Once, not so long ago I was only focused on Business Process Management, and the positive changes the tool/method could generate to HR. And this using the standard SAP HCM On-Premise processes that could support HR.

Successfactors BIZx module is a complete HCM solution in the cloud, but one thing was lacking in Successfactors universe was in house Payroll.

Since SAP HCM has one of the best payroll solutions in terms of functionality (supporting more than 60+ country versions), robustness and stability, It was imperative that Successfactors reused the SAP Payroll ie integrate with SAP HCM system to make itself complete HCM solution in the cloud, instead of developing it from the scratch which would have taken years.

Hence Employee Central Payroll was born. First of all, Employee Central is what is PA/OM or Core HR we would call in SAP HCM world along with ESS, MSS and HR self services. Hence if customers moves to Employee Central (EC), we call this full cloud and EC becomes system of record.

This distinction is important to make at the outset so we can differentiate the roles of the two disparate HCM solutions. This implies no actual hiring, firing or master data changes are done directly in ERP HCM system once it integrates with EC (this is recommended), although if you do direct changes in ERP HCM system it would be overwritten by replication once EC data flows into the system through BOOMI

Below architecture diagram shows EC integrating with SAP HCM system, Now then there is also a nuance between EC Payroll and On Premise Payroll.

Lets clarify this before we explain the architecture.

EC Payroll is a system given by SAP to Core Cloud customers (for example) who never had HCM footprint to run the Payroll, But large customers who already had ECC (HCM) footprint and wants to leverage their ECC (possibly for other modules),  integrate their HCM On Premise with EC by taking advantage of the Cloud innovations.

Below are salient differences, although not exhaustive

SAP ERP on premise payroll prerequisites: 

• Refer section 2, 3 and 4 in Employee central EC ERP Hand book for ERP System set up. - Install SAP add-on's on SAP ERP system and install HR related and Non HR related SAP Notes in SAP ERP.
  • SAP ERP Central component 6.0 and SAP BASIS 700 SP 18 and higher version are required.(Changes with functionality needed due to mashup screens and Payroll Control Center)
  • Enable OData communication in Employee central.

• Customer IT needs to open up the HTTPs Endpoint via 443 port to make sure that SAP ERP web services are accessible from BOOMI middleware (data Integration) and EC (payslip mashup)
• SAP ERP 6.0 EHP6 system is required to use Pay slip UI and must be replicated from EC to ERP using the add-on PA_SE_IN.
• Payroll Control Center is available in EHP7 or as an add on to EHP6.

Now coming to the below diagram, As these are two disparate systems, an robust integration engine is needed to send Payroll relevant data to EC Payroll system or On Premise system henceforth we can call this ERP HCM system, for this BOOMI(by Dell) and now HCI (HANA Cloud Integration) are being provided which what we call replicates the master data etc to HCM system using Iflows

Iflows are standard delivered Integration content by SAP to integrate EC with ERP HCM system, Currently for full Cloud scenario, We have below standard iflows delivered to cover different scenarios for ERP HCM integration, there are other iflows also, for third party integration

ie

Employee Central Integration – SAP Help Portal Page

Replicating Employee Master Data from Employee Central to SAP ERP

Organizational assignments replication plus generic replication of organizational objects (including custom objects)

Replicating Absence Data from Employee Central to SAP ERP

**We have also seen customers developing their own iflows too to meet their custom requirement.

BOOMI Uses Compound Employee API for querying the changes in an elapsed time period and OData API for alert framework(confirmation message back from ERP HCM to EC) i.e. to update the Data replication monitor in EC to inform if the data was successfully updated in the infotypes for the employee or not. Below diagram will make it clear.

As you see there is a scheduled replication process, Schedule of this process is configurable i.e. for example say every 5 to 10 minutes which means any changes (masterdata, Organisation data or time data) done in EC in last and every 5 minutes would be picked by this BOOMI process and sent to ERP HCM system using webservice etc which is done in SOAMANAGER configuration as mentioned in the EC Payroll Implementation guidebook Employee Central Payroll – SAP Help Portal Page . Data is sent as shown in above diagram.

Schedule Replication for regular execution

Create an own Environment in the Boomi Atom Management.

Assign your Atom to the Environment

Deploy your process to the Environment

Schedule the Job Execution for the deployed process

Also, We have encountered lot of customer queries on Payroll Lock and Correction, Let me explain this :

• If payroll is locked in SAP for payroll process, how does the interface handle that?

If the payroll is locked for a payroll area, the replication of those employees will fail. Those failed employees are shown in the replication monitor in EC as failed employees. If necessary, those employees can be forced to be replicated also in the lock period via manual triggering of replication out of the error monitor (corrections can be triggered for those employees also during payroll lock period). After releasing the payroll area again you can select all other employees in the payroll error monitor to trigger missing updates. Advantage: In EC changes to employees are not locked during payroll processing.

Payroll Correction Phase also, employees will not be updated and hence needs to be manually re-triggered via Data replication Monitor or a rule can be written in EC to automate these employees similar to locked Payroll area which is delivered as standard.

For Troubleshooting, using Data replication monitor in EC and SLG1/SRTUTIL in ERP HCM system.Once replication hits the ERP HCM system, it creates a log in transaction SLG1 that describes the processing messages and will give any master data issues if it failed

Also, If there is no SLG1 log or SRTUTIL log, probably the error is from BOOMI side or Compound Employee API side and then BOOMI Process logs or the API Audit log in EC can be checked for troubleshooting

Transaction SLG1 can be used for further issue tracking (Object PAOC_SF_PA and Subobject EE for master data replication as an example):

Another point to explain is webdynpro screens in EC for some country specific scenarios which can be activated, Payslip is a webdynpo application reused here. UI Mash up is a portlet available in EC. Data from backend system is made available through the UI for display and edit. Mashup Screens doesnt use BOOMI as it directly updates the infotypes.

There are further many points to explain,i did try to condense lot of information here which are enquired on regular basis by many customers.

In next blog, I would cover more topics in detail for OM and Time data, I would highly recommend to refer the guides for further reading.

Today’s most cutting-edge companies have conflicting visions of employee productivity. Whilst Google pulls out all the stops to keep their employees happy with free meals, a gym and shuttles to and from work, other companies have taken the approach that the best perk you can offer an employee is to avoid having to come into an office at all. Working remotely is becoming more and more popular, and whilst both models make sense, working remotely is probably the better option for a business if you’re a start-up that can’t afford to splash the cash on expensive benefits for your staff. Choosing the distributed route will keep your costs down, give your employees flexibility and allow you access to the best workers in the country or even the world, regardless of geography. We’ve put together some advice for managing a remote team.

Royalty free photo

Set Clear Communication Standards

Depending on the type of work it is that your remote team do, a daily meeting or even a few daily meetings may be required in order to ensure team cohesiveness and efficiency. An effective way to ensure good communication is to record meetings, so that anyone who is confused about what has transpired can use the record as reference. Setting good communication standards is critical for leading a remote team, as communication is key when it comes to effective management.

Optimize the Right Tools for Communication

Experts will tell you that the best way to ensure that a remote worker is fully engaged when communicating is to contact them via video call. Otherwise, many employees will call in only to multitask or zone out when they are on the call, making for less engagement and ineffective communication. There are a wide range of digital communication channels to choose from ranging from e-mailing to social networking and chatrooms. Require that your workers have a number of different communication tools to choose from.

Pay Attention to Team Activity

If you break your work into teams like most offices, you will need to make sure that each individual team member is communicating properly and effectively with other members in their team. For example, if there is a certain project manager who is not communicating effectively with the product development team, this will result in some or even all members of the team working ineffectively. For each of your respective teams, choose a team leader that is a highly effective communicator and who will be responsible for ensuring that all team members are working on the correct things at the correct time.

Pick Workers Wisely

Because of the inherent latitude in remote work, it is vital that you choose people of good character and who are self-starters to do the job. Make sure that you interview each prospective employee thoroughly, and check any references. Don’t ignore any bad feelings about a prospective worker if you sense that something is wrong or feel that an interviewee has an attitude or bad communication skills.

By following these tips you should be able to lead a successful remote team.

Ok. I am a newly minted Certified SF EC Associate. Yay! I can rightfully claim the honor of one of the few Consultants who have spent the $$ from their own pocket, I used my Vacation $$! (as opposed to the fee being paid by employers). I have plenty to write about the whole experience and how I think it can be improved.

Off the bat here are a positive and a negative.

Positive – I was told that SF Trainings are now open to anyone and we do not have to be sponsored by a Partner.

Negative – The prices have been jacked up. (Well, for those already trained this could be a positive)

I wanted to test out the Positive. So, I went on to the SAP Education Training & Certification Shop and tried to enroll in THR82 - SuccessFactors Performance & Goals Academy. I was able to proceed till the Payment Confirmation page (even though it listed THR80 – Introduction to SuccessFactors HCM Academy as a Pre-Requisite Essential and I do not have that). I stopped here. I can say with confidence that the opening of the SF Trainings to everyone is a huge positive for the SAP Consulting community. Given this direction, I fail to understand the sanctity of the whole 'PartnerPortal' concept. Why should an officially trained consultant be tied to a Partner, if he or she can independently enroll in the training otherwise?

Now to the Negative. Last year when I had started my quest to get Trained, the cost of Intro to Mastery was just $ 2,500/- and the cost of EC Mastery was $ 3,500/- adding up to a grand total of $ 6,000/-. Now the Intro to Mastery costs $ 3,325/- and EC Mastery costs $ 6,075/- adding up to an astounding $ 9,400/- ! This will be a huge barrier to entry of the average Independent Consultant who spends a half month’s earnings on getting trained on a software and then not being guaranteed to be able to use that skillset! I think it is already having an effect on the enrollment. The enrollments are still open for courses starting next week as opposed to almost a 6 month wait that I saw last year. Even in my class of 11 Trainees, 2 were last minute SAP employee enrollments! So the demand has come down drastically. I have already commented on this phenomenon and opined that this could be due to a glut of Trained Consultants on the market without a project. I personally know of a Partner company that trained a batch of its employees in Recruitment module and could not place a single employee on a recruitment project. So, now even Partners maybe holding back on their reckless spending on SF trainings that may not get them any ROI.

Let us go to the training itself. The online course is a big positive as it allows consultants to be able to get trained even when they are on a project. I registered for the course starting at 3:00 A.M, so I would be done with Instructor meeting by 6:00 A.M and would head out to work. Then get back home and complete the Online Videos and excercises! As usual (this happened during the Intro course also) there was a lot of confusion with the Webex and JAM Group access and the training system itself being slow. By the end of the course, I had 3 different accounts on JAM! The URL’s often keep getting directed to the wrong pages (LMS log in page gets directed to Sales Demo page and sometimes the Production page itself). Both the Trainers that I had worked with were experienced with Success Factors product, which is good. It would be nice to have Trainers that also have experience in the SAP HCM space as that would add a lot of value to the trainees. The Exercise Workbooks had a few incorrect instructions, which resulted in the trainees spending a lot of time trying to figure it out. If I am paying this kinda money for the class, I would expect 100% correct Exercise Workbooks. Figuring out does help the trainees to get their hands around the system, but when it is a time bound course which has to be completed successfully, there should be no scope for wasting of time by the trainees. However a Case Study 3 could be given to the trainees to be completed at will AFTER the successful completion of the class with no instructor help. This would enable the consultants to get more comfortable with the system.

