Middle men and full time contractors in the SAP HR world: two concepts that seem more widely used by far in the UK and the US than in the German speaking countries. This struck me, when I moved to Britain 5 years ago, and I still feel both concepts are over-used and I'm afraid sometimes for no better reasons than lazyness or CYA tactics. So, I decided this is the time to share my thoughts and maybe provoke some discussion.

Before I start, I need to make two "confessions":

- my own experience is primarily in SAP HCM (and some other HRIS incl. cloud). I appreciate that HCM by its nature (e.g. non-core business process, lot's of mini-projects for legal changes like the typical 10day assignments recently triggered by UK RTI) may differ from other processes closer to the core of the business

- I or my business have benefited from the two concepts in the past. I advice clients accordingly, when full time is not required or when they could just as well work directly with a contractor, but I would not in every case walk away from business, if a client insists - it's anybody's choice to call this either inconsequent or good customer service.

I'm aware that this article will feel provocative to many readers. That's what it's meant to be. I know things are not black and white and that the concepts I found so alien 5 years ago are in many cases a good or even the best solution. However, I also observe, that they are all too often accepted without consideration, when direct engagements and traditional consultancy models would be more efficient and probably also more effective.

Full time culture

Why is it, I keep asking myself, that so many SAP HCM projects happen to just require an experienced professional to work on it for exactly 5 days a week over a given period of time? And in a complex set-up, even assuming a 6 months really project needs 125 days, how comes it's always one person covering everything even though there seems to be an extremely high degree of specialisation amongst professionals trained in the world of big consultancies or big integrators? And if you need 250 days in half a year, how come it magically requires a 50% split between a "functional" specialist and a developer?

I might be more inclined to believe in these accidental perfect fits, had I ever hit the jackpot in the lottery. Alas, I haven't, and so I'm very sceptical about it.

"The number of days is adjusted to the requirement through the duration of the project!", I here someone say? Well, this may be so in some cases. However, in the real world I see most projects coming with a fixed deadline already and a start date of "asap", as they know they are late already and even more importantly: the duration of the project should not first and fore mostly determined by the availability of the consultant, but by the customer's circumstances. Their employees need to be available for process design discussions, prototype reviews, training, tests, knowledge transfer, and whatever tasks in the project are given to them to learn and save money under the consultant's guidance. In a typical HR project with not too much custom development, an experienced full time consultant would in many cases demand more resources from the customer than they can realistically put in, so the consultant ends up being idle or doing work the customer could do themselves (which, quite conveniently, also makes them more dependent on external resources in future - hony soit, qui mal y pense).

I'd recommend customers to look closely into how estimates are calculated. If you find you'd need a particular consultant for 3 days/week to implement your LSO project, and the same person happens to have the right skill set to act as support for other HR modules you already have in place, there's nothing wrong with taking him or her on full time for that period, if it gives you a better deal. But it needs to be transparent and a conscious decision.

Customers should also think about what they expect from their consultants:

a) if they expect to receive advice on what to do and how to do things, it's much more likely they need someone to come in for two days a week or even one day every other week for workshops and possibly solving the more difficult issues directly on the system. That's a consultant. Just having someone sitting there doing stuff full time, is a temp employee. This is fine. You just need to be aware of what you can expect. Initially I was confused by the term "contractor" widely used for these people. I still think it sometimes betrays wrong priorities: is it about the contract first and helping the client or deliver a solution comes second? Although, of course, this notion would be completely unfair to apply to all "contractors". The word just seems to be a nice artefact indicating the overall culture. By the way: Being able to help customers doing things themselves also requires some additional skills on top of those required to just do it (yes, there are also those consultants, who only tell you what to do, but not how to do it, without ever having had their own hands dirty. This doesn't work for this type of engagements and these are the people, who got a sound approach into discredit in many managers' books)

b) if you expect your consultant to advice you on alternative solutions, system driven process changes to improve efficiency, and effectiveness, risk, and feasibility: why do you think they know more about this than you do? "A broad experience!" . Right. That's what I would have thought. But I certainly wouldn't claim to have a broad experience, had I worked only with 5 or so clients in my SAP HCM career since 1996. I can't claim to be smarter than the next SAP expert, but despite my aging grey cells I managed to remember a lot from having worked with anywhere between 50 and 100 organisations and it's often the one or two day high intensity design workshops or problem solving assignments, where I learned most from. So, I've seen a lot working and not working and that's what clients can benefit from - not my cleverness or even my good looks ;-)

A note for consultants or contractors: working with a large variety of customers on a mix smaller and larger projects or support tasks is also the best way to develop fast. It not only increases your arsenal of technical and process level solutions, but also sharpens your analytical skills by forcing you to understand a new context fast and develops your communication skills by exposing you to a wide range of people and organisational cultures. It may look a bit scary not to always have 6-18 months fully booked ahead of you, but in my view it's definitely worth it.

So, is full-time always bad? Definitely not! In larger projects with teams of 5 or more external resources in one solution area, say HR, many or most roles are probably shaped well for full time team members, whilst some specialists may be added for a few days as and when needed. And this is just one example amongst many. Again: I'm not trying to discredit full time consultants or contractors, just suggesting there may be cases, when putting some extra thought into the decision wouldn't hurt.

I won't try to explain, why the full time paradigm seems to be so much stronger in some countries than in others. Comparing the UK with Germany, a more entrepreneurial culture as well as the tax system seem to favour freelance work over employment, and individual freelance contractors will obviously find it more difficult than teams in small and medium consultancies to put together the right portfolio of part time assignments. But this is just scratching on the surface.

However, what I found in many countries, is that middlemen in any shape or form, most notably agencies with no or little knowledge of the subject, increase the propensity for having people full time on the project. It's obvious: for them, full time is much easier. Get them into the client once and then all you've left to do is sending monthly invoices and counting the money. No juggling between various projects, which would also require some understanding of the work at hand. And this brings me to the second element of this article:

The non-value-adding middle man (or woman)

This is, where I really do despair sometimes.

You will why, understand, if you read this little story (simplified so as not to make any parties involved recognisable):

I once subcontracted as a project manager for a company, who described themselves as a Systems Integrator. They didn't have any perm employees, except for some back office and a sales team. They would probably have been reasonably well positioned offering themselves as an outsourced sales department winning projects for others, but they wanted to do the projects themselves. So, I ended up with 2 off-shore FTEs with virtually no SAP experience and a team of 4 on-shore consultants, who had never met before. Only I and one other guy had a direct contract with the "SI" the other 3 on-shore consultants where recruited through an agent. The SI effectively charged GBP 950 per day for them, paid 550 to the agent, who paid 425 to the contractors. The agent did very well making about 30k per person for scanning through a few CVs (missing a few essential skills and having one of the guys not even turn up, so I was left with 2 jobs for the first 6 weeks) A funny note: each project team member was 1 or 2 degrees away from the HR person or account manager of the SI on Linkedin and would have turned up on page one with a reasonable search.

