts can be detected automatically, the affected objects are presented in the results, together with a link to the corresponding documentation (SAP Note, SAP Knowledge Base Article, etc) and therefore the time needed to solve such problems can be strongly reduced.

These checks being carried out currently are:

• Check use of PROOF field: if this check is active, it will notify of iDocs found with this flag set to 'X' in E1PLOGI segment. This flag should remain empty as a requirement to guarantee that the inbound process works properly. More information can be found in KBA 2028221.

• Check HRMD structure & T777D: if this check is active, it will be checked if the general structure common to all HRMD* idoc types is being respected. This includes the hierarchy E1PLOGI-E1PITYP-E1Pnnnn but also the segment reference customizing informed in fields IDOCS, IDOCS2, IDOCS3 is checked to match existing idoc segments. More information can be found at note 134085.

• Check E1PITYP, E1Pnnnn dates: if this check is active, it will evaluate if the date condition explained in KBA 1795606 is being followed in the selected iDocs. These rules need to be followed for a correct storage of the data during the inbound processing.

• Check object repeated in iDoc: if this check is active, it will check if the same object (plan version + object type + object id) is repeated in more than one E1PLOGI segments in the same idoc. This is known to potentially cause the errors described in KBA 2017393.

• Check subtype consistency: if this check is active, the report will detect cases where the subtype is not kept constant between a E1PITYP segment and its children E1Pnnnn segments. This is a condition that needs to be considered, as explained in KBA 2004553.

And here is an example of how the resulting ALV list would look like:

This application has just been delivered with note 2210950

If you are interested in it, you can proceed to apply it either from SNOTE or from the corresponding Support Package, when available. Please do not hesitate to check this mentioned note for additional details.

We are open for suggestions and we are considering the possibility of adding more checks in the future. So if you have any question, feedback, comment or suggestion, please feel free to leave it in the comments section below.

Thanks for your time!

This blog describes how to change standard fields mapping on example of mapping of EC field “Job classification” to ERP HCM field “Work Contract” of Infotype Organizational assignment (0001).

Scenario: you use Employee Central (EC) to manage employee data and need to replicate employee data from EC to the SAP ERP HCM system.

You leverage the prepackaged Integration “Replicating Employee Master Data from Employee Central to SAP ERP” (AddOn PA_SE_IN100) to replicate the employee data to SAP ERP HCM infotypes.

ERP HCM Infotype Organizational assignment (0001) has a field Contract (or Work contract; technical field P0001-ANSVH). This field is usually used in statistical reporting.

The valid codes of this field are checked via the customizing table T542A (Work Contract) in SAP ERP.

Field Contract in SAP standard delivery is mandatory only for one country version: Canada (check setting for mandatory fields in ERP table T588MFPROPS).

Thus, you have to fill this field if you replicate Canadian employees data from EC to ERP HCM.

Currently, there is no any standard field in EC that semantically matches the ERP field Work Contract of Infotype 0001.

The prepackaged Integration for Employee master data replicates the EC field Job Classification from the portlet Job Information to the ERP field Contract of the Infotype 0001 per default.

However, in Employee Central the object Job Classification semantically corresponds to the ERP Org. Management object Job (OTYPE C). If you use Employee org. assignment replication from EC to ERP OM and PA/PD replication between Org Management and Personal Administration in ERP, the field Job Classification from the EC Job Information is replicated to the field Job key (P0001-STELL) of the Infotype 0001.

If you don’t want to replicate the EC Job Classification to the ERP field Contract you have the following options:

• Deactivate standard mapping  (if you don’t want to replicate the field in ERP);
• Overwrite standard mapping with extensibility (if you need to replicate the field from EC to ERP e.g. for Canadian employees).

How to deactivate standard mapping?

In ERP HCM you can simply deactivate the default mapping in the Customizing Activity “Switches for Employee Replication Settings” by checking the checkbox Deact. mapping for ANSVH.