I don’t know if there is already a training ‘bundle’ available that consists of multiple modules where the cost of the bundle is less than the sum of the individual classes. It would be nice to have a ‘bundle’ that would include say Intro+EC+PGM for a cost of say $ 10K or something like that. Another thought is to allow ‘delta’ at discounts as in say if you have completed Intro+EC, then you can do PGM for a discounted price. Another thought is to just make available the Videos and Exercise workbooks of ALL the courses to the students and have them complete the exercise on their own with no Instructor help. This would generate a great eco system with Consultants using the JAM as a vibrant forum to ask questions and float their ideas.

Finally a Plastic Card that says Certified by SAP would be great. (I still carry around my 2005 Solution Consultant Certification card in my wallet, although I never had the opportunity to show it off!).

Hello,

as each 3 months, a new SF release has been released into the world. Let me briefly spread out the news on the new features that we bring within our EC Time Management component.

We worked on 3 Main topics:

1) Time off in lieu

2) Absences with undefined end date

3) upload service for time sheet

and some misceallanous minor new features.

So, lets have a more closer look onto the major features:

1) Time off in lieu

When you have already informed yourself with my previous blocks EC Time Sheet can calculate overtime in a very flexible way. You know then that the time sheet can calculate daily or weekly overtime based on the planned working time or a fix value threshold. You even know that an advanced threshold can be set up in a way that for first two overtime hours per day a pay type of OT 1.0 is generated and for each hour beyond a paytype like OT 1.5. Daily and weekly advanced threshold can even be combined in a way that each daily overtime (be it OT 1.0 or 1.5) can be summed up in the week and when more than for example 6 hours of overtime a premium of OT 1.5 or any other can be generated. Let alone the possibility to generate specific pay types for Sunday / Holiday work or even shift differentials.

All of this generated overtime pay types (or premiums) could till now only be transferred to Payroll for payout reason. Up to now. With the 1602 release we bring the Time off in Liue feature. With this it is possible to bank the overtime performed into a time account for additional leave entitlement. This allows employers to save the money they would need to pay for overtime and employees benefit in a way that they can get additional days off and not having a huge tax burden on the overtime pay-outs.

So, how does this work?

Employees record their working time in the EC Time Sheet. The time valuation engine calculates overtime real time, directly upon time recording. No batch job needed to do this ;-). The overtime hours get posted with a multiplying factor into a time off account and the employee can then request a partial or full day leave in order to stay a full day at home or leave office earlier. The recorded time off in lieu absence hours deduct the time off account accordingly.

Of course you can assign all usual rules that you are used to use in the time off application to the time in lieu off account like for example period end processing rules that cap the time account at a certain value or that transfer the balance to the next months / year time off in lieu account.

What do you need to make all this work? You need to adapt the configuration a bit and define on employee level what kind of overtime compensation method shall be applicable.

First of all you need to assign in the employee file a new introduced "Default overtime compensation variant". You can choose between: payout, time off or payout and time off:

Payout: All overtime calculated is stored as pay types relevant for payroll pay out.

Time off: Banks the calculated overtime into a time account. The posting of the hours is done with an internal posting factor. When for example the system calculates for a week 3 hours of OT1.5 an 4 hours OT 2.0 then for the posting factor (called valuation result factor) for the OT 1.5 is 1.5,  for OT 2.0 it is 2.0. Hence for the 3 calculated OT1.5 hours the posting to the time account is 4.5 hours plus 8 hours that are derived from the 4 hours OT 2.0. All in all 12.5 hours are posted to a time account in this week.

The employee can than apply for a leave - either partial day or full day- in order to reduce his time off in lieu account.

Payout and time off: This is a mixed variation: only the overtime premium portion gets transferred to the time account, but the base hours are paid out. An 4 hours overtime with OT 1.5 would lead to payout of 4 hours and a time account posting of 2 hours (4 hours with 0.5 valuation result factor = 2 hours).

When you want to use the time off in lieu functionaltiy you need to assign a default time off in lieu account in the Employees Time Profile and an absence time type that deducts from this time account.

Furthermore Time Evaluation rules must be set up in a way that the calculated overtime is splitted in time type groups that represent the base pay and the premium pay. You need to define the new time type group field valuation result category accordingly for the time type groups. The valuation result factor needs to be defined in the time type group and this basically is it.

For more details read the excellent step-by-step explanation in the time sheet documentation.

The result of this is that when you have set up the system accordingly and choosen for example the default overtime compensation method"Time Off" in the employees job info and an employee records time which results in overtime, the summary pop-up upon submitting the time sheet indicates exactly how many overtime hours has been calculated and how many hours are transferred into the time off in lieu account:

2) Absences with undefined end date

The absence management application in EC Time, called Time off, brings more and more country specific legally necessary features. Like for example illnesses with unknown end date which is needed in UK and Netherlands to name only some. What is this? Well, an employee gets ill and needs to hand to the employer an illness certification by a doctor. In Germany the doctors certificate has got a fix end date on it. When the illness is not cured before this date the employee needs to visit the doctor again and the doctor writes a new certificate.

But in UK and Netherland the process is a little different. There are illnesses where the doctor does not state an end date on the illness certificate. It is open ended. And the end of the illness gets confirmed later by the doctor again. Hence the illness record that is recorded in EC Time must reflect the open end date. Sure, this could be done with an 31.12.9999 end date, but this is not very nice - and it does not really reflect the statement that the end date is unknown. This is now possible in Employee Central with the new flag "Undetermined end date allowed" in the absence time type. If a time type is configured with this flag set to yes, than there is no end date recording necessary.

This looks in the leave request like this:

The team absence calendar reflects this unknown end date accordingly. All days in the future are set to absent:

When the employee hands in a new illness certificate with the end date confirmed on it or he informs in another way HR on the end date of his illness, the flag "Unknown end date" in the illness absence record needs to be removed and the certified end date choosen. Then it is a "normal" absence record with start / end date.

3) Upload service for Time Sheet

This new service for the time sheet allows to upload working time from an external system into the time sheet for further calculation purpose, like overtime or other pay type generation processes.

This service can be used when a customer has got for example time recording terminals or still uses excel or other kind of easy time recording tools.

A constraint for this service in 1602 release is however that it can handle only duration based imports. So, it is not a means to support time recording terminals in a sense that the pair formation of single clock in / out punches is done in EC Time Sheet. This might come later. The service is first step into this direction. Rom wasn´t invented neither in one day ;-).

So, how can this service be used in conjunction with terminals or any other kind of external time recording systems? Simple: Fill a CSV file with the necessary information (or call the respective OData Apis directly).

To post the records into the time sheet the upload needs: User ID / Day / Hours. This is it.

You can upload multiple records per day and employee and of course records for multiple days / employees. There are initial checks upon uploading (like does the user ID exist...). The data is kept in a staging area where additional checks are performed like for example collisions checks (you want to upload working time on a day where an employee has already a full day absence recorded).

See here an example how this looks like:

But this is not yet all. You can set up the system in a way that an employee is not allowed to edit the imported times. He will then get this only in a display only mode. Cause when there are external terminals or whatever that keep the truth of the employees working time, why allowing the employee to overwrite this in the EC Time Sheet?

But again, this is a simple configuration flag that needs to be set in the time type that gets uploaded if the employee is allowed to edit it or not. If not, a time administrator will always have the possibility to edit the uploaded records in the employees Time Sheet.

Furthermore there where some minor features in 1602 like enhancements in the time recording collision checks, negative time recording scenario and a new time account stop accrual function when an employee is on sick leave.

Hope you like what we build, and as always: more features to come in 3 months.

Please have a look on my previous posts regarding features in EC Time Sheet / EC Time:

Successfactors EC Time Sheet and Time Off - new features

I recently enrolled for Certification Hub access and completed the C_THR88_1508 SuccessFactors Learning Exam. I didn’t have much success on my first two attempts to launch the Questionmark secure server and connect with a proctor, but after speaking to the great support team at Questionmark, they provided me with a few extra system settings that ensured success on my third attempt. If you are planning on taking the certification exam, I’d like to pass on some advice for preparing your system and to help level set your expectations for this experience.

System Settings to Prepare for the Questionmark Secure Server

Like a good consultant and system user, I followed the directions on the home page of the Questionmark site to schedule my exam and test my computer. I thought I had a successful system test, but when I returned to the site a few days later to actually take my test, I ran into a few issues.  The first was that the test timed out. (Note: You have +/- 15min within your scheduled appointment time to start your exam and connect with the proctor.) On a positive note, these “missed” appointments did not count towards my 6 exam attempts with my purchase of Certification Hub access.

The cause of the first issue I ran into was with GoToMeeting. Even though I didn’t have the tool actively in use on my laptop, it was running in the background. After trying to shut it down in my system processes and still running into issues, I decided to uninstall GoToMeeting. You may find that’s the easier option as well, if you have GoToMeeting or other solutions that run in the background.  (Note: It’s important to remember that you won’t be able to have any applications open during the exam, nor will you be able to use a secondary monitor, so make sure you shut everything down before you start this process.)

From my exam appointment, I couldn’t find an active button to start the exam at first. It turns out that from Internet Explorer, the button is not visible.  I found if I hovered my mouse in the area where the button should appear, I could click and start the exam. When I later tried to start my exam in Chrome, I was able to see the Start Exam button without a problem. In the end, you should be able to start your exam from either IE or Chrome.

Once I was able to start the exam, the Questionmark secure server launched and performed a system check. In my case, the system check noted a failure based on the IE8 Compatibility settings. It’s important to note that even if you launch your session from Chrome, the QM secure server still uses an IE session, so you’ll need to take care of this setting as well before you start the exam.

Following are the instructions I received from the QM support team as I worked through accessing the test. Once I followed each step, I had no issues starting the exam and connecting with a proctor.

1. Go into Internet Explorer and turn off compatibility mode. In IE, click on Tools, and go to Compatibility View. Uncheck the boxes “Display intranet sites in Compatibility View” and “Use Microsoft compatibility lists.” Also, make sure there are no URLs in the Compatibility View list. If there are, remove them.
   
   
   
2. Verify that your version of Flash is up to date. The system requires at least version 17. You can check your version of Flash from this webpage - https://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player.html
   
3. Adjust the Global Flash settings:
   • Right click on the Flash window (or go to Control Panel -> Flash Player, right click, and choose "Run as administrator")
   • Select Global Settings
   • Click the Camera and Mic tab
   • Click the Camera and Mic settings by site button
   • Check for the following sites in the list, and if not there add them:
     • onlineproctornow.megameeting.com
     • systemtest.onlineproctornow.com
     • meeting.onlineproctornow.com
   • Set those sites to Allow
     
     
4. Check for blocked ports on your client environment.
   • Go to the following URL:

http://www.therealtimeweb.com/index.cfm/2004/10/2/fms-port-tester?CFID=6246819&CFTOKEN=79142866

• Scroll down to “Port tests”
• Run the port tests
• Verify passed. If not passed, make a note of the blocked ports to send to your IT department.

Preparing for the Exam

This is a “closed-book” exam. During the exam, you are not able to launch a demo site or have any printed materials on your desk for the exam. If the certification process is meant to test our capabilities as consultants to implement the SuccessFactors modules, then I’m at a loss to understand why we can’t use the configuration workbooks, a demo system, or the other materials that we use as consultants. To compensate for this (I’m assuming), you will need only 63% to pass the exam. Personally, I’d prefer to be able to use printed resource materials and see the passing score increased, as this would more accurately test our troubleshooting savvy as consultants. Instead, we are left to try to memorize all of the system configuration settings, menu locations, defaults, etc.