The SI contributed two elements apart from taking the client out for lunch to get further business: they dialled into the steering group meetings every other month and where difficult to reach to rubber stamp and decisions on resources or change requests. They also did - knowingly or not - steer things into a direction, where the client would still be very dependent on 3rd party services after the project. So, basically they just acted as a second middle man.

I appreciate this client would have needed one on-shore coordinator as their corporate IT was based several time zones away with very little knowledge of the UK, whilst local IT didn't have any SAP HCM experience. An agent to help them with recruiting a team would definitely definitely be required - or alternatively a proper Systems Integrator with at least their own project management capabilities. But certainly not two middle-men doing nothing more then sell them the project and bring together a few individuals hoping they could become a team.

In a less layered set-up, I'm very confident that for similar rates the client could have had a more sustainable implementation with at least 30% less 3rd party resources (to begin with, I would have needed 50% less time as a PM, had I worked with the customer directly without having to manage the SI and training their off-shore team) and a better trained internal on-shore team after the project.

So, are middle-men / agencies etc. always bad? I don't think so!

Again, all I'm suggesting is that customers as well as consultants / contractors take a close look at what each part of the value chain is bringing to the party. It is naïve to assume it doesn't affect the quality of service you get for your money, if a big chunk of the fees is eaten away by middle-men, who don't add real value.

Most agencies I've worked with may just be capabable to send you a dozen of CVs of candidates vaguely going into the right direction, but you still need to have a thorough understanding of the task at hand to make the right choice. Once the CVs and contact data have been provided, any further involvement of the agent in my experience just adds further admin layers without any benefits. So, rather than being charges 100 pounds or more per day and having a cumbersome communication chain, in many cases it would make more sense to pay a reasonable flat fee for a successful candidate and then hold the relationship directly. Some may argue that it's easier to get bills from just one agent than from a dozen contractors. Well, I would seriously doubt the capabilities of my accounting or procurement teams, if this should make such a big difference. Billing and payment as such are highly automated and you still need to check each individual's timesheet and eventually talk to the individual contractor, if the hours billed don't look right - the agent would at best not be able to help with clarifications and at worst complicate the process.

However, I do see their value in providing a long list, maybe even short list, of candidates, and in some cases they are even skilled enough to really advice you on which candidate to pick for your project(s).

There definitely is value in using a system integrator or consultancy rather than individual contractors in many, probably most cases. There are many arguments for this - starting with replacements in times of illness or holiday and ending with having access to a broader set of skills and getting a team of people, who know how to work together to deploy your solution. However, you can't assume that they all do, what they say on the tin. Some SIs are little more than recruitment agencies for contractors. If they don't have any capabilities of their own beyond sales, then it's actually a dangerous mixture. Whilst the client relies of the SI to know how to set up the project and define or verify the target design, the SI is just rushing to the job board or even another agency to find people to staff the project. In many cases, they would happily have the customer believe that this project team are their own staff, familiar with a proven set of methodologies and well known to the SI management. They may not explicitly say so, but I've heard the directive more than once "You must only use our email address and as long as the client doesn't ask explicitly, don't tell them you are not a perm member of our staff."

So, you end up with an integrator, who is completely disintegrated and you can only hope they manage to find a good project manager to hold the whole thing together.

To justify the mark-up compared to freelance contractors consultancies or SIs need to be able to

- provide the resources you need at the pace you need them, which is not always one person full time - particularly in smaller projects

- bring in specialists for a day to complement the skills of the core team on the ground

- share knowledge internally - effectively and fast. If I had to hire a consultancy, I would definitely ask them about there knowledge sharing process

- have a culture that allows the consultant on the ground to pick up the phone and ask a colleague even in front of the customer

So, basically: whatever or whoever sits between the customer and the consultant / contractor in the value chain (taking a chunk of your money) need to justify how they are adding value.

And on a note for contractors: working independently might look attractive financially as well as in other aspects, but you need to be aware that an organisation paying you by the hour is much less likely to invest in your development than a consultancy you have a permanent employment contract with. Together with working for just one client over longer periods this can seriously limit your development, so you need to make sure you improve your skills through training, networking and opportunities to try things out in sandbox systems.

So, in conclusion:

Imo middle-men as well as full time engagements are justified in many cases. The fact that they are more prevalent in some countries than in others can be explained and is some cases also justified by various circumstances including a more risk-taking culture or the tax system. However, I still see too many cases, where either concept works against giving the customer the best value for their money in any given project and even against developing highly skilled SAP HCM consultants in the long run.

Funnily enough, just 2 days ago, when we recorded the latest SAP HCM Insights Podcast (with Luke Marson, Steve Bogner and Mark Ingram) we discussed that the move to hybrid and cloud models will change some of these things anyway. It will be much rarer for a typical cloud deployment, say Successfactors HCM, to require any full time resources on the project. Watch out for this latest recording, which will be online soon.

Disclosure:

As you may have guessed, I'm not completely impartial regarding this discussion. I work for iProCon Group as a consultant and their UK director and ever since co-founding the company in Germany 13 years ago, we limited full time assignments and using or acting as middle-men to a very low level. So, whilst acknowledging that it's not a one-size-fits-all solution, it's not surprising that I advocate for caution with those two concepts. There's no doubt, I would personally benefit from all SAP HCM customers dropping middle-men and full time assignments tomorrow, so my view is necessarily biased and to be viewed as just one part of the big mosaic of opinions.

Hello,

This quarter we have great news for compensation planners. SuccessFactors Compensation Management is getting to the next level in simplifying the lives of managers and supporting fair decisions with innovative functionalities. In this blog I’ll share with you the key things you should know about the August 2013 release for Compensation, and why you should immediately start using it.

What is one of the key challenges of compensation planning?

The data itself is the problem. Or better said: the complexity of total compensation information and the challenge of understanding it quickly to make fair management decisions on an employee level – that’s the problem. And we have solved it with the August release with a new, highly visual support for planners called “Compensation Profile”. Now let’s go back to the complexity of managing compensation information. You, as a comp manager, have to be able to digest a lot of data, and create an additional set of data on a regular - generally yearly – basis on top.  I am talking about the compensation history, the current compensation information and the final total compensation of an employee. The time dimension is absolutely key in the process. In addition to this, there is a component dimension, as the total compensation can be itself divided into various blocks, going from base pay, to MBO bonus to variable pay elements related to individual or company goals.  As a matter of fact, compensation managers are not comp experts, but they have to make important comp decisions. These managers do potentially have access to a lot of data on their employees to support their decisions, but not in a consumable way. This means, that they potentially make decisions based on partial or not well understood information. With the August 2013 release, we’ve fixed that problem, bringing both the time and the comp components dimensions together, and giving compensation managers a one stop shop for compensation information and actions. They can get a very accurate view on an employee’s contribution over time, and not only as a snapshot. And equally important: they can take action from the Compensation Profile, like adjusting a salary, or even giving someone a promotion.

How can the Compensation Profile help with this comp data challenge?

The Compensation Profile is divided into 4 parts: employee information, compensation history, salary positioning, and recommendations. The employee information displays just the necessary data: his or her picture, the organizational assignment, the manager and the hire date.