The report PAOCF_EC_REPLICATION_SETTINGS, which is triggered by this setting, creates two entries:

• In the customizing table PAOCFEC_MAP_MODC for GDT name “JOB_ID”, ISO code “XX” (all countries) and Code list ID “91399” (ERP customizing step: “Define Customer-Specific Country Dependency of Code Value Lists”).
  

• In the customizing table PAOCFEC_MAP_CC for GDT name “JOB_ID”, Code list ID “91399”, GDT code value “*” and ERP key “blank” (ERP customizing step: “Define Mapping Code Value Lists”).

The entry created in the customizing table PAOCFEC_MAP_CC deactivates mapping between the EC values of Job Classification and the field Contract of Infotype 0001; thus, the field Contract is not filled.

How to overwrite the standard mapping with extensibility?

If you want to assign the Contract to employee in EC and replicate it to ERP you can use the extensibility of the prepackaged integration to overwrite the standard mapping.

Processing steps:

1. As there is no any standard EC field for the ERP field Contract, you can create custom field in the Employee Central portlet Job Information.

Goto “Manage Business Configuration” -> jobInfo:

In example I have created custom field custom-string10 for Work Contract in EC jobInfo.

2. Create a picklist for the new custom field based on the 2 character values in the SAP ERP HCM customizing table T542A (optional, to avoid the wrong data input).

3. Define field mapping. Go to Extensibility table in SAP ERP IMG customizing.

Map the new created custom field custom_string10 of EC node job_information to the Contract field (ANSVH) of infotype 0001.

5. Test the new mapping.

The employee is managed in EC and replicated to SAP ERP.

In EC Job Info of employee I assign code “GM” (Employee) that corresponds to the entry in ERP customizing table T542A.

The integration message transfers the code “GM” of custom field “custom_string10” to ERP.

The replication checks the extensibility table and replicates the "GM" code (Employee) to the field Contract of the Infotype 0001.

Alternatively, you may use BADI EX_PAOCF_EC_CHANGE_INFOTYPE_DA “Change mapped infotype data” if you need extended mapping logic between EC and ERP fields.

Further information is available in SAP Help portal:

Prepackaged employee master data replication:  http://help.sap.com/hr_integration-> SuccessFactors and SAP ERP: Core Hybrid HCM.

I would like to extend a huge thank you to Layla Mansfield who created this blog posting and played an instrumental role in coordinating these events and ensuring the customer contestants were prepped and ready for their presentations!  Enjoy!

Extensive research has shown that well designed employee performance management methods are clearly linked to business success ¹. However, HR professionals, managers, and employees are often skeptical about the added value of performance management and many consider it as a set of bureaucratic practices ². This skepticism has increased in recent years with many organizations changing or eliminating the practices they were using in the past ³. Yet, while many people are calling for the need to “fix” performance management, there is little consensus or clear direction on how to fix it ⁴. So while it is clear that the world of performance management is changing it is far less clear what works when it comes to making these changes. 

Highlighting What Works

In 2015 SAP SuccessFactors created a new type of contest called the “Performance Management Throw down” to explore what effective performance management truly looks like.  The PM Throw down, based on the cooking show of the same name, was initiated by a customer who wanted to highlight their current PM process and how these processes work for them, but also hear from other organizations on differing solutions and/or methods. This format created a friendly competition that allowed for an environment of knowledge sharing and proactive problem solving for all participating organizations and audience members. We loved the idea and decided to organize a series of Throw downs, all focused on what is working in performance management. Thirteen companies participated, with Allergan, Bank of America Merchant Services, Capital Group, ConAgra Foods, First American, Johns Hopkins Medical,  Lowe’s, Micron, New York Life, Peabody Energy, TranSystems, Under Armour, and Wawa all competing to share their unique PM processes.  Here’s a summary of how the Throw downs were structured:

• Four regional Throw downs were held in the West, South, East and Midwest with three to four organizations presenting how they utilize PM to drive positive business outcomes and highlighting practices that are particularly effective.
• Throw down audience members consisted of over 302 HR professionals from over 193 [LM1]different companies. These events were marketed to SAP SuccessFactors customers in each region where the competitions were held. 
• Audience members voted for a winner at each regional throw down. The winners of each event were then invited to compete against each other at a National Throw down, which included a larger audience and a grand prize.