In my preparation for the SF Learning exam, I decided to read through the Configuration Workbook and the Connector Workbooks; this served me well. I also reviewed my demo site, trying to remember all of the settings in Global Variables, Registration Settings, and User Settings and reviewing the settings available in the LMS_ADMIN and CONNECTORS configuration files. A review of the main features like Programs, Curricula, Items, and PQE is also wise. Here’s a breakdown of the topics covered in the exam (you’ll also find this located in exam description):

Preparing for the Experience of a Proctored Exam

After all of my years as a Learning Consultant, this was the first time I actually had to take a proctored exam online. I found the exam experience interesting, so I’ll share what I encountered in the hopes of reducing any fears/concerns you may have.

When you first connect to the proctor, the process is very similar to a video conference. You will see and hear the proctor, and they in turn will see and hear you. Actually, in my case, I didn’t hear the proctor because I forgot to un-mute my speakers before launching the secure server. As I wasn’t able to leave the secure session once it started, we resorted to using the text chat. Via text, my proctor asked me to show my ID, turn the camera around my office space to show my desk was clear, and then stand up to show that I didn’t have anything in my pockets. It felt a little odd and invasive, but nothing worse than what I have experienced going through security at the airport. Once the proctor completed all their checks, I was able to minimize the proctor window so I didn’t see him watching me. Of course there was that little light on my web camera reminding me that someone was observing, but I quickly focused on the exam and got on task. Note that you won’t be able to read the questions aloud during the exam, either.  Again, I found this strange at first, but it was something I got accustomed to during the exam.

During the test, I was able to tag questions that I wanted to return to, and I would recommend that you do this for any questions you’re not completely sure about. I felt that I had plenty of time to take the test. When I completed the exam, I received my results right away. An important point to remember is that at the end of the exam, you must return to the proctor window to ensure the proctor received the results of your test. Once you do this, they will let you know to close the exam window.

Conclusion

Overall, the exam wasn’t a major ordeal. If you review the preparation information I’ve provided, you too should be able to successfully complete your exam(s). Chris Wilpert, from iProCon, has written an article on his experience with the Employee Central delta exam that you may also want to review – click here to read it.  Chris provided some great information about the exam process in general, and I tried not to duplicate many of the details he has already shared.

I wish you all the very best with your certification exam.

It has been another very eventful year in HR Technology and last year at this time, a group of friends and I collaborated to write The Future of SAP HCM and SuccessFactors Consulting - 2015. This year we will be splitting the report into a three-part series with this article covering the SAP HCM Consulting Market. Please be on the lookout for the Future of SuccessFactors Consulting – Core HR, Payroll, Analytics, Concur (Part 2) and Future of SuccessFactors Consulting – Talent Management (Part 3) planned for the coming weeks.

I have no doubt we are we are still in the early innings of the multi year shift from client server OnPremise software (i.e. SAP HCM, Oracle EBS, PeopleSoft) to the next generation cloud based offerings (i.e. SuccessFactors, Workday, Oracle HCM Cloud) which Bill Kutik has done a great job of outlining in this article. SAP has been very aggressive over the past 5 years spending over 17 billion on acquiring cloud companies such as SuccessFactors, Ariba, Fieldglass and Concur and is now predicting that cloud and support revenue will overtake software by 2018.

Given that, it should come as no surprise that SAP is leading with SuccessFactors HCM Suite for all new customers, in most regions worldwide. There has always been a delicate balance within the SAP HCM Consulting market and this major shift over the last few years of HR customers moving to the cloud (with SuccessFactors and to competitors) has had a huge impact on the traditional SAP HCM consulting market. In the SAP HCM market, I am seeing a very little opportunity, billable rate compression, layoffs and it is not a place you want to be longer term.

On the flip side virtually every consulting company is looking to add experienced SuccessFactors resources as well as re-train and certify their existing consultants on new technology. This was one of the reasons we recorded “Becoming and HCM SaaS Consultantand followed it up with “Becoming a SuccessFactors Consultant” with fellow SAP Mentor Alumni Jon Reedand Luke Marson to help people with the transition. For any customers reading this, the SuccessFactors consulting world is VERY different than the SAP consulting world and would highly recommending watching the video below.

While there will continue to be some very small pockets of strength in the SAP HCM market in various regions and modules, the combination of the product roadmap being squarely focused on SuccessFactors, SAP sales teams leading with the Cloud (for HR), continued off-shoring, faster implementations, the buzz for cloud based HR technology and serious competitive threats from Workday, Oracle Fusion and others guarantee the OnPremise SAP HCM consulting market will continue its downward spiral.

I decided to reach out to a diverse group of individuals that I personally know and trust would give an honest opinion of what they are seeing on the ground in their respective areas. They include SAP HCM and SuccessFactors Industry Experts, SAP Mentors, SAP Press Authors, HR Expert authors, well-known conference speakers and some of the most knowledgeable individuals I know in the industry.  Here are their thoughts.

SAP and SuccessFactors Project Management

I reached out toSteve Bogner, who is Managing Partner atInsight Consulting Partners, SAP Mentor, maestro of the greatHCM Podcast Groupand he told me:

Sound advice for SAP HCM and SuccessFactors HCM project management is much the same as a year ago. The technical landscape is changing rapidly, so be sure to keep an eye on that as you plan your roadmap and implementation. Integration is still a key part of projects, with more moving to HANA Cloud Integration (HCI). Consultancies are racing to build their practices and win implementations, keeping us in a Wild West environment for now. Address this by being selective with the consultancies and consultants you bring in to your projects, and perhaps by hiring a third party, independent consultant as an advisor.

As you plan projects it is ever more critical to have good, solid buy-in and ownership from each business area impacted. In fact, if the business areas - HR, Benefits, Payroll, etc. - are not willing to allocate resources and leadership then it might not be the right time to start critical projects. And also remember that IT resources are still needed! There is integration work, understanding legacy systems, and system architecture issues (and more) to deal with in the cloud.

SAP Core HCM

I reached out toSteve Bogner, who is Managing Partner atInsight Consulting Partners, SAP Mentor, maestro of the greatHCM Podcast Groupand he told me:

SAP continues to make some investments in their on-premise HCM software, but the pace seems to have slowed as Employee Central becomes an ever more feature-filled option. This is to be expected and should not come as a surprise to those who have followed SAP’s roadmap for HCM software. Still, there is a lot of life left in the on-premise HCM software - options such as HR Renewal, Fiori, HANA, and the Payroll Control Center. My advice to customers is to start evaluating Employee Central, do what you can to simplify and standardize your existing functionality (making it easier to convert once you decide to), and to make sure your HR technology roadmap is up to date. Start working your way towards the cloud as it makes sense for your company. For consultants, the amount of on-premise consulting work is naturally decreasing, so start sharpening your cloud skills!

SAP Payroll

I reached out toJarret Pazahanick, who is Managing Partner atEIC Experts, an SAP Mentor Alumni and has been part of 20+ SAP Payroll and SuccessFactors Employee Central Payroll implementations and he told me (couldn’t resist a formal intro)

I am still seeing demand for SAP Payroll (mostly for production support) but there are definitely not as many new implementations as there has been in the past. It will be interesting to see if SAP can convince their roughly 7,600 Payroll customers to make an investment to implement the Payroll Control Center, which is a solid offering by SAP but currently has very low adoption, as that could drive some additional consulting demand. The good news is the Payroll Control Center helps address long standing complaints around overall usability and reporting but the bad news is SAP can’t control if and when their OnPremise customers deploy or use it plus it requires a technology “upgrade” (EHP7 FP4) for many customers.

SAP Talent Management and Enterprise Compensation

I spoke with Jeremy Masters, who is the author of six SAP PRESS Books, and Managing Partner at Worklogix, a boutique HR technology firm, who told me:

Like the rest of SAP on premise, SAP’s Talent Management solutions will be supported through the year 2025. Although modules such as Performance Management, Succession Planning, Career/Development Planning, and Qualifications Management are still in wide use today from customers, many are considering migrating these processes to the cloud. Some companies continue to leverage their investment by beautifying the user experience with a “skinned” front end, using technologies such as SAP Fiori or Java. I have had the opportunity to do this with several different customers and the results have been overwhelmingly positive when done with the right team.

Enterprise Compensation Management (ECM) is still being implemented with customers for (mostly) two reasons. First, some customers are not yet sold on storing their compensation data in the cloud. Data such as salary, bonus, equity awards, and other highly confidential compensation information is not something that all customers feel comfortable putting in the cloud yet.  Second, many customers have already implemented complex logic in the calculation of their bonus awards.  Depending on the complexity of the bonus plan design, this process may or may not lend itself easily to the cloud.  Some customers are opting to keep bonus planning on premise and perform their salary (merit) increase planning in the cloud. For focal review planning, this is not optimal since the approvals are oftentimes gathered at the same time. Some customers are opting to number-crunch using their on premise system (to calculate Bonus Targets, for example), and perform the compensation planning in the cloud.

For both SAP Talent Management and Enterprise Compensation Management (ECM) functionality, SAP is still running its Customer Influence program (see Figure below from the SAP website).  This program is designed for current SAP customers to provide their inputs on what improvements should be made to the modules. Go to https://influence.sap.com/ and navigate to Projects by Lines of Business > Human Resources.  You can look at projects newly registered (“Get Involved”), projects currently running (“In Progress”), and projects completed (“Benefit”).

SAP HCM Fiori, ESS/MSS, HR Renewal

I spoke to Justin Morgalis, who is a Principal with M7 Solutions and SAP Press Author, who told me:

The heavy cloud messaging from SAP cannot help but have a downward effect on the market for self-service consultants.  With that said, it is an interesting year ahead for Self-Services and Self-Services consulting.  It used to be very straightforward to be a Self-Services consultant.  “Here is the portal and off you go” and that sort of thing. The introduction of SAPUI5 technologies changed that by offering (too many?) options for customers to choose from when trying to determine a path forward for Self-Services.

With each wave of Fiori apps that SAP releases, SAP is getting closer to filling in all the gaps that have existed for using Fiori as a full-featured platform for Self-Services. Prior to these latest waves, Fiori had existed in a niche where it was a very nice application set for what it did, but given its holes, it was hard to commit fully to it for HCM. However, with the latest wave of apps, as well as SAP’s release of new Overview pages to go along with the Fiori Launchpad, SAP is showing its commitment to support any customers that might want to use Fiori as the foundation for end users’ online interaction with HCM. Being able to recommend a fully Fiori base will be a benefit, but will also carry challenges for the Self-Service consultant as there are fewer configuration options available at this time. There may or may not be a sign in there somewhere. 

The rise of Fiori almost inevitably means the decline of HR Renewal UI5 as a solution base. While the HR Renewal application offerings remain strong and valuable, in the “SAPUI5 Wars”, the HR Renewal landing page technology clearly has come in second. This is not the worst thing in the world as we are able now, as consultants and advisors, to make more clear recommendations to customers, as SAP’s direction has gained some clarity of its own. 

As for the portal, Self-Services consultants will be faced with questions from customers this year about the role of the NetWeaver portal moving forward. The portal is no longer a requirement, this is true, but consultants will need to make sure that “cutting the cord” is viable given any current commitments to the NetWeaver portal.

One thing I always like to tell my clients however is that there is much value to be gained in upgrading your Self-Services, even if you do not go “all the way” to SAP’s latest vision. An iPhone 5 is still an awesome device to someone with a flip-phone.