The compensation history enables managers to see the evolution of the salary progression over time, versus a snapshot of the current data. The visual part provided by the chart view (see Fig. 1) best supports the decision. Should the employee have stocks, options or another component, those would be displayed as well in the history.  The manager can switch between tabular or chart view for those as well.

Fig 1. Compensation History (click to enlarge)

The next decisive part of the profile is the Salary Positioning. This part of the profile shows the current salary grade of the employee (Figure 2). The compa-ratio and the position in range put the salary grade of the employee into context, and give the manager a clear understanding of where the employee is standing versus his peer group. This helps identify potential misjudgments like underpaid top performers or employees overpaid relative to their performance, a performance review form that is just one click away in the application SuccessFactors Performance and Goals. Directly below (Figure 3), the manager can “promote” the employee (see figure 3) to a new job. He will get access to selectors like “New global Job Family”, “New Job title Grade” and “New salary grade” to do so. Here again, the solution guides the manager who will automatically get a warning if the entry is not respecting the company guidelines, like a maximum of 10% of total increase.

Fig. 2: Salary Positioning

Figure 3: Salary Positioning / Promotion

The last part of the profile is called “Recommendations” and is indispensable.The manager wants to take action after promoting an employee and adjust his or her salary with compensation components such as merit increases, promotion, or lump sum. Those compensation fields are entirely configurable to fit the customer’s requirements. In that recommendation process, the manager is entirely guided along his compensation decision with information like budget availability, soft or hard validations, guided. If the employee has been granted a bonus or stocks, the solution provide the same support to make the necessary adjustment, as per figure 4 for bonuses. With this, the management can simply go “Next” or “Back” to the other person on the team and go through the same process.

Fig. 4: Recommendations / Bonus

We’ve seen how the Compensation Profile can help planners better manage the compensation process, bringing all the necessary transactional and contextual information in one single place. The consumer grade user experience will support company with implementing and adopting compensation management faster. This will not only help them retain the top performers, and avoid overpaying people with an average performance. But more importantly, SuccessFactors Compensation Management is the best companion for every origination that wants to implement and live up to a “pay for performance” culture, as it is the angular stone of a working environment that is running for the best performance.

You can find more resources on SuccessFactors Compensation Management here:

·     http://www.successfactors.com/en_us/solutions/bizx-suite/performance-cloud/compensation.html

These resources are updated regularly so be sure to save them as favorites in your browser.

Follow me on Twitter: @ypeterschmitt

Follow SuccessFactors: @successfactors

Follow SAP ERP HCM:@SAPHCM

Since SuccessFactors became an SAP company, hundreds of organizations have adopted SuccessFactors talent solutions for their talent management needs. Many such customers have also adopted SuccessFactors Employee Central for their employee administration needs. SAP has announced an integration strategy and road map to help customers get the best out of both SuccessFactors and SAP applications. 

Several SAP HCM Mentors and experienced SuccessFactors experts have been advising customers on the adoption and implementation of SuccessFactors solutions. They face real world problems and provide practical advice to customers on how to make their move to the cloud.

We are planning a session, as part of the SAP Mentor Mondays series, to bring some of these experts together for a valuable conversation.The session is on Monday August 26th from 9.00 a.m. PST to 10.00 a.m. PST.

In this session a few SAP Mentors and experts will share their experience advising customers on adopting SuccessFactors solutions. They will also bring their implementation insight to table and discuss how they approached the implementation.

1. SuccessFactors Employee Central expert Jyoti Sharma will share her experience implementing Employee Central and connecting it to on-premise systems.

2. SAP HCM Mentor, Luke Marson will talk about his experience implementing SuccessFactors Employee Central for an SAP customer.

Jyoti Sharma and Luke Marson are the co-authors of the upcoming book, SuccessFactors with SAP ERP HCM.

3. SAP HCM and SuccessFactors expert, Venki Krishnamoorthy will talk about his experience implementing SuccessFactors Learning and connecting it with SAP ERP HCM.  

4. SAP HCM and SuccessFactors expert Kellie Fitzpatrick, will share her experience helping customers move their human capital management applications to the cloud. She will share the stories of how some of her customers are making their move to the cloud and the decisions they had to make. Kellie is the CEO of SAP and SuccessFactors partner Symphony Consulting.

5. SAP Mentor Jarret Pazahanick will join the conversation and share his insight.

6. SAP Mentor Prashanth Padmanabhan will kick of the session with a short update on the deployment options for SuccessFactors customers.

Hello HCM Community,

After a successful conference in Las Vegas in March and Amsterdam in June, we are back with HR Insider 2013 in Singapore from September 3-rd to 5-th, 2013. We have an agenda full of exciting topics on both SAP OnPremise HCM Solutions as well as SuccessFactors! In this post I want to inform you about the ‘must see sessions’ that will give you an overview of what’s new from SAP for HR.

Tuesday

Overview: On Tuesday Ralf Wagner, head of HCM Solution Management at SAP will open the event with a key note: The 2013 guide to core HR enhancements: On-premise and cloud.’ During his keynote he will talk about the most recent enhancements made to core SAP ERP HCM solutions, as well as the integration capabilities between SAP ERP HCM and SuccessFactors. Ralf will share our complete strategy and roadmap, which will also contain the latest information about new and planned functionality for Suite on HANA like the planned payroll offering. 

Analytics and planning: At 10:45 Faisal Haneef, Vice President and Head of Global CoE for Business Intelligence at SAP will explain strategies for bringing business and IT leaders together to develop a BI strategy that supports organizational goals

Core HR (including Payroll): A bit later on 14:30 Francis Chan Director, Product Solutions and HCM Strategy for APAC at SAP will show the new face of HCM: Employee Central. This is our new and full cloud HR core solution and it is the foundation for SuccessFactors' BizX suite of applications. During this session you will learn more about Employee Central, you can view live demos and ask our product experts questions in this interactive session. This is a must see for all customers that consider replacing their HR core with a cloud solution, or customers that want to start with a flexible HR core system on-top-off their current landscape to become more scalable e.g. in case of an acquisition of a new firm.

Analytics and planning: Nic Smith, Senior Director of Marketing for Analytics at SAP will explain at 16:45 how you can effectively mobilize your BI investment. This demo and discussion forum offers an up-close look at how to get started with a mobile BI strategy within your organization. Nic will show live demos and explain the latest innovations for mobile BI from SAP. 

Talent Management: Later on Tuesday my peer Parvathy (Paru) Sankar from Solution Management , Line of Business HR Solutions at SAP explains how
SAP software helps you to become a ‘best run business’ by addressing the global talent management trends. She will also showcase the latest in Talent
Management solutions including the latest solution from SuccessFactors for Onboarding new hires.

Wednesday

Analytics and planning: On Wednesday I will kick it off at 9:00 with a session about SAP and SuccessFactors’ analytics and planning solutions. I will explain our complete portfolio, and the customer benefits for both deployment options (cloud and on-premise). In addition, I will talk about the synergies between both platforms and how integration works for customers that want to bring HR data into the cloud analytics solution, or vice versa. 