What we learned from the winners

Each of the Throw down participants had created a PM system that reflected the unique culture and goals of their organization. The main thing we learned from these presentations was that what defines the best PM process differs by organization, so what works for some may not work for others. However, we also saw several common features that were effective across the competing PM systems.

Ongoing feedback and coaching. All Throw down participants recognized the need for a more dynamic and ongoing feedback system. In some cases, companies were conducting appraisals on annual cycles but had integrated formal or informal check-ins throughout the performance period to increase just-in-time feedback. In other instances, organizations had moved away from the formal annual form to focus more heavily on quarterly check-ins. A major advantage for all companies utilizing more frequent feedback methods was increased transparency around standards and expectations. This transparency led to improved employee satisfaction, with many Throw down contestants reporting increased engagement scores and positive feedback about the PM system as a result of implementing this approach.

To rate or not to rate?  The use of performance ratings was a key topic of discussion during the Throw downs. Related to the increased emphasis on ongoing, quality conversations, some of the Throw down participants were moving away from defining performance with a single rating. However, we found that this tended to be more nuanced than the approach suggested by recent headlines to “get rid of ratings” ⁵. For instance, we found that some Throw down participants were replacing their numeric ratings with more meaningful categories. In these cases employee performance was still being evaluated, but a lot of work was going into ensuring that the evaluation was meaningful to employees and was clearly defined and aligned with important organizational criteria. A few Throw down participants had removed overall performance ratings but retained ratings of individual goals or competencies. Other Throw down participants continued to utilize ratings in the traditional sense and found them to be effective. Regardless of rating approach, all Throw down participants emphasized that in order to effectively measure performance, engage employees, and make compensation and other employment decisions related to performance, it was imperative to ensure that the measurementmethods were consistent and transparent.

Emphasis on training and change management. A number of the Throw down participants noted that they invest heavily in training. In one organization, managers were provided training in how to have performance discussions with low and high performers while employees were given training on how to receive and utilize feedback. Other participating organizations provided numerous resources to managers on how to hold impactful and useful conversations as well as how to make fair and accurate ratings.

Along with providing proper training, participants designed effective change management processes to ensure their PM systems would be adopted and valuable. One organization described their three-year process in implementing their new PM system with a strong emphasis on creating lasting behavioral change in the company. Another held focus groups with their employees to see what was working and what was not working, and designed their PM practices accordingly.  We saw that several others implemented change within one department before rolling the system out to other departments. Regardless of approach, all participants recognized the role of well thought-out change management in driving adoption and effectiveness of PM.

Further, participants uniformly recognized the importance of leadership support in driving PM system adoption. Others implemented changes in the performance management processes of leaders in order to gain buy-in prior to the system change affecting the rest of the organization. All Throw down participants had secured leadership support and found that this support was crucial to creating a climate where PM was seen as a key strategic HR lever.

Efficient but effective. Several Throw down contestants emphasized that a performance management system that is too time consuming or difficult to administer creates barriers and decreases the probability that employees will see the value. This was a key outcome that many of the Throw down participants used when evaluating their current processes – is thesystem simple to use? To tackle this many of the participants had created training materials that could be accessed throughout the performance cycle, so resources were on hand as managers and employees needed them. Others had taken a holistic approach and removed or added steps in the process to streamline and add clarity. For example, by reducing the number of necessary steps in the process, one organization went from using over twenty different performance forms to under ten. Another organization added steps within the process to allow for ease of use and simplification when employees were rated by more than one manager.

By bringing our customers together to share their innovative performance management methods, the Throw downs allowed us to gain an insider’s perspective on what is working in PM. We were amazed by how creative and unique each organization was in getting their PM processes to meet their own organizational needs and goals.

Read more about our insights from the 2015 Performance Management Throw downs here. If you are an existing SAP SuccessFactors customer, you can access presentations on innovative PM practices from our contestants on the Customer Community: hear from Capital Group, ConAgra, John Hopkins, Micron, Under Armour, and Wawa.