SAP E-Recruiting

I spoke withMark Ingram, who is a co-owner ofIngram Talentand in a past life both had product management roles at SAP and he told me:

The death of SAP E-Recruiting is slightly exaggerated. The HCM E-Recruiting 2016 Customer Influence project was kicked off at the beginning of February. Though enhancements are small incremental improvements to existing functionality rather than new features, the first project delivered 28 improvements. Since an improvement request has to be voted for by five customers before being evaluated by SAP. This means that there are at least five E-Recruiting customers remaining! In all seriousness this is a good sign that E-Recruiting is still being supported. This is important for clients whose recruiting processes are not supported by SuccessFactors Recruiting Management and who do not plan to migrate in the future. On a side, I can only speak for the US but I haven't seen a single E-Recruiting implementation opportunity with the exception of upgrade project in public sector two years ago, though I have colleagues that have worked on system subletting activities.

SAP Learning (LSO)

I spoke withSharon Newton, who was a co-author ofSAP Enterprise Learning, a fellow SAP Mentor, and the CEO athyperCisionand she told me:

As I noted last year, there is a steady migration of SAP customers adopting SuccessFactors Learning, the SAP Cloud Learning Management System (LMS). With that being said, there are still many customers who have either a strong investment in on-premise Learning or have determined that the Cloud is not for their organization. For these customers, it’s important to note that the on-premise SAP Learning Solution (LSO) is still going strong globally.

In 2014/2015, ASUG’s Learning Solution Influence Council, which consists of 25 North American on-premise LSO customers, partnered with other influence groups globally and was able to push through 19 key improvements to the LSO, focused on both usability and functionality. In addition, SAP delivered and enhanced robust integration in 2014/2015 as well as some minimal improvements as part of HR Renewal. Currently, SAP is committed to supporting all on-premise functions through 2025, and on-premise HR will be supported in conjunction with S/4 HANA.

Some customers who have chosen to stay on-premise are exploring the option of building their own enhancements or purchasing off-the-shelf add-ons (examples include SPRING, the new Fiori-based UI; SAP AG Services’ enhancement to support Kirkpatrick’s levels of evaluation; and integration with QuestionMark to support enhanced certification needs). While SAP has been very clear that there will be no major enhancements to any of the on-premise Talent solutions, if you have a need to stay on-premise near-term or for the foreseeable future, I encourage you to educate yourself about the standard integrations and add-ons available and to partner with your local influence organizations, as the customer voice can still make a difference.

Wrap Up

There is an excellent quote from Naomi Bloomwho is a HR Technology thought leader that I like to share every year as I find it very relevant.

"Consultants, at least in my world view, are individuals who are able to study a business problem and, regardless of any particular technology choices, guide the client to the best possible approach to achieving the desired business results."

At the end of the day, if you are a consultant that is able to provide that type of value for your customers then it won't matter the HR technology, you will be have the head start at being successful. That said, it is very important whether you are a customer or consultant, that you are aware of where the technology is headed and in HR the future is the cloud. If you trying to break into HR Technology I don’t see any scenario where learning SAP HCM as a “fresher” in 2016 and beyond is going to serve you well in the long run.

I am a big believer that being a lifelong learner is a key competitive advantage given the rapid pace of change in HR Technology, and in order to stay current on all the major news and developments I would recommend joining the 25,000 people in my Global SAP and SuccessFactorsand Global SAP HCM and SuccessFactors Linked Groups. I would also recommend attending the upcoming HR2016 Conference (February 23-26), which I have worked with the organizers for a special $450 discount code for the readers of this article.

Would love to get your comments, questions to the authors, and your individual point of view.

No, not that kind of transformation. Digital transformation doesn’t happen overnight and isn’t quite as flashy as Hasbro’s most famous toys may make it seem. Especially in the world of HR, the shift towards digitization and the cloud can be especially daunting. Luckily, ASUG’s HR community has the knowledge and resources that can save you from the IT junkyard and make you the Optimus Prime of your business.

Here are some of the highlights from the week ending 2/19/2016

Secrets of a Digitally Transformed Workplace: Do you go from booking your next vacation all on your phone back to the age of mullets and shoulder pads the second you enter the office? Shouldn’t HR be evolving as quickly as our own methods of productivity? ASUG’s Sherryanne Meyer urges HR to be “more than administrators” in her blog post that blows the lid off of Digital Transformation. Supplemented by this webcast from the President of SAP SuccessFactors, Mike Ettling, this is content you can’t miss.

SAP SuccessFactors Q1 2016 Business Update/Release Highlights: Although technology is more of a marathon than a sprint, if you don’t keep up you’ll be left in the dust. Pick up your speed by hearing the latest Q1 updates and release highlights for SAP SuccessFactors. David Ludlow, Global VP of SAP HR and SuccessFactors, sets the pace in this informative webcast.

SuccessFactors HCM Suite Road Map: Suite-Wide Topics: Although we are extremely spoiled by our smartphones and Google Maps, sometimes a good old Road Map is the way to go. ASUG and SAP have that covered. In this webinar, SAP project managers present product road maps for Intelligent Services, Mobile, Admin, Talent Foundation, ERP/HCM Integration, Cloud to Cloud Integrations, and Extensibility.

SuccessFactors Strategic HR: Did “SuccessFactors HCM Suite Road Map” not satisfy your thirst for HR knowledge? Once again the best and brightest of SAP project managers share our road maps. Topic in this webinar include Recruiting, Onboarding, Learning, Performance & Goals, Compensation, and Succession & Development.

HR Town Hall - Focus on Services & Support in the Cloud: Did you miss the chance to voice your opinion in our HR Town Hall? Luckily, there was no shortage of feedback between our SuccessFactors users and SIG leaders. Jamie Bridwell from SAP Successfactors joined us for the discussion. Keep your eye on our event page for the recording!

Discussion – Retro-calc. changes past payroll withholding tax: While you may be quickly preparing for the dreaded Tax Day, your technology might not share the same sense of urgency – a scary thought. The HR community has been buzzing with tax talk. What happens when you need to apply new tax rates to old payments? The ASUG HR community collaborates to find out.

Upcoming – Practical Analytics for Business Users: Imagine this – you need a visualization comparing turnover for the past 10 years. You have the numbers, but to make it presentable and to forecast your expectations for 2017 you need some visuals. So, you put in a ticket, request, email, etc. and wait. And wait. And wait. Wouldn’t it be nice to cut the middleman and learn how to use data analytics? Or how to acutely explain your needs to cut down on files named “Final Version” and “Final VersionV2” and “Final Final Version.” This hands-on workshop is for us business users who don’t have the time for data bottleneck. Plus… registration is buy one get one ½ off!

To see more HR resources and content check out the ASUG HR Community– and stay on the lookout for next week’s recap.

P.S. Don’t miss the RechargeHR Webcast Series for HR and HRIS professionals using SAP HCM and/or SuccessFactors. Stay connected to the information, insights, and ideas you need to move your workplace forward in the 21st century.

Photos ©Mattel

In my three-part series on how to use Boomi to extend SAP SuccessFactors capabilities, I reviewed some examples pertaining specifically to Boomi and SuccessFactors. In this post I will take a more general approach, and discuss why it’s important to consider a cloud-based integration platform as part of your overall system architecture when implementing a Software as a Service (SaaS) solution such as SAP SuccessFactors.

There are several cloud-based vendors offering integration platforms as a service (iPaaS), such as Dell Boomi AtomSphere®, SAP HANA Cloud Integration (HCI), MuleSoft®, and IBM® WebSphere®Cast Iron. The graphic below is a high level system architecture diagram showing the typical relationship of the integration platform with other cloud-based and on-premise systems:

Here are three ways that an iPaaS can make a difference when implementing SAP SuccessFactors.

1. Automation

In a competitive business environment, the company with a faster cycle time has a key advantage. For example, when it comes to hiring new employees, compressing the time it takes to complete the process lowers costs and reduces risk. The most efficient way of doing this is through automation.

One example of this in a recruiting scenario is “Auto-Progression” when a candidate is moved through the application process based on certain triggers or outcomes. –Say that an application is updated to reflect that the candidate failed a background check ‑ then that person is automatically dispositioned and removed from the queue for that application. If the application is updated to reflect that the candidate passed the background test, then, the person is automatically moved to the next step in the hiring process. There are multiple ways this concept can be used to result in a significant reduction in cycle times. You can even automatically bypass some steps in the process if they’re not relevant to a particular applicant or position. Here is a screenshot of some sample active candidate statuses.

2. Extensibility

I covered this topic in previous posts, but the general concept is to extend the capability of your SaaS solution to support additional services and features. By building a seamless integration with other vendors, you can offer a service that is not natively available in your SaaS solution. This includes Benefits, Payroll, Background Verifications, and Assessments. The objective is to summarize all the results and display them in one system so the user only has to go into that single system to complete an action. From a user perspective, even if there are two different systems and vendors, it will appear as a single integrated solution. An iPaaS makes it easier to integrate with other cloud based systems.

Below is a screenshot of how 3D Results extended a client’s SuccessFactors system to support digital interviewing. As you can see, all the key information exists in SuccessFactors for the recruiter to process. There is also a link to the recorded interviews. An additional benefit is that this extensibility can be combined with auto progression. For example, if the reviewers indicate that a candidate has failed their HireVue interview, that candidate can be automatically dispositioned. If the candidate passes the interview, then he or she will be automatically progressed to the next step in the process.

3.Integration

This one may seem obvious, but with a lot of SaaS systems having their own integration capabilities, it’s easy to overlook. SuccessFactors recently rolled out an Integration Center which provides enhanced capability to export data from the system. This is a really nice feature and it will work for simple integrations, but it will not be able to support complex or bi-directions integrations. As you design the future state for your system architecture, it’s critical to determine whether the integration capability delivered by the SaaS vendor will be sufficient or if you’ll need a more robust integration platform. Attempting to figure this out during the implementation will result in delays and potential reconfiguration of your system.

Conclusion

There are additional benefits that can be realized by using an iPaaS over an on-premise integration application or by custom developing integrations using proprietary tools. I covered these benefits in my previous blog: Top 5 reasons to use Dell Boomi for SuccessFactors Integrations. For more use case examples of what an iPaaS can do for your SaaS implementation, you can download a copy of the presentation I gave recently at a meeting of the Leading Edge HR Network (LEHRN).

I have concluded the entire topic in forms of steps to make it easier to understand track your progress.

1. Identify the field which needs to be hidden, made mandatory or output field. For example I have chosen Initial(Technical field name – INITS)
2. SAP never suggest make the direct changes to the screen provided whereas system does not stop you to do this activity directly. You can make the direct changes to the screen as shown in the below screen shot ( I have made hidden) – Not preferred

     3.  Second solution is by making use of Features . The Feature which is used for modification here is P0002.

     4. First identify the screen which you want to make the changes.

1. Go to PA20
2. Take an employee and reach view the infotype PA0002
3. Go to Menu bar with path system->status

          d. Copy the program name and screen number

     5. Go to the IMG path Personnel Management->Personnel Administration->Customizing User Interfaces->Change Screen Modifications  or just run           TCODE SM30 and enter the table T588M.

     6. Search for your program name and screen number

      7. Copy the standard screen and assign a new screen number and a variable key ( FR). The variable key will bind your new screen with the logic which             you will be providing in the FEATURE- P0002.Assign P0002 feature in the feature area. Make the changes to field as hide for Initials

     8. Go to transaction PE03. Provide the feature name as P0002 and go to edit mode.

     9. Write your logic based on your requirement and once that is completed make the return value as same the variable value which you have provided in           table T888M for screen changes.A example below.

     10. Now go to PA30 and view the screen for the same employee. The initial field will not be visible along with the change in screen which can be view in               system->status

In this blog, I will briefly explain the generation of an XSD to define the consumer interface structure for EC Compound Employee API.

Generation of an interface structure file for EC Compound Employee API

Employee Central's Compound Employee API supports now the generation of a consumer interface structure file by returning such an XSD as query response.