Deployment options: In parallel Icy Huang, Senior Product Expert of SAP Rapid Deployment Solutions (RDS) will explain our RDS portfolio. 

Analytics and planning: At 10:45 Peter Amor, Senior Director, HANA & Analytics Services at SAP APJ will explain how you can improve business planning and consolidation with SAP HANA. Peter will show live demos and explain how Big Data is handled by BPC, coupled with the real-time planning capabilities. Customers that are interested in Integrated Business Planning with headcount planning will find this session very useful.

Analytics and planning: Right before lunch (12:15)  Michael Lortz, Vice President GRC Solution Marketing at SAP will explain how our Governance Risk and Compliance (GRC) suite helps to detect, investigate, analyse, and prevent fraud. Michael will show live demos, and you can see the value proposition of adding SAP Predictive Analysis to even further enhance fraud prevention and deterrence for your organization. 

Core HR and payroll: Later that day at 14:30 Srikanth Gopalakrishnan, VP of product development at SAP, will present ‘A detailed look at the new user experience for core SAP ERP HCM on-premise’ Srikanth will explain in detail what the advantages are of HR Renewal and how users can work more effectively. In addition, this session will cover how the new Web Dynpro for ABAP UI option for processes and forms improves the user experience and
TCO.

Analytics and planning: Because my personal focus (and interest) lies with analytics one of my personal favorites is the session presented by Charles Gadalla, Senior Director Advanced Analytics at SAP. Charles will start at 14:30 and he will explain how you can incorporate predictive analytics capabilities in your HR domain. 

Social in HR: At 15:00 Timo Elliot, Technology Evangelist at SAP will explain the power of influential advocacy on social media. Everybody who attends this session can build expert strategies and insight on how to become an influencer and advocate of your brand on social media

Deployment Options : The last session will be provided by Paru and she explains the integration between SAP and SuccessFactors at 16:45. Customers that have (parts of) their landscape and want to take advantage of our cloud offerings need to attend this session. Paru will explain the benefits for a hybrid approach and she will provide guidance for planning and executing a hybrid deployment including some best practices and references. 

At the end of the day there will be an ‘Ask the Expert’ where everybody can ask questions that come up before, during and after the event. The expert speakers can address all product and implementation related questions.

Thursday

Talent Management: Thursday will be a jam packed day. Paru picks it up where she left off and kicks off at 9:00 with an overview of the SuccessFactors Performance and Goals functionality. She will explain the business value for Performance and Goals functionality and show detailed look at the SuccessFactors Performance and Goals solution. 

Talent Management: A bit later at 10:45 Paru will present the recruiting functionality from SAP and SuccessFactors together with the latest evolutions in our Recruiting functionality including what to expect in future. She will talk about recruitment marketing, enhancing the candidate experience, candidate screening, and the latest analytics. 

Talent Management: In parallel Laura Hunt, Principal Consultant at SuccessFactors will provide an in-depth look at SuccessFactors Learning. She will explain the roadmap for SuccessFactors Learning and insight into future enhancements. In addition, she will talk about our integration roadmap, with a detailed discussion of the relevant integration points. Laura will also provide a demo session on Thursday at 16:00 in which she shows the full Successfactors solution suite.  

Social in HR: Before that session at 13:30 Giovanna Enea, Product Manager for SAP Jam will show and explain the benefits of SAP JAM and how it empowers social learning, employee on-boarding, performance management, and other talent processes. 

Core HR and Payroll: At the same time Francis Chan Director, Product Solutions and HCM Strategy for APAC and Leong Yin Wah, Senior Solutions Consultant at SuccessFactors conduct a demo session with a detailed look at the SuccessFactors core HR solution, Employee Central. This is a must see for all customers that consider replacing their HR core with a cloud solution, or customers that want to start with flexible HR core system on-top-off their current landscape to become more scalable e.g. in case of an acquisition of a new firm. Next to these product and solution related sessions customers and SAP partners will provide detailed insight into capabilities and share implementation experiences.

Some interesting twitter handles to follow during the event: @Timoelliot, @SankarParu, @CGadalla, @Faisal_Haneef, and @FransSmolders

I’m looking forward to meeting you there!

Best regards, 

Frans

Hi All,

I was asked to put together a basic time management logical test for a recent recruitment exercise.

It received really good feedback as a test which probes the theory of SAP PCR’s and groupings without requiring the applicant to possess any prior SAP experience.

I thought that it would be a good test to share…

http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-44103

I hope you like it!

Will Jackson

As I said at http://scn.sap.com/community/erp/hcm/blog/2013/08/03/what-i-have-learned-from-implementing-sap-hcm--part-1--date-issues I had a strange issue with date in a non –Gregorian calendar in my current project.

Fortunately I managed to fix the issue 2 days ago. It was really a strange case. I have access to other 3 systems which are R/3 4.7, ECC 6.0 EHP 4.0(Kernel 701, SP level 32) and ECC 6.0 EHP 6.0 and my current system is ECC 6.0 4.0(Kernel 701, SP level 92).

I had no problem with any above systems. As you see my IDES system configure is lower than my current system but I had no problem with it.

We decided to upgrade the kernel to 703 but I couldn't fix the problem. Finally I decided to seat down and debug the international payroll derive. As you know it's a bit big and complex program. It took me hours and unfortunately I could not find the source of date conversion problem.

I disappointed but I thought to go to the point and just look the problem in a small program which shows the same issue and I remembered V_T549Q. I debugged display of V_T549Q in SM30 and I could find the source of problem in a few hours

What I learned is also debugging is not the best and last way but is the BEST and LAST way to find the root of issues

By the way I have decided to publish a document about what was the problem and how could I fix the issue as soon as possible. I will put the like here.

Omid

It’s that time of the quarter when SuccessFactors release the latest set of updates for customers. As preparation for some upcoming Employee Central projects I will be working on I took the time to review the new features in the August release (b1308) and publish this blog. There are a considerable number of enhancements and additional new features for Employee Central customers. The main enhancement focuses on Time Off, but there are also additional enhancements for Localization, Position Management, Workflows, and integration – plus other “miscellaneous features”. Employee Central Payroll includes a number of new features and these will also be covered briefly in this blog, as well as enhancements to the Employee Profile.

A key aspect of this release is the enhancement of features to leverage the Metadata Framework (MDF). Many new features leverage the Rules Engine so that customers can define how the features work.

Time Off

The new Time Off UI has been introduced to make entry of absences and requesting time off easy and simple for employees, managers, and administrators. The new UI can be seen below.

The new UI for Time Off allows employees and managers to enter all types of absences and edit absence requests (once the return date has been confirmed). Workflow process, status changes, and leave of absences are triggered in the background automatically.

The enhancements for Time Off include:

• New fields for Non-Permanent Time Accounts
• Period End Processing enhancements
• Posting Rules for using vacation from previous period
• BizX Mobile enhancements

For managing Non-Permanent Time Accounts 3 new fields have been added: begin date, end date, and Bookable until. For creating Time Accounts for recurring Time Accounts 2 new fields have been added: On hire date and On fixed date. These are a prerequisite for using Period End Processing.

