In 1999, I was studying for a Masters degree in Political Science and answered an ad in the Washington Post (hardcopy edition, of course) for a research associate position – little other information was offered in the ad – at the Corporate Executive Board. The best practice case study firm had recently gone public and was in the midst of tremendous growth.

Shortly after a two-step hiring process – a telephone screen and single interview at CEB’s then headquarters (the Watergate building, karma to a student who was writing a thesis on President Richard Nixon) – I was hired into the general research pool and assigned to Corporate Leadership Council, the HR research business unit. Still, I knew little about the company I would be joining, other than the details included on the company's website; despite that, I had a tremendous career with CEB and greatly appreciate the coaching and training received while there.

Of course, much has changed since 1999 with respect to how organizations’ engage and recruit new employees, much of it a consequence of new processes (behavioral interviewing, personality tests, etc.) and technologies (using social media to broadcast the open position, LinkedIn to source passive candidates, recruiting marketing to interact with pre-candidates, etc.).

From my workforce analytics perspective, it made me wonder whether recruiting metrics have kept pace with process and technology transformation? Or are firms still largely reliant on traditional measures of recruiting pipeline management?

This is the second in a series of blogs that endeavor to share some ideas on current approaches to measurement in specific talent management domains, and is written for the practitioner in that field. The first blog, on learning analytics, can be found here.  

Contributing to this blog are two colleagues who are well-versed in recruiting trends. Will Staney is a Director of Recruiting for the SuccessFactors Talent Management organization, while Brent Ellis a Director of Recruiting Product Strategy & Sales at SuccessFactors.

1. What’s conventional practice for using data to measure the impact of recruiting?

Traditionally, most SuccessFactors Workforce Analytics customers have focused on integrating their other talent management data (performance, engagement, mobility, diversity, etc.) with measures of hiring activity and process effectiveness:

• External recruitment measures relate to hiring activity in terms of the volume of new recruits from internal and external sources, as well as the relative growth or shrinkage of the workforce.

• Effectiveness measures relate to the mechanics of the recruitment process, such as screening, interviewing and making employment offers, as well as the delivery of quality candidates to hiring managers.

As concisely described in the SuccessFactors Staffing Metrics Pack (part of the Workforce Analytics application), such measures can provide a wealth of important information, including:

• Demonstrating the value of the entire recruitment process and function.
• Supplying a vivid picture of recruitment costs, as well as the expected and actual outcomes from these costs.
• Providing a picture of how the organization has changed over time.
• Identifying potential talent management risks.

Of course, poor data quality can inhibit any effort to provide solid recruiting metrics. “Put yourself in the shoes of your Head of Recruiting,” says Will Staney. “They have to use the numbers coming out of the applicant tracking system but are well aware that the raw data is prone to human error. A classic example of this is recruiters who must choose the candidate source (referrals, job boards, career fairs, etc.) from a drop-down list; if they don’t know the source, or if it isn’t listed, they probably just select one at random.”

2. What’s missing from this approach?

Assuming that your organization has the ability to mine its applicant tracking data (in contrast to the VP of HR at one Financial Services organization who told me that “we have lots of recruiting data…we just don’t use it”), two obvious challenges are:

• Internal - Misaligned Functional Objectives: Current metrics tend to focus on the latter stages of the hiring process – the volume, quality, time, and cost of candidates having submitted applications. However, as Will Staney says, “early stage sourcing is the really challenging part of recruiting – it tests the effectiveness of outbound marketing. Locating and engaging candidates can mean that 70 percent of recruiting is done before the candidate physically applies for a position.” Put yourself back in the role as Head of Recruiting – are you holding your recruiters accountable, and using metrics that reflect, activities conducted across the full process of recruitment marketing (sourcing) and execution (hiring)?

• External - Lack of Visibility into the Recruitment’s Impact on Organizational Goals: Brent Ellis, who works with the SuccessFactors Recruiting Execution product, makes the point that “today, less mature recruiting organizations seek to address the question of ‘how well are we hiring?’ whereas the future question will be ‘what types of people will we need to recruit to best execute our growth strategies?” Firms may approach recruiting as a knee jerk reaction to a vacancy, engaging temp agencies or kicking off a replacement search – the Financial Services VP referenced above explained that one BU has identified 125 jobs that require strategic sourcing, with no action taken thus far to do anything about them. Turn that around – if you knew how many staff your firm was liable to lose in any given quarter, could you better predict how many candidates you would need in the pipeline to replace them (should they all depart)? It would certainly reduce the time to full productivity of incoming hires.

3. What might be examples of foundational metrics to apply to recruiting?

Beyond the basic metrics (cost per hire, time to fill), consider a range of metrics that illustrate the depth of the internal/external recruitment pipeline:

• On-Time Talent Delivery (how many recs were filled within the preferred timeframe)
• Offer Acceptance Rate (how many offers are accepted/declined)
• Top Candidate Acceptance Rate (how many of the best candidates for the job actually accepted the offer)
• Recruitment Source Breakdown (the composition of external hiring sources)
• Recruitment Source Ratio (the number of positions filled either by internal or external candidates)
• Referral Rate (the number of positions filled by internal referrals)
• External Hire Rate (the percent of the current workforce hired from external sources)

4. What about more advanced analytics?

In order to provide better visibility into the entire sourcing/recruiting process and organizational impact, here are a couple of suggestions for ideas/frameworks to use:

1. Capture data from a recruitment marketing platform that indicates the robustness of your sourcing and external talent cultivation activities; for example, what proportion of hires are sourced from your talent communities or career sites?
2. Put as much effort into collecting data on internal recruits as those sourced from outside your organization. For example, use employee engagement/satisfaction data to evaluate the propensity of employees to switch jobs or career tracks.
3. As loosely discussed in Kyle Lagunas' blog on Recruiting Analytics: The Next Big Thing in Talent Acquisition and Stephan Millard in Big Data Brewing Value in Human Capital Management, leverage big data in real-time (where relevant) and present the information in a meangingful way to recruiters that speeds mid-course adjustments to sourcing activities.
4. Over-invest in using data science to attack a subset of business/talent problems. In his blog on How Google is Using People Analytics to Completely Reinvent HR, Dr. John Sullivan shares how Google developed an algorithm for predicting which candidates had the highest probability of succeeding after they are hired. Its research also determined that little value was added beyond four interviews, dramatically shortening time to hire. This data is of value both to the company (building a strong talent bench) and the HR function (improving process efficiency). Who doesn’t like a “win-win” situation?

5. Any final words of advice?

Regardless of what kind of work you perform, information overload is a real threat to productivity and decision-making; we are bombarded with data on almost every conceivable subject. Before diving into processes for collecting, aggregating, and synthesizing data, take a step back and ask “what 3-5 metrics will offer our recruiting teams the best insights into the sourcing/recruiting process?” Start small and deliver value. 

