Here’s to 2013 and Employee Central !!!

It’s the end of the year, time to do some reflecting as I try my best to finish off some open marketing projects and make sure I don’t miss the last shipping date with Amazon. Looking back, here are some great impressions that I have from 2013:

Customers – We are winning our customers over. I used to work for a company where we gave everything away for free. When you give things away for free, you would expect that there would be no lack of customers willing to sing your praises, doing testimonials and sharing their successes with others. Nope. Surprise! The reason: enterprise companies don’t want to admit that they are using a free product. I can understand that.

For the record, Employee Central is not free. You all know that, but I better be clear. And we have enterprise customers who are really happy and willing to share their stories, like Sun Communities, WorkForce Software and others here on our customer story page. They are singing our praises!

SuccessFactors/SAP people – Where do I begin? There’s Andrew, our facilities manager, who knows everyone by their first name and calls me “sista.” Yeah, that’s right. Our product management leaders are Thomas Otter, who introduced himself in a Webinar recently as a Mamil (middle-aged man in lycra), Joachim Foederer, who I suspect does NOT wear lycra, and Murali Mazvanchery, who can talk for hours on the Employee Central road map. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention all the external experts out there who provide expertise on Employee Central and SAP ERP HCM on a daily basis – folks like Luke Marson, Jyoti Sharma, and Chris Paine. All are veterans in this space, but they are kind enough to take the time out to help a newbie (like me) learn about what they are doing.

So much work was done in preparation for the HR Tech and SuccessConnect in Las Vegas. True teamwork ensued when we were tasked to develop not one but three videos with only a few weeks’ notice. I remember being on vacation in Seattle and madly typing a creative brief while waiting for my rental car. It was all worth it, because we now have this plus two other awesome videos to share.

Then there is Employee Central. I’m going to tell you why it’s superior from the perspective of a user (me):

First, there’s the personalized home page. The home page is the single point of entry for me. Gone are the days where I have to hunt down e-mails from HR or go to some server to get information. Everything is right here through Employee Central.

A day in my life with Employee Central involves the following:

• – To-do tile – This lists compliance training that I must complete.
• – Links organization chart tile – I use this all the time to quickly come up to speed on who’s who in the company.
• – SAP Jam – My one-stop shop for info on any project or group. Internally we call them Jam sites. From Employee Central, I am already logged in and can quickly view updates that occur on any Jam site that I am a part of. Content such as videos and files are easily uploaded, and the polling feature is the quickest way to get an answer to a burning marketing question. Good-bye e-mail and “reply to all”!

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I know folks have seen our “marketing-approved” Employee Central home page, so I thought I would show you mine. Uh yes, I better get started on my to-do list . . . it’s due 12/22.

I can’t end the year’s wrap-up without dropping a few hints on what to expect for 2014. Let’s just say, we will continue to be the leader in globalization. We will be launching new products and innovating further on existing features. And expect more stories from our happy customers! Best wishes this holiday season!