Period End Processing can now be setup and started using a calendar, with the results coming via email to the user. Rules – configurable via the MDF rules engine– can be used to determine how the remaining balance is handled. Common examples can be found in the Employee Central Handbook and a screenshot below.

Posting Rules can now be used to determine which Time Accounts can be used to book vacation. For example, a Time Account for the previous vacation period can be used instead of the current period so that accrued but unused vacation from the previous vacation year can be used.

As a result of these changes, the Leave of Absence field has been removed in the Job Information portlet and also from the Take Action menu.

There are some quite exciting BizX Mobile enhancements for Time Off on the iPad. I am still awaiting for new features for the Android version! These include:

• Team Absence Calendar
• Balance Box Logic on iPad to calculate balanced based on selected date
• Visualize non-working days & public holidays in calendar
• Introduce new list of public holidays
• Public Holidays and absences can be tapped and detail information will be shown
• "Humanize ticker" (see screenshot below)
• New message area
• Comments & last activities in history list
• Introduce help overlay
• New selection style

Below you can see the Time Off calendar in the iPad app.

Localization Features

New country-specific localization for Egypt, Israel, Jordon, Lebanon, and Uruguay have been added. This includes fields, picklists, and validations for personal information such as personal IDs, National ID, address information, job information, disabilities, and documents. This opens up a number of Middle-East territories to Employee Central as well as another LATAM country, where growth of adoption is continuing on a steady upward curve.

Employees in legal entities in India can now manage and declare tax-deductible investments within Employee Central in an ESS scenario instead of through a manual or 3rd party system. There is an approval workflow triggered in the background for this feature.

Advances can now be maintained in Employee Central and configured to each locale within the system. These Advances can be based on different attributes, such as Pay Grades. This is part of the MDF.

Other enhancements include:

• Address layouts for 62 countries
• Bank validations for 22 countries
• Enhanced validations for National IDs for Ireland, Netherlands, United Kingdom, and Spain
• Usability enhancement and CSV capabilities for naming formats
• Dependents information for United Arab Emirates, Chile, Hong Kong, South Africa, and Qatar
• Post code validation for Taiwan

Position Management

Position Management features 3 new enhancements in this release. The major release is the ability to select which hierarchy will be used for the org structure (the “Leading” hierarchy). This allows either the Position Hierarchy (position-to-position) or Reporting Line (employee-to-employee) to be used. Whenever one structure is changed, the changes within that structure will be reflected in the other. For example, setting a position a new parent position will update the supervisor field for all incumbents of the position. The main benefit of this feature is that customers no longer need to maintain two structures, rather just one. They can also select the hierarchy they use most to be the focus of the system.

Another enhancement is that the “To be hired” flag of a position will now be set automatically if the incumbent(s) is moved out of the position (e.g. an employee leaves or is transferred to a new position). This is a much needed feature to further automate transfer processes.

The third and final enhancement is the ability to define a Rule (created in the MDF Rule Engine) to determine the fields that are automatically propagated in a new position that is copied from an existing position in the Position Org Chart. This is another useful feature to further automate position management activities.

Workflows

There are a number of features introduced for Workflows, including Workflow enhancements for Global Assignments. These are:

• RBPs for Manage Workflow Requests Page: RBPs can now be used to restrict access to Workflows that contain an employee within the target group
• Reminders for stalled workflows: A new field called Remind In Days has been added. The approver(s) of the Workflow will be sent a notification every number of days defined in this field until the Workflow is approved.
• Support for assigning Dynamic Groups to Dynamic Role: When assigning users to Dynamic Roles it is now possible to assign a Dynamic Group instead of a user.
• Leverage Job Relationships in Workflow assignments: Different job relationships like Matrix Manager, Second Manager, Custom Manager, and Additional Manager can now be assigned for Workflows. They are also available in RBPs for Workflows.
• Activity Log note for Proxy approvals: When a Proxy approves a Workflow a note is now recorded in the Activity Log.
• Attachments can be viewed in Workflow Approval Page: A link has now been added to the attachment name so that it can be viewed in the Workflow Approval Page.
• Enhancements for Global Assignments: Workflows can amended and returned to the initiator, planned assignments that were cancelled before starting can be set to Obsolete, and Workflows can now be found in the Manage Workflow Requests list.

Integration and Data Imports

There are a number of new integrations included in this release. These include content for both Dell Boomi AtomSphere and for the SAP ERP Add-On PA_SE_IN_100. Additionally, integration is now available to transfer data from Employee Central to NorthgateArinso’s EuHReka system.

Cost Centers can now be replicated from SAP to Employee Central by using a report. IDoc’s are leveraged for the data transfer and Employee Central – via Dell Boomi AtomSphere – is configured as a receiving system. Change pointers can be used to identify changes to Cost Center data. The selection screen for the report can be seen below:

Other integration features for SAP ERP Add-On PA_SE_IN_100 include:

• Employee Cost Center: An employee’s Cost Center assignment can now be transferred from Employee Central to SAP. In SAP this Cost Center assignment is made on the employee’s position.
• Replication Requests Viewer: A report has now been introduced to display and restart organizational assignment data replication requests in SAP.
• Template roles for organizational model: New standard roles are provided.

The new release sees the introduction of OData query APIs. OData is the future technology for the SuccessFactors APIs, although it does not mean that the existing APIs will cease to function or be depreciated. The OData technology allows one REST-based API call for a number of Employee Central entities. In this release there are 38 entities supported. Additionally, new data segments have been added to the compound API to address missing entities in the entity-based SOAP APIs for Dependents, Job Relations and Payment Information.

A DELIMIT operator can now be added into the operation column of data import files to delimit effective-dated records. This is enabled for the following entities in this release:

• Phone Info
• Email Info
• IM Info
• National Id card Info
• Emergency Contact Primary Info
• Pay Component Non Recurring Info
• Direct Deposit Info
• Pay Component Recurring Info

Miscellaneous enhancements

In addition to the enhancements already mentioned, there are a number of other enhancements that cannot be categorized as I have done so. These are:

• Restrict sensitive information for Proxies: The Proxy feature has been enhanced so that it is possible to restrict a Proxy from viewing personal and compensation information about the Account holder.
• Limit Picklists for Event Reason and Pay Components for multi-national instances: Customers can now limit the values in the Event Reason and Pay Component Picklists by country, so to reduce the values in these lists. This is achieved in the MDF and is another example of SuccessFactors leveraging the MDF for new enhancements in Employee Central.
• MDF enhancement for fields: Another enhancement made to the MDF enables fields to be set to required, hidden, or made visible based on selected values. This leverages the Rules Engine in the MDF. In conjunction with propagation through rules, this enables a number of different scenarios to be included in events such as hiring actions, job changes, position modifications, etc.
• New Decimal Precision field: An additional field – Decimal precision– has been added to define how many decimal places (0 to 5) are required for the Pay Component field. This is to satisfy US companies who still pay hourly rates with decimal values.
• RBPs for Pay Components: Role-Based Permissions (RBPs) can now be used to control read and modify access to each Pay Component type for recurring, non-recurring, and target payments. This means users will only have access to the specific Pay Components that they work with.
• Insider Flag: An Insider Flag field has been added to the Compensation Information page to flag employees who have access to insider information. This is a requirement under some local laws, in particular the Securities Exchange Act in the US.
• Profile of employees on Global Assignment: For employees on a Global Assignment the Profile will now show the employee data, rather than showing blank portlets.
• Editing Pension PayoutDetails: The Pension Payout Details portlet can now be edited from the Employment Information page.
• Custom MDF portlets on Employee Profile: Custom MDF object UIs can now be added to the V12 Employee Profile as portlets.
• Internal Job History portlet: A new Internal Job History portlet has now been made available to be added to the Profile. This portlet displays the organization assignment of the individual.
• Editing Public Profile UI: An employee can now edit their public profile in one single UI, as seen below.

