Book on Integrating SuccessFactors with SAP

The book on Integrating SuccessFactors with SAP is now available for purchase in the SAP Press and Amazon websites. Employees of SAP and SuccessFactors can order the book at no personal cost using the SAP