References

1. 1. Cascio, W. F. (2006). Global performance management systems. In I. Bjorkman & G. Stahl (Eds.), Handbook of Research in International Human Resources Management (pp. 176—196). London: Edward Elgar Ltd.
2. 2. Aguinis, H., Joo, H. & Gottfredson, R. K. (2011). Why we hate performance management – and why we should love it. Business Horizons, 54, 503-507.
3. 3. Rock, D., Davis, J., & Jones, B. (2014, Autumn). Kill your performance ratings. Strategy + Business, 76. http://www.strategy-business.com/article/00275?gko=c442b.
4. 4. Steven T. Hunt (2015). There Is No Single Way to Fix Performance Management: What Works Well for One Company Can Fail Miserably in Another. Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 8, 130-139. doi:10.1017/iop.2015.11.
5. 5. Rock, D. and Jones, B. (2015, September, 8). Why more and more companies are ditching performance ratings. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2015/09/why-more-and-more-companies-are-ditching-performance-ratings.

It's truely amazing - in a sad way. I know I've been banging on about this for ages, but maybe one day the right person reads this and changes something in there own organisation. And after all, Blogs are supposed to expose a personal opinion to discussion rather than just spread technical facts, so here we go.

My best hope is that it's merely a communication problem (bad enough) and Junior Consultants in large System Integrators and Service Providers could actually have access to the knowledge they need, but for some reason believe they have to get along without help.

Just today I've seen an employee of an offshore service centre of a large UK based service provider, who run SAP based payroll for a large number of clients and surely know how to implement all the latest UK statutory changes. Yet, this employee seems desperate for help in how to deploy shared parental leave - half a year after it has become a legal requirement. Sure, many employers lack behind, but I guess about half of their customers would have implemented by now, so the expertise must be there. Yet, the organisation doesn't seem to know how to do shared parental leave (or holiday pay, or latest RTI changes). Only individuals know and their colleague on a far away island finds it easier to spend a lot of time on the SCN to find it. No best practise database? No culture of sharing and asking?

And still: she seems to be lucky. At least, she is allowed to use the SCN. Not long ago I had a consultant from a global SI, who knew my name from the SCN email me directly to ask a very elaborate question about ALE in HCM (it must have taken an hour to write and at least as long to answer). Much better chances for an answer on the SCN, but it seems they are "not encouraged" to do that. Nor did he receive much help from his colleagues, when I expect dozens should have been able to give this answer.

Why is this? Why are experts in Human Capital Management not able to develop their own Human Capital by sharing their knowledge about Human Capital Management? Don't start the story of the cobbler's kid's shoes again! It's not an explanation - just a poor excuse.

There is one guess from me. It's the same reason, why I left a medium size SI back in the days, because collaboration and the ethos of doing the right thing for the client both died, when they went public.

What happens in these organisations, when you ask a colleague for more than 5 minutes of their time: they ask for a project ID to bill it to. Because that's what they are measured by. Alas, junior colleagues (or seniors, who should really be asking just as much) don't have an "ask a colleague" budget on their projects. So, they can't ask.

It's really sad. I've never managed a large SI, so the problem is probably not as easy to resolve as I think. But, if you are, are you even trying? How much do you invest in building and spreading knowledge? Compare that to what an oil company invests to get oil out of the ground and to the pump. Because knowledge is for you, what oil is for them.

The irony is that many young professionals join the big brands, because it looks good on CVs and allegedly they learn a lot. Maybe, when this perception changes (we certainly apply a discount factor of 30-60% to candidates' experience from large SIs) and labour shortage kicks in, we see a change here.

Until then: if you are an SI's CxO and you want to improve, please take your time. The day you'll all get this sorted, small companies like ours will struggle to compete on quality and beat the brand.

Bonjour.

Close your eyes for 10 seconds and remember the best present you received for Christmas when you were a kid. What was it?