Employee Central Payroll

Employee Central Payroll sees one new country added – Malaysia – to bring up the number of supported countries to 23. The complete list of supported countries can be found here.

A new alert for Employee Central Payroll issues is now available on the Admin Alerts tile, as seen below. Clicking on this opens up the new Payroll Issues Monitor, which is also accessible via OneAdmin. Within the Payroll Issues Monitor an administrator has a number of options, including navigating to the Employee Files to correct an issue (to correct the issue) or executing a manual data transfer to the Employee Central Payroll engine for one or more corrected employee records.

Other enhancements include:

• BSI eFormsFactors: integration with BSI eFormsFactory for US Payroll is now available so that administrators can enter tax information on behalf of employees. Within Provisioning, a configuration consistency check is also available.
• Workflow for additional cost center assignments: There is now a standard workflow that is triggered when additional cost center assignments are made for an employee, which can be configured to route either to a manager and/or HR administrator.
• Non-cost center information replication: Non-cost center information held in the cost center field (such as Work breakdown structure (WBS) or internal orders) can be replicated to Employee Central Payroll or SAP. A BAdI is used to define how this data is retrieved for transfer.
• Event reasons data changes during data replication: During replication of data to Employee Central Payroll, event reasons defined in Employee Central can be used to change, modify, or overwrite data in Employee Central Payroll. For example, an event for unpaid leave can automatically change the status of an employee from “active to “inactive”.
• Three digit rates: Three digit rates can now be replicated to Employee Central Payroll. This means more accuracy when rates such as 1/8 hourly rate need to be paid.
• API enhancement for employeeTime object: The API now reads data from the MDF object employeeTime. Various selection criteria from the employeeTime and jobInfo objects can be used to determine the output.
• Infotype 0008 replication: Custom fields can be replicated to infotype 0008
• Infotype 0007 replication: Work scheduling defaulting can be replicated to infotype 0007
• Infotype 0041 replication: Dates in the Employee Information portlet can now be replicated into infotype 0041

Summary

There are an impressive number of enhancements in SuccessFactors Employee Central and Employee Central Payroll in the August release. SuccessFactors are making heavy use of the MDF in this release and rightly so. The MDF component adds configuration flexibility and therefore by using it, customers can leverage this flexibility to modify standard objects to suit their own unique business requirements. All in all this is a solid release and further extends the value of Employee Central.

In future releases I would be quite keen to see deeper handling of Global Employment and Concurrent Employment, as well as the ability to add custom portlets in pages such as Personal Information and Employment Information. I would also like to see Time Management and Benefits fleshed out further to align more with the functionality offered in SAP HCM on-premise and HR document management would also be a big bonus. And of course more features in BizX Mobile for the Android platform!

I just celebrated my birthday a couple of weeks ago.  I received all the latest technology gadgets, including a Fitbit Flex, an iPad mini, and Apple TV.  These are all great gifts, and the best part is that they are all plug-and-play.  No more messing around with technical guides and detailed set-up instructions.  I turned these devices on and was immediately guided through the activation process in a couple of quick and easy steps – I was up and running in a few minutes. 

What if you could get the latest innovations for your Human Capital Management system that would simplify business processes and help you work smarter, and like my birthday presents, they were easy to activate? 

With SuccessFactors quarterly product releases, you get access to hundreds of innovations and enhancements throughout the year to make sure your HCM system is equipped to support the ever- changing demands of your workforce and business.  We understand that it can be a challenge to track and activate the right enhancements and innovations for your business, but fret no more.  We have a solution for you! 

With our August 2013 release, we’re excited to announce that the SuccessFactors Upgrade Center is now available to our Enterprise Edition customers.  Since its release to Professional Edition customers in May, 125 companies have performed over 209 upgrades of opt-in features on their own via the Upgrade Center. With built-in documentation and self-service activation of new features, the Upgrade Center is accessible from the OneAdmin page and makes learning about and activating key enhancements quick and easy from a centralized location.

Image1: SuccessFactors Upgrade Center

“The Upgrade Center represents a major step forward in the ease of deployment for business SaaS applications. In years past, with on-premise software, an upgrade would mean months of effort and a risky migration process. Cloud software delivered a major step forward by offering customers a simpler upgrade process and common benefits to all customers, but it still required paying close attention to release notes, configuration details, and feature dependencies,” said Will Doolittle, Vice President, Product Management. “Now, with the SuccessFactors Upgrade Center, all the information and control is presented to system administrators in a single, easy to understand, and easy to use panel. Customers will enjoy unprecedented control
over their software deployments, and find it easier than ever to take advantage of the improvements that come out with every quarterly release. And, they can do so with confidence, knowing that the Upgrade Center gives intelligent recommendations based on the existing configuration of the system and dependent
features, and that it will respect company rules for dividing responsibility across multiple administrators.” 

The Upgrade Center intuitively displays upgrades that are recommended for your system and provides additional information including a detailed description and video of the innovation, system prerequisites and gives you the ability to perform the upgrade in a single click! With self-activation of key innovations available in the Upgrade Center, you will no longer have to submit a case to Customer Support to perform these upgrades.

Image 2: Performing an upgrade

The Upgrade Center also features a summary of the upgrades performed from the Upgrade Center.  You can track the status of upgrades and see past upgrades performed.  You also have the option to undo upgrades that have been performed in the Upgrade Center within 10 days of that enhancement being activated. 

Image 3: Summary of installed upgrades

The Upgrade Center is just one of the many innovations delivered with this release. The August release also features a new compensation profile, cross-domain reporting across the talent modules, simplified mobile activation, expanded localization support for EC, increased flexibility of FTE calculations, redesigned learning orders page, and easier creation of new groups in SAP Jam with customizable group templates and dynamic content widgets.

Please visit the SuccessFactors customer communityto learn more. (Registration required)

In 2010, SAP embarked on a journey to redefine the industry with in-memory computing. SAP’s bold vision and big promise was to combine the analytical and transactional worlds, completely redefining the “real-time enterprise” without disruption to our customers’ businesses.

