Which is best for HCM software, on-demand in the Cloud or on-premise inside your organization firewall?

If you are deploying SAP solutions themselves, then your choice will likely be defined by SAP’s functionality and roadmap. As SAP’s David Ludlow's  blog Hybrid HCM Solutions Are a Solid Option for Organizations suggests - a hybrid “loose coupling” approach will work for many. But whether or not you deploy SAP on-premise or on-demand, you also face a choice with all the other elements of the HCM ecosystem.

If you’re grappling with this issue in the HCM space, this blog contrasts on-premise vs on-demand software.

As SAP’s Tammie Eldridge says, “The truth is, selecting on-premise, cloud, or a hybrid approach is not an easy decision”. Here are 6 reasons why the Cloud is usually better and 4 reasons why it may not be.

1. On-demand gives you access to innovation

A critical advantage of on-demand is that you typically get the latest version of the software that you are working with. Most on-demand providers upgrade all their customers at the same time to the latest version, and you get bug fixes, feature improvements, security fixes and innovation as part of the service. With on-premise, you are in control of when you install updates, and you are not forced to deploy an innovation you do not want. But due to the resources required to upgrade, it’s commonplace to only upgrade once a year or once every other year, and so be several versions behind an on-demand system.

With the increasing prevalence of smart phones and tablets and other technology changes, this loses opportunity.

To  quote Ed Cohen of SuccessFactors in Thought leader interview with Ed Cohen - The Cloud is the key Factor for Success in Talent Management :

“If you look at the rate of innovation that can occur with a SaaS product as against a company maintaining a behind the firewall instance of something, it becomes super important for learning and talent. … To be honest, with the amount of money companies spend internally trying to maintain systems, if you compare that against the cost of subscribing to a service, it becomes obvious.”

2. Deployment is easier with on-demand and allows quick pilots

An on-premise system needs setup of servers, and installing the software. This takes planning, time and resources, whereas an on-demand system can usually be deployed within hours or days of order.

An on-demand system is also easier to scale up and expand. You can easily start small with one project and add users or departments as needed. Growing an on-premise system tends to occur in “chunks” as extra servers are added.

And it can be realistic for individual  departments to use an on-demand service or to try it out for a trial project, without the resources involved in setting up servers.

3. On-demand requires less corporate IT bandwidth

This is often the strongest reason to go on-demand in the HCM area.

Corporate IT departments are typically overloaded, and HCM software is often not their top priority. Other company systems are seen as more mission critical and HCM projects have to queue for priority with other systems. There is often a bottleneck and delay for deployment.

Of course on-demand still needs the involvement of coporate IT, see Richard Hirsch’s blog article The role of agents in hybrid (OnDemand / OnPremise) environments or why Corporate IT isn’t going to disappear any time soon for one view on this. But by using on-demand for HCM, you can usually make headway and provide improved functionality quicker than when deploying on-premise.

4. You don’t need to worry about scalability with on-demand

SuccessFactors state this very succinctly:

"No matter how many employees you have or where they are located, our solutions are available to you anytime, anywhere.”

With an on-premise solution, you have to scale servers to cope with the busiest time (e.g. an end of year deadline, or a compliance milestone). But if you use on-demand, you delegate this to the Cloud provider, who will usually be able to expand to handle your highest load.

5. On-demand is easier to make secure

Both on-premise and on-demand systems can be set up to be very secure, but achieving a high level of security is expensive and involves constant vigilance. Unless you invest heavily in security, Cloud providers will usually provide higher security than the typical on-premise solutions.

This point is well described by SAP’s  Prashanth Padmanabhan in his blog article Why Do We Keep Our Valuables In A Bank Locker? where he states:

“In a public customer session at HR Insider 2013 in Las Vegas, one of the SAP - SuccessFactors Hybrid customers announced publicly that their own security audit found that SuccessFactors cloud infrastructure was more secure than their own fire wall.”

Independent organizations also comment similarly. For example the respected UK Universities and Colleges Information Systems Association says in its cloud briefing paper:

“In practice, data is probably more secure in cloud services than can be provided by in house solutions.”

6. On-demand us usually more reliable

Usually an on-demand system will also be more reliable and have higher up-time, providing your users have good Internet connectivity.

Unless you invest heavily in your on-premise infrastructure, a professionally maintained on-demand server is likely to provide a higher level of 24/7 availability and uptime than a locally maintained system. For instance, a professional system is likely to have redundancy in every component so will not fail if  a piece of hardware fails, whereas it may not be cost-effective to have such redundancy in an on-premise system. Redundancy makes sure, just like in a bridge over a river, that if one piece fails, the rest survives.

7. Data protection is simpler if everything is in house

So what are some of the reasons against on-demand? One is data protection.

A key HCM concern is privacy and data protection, and many industries have additional compliance needs around data protection.

With an on-premise installation, you have full control of your own data protection. 

With an on-demand installation, you need to ensure that you remain the controller of your data and that the Cloud provider is a responsible processor of it. Most reputable providers do a good job on data protection, so this is usually resolvable, but you do have a network of data with different providers and this needs control and vigilance.

8. The US Patriot Act can be a concern for non-US organizations

A concern for some organizations is that government (either their own government or a foreign government) might get access to data by using an on-demand service.

Usually an organization will be reasonably confident that data in an on-premise system should be inaccessible by governments or other outside parties, at least without a legal process.

But there is a potential concern that if data is hosted by an on-demand provider or in equipment in the Cloud, a government might force the provider to share data without the organization’s permission.

In particular, the US Patriot Act gives the US government the right to demand data from any provider that is operating in the US or is owned by a US company. It’s not clear how real an issue this is in practice (why would the US government want to get access to HR data?), but if an organization is concerned about this, it would want to use an on-demand provider that is not US owned, that has a non-US data centrer and that does not use a data center provider that is owned by a US company.

There’s some good commentary on this issue in this video by William Harmer of SuccessFactors who argues that the US Patriot Act should not be a real concern to most organizations for HR data.

9. There is less risk of lock-in with on-premise

Technology and suppliers and needs change, and every organization needs to be able to plan to move systems in the future.  Whether using on-premise or on-demand, the key issue is that your data  should be available in a documented format so that if you want to move, you can take your data with you.

With on-premise, you will have the data (though you need to check it’s in a format that can be extracted). With on-demand, you need to make sure that your contract permits you to get access to the data and there are practical capabilities to export or otherwise access the data to avoid lock-in.

10. You can customize on-premise

Typically you can configure on-demand systems, and do a limited amount of customization – for example set up your own templates and branding, but if you need major customization, it’s harder. Most on-demand providers use the same software instance for all their customers, this is one of the key economies of scale that make on-demand successful. It’s not always as simple as when Jarret Pazahanick quotes Chris McNarney to say "implementing SuccessFactors BizX is a simple matter of flipping some configuration switches”, but on-demand usually has major limitations in customization.

An on-premise installation is much easier to customize, so a strong reason to go on-premise can be to do deep customization. For instance, you can usually access data via web services in the Cloud, but if you need direct database access or connections, you may need to go on-premise.

Of course, if you do customize, too wide a change can make things difficult when a new version of the software is produced. Which goes back to the first reason on my list … that you get easier access to new versions and innovation with on-demand.

Of course other factors come into play as well – functionality, cost, support, organization culture to name a few. And both on-demand and on-premise are viable routes. There are growing advantages for on-demand but some organizations prefer on-premise for good reason.

I’ve written this article from a neutral perspective, I don’t personally have an “axe to grind”. The company I work for Questionmark produces on-premise and on-demand assessment management software and we integrate with both SAP LSO and SuccessFactors.

If you’re trying to decide what’s right for you, I hope this article helps highlight some of the issues. I’d welcome comments from others – do you agree with these ten factors or what other ones are important?

Cloud computing/ Software-as-a-Service is the new source of revenue for the IT industry. SalesForce.com is one of the phenomenal success stories in the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) area. Salesforce.com’s tag line is ‘No hardware. No software. No Boundaries’.
In HR systems area, it is a very inviting and exciting proposition to the customer. Every software company is touting that it has a ‘cloud’ based HR solution. Customers have the tough task of determining which solution will fit in their strategy. Even when the existing on-premise solution works fine, customer will evaluate 'cloud' option and transition benefits. The cloud computing buzz is getting stronger, and everyone wants to jump on the bandwagon. How does it impact the SAP HCM and SAP HCM consultants? Existing implementation, new implementation and transition projects will need SAP HCM consultants for the following 5 years.