To generate an XSD query parameter resultOption with value xsd needs to be passed when calling the Compound Employee API via the query request. The result for such a query is an XSD that matches the query response structure for the requested select items and the given query mode in the query request. Special about the XSD is, it corresponds to the succession data model configuration of the given company that is used in the login operation.

XSDgenerationoptions

This new feature also provides the freedom to influence the structure dependent on the consumer needs. Query parameter xsdOptions can be utilized for this. It supports certain options, which have the following effects on the structure of the query response:

• If no xsdOptions query parameter value is passed, the generated XSD contains all fields included in Compound Employee APIs static set of fields and all additional fields that have the visibility edit, view, or both in the Succession Data Models. For personal global information the XSD contains an element for each configured country. For MDF object-based segments the XSD contains all relevant fields defined in the corresponding object model.

• Passing value returnAllFields will return the superset of all fields supported by Compound Employee API. The generated XSD contains all fields included in its static set of fields and all additional and configurable fields of any of the Succession Data Models, independent of their visibility. For personal global information the generated XSD contains all supported countries and not only the configured ones. This parameter doesn't have an impact on MDF object based segments.

• Passing value useWeakTypes leads to a generated XSD in which data type String is used for all numeric typed fields (Long or Double) in the XSD (see below).

Special handling for numeric typed fields using xsdOptions parameter value useWeakTypes

Numeric typed fields can be handled considering the modeling of the field in the Succession Data Models, which depends on the parameter value that is passed via the query request. If a numeric field is defined with a reference to a picklist, foundation object, or generic object, the data type used in the generated XSD needs to be String instead of Long or Double. This behavior is required because the Compound Employee API exposes the external code for these referenced object. Keeping the original numeric typing may cause validation issue on consumer side as external codes also may contain characters.

The tables below give an overview about the XSD results for fields with different data types, data model configuration, and xsdOptions used. In these examples, ExtRef means "external reference". It indicates that the field has a reference to a picklist, foundation object, or generic object modeled in the Succession Data Model.

Table above shows the result of XSD generation behavior for country independent select items such as personal information, email, phone or select items that have a global model such as employment information, job information, or compensation information.

Table above shows the XSD generation behavior for country dependent select items such as personal global information or address information.

XSD query response handling

The query response for the XSD generation contains more information than needed for the consumer interface structure. From the query response the information needs to be taken as shown in the example below marked in the pink color to define the schema file.

<?xml version="1.0"?>

<S:Envelope xmlns:S="http://www.w3.org/2003/05/soap-envelope">

  <S:Body>

      <queryResponse xmlns="urn:sfobject.sfapi.successfactors.com"

                                xmlns:ns2="urn:fault.sfapi.successfactors.com">

        <result>

            <sfobject>

              <id>xsd</id>

              <type>CompoundEmployee</type>

              <xsd><![CDATA[

                                      <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

                                        <xs:schema xmlns="urn:sfobject.sfapi.successfactors.com"

                                        xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"

                                        targetNamespace="urn:sfobject.sfapi.successfactors.com"

                                        elementFormDefault="qualified">

                                        ...

                                        </xs:schema> 

                                                                 ]]>

              </xsd>

            </sfobject>

            <numResults>1</numResults>

            <hasMore>false</hasMore>

            <querySessionId>0ee36b8a-0e21-4e47-942d-f8ef4e6431a1</querySessionId>

        </result>

      </queryResponse>

  </S:Body>

</S:Envelope>

Further examples

Examples for Compound Employee API query request and query response can be found in the attached document.

Additional information

You can find further info under inhttp://help.sap.com/hr_api/or about Compound Employee API:http://service.sap.com/~sapidb/002007974700000283532014E

Looking forward to your questions and feedback in the comments section.

Do you replicate employees and employee assignments to cost center from SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central (EC) to ERP HCM?

Then you need to ensure that only the cost centers that belong to the employee’s company could be assigned to employee in EC.

This input data validation in EC allows to avoid the replication error in ERP.

This blog explains how to adjust the prepackaged integration “SAP ERP to EC Cost Center Replication” to replicate the ERP Cost Center fields Company Code and Person Responsible to EC Cost Center.

If the Company Code (EC Legal entity) is filled in EC Cost Center object, you could use this field as filter field for the Cost Center assignment.

Scenario:

You use SAP ERP system to manage Cost Center information. This might be a separated SAP ERP FIN system or an unified SAP ERP instance.

You need to synchronise the Cost Center information between SAP ERP system and SF EC system.

You use the pre-packaged integration “SAP ERP to EC Cost Center Replication” for replication of Cost Center information from SAP ERP to SF EC system.

You could use Hana Cloud Integration (HCI) or BOOMI middleware prepackaged content. This blog describes configuration in HCI.

Optional:

You configure SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central system to manage employee data.

You assign Cost Center, replicated from SAP ERP,  to Employee in SF EC and post  this assignment to SAP ERP.

You use the pre-packaged integration for Employee master data replication “EC to EC Payroll Employee Replication” and for the Employee Organizational assignment “EC to ERP Organizational Management” to  replicate Employee data  and Cost Center assignment to SAP ERP.

Main steps to process:

1.  SAP SF EC: create custom fields in Cost Center object

2.  SAP ERR: enable mapping of ERP field Company Code to EC field Legal Entity

3.  SAP HCI middleware:  set Parameters for custom fields created in EC.

1. SAP SF EC: create custom fields in Cost Center object

1.1  Create custom field for ERP Company ID and ERP Person Responsible.

ERP field Company Code should be mapped to the EC field Legal Entity to enable filtering/validation by Legal Entity while assigning Employee to the Cost Center.

This validation is important if the Employee and their Cost Center assignments are replicated to the ERP.

Replication of ERP field Person Responsible is optional. This field is not validated in EC and serves for information.

The EC Cost Center portlet doesn't have standard fields for Legal Entity and ERP Person Responsible.

In SF EC system go to Administration Tools -> Configure Object Definitions

1.2  Search for “Object Definition” and “Cost Center”

.

1.3  In my example I create custom field cust_companyCode for Company Code (Data Type: Generic Object) and custom field cust_respManager for Person

        Responsible (Data Type: String) in EC:   

1.4  Refresh OData API

In SF EC system go to Administration Tools -> Search for “OData API Metadata Refresh and Export”.

Refresh Metadata.

2, SAP ERR: enable mapping of ERP field Company Code to EC field Legal Entity

2.1  Apply SAP Note 2255967 e.g. with ERP transaction snote.

2.2  Create BADI Implementation for mapping ERP field Company ID to EC Legal Entity.

The example implementation provided in SAP Note 2255967 uses mapping in the Customizing table PAOCFEC_KMAPCOMC:

In my example the ERP Company Code 2000 is mapped to EC Legal Entity ACE_GBR.

If you use distributed system landscape and your SAP FIN system and SAP HCM (with customizing table PAOCFEC_KMAPCOMC) are in different instances you have to maintain RFC connection to your HCM instance.

Per default the BADI implementation checks the mapping in PAOCFEC_KMAPCOMC locally: iv_rfc_destination = SPACE in the coding below.

2.2.1  Call transaction SE18 -> Enhancement Spot ODTF_CC_REPLICAT_IDOCS_MODIFY

Choose ODTF_CO_REPL_IDOC_COST_CENTERS -> create Implementation e.g. ZZ_MODIFY_CC_COMPANY_ID.

2.2.2  Create Implementing Class e.g. ZCL_MODIFY_COMPANY_CODE

2.2.2.1  Go to Tab “Attributes” -> create Attribute “go_map_company_code” and refer it to Associated Type CL_ODTF_EC_MAP_COMP_CODE_EXMPL, which is provided with SAP Note 2255967:

2.2.2.2  Go to CLASS_CONSTRUCTOR and create e.g. the following code:

IF NOT go_map_company_code IS BOUND.

CREATE OBJECT go_map_company_code.

ENDIF.

2.2.2.3  Go to Method IF_ODTF_CO_REPL_IDOC_COST_CENT~MODIFY_COST_CENTER_EXTRACTOR

Enter e.g. the following code:

method IF_ODTF_CO_REPL_IDOC_COST_CENT~MODIFY_COST_CENTER_EXTRACTOR.
IF go_map_company_code IS BOUND.
go_map_company_code->set_map_company_code_rfc(
EXPORTING
iv_rfc_destination = SPACE ).

go_map_company_code->if_odtf_co_repl_idoc_cost_cent~modify_cost_center_extractor(
EXPORTING
it_sel_cost_center   = it_sel_cost_center
CHANGING
cs_cost_centers_idoc = cs_cost_centers_idoc ).
ENDIF.
endmethod.

2.2.3  Save and activate the created Implementing Class and Implementation

3. SAP HCI middleware:  set Parameters for EC custom fields

3.1  In your HCI tenant go to Design. Choose “SAP ERP to SuccessFactors Employee Central Cost Center Replication” -> Configure

3.2  In Configuration go to tab “Parameters”  and enter the custom fields that you created in Step 1 in EC.

3.3  Save and Deploy the changes.

4. Optional: Test the replication of Cost Center

In ERP Ihave created Cost Center OL_CC_01 in ERP with Company Code “2000” and Person Responsible “Olga”.

Company Code “2000” is mapped to Legal Entity “ACE_GBR” in Customizing Table PAOCFEC_KMAPCOMC.

You could replicate Cost Center using ALE Change Pointers or manually e.g. with report ODTF_REPL_CC.

I replicated changes with report ODTF_REPL_CC. IDoc is created:

In EC go to Manage Data .> Cost Center -> enter Cost Center ID “OL_CC_01

The Cost Center fields Company ID and ERP Resp Manager are successfully replicated from ERP into EC Cost Center.

Please also refer to Integration Guide „Replicating Cost Centers from SAP ERP to Employee Central” on the SAP Help Portal at http://help.sap.com/hr_integration#section2 -> SuccessFactors and SAP ERP: Core Hybrid HCM -> Replicating Cost Centers from SAP ERP to Employee Central.

Check other blogs relatedt to prepackaged integration of Cost Center:

https://scn.sap.com/community/erp/hcm/blog/2015/12/09/successfactors-employee-central-starts-transition-to-sap-hana-cloud-integration-hci

https://scn.sap.com/community/erp/hcm/blog/2015/07/16/how-to-reuse-cost-center-ids-while-replicating-cost-center-from-sap-erp-to-successfactors-employee-central

So what is preboarding and how do organizations benefit from preboarding. It is not just about Onboarding anymore and in my opinion, Preboarding process is an excellent way for organizations to strengthen employee engagement even before Onboarding your new hires. Imagine yourself when had a couple of offer letters in hand and still could not choose one over the other.  Which was the deciding factor that helped you make that decision. Every person who is about to join a company would have the following questions and apprehensions on their mind

“How are the people in the organization going to be?” “How do the managers treat their employees?” “What will the work culture be like?” “How are my goals going to align with my career path”? What are the company policies?

Here lies a huge opportunity for organisations to impress their new hires by clearing their doubts and confusions even before they could voice it out and make them feel welcomed .

In essence , preboarding is the experience you give your new hires even before they join the company which is the time between offer acceptance and the first day of work and onboarding is the process that kicks in once they start working with your organization including a robust orientation plan.     

Pre-Onboard with SuccessFactors

Preboarding automation is the key to effective onboarding and SuccessFactors Onboarding provides its customers the right technique to ensure a smooth and a satisfying journey for its new hires by following the below model which pretty much sums up the whole idea of catering to a successful onboarding experience .