When I was 10-year-old, I (already) was quite nerdy and receiving my first calculator moved me:

I didn't know yet about what kind of power my future best friends SIN, COS and TAN would unveil - but for sure having them in front of me made me feel smart.

Not only was that object beautiful (yes, at that time, it was!) - it also had great features, among which my top 3 were:

1. The π button. Loved - and still love - the mystery around that number.
2. The ON/C and = buttons. Because they had different colors.
3. The square root button. I still need a calculator to help me find a square root of numbers different from 4,9 or 16.

Every year, when the SAP SuccessFactors Q4 release is made available on our demo instance, I feel like receiving my TI-30 Galaxy. That mix of novelty, unknown and power is exciting for my nerdy inner child

So - for if you've not watched it yet: what's in the box?

Here are my favorite 3 functionalities - quite related to learning which is my favorite area as a former software instructor:

1. Mobile learning attendance tracking: how cool is that you don't need attendance sheets anymore? The instructor can just come scan the learners' QR codes to track presence. Real time saver.
2. New question types for quizzes: validation of learning is key. Some instructional designers mistakenly leave the exam building at the end of the course development process, while it should be done at the beginning, based on the learning objectives. Being able to easily create these tests makes the adoption of the good practice, way easier, resulting in better knowledge transfer. Those of you who have worked with SAP SuccessFactors Learning know that the Quiz Builder is bringing a ton of agility compared to the previous versions. You can use now drag-and-drop and fill-in-the blank.
3. SAP Jam Microsoft Office Integration: SAP Jam Q4 2015 is as good as a Saint-Émilion 2005. Great year. Packed with great innovations. For those of you who are - like me - fan of the file sync client, you will be happy with the possibility to see that the desktop features are being each time bigger. Consulting the Jam feed from your PowerPoint presentation can make these deck reviews and training material development so much more enjoyable.

Now my questions for you:

1. What is yourtop 3 for this release? To help you answer, make sure you review the documents made available to customer in the SuccessFactors Community: not only are there the Highlights but also the Details documents.
2. Optional question 1: what was that favorite Christmas present you remembered?
3. Optional question 2: just out of curiosity - how many  π decimals were you able to tell? I was so proud of the 20+ I had learned and of which I still can tell 18
   

Looking forward to reading your comments!

Bonne semaine à tous!

(this blog is a advice for a business leader of a medium sized organisation for attending SuccessConnect. However, I guess many corporate leaders and most notably HR people could do with some down to earth thinking about business value and most of the reasoning will still be good food for thought long after SuccessConncect 2015 in Rome)

Having one focus on medium sized organisations to get business value from the right HCM systems, and realising this requires convincing owner-managers and other business leaders more than HR directors, I looked at the SuccessConnect agenda and thought:

Which sessions would I recommend to a business leader, who doesn't primarily aim at improving HR process efficiency, but wants to see business value?

Of course, businesses in different contexts would set different priorities. E.g. an organisation growing fast in an area with a tight labour market would probably look at recruiting first, whilst others would prioritise Performance&Goals. But instead of giving myself the answer we consultants are supposed to give ("it depends"), I built The Business Leader's Agenda and I'm sharing it here.

Honestly: it wasn't easy at all. A lot of the sessions, where you'd expect to learn about down to earth business value (rather than IT or HR playing with each other or amongst themselves) run in parallel and in some time slots there were only second choices available.

So, albeit this decision is too late now: if you are  an owner-manager of a 500 employees organisation, who has been convinced that people management capability is their barrier to growth (possible after a conversation with me ), would I recommend you to attend? Yes: there is still a lot of good content and whilst we can't know yet whether you'll get enough out of the key note sessions, you'll benefit from talking to your peers and get some free consultancy from all the experts (best to pick the right people to talk to before the event or very early).

Themes you'll be looking for, whether in sessions or in conversations:

• empowering managers and making them, rather than HR responsible for people performance
• empowering employees to own their own data and their own career
• overcoming barriers to growth
• staying in control without administering a straight jacket
• making learning simple and relevant
• supporting the right image and the right underlying culture - you are 55 now and many of the brightest and most engaged your professionals won't play by the same rules you did back in your days (sorry: seems I missed that lesson in my early consultant training saying inconvenient truths should remain unspoken...)

