Organizational Management: Organizational Charts
A very common request raised by organization’s Human Resources department is presenting the organizational structure in a graphical formation. Unfortunately, the standard tools offered by SAP for organizational visualization are very simple and extremely inadequate and therefore there is a place to examine third-party organizational chart software packages. These tools can retrieve data from SAP HCM.
Common tool’s requirements:
- Present the reporting structure between organizational objects, especially between positions and/or employees
- Additional information should be presented for each element in the structure, such as: position title, employee name, organizational assignment, cost center, employee’s photo, vacancy indicator, special mark for supervisors, etc.
Main Software packages:
- OrgChart by Nakisa. This software is the one offered by SAP
- OrgPublisher by Aquire
- OrgPlus by Human Concepts
- OrgManager by Ingentis
SAP Organizational Visualization by Nakisa:
This software package offers the best and most comprehensive solution for organizational visualizations.
Alternative solution:
All these third-party applications in general, and the one offered by Nakisa in specific, present a full solution for organizational visualization, however they all require separate licensing.
There is an alternative solution, which many organizations disregard – using Microsoft Visio Organization Chart. You may find it hard to believe the amazing results that can be achieved by using this tool.
If any of you want to get additional information about this solution, you may contact me and I will guide you.
Liran Azury
Senior SAP ERP HCM Consultant
[Rating the blog will be appreciated]
First of all, a bit of background and disclosure before my comment ... a large proportion of my day job is implementing SAP Org Visualization Solutions by Nakisa (SOVN) and I have been a technical lead in several past roles which saw me advising on and implementing solutions based on / involving MS Office products, including Visio.
I think it is worth stressing the difference between the types of things you are comparing. You note that the non-Visio options "present a full solution". The difference is therefore potentially highly significant and whilst I entirely agree that in some circumstances perhaps all that is required to meet an organisation's basic requirement to visualise their org structure is perhaps something like a regular data export and a scripted option on a PC/server/VM to process the data and produce one or more charting diagrams from a tool like Visio, I wouldn't personally (and this is purely my personal view) put it in the same league as the "main software package" solutions.
SOVN for example actually includes four system modules; just one of which (SOVN OrgChart) is for charting the organisational structure (the others provide ways to audit HCM data, model your structure and write changes back to SAP and to access team management functions). Anyone wanting more information on SOVN can of course find out more in the SAP Organizational Visualization by Nakisa and SAP Talent Visualization by Nakisa space.
SOVN OrgChart can be configured to visualize an organisational structure in real time and it provides an intuitive and interactive way for users to navigate the chart and access additional information about org units, positions and employees. Users can focus in on specific areas or zoom out and just expand on strands of the structure they are interested in. SOVN OrgChart includes search capabilities that can search on data not necessarily shown in the chart and you can export chart snap shots and chart collections (via an option known as ChartBook). There's even a mobile application (OrgHub for Mobile) that easily extends access to the charts and searches for users who need such access on the move. There are of course a whole range of configuration options available as standard and where required, bespoke customisations can be made.
So yes, there are going to be significant differences in the licensing/costs, but there are also significant differences in the functionality and strategic benefit of Visio versus the other solutions (such as SOVN OrgChart). As I said above, I do agree that for some organisations perhaps Visio can quickly and easily meet a very basic need, but I think for the majority of organisations using SAP something more sophisticated and strategic can bring far more benefit.
I think it would be useful to see a comparison in your post of what using Visio with your approach would provide versus the org structure charting features of each of the other solutions. A ball park pricing comparison could also be included.
Regards,
Stephen.
I'd like more information on the Visio Org Chart option. Is this a Visio Add In offered by SAP or something else?
Well, I will say this is really a value addition instead, but now the issue is even if an end customer go ahead with Nakisa, extra license is required and that will be a quite doubtful area to proceed with it 🙂 .. Even when we have standard OM in place as you stated above there are quite issues on deriving a proper report out of it and further calls for development