Supporting existing implementation:
SAP HCM consultants (functional as well as technical) will have steady work in support organization. If SAP Payroll is on the same instance, changing from SAP HCM to other solution would require a higher budget and longer duration. For the next 5 years (till around 2017), there will be a steady demand for SAP HCM consultants for support roles.
Within the Support organization, upgrade projects will still need SAP HCM consultants. The pace of upgrade projects might accelerate to ensure that customers are ready to transition to a newer version that might support 'cloud' solutions.

New Project implementation:
Cloud computing will adversely impact the decision to select SAP HCM. Companies who have already started the implementation will find it difficult to stop the implementation and reevaluate cloud options. They will need the SAP HCM consultants to take them live while ‘cloud’ strategies mature. There are some questions that customers are grappling with:
- What do they ‘own’?
- What is the exit strategy?
- What are the options if the vendor cannot support their requirements in the future?
- What happens if their vendor files for bankruptcy?
If cloud solutions gain more acceptances, SAP HCM consultants demand will decrease.

Transition projects:
The customer decides that they want to transition from existing SAP HCM solution to new cloud based solution. These projects will be the most interesting ones and will need SAP HCM consultants to enable the smooth transition.

All this change is outside SAP HCM consultant’s control. What should SAP HCM consultant do that is within their power and the skills they need to acquire for the future?

To be continued...

** This blog, or any related presentation of SAP’s strategy and possible future developments, products or platforms directions and functionality are all subject to change and may be changed by SAP at any time for any reason without notice.

Showing that SAP continues to invest in Core HCM on-premise – and that our new user-experience makes the “hybrid” model (on-premise Core HR with cloud talent management) ever more appealing –  March 21, 2013 marked the latest quarterly installment of HR Renewal 1.0:  Feature Pack (FP) 3.  With FP3, we’ve focused on the areas where customers previously had to invest in modifications, where there was an opportunity to improve insight or where performance improvements could make the user-experience even better. 

Delivery Mechanism and Terms

The new delivery frequency and methodology behind HR Renewal has necessitated the introduction of new terms like Feature Pack (FP) that may be hard to keep straight for some of you.  Please remember that Feature Pack 3 for HR Renewal 1.0, is a new kind of add-on, called an “In-Advance Shipment”.  The prerequisite for HR Renewal 1.0 is Enhancement Pack (EhP) 6 for SAP ERP ECC 6.0 and HR Renewal should be a great extra incentive to upgrade if you haven’t already done so.  “In-Advance Shipment” implies that this is new functionality that is being supplied in advance of the next Enhancement Package, which is not officially named but we may assume here is Ehp 7.  In this way, you get a preview of most of the functionality to be included in the next Enhancement Package!  A Feature Pack (FP) in this context is nothing more than a special kind of Support Package (SP) that includes new functionality (where a SP usually only contains code corrections and legal changes), albeit you still control the activation of that new functionality with a business function switch that you may turn on.

Availability and Cost

HR Renewal is available for download today by existing customers on the SAP Service Marketplace.  The recommendation is that you use the SAP Solution Manager, Maintenance Optimizer to do so.  By using the Maintenance Optimizer, it should automatically include prerequisite functionality.   You may also be happy to know that we do not charge extra for this new user-experience per se.  If you were licensed to use Personnel Administration, Organization Management, Employee or Manager Self-Service before, then you may use the new user-experience without incurring additional fees with some exception. 

Where completely new functions are enabled and use is optional: for example the collaboration functionally, supported by our cloud based collaboration engine, would require the appropriate subscription fees.   If you have seen earlier blogs, you also know about the new landing page functionality based on SAPUI5 which also make use of HTML5.  The landing page leverage SAP NW Gateway to read/write backend data.  Earlier on there was a question as to whether additional cost would be incurred with that use of Gateway.  User licenses have been adjusted such that when accessed via the standard SAP delivered landing page, that Gateway usage is covered.  However, you should consult with your Account Manager wherever there are questions about license and subscription fees. 

Landing Page, Short Profile and discussions

OM/PA Customizing for the HR Professional in HR Renewal

Existing SAP ERP HCM customers benefit from the fact that they already have done much of the necessary customizing but visit the new IMG node under “Personnel Management” called “Personnel & Organization.

Partial List of HR Renewal content including country specific (as of FP2, Q4/2012)

Feature Pack 3 – Overview of major features

Feature Pack 3 (FP3) offers something for everyone – employees, managers and HR professionals. Improving TCO and embracing the optimism of an improving economy we introduce the beginning of a new mass change framework with a mass hiring scenario. Another key improvement for the HR professional adds new access and insight into processes from the landing page with a new process lane.  Managers get a performance boost – that is, we optimize the performance of the manager home page and team viewer to improve the user-experience.  Additionally, we provide multiple enhancements to employee leave request functionality.  

Leave Request – Multiple approvers

Manager Self-Service Performance Optimization with OADP
Responsive UI for Home page – Asynchronous Refresh

Process Lane

HR Professional – mass hiring action

Future Direction

We intend to continue quarterly deliveries of the HR Renewal program, but there is no release planned for Q2/2013.  Instead, we plan what we anticipate will be called Feature Pack 4 in July.  While today, the landing page is focused on the HR Professional role, we intend to make this the landing page for SAP HCM user no matter what your role.  That is, with FP4, we intend to provide content (i.e., “lanes”), focused on the employee and manager roles.  The landing page should be supported on both the NW Portal and Net Weaver Business Client (NWBC) with FP4. We also have additional TCO reduction type enhancements planned.  For example, enhancements to our HCM Processes and Forms framework to allow simple and quick configuration of workflow enabled HCM process, that specify whole data screens (Infotypes in SAP lingo), which are then presented in order. We eventually plan to grant, you existing customers, your wish to have dynamic actions (i.e., ability to trigger additional screen pop-ups depending on data being changed) incorporated, but this will come a little later.  We are looking at extending the mass action functionality, next in the area Organization Management.  We plan continue to expand HR Renewal content in depth and breadth: for example, providing more country content and infotype coverage.

Considering HR in the Cloud? Consider also a SAP/SF Hybrid with HR Renewal

Do you feel like you need to start moving your HCM environment to the cloud but don’t know how, or not ready to do so in one giant leap?  SAP and successfactors offer class leading HCM solutions and the integration too boot.  The hybrid model allows you to leverage your existing investment in SAP Core HCM and start on the path to the cloud with SF solutions, for example, in the area of talent management.  And, we think if you choose the hybrid path that you will also want to leverage HR Renewal to get that consumer grade user-experience across deployment methods.

Where to Find More Information

Obviously, you can find great information here in SCN.  In addition, provided you have access to the SAP Service Marketplace, the SAP Product Availability Matrix (PAM) is a great place to find all kinds of information about SAP products.  For example, the PAM entry for HR Renewal 1.0 can lead you to information about release dates, release notes, installation/master guides, help documentation and more.  Ramp-up Knowledge Transfer (RKT) materials are also available, see “Preview Conent Details & Buy”, then look for “OCHR10 SAP HR Renewal 1.0” in the section for “SAP ERP Human Capital Management”. The Line of Business Roadmaps are also available and can give you an idea about past deliveries if not a look into the near future (note: a more current version of the HR LoB Roadmap should be available at the above link shortly).  Please be on the lookout for more information at an SAP user-event near you soon.  For example, my manager, Jean-Bernard Rolland, will feature HR Renewal in SAPPHIRE Orlando session 14738 titled “Provide a Consumer-Grade User Experience with Human Capital Management”.  ASUG session 1804 - The new HCM On-Premise User Experience (UX) is being presented by my SAP Products counterpart, Alex Mathew.  Also look for Sherryanne Meyer’s presentation at SAPPHIRE , 14733– “Deliver a Renewed HR Experience” based on customer validation testing of FP3.  Customers may also find that their implementation partner can also offer some help regarding upgrades, and specifically HR Renewal.  If not, reach out to your SAP Account Executive and, or Client Partner and they will likely find me.

Thanks!

Robert Moeller

SAP Labs, LLC.

Read, Rebecca Sowards-Emmerd, Onboarding Product Management, blog on the SuccessFactors blog page -

Starting a new job is one of the more emotional experiences someone can go through. Traditional onboarding systems focus on paperwork and process, forgetting about the emotional transition of a new employee. While process efficiencies are important and can save company’s money,...

What is HR Renewal?

HR Renewal is part of SAP's HR core renovation program, which is aimed to boost productivity of HR Professionals and increase HR efficiency.

This program shows SAP’s commitment in investing heavily in core HR on-premise, so that customers can leverage their existing systems, even when SAP is enabling the HCM transition to the cloud.

HR Renewal has many functional and UX improvements. Notable improvements are additional of HR Professional Role, and the new user interface option for (P&F) forms development based on WebDynpro for ABAP.

What is HR Professional Role?

