SuccessFactors- 1408 Release-Employee Central Service Center – this is not your parent’s helpdesk
It’s debatable whether or not Plato was the first to say, “necessity is the mother of invention”, but regardless of who takes the credit for this statement, I wholeheartedly agree! Employee Central Service Center is a perfect example of a new solution from SAP for Cloud HR/SuccessFactors that was developed out of necessity.
Employees turn to HR on a daily basis to resolve employee related issues such as paycheck inquiries, career planning, performance reviews or employee relations. To assist employees in getting answers, HR operations rely on numerous sources ranging from paper and electronic company policies, guides, scripts, HR experts – even sticky notes!
Traditionally, the solutions available to support HR operations have not been specifically designed to solve the unique needs of HR. Until now – ta da! Employee Central Service Center.
Simply said, it’s a central place for employees and HR service representatives to view, request, store, share, organize, and prioritize all HR related issues and information. Dare I say…help desk? Well, if the shoe fits! Employee Central Service Center is a help desk for everything HR related, but it’s NOT your parent’s help desk, here are the top 3 reasons it’s different:
- It’s developed specifically for HR organizations –with workflows and privacy features that are HR-centric.
- It’s designed for employees and HR service representatives – we built it to support both sides of the organization with a consumer grade UX.
- It’s integrated in Employee Central – one sign on, one seamless experience.
Beautiful and easy to navigate user experience for employees and HR service providers.
An “Ask HR” button on every page for employees’ immediate access to the EC Service center, where they review info or status and create a new ticket.
Don’t take my word for it, here are a few quotes from our beta testers—key customers we worked closely with to finesse this innovative solution before launch:
“This is very, very nice. The home screen that you showed at the beginning with all of the activities available in one screen – I can see how easy it would be to train an agent how to use it.”
And my favorite…“This is really cool.” Yeah, I agree, and so would Plato.
Check out the new video.
Woww! simply awesome..This would actually make the life of the HR's much happier and simpler.
That's the idea! Thanks for your feedback!
SAP has struggled in the past when they have tried to "repurpose" existing technology and make it "HR Centric" in this space with CRM Employee Interaction Center and the Shared Service Framework for HR. Given that this offering is based on Service on Demand and "integrated" with Employee Central I will have see it under the covers before I am sold this is a solid offering as I am very familiar having done 10+ implementations of SAP Shared Services offerings (SAP ERP EIC) to multiple large clients and want to see if it address the major gaps that customers have in this space that I have repeated talked to SAP product management about.
Hi Jarret,
Let's discuss your concerns -- I'll set up a meeting with meeting with you. Thanks for your input, as always.
Carrie
Hi Eva,
Does it absolutely require employee central or can it be used with just talent side of SuccessFactors? Looks to me very much like an HCP portal site embedded as per an extension... So perhaps Employee Central not needed? Or does it rely on some additional MDF objects?
With be sure to chat to you about it at SuccessConnect.
Cheers,
Chris
Hi Chris - Yes, Employee Central is a prerequisite for this solution. If a customer does not have EC but wants to have an employee ticketing solution, SAP Cloud for Service is definitely an option. Chris Paine - feel free to drop me a line to discuss (Carrie.lande@sap.com)
At first glance, this functionality looks fantastic! Definitely something I'm interested in seeing in more detail. The UI is definitely very appealing and the integration is obviously a big advantage. I'm excited by the prospect that this may in fact prove to be the answer to my current challenge of finding a suitable "helpdesk" tool that isn't completely IT-focused.
Hi Nikki - We're glad that you like it! Please feel free to drop your account manager or me a line if you want to discuss your requirements - carrie.lande@sap.com
Thanks for sharing this info, Eva Woo.
Since it has been months since this was posted, may I know whether there is a change on EC being a pre-requisite for HR Service Centre? My customer is interested with the product but not keen on getting EC at this point (core HR is in SAP).
Carrie Lande mentioned that SAP Cloud for Service, what are the differences between the two products?
Hope to hear from you soon.
Thanks.
Best Regards,
Grace
Hi Grace,
there is no change that EC is a pre-requisite for the EC Service Center. As Carrie mentioned earlier if your customer has no EC yet the Cloud for Service could be an option. EC Service Center is build on top of the Cloud for Service solution and is designed for the usage in HR Service Centers. Customer without EC but using e.g. SAP HR onPremise can use Cloud for Service as an employee ticketing solution.
Best regards
Andreas
Thanks for sharing this, looks similar to the Support Portal launch pad for raising support tickets.
I've been in a shared services centre in a previous Company and think this would have worked well.
I have a few questions on this:
Do we know if this is still in concept stage? or whether it is part of the product roadmap for 2016 or 2017?
The video didn't really show how an employee would search or raise a ticket, how would this be done on EC?
If the same question or similar question has been raised by a different employee, does this question appear on the resolution pages, similar to the Support portal?
Best regards
Tim
The C4C help desk (help desk version of Cloud for Service) has been available for a few years now have live customers using it for a variety of shared services processes.
As you pointed out there is also a portal to the C4C help desk that allows employees to open and view status on help desk incidents.
This portal has also been available for a few years too on the Hana Cloud Portal services of Hana Cloud Platform.
We have customers who have deployed this standard portal, as well as developed custom employee facing websites using UI5 HTML5 and C4C ODATA restful APIs with the Hana Cloud Platform web IDE.
Hi Guys
A very stupid question - Is EC Service Center a feature in EC or is it separately hosted because i m not able to see any information in EC master guide.
Regards
Aadil
Separate offering, licensing and integrates with EC.
Hi All,
We are implementing EC Service center. When we click on the Ask HR getting the below error. None of the ticket widgets are getting loaded but open search is working fine.
Please let me know when do we get this kind of error. Is it because of something missing HCP config, or C4C config or any authorization issues in HCP or EC or C4C.
Regards,
Jyothi
Hi Jyoti,
Did you ever get a resolution for this?
Thank you
Juhi Yasmin
Hello,
Could anyone of you confirm if EC Service Center requires any licensing on top of EC?
Thanks a lot,
Juan Francisco
It does require extra licensing Juan.
Hello Team, I may be late to have a discussion on this topic. However I am really interested on this “Product”. However my question is :
We already have a Service Center with OnPremise solution that’s SSF HR. What do you think about migrating from On Premise to this cloud based solution?
Is it possible to connect it with back-end HR system if the HR system is not SucessFactor but an HCM OnPremise system?
We also have a Process and Form integrated to SSF ad will it be possible here as well?
and as far as I know ECSC is based from Cloud 4 Service scenario and in gernral the C4C/CEC system gets quarterly upgrade and would be the same case for this system?
Regards,
Dhruvin