• Guide your new hires through the key onboarding activities
• Connect your new hires to the right people and the appropriate information pre day 1 and go social !
• Develop new hires quickly into productive employees through innovative learning and training plans

The preboarding process begins and concludes with the key stakeholders – New hires, HR manager and Hiring Manager. It gives them an opportunity to plan for the new hire activities well in advance and also leverage the essential pre day 1 activities.

Some of my much loved SuccessFactors Onboarding Pre day 1 features –

New Hire Activities – This makes the life of all Hiring Managers so easy and simple. In just few steps, you are ready to give your new hire a warm welcome!

Write a welcome message for your new hire, setup recommended links , assign a buddy or a people manager or even create a short term goal plan so your new hires turn into productive employees in a shorter period of time.

Furnish Equipment– This is my personal favourite and a hit with customers too as this will let you make arrangements for the downstream assignments like business cards, laptop, phones etc. and also trigger a workflow to take approvals from the respective teams, if needed –

You can add any number of equipments with workflows that can be kicked off based on the business needs.

In the below diagram,

• In step 1, a request for arranging phone equipment is made where the hiring manager can enter comments that the approver will get to see upon approval.
• In step 2, upon making the request, a workflow is triggered and is now pending for approval with the respective team.
• In step 3, when an equipment is awaiting approval it shows a waiting sign.
• In step 4, on clicking the equipment you will get to see the approvers along with the details.
• In step 5, once approved the equipment indicates that the approval is now complete.

In 5 simple steps, the hiring manager is now able to request for an equipment for the new starter.

Onboarding Tour in Pre day 1 Access – Pre day 1 access means granting platform access to new hires even before they become employees. The homepage for your new hire has an appealing carousel on top which lets your new hire take a quick tour. Access to other confidential data like performance, goal, compensation, organisational chart, personal information can be restricted via RBP. This is where your new hire gets to see all the welcome messages and communication sent by your manager.

One can explore more about the organization by accessing the About Us Tab which takes you to the Employee Portal.

Configuration of this portal is customer’s responsibility and should be taken seriously as this is where companies can pay attention to improvise their branding and make it look attractive for the visitors of this site. It can include attachments, policies, texts, videos etc. and make it look appealing !

Notifications – Successfactors Onboarding allows you to create notifications, the content of which can be drafted using rich text formatting options and you can even include table type view and other features – Be Creative and explore to send the most awesome welcome letter to your new hires! You can include dynamic data in the form of tokens and all data collected in the panels during the process are potential tokens. One cool thing to note here is the ability to add conditions on the notifications that control if a notification is applicable or not. There are also various triggers available by standard that determine when the notifications should fire off.

Integration – To facilitate seamless flow of data, the Onboarding module is integrated with various modules of SuccessFactors like recruitment management and Employee Central. It also supports integration with Learning Management system, JAM and Goal Management. Below image will give you a snapshot of the modules integrated with Onboarding. Additionally, Onboarding module is capable of integrating with SAP HCM or any other HRIS / ATS through APIs and standard exports.

Compliance Forms – Successfactors is making every effort to include standard compliance forms from all across the globe to support commonly used forms. Current countries included are – US, Canada, India, Australia etc. Guide your new hires to fill out these cumbersome forms online and get them signed electronically so that you can time and energy.

Intelligent Services – Everyone is talking about intelligent services and sure it is intelligent enough to release the pain points of most HR processes. In onboarding, successfactors makes sure that the system is intelligent enough to make automatic updates in data in onboarding based on changes to data in Recruiting or Employee Central like start date change in Recruiting or Hiring manager change / buddy change etc. The system restarts and makes reassignments in the steps of the Onboarding process based on these changes.

Benefits from Preboarding

• Connecting and collaborating lets your new hire meet and know the team so they can be aware of the company culture and their own responsibilities in the team. Always remember being social pays! Always!
• Raising the anticipation – With these exciting features, will get your new hires to definitely look forward to their first day at work.
• Reduce apprehension – Your new hire feels more connected and engaged and has the access to right content and information leaving no room for doubts.
• Reduce no-shows – Having face to face meetings with new hires and even their families, frequent contact and communication from recruiter and hiring manager and maximizing contact through team mates can all be very helpful in reducing the number of no shows drastically.
• Faster employee effectiveness – With short term goal plans and effective training and learning management programs can ensure your new hires hit the ground and become more productive in a shorter period of time.
• Increase retention - Research has shown that preboarding activities can increase first-year retention by as much as 80 percent. Involving current employees in onboarding also increases their engagement and their “ownership” of new hires.

Welcome on-board !!!

The new functionality for SF Continuous Performance Management (CPM) is only out on preview at the moment until the March 4th release, but it is quite exciting because of the ease of use and mobile feature. This really looks like a dialogue between employees and managers. Being a manager myself and especially in an industry where we mostly work remotely from our teams, I understand the challenges with focusing on employee satisfaction and career development. The mobile feature of this tool will allow much more dialog or at least, seeming like actual dialogue!

My goal with this blog is to start discussion about CPM, the use of it, the configuration, etc. I have configured it just the other day and can say if you just follow what is said in the release notes, it is pretty easy.

Let me know your thoughts! Regards, Margaret

Are you in love with your HR solutions? Whether you are still honeymooning or celebrating your twenty-fifth anniversary, ASUG’s HR Community has resources to help you make the most of your technology. This week, we look at how to spice up a stale relationship with your HR solutions with User Experience updates and gamification!

SAP® Successfactors® is Turning the Heat up on Employee Engagement:ASUG’s resident HR guru, Sherryanne Meyer, shares how simplification is essential to stay relevant. Highlights include a look at a new interface, for both cloud and on-premise HR solutions, and ways of “getting ‘em and keeping ‘em” when recruiting. She ends on a high note by revealing updates to SAP® Jam™ that will help develop your “informal, social, and shared” workforce.

Discussion – Retro-Calc. Changes Past Payroll Withholding Tax: Remember last week’s tax conundrum? This week, the HR community collaborated and finally found a solution – and it’s simpler than you may think. Thanks to Kenneth Moore for taking on this “taxing” endeavor.

SAP SuccessFactors Q1 2016 Business Update/Release Highlights: Although technology is more of a marathon than a sprint, if you don’t keep up you’ll be left in the dust. A recording of this webcast is now live on ASUG’s HR Community. Pick up your speed by hearing the latest Q1 updates and release highlights for SAP SuccessFactors. David Ludlow, Global VP of SAP HR and SAP SuccessFactors, sets the pace in this informative webcast.

SuccessFactors HCM Suite Roadmap: Core HR and Analytics:Although we are extremely spoiled by our smartphones and Google Maps, sometimes a good old roadmap is the way to go. ASUG and SAP have that covered. In this webinar, SAP project managers present product roadmaps for Employee Central, Cloud Payroll, and Workforce Analytics & Planning.

Practical Analytics for Business Users: A Discussion of the Tools and Techniques to Make Analytics Practical for You:In preparation for the March 14-16 Practical Analytics workshop, this webcast provides an overview of the lessons and hands-on activities that attendees will use. It’s an exclusive sneak peek into why the workshop is the right fit for you. Plus, registration is still buy one, get one half-off. Don’t miss this deal!

To see more HR resources and content, check out the ASUG HR Community and stay on the lookout for next week’s recap.

P.S. Don’t miss the RechargeHR Webcast Series for HR and HRIS professionals using SAP HCM and/or SAP SuccessFactors. Stay connected to the information, insights, and ideas you need to move your workplace forward in the twenty-first century.

Over the past 20 years, I have had the opportunity to play a number of roles within the eLearning industry including LMS implementer, LMS administrator, instructional developer, instructional designer, and learning team manager.  This has given me a unique perspective and one I’d like to share; if your corporate learning team takes a holistic view of your learning technologies, the team will operate far more efficiently and effectively than if each function operates in a silo.

• In order to effectively manage the team, the team manager needs to understand the Learning Management System (LMS) technology at least enough to know that the team members are using it properly and to its full capabilities.  Team managers must understand everyone’s roles, where roles and responsibilities may overlap, how to ensure proper handoffs, and what the technology parameters are.
• The instructional developer needs to know what technology works within the given system in order to make sure that the modules developed will integrate seamlessly.  The constraints and settings of each LMS can vary significantly, and knowing the specifications of a given LMS is crucial to the success of each project.  I can offer a good example of how costly it can be to operate without knowledge of the technical specifications of an LMS.  While contracting at a pharmaceutical company not long ago, I became aware of a project that had been contracted out to another external vendor.  While that vendor offered exceptional design capabilities, it had not never been sent LMS specifications by the instructional designer and wasn’t even aware that SCORM was to be used.  The sales training developed, while interesting and, on a stand-alone basis, sound from a training perspective, was not tested on the LMS prior to one day before it was released.  Once tested it quickly became apparent that the module had to go back to the vendor so that the SCORM protocol could be implemented in order for it to function. Unfortunately, the module was required training for sales representatives prior to a major new pharmaceutical product launch.  The sales force training was held up for two days while SCORM compatibility was being tested and fixed which in turn delayed to product launch costing millions of dollars to the company. In this case, had the Instructional Designer, been familiar with basic LMS technologies and included a LMS system administrator in the while gathering requirnments, compatibility could have been developed into the solution up front, saving a costly delay in launching the training.  
• Having the instructional designer up to speed on the limits of a given LMS will prevent costly rework from being done to modules that might not work within the constraints of certain learning management systems.  In contrast, to get the most of your LMS functionality, it is important that instructional designers be aware of the LMS capabilities so they can design accordingly.  For example, there was a company that needed to have 23 separate compliance documents in the form of PDFs assigned to learners, but wanted to ensure that they would always be assigned together.  The company asked a vendor to put these documents into a format that would have them all come into a learner’s assignment queue under one menu.  The external vendor – for nearly $20k –  designed a solution and sent back a SCORM package. However, what could have been done instead was to simply group the PDFs together in a Program Item within their SuccessFactors LMS with an appropriate description under each. The new Program feature gives the administrator the ability to create and maintain new eLearning modules by recombining existing content objects without having to spend on costly software development.  In this case, had the company fully understood the capabilities of the their LMS they could have save $20K on this project alone.

Figure 1: An Example SuccessFactors Program

• Conversely it is just as important that LMS administrators be looped in on the learning objectives for courses by the instructional designer.  As the ones who are typically responsible for assignments, understanding the objectives as well as such details as the target audience is important to efficient and effective training management.  For example, if training is designated for lab workers, the assignment of the course may not be accurate if the real learning objective is that the lab safety course is required for all who enter the lab at a particular company.  The lack of complete understanding of the target audience could result in downtime or even fines and penalties.  
• Learning management system implementers should understand the full scope of options available within the system they are implementing and be able to fully explain them.  The LMS implementer needs to understand how you are going to use system up front and whom you are educating in order to be most efficient and effective.

In summary, it is critical that corporate learning teams refrain from operating in silos.  Despite how busy teams can be, it is important that the full team be given every opportunity to take a holistic view of learning – from objectives through the technological implementation.  This will save costly mistakes from being made and, as learning management systems become more robust and dynamic, will allow your team to take advantage of the full range of capabilities.

--Adam Marturana

Prime Lead Consultant

HMC_AdamMarturana (@HMC_AMarturana) | Twitter

Do you search for a possibility to integrate SAP ERP UIs within Employee Central? SAP provided a new Integration Guide in Q1 2016 explaining the different possibilities to integrate SAP ERP User Interfaces with Employee Central.