HR Professional role is part of HR Renewal. Following are some of the features:

Role-specific start pages

- Important action items, Frequently used applications (favorites, top-x lists), Collaboration and subscribed feeds, etc.

Easy Web UI

- Selected PA/OM data details, Tailored single activity to edit selective data (e.g., change employee and organizational data attributes), Combined data OM/PA data maintenance for single-step processes (e.g., hiring, transfer, promotion, organizational changes), Mass data change activities (e.g., mass hire, mass change of job assigned to positions)

PA + OM UI Harmonization

- Harmonized navigation pattern across PA and OM (Search, Structure), Harmonize UI for combined data changes, single activities, display data details and mass data changes

User Productivity features

- Save as Draft, Favorites, Recently used

Analytics/Reporting and Data Quality Tools

- Ad hoc reporting, Embedded analytical content directly within applications

Collaboration

- Light-weight collaboration features to allow users to communicate with other users from within the new Web applications about their tasks

Additional interface for HCM P&F

- Design time leverages SAP Floor Plan Manager (FPM) to develop WD ABAP forms, New “start applications” for corresponding WD ABAP forms makes launching forms more efficient (e.g., reduce clicks)

PA + OM UI Harmonization example:

PA change in Employee Profile

OM change in Position Profile

How does the new UI improvements help the users?

The newly redefined navigation helps the users work more effectively and efficiently.

It enables quick navigation with fewer clicks to the content. Information is organized, prioritized and better accessible to the user. Fast data entry aids like cut, copy, paste and user friendly capabilities like search and save as draft provide better usability.

Is the HR Professional Role and HR Administrator Role the same?

No.  HR Administrator role provides the HR users ability to initiate, execute, and check HR processes such as hiring an employee or an organizational reassignment, Edit employees' master data, Manage the Digital Personnel File etc. HR Admin was available to customers prior to HR Renewal.

HR Professional role is new and was released as part of HR Renewal. It has more functionality and has the new improved UI.

What are the minimum requirements to implement HR Renewal?

HR Renewal will require ECC 6.0 and Enhancement Package 6 (EHP6) as a pre-requisite. It is delivered as an “In-advance” or early shipment of Enhancement Package 7 (EhP7).

How do the end users access HR Renewal? NWBC or Enterprise Portal?

HR Renewal could use NetWeaver Business Client or Portal.  In general, NWBC is more obvious choice if all services deployed are built in Webdynpro ABAP. If a customer has a mix of WD Java and WD ABAP services, Enterprise Portal is a better choice. Choice between NWBC and Portal is based on many factors. Non-SAP content published for the users, browser support, branding requirements etc are few.

The Landing page is currently available for NWBC 4.0 only.

Is Netweaver Gateway required for HR Renewal?

Mostly Yes. HR Professional Role is a major new feature in HR Renewal. The new SAP UI5 based Landing Page for HR Professional Role is one of the major UX improvements. The Landing Page requires NW GW to be installed and configured.

However, HR Renewal comes with a lot of updates on other components like ESS\MSS. Customers will immediately benefit from those functionality enhancements even if HR Professional Role and Landing Page are not configured and used. So currently NW GW is not required if HR Professional Role and Landing Page are not used. But this may change in the future when SAP rolls out HTML5 Landing pages for ESS and MSS.

Does Netweaver Gateway require separate licenses?

No. According to SAP, there is no extra license cost for NW GW when it is used only with SAP delivered HR Renewal functionality.

Here are few useful references:

http://scn.sap.com/community/erp/hcm/blog/2012/06/01/new-sap-hcm-functionality--hr-renewal-10

http://scn.sap.com/community/erp/hcm/blog/2012/10/10/sap-new-hr-renewal-functionality-and-roadmap

http://scn.sap.com/community/erp/hcm/blog/2013/05/03/updates-including-fp3-regarding-consumer-grade-ui-for-sap-hcm--hr-renewal

HCM Processes and Forms have gotten some major new improvements in the much promoted HR Renewal 1.0 Add-On. After huge demand from customers, SAP has finally released a whole new Web Dynpro UI for HCM P&F using Floorplan Manager (FPM). This provides an alternative to costly Adobe licenses and skills. For more information on HR Renewal you can check out this FAQ.

Having recently been involved in a pilot project using this exciting new technology, I thought it would be a great opportunity to take a peek under the hood at how easy it is to set up a basic form with the new FPM UI. 

Although editing is done in FPM you don't have to be a FPM guru to create a form and the interface is quite intuitive. So don't be alarmed if this sounds way too technical! The FPM editor is much easier and faster to develop in than Adobe Lifecycle Designer, but the trade-off is that it is a lot more restrictive in terms of layout and scripting.

For this example we’ll create a form which changes the address of an employee.

Design Time Configuration

Configuration is done in the Design Time (Transaction HRASR_DT) to utilize the SAP PA service fields for Infotype 6 – assuming you already know the basics of the HCM P&F Framework.

In order to create the FPM Layout one has to navigate to the Form Node in the HCM P&F Form Scenario Design time.  A form can consist of multiple FPM configurations and these are stored in a table within the node. The order in the table is the order in which they will be displayed.  A dropdown allows users to choose the type of user-interface building blocks (UIBBs) for the FPM configuration.

Currently there are four different types: Form (basic layout), List (used for Infotype repeat fields eg. Infotype 8), List Complex (multiple records on an infotype) and Composite (UIBB grouping).

Since this is an introduction to basic form layouts we’ll be using the Form FPM Configuration type and exploring the other options at a later stage.

Floorplan Manager (FPM) Configuration – Form Layout

Adding Fields to the Layout

The FPM Form Layout editor displays all the Form Scenario fields and buttons within the Repositories area. Buttons are analogous to HCM P&F Events which include the standard User Event Intialize and User Event Check.

In addition to the fields from the Form Scenario three decorative element fields are available in the editor: Formatted Text View, Text View and Explanation.

The Preview area is arranged as a grid of columns and rows and the Layout Type dropdown allows one to divide the Preview area grid. In order to add a field to the Form one simply has to drag and drop it from the Repositories panel to the Preview area or alternatively add it directly from the Form UIBB Schema Area.

In the UIBB Schema the option exists to add Fields to a Group, and it is important to take note that if all Fields in a Group are invisible then the Group will disappear from the layout which allows for the heading of the Group to appear dynamically. This helps you out a bit if you’re used to being able to script text visibilities in Adobe forms with other dependancies.

Formatting Fields and Layout

Once a field has been added to the Preview area it can be moved around using drag and drop or reordered using the Form UIBB Schema table.

Preview area:

UIBB Schema:

Clicking on a Field allows the user to fine-tune the Field attributes, labels and output format. If you've selected the Attributes button then you'll see this at the bottom panel of the editor.

The Display Type allows you to change the field to a dropdown, checkbox, etc. Other important settings to note, is the ability to calibrate the exact starting Rows and Columns of the field on the Preview grid area instead of dragging and dropping. Rows and Columns may span multiples which is useful for text box areas such as your Previous and Current Comments.

Developers who are using the Adobe editor may be wondering, “Where do you set the field visibility and mandatory settings?” Well the good news is that these settings are now fully integrated with the Design Time configuration settings on a Field Attribute and will display appropriately even if you select step dependence - something Adobe forms didn’t quite manage to leverage from the framework.

If you’re used to controlling the Field Attributes dynamically with scripting in Adobe Forms depending on user events there is a new parameter which has been added to the Generic Service BAdI method DO_OPERATION and INITIALIZE to try and compensate for this. This is only available from HR Renewal Feature Pack 2 onwards.

Adding headings, guidance texts and decorative elements is simple to do by dragging a Formatted Text View onto the Preview area. This element can be formatted by using traditional Web Dynpro for ABAP Text View tags or, as of Feature Pack 2, the mini editor in the Attributes of the element.

User Events and Buttons

Adding a button to the form is accomplished by dragging and dropping a Button from the Repositories area onto the Preview.  In this example it would allow the users of the form to refresh the default address data based on the Effective Date entered.

An alternative for this exists by directly linking a Design Time configured event or standard check / intialize event to the field on the attributes. This event will then trigger when the user hits Enter on the field. Although not as robust as the Adobe scripting events which allows for mouse focusing or exiting events, this is still a useful option to keep in mind.

The End Result

Once you’ve done all your customization and layout settings this would be what a very elementary address change form would look like. Not bad for fifteen minutes! 

Of course live forms will always be more complicated than this example, but the intention is to showcase how effortless it is to create a form using the Flexible User Interface Designer (FLUID) editor in FPM.

Stay tuned for more blogs on this exciting new HCM P&F functionality which I plan to cover. Don’t be shy to add your comments!