Anyway - your agenda:

Tuesday

08:30 - Keynotes. Sorry, but it's a really good way for setting the scene and giving you the right context. And they guys are usually really good at creating that clear line of sight between HCM systems and business strategy, albeit they may be talking a bit too long for your taste. If there are any boring bits, you can still use the conference app to connect to the right experts to bag some free consultancy - I bet you haven't done this before the conference, right?

11:45 - Performance, Compensation and Succession: Introduction and Overview.
Performance Management is THE one tool to align what your people do with what you want to achieve as a business. So, this is the one piece, where you should really understand how it works.

14:00 - The Simple Truth About Talent Management.

Sounds great: no management fads, just a straight way to make sure you develop the right talent, keep it engaged and retain it. If this session does, what it says on the tin, you'll be very happy.

15:30 - SuccessFactors Mobile: Overview and Roadmap.

Sounds like a very technical topic? Nope. If you want to beat the big corporates, you'll want an agile workforce and you'll want them out there, where your customers need them, where production happens, where they can innovate without being constraint by a cubicle. And even as and when you want them in an office: do you want them to arrive there weary from 70 minutes in traffic jam and dreading their way back or in their back garden, where they can study that court case, design that movie animation or develop that marketing plan, whenever immediate team interaction isn't necessary. So, supporting your workforce to be mobile, can be a real boost for efficiency as well as creativity. And if you don't trust your people to work outside the office: bad hiring decision

17:00 - SuccessFactors Analytics: Roadmap and Direction

I know: you want business value here and now, so why bothering about solution roadmaps. Isn't that like listening to politicians election speeches and then hoping it will actually happen? Well, to begin with, SAP has been quite good so far delivering on their roadmaps. But there is a reason I picked "roadmap" for Analytics. The endgame for any word class HCM system will have to include a world class analytics solution including embedded analytics ate your fingertips, big data capabilities and predictive analytics. However: you are not there yet. Yes. Sorry. our systems and the way you are using are not good enough yet for you to benefit from very powerful analytics solutions - and compared to the big corporates, your decision making probably isn't bad enough yet, so you'd need it now. Therefore, this is your visionary session. This is where you want your people management capability to be in a couple of years' time.

18:30 - Networking Reception:

Nope - not the time to go back to your room and do that sales forecast. Get the most out of this event. Find some learning experts and find our how you can get to demand driven, mobile, agile learning to make sure your people are always up to the job!

19:30 - Free Night

Well done! Come on. I buy you dinner and a good bottle of wine and we can discuss your innovation process, or marketing strategy - just taking a break from HR

Wednesday

8:30 - Keynotes

I know. Again. Well, check what's on the menu and if it's not inspiring you, feel free to wonder around the exhibition hall to grab some more experts for free consultancy. No! Not me again: I gave you a whole free workshop on the people element of Innovation Strategy over dinner last night...

10:45 - The Future of Performance Ratings: Identifying Winners Without Creating Losers

No surprise here. Of course we pick another performance management session. It's at the heart of aligning people management with your business objectives. You think the "not creating losers" stuff is just fluffy softy talk? If you have 2 machines, one creating 2 million profit per year and another one creating 1 million, but you can't have a second machine of type one: will you throw the second one away? If your performance process has to create losers, one of 3 things has happened:

• you've made bad hiring decisions
• you are managing your people very poorly, destroying value as you go along
• you've read an outdated management book (or a current book written by an outdated manager)

Attend this session and find out how you can get the best out of every single one of your employees and make sure they are in it for the long run

13:00 - The Evolution of Recruiting While Maintaining Your Culture

If you want to grow, you need more people. As you decided to be in the top cluster of your industry, the labour market isn't your friend. So, you need any help you can get to attract and hire the right talent. However: as a medium sized player, much of your advantage against the corporate competition is probably ingrained in your culture. Growing your workforce without destroying that culture is paramount.