Meanwhile our internal SAP systems all moved to SAP HANA. For us as SAP employees this means that any employee who travels, makes a purchase or records time now experiences the power of SAP HANA. In addition, our complete infrastructure is operated in the SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud.

Recently, I have talked to many customers about Suite on HANA and what the expected benefit can be for HCM. In this post I will share information that might be helpful when considering Suite on HANA.

Suite on HANA

First things first: In the past I have written about the benefits of BW on HANA because that was the most valuable business scenario on SAP HANA only a while ago. Meanwhile we have seen a huge change: SAP launched the full Business Suite Applications running on the next-generation SAP HANA platform. This means that you can run your entire business in-memory. This brings together all your transactions and analytics into one platform. Obviously, for HCM as a part of ECC this has a big impact as well. 

So what does this mean for your business? Ultimately this will mean that you can drive your entire business in real time to create new business value with smarter business innovations, faster business processes, and simpler business interactions.

What is the benefit for HCM?

In the past months I have received quite a few questions about why HCM will benefit. Mission critical systems that directly impact revenue streams are usually the first ones that come to mind when thinking about Suite on HANA. HCM quite often runs on a separate instance so why consider HCM?

Actually I have talked to quite a few customers that want to start with their HCM system, just because it is a separate system. The reasoning for these customers is that the lessons learned from this move to Suite on HANA for HCM will be beneficial for future initiatives to put other ECC systems to HANA.

From a landscape perspective Suite on HANA brings cost savings and simplification for IT. But what about the business benefits? Why would the HR department consider moving to Suite on HANA?  

Smarter Business Innovations

After talking to many customers I came to realize that for quite some customers SAP HANA equals speed. So the expectation is to do the same things, but then much faster. This is not what SAP HANA or the Suite on HANA is about. What Suite on HANA allows us to do is rethink processes we have taken for granted for years.

For example: “Leverage HR data and analyze and report across the business cannot happen in real-time. It’s too complex and the data volume that needs to be analyzed is too high.” For the business this meant that measuring what the revenue per FTE is after a sales campaign, figuring out what soft-skills profile delivers the best-selling sales rep, or what will be the most rewarding team to staff your store with on a Saturday was not possible. Just because it requires data coming from multiple modules like Finance, CRM, and HR. Having that data real-time was considered as too complex.

With Virtual Data Models in SAP HANA we are now able to create a data model that combine data from multiple modules in the Business Suite, and to have answers to those business questions in real-time. SAP HANA Live provides predefined data models that customers can use out-of-the box or as examples to get going quickly. In addition, for HR the latest HR Renewal FP4 provided a new user experience to bring SAP HANA based metrics to the manager easily.      

Another assumption for us seemed to have been: “our payroll is not lightning fast and it is so complex that changing it requires a complete ‘recoding’ of the existing.” This is not true anymore! By analyzing what takes most time in the payroll process you can find out that this is not the payroll program. Because data volume is high and is stored in clusters, the end-to-end process usually requires a lot of batch-jobs to create reports that provide insight into payroll results. Analyzing results and making corrections are very time consuming, and the control record puts a lock on the whole administration during the process. Simply speeding up the payroll program does not solve these pain points.   

By rethinking the payroll process we will be able to provide payroll results in a smarter way, and allow business users to analyze these results quicker. By pushing areas of concern and potential issues to business users earlier in the process, this would provide more time to analyze and correct. Ultimately this will result in quicker end-to-end payroll processing. And if we brainstorm a bit further on this new insight: “Why would we still need a control record in the future that during a payroll cycle is hindering a lot of administrative efforts?” Maybe we can rethink this as well and ultimately move towards an approach that employees will get paid whenever they want to get paid. How frequent that may be.

These kinds of smarter business processes combined with the new look offered by HR Renewal, our amazing SAP Fiori, and complemented by our SuccessFactors Talent suite this will define the new hybrid approach and the way HR will operate.

HANA Enterprise Cloud

So what about the cloud?  Everywhere around us we hear and see that the software market is moving from the on-premise model towards the cloud. This might be a public cloud like we offer with SuccessFactors or a private/managed cloud.

The three main reasons for a move to the cloud are rapid globalization (scalability), quicker ways to adopt innovating technology and a different cost model. With that in mind we found that many of our customers need business agility, and that IT could be a bottleneck to keep up with desired or required speed. We received feedback from customers that do frequent acquisitions, that it takes too long to get hardware and systems up and running fast enough to support new businesses. As an answer to these market requirements one of our biggest recent announcements is the HANA Enterprise Cloud.

HANA Enterprise Cloud offers a way for all our customers to have their own SAP systems (ECC, BW or any other SAP system) being put in the cloud. customers can also get completely new landscapes up and running quick to support new business or even projects. HANA Enterprise Cloud is a private cloud. This means a dedicated landscape per customer, but then offered and maintained by SAP in the cloud. SAP will care for upgrades, patches, and all other activities that are needed to keep your environment up and running and on the latest release. In addition it means that you can keep leveraging our latest technology without having lengthy internal projects and discussions about upgrades and release windows.

Ordering and installing hardware can take months. HANA Enterprise Cloud offers fully operational Suite on HANA landscapes in hours or days, provided via data centers in Europe, APJ and the US. Just imagine how quickly you can get for example a sandbox environment up and running to test new innovations, instead of first planning and upgrading your own on-premise sandbox environment.      

More Information

This link provides customer stories about journeys and benefits of Suite on HANA, BW on HANA, and the HANA Enterprise Cloud. It includes customer references for speed and smarter solutions. 

If you want to check which of the HR Business Innovations on Suite on HANA are relevant to your business you can check the Business Scenario Recommendations

I hope that I have provided you with some food for thought. I will keep sharing new HANA based innovations over the coming period. In the meantime, if you have questions please contact me. 

Best regards,

Frans Smolders

Frans.smolders@sap.com

On Thursday, September 12, 2013, at  10 a.m. PDT, join 2013 Game Changer Will Staney, for a discussion of how he has applied new media marketing tactics and some of the latest recruiting technology to his career in recruiting. As Director of Recruiting, Strategic Programs at SuccessFactors, Will lives this stuff every day. Come hear how he transformed the company’s strategic sourcing strategy, social recruiting efforts, and employer brand. Specifically, he’ll cover:

• How he teams up with marketing to leverage the corporate brand and assets to further the employer brand
• How he uses analytics to see what’s working and continuously tweak his strategy in real-time
• How he keeps up with the changing expectations of today’s candidates
• How he stays current on technology and best practices

Register today and hope to see you there!