I have talked to many SAP HCM consultants. Most of them are aware of the changes and confused. SAP has always been about integration but now we hear about hybrid solutions. For example: store the core employee data in SAP HCM and interface with SuccessFactors' functionality of on-boarding, talent management, compensation management. Some companies integrate SAP  finance, production planning, material management, human resources and other functions but what will be the impact of hybrid HR solution. There are many thoughtful questions but few good answers as things are still evolving. Cloud computing is a disrupting technology and has changed HR solutions and in turn the SAP HCM consulting. The consultants need to keep calm, carry on with their current work and understand the new normal proactively

1. Networking - LinkedIn.com provides a good way to stay connected to your contacts. Your connections can offer insight and information that can help you. You can also reciprocate the same.
2. Learning - Twitter.com, Facebook.com, SAP.com and other sites have a lot of information. You can follow industry experts and companies to learn about the trends as well as new detailed information.
3. Certification - Certification is not always required but it can come in handy. Though it might not always be obvious how useful they might be, there is definitely no harm in getting certified.

SAP HCM Consultants (Functional)

The good news is that there are many transferable skills.

1. Leadership, Team work and communication These skills are transferable.
2. Project management This is also transferable with some knowledge of the new system that you are implementing.
   • You can supersize it by getting certified. PMP certification (www.pmi.org/certification)
3. Documentation and testing These skills are transferable though a little system knowledge might be helpful.
4. Business analysis - This skill is transferable. Cloud solution also requires HR processes analysis and requirements gathering.
   • You can supersize it by getting certified. HR certification (www.shrm.org/certification) or Business Analysis certification (www.iiba.org/certification)
5. Gap analysis and configuration - This requires the knowledge of the new system. Understanding the cloud based solution is the key. If you plan to switch to the cloud, then you should take up some training or be a part of a cloud project. There are no courses available to public and training is only provided to the vendors/ system integrators.
   • You can learn more by following people and companies on twitter/ LinkedIn. I have a twitter list that might help to get you started @manishcom/HRTech-SAP_SF_Workday

SAP HCM Consultants (Technical)

There are specific challenges to this role as the cloud solution grows but it provides big opportunities. There will be a lot of work in transition and upgrade projects. But as more and more technical work is outsourced, technical consultants might need to add skills (though this might be a boon to technical consultant where the outsource work is going).

1. Leadership, Team work and communication These skills are transferable.
2. Project management This is also transferable with some knowledge of the new system that you are implementing.
   • You can supersize it by getting certified. PMP certification (www.pmi.org/certification)
3. Documentation and testing These skills are transferable though a little system knowledge might be helpful.
4. Development (Programming): Though the basic programming concepts might be transferable, the detailed coding will not. ABAP programming is SAP's proprietary language.
   • You can move to other SAP module if you would like to continue within SAP environment
   • You can also pursue other upcoming SAP technologies like SAP Mobility and SAP HANA.
   • You can move to cloud solutions and learn the new system by getting trained or being part of a cloud project. There are no courses available to public and training is only provided to the vendors/ system integrators
   • You can learn more by following people and companies on twitter/ LinkedIn. I have a twitter list that might help to get your started @manishcom/HRTech-SAP_SF_Workday

If you have any feedback, please feel free to give your comments here or email manish.thakkar@adept-consultancy.com. I wish you all the best.

This year, I will not be attending ASUG but will be attending the HR2013 conference in Amsterdam.  The Amsterdam conference is scheduled from Jun 10th (Monday) - Jun 13th (Thu).

On Jun 10 th, the following pre-conference sessions are scheduled:

• A detailed guide for leveraging SAP functionality for employee self-service (ESS) and manager self-service by Martin Gillet (Cogilius bvba)
• An introduction to SuccessFactors solutions for HR and their integration with SAP ERP HCM by  Sonja Van Sleeuwen,(SuccessFactors) and Margit Bauer, SAP
• An independent expert’s guide to talent management: Deployment and integration, on-premise and  cloud  by Jeremy Masters (Worklogix)
• The 2013 complete guide to the functionality, updates, and future roadmap for SAP ERP HCM solutions  by Jean-Bernard Rolland, SAP

All four sessions are a great educational opportunity and we can expect to learn something new.

At the Amsterdam conference, I am scheduled to deliver four sessions:

• Guidelines and best practices for creating a world-class appraisal application -- scheduled on Jun 11th , 10.45 AM
• A how-to guide for implementing SAP E-Recruiting globally -- scheduled on Jun 12th , 12.15 PM
• Develop an effective succession planning process using SAP talent management functionality -- scheduled on Jun 13th 10.45 AM
• How to prepare for a SuccessFactors implementation -- scheduled on Jun 13th, 2.45 PM

If you are planning to implement Successfactors , I suggest you attend my session "How to prepare for a Sucessfactors implementation".  In the session, I will walk you through , on what Successfactors offers, how to prepare for a Successfactors implementation, what to watch out for during the implementation, and how you can leverage your current on-premise assets. 

A new Successfactors customer after reviewing the HR 2013 (Amsterdam) agenda, reached out to me few days back, trying to understand if the inputs provided by their SI is accurate.  The customer appeard to be very frustrated with the SI,and we (customer and I) have been exchanging e-mails on how to prepare for the Successfactors implementation, as well what questions you as a customer need to ask your SI. 

If you are attending the Amsterdam conference, do plan to attend my sessions. If you have not decided yet, I strongly urge you consider attending the conference. You can get more details about the conference by clicking on this link http://bit.ly/16Y9eBV

I shall write another post, in a few weeks, where I shall list the sessions that I plan to attend.

Amy Thistle (conference producer) and her team do a truly outstanding job in putting together these conferences - there is something for everyone. If you enjoy socializing with your peers, meet other customers, there is a socializing event every evening in the exhibition floor. Do not forget to pack sufficient number of business cards. Even in this age of LinkedIn's, a business card still carries its value.

I look forward to seeing you at the HR2013 Amstedam conference : http://bit.ly/16Y9eBV

Professional Tax - Maharashtra

& Form16-Summary of Payslip

Component Version: SAP ECC 6.0   Release: 604   Level: 0046       Highest Support Pack level:SAPKE60460

Dear Gurus,

This document comprises the steps for configuring the Professional Tax for Maharashtra. Unlike the other states Maharashtra professional tax will be calculated in a specific manner.

The PTax Slab rates for pertaining Maharashtra are as follows.

In the context of the years 2012-2013 & 2013-2014, the Maharashtra PTax calculation for employees with Income above Rs.10, 001/- will be as follows.

Instead of calculating 2500/12=208.333 it should be calculated as follows

200*11=2200(April-2012 to Jan2013 and March2013) (For Eleven months 200)

300*1=300(February2013) (Eleventh Month of 2012-2013)

Total: 2500 (12 Months)

_________________________________________________________________________

To make this calculation so, it is required to configure the below steps

Step1: SPRO->IMG->Payroll->Payroll India->Professional Tax->Define Professional Tax Grouping Details

Table: V_T7INP1

In this step, we define the personnel area and subarea groupings for Professional Tax (PTax) which are used to group all personnel areas and subareas that contribute to the same professional tax circle.In the below mentioned table enter the PTax Grouping no mention the End Date as 31.12.999 Start Date as 01.04.2012(Any Other effective Date).

1. Enter an alphanumeric value for the group name in thePtGrpfield.

2. Select a state in theRegionfield.

3. Enter the zone number valid for the state of Maharashtra in theZone No.field.

4. Enter the zone number valid for the state of Maharashtra in theDiv. No.field.

5. Enter the registration certificate number in theRegn. Certfield.

6. Enter the professional tax office circle name in theCirc. Namefield.

7. Enter the professional tax office circle number in theOff.CircNofield.

8. Enter the address of the tax office circle by clicking on the address button on the toolbar.

9. Save the entries.

Step2:SPRO->IMG->Payroll->Payroll India->Professional Tax->Assign PTax Groupings for Personnel Areas and Subareas

Table:V_7IN0P_PTX

In this step, we assign professional tax groupings created in the previous step to personnel areas and subareas.Activities

1. 1. Enter a personnel area in thePers.areafield.
2. 2. Enter a personnel subarea in theP.subareafield.
3. 3. Enter a personnel area and subarea grouping for Professional tax that is to be associated in thePS grp.Ptaxfield.
4. 4. Save wer entries.

In this step PS Grouping for Ptax -29 which is defined the previous has to be assigned to the respective personal area.

Step3:SPRO->IMG->Payroll->Payroll India->Professional Tax->Assign Amounts for Professional Tax Deduction

Table: V_T7INP4

In this activity, we assign a Professional Tax (PTax) rate to a slab code. Slabs are salary brackets as specified for a State by the respective State Government or local authority.To assign rates to slab codes for a state MP, we must first define the slab code and then assign serial numbers, maximum limits and the rates.