Link to the Integration Guide in Service Marketplace:

http://service.sap.com/~sapidb/012002523100004085142016E

In general SAP offers different possibilities to integrate SAP ERP Screens into the Success Factors Employee Central Homepage. The following use cases are part of the above mentioned Integration Guide.

• The employee is still mastered with all his/her global HR processes in SAP ERP HCM, but his Employee Master Data is replicated to SF Employee Central (Side by Side Deployment Model). The SF Homepage serves as a global UI Hub for Managers and Employees and via the UI Navigation Manager and Employee Self Services can be embedded in the SF Homepage. E.g. a Manager can trigger a change of working time for his/her employee or an employee can change his/her Address. The UI integrations are embedded in the Take action menu of the Employee.
• The employee is mastered with all his/her global HR processes in SF Employee Central but for some processes the ERP HCM is still leveraged (Core Hybrid Deployment Model). This can be for example Time Management in ERP HCM or local HR processes. In this case Managers and Employees can also trigger these ERP processes from the SF Homepage. E.g. the employee can request vacation or the Manager can trigger a local process for an employee. The UI integrations are embedded in the Take action menu of the Employee.
• The employee is mastered with all his/her global HR processes in SF Employee Central but the ERP HCM is still leveraged for running Payroll processes. So the Employee Master Data for these employees is replicated from Employee Central to SAP ERP HCM. In order to maintain additional data needed for the payroll the HR Administrator can use the Payroll Information Page as part of the SF Homepage which includes Mashups to the relevant ERP HCM Payroll Infotypes for maintenance.
• The employee is mastered with all his/her global HR processes in SF Employee Central but the ERP HCM is still leveraged for running Payroll processes. So the Employee Master Data for these employees is replicated from Employee Central to SAP ERP HCM. Employees can use the Mashups in the Payroll Information Page in order to view his/her Payslip.
• A more generic way to integrate SAP ERP HCM screens can be leveraged via custom navigation. This integration is not specifically introduced to embed ERP Screens but to integrate UIs from any other Third Party system.

In my previous posts on extending SuccessFactors core capabilities by using an iPaaS,  we looked at the automatic creation of Development Goals in the Career Development Planning (CDP) module and how to automatically create a mini-compensation statement using the Meta Data Framework (MDF) panel. In the third part of this series I’ll discuss how you can extend Employee Central (EC) tax capabilities by linking EC with the Onboarding module to generate a tax feed for payroll.

1. Business Objective

Problem: an organization’s payroll provider needed tax information for new hires in order to complete the payroll process. Unfortunately, EC does not store this information, so the payroll feed between Employee Central and the third-party provider was incomplete. However, tax information is captured in the organization’s Onboarding module.

The example below is from an actual client using ADP EV5 for payroll and looking to synchronize tax data from Onboarding with information from Employee Central to provide the complete payroll feed to ADP.  Marital and State Tax exemptions are entered into the Onboarding forms similar to the one below. This information needs to be included in the tax record in the EV5 payroll feed.

2. Designing the Process

There were two key issues we had to address when designing this integration. The first was how to match and sync a candidate’s data in Onboarding with a new employee in EC when there is no user identification field linking these two systems. The solution was to use the unique ID generated by the Onboarding system (ONB Data ID), and configure the standard integration between Onboarding and EC to push the value to EC. This can be done from Admin Tools by using the Field Mapping Tool for Integration with Onboarding and EC. See below.

If the setup is done correctly, you will be able to see the ONB ID value displayed in the target field in EC. Below  is a sample screen shot.

The second key constraint was timing, since there can be a lapse between the time when onboarding is completed for a new hire and when the candidate-to-employee conversion process is completed in EC. This makes it untenable for us to use the standard new hire export file from Onboarding and then link that information with EC to generate the tax records. The timing issue was resolved by having the Boomi process  triggered only when there is a new hire, and then use the Onboarding and Employee Central APIs to retrieve the information needed to create the tax record.

3. Developing the Solution

To actually send the tax record to ADP we piggybacked the tax record sub-process on to the main EV5 integration process and had it run only when there was a new hire. This way ADP only receives one master file with all relevant records, including the tax records. Here are the changes that were made to the Boomi process to have it run the sub-process whenever there was a new hire. The light colored items are the changes.

Conclusion

This is a unique solution that uses a combination of the standard Onboarding to EC integration, with a custom Boomi process. The best part is that we were able to deliver precisely what ADP was expecting ‑ a single tax file with all the detailed records, including the taxes.

It has been another very eventful year in HR Technology and last year at this time, a group of friends and I collaborated to write The Future of SAP HCM and SuccessFactors Consulting - 2015. This year we split the report into a three-part series with the recently released Future of SAP HCM On Premise Consulting – 2016 (Part 1)and Future of SuccessFactors Consulting – Talent Management (Part 3) planned to be released in two weeks.

I have no doubt we are we are still in the early innings of the multi year shift from client server OnPremise software (i.e. SAP HCM, Oracle EBS, PeopleSoft) to the next generation cloud based offerings (i.e. SuccessFactors, Workday, Oracle HCM Cloud) which Bill Kutik has done a great job of outlining in this article. SAP has been very aggressive over the past 5 years spending over 17 billion on acquiring cloud companies such as SuccessFactors, Ariba, Fieldglass and Concur and is now predicting that cloud and support revenue will overtake software by 2018.

Given that, it should come as no surprise that SAP is leading with SuccessFactors HCM Suite for all new customers, in most regions worldwide. There has always been a delicate balance within the SAP HCM Consulting market and this major shift over the last few years of HR customers moving to the cloud (with SuccessFactors and to competitors) has had a huge impact on the traditional SAP HCM consulting market. In the SAP HCM market, I am seeing a very little opportunity, billable rate compression, layoffs and it is not a place you want to be longer term.

On the flip side virtually every consulting company is looking to add experienced SuccessFactors resources as well as re-train and their existing consultants on new technology. This was one of the reasons we recorded “Becoming and HCM SaaS Consultant and followed it up with “Becoming a SuccessFactors Consultant”with fellow SAP Mentor Alumni Jon Reed and Luke Marson to help people with the transition. For any customers reading this, the SuccessFactors consulting world is VERY different than the SAP consulting world and would high recommending watching the video below.

While there will continue to be some very small pockets of strength in the SAP HCM market in various regions and modules, the combination of the product roadmap being squarely focused on SuccessFactors, SAP sales teams leading with the Cloud (for HR), continued off-shoring, faster implementations, the buzz for cloud based HR technology and serious competitive threats from Workday, Oracle Fusion and others guarantee the OnPremise SAP HCM consulting market will continue its downward spiral.

I decided to reach out to a diverse group of individuals that I personally know and trust would give an honest opinion of what they are seeing on the ground in their respective areas. They include SAP HCM and SuccessFactors Industry Experts, SAP Mentors, SAP Press Authors, HR Expert authors, well-known conference speakers and some of the most knowledgeable individuals I know in the industry.  Here are their thoughts.

SuccessFactors Project Management

I reached out toSteve Bognerwho is Managing Partner atInsight Consulting Partners a fellow SAP Mentor, maestro of the greatHCM Podcast Groupand he told me:

Sound advice for SAP HCM and SuccessFactors HCM project management is much the same as a year ago. The technical landscape is changing rapidly, so be sure to keep an eye on that as you plan your roadmap and implementation. Integration is still a key part of projects, with more moving to HANA Cloud Integration (HCI). Consultancies are racing to build their practices and win implementations, keeping us in a Wild West environment for now. Address this by being selective with the consultancies and consultants you bring in to your projects, and perhaps by hiring a third-party, independent consultant as an advisor.

As you plan projects it is ever more critical to have good, solid buy-in and ownership from each business area impacted. In fact, if the business areas - HR, Benefits, Payroll, etc - are not willing to allocate resources and leadership then it might not be the right time to start critical projects. And also remember that IT resources are still needed! There is integration work, understanding legacy systems, and system architecture issues (and more) to deal with in the cloud.

SuccessFactors Employee Central

I reached out to Luke Marson,who is a Certified Professional in Employee Central, has worked with over 15 SuccessFactors customers ranging from 750 to 105,000 employees, co-author of the SAP PRESS books "SuccessFactors with SAP ERP HCM" and “SuccessFactors Employee Central: The Comprehensive Guide”, runs the SuccessFactors business at Hula Partners and delivers Employee Central and integration implementations, optimization, strategy, roadmapping, assessment, and advisory who told me:

2015 was really the year that Employee Central took off. SAP sold their 1,000th subscription for Employee Central and a number of large global customers went live. Employee Central continued to mature, with enhancements to existing features (such as time management and workflows) and introduction of new features (such as document generation and contingent workforce management). The integration offerings have increased significantly in terms of SAP integration capabilities (i.e. CATS, GRC, Fieldglass, etc.) and technology (SAP HANA Cloud Integration (HCI) is now available for new customers).

In terms of the consulting market, there has been a surge in demand for quality resources (also in areas such as Recruiting and Onboarding). Although there are a limited number of experience consultants compared to other modules, customers should still be easily able to find consultants that have Professional Certification to lead their implementation. However, some customers are still not doing their due diligence or are hiring brand names without understanding who will actually deliver the implementation. As a result, there have been several customers who have struggled with their implementation or who have needed help afterwards to fix their botched implementations.

The maturity of the product is no longer a question and large enterprises are actively implementing or have gone live with Employee Central. Only recently was I lucky enough to begin working with one of the largest oilfield services firm in the world, who has over 105,000 employees across more than 40 countries. They are currently rolling out Employee Central over the next 18 months while integrating back to SAP ERP, which goes to show that even large, complex, global organizations are able to leverage Employee Central for their HR needs. And every quarter last year, SAP signed a new record sized customer for Employee Central. SAP’s top five Employee Central customers in terms of employees employee over 1.3 million people and are headquartered in 4 different continents.

In 2016, I expect to see more and more consultants obtaining both Associate Certification as well as Professional Certification in Employee Central, as more consultants continue to gain further experience due to the rapid growth of Employee Central. Many firms have still not delivered many Employee Central implementations or have delivered them at smaller customers, meaning that customers really need to look around at the ecosystem and do their due diligence to avoid getting burned. Customers can learn a few more tricks in this interview on Firing Line with Bill Kutik that features Jarret Pazahanick and myself.

From a product perspective, there will be a lot more ongoing enhancements to People Profile, Contingent Workforce Management, Time Management, cross-suite integration, and more. Additionally, Platform features like Integration Center, Intelligent Services, and Metadata Framework (MDF) continue to strengthen EC and the other SuccessFactors HCM suite applications. I fully expect to see more partner-built SuccessFactors extensions on the SAP HANA Cloud Platform (HCP).

2016 should also see a large growth year in the EMEA market, now that Employee Central is a proven global HR system for companies of all sizes. Additionally, I expect Employee Central to overtake Workday in terms of number of customers during the first half of 2016, which will be a real coup for SAP. Currently Employee Central is under 100 customers behind Workday, despite being a significantly younger product. This is largely down to the strategy put in place by Thomas Otter, Dmitri Krakovsky, and Mike Ettling over the last 3 years, as well as the teams working with them.

Overall, it will be onwards and upwards in 2016.

SuccessFactors Employee Central Payroll

I reached out toJarret Pazahanickwho is Managing Partner atEIC Experts, an SAP Mentor Alumni and has been part of 20+ SAP Payroll and SuccessFactors Employee Central Payroll implementations and he told me (couldn’t resist a formal intro)

There are currently 68 Employee Central Payroll customers and 911,000 users out of the roughly 1000 Employee Central customers. It is important to note that the foundation of this product is SAP Payroll (hosted by SAP) with vendor delivered bi- directional integration with Employee Central and is available for the following countries as of 1602, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Spain, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, UAE, UK, USA and Venezuela.

