My thoughts on the SAP Run Simple Message

[Former Member]

It's that and a lot more

Run simple is not just about simplification of business processes or reducing the complexity of legacy software or reducing the complexity of decision making or configurable SaaS solutions. It’s about getting more productivity and user adoption from employees who expect their business software to be as simple as the cloud applications they use in their personal life. In my mind Run Simple is also about the Employee Experience. Aasonn looks at every engagement with this in mind.

The workforce is changing, the competition for talent is getting fiercer, and attracting and maintaining your top talent is more important than ever. Decisions regarding who you hire is about being more competitive. Since talent is the ultimate competitive edge, we believe it’s critical that: 1) our customer’s highly talented people have the best tools; 2) we engineer business and HR solutions that make running a business simpler; 3) our solutions should include ways to reduce complexity; 4) our solutions also support simplified decision making; and 5) the employee experience needs to be considered when making decisions about selecting and configuring a cloud solution.

Complexity of Business Processes

A lot of the work we do with customers is migrating from highly customized HR on premise solutions to a SuccessFactors configurable HR and Talent Management solution. Often we find our customers with highly customized on premise solutions that have layers of unnecessary complexity from years of legacy HR processes. Many of those processes were designed over 20 years ago. We work with our customers to engineer a cloud technology environment that fits their current needs as well as their future needs and reduces the complexity of their HR processes.

Aasonn has created a 21st century HR BPO offering called the Employee Cloud that is built on top of cloud technology, integration, automation, and robotic process automation. This solution reduces the complexity of HR business processes and optimizes the employee experience. Our HR BPO solution is engineered against highly standardized processes which we believe is the basis for reducing HR business process complexity. By using highly standardized HR processes we are able to deploy an automated HR cloud solution that offers standardized integrations, supports robotic process automation, and maximizes the employee experience.

Our customers realize the complexity of a move to cloud technology. They are concerned that a move to the cloud could be disruptive to their operations and fear a loss of integration to their legacy on premise software. We offer guidance and expertise that simplifies the process of moving to cloud technology. We ensure that our customer’s legacy software integrations are preserved.

In the past processes were built around the limitations to legacy software. Over time the ability to reduce process complexity was constrained by customizations to legacy software. Since it was expensive to change a process tied to a customization, the processes couldn’t evolve to something simpler. Today, configurable SaaS software embraces the ability to change processes more quickly and less expensively.

The end result of moving to cloud solutions and realizing reduced process complexity is the ability to change more quickly and engineer a better employee experience. These technology advancements and employees who have better tools mean a higher quality of service to the organization.

Complexity of Decision Making

Making use of cloud collaboration tools like SAP Jam allows our customer’s employees to accelerate decision making around critical operational problems. Using today’s collaboration tools enables real time discussions around almost any topic related to running the business. These real time discussions can be tied directly to almost any area of the business and are linked to the source data related to the problem being discussed. This real time collaboration increases the rate of innovation and enhances workforce productivity.

When companies deploy collaboration tools like SAP Jam it helps them attract and retain high-value employees and increases operational effectiveness. Highly integrated collaboration tools deliver multifunctional collaboration at an effective cost. These tools are being deployed at a high rate by customers as they begin making their journey to the cloud.

Decisions made in a timely manner helps companies be more competitive. Highly integrated, cloud based, collaboration tools can reduce the decision making cycles dramatically. The time to decision (TTD) is more important than ever in today’s fast moving economy. Reduced TTD can make a competitive difference when moving new products and new features to market. As an example, getting the right input to decisions by the right people can reduce the chance of legal problems with regard to employment situations. Being able to collaborate on a secure basis with features like role based permissions can encourage senior level decision makers to feel more confident in participating in discussions online when sensitive data is being linked. Optimized and highly integrated collaboration tools leverage every employee in the decision making cycle. Collaboration tools allow every individual contributor to feel like they are part of the company conversation. At an executive level, the ability to communicate real time allows C-Level employees to communicate changes in strategy which is critical to being more competitive.

Cloud based collaboration tools, like SAP Jam, help reduce the complexity of decision making while reducing the TTD. When all employees feel connected and decision making is simplified, you get increased satisfaction of your employees which also results in a better employee experience.

Efficiency

If we look at what we’ve talked about here, you can quite easily see that all of this results in an organization that operates at a higher efficiency. Operating at a higher efficiency level almost always results in higher profits. Most people would agree that employees feel better if they are more efficient which results in them being more productive and happier.

Cloud technology gives our customers the ability to deliver their solutions globally to all of their employees in their native language on a unified platform. In the past, tools were delivered locally and regionally and in silos across the organization. Today, not only can we deliver these tools globally and in the user’s native language, these applications can be delivered on more than the employee’s desktop. Today users employ not only their company issued devices but their own. Their devices can include smart phones, tablets, and even television sets. The ability of a company to leverage their cloud software investment across many different types of devices means that regardless of where an employee is, he or she can participate in decisions, share data securely, and ultimately make better decisions, more quickly, to the advantage of the company.

According to an IDC report in 2012, “Despite the benefits of cloud collaboration services, moving to the cloud can be difficult. Organizations need to be conscious of a number of issues, and the network architecture they put in place to accommodate their cloud infrastructure must address them. The issues include managing centralized data with decentralized users and devices, managing the growth of media-rich content, achieving reliability and low latency in the WAN, ensuring security, and reducing management complexity.”

That statement was made in 2012. Three years later those same challenges exist to some degree but we have seen customers improving their network infrastructures and adopting cloud solutions at a faster rate. Aasonn believes that running more efficiently and reducing complexity means our customers will be more competitive. We also believe if our customers deploy cloud solutions they’ll have happier, more productive and engaged, employees.

We can see from the work we do that companies are making dramatic strides toward being more efficient and are reducing TTD by deploying highly integrated cloud collaboration solutions that offer real time engagement of their employees. Quite simply, this is the benefit of today’s technology and the work that Aasonn does using SAP cloud solutions.

About the author of this blog post. Allen Peterson is the President and Founder of Aasonn. Aasonn is a global Cloud consultancy and HRO provider who has implemented and integrated HR/Talent systems for over 2,000 SAP/SuccessFactors customers in 30 countries in the last eight years. Today the company has a new division to deliver HRO using highly integrated Cloud solutions with highly standardized HR processes. The HRO product is called the Employee Cloud. The company's new HRO solution is focused on the employee experience.