Example

Step4:SPRO->IMG->Payroll->Payroll India->Professional Tax-> Maintain Method and Form Layout for PTax Groupings

Table: V_T7INP3

In this activity, we assign the calculationmethodused for a slab code in a region and specify the layout of the form to be submitted.

Select the state in theRegionfield.

1 Enter the professional tax slab code name in theSlab codefield.

2. Enter the method or function name for PTax calculations in theMethodfield.

3. Enter the time dependent key entry inT596Ftable to indicate the layout in theForm layoutfield.

4. Enter the start and end dates for the period.

5. Save the entries.Maintaining the Master DataIt is required to maintain the infotype 0588 Other Statutory Deductions (Subtype 0003).

Step6: Process the PayrollUnder the Deduction side, we could see the PTax deducted for that employee as 200 for the months of April-12, May-12......till January-13.For the month of February-2013 the PTax is calculated as 300.

January-2013

February: 2013

Form16-Summary of Payslip

Form16 –Summary –February2013

For the March-2013 month the PTax will be calculated as follows.

Form16 –Summary –March 2013In the month of February 2013 the PTax will calculated as 300.However in the Form16 Summary of the Payslip the aggregate amount of Professional Tax for the entire year will be reflected as 2600 instead of 2500.In the month of March 2013 the PTax will calculated as 200.In the Form16 Summary of the Payslip the aggregate amount of Professional Tax for the entire year will be reflected back as as 2500 instead which is correct..

Related Notes:The related SAP Notes for Maharashtra PTax

Bibliography:Related Links:

1. http://taxguru.in/goods-and-service-tax/new-profession-tax-rates-after-mahrashtra-government-budget.html
2. http://wirc-icai.org/wirc_referencer/indirect%20tax/Profession%20Tax%20Act.htm   

Sincerely

Govardhan Reddy

SAP HCM Consultant

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Disclaimer:This document does not contain thecopyrighted content or material own by others.The coding or technical names used in the configuration screen shots are purely set as just examples and doesn't belongs to the real time systems or material own by others. Any resemblance with the real time system or material own by others is s just a coincidence. The numbering, wording, coding are provided in screen shots are to give better understandings to the forum users. I am fully abide by the rules and regulations of the forum. The prime motive is to serve the forum users better.

             

“My IT team has deployed SAP BI which is providing extensive reporting across our organization. However, I am also looking for an application that is designed for my HR team. Am I running the risk of paying twice for the same tools?”

I regularly get questions on how SuccessFactors Workforce Analytics (WFA) and SAP Business Intelligence (BI) solutions, specifically SAP BusinessObjects BI for Reporting and Analytics are related or different in the context of human resources (HR).  I want to take this opportunity to explain: why traditional BI is not enough, the analytics value chain, how SAP BI solutions and SuccessFactors Workforce Analytics align along the analytics value chain, how they can be compared and contrasted, and how you can use them together to your advantage.

So, Why Is Your HR Organization Struggling?

Like many large enterprise organizations, your company has probably made investments in enterprise business intelligence tools.  This could be SAP BusinessObjects BI, IBM Cognos, Oracle BI, or other.  Yet, many such HR organizations don’t get full benefits from the reporting and analytics capabilities of the BI tools being used elsewhere in the organization.

There are some typical barriers that inhibit HR’s ability to effectively deploy enterprise BI tools.  Some common workforce analytics and planning challenges cited by HR leaders are:

• “Our data is all over the place – we use a Band-Aid to patch together systems”
• “It takes 3 weeks to produce our workforce dashboard – it gets sent out and we start all over again”
• “We want our analysts to be analysts, not building pivot tables or creating VLOOKUPs”
• “We need to be better at telling the story – that starts with credible data and metrics”

In addition, when HR leaders need workforce analytics, reports or calculations, they have to wait behind the Finance, Operations, and Sales departments.

How much of your analyst or HR business partners’ time is spent taking manual “data dumps” from your disparate HR and talent systems into Excel, then cleaning the data and putting into PowerPoint? How does this compare with amount of time spent analyzing the results and telling a compelling story?  One goal of analytics tools should be to get the most out of people’s time, energy, and talents by shifting the percentage of time spent from data assembly and transformation work to higher value-add functions like interpreting information to improve data-driven decision support:

Not All Challenges Are Technical in Nature

Finance, sales and marketing typically have clear standards for measuring and managing their business functions.   In HR, we frequently encounter less consistent metric definitions and fewer standards than are used elsewhere in the organization. Often, HR struggles to identify key performance indicators  (KPI) to measure things that matter, and it ends up tracking metrics that don’t necessarily measure business outcomes.   This results from a lack of analytics mindset (see Analytics - from the World of Finance to the HR Organization) in the HR organization — but this is changing and HR is seeing the impact and the value very rapidly. 

Once they do, the challenge becomes building in-house analytic skills and capabilities in the HR organization. Frustration with current technologies and processes often spurs the need for a best-of-breed approach to workforce analytics and planning. 

Traditional BI is Not Enough

The product rationale behind SuccessFactors Workforce Analytics is that traditional BI is not enough to unlock full value from people-data.   BI technology alone isn’t enough to help determine:

• Which data to analyze?
• How to get/integrate it?
• How to analyze it (metrics)?
• How to interpret it?
• How to react?

Along the Analytics Value Chain

I attended a great presentation by Brian Ong, people analytics manager at Google, at the 2012 Human Capital Institute (HCI) Workforce Planning and Analytics Conference on Case Studies by the Google People Analytics Team.  During this presentation, Brian presented a very simple view of the Analytics Value Chain:

I will use this depiction to position WFA and SAP business warehouse and BI solutions relative to how well they deliver on this analytics value chain out-of-the-box.

Functionality of Key BI Tools for HR

BI tools don’t need much introduction.  They are, according to Wikipedia, “generally designed to retrieve, analyze and report data. The tools read data that have been previously stored, often, though not necessarily, in a data warehouse or data mart.”  BI helps “transform raw data into meaningful and useful information for business purposes.” 

Two important things to point out in these statements: 1) BI tools are generally designed, and 2) the tools by themselves are not smart enough to transform data into meaningful and useful information for business purposes without intervention from resources with expertise.

SAP is positioned as a leader in 2013 Gartner Business Intelligence and Analytics Magic Quadrant and I cannot do justice in this blog to cover even a fraction of its capabilities and benefits it can provide.  Organizations with a strong analytics mindset can utilize the power of BI tools to drive advantage. However, BI tools are not specific to HR, which puts the HR department behind the curve relative to other departments whose needs are better supported.

• Data: HR departments, with the help of IT, can choose to build their own data warehouse or they can deploy a standard business warehouse, such as SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse (SAP NetWeaver BW) or third party warehouse, as the foundation for the data model and then extend this to meet their needs.  If leveraging SAP NetWeaver BW, integrations to SAP for HR and SuccessFactors for Talent Management are available.
  
  
• Metrics: HR departments are typically left on their own, or can solicit help from consultants, to identify KPIs that are important to its organizations.  Once identified, they need to get agreement from all stakeholders on the definitions of these metrics, and then use IT resources to build and roll out the metrics.  To get a jump start, SAP has made available a rapid deployment solution for Executive HR Reporting, which delivers a foundation for visualization leveraging SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards and including over 40 KPIs across HR and talent management processes.
  
  
• Analysis:  The SAP BI solutions provide various tools to enable the analysis process.  SAP has released a framework for HR analysis via a rapid-deploymentsolution for Advanced HR Analysis based on SAP BusinessObjects Analysis edition for OLAP to enable HR analysts and HR Business Partners to explore and assess data visually, drill down to identify the root causes, answer questions, and validate hunches quickly. This solution contains predefined content around headcount, mobility and cost, recruitment, and talent management.
  
  
• Viewers of workforce data are left to their own devices to interpret the information they see and draw their own Insights and determine suitable Actions.  
  

Functionality of SuccessFactors Workforce Analytics for HR

With SuccessFactors Workforce Analytics, HR and business leaders can take advantage of a solution that specifically provides the strategic and tactical insights derived from workforce analytics without having to become data or IT specialists, or having to impart deep HR experience to their IT teams who support the BI environment.  So what does this mean and how is it different from BI? 

WFA comes delivered with libraries of predefined content relevant to HR:

• Data: WFA provides target maps and integrations to bring in raw data into its warehouse in the cloud from any HR and talent management system, whether from the cloud or on-premise.  It can further take in data from other systems including sales, financials, and even external surveys providers.
  
  
                         
  
  Behind the scenes, the WFA transformation engine manages exceptions, fills in logical gaps, and handles organization changes to elevate the quality and credibility of the data that is later used in analysis.   The broad experience in integrating with large enterprise HR systems including SAP, PeopleSoft, and others helps to bring the application up and running in as little as 100 days.
  