Don't forget to follow us on twitter: @successfactors

As an HR executive, one of your key roles is to be an advisor to the business. See how SuccessFactors Workforce Analytics delivers insights that managers need to optimize their workforce. If you want to learn more about it - check this video.

a recent discussion got me thinking. who are the legacy sfsf consulting partners and who are the newbies. why does this matter? customers need as much information as possible to make smart choices.

to achieve this i went to the wayback machine and pulled a sfsf consulting partner list from 2 december 2011 (prior to sap purchase) and a list from today. back then there were a total of 29 partners (5 strategic). today there are 90 partners (9 strategic). in comparing the lists, only one legacy partner is not on the new list. some other legacy partners (learn2perform; knowledgeinfusion) have been purchased and are part of other orgs.

the legacy partners are: accenture; capgemini; ibm; mckinney rogers; pwc; 3dresults; aasonn; arago consulting; drivensystems; droste group; effective people; elkiem; hentity; hrizons; ihouse; inforonics; integrity data; jigsaw-is; knowledge infusion; learn2perform; lockheed martin; northrop grumman; pentos; report designers; satyam; serco; skillpartners; surrex project solutions

some basic observations. unlike the workday market (aggressor bought by deloitte; omnipoint bought by aoh-hewitt), i do not see any legacy sf partners been purchased in the samw way. which brings the following question. how have the 61 newbies managed to become partners (since my understanding is that there must be x consultants with y projects in a specific sfsf product). by headhunting? other?

another observation. since some partners are only partners in specific sfsf products, a customer may need more than one partner to implement sfsf. also, if integrating to sap hcm, a legacy sap hcm consulting company is needed

to have a successful partner experience, customers may have to hire more than one consulting company depending on what is to be implemented

the burning question - to success, quite a few of these partners are going to have to merge or build strategic relationships. this is valid for both legacy and newbie sfsf consulting partners

thoughts??

In SM59, on savging the (for few of the connection types like Type H) connections are created with Upper case letters.

Following steps explains how to create case sensitive connections.

1. Create connection and save it. The connection name is converted to the upper case.

2. Choose Menu, Connection -> Copy

3. Provide the connection name in mixed cases

4. Case sensitive connection is created

In HR Renewal 1.0, Action Lane is offered as a part of HR Professional role or landing page. Action lane displays all actions available for HR Professionals. For more details please see this link in the section HR Renewal 1.0 SP14.

Content for the Action Lane comes from launchpad configured in the HRPAO_ACTIONS_LPD Personalization object Key in the PFCG role assigned for the user. If no launchpad name is in the  HRPAO_ACTIONS_LPD Personalization object Key then standard SAP delivered launchpad's (Role: HRPAO instance: ACTIONS) content is displayed in the action lane.

In the SAP delivered launchpad, so many applications are present. Not all the applications might not be relevant for the user. Standard Launchpad can be copied to a new launchpad and keep only the required applications and the new launchpad can be associated to the role. Another advantage is that the Action Lane would be faster.

Following is the list of steps needs to be followed to copy the standard launchpad and modifying the entries and associating the new launchpad to the Role.
1. Navigate to LPD_CUST transaction
2. Open the standard launchpad delivered by SAP for HR Professional User. i.e. open Role: HRPAO Instance: ACTIONS in display mode
3. From menu Choose Launchpad -> Save as … to copy the launchpad and provide new Role, Instance and Description and choose continue button
4. Navigate to LPD_CUST transaction again
5. Locate the new launchpad (created in step 3)
6. Open the launchpad in change mode.
7. Modify the launchpad like delete the folders or links which are not applicable for your organization or add new links or folders. Save the launchpad
For example:

Note: Only one level folder and application of those folders are displayed in Action Lane. So if multi-level or nested folders are created in launchpad then they are not displayed in Action Lane. For example:

• In above screenshot under Actions folder Employee Basic Data folder is present and application are added within this folder. This content will be visible in Action Lane.
• If a new folder is created within Employee Basic Data and then added the application within it, then they will not be visible in Action Lane.
• If new launchpad is created (of normal launchpad not the repository launchpad) and applications are added directly under the root folder. This content will not be visible in Action Lane

8. Open the HR Professional PFCG Role

9. Edit the Role

10. Navigate to the Personalization tab and locate HRPAO_ACTIONS_LPD Personalization object Key.

Double click on the key and enter the copied launchpad name for Role and Instance and click on Continue button.

Note: If HRPAO_ACTIONS_LPD Personalization object Key is blank then the standard launchpad contents are displayed in action lane.

11. Save the changes.

Note: Following steps are for getting the country text in Action Lane

12. Navigate to view /UI2/LPD_FEEDERV
13. Create the new entry by providing new launchpad name, as Customer object and Class as CL_HRPAO_ACTIONS_LPD_FEEDER. Save changes.

14. Access the landing page for the user (who has the role accessed in step 8 is assigned)

15. New launchpad’s content is displayed in the Action Lane. For example in the below screenshot you can see only two folders Change Organization Structure and Employee Basic Data’s contents are displayed.

The SAP ecosystem is a complex beast with multiple facets / participants and a long / glorious history.  A new job offer, however, shows that SAP is considering moving into a new area: HR-specific application extensions.

The job offer

Position: Student: Platform Ecosystem and Marketplace for Application Extensions Job

- Establishing the Platform Extensions as a leading offering for HR Line of Business customers to satisfy growing needs for custom applications.
- Becoming the first choice for Partners to build their next partner solution on, and promote their product.

 

EXPECTATIONS AND TASKS

 

- Understanding Customer Needs with (HR) Extensions on the Platform
- Understanding Partner needs for building Extensions
- Competitive intelligence on where other vendors are headed strategically

What is a platform ecosystem?

Here is a fitting definition that I found:

For big enterprise services companies, the hot new trend is having a cloud-hosted platform for third-party applications. These platforms give app developers the resources they need to build, launch, promote, and integrate their apps with other businesses. This not only creates a bundle of exceptional business tools but it also creates a hotbed of savvy entrepreneurs with working solutions looking for partners.

POV

• Despite the focus on HR and extensions, I find no mention of the HANA Cloud Platform in this job description.  This is rather strange in that for SuccessFactors, the HANA Cloud Platform is THE platform for extensions.
• The focus on HR Line of Business customers is also very interesting.  I have no idea if this emphasis is just the beginning and then other areas are planned – I could imagine a supplier-focus with applications extensions for Ariba.
• My first assumption was that initially such extensions would be associated with SuccessFactors solutions and the HANA Cloud Platform.  I was rereading a blog from Filip Misovski - a tweet from Filip first brought the job offer to my attention - and realized that the focus is potentially larger than just cloud. This platform could theoretically also be used for OnPremise extensions which would probably take the form of extensions of existing Fiori apps or new Fiori applications.
• There are already efforts – such as the PartnerEdge Program - to woo partners to more actively collaborate with SAP. The relationship of the new platform described in this job offer to those existing efforts is unclear.
• The relationship of this new environment to existing e-commerce efforts is also unclear. The SAP Store already exists but I have no idea if the marketplace depicted in this offer is associated with the existing Store.
• SAP isn’t the only one moving in this direction – there is a general market trend that is emerging.

I am very bullish on the platform eco-system trend, and am seeing faster adoption of the model up and down the technology value chain. Just in the last 3-4 months, I have talked to at least 30-40 executives in various technology companies who are developing platform ecosystems. They each consider the initiative to be a cornerstone growth strategy for their businesses. [SOURCE]