14:45 - Pirelli Aligning Human Capital Management and Business Needs with the SAP SuccessFactors HCM Suite

Yes, Pirelli is a large corporate. But many of the challenges they are discussing here and offering solutions apply to medium sized businesses and can be transferred. Data quality, data driven decision making, lean HR,... Sorry? Know, I don't think they'll be giving away calendars...

Thursday

Management meeting in the office. Start making changes.

Talent is the fundamental force behind business growth and the key differentiator for organizations across the globe. It is the single most important factor that determines whether an enterprise succeeds or fails, which is why managing and optimizing your total workforce is so critical.

The on-demand workforce is trending – and here to stay

What has changed in organizations in recent years is how that talent is structured, how it is sourced and its relationship to the organization. The use of non-traditional, contingent labor has significantly increased and it has a considerable impact on business strategy. 92% of organizations cite non-traditional talent as a moderate to vital aspect of their overall corporate people strategy (source: Ardent   Partners: The state of contingent workforce management, 2014). And it has become very clear that this trend is here to stay. According to Workforce 2020, a recent study by Oxford Economics and SAP, 83% of HR executives intend to hire more contingent workers in the next three years.

The composition of this new workforce, consisting of traditional employees and external workers, requires organizations to rethink how they manage and optimize their “total workforce”. But it’s not as easy as it may seem. Organizations face many barriers to seeing the “Big Talent Picture” and helping every single worker to reach their full potential. With HR managing full-time employees and Procurement managing external workers, companies often lack visibility and understanding into what’s happening with ALL their talent. Barriers include inconsistent operating processes, distributed information and siloed and inadequate systems.

What does total talent management mean?

HR leaders are instrumental to driving the evolution of a total workforce management approach. While traditionally the provisioning and management of non-employee workers fell on procurement and line managers, the need for HR to get involved increased as the use of external workers increased. It is now up to HR to take the lead on understanding, managing and optimizing the total workforce in order to gain the competitive advantages from an engaged and productive workforce.

Total workforce management bridges the gap between employees and contingent workers and allows organizations to manage all talent under a single, centralized platform of capabilities, processes and solutions. Of course, applying select HR principles and talent processes to the management of contingent workers must happen under consideration of compliance and risk of co-employment. And there are considerable gains to be realized from this approach: better alignment and engagement of contingent workers, faster productivity, more efficient processes, cost saving, risk mitigation and actionable insight into the total workforce.

According to Ardent Partners, amongst the main capabilities for best-in-class total workforce management are:

• Formalized collaboration between procurement and HR
• Human capital principles applied to management of contingent labor
• Linkage between traditional and non-traditional workforce data
• Direct integration between contingent workforce management and HCM solutions

The SAP difference

SAP recognized this important trend early on and crafted a clear Total Workforce Management strategy.  With SuccessFactors’ suite of leading HR and talent solutions and the acquisition of Fieldglass, the leading Vendor Management System provider for contingent labor and services procurement, SAP is unmatched in its end-to-end solutions for best-in-class management of an organization’s total talent.

Continuing its execution of this vision, SAP announced  the latest integration between Fieldglass and SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central with the November release from SuccessFactors. Data from Fieldglass can now be uploaded into the contingent worker profile in SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central, increasing visibility into the external workforce, breaking down the silos between procurement and HR, and bridging the gap between employees and contingent workers.

To learn more about how a total workforce management strategy can give you a competitive edge and enable success at your company, check out the latest assets from SAP SuccessFactors on the newly launched Total Workforce Management Digital Hub . From leading analyst reports to customer success stories and videos, you’ll find plenty of information on the important integration between HR and Procurement.  

Hi all,

We have a new content in HCM Processes and Forms wiki. Check the new Troubleshooting guide!

It contains step-by-step information to analyze the issues on P&F and find the solution to known issues:

Any feedback is really welcomed!

Here you have the link to the Troubleshooting Guide:

HCM Processes and Forms Troubleshooting Guide - ERP Human Capital Management - SCN Wiki