  
• Metrics: WFA comes delivered with a library of roughly 2000 predefined metrics focused on topics such as: workforce demographics and diversity, movement into and out of organizations – internal and external,  absence management, career and development planning, compensation planning, employee relations, financial, goals management, health and safety, HR service delivery, learning management, leave accrual, payroll and benefits, performance management, recruitment, succession management, and surveys.
  
  
                      
  Every measure and metric in WFA is comes with a clear definition, formula for how it is calculated, and its purpose to ensure a standard and mutual understanding across all users, as shown in the screenshot above. Each metric definition is complemented with a list of related measures that can assist in providing a more comprehensive view of the situation, and prompt logical next steps for analysis.  This knowledgebase reflects more than 600 person-years of practical and field experience spanning all regions and industries, enabling HR practitioners to learn experientially by simply using the solution.
  
  
• Analysis: WFA provides multiple ways of delivering guided analysis of your workforce to help you discover what questions to ask, find out why they matter, and get answers.  One is Issue Focused Series, where WFA brings together related metrics and focus on very specific issues that are of high interest to organizations. Examples of issues include Aging Workforce, Diversity & Inclusion, Low Tenure Terminations, Internal Mobility, and Workforce Generations.  Another example is Critical Human Capital Questions, where WFA uses question-driven analytics to help answer common and critical human capital questions across HR and talent management topics, with capability to drill down to understand the root cause of trends, hotspots, or inefficiencies. Sample questions include “Do we have a pay-for-performance culture?” or “Are we building a high performance workforce?”
  
  
  
• Insight: Most HR and IT organizations face complexity in assembling and communicating insight.  Managers are time poor and need advice, not more data.BI-based analytics often prompt follow-on questions that are hard to address in a timely manner.  With its latest feature, Headlines, WFA continually mines HR and talent data across the organization and behind the scenes, finds pain points and hot spots that matter to each manager, and presents custom alerts to individual managers in common language, to highlight specific areas of concern. This is a very different tact from pushing dashboards, however sophisticated, and leaving the audience to its own device to read and interpret the charts and graphs.
  
  Headlines takes this further to describe what could be contributing to the condition, other related items that should be given consideration, recommendations on how to address the situation, as well as predictive analytics to identify who else may be at risk.  Headlines (video) is clearly a differentiator from typical BI tools as it helps managers understand the situation as it is happening, pre-empts questions, provides advice and guidance, and focuses and facilitates dialog to address issues.
  
  
  
  WFA also enables you to benchmark yourself against your peers to identify gaps, build business cases, and take action.  Benchmarks are available across metrics and topic areas for all users of the application, and can provide comparisons within your organization, as well as to others using the WFA solution.  This is typically a service that is only offered by third party providers.
  
  
• Action:  Where relevant, WFA provides recommendations for action from the best practice “strategy bank,” which is based on years of field research and domain expertise.   WFA also provides quick links and actions where it makes sense from employee-level detail to navigate directly to relevant areas in the SuccessFactors suite to take action.
  

Comparison of SuccessFactors Workforce Analytics with SAP BI Solutions

There are other ways of comparing and contrasting the solutions as outlined below:

How SAP BusinessObjects BI Solutions and SuccessFactors Workforce Analytics Work Together

Now that we’ve talked about how they’re different, let’s briefly talk about how WFA fits together with other analytic solutions:

In a side-by-side deployment, you can extend utilization of HR metrics from SuccessFactors WFA by allowing consolidation with cross enterprise reporting, to be presented via enterprise scorecards and dashboards to increases visibility into workforce trends, risks, and opportunities. 

This can help accelerate the correlation and analysis of workforce characteristics against data from other parts of enterprise, and gain insights into how investments in talent are impacting business outcomes.

When talking about SuccessFactors Workforce Analytics, note the emphasis and attention on HR and content delivered out-of-the-box, as opposed to technology talk.  While many of the WFA capabilities can be replicated on top of an enterprise BI platform, doing so comes with a very long implementation timeframe and at a very high cost.

So, in answer to the question, “WFA or BI?”, I say— SAP BusinessObjects BI Solutions and SuccessFactors Workforce Analytics.

Hi,

I have maintained X no. of hours in one attendance type, after running the time evaluation those X no. of hours should process in a time wage type. Can any one of you tell me where can we assign the time wage type to attendance type.

Regards

Bharathi

I’m excited to see Seth Godin tomorrow when he speaks at the ASUG-SAPPHIRE keynote address. His book Poke the Box is a epithet for what I do each  year at this annual conference: listen, examine, poke, prod, question, challenge and try to influence the shape of the technology I am now using or will be using in the next five to ten years.

Tomorrow, I will be speaking about my recent experiences inmaking an  impact on the usability features of SAP HCM when I speak about Customer Validation of HCM Renewal 1.0,Feature Pack 3, which is now released by SAP for general availability.

This morning, I participated in the pre-conference,“SuccessFactors Employee Central, Cloud Payroll, and Integration to ERP”.   Employee Central takes what is best out of SAP’s strengths in localization and globalization and applies it to the best usability features of SuccessFactors. There were a few features I was just itching to get my hands on. Take, for example, the ability for a manager to initiate a change in an employee without having to know about the object,  Position.”  He/she can execute the change simply by providing the necessary information. There is no need for the manager to know there is a position in the background. This is genius. We have long struggled with how to educate managers on the importance of the Position and what that data element means – both separate from the employee record and in relationship to the employee record.

Yet, many tquestions remain n my mind about SAP HCM on premise and SAP SuccessFactors (HCM cloud).  At the moment, the "full cloud" HCM deployment appears to be a cornucopia of SAP, EC and partner solutions.  Flash back to a time when we had multiple vendors and separate and disparate systems that did not talk to each other in a synchronous language or real time.  We in the HCM Community have often joked, "The good thing about SAP is that it's fully integrated.  The bad thing about SAP is that it is fully integrated."  What if we got what we asked for -- that is, less integration -- and really did not want that to begin with?

Moreover - what intrigues me about the cloud versus on premise model is this:  Is the cloud model merely prettier than what we're used to seeing in on-premise?  What's the value equation?  I heard enough confused attendees at this morning's pre-conference to know that the attraction is the UI of SuccessFactors.  But - what if your on-premise solution could have the same or similar UI?  And I do believe that's possible with EhP6, HCM Renewal 1.0, Feature Pack 3.  Trouble is - no one is selling that as hard as SuccessFactors software; so, sometimes it's a little bit harder for customers to sift thru the muck to find what is actually best for their own company:  full cloud, full on-premise or hybrid?

It's a complicated puzzle to solve.  None of us have all the answers.  But, I'm confident that together,  in our community of HCM users, we will ask the right questions, challenge the status quo, and generally influence the future course that SAP/SuccessFactors charts.  In the meantime, I plan to use the next four days to soak up information, reconnect with colleagues and friends, and generally come away with more ways to "poke the box" with SAP.

Summary

Aspect contains a code that represents an aspect. An aspect is a tool that allows you to filter out, or restrict, which infotypes you may define when working with an object. Using aspects is optional.

Aspects enable you to create and edit your data in the system from a certain point of view. This means you are able to control which plan versions, object types and infotypes are relevant, and thus offered for editing. The screen layout of the maintenance transactions depends on this allocation.

Example

Information (i.e. infotypes) of the aspect "job description" is not used in the aspect "Organizational development" and can therefore be excluded from the processing

Maintain Aspects

Maintain the system settings which are required for setting up aspects.

1. Define the required aspects.

You can create as many aspects as you like. There are no naming conventions for the aspect name.

1. Assign these aspects to your plan versions.
2. Assign object types and infotypes to the aspects.

SAP IMG: Personnel Management - Global Settings in Personnel Management -  Dialog Control – Maintain Aspects

Fig.01: Display IMG-1

Go to new entries  for Maintain Aspects

Fig.02: New Entries: Overview of Added Entries-1

Once maintained save  the request, here in this case, ZTGA – ZTG Aspect is created

Maintain Plan Versions per Aspect

Plan Version contains a one or two alphanumeric key which differentiates between scenarios in the organizational plan. Organizational Management allows to manage scenarios in parallel in various plan versions.

SAP IMG: Personnel Management - Global Settings in Personnel Management -  Dialog Control – Maintain Aspects

Select the Aspect created and choose the “Plan Versions per Aspects” in the Dialog Structure in the left-side

Fig.03: Change View: “Plan Versions per Aspect”: Overview

Go to new entries   to Maintain Plan Version per Aspects

Fig.04: New Entries: Overview of Added Entries-2

Once maintained save  the request, here in this case, ZTGA – ZTG Aspect is assigned to 01 – Current plan version

Object Types and Infotypes per Aspect

Object Type contains a one- or two-character code that represents different types of objects, for example, 'S' for position, 'Q' for qualification and 'E' for business event.