The preferred skill set customers should be looking for to help them with their Employee Central payroll implementation is different than it is in SAP Payroll as consultants need to be familiar with Employee Central and ideally certified in that offering.  My recommendation is customers be very diligent to ensure their consulting resources have the necessary ECP experience before moving forward with their implementation and although it is almost 5 years old here are Seven Tips to ensure you hire the Right Consultant.

Some good news for ECP customers is that the Payroll Control Center has been delivered as part of the 1411 offering so customers will not have to worry about being on the right technology stack (SAP takes care of that) but you will want to ensure your consultant has experience implementing the Control Center and ECP (very few do). My understanding is that over time Employee Central Payroll will continue to add functionality that differentiates it from SAP Payroll as it has with functionality such as BSI Tax Updates, BSI eForms plus several items on the roadmap

Platform

I reached out to Luke Marson,who is a Certified Professional in Employee Central, has worked with over 15 SuccessFactors customers ranging from 750 to 105,000 employees, co-author of the SAP PRESS books "SuccessFactors with SAP ERP HCM" and “SuccessFactors Employee Central: The Comprehensive Guide” who told me:

SAP has continued their innovation with the SAP SuccessFactors Platform this year. Intelligent Services, Integration Center, People Profile, and Next Generation Admin are just some of the areas where SAP has made a serious investment in new capabilities. The People Profile UI is slick and is part of a larger user experience strategy that SAP hopes will unify all of their cloud and on-premise solutions from a user interface and user experience perspectives. Intelligent Services enables system events to push out notifications and integrations within and outside of the SAP SuccessFactors HCM suite.

Continued investment in Metadata Framework (MDF), rules engine, and the OData API has enabled further functionality to be rolled out and continues to be the framework on which new functionality is built. The forthcoming Extensions Center will take this one step further with a central place to manage and build extensions. MDF has really become a staple of every EC consultant, rather than being a differentiator as it has been in the past. Although not used extensively across the talent applications, plans are afoot to move Recruiting and Onboarding onto MDF to unify the hire-to-retire data model and therefore enhance processes, data flows, and opportunities for customers.

SAP has also stepped up with their documentation, meaning implementation consultants have a wealth of documentation online to understand how new and existing functionality works. This is helping to level the playing field and meaning that consultants focused in specific areas can understand these capabilities. I expect the smarter SuccessFactors consultants to understand more than just the immediate features and functionality of their core area and to understand the Platform and other integration points that are part of the suite.

Workforce Analytics

I spoke with Doug Rippey, a 15-year HR Analytics veteran who leads Aasonn’s analytics and reporting, who told me:

When discussing SuccessFactors’ Reporting and Analytics, it’s important to understand the delineation between the two.  Reporting consists of the tools used to get transactional data out of the various modules in a near real-time environment; Analytics provides strategic guidance based on monthly data points and trends over time.  Unfortunately, most organizations’ approach to reporting is as an afterthought rather than crafting a cross-module reporting strategy at the beginning of an implementation.  SuccessFactors’ variety of reporting tools: Dashboards, Ad Hoc, Online Report Designer (ORD) and some module-specific tools mean clients find it difficult to know which tool should be used for what and how they all interrelate.  Different functionality (and a different interface) between ORD queries for the talent modules versus EC has added additional confusion.

The good news is that SuccessFactors has invested in closing functionality gaps and is continuing to enhance the reporting tools in 2016.  With each quarterly release, the team addresses many of the faults that had been identified in Dashboards 2.0 that prevented some migrating from the old Dashboards.  Advanced Reporting (the new EC version of the ORD query tool) has provided additional/easier functionality around change reporting and field aggregation.  Many more enhancements that have been identified through the customer community are now on the reporting roadmap.

For the Workforce Analytics and Planning (WFAP) modules, SuccessFactors faces competition from new point solution vendors as well as its traditional HCM competitors.  Many of the point solutions have sprung from companies who understand analytics/”big data” and are trying to move into the HR market. SuccessFactors is investing to stay ahead and compete effectively in this market.  Its latest updates include additional analytics dashboards focused on diversity and inclusion.  Ongoing investment into Analytics in 2016 is designed to provide deeper insight cross-module and help leaders with data-driven decision-making.

Finally, as the talent modules mature and EC continues its rampant growth, the demand to get useful data out of the SuccessFactors suite had outpaced supply of knowledgeable consultants in the reporting and analytics areas.  I see this shortage lasting at least through the short term, until new resources can ramp up to meet this exponential demand.  

Concur

I spoke withSven Ringlingwho is the UK director ofiProCon, a small consultancy based in the UK and in Germany and recently his firm became a Concur Partner who told me:

Concur’s first year in the SAP family has seen a lot activity and interest from customers, though not too much of that translated into completed implementations yet. The whole Concur market (only T&E, ignoring Concur Invoice) can be split along 2 lines:

1. America vs. Europe

• As a world market leader Concur had several well-established markets, most notably in North America. The SAP acquisition has added some momentum there, but it’s a far less significant change then other markets see. However, I do expect solution improvements driven by Europe to positively impact established markets, too.
• With few exceptions, Concur was an “also ran” in 2014 Europe. This has changed dramatically. There are already many new implementations. With Concur doing their homework on SAP integration, European legal requirements and practice, stability, and a much wider mobile scope, I expect many more.

2. Travel vs. Expense

• Expense is the natural starting point and what most customers have in SAP. Concur’s big differentiators are mobile, receipt handling, and analytics, but some customers still prefer SAP’s backend processes.
• The real game changer is Travel, bringing a fully integrated process. Customers are still more cautious here.

3. Impacts on consultancy:

• Concur already struggles with implementation workload, especially in Europe, and they are also aware customers demand more than purely technical deployment. They responded with the new partnership program, where consultants, who understand Concur configuration, but help with strategy, process, integration, and transformation, will be in high demand. The surge will hit Europe, most notably Germany, first, but spill into other regions due to the improvements mentioned.
• Mid-term, I expect Concur to change their partner model to allow partner managed implementations.

An interesting bit are large service providers, T&E processes are outsourced to. Some translate their models into Concur already, but to me it seems to become obsolete with cloud solutions like Concur. Much more effective to keep the process inside, decentralize as much as possible, and add individual services such as receipt audit or VAT reclaim as needed. With more customers picking up “Travel” some strategic consultancy will be in demand here.

Wrap Up

There is an excellent quote from Naomi Bloomwho is a HR Technology thought leader that I like to share every year as I find it very relevant.

"Consultants, at least in my world view, are individuals who are able to study a business problem and, regardless of any particular technology choices, guide the client to the best possible approach to achieving the desired business results."

At the end of the day, if you are a consultant that is able to provide that type of value for your customers then it won't matter the HR technology, you will be have the head start at being successful. That said, it is very important whether you are a customer or consultant, that you are aware of where the technology is headed and in HR the future is the cloud. If you trying to break into HR Technology I don’t see any scenario where learning SAP HCM as a “fresher” in 2016 and beyond is going to serve you well in the long run.

I am a big believer that being a lifelong learner is a key competitive advantage given the rapid pace of change in HR Technology, and in order to stay current on all the major news and developments I would recommend joining the 26,000+ people in my Global SAP and SuccessFactorsand Global SAP HCM and SuccessFactors groups. 

Would love to get your comments, questions to the authors, and your individual point of view.

SuccessFactors Q1 2016 Release

By Nicole Saunders, Senior Product Marketing Manager, SAP SuccessFactors

With increased global competition for talent, increasing globalization of the workforce and the rapid pace of change in the business environment today, employers are working harder than ever to retain and reward top talent. According to the Workforce 2020 research study, what employees value most is competitive pay. However, although 67% of employees say competitive compensation is important, only 40% of executives say their company widely offer it. So, why is there disparity in what employee’s value and what companies offer? 

Despite recognizing the importance competitive compensation plays in attracting and retaining talent, companies are struggling to reward high potentials and key contributors. Having a solid compensation planning model is an important step in retaining key talent by ensuring that employees are being paid competitively while adhering to company budgets.  Modeling is a strategic decision-making tool that enables organizations to design effective compensation plans aligned with their financial and HR objectives - which can have a positive impact on an organization’s bottom line.

Providing fine-tuned compensation guidance to Planners is a daunting task.  Compensation Teams need to juggle small merit budgets across diverse business units, geographies, employees below the pay range, at risk of loss, high potentials, and multiple pay currencies; the reality is that insufficient modeling by compensation professionals is common, often due to lack of time, lack of expertise or adequate modeling tools.

Compensation modeling is a time consuming task for HR. In fact, nearly three-quarters — 71 percent — of participants in a Ventana report identified Microsoft Excel as a system they use for compensation management. While spreadsheets certainly have a place within many organizations, their use as a compensation management tool can lead to challenges. For starters, it can be easy to inadvertently introduce errors. Few spreadsheets possess the security features needed to safeguard confidential salary and payroll information. Additionally, important compensation plan design decisions are made in geographical or divisional silos because data is not easily available on spreadsheets. Once a compensation plan design has been determined, all the data must be re-created in the compensation management software system to initiate the compensation planning process. 

Making the move from Administrative to Strategic Compensation Management with SAP SuccessFactors

Compensation professionals can now spend less time on constructing guideline spending schemes with multiple spreadsheets and more time on strategic activities. Expanding our existing variable pay forecasting and modeling capabilities, compensation professionals using SAP SuccessFactors Compensation can now model base salary, incentive bonus and long-term incentive programs prior to finalizing planning cycle configuration. With the first release of 2016, we’re proud to introduce new and innovative compensation modeling capabilities that improve planning accuracy and efficiency by aligning compensation guidelines with budgets. 

Image 1: Guideline modeling homepage

Compensation specialists can now plan and model base pay adjustments and LTI’s (equity and cash) distribution in multiple ways:

• Smart Alignment - We are taking the headache out of compensation modeling.  With hundreds or thousands of guidelines, it can be difficult to know the overall guideline cost, or what adjustments need to be made to meet budget targets.  SAP SuccessFactors Compensation unique and innovative approach to modeling provides specific recommendations on how the guidelines can be adjusted to align with pre-defined targets. (See image 2)

• Top-down - Organizations can define targets for base pay adjustments or LTI distribution based on salary surveys and the specific situation they are in (for example we pay our engineers 2.5% above market average). Starting with these targets by country, location, position or other parameters compensation specialists can then model the guidelines they need to deploy to reach them.

• Bottom-up - The modeling tool starts with applying previous year’s guidelines to the current eligible population to estimate the baseline expense.  The Compensation Specialist can then update the guideline values and attributes using pay relevant criteria such as position in range, rating, job family, location, high potential, salary grade or any custom field.

Image 2:  Smart recommendations make it easy to align guidelines with targets

SAP SuccessFactors Compensation modeling allows you to:

• Perform complex calculations and analyze how base salary and equity should be awarded to employees across a variety of criteria including locations, performance levels, and position in range, just to name a few.
• Model the cost of incorporating salary survey information on competitive market increases by country,

industry, and job classification.

• Have firm targets in place from a works council, union, or the finance department.
• Measure the financial impact of adjusting pay guides or updating exchange rates.

Some benefits include:

• Access to organization-wide data for more holistic planning
• Ability to drill down and roll up at desired level of granularity
• Push the optimal compensation model(s) to a live plan template

To learn more about compensation structure modeling and all the other great features in the Q1 2016 release, check out the release highlights and listen to David Ludlow in our release video. For more detailed information, please visit the SAP SuccessFactors Customer Community.  (Login required)