In my next blog, I will take a look at workforce analytics in the realm of Performance & Goal Management. Enjoy the final days of summer!

SuccessFactors, an SAP company, was recognized as the Top Learning Organization in the world by Elearning! Magazine’s Learning! 100 list for 2013. The Learning! 100 Award recognizes 60 corporate and 40 public sector organizations of all sizes for outstanding learning culture, innovation or collaboration that drives performance. Companies are evaluated using three criteria: Aberdeen Group's best-in-class Learning & Development assessment, Elearning! Media Group's Learning Culture index and the overall performance of the organization.

"When evaluating the top learning organizations in the world, SuccessFactors stood out as a clear leader across the board," said Joe DiDonato, awards chair and Enterprise Learning! Conference & Expo (ELCE) conference director. "As a result of its robust learning program, SuccessFactors has grown into a high-performing, innovative organization that leverages the same foundation for future learning that it advocates and implements for its customers."

Read more...

I am currently preparing for a SuccessFactors Seminar series to cover the following three topics.

1. SuccessFactors product strategy and roadmap

2. A Guided Tour of SuccessFactors Solutions

3. SAP SuccessFactors Integration Strategy and Roadmap

SuccessFactors product strategy and road map
In the first session I want to talk about the trends we see affecting human capital management in the next decade and how SuccessFactors products are responding to these trends. We want to assure you and provide proof that our product teams are monitoring these trends closely and tailoring the overall suite as well as individual products to help you meet the challenges these changes will pose.

We are seeing significant changes in workforce demographics. Employees are expecting consumer grade experiences and convenience from enterprise technology and knowledge work is becoming the foundation for economic growth. SuccessFactors product strategy and product management teams are working to create software solutions to help you address the above challenges. I am working with my colleagues in product management to highlight the recent features we have released, to share some plans we have in place for the next year and show some early design concepts.

I plan to high light the fact that customers can start with any application in SuccessFactors and expand their cloud foot print based on their current business challenges. I will talk about the mobile innovations that SuccessFactors is investing. I also plan to showcase some of the user experience innovations that we have done in the SuccessFactors home page.

A guided tour of SuccessFactors Solutions
This is a two hour session where I plan to talk about the top features in SuccessFactors solutions from the point of view of an employee, a manager and, to some extent, an administrator.

When an employee is solicited by a recruiter, the recruiter does so using recruitment marketing tools. The employee then collaborates with the recruiter and the hiring team via the applicant tracking software and SAP Jam. Once the employee is hired, the employee is on-boarded using SuccessFactors Onboarding. New on the job, the employee then receives her goals in the goals management system and continues work related collaboration via SAP Jam. She goes through mandatory training delivered via SuccessFactors Learning and seeks out experts and mentors using SAP Jam. 

The employee's manager then conducts the mid year performance review via SuccessFactors Performance Management and gives her a promised raise using SuccessFactors Compensation. The employee gets to see the updated pay information in her employee profile in SuccessFactors Employee Central.

I plan to invite one of my experienced colleagues from Solution Consulting to demo some of the features and share some of their experiences and knowledge about customer challenges. Solution consulting colleagues work with several customers every month and can bring a wealth of knowledge to the table.

SAP SuccessFactors Integration Strategy and Road Map

In the integration session, I want to do something interesting and useful for those who want to understand how to go about implementing the various solutions from SuccessFactors, while keeping their current on-premise or 3rd party applications running in the interim. I plan to tell the story from the point of view of Janet Lee, an IT executive who starts her cloud journey by moving one talent management application to the cloud, deriving value out of it and them moving all her people management applications to the cloud step by step, culminating in the movement of employee administration and payroll to the cloud.

That is my grand plan. Many smart and talented colleagues such as Will Doolittle and Mark Brandau are contributing to this effort. If there are change in design plans, I will update this post.  Colleagues such as Kellie Fitzpatrick, Venki Krishnamoorthy and Jeremy Masters from SAP and SuccessFactors partner organizations will be there as well. I think it is going to be a useful and exciting session.

My fellow SAP Mentors Luke Marson and Jarret Pazahanick have already given me some valuable inputs on what I should cover. What specifically would you like me to cover? Any pressing challenges that I need to attempt to address? Please let me know. I would appreciate your thoughts and inputs.

This SuccessFactors Seminar series  is scheduled to be delivered from three locations in November and December 2013.

HI To All ,

Please find the below link which will tell you to get a report based on infotype

http://raghav-sap.blogspot.in/

Regards

Raghavendra

It was my first attendance to the prestigious conference conducted by SAP Insider and SAP. I was thoroughly excited to not only attend and learn the various solutions, ideas, trends, strategies of SAP and SuccessFactors but also had an opportunity to speak on my thought paper “Your next global HR project just got easier: Guidelines and considerations for leveraging a global SAP ERP HCM template”.

I had a very fruitful experience and there were many takeaways for me. I would like to highlight some of the key takeaways for the benefit of all who could not attend the conference.

1. SAP plans to keep investing in SAP ERP HCM core on-premise through HR Renewal. The main focus is on providing a consumer-grade user experience e.g. Navigation, look and feel, social concept integration, etc. HR Renewal has been delivered in four main shipments till date and the journey will continue.
2. In the Talent space, SAP is promoting the SuccessFactors talent solutions and has a “Cloud First” strategy. Successfactors has a comprehensive portfolio of best of breed solutions as part of their BizX suite.
3. The focus area from last 1 year has been on integrating the SAP and SuccessFactors solutions. Data integrations are already delivered and they are concentrating on the end to end process integrations and seamless user experience. Process integrations for Recruitment, Compensation, etc. are already delivered and many more e.g.  Learning, etc. are in the pipeline.
4. The hybrid model with SAP On premise as core and SuccessFactors as Talent solutions leverages customers’ SAP HCM existing investments by profiting from SuccessFactors’ market-leading talent management solutions.

With Successfactors in its fold, SAP has now the capability to offer multiple scenarios to its customers who are planning to transition to the cloud world. SAP and SuccessFactors are thus enabling the journey to the cloud based on the customer current investments and requirements and at their own pace.

I recently blogged about a new job offering regarding a new proposed marketplace for HR-specific extensions:

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.

A screencast by the Hana Cloud Portal Team was released today and provides more technical details about the usage about such extensions in SuccessFactors.

HR Extensions in action

We’ve heard about these extensions in the past but now we finally get to see them in action in SuccessFactors.

The extensions marketplace

One specific part of the screencast caught my eye.

The screen shows a list of extensions that are available. My assumption is that this data is coming from the HANA Cloud Portal and is tenant-specific so that the content in this environment is matched to the context in SuccessFactors. 

This might be the perfect location for the extension marketplace depicted in the job offering - imagine having the ability to select new extensions and rapidly be able to use them.

Despite the obvious appeal of this possibility, there are process-related aspects that are still unclear:

• Since the extensions appear to be hosted in the HANA Cloud Portal, who should have rights to administer new extensions? SuccessFactors administrators or HANA Cloud Portal administrators? These roles will usually be performed by different individuals.
• Should the marketplace only be available in the HANA Cloud Portal. SuccessFactors administrators would then be presented with a list of preselected extensions without the possibility to purchase new extensions? 
• How might business users purchase new extensions?

(This blog was originally posted on SuccessFactors blog page)

In early October, the most influential experts in the HR industry will be gathering in Las Vegas. Why not make the most of your travel and learning experience and attend both of these back-to-back conferences in Las Vegas?

Join Us at SuccessConnect 2013

This year’s SuccessConnect 2013 (October 9-11) focuses on jump-starting your workforce of tomorrow with insights, solutions, and strategies to help you not only manage, but also to lead.

Here’s a highlight of what you can learn at this year’s conference:

• SuccessFactors executives share insights into the future. Shawn Price, president of SuccessFactors, kicks off the conference with insightful views on the major trends impacting HR and the business and the role technology plays in transforming HR. Dmitri Krakovsky, senior vice president of global product management at SuccessFactors, will introduce the upcoming direction for SuccessFactors products, highlight recent product advances, and share short demonstrations of exciting new functionality. He will also share the key trends that savvy customers are leveraging in their HR processes and software.

• Industry experts discuss the HR of tomorrow. Some of the foremost experts on HR will be here, including industry visionary Bill Kutik. He will lead a panel that includes Lisa Rowan, research vice president at IDC, Yvette Cameron, research director at Gartner, and Josh Bersin, principal and founder at Bersin by Deloitte. These masterminds of HR, who have been dubbed “the most powerful HR technology experts,” will discuss why tomorrow won’t look like today in the world of HR. They will share what they see as the most critical HR challenges today – and the technologies that will help solve them, including cloud computing, social and mobile technologies, and analytics.

• Breakout sessions highlight the topics that matter most. In addition to the above sessions, there will be three days of breakout sessions on how to take advantage of SuccessFactors and SAP HR solutions. There will be sessions on new technology advancements, optimizing your technology investment, and the alignment of strategic HR with corporate business objectives. Every topic of HR will be covered, from recruiting and onboarding, workforce analytics and planning, to performance and goal management, compensation, and succession.

• Customers provide their own insights on HR success. Besides the breakout sessions mentioned above, you will also get to see HR technology in action as SuccessFactors customers, such as Jo-Ann Fabric and Craft Stores, ConAgra, and Sun Communities, share their achievements in HR. Jo-Ann will discuss how the company mastered the challenge of hiring large numbers of frontline team members for permanent and seasonal positions. ConAgra will share how it integrated its talent management platform and used an agile implementation methodology to support its “recipe for growth.” And Sun Communities will talk about how it found a better way to manage its workforce data and processes, and how it’s using social media to get real-time information to employees in the field.

Of course, the week won’t be all work! You can join us on Wednesday, October 9, for a Welcome Reception poolside at the Venetian to network with your peers and the conference presenters. And on Thursday, October 10, we want you to be our guest at another fun cocktail reception followed by a private performance of Rock of Ages.

If all of this isn’t enough reason to join us, here’s one more!

Attend TWO of the industry’s leading conferences and SAVE!

Las Vegas is the place to be in October! Save up to $900 by arriving early in Vegas to attend the HR Technology Conference on October 7^th and stay for SuccessConnect beginning October 9. You’ll get $500 off HR Technology by using Promo Code “SC13” when you register and then save an additional $400 off SuccessConnect with the Promo Code that will be provided at the bottom of your HR Tech registration confirmation. It’s the perfect way to make the most of your trip! Learn more about the HR Technology Conference here.

If have questions about SuccessConnect^® or have already registered for HR Tech and want to get your SuccessConnect^® savings, contact crivers@successconnect.com

Introduction :

Successfactors (SF) Compensation budgeting - Budgeting for salary planning for an organization can depend on various components of the employee and/or organization. SF budgeting is a very robust tool that provides various standard option to perform bottom-up budgeting for compensation planning (both for salary and Bonus).   Apart from providing options to base budget on standard fields in the compensation form, SF provides great agility to allow organizations to perform calculation (allocated and used) based on custom fields. In this article we will try to focus on budgeting options in SF specifically on budgeting based on custom columns which were released in 1203 release.

Standard budgeting Options

To calculate Salary Budgets in ‘SF Compensation’, various methods/options are available. These options include calculating the budgets:

•         Based on % of Salary: In this method the budget is calculated as of % of the current salary. This method seems easy to configure and test. Lot of the clients that I worked with use this method for budget calculation. Using this method has a considerable drawback. Once the forms are launched you are not able to change the % and everyone would get the same %.

•          Based on Targets: Here the budget is calculated as of % of the Merit Target. This method seems fairly flexible but is not often used as the other methods and this method is not dynamic.

•          Based on Guidelines: We take into account the Guidelines which are set in the system. This method is new but it is flexible and is based on the employee performance and benchmarks. 

•          Based on Percent Loaded at Employee: This method uses fields on the employee import file to pass in the % each employee can contribute to manager’s budget. This method is dynamic and flexible but there are a lot of calculations which need to be completed prior to using this method.

•          Based on Groups: In this case we import file based budgeting tool which allows the managers to determine budget for group of employees. Grouping can be done by division, department or location. The setup process for this is a bit complex both, client and also for the planners.

The standard XML for budget looks something like this -

Most of the above budget calculations methods are based on the Standard fields. From the above XML code depending on the method, the ‘Mode’ is assigned to the respective components, as well as the percent component is changed. Rest of the code and the components are almost same.

Improvements/ Additions for budgeting in 1203 Release

Initially prior to the 1203 release this functionality was not available in SF through which budgets calculation could be done based on the Custom Fields. With 1203 release this functionality was introduced making the Budget calculation more flexible. Although this method makes use of the custom fields, a mix and match is also possible. This means that Custom Fields and Standard Fields, both can be used together (mix and match) for the calculation of Salary Budget. One of the advantages of using the Custom Field is that, these fields are reloadable. This means that budget can be updated even after the compensation forms have been launched. This allows budgets to get updated dynamically in the system and hence planning and allocating budget becomes more flexible.

Salary Budgets based on the Custom fields:

In this method there are two components which we need to understand and take into account.

•          budgetOn – The field based on which the budget used will need to be based on ( Total used )

In the above screen/option for budget, we want to base the total ‘budgetOn’ (Total used) field to a custom field instead of the standard total fields available in the compensation form

Likewise when we can configure the total allocated based on custom field

•          baseCustomField – The allocated field to be used for available budget calculation ( Allocated Budget)

We can make this change directly in the XML – which will look something like this

<budget-calc useFor="salary" budgetOn="TotalProp" mode="PercentOfCustomField" basedOn="template" includeIneligible="false" prorating="false" hidePercentage="true" useFinalPayoutForVPBudget="false"baseCustomField="BonusAwardbefDesc" applyRounding="true">100.0</budget-calc>

Below screenshot shows you the employee salary form which is created from the above configuration. Now as the Custom Fields are reloadable, if there any changes made in the ‘Discretion%’, the ‘Proposed Bonus Award after Discretion’ field will be updated. As ‘Proposed Bonus Award after Discretion’ is the budgetOn field the Salary budget gets updated accordingly.

Now let’s try to change the ‘Discretion%’ for Amanda A. From the above screenshot we can see that it is currently set to 105. We are changing it to 110. Below screenshot shows the changes and how the Budget gets updated.

Scenario – Update allocated budget – Assuming the scenario is to update the budget based on a business entities performance. We will need to upload the UDF (User Data File) to reflect the last allocated field updates. Once the UDF is uploaded and since we set the field as reloadable, the allocated budget gets updated immediately even though the forms are launched.  See below:

The flexibility that is provided by SF budgeting to base allocated and total used on custom fields makes the budgeting process a very flexible for complex organizations.

Authors:

Raj Jogam - SAP/Successfactors Lead Consultant

Sudhanwa Agawekar - Successfactors Consultant

                    One of the most common definite requirements in any LMS workshop is ‘A way to check the knowledge of a user in particular are before another course is offered’. Success Factors addresses it as something called as Prerequisite. In LMS, a Prerequisite is a requirement to be met before registering for another course. Multiple prerequisites can exist for one single course individually or categorized into groups. Among the prerequisites, another requirement is to have an OR condition among prerequisites. That means to take a particular training; a user should have completed either of the groups of learning items.

For example – To undertake Performance management mastery training, a user should have completed either introduction to mastery OR SF core training. This feature to select between two requirements or group of requirements was not available prior to 1302 release.

From 1302 release Successfactors added this feature making it more easier to toggle between two requirements.

The following is how simple Success Factors have made the procedure of Adding a AND/OR condition for Prerequisite, for an item created, making the life of Administrators and decision makers very easy.

How to Configure:

Sample Scenario: For a user to be able to register for a course named Training material test, he/she has to complete either ESS or MSS Training. ESS Training has two courses – ESS Time Entry and ESS Support Services Procedure. MSS Training has one course – MSS Time Approval.

Step 1:

Navigate to Prerequisites under the Related portlet on the left bottom of the Item details screen.

Click on “Create New Group” to create group of prerequisites.

Step 2:

Create Group ESS and add prerequisites

1. Create New Group

• Pop-up screen come to enter new group title

• Enter Title – ESS and click OK

A New Group for Prerequisites is created.

   B. Add Prerequisites

• Pop-up screen come to search and select prerequisites for this GROUP.
• Enter Search criteria, search and then select a prerequisite

• Two items are selected and added

Step 3:

Create Group MSS and add items

1. Add new group MSS by clicking on Create New Group option

• Add prerequisites for MSS GROUP

Click Save to save the prerequisites

Step 4:

Create a schedule offering for the original item

The Item is Scheduled

Step 4 :

1. Login as User
2. Search catalog for the Scheduled offering (Test Training)

• Click on “item” to navigate to detailed information for the item
• The system opens the detailed screen.  Observe that the system says “Choice of 2 groups’

Step 5:

• Click on the “Triangle” button to open the Prerequisites.

Validate that system provides 2 prerequisite paths to this item. Observe the word OR.

If the user chooses to go Via ESS group path – they have to complete both the items in ESS to complete the prerequisites

Authors:

Raj Jogam - SAP/Successfactors Lead Consultant

Pavan Parimi - Successfactors Consultant

Before getting started with HR Renewal, I always thought – “HR Renewal is a package that provides FPM Forms functionality (in HCM Processes and Forms) and new Landing page (with new Tasks[UWL] functionality and excellent ‘Search’ functionality)”. But I did miss/didn’t notice one very important application that got delivered through HR Renewal 1.0 – “Maintain Master Data Application”. Though the other features (FPM forms, etc) look amazing, I did notice that this particular application (Maintain Master Data Application) literally has been used as “Backbone” for this new framework (entire HR Renewal framework). So I decided to write this blog emphasizing the features of this “Superstar” application.

Quick Introduction –

As of first phase of HR Renewal i.e. Feature pack 1, SAP had focused on automating the HR Specialist/ HR Administrator functionality into “Web” based functionality. So the first and foremost things that come to our mind when we think about HR Administrator’s primary responsibilities are “Maintain Master Data of Employee” and “Maintain Org Units and Positions”. Yes, this application pretty much integrates these major stalwart HR transactions - PA30, PO13, PO10 and PPOSE. This new application lets you maintain “Employee”, “Position” and “Organizational Unit” using one simple Web Dynpro ABAP application –

Employee Maintenance

Position Maintenance

Organizational Unit Maintenance

You can find more information about this application from SAP help -

Maintaining HR Master Data - Personnel Administration (PA-PA) - SAP Library

Features

Coming to the features of this application, we really got some powerful features that are listed below -

Search functionality

Since this application can support multiple object types (Employee, Position and Org Unit), we should definitely expect some kind of “Search” functionality to locate any of these objects easily. Yes, there is an excellent search functionality provided in this application (located on the left side of the application) which is smart and performance sensitive (too good performance)! You can easily search related object by selecting the “Search Object Type (left hand side dropdown)” as “Employee or Position or Org Unit”. The search results (with datasets view only ) are listed under this search criterion with basic information about each search result i.e. if we are searching for employee and employee related information like employee’s position, personnel number, personnel area and org unit would be displayed under the search hit.

“Smart Name Suggestions” functionality (as in Google) is also provided as you type in the search term.  I wish we have this functionality provided in all SAP transactions too

“Advanced Search” functionality allows us to search based on more search criteria, not just by name of the object. For each object type different search criteria has been provided. For employee based search, the below advanced search criteria is provided -

For Position based search, the below advanced search criteria is provided -

For Org Unit based search the below advanced search criteria is provided -

On the search results, we have the option to launch the respective “Employee/Position/Org Unit” related applications –

Also, we have an option to integrate the custom HCM P&F based forms (FPM form or Adobe form or Mass form or Roadmap form) into this functionality with very simple configuration. This application literally replaces the Forms Start application (ASR_PROCESS_EXECUTE_OVP) allowing HR Administrator to initiate forms directly from this application.

Org Chart view and Hierarchical view

On locating the required employee/position/Org unit, you can now visualize the Org structure very easily with a simple click on “Chart View” button.

You may find more information on this feature from my other blog – NAKISA based Org Chart functionality in Maintain Master Data Application - NAKISA based Org Chart Functionality in Maintain Master Data Application

Also, you could switch it a simple “Tree” View where you could visualize the org structure in a simple table format. This view displays all three object types i.e. Org Units, Positions and Position holders i.e. Employees (combining both “Organization and Employees” & “Organization and Positions” of Org Chart). From my perspective, this view is very good in performance compared to the “Org Chart” view.

Again, you have the same option to launch any application related to the Org Unit or Position or Employee using “Action” functionality.

Overview Screen and Detailed Maintenance Screen

Based on the object (Employee/Org Unit/Position) selected from the search results, you would get quick information about that object using this Overview screen. This overview screen has “Short Profile” and a set of Object Profile pages(that displays individual infotype information using Biz Cards).  The list of infotype information that can be displayed in this Overview screen is configurable. Also, the “Short Profile” content can be customized by adding/removing any fields as per customer requirement.

You can easily navigate to these detailed screens using “New” or “View All” buttons where you get an option to maintain the respective infotype –

The existing infotype records can be viewed as “Datasets” format or “Table” format -

Datasets view

Table view

Conclusion -

So far I have covered the features of this HR Renewal's Maintenance Master Data Application, In my next blog, I would emphasize on the integration of this application with other HR Renewal applications. So stay tuned !

In my last blog - HR Renewal – Maintain Master Data Application I have discussed the powerful features of the HR Renewal's Maintain Master Data Application. In this blog, I would like to emphasize it's close integration with other HR Renewal applications.

Landing page has been one of the hot favorite in the HR Renewal which has got a whole bunch of new functionality again. This Maintain Master Data Application has been closely integrated with the Landing page almost everywhere. The “Search” functionality in the Landing page again launches the related application(Object profile page/forms) using the “Actions” menu from the search results. Let’s say we have searched for “Jack” and we could launch the “Maintain Master data application” to view “Jack’s Absences” from the search results screen itself –

You can even launch the same set of applications (including the Maintain Master Data Application) based on card type(Employee card or Position card or Org Unit card) from the Workforce Viewer –

You can tag certain Org Units in “Maintain Master Data Application (through Short Profile)” as “Favorites” which appears in the Landing page as a “Favorite” –

Organization Favorites are displayed in the "Organization lane" as shown below -

Most of the applications in “Actions” lane launch the “Maintain Master Data” Application –

On click of “Name and Description” under “View Position Details” folder, the “Maintain Master Data” application is launched waiting user to enter the Position details in the search screen –

On entering the position details, you can now view the “Name and Description” of the search results -

Conclusion –

From my perspective, this is one of the wonderful HR Renewal deliverable till day. This application literally brings in most of the important Infotype maintenance for Employee, Position and Org Unit into one single application. Also, this application has been closely integrated with many HR Renewal Applications (Search, Workforce Viewer, Actions). From technology standpoint, this “Maintain Master Data” application is a OVP based FPM application which uses the infotype screens(Object profile pages) that are in turn FPM Forms (Bizcards) which are designed using Flexible UI Designer (FLUID). So, this again is most advanced technology in Web Dynpro ABAP.

Wishes –

As per SAP’s latest direction from UI perspective for HR Renewal deliverables, I would expect this “Maintain Master Data” application to be migrated to SAPUI5 (so that it would be in sync with other HR Renewal deliverables). Also, I would expect SAP to provide Profile pages for all infotypes of employee, position and Org unit. It would also be great if SAP makes this application as strong as PP01 transaction which supports many object types.

I know that the latest feature pack i.e. Feature Pack 4 for HR Renewal 1.0 has got released recently i.e. less than 2 months. Even before I settle down with this latest version, I started thinking about the next version(dreaming about could be new features ) .I decided to put my wish list (just top 5) for the next HR Renewal release in this blog. I am not sure about the next version# i.e. whether it’s HR Renewal 1.0 FP5 or HR Renewal 2.0, but titled this blog as HR Renewal 2.0 with a simple logic – HR Renewal 1.0 sits on EHP6 and SAP has recently released EHP7 which means the next HR Renewal release would be 2.0

#1 – Make Mass Forms truly powerful

With HR Renewal 1.0 FP3, SAP has introduced the “Mass Form” functionality in HCM Processes and Forms. I got excited when I was exploring this functionality, but soon I realized that these “Mass Forms” is only confined to Hire/rehire actions. We can’t really create Mass Hire forms for any action/infotype update.  My wish in the next release is “Extend these mass forms” to any infotype updates and all kind of backend services. I should be able to easily build/configure a mass position creation form using SAP_PD backend service by adding all related fields of Position from HRP1000, HRP1001, HRP1002, HRP1007, HRP1008, HRP1013, etc. On submission of this mass form it should create positions in one shot! I should be able to build/configure a Mass Transfer form using SAP_PA backend service by adding all related fields of Transfer action from PA0000, PA0001, etc.  More info about these mass forms can be found in my blogs –

HR Renewal 1.0 Feature Pack 3 - Mass Processing Tool

HR Renewal 1.0 Feature Pack 3 - Mass Processing Tool...continued

#2 – Enhance Maintain Master data Application

Maintain Master data Application has been one of the core application that was delivered with HR Renewal 1.0 (I would say this application has been there from Day 1). Though we saw lot of country specific Object profile pages (Country specific infotype maintenance) over a period of time, but there have been very little enhancements to this application. I know the audience for this application would be just “HR Professionals” who can be literally counted (10-200 per organization), but I would still expect this application to be enhanced to support many object types and their infotypes. It would also be great if this application is also used by Managers in some smart way (where the Short profile and object profile page is customized based on the role – HR Professional vs Manager). More info about this functionality can be found in my blogs –

HR Renewal – Maintain Master Data Application

HR Renewal – Maintain Master Data Application continued...

#3 – Migrate more/all Applications from Web Dynpro ABAP to SAPUI5

From feature pack 4, SAP has introduced new applications (in SAPUI5) and landing pages for Employees & Managers. I love these new applications (Personal Profile, Leave Request Application, etc) and the lovely ESS and MSS landing pages too, but not all Employee and Manager Applications are migrated to SAPUI5. Applications like Employee profile still doesn’t have “Edit” functionality to have employees maintain their own information, employees have to use “Personal Profile” application to update their information(which seems to be bit confusing where we have different look and feel).  Above it, one of the major application of HR Professional role i.e. Maintain Master Data application is still in Web Dynpro ABAP. I wish SAP to migrate more/all these applications to SAPUI5 to get uniform look and feel.

#4 – Enhance Workforce Viewer

From feature pack 4, SAP has introduced its own SAPUI5 based Org Chart functionality which looks pretty good as a starter. The Workforce Viewer is just over simple. Compared to NAKISA org chart functionality, the Workforce viewer definitely lags in various features like zoom, different views (like Vertical Style, Vertical Condensed Style, Horizontal Style, Combined Center Style), search functionality, date selection(display Org Chart based on certain dates), etc. After working on NAKISA based Org chart functionality one would expect all the existing features (at least most of it) of existing Org Chart in the new Workforce Viewer. In fact, one would expect something new and cool in the Workforce Viewer J My other wish in the Workforce viewer is – enhance the existing Card layout to display more basic information of the employee/position/org unit without navigating to it’s quick view(as in NAKISA Org Chart).  More info about this blog can be found my blog –

HR Renewal 1.0 Feature Pack 4: New Org Chart functionality – The Workforce Viewer

#5 – Lanes, Lanes, Lanes everywhere, but lack of customization of lane content

Right from day one if HR Renewal, I kept seeing lane based approach in most of the SAPUI5 applications i.e. from Landing pages to Personal profile to Leave Overview J Yes, it is nice to have lanes, but there should be a way to customize these lanes i.e. control the content inside these lanes. Like, if I wish to add a custom field in the Employee profile’s “About” or “Organizational Assignment” lane, it’s almost impossible as of today. There is no customizing option in SPRO to modify this lane content. Also, there is no option to add a new lane (at least to my knowledge so far from SPRO node) using simple SPRO Customization. My last wish is – “Customization option for SAPUI5 applications”.

Conclusion :

As said before these wishes are from my perspective only ! You can agree or disagree with my picks, and feel free to suggest your own. Looking ahead for some good feedback !

Businesses large and small can now reap the benefits of cloud computing, one of which is the availability of core business applications via the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model. But while the benefits of such a model are exponential, so is the perception of risks. Security concerns for the application delivery environment in a SaaS model share many of the same concerns as other application delivery models. Where we really start to see a difference in the SaaS model in terms of security practices is around multi-tenancy, identity management, data storage and location, and data transmission and flow controls.

The good news is that when you partner with SAP for your SaaS applications, you don’t have to worry about any of these security concerns – because we do that all for you!

SAP Cloud uses a unique multi-tenant architecture that serves millions of users around the world in a secure yet cost-effective manner. For example, SuccessFactors an SAP company logically segments each customer’s data at the database level, complete with their own database schema. Customers can export their own schema out of the database, import or export data, and configure or modify fields. With this approach, SuccessFactors leverages the self-describing attributes of XML to abstract much of the unique customer data requirements into its object model, retaining all the advantages of a highly scalable and secure multi-tenant model while still offering a highly configurable application that does not comingle customers' data. SuccessFactors also provides a distinct application instance per customer, offering better security through enforced memory segregation.

SAP Cloud has adopted one of the best defenses for cloud security risk in the industry. Called “defense in depth,” this approach combines information security best practices with layered technology. Designed to protect information confidentiality, integrity, and availability, the “defense-in-depth” strategy for cloud solutions from SAP is multilayered, with defenses at all the touch points in the flow of data, and provides complete and comprehensive privacy, transparency, and audit controls.

The critical layers in a “defense in depth” approach include several key levels, such as:

• Layer 1: The data center. To prevent downtime, whether from a power outage or illegal access, multilevel protection must begin right in the actual physical location of the data center. This can be a costly investment if done in-house, so it’s often outsourced to a trusted provider. At SAP, we provide environmentally controlled and secure facilities that use an integrated security management system. The embedded security measures are extensive, from electronic photo ID badging to biometrics and video surveillance. Our facilities also include extensive safeguards that immediately act on security breaches and shield against environmental disturbances. We also have implemented technical vulnerability management in our solutions to reduce the risks from the exploitation of any technical weakness.

• Layer 2:The database. Whether a database environment is a multi-instance or multitenant model, data must be secured while at rest, in transit, and in use – and so must access to the data during each of these occasions. Cloud solutions from SAP use the most sophisticated security mechanisms to secure data, including an advanced method based on dynamic data and encoded session identifications. SAP Cloud solutions also include load balancing, attack prevention, access control, database audits, information classification, data encryption, and back-up and restore measures.

• Layer 3:Middleware. Because the architecture of both software and hardware in cloud solutions can vary significantly from provider to provider, it’s important to explicitly understand what technologies are being used. It’s also important to understand what technical controls are in place for the security and privacy of the system throughout its lifecycle. Cloud solutions from SAP help ensure that safeguards are in place to enforce authentication, authorization, SSO and other identity and access management functions at all times.

• Layer 4: Application. The application layer must employ security measures that protect against loss, misuse, and unauthorized alteration of data. Cloud solutions from SAP include security measures to protect applications from insider threats, risky plug-ins and downloads, phishing and pharming, and improper logins.

• Layer 5: Network and communication. When securing a network infrastructure, it's important to strike a balance between security and the availability of applications. Every component of an IT network—from the point of entry on the network down to the final place where information is stored—must be meticulously configured, deployed, maintained, and continually tested for optimal performance. Cloud solutions from SAP come with functionality that reinforces security through multiple Tier 1 Internet service providers (ISPs) while limiting internal network traffic to pass along only the data required by an application. All incoming requests are validated against business and security rules to protect against malicious access.

We do it – so you don’t have to!

When your business is protected by a “defense in depth” security solution, you can confidently reap the benefits of a SaaS cloud computing offering. With cloud solutions from SAP, you can be assured that your data is secure at all times. We work with the best security and monitoring providers to:

• Ensure individual server performance and uptime
• Maintain a smooth user experience
• Stop network intrusions
• Prevent malicious server attacks
• Protect against potential threats
• Identify information system problems
• Verify the effectiveness of security controls and compliance

At SAP, a seasoned team of industry experts that specialize in creating secure, reliable environments will help you save on IT staffing and build-out costs to safeguard your critical applications and data while keeping your business operations intact. We relentlessly focus on security—so you don't have to.

To learn more about “defense in depth” and the approach SAP Cloud takes to secure your data, download this white paper entitled “SAP Cloud: Focusing on security, so you can focus on business.”

We are running SAP in a holding company which is not exactly a holding and subsidiary companies are in a value- chain of holding company. I mean although they have to follow all strategies of holding company and they are doing a specific task(s) to complete a product or service of holding company but they have their authority in some way also then they have their own internal process and can make decision about how to run them.

Now how we should implement and specially provide SAP in this holding? As I know almost holding companies like SHELL has their own IT department which is in charge of SAP implementation and support. Also I have heard some holdings have decided to closed their own SAP department and just keep a few people to control and monitor the SAP issues and take SAP consultancy from private consultancy companies.

Do you think there is a solution fits all holding companies or it depends? It depends on what? Is it depend on Holding situation and strategies? Is it depends on SAP market in the country? Or what?

I am looking forward to hearing from you!

Omid

Want to know what makes me nuts?

Driving behind (or in front of) someone who has a phone next to their ear, or worse – they’re checking email or texting while driving. The person is clearly not paying attention to driving-- creating not just an inconvenience, but a significant safety hazard.

And it’s getting worse.

According to the data from “Mobile Worker Population to Reach 1.3 Billion by 2015, According to IDC,” the number of workers using mobile devices is set to increase to 1.3 Billion by 2015. That’s billion with a “B” folks. And this is not just happening in the Washington DC area where I live— the growth of a mobile workforce is truly global, and one of the key trends shaping the 21^st century workforce:

• North America is already underway, with 75% of its workforce currently mobile, and growing – the most highly concentrated group
• 838.7 Million Asia/Pacific workers by 2015 – the largest total number of mobile workers
• 244.6 Million EMEA workers by 2013 --  which includes 50% of Europe’s total workforce

Sitting in traffic watching this ‘mobile madness’, I began thinking about mobile adoption and use. More specifically – when and how should mobile be adopted to really help improve workforce productivity and business results? 

One of the key areas within Talent management where mobile can be applied is with learning solutions.  Working with our customers, here are the top
5 ways we’ve seen mobile applied to improve Learning adoption and results:

1. Accelerate and Assure Compliance -- Learning solutions are traditionally applied in this area. But did you know you can accelerate and help further assure compliance related training with a mobile enabled learning solution? In the case of SuccessFactors, you can manage the learning plan, view assigned courses and related information, and launch online content.
2. Conduct on-the-job (OJT) Sessions without the Baggage - Mobile learning can provide a great way to conduct OJT sessions and ensure the results are captured (no more clipboards, or notepads). With SuccessFactors, you can easily access your task checklist to view the identified responsibilities necessary to complete training. You can also manage the checklist and easily record completion of steps.
3. Manage Training Requests (Before they become a logjam) – Whether you’re traveling on business, or home on the sofa – you can quickly easily manage training requests and schedules. With SuccessFactors you can register for scheduled offerings, and approve/ deny training requests from your mobile device. 
4. Stay Informed and Connected– With social and informal learning, you will never miss never miss an important conversation. With SuccessFactors Learning, you can setup push notifications for immediate notification when someone sends you a direct message. Whether as part of a blended learning solution, or as a part of a stand-alone, dedicated learning community -- active conversation keeps people engaged, and you can make comments on the fly by adding and sharing tips, tricks, or something you just discovered.
   
5. Continuous Project Collaboration– with mobile learning you can keep collaboration going. SuccessFactors Learning provides the ability to capture, and share videos and documents. You can upload images and video of white boards, prototypes, product displays and complex procedures (just to name a few). Plus, you have access to all your groups and projects (and the tools to move them forward). All available on your mobile device.

More Than Dangerous Miles and Wasted Minutes-- Make Mobile Matter

In your business, discourage your workforce from using their mobile devices while driving. Encourage smart mobile usage and solutions, like with SuccessFactors Learning – where employees, and your business can really get moving.

Want to learn more?

Join us for one of our upcoming webinars:

• September 25, in Conjunction with HR.Com –
  Focused on Mobile Learning:  http://www.hr.com/stories/1377538218919, and on: 

• October 16, for our 21^st Century
  Workforce Series – this one focused on Learning and Development: http://info.successfactors.com/21stCenturyLearningandDevelopment1016_s.html

Follow SAP ERP HCM on Twitter: @SAPHCM

*** My first blog post on SCN. Originally posted at http://blog.ingramtalent.com/ and re-posting here to more feedback and discussion ***

Every three months, SuccessFactors releases a build with new enhancements and features. The nomenclature is bYYMM = build/year/month, so this release is b1311 (build November 2013). b1311 will be pushed to client systems on November 15, but is made available in demo systems a week early. I took advantage of this to try out some of the new features. This post is not meant to be an exhaustive explanation of new recruiting features and enhancements in b1311 of SuccessFactors. I’ll focus on just a few.

Resume Parsing– super simple to set up, with no separate license fees. All you need to do is turn the feature on and map the standard fields from your recruiting instance to those of the resume parsing service. No complex tools or knowledge required. Contact information is automatically mapped and you can map the standard background elements of Work Experience, Education, Languages, Certifications and Professional Memberships. Figure 1 below shows configuration for resume parsing field mapping.

Figure 1: Mapping of fields for resume parsing

Managing recruiting templates in Admin Tools (beta).  Up to now, customers have had to engage with professional services for any edits to templates used in recruiting, e.g. requisitions, offers, the candidate profile and application forms. Moving this to Admin Tools is a huge plus for customers, as they won’t have to rely so heavily on professional services post go-live to tweak the templates they use. This feature is still in beta and should be released more widely once there is more robust documentation and it's been implemented by a few select customers.

Enhanced branding for external career sites. Customers will now be able to use the theme manager to create and apply multiple brands across external career sites and microsites. Customers have long asked for the ability to tailor the branding of the external career sites and now it will be possible – change the colors, fonts, logos, etc. to have a more seamless transition from the corporate website to the career site. The theme even carries over to private postings. Integration to Recruiting Marketing should mean that candidates navigating from Recruiting Marketing (RMK) career site to Recruiting Management would have no change in theme or branding. This will allow a seamless branding experience.

Figure 2: External career site before theme branding

Although the instructions seem simple, I ran into issues in my demo instance setting this up. The top-level navigation disappeared, and my navigation changes did not transfer. Promising functionality and I’m sure they’ll work out the kinks.

Figure 3: Theme manager for defining career site themes. Note the custom navigation colors

Figure 4: External career site after theme branding – only background image rendered properly

Automation enhancements. A couple of nice enhancements this release include the ability to automatically close job requisitions once all openings on the requisition have been filled as well as the ability to disposition a hired candidate on all other requisitions when a job requisition is closed.

Other enhancements. A number of email tokens have been added, including attachment tokens for a candidate’s cover letter and resume, as well as new standard email tokens, like career site URL, company name and login URL. This will make it easier to define standard emails and require less manual editing.

Onboarding. Although not directly recruiting, SuccessFactors Onboarding now has direct integration to send new hire data to Employee Central, thus closing the process loop between Recruiting -> Onboarding -> Employee Central for companies using Onboarding and Recruiting. Note: If you are not using SuccessFactors Onboarding, you can still send new hire data directly from Recruiting to Employee Central.

Summary: While some of these features may be catch-up to other recruiting solutions, it shows that there is constant ongoing innovation with SuccessFactors Recruiting and that they truly listen to customers.

What’s your process for rolling out enhancements to SuccessFactors modules? In an ideal world, we’d all have ample resources to devote to release management—but in many companies, time crunches and headcount limitations mean settling for, shall we say, more “expedient” approaches.

Would it help you to get some tips from a company that has put a lot of time and thought into its release management process? That’s exactly what SuccessFactors customers got to do during our recent VIP Best Practices Presentation: Release and Readiness Testing at Talisman Energy, Inc.

About Talisman Energy’s Implementation

First, a bit of background on our company. Talisman Energy is a global upstream oil and gas company headquartered in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Between our two main operating areas (the Americas and Asia-Pacific), we have a workforce of 7,000 employees and contractors.