Infotype contains a code that represents a specific infotype. Infotypes allow you to describe object attributes.

Fig.05: New Entries: Overview of Added Entries-3

As shown in Fig.05, select the required Aspect to maintain respective object types and infotypes and double-click “Object Types and Infotypes per Aspect” in the Dialog structure from left-side.

It will open a screen shown as in Fig.06

Fig.06: Change View “Object Types and Infotypes per Aspect”: Overview

For new entries as shown in Table.01, Object Types and Infotypes are maintained for Aspect ZTGA – ZTG Aspect

Table.01: List of Object Types and Infotypes per Aspect

Go to new entries  to Maintain Object Types and Infotypes per Aspects.

Maintain entries as shown in Fig.07.

Fig.07: New Entries: Overview of Added Entries

Once maintained save   the request.

Here it completes the configuration for Aspects.

Maintain User Profile Parameter

Once configuration completes system administrator should maintain user’s profile in parameter with ASP for Aspects.

Here in this case user profile maintain in parameter ASP as ZTGA.

Maintain required user profile as shown in Fig.08

Fig.08: Maintain User Profile

Here it completes maintenance of user profile for Aspects.

Go to Tcode PP01 to find the changes of Aspect ZTGA – ZTG Aspect

Access Tcode PP01

Fig.09: SAP Easy Access

Once the user whose profile is maintained with parameter ASP – ZTGA, enter into Tcode PP01, Object Type field will be listed with only those Infotypes for Object Types maintained in Aspect ZTGA – ZTG Aspect.

Users Access is restrict as per the Aspect, it is accessible for only those Object Types with respected infotypes per Object Type.

Example

As per the Aspect ZTGA – ZTG Aspect:

If Object Type O – Organizational unit is selected, then there are only three infotypes maintained i.e. 1000 – Object, 1001 – Relationships and 1002 – Description.

If Object Type C - Job is selected, then there are only two infotypes maintained i.e. 1000 – Object and 1002 – Description.

If Object Type S - Position is selected, then there are only two infotypes maintained i.e. 1000 – Object and 1001 – Relationships.

Maintain Object Type O

Fig.10: Maintain Object-1

As shown in Fig.10 select Object Type O – Organizational unit

Fig.11: Maintain Object-2

As per the Aspect ZTGA - ZTG Aspect, once Object Type O – Organizational unit is select, then there are only three infotypes maintained i.e. 1000 – Object, 1001 – Relationships and 1002 – Description.

User has no permission to maintain any other infotype for Object type selected.

Maintain Object Type C

Fig.12: Maintain Object-3

As per the Aspect ZTGA - ZTG Aspect, If Object Type C - Job is selected, then there are only two infotypes maintained i.e. 1000 – Object and 1002 – Description.

Maintain Object Type S

Fig.13: Maintain Object-4

As per the Aspect ZTGA - ZTG Aspect, If Object Type S - Position is selected, then there are only two infotypes maintained i.e. 1000 – Object and 1001 – Relationships.

Toggle between Aspects

It is possible to toggle between Aspects from Tcode PP01, follow Fig.14 and Fig.15 to select the required Aspect as per the requirement

Fig.14: Maintain Object-5

Fig.15: Select Aspect

I have implemented global SAP HR projects for almost 15 years. During this time, very little has changed with HR and SAP HR. There were some cosmetic changes (HR to HCM) and some incremental changes (seeing your manager's goals and setting your own goals for the year). I always felt some gap in HR/ HR systems as compared to consumer technology. For example: Why not email a photo, taken using a ubiquitous cell phone, of required document than faxing? How can the world of HR use the technological innovation? My tipping point came when I watched the movie 'Moneyball'.

'Moneyball' (the movie and the book) is about how Billy Beane, the General Manager of Oakland Athletics', rebuilt his baseball team on a lean budget using data analysis in selecting his players. He did not believe in the traditional scouting method. Nor did he believe in many of the player statistics as they did not correlate to their real performance. He used new player metrics (Sabermetrics) developed by Bill James that showed the true contribution and skills of the player. The results were astounding. Oakland Athletics created history in 2002 by winning 20 straight games, an accomplishment unheard of but what was fascinating is that his team had the lowest payroll. Boston Red Sox, understanding what Billy Beane had done, copied the approach. They went on to win the World Series in 2004 after a gap of 86 years!

US baseball's origin can be traced back to 18th century, and the 'World Series' started in 1903. Traditional scouting techniques seemed the only way to find baseball talent. Bill James saw the inherent flaws in this technique and started to write about it, but baseball insiders couldn't see it. Computers became available to do data analysis and crunch number and showed that Bill's assessment made sense, but still the insiders refused to see the facts objectively. Finally, Billy came and executed on new model using technology. Now, why are we discussing this and what does this have to do with HR or HR systems like SAP HR?

Introduced around 1995, Core SAP HR hasn't changed much. Since then, Steve Jobs came back to Apple and created iPhone. Mark Zuckerberg left college to create 'Facebook'. Jack Dorsey lead 'Twitter'. During this people-centered technological upheaval, SAP HR was just tweaked. I think most of the other systems are very similar and essentially execute the same HR processes, maybe slight differently. It seems that HR itself, as a function, has changed very little. Most data collected by HR drives administrative processes. Statistics and analytics that come from this data can not drive talent management or employee engagement. HR talks about building teams all the time, but how do you measure success of team building programs? How to measure what employees do differently if they become good team players? HR talks about employee engagement. How can it find out the degree of employee engagement? The lack of data and data models prevents HR from measuring key skills of the employees. But the same employees create an unbelievable amount of data when they leave the office. They tweet millions of messages every day post thousands of picture and posts on social media sites like Facebook. How can this phenomenon of creating and sharing data, willingly, be replicated for work, in the context of an office, a company ?

Big data, social media, cloud computing and mobile connectivity are going to help bring about HR transformation. HR has to rebuild itself from the bottom up. HR can analyze social data, provided by employees using their mobile devices, to improve personal productivity and lead the use of wearble computing which leads to higher company profits.

- Mobile devices enable employees to capture data easily and efficiently

- Mobile social apps help capture the relevant data

- BigData/ Analytics helps crunch and analyze this data (collected by crowdsourcing)

- Cloud computing makes this analysis/ feedback available anywhere, anytime

- Wearable computing (like Google Glass)

The dreams of HR visionaries can become reality as the technologies have converged. It's time for HR professionals to understand technology to see what moon shots are now possible. It's time for HR professionals to become the 'Billy Beane' of a company. They have to build new HR systems that captures more relevant data, engages employees,  predicts true talent and directly impacts company's bottom-line. It's not a time for incremental changes, it's not a time for just a little transformation. It's time to rebuild HR from the ground up using all the technology we have. It's time for a new 'RebuildHR' Manifesto.

To be continued...

=========================================================================================

Acknowledgements:

Wikipedia, Billy Beane, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Beane (as of May 13, 2013, 19:11 GMT).

Wikipedia, Bill James, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_James  (as of May 13, 2013, 19:14 GMT).

IMDB, Moneyball, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1210166/ (as of May 13, 2013, 22:00 GMT).

Wikipedia, History of baseball in the United States, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_baseball_in_the_United_States (as of May 15, 2013, 02:45 GMT).

Special thanks to Martix Rexroad for his insight and feedback.

SAPPHIRENOW/ASUG is in the books for 2013.  Having finally digested all of the pudding cups, fruit, and fluorescent margaritas, I think I'm now ready to make sense of the torrent of information I saw.  There will be plenty of analysis  discussing SAP as a whole, so for the most part my remarks will be limited to the HCM space.  However I do want to comment that I came away with the sense that the morale of the SAP employees and partners I talked to was very strong.  Much like team members all enjoying being part of a team that is on a winning streak.  This is a marked contrast to 3-4 years ago when SAP seemed stuck in a rut living off its past glory.  No more.

Due to the amount of information, I have decided to break the content into 2 blogs.  Today, we'll cover OnPremise HCM and I'll post the Cloud (i.e., SuccessFactors) in the next few days.

On to the HR space...

