Hello everyone!
In this new blog I’d like to update you on SuccessFactors Compensation Management in the 1405 release. Amy Dines, Senior Product Manager has offered to share those highlights with us. Amy is a recognized Compensation expert working on the global Product Management team and is based in Boston. She will give us her thoughts on the design and benefits of the two major enhancements available with the 1405 release. We will focus on the further improvement of the user experience with the new compensation worksheet and the benefits of the new decentralized administration. In addition, Amy will share with us her vision and the mission for the SuccessFactors Compensation.
First of all let’s talk about the V12 Compensation Worksheet. This release brings it to the next level of flexibility and navigation-ability. Amy can you let us know about the advantages of those enhancement and how they better meet end-users requirements?
Amy Dines: The V12 Worksheet was a collaborative effort between SuccessFactors and a number of customers who shared our passion for providing Compensation Planners with a great user experience. Early adopters enabled the Beta Release worksheet in late 2013, allowing them to try it out and provide feedback. We used the next two releases to incorporate their feature and usability suggestions into the newly released V12 worksheet in 1405..
YP: What functionalities have been concretely added with 1405?
Amy Dines: The V12 worksheet makes much better use of real estate on the page. Pods for budget, worksheet instructions, workflow route map, and analytics may now be expanded and collapsed as needed; a worksheet filter allows Planners to quickly drill down to view employees by a number of attributes including name, job title, grade, and performance rating. All worksheet pages were enhanced with new CSS styling.
New functionality was added to VRP worksheet (see picture 1)
- Planner can vertically scroll with the column headers fixed on the page;
- A worksheet filter has been added, which scans all pages for up to seven commonly used filter attributes;
- Ability to plan incentive bonus by amount or percent;
- The promotion job selector is accessible from each employee’s Compensation Profile. Previously it had been available on both the worksheet and profile, but involved excessive scrolling on the worksheet;
- The Actions button is removed from end of each row, and notes are now accessible from the employee name;
- Refresh buttons removed from salary and stock tabs and included in the Save button.
Picture 1: Compensation Worksheet in 1405 with enhanced navigation (click to enlarge)
Picture 2: V12 Worksheet, Variable Pay Tab (click to enlarge)
YP: The second major enhancement is called “Decentralized Administration” and is completely changing the way global companies will deliver compensation planning with SuccessFactors. Here is the situation before: permissions at the local admin level are not available. Now with 1405, each local compensation admin team can manage guidelines for their region, and it is restricted from viewing guidelines for other regions. Amy, is there as special target group if customer for this functionalities or can it be used to added flexibility to smaller organization as well?
Amy Dines: For global companies with local HR Teams, attracting and retaining top talent is a challenge that is best managed locally, with central guidance and oversight. SuccessFactor’s new decentralized administration option allows local HR Teams to independently set up and administer compensation programs that are designed to optimize for local market goals and objectives for the country, region and/or business unit. Decentralized administration enables two roles: the local admin role, and the super admin role. Each local admin sets up and manages guidelines, and bonus plan structure for their region or country, and does not have access to other region or country setups unless specifically enabled. The Super Admin is provided with insight into all local admins program configurations.
YP: What are the key elements for the de-centralized admin of the compensation process?
Amy Dines: those elements are:
- Comp & Varpay Guidelines
- Varpay Bonus Plans
- Varpay Business Goals
- Varpay Business Goal Weights
Picture 3: Decentralized administration and management of administrator groups (click to enlarge)
Picture 4: Decentralized administration and formula assignment to groups (click to enlarge)
YP: this sounds like many global customers will love it because they needed it so much. Do you have any tips and tricks for the deployment of the decentralized administration? Where to start for example?
Amy Dines: Decentralized administration can be deployed in a variety of ways. HR organizations will need to decide on which local country/regions to create, and roles & responsibilities of the local administrator vs the central administrator. We plan to schedule some webinars for later this year on recommended best practices.
YP: Without going into the details, what is next on your roadmap when it comes to globalization versus localization?
Amy Dines: We will be extending the decentralized administration approach to salary structures, compensation history management and compensation statement production in upcoming releases, to provide companies with additional local administrator options.
YP: thanks a lot Amy for sharing those details with us. I am sure our customers will appreciates all the insights.
Follow Yannick: @ypeterschmitt
Follow Amy: @dinesAL