Talisman Energy first implemented SuccessFactors Recruiting and Performance & Goals in October 2011. We followed this up with Employee Profile in June 2012, Succession & Development in September 2012, and Learning in June 2013. We then deployed Leadership Multi-Rater functionality this fall and have continued to roll out reports and dashboards since our initial go-live on SuccessFactors.

When SuccessFactors heard about the way we’d set up our release management process, they approached us about presenting a webinar on the topic. We were more than happy to share our secrets.

Four Tips for SuccessFactors Release Management

So, what makes our quarterly release management process so effective? In a nutshell, it’s the fact that we follow clear project governance standards.

Now, before I share our tips, I want to make something clear: you shouldn’t feel like you have to copy our process exactly. Your headcount and overall workload may prevent you from doing something so in-depth, and that’s fine. But implementing even one or two of our suggestions below could make your release management process just a little bit better next time around.

During the webinar, we shared four tips for managing quarterly releases:

1. Create and maintain an inventory of test cases for each SuccessFactors module. Our support team starts by creating a release testing spreadsheet. We then look through our case management tool to find any Platinum Support tickets that are slated for the upcoming release, and add these tickets to the testing spreadsheet.

2. Review all release documentation and attend the SuccessFactors OneVoice webinars. As soon as SuccessFactors publishes the Release Notes Summary document for a new release, our support team will read through it to find items that apply to our specific module versions. We’ll then start adding items to our release testing spreadsheet. We also read through the Release Readiness Overview document to glean additional helpful details.

It’s typical for three or four Talisman Energy staff—including module or process owners, representatives from our SuccessFactors support team, and members of HR Operations—to attend OneVoice webinars. Anything we learn gets added to the release testing spreadsheet.

3. Prioritize universal release items, and focus on getting through the high-priority items first. On the Saturday morning after a Friday release, our support team gets together to explore and test the universal release items. We test the high priority items first, confirm that they’re working properly, and then create simple documentation to help business users understand how the functionality works. We also perform regression testing to ensure that the enhancements don’t impact our existing functionality in unexpected ways.

4. Prioritize the testing for modules used at Talisman Energy. Our support team categorizes items as high or low priority and high or low use. An example of high-priority, high-use functionality would be our performance review tools, which employees use frequently across our company. We would test items related to performance review on Saturday after a Friday release.

High-priority, low-use functionality (such as succession planning, which is mainly used by one team) and low-priority, high-use functionality (such as recruiting, which is used daily by recruiters but doesn’t normally undergo major changes) get tested within one to two weeks after a release. And low-priority, low-use functionality such as ad hoc reporting will be tested within one month.

Get the Full Story

Our SuccessFactors support team certainly doesn't spend all day every day testing new releases—but we still manage to address the highest-priority items within a day, and the lowest-priority items within one month. Sounds like a balanced, reasonable approach to release management, doesn’t it? To find out more about our approach, and to gain more tips you may be able to apply to your own release management process, check out our archived VIP Best Practices Presentation: Release and Readiness Testing at Talisman Energy, Inc.

As SAP released the second iteration of their Integration Add-on for SAP HCM and SuccessFactors - covered very well by Luke Marsons blog about the latest package and also the first version, can be found here and here - a few very obvious integration points are still missing. Don't get me wrong, I very happy about what SAP already brought to the table and loving the fact they are focusing on getting integration to a process level, instead of just on a data level - excellent work! And also the package is free and requires no additional licenses shows commitment from SAP to ensure customers get integration in the cloud fast and cheap:)

The current integration support:

Note: Borrowed from Prashanth Padmanabhans blog

Note: Not all of the integration are available just yet.

Currently SAP supports the basic employee data required to create employees and users in SuccessFactors,compensation process, recruiting - moving candidates to SAP and also indicating which positions are vacant in Recruiting, and some extraction reports for Workforce Analytics.

The next focus area for SAP is integration for Learning - where focus will be on skill and competencies, learner history, cost etc. With all of this done in little over a year, I sure SAP is going to provide a complete and comprehensive integration as time moves forward.

However I think they left out some integration points that are relevant for a lot of customers - I am sure SAP will come around to them, but before that customers should know about these points and how to get integration for these areas and make sure they account for them when planning to integrate SAP with SuccessFactors.

Also I think the idea of using web-services as the main (and only way for some of the integration points) way of integrating is a bit limiting for many customers. The file import/export is still a very used and proven solution for many customers. A file import/export is a robust solution, that's easy to monitor and has been used a lot in SF. For a lot of people having instant transfer of Talent Management data is not high on the priority list for integration or a requirement - I have only experienced the requirement for instant transfer in the recruiting area and not in many other areas. So pushing web-service integration seems like push for more PI and potential over-complex integration, that does not need to be complex with additional sources of error and maintenance loads. It is definitely something that should be revisited and consider how customers can get maximum effect of the integration with as little effort as possible.

A few missing pieces of integration in the current release of the Integration Add-on:

So what are the additional areas SAP should think about adding support for as well - they might already be considering it:)

Extend Employee Information

File import to enable the transfer of additional employee data like social security number, nationality, former PDR scores, etc. The data imported here can be outcome defining in some processes.

Employee Background Data

File import to to enable the transfer of employee data like work history, education history, salary information etc. All of these data can be important and a foundation for processes like Pay-for-Performance or Succession and Development. Thereby becoming a key piece of information for performing decision based on relevant information and not guessing.

Position Import

Brings data support to Succession Planning processes and provide position information like title, owner of position etc.

Organization Import LMS

Transfer all relevant organizational data required to use SuccessFactors Learning Management. Without the data, its not possible to use LMS in a proper way or structure learning based on organizations.

Generally speaking all of the above integration points can be highly complicated to get started with for a customer to built themselves and easily take months to complete with defining the logic, building the file format and proper testing.

The overall challenge with the employee relevant integration is that it changes a lot depending on the customers requirements, however that could easily be supported using configurations options in the report: Adding/Naming of columns - which would be reflected in the exported file, logic for the extracted data could be supported by using BAdIs and an offering of predefined logics for fields like SSN, nationality, veteran etc. like in the current tool does for Employee Export/Import in the Integration Add-on - just add the option of adding your own columns.

The position and organization exports are fairly simple and provide a large impact compared to the effort required to built the integration, so in my opinion should have been part of release 1.0 or just be in the consideration of future integration points

EVRY, the consulting firm I work for, have designed a tool to support these cases - The SuccessFactors Integration Tool, can be found here.
The tool offers customer an additional tool to help maximize the effect of their integration between SAP and SuccesFactors. It is in no-way a replacement for the Integration Add-on, it's add-on for the add-on . The purpose is to help customer speedup the integration time, and get to that point where they can focus on getting their SF modules implemented and not the integration. The tool can be used as it is or used an accelerator just to get you moving on the integration.

Lets get the integration between SuccessFactors and SAP even better