Core HCM

• Major initiatives are underway in SAP HCM on-premise.  The SAP team has 150 developers hard at work making quarterly updates and the progress shows.  As a side note, SAP acknowledged that one of the key drivers behind investing in the refresh of its core HCM UI was that it did not compare favorably when core HCM applications were integrated in portal environments with the talent management applications from SuccessFactors.  Ironic that it took the acquisition of a cloud company to make SAP step up its game, but the massive install base for core HCMwill be a happy with the results whatever the impetus.
• From an HCM Renewal standpoint, the "swim lane" landing page for HR Administrators that has wowed customers is in the process of being updated so that it can be used for ESS and MSS as well.  The end-goal here is that this UI can be used regardless of what role you play in the organization and that users will be able to populate the lanes with whatever content they desire, including some social content.  The new ESS/MSS content will be delivered in July in a quarterly feature pack.  An under-reported benefit of the swim lane page is that it can render on smartforms/tablets, which means that SAP is delivering mobile-capable UI.  However, given the size of the page, "mobile-capable" probably refers more to tablets than smartphones.  Also of note is that customers will be able too build out their own additional swim lanes using Eclipse.
• We learned that SAP is also developing full ESS/MSS mobile portals, with the prototype name of "Work Deck". There was no official timeframe for these. No word on if additional licensing costs are involved, but I suspect if they are following the same model of just creating mobile-enabled web pages as opposed to developing applications for specific devices, then the answer is probably 'no'.  Of course, in order to access the mobile portal customers would need to decide how to either expose the web page to the internet or install VPN on devices.
• In a big and somewhat surprising development, a new HTML5 org chart visualization is being created to replace the Nakisa-developed flash version currently in use in MSS for the HR Renewal home page.  This will be delivered in July.  The likely rationale behind the switch is that the flash UI does not render on mobile devices.  The new org chart will be available within the swim lane UI and as a standalone application.
• For the first time that I can recall we have interesting SAP Payroll user interface news!  A new web-based payroll manager workbench is in the planning stages.  It is being built to help payroll managers manage the entire payroll process from a web front end, with reports and alerts. 
• Also on the payroll front, one of the key areas that SAP is planning to use HANA for in HCM is payroll reconciliation.  To do this, the payroll data is being "de-clustered" during post-processing to enable HANA to work its in-memory magic. The reconciliation processing time will be reduced from a few hours to a few minutes--making it more likely that your payroll administrators will make it home in time for dinner. The "de-clustering" is being rolled out country-by-country in order to ensure that the process is working properly.  One side note: the core employee calculation process is not going to be altered to optimize for HANA as this presented too many risks.

That's it for now.  I'm sure if I made any material misstatements in the above our friends at SAP will provide any corrections.

One of the best SAP HCM conferences of the year is nearly upon us in one of my favourite cities, Amsterdam.  HR2013 Amsterdam promises to be an exciting and informative event and is a great opportunity to get answers to your questions, but also to find out what the latest information is on SAP HCM.  There is a lot of confusion right now around on-premise, cloud, UI/UX, and mobile.

From my perspective, the biggest questions and clarity is needed around SuccessFactors integration.  Although I know that the answers exist, this information is not feeding down to customers.  Recently I’ve had two customers who didn’t know that the first integration package (iFlow) for SAP HCM and SuccessFactors could use SAP NetWeaver PI.

Customers are also confused about the position of on-premise versus Cloud, as well as about HR Renewal versus SuccessFactors. Sam Yen (via Jon Reed on this great blog about Fiori by Graham Robinson) recently specified the overall UX strategy of New, Renew, and Enable. However, this message is fairly new and as of yet hasn’t penetrated customers significantly.

In addition to learning about these topics, HR2013 is also a great opportunity to speak to fellow customers and to consultants about the latest topics and to get informal advice from experienced people who have gone through or are going through similar projects to you.

Top Sessions

There are plenty of demo sessions of SuccessFactors as well as sessions on SAP’s roadmap and strategy for both core HR and Cloud. If you need to know more then you have a number of great sessions to attend.  For the pre-conference day on Monday 10^th June I would recommend all sessions.  I think which ones you choose are down to which topics are of most interest to you.

Tuesday 10^th sees the conference “proper” start and prior to the kick-off is the keynote with David Ludlow, Group Vice President, Product Marketing, SAP Cloud and Jessica Kane, Vice President, Global Business Execution Architecture, SuccessFactors.  Following this are several sessions that I recommend, in particular Jeremy Masters’ session at 12:15 that received a lot of plaudits when he delivered it at HR2013 Las Vegas.  JB’s session at 10:45 will give you an overview of what enhancements are due in both on-premise and cloud, as well as clarify some questions around SAP’s strategy for HCM.

For Wednesday 11^th there are a number of interesting sessions, including two panel discussions:

Thursday 12^th sees the final day of the conference but there are still some great sessions to see:

Ask The Experts

The Ask The Experts sessions give customers and consultants the possibility to ask their burning questions to SAP employees and SAP HCM experts.  This year again sees a great list of experts to speak to, with plenty on offer in terms of SuccessFactors and Talent Management.  On Tuesday 11th June you can speak to:

On Wednesday 12^th June you can speak to:

Shameless Plug

I will be part of 3 sessions, two which I have already mentioned above. These are all interactive discussions as this is a format that I really enjoy and allows customers and consultants to drive the content of the session.

Summary

This conference, although not as good as its Stateside equivalent, is still the best SAP HCM conference in Europe and I highly recommend it for any customers or consultants who couldn’t make it to Las Vegas this year. There are always plenty of informative sessions and it is also an opportunity to ask your questions of true SAP HCM experts and SAP executives.  It is also an opportunity to meet up with other SAP partners and vendors that you deal with.

Hi All,

An Employee’s current salary is 1234 AED ()Payroll Period is 01.02.2013 To 28.02.2013)

He applied for a leave for vacation on 15^th February and he got the Advance Leave Payment of 1234 AED for March Month.

His vacation starts on 3^rd March and end on 27^th March

But on 26^th February he got an increment of 2345 AED.

While running the payroll for March month system is unable to calculate the difference amount.

Why is it so?

For this pls provide some solution.

Whether we need to do some configuration.

Kindly Help...........

Hi All,

While running tha payroll i am getting the error " Posting balance is not cleared (Off-Cycle Payroll Run B 0 12.05.2013 A)

All the GL A/c and Symbolic A/c are assigned properly. When i am trying to trouble shoot for one employee, some other employees are getting impacted.

One more thing if i fix this issue for one employee for the previous month payroll, i am getting the same issue for the same employee for the current month payroll.

the employees who are falling in this error category in previous month payroll run, they mayn't be fall in the same error category while running the current month payroll.

Pls provide some solution to fix this issue.

There are never enough hours in the day, so I’m all for anything that frees me up to concentrate on the strategic stuff. But I was quite taken aback by the theme of SuccessFactors’ latest 20 Minute Masterclass: “Collecting HR metrics is a complete waste of time”. I tuned in, anticipating that I’d leap to defend all the KPIs we measure and monitor on a regular basis. But it turns out we’ve fallen into the same trap as many other companies.

We drew up our original list of indicators by canvassing all the various business functions, and it’s grown organically year on year. Every quarter, I send out a substantial PDF, packed with charts and graphs, that provides a retrospective view of our performance. I did a quick straw poll round the office and it appears that very few people have the stamina to read it all, let alone interpret it and make decisions based on its findings. So why are we bothering?

According to the webinar, we can get back on track by mapping out our organisational strategy on a single sheet of paper (yes, just one).  Apparently, this helps to narrow the focus on what the board needs to know about our performance, rather than what we think might be interesting or simply a box-ticking exercise.

Another nugget of wisdom was that our annual Employee Engagement survey, at 32 questions long, needs to be torn up and replaced with just three questions.  One quantitative – simply “to what extent would you recommend the company as an employer to your friends” – to create a kind of net promoter score, plus a couple of open-ended ones to tease out some useable insight. And rather than surveying everyone annually, we should be sampling 10% of our workforce on a rolling monthly basis.

Lastly, we need to simplify our presentation of the results back to the business. Metrics don’t tell a story by themselves – or reliably inform important decisions.  So I’ll be lifting another tip from the webinar and taking a more journalistic approach: a headline that sums up the most critical issue, a strong visual, and a compelling narrative that focuses 20% on where we’ve been and 80% on where we need to go.

It might not take me any less time to compile than the chunky PDF I normally send out, but as Einstein says, not everything that counts can be counted. All I know is that when it comes to KPIs, less is often more valuable. It’s how relevant they are that matters.

Register for the Recruiting Webcast with Expedia on June 5, 2013.

Hear Jeremy Langhans, Talent Acquisition Manger at Expedia, share details about how they increased traffic to their career pages by 1,500% and attracted more than 150,000 visitors per month by using SuccessFactors Recruiting Marketing. Participants will learn how they:

• Exponentially increased career site traffic
• Reduced hiring agency fees by more than $1 million
• Made sharper decisions with advanced analytics
• Closely aligned recruiting efforts with business goals

Registration link: http://bit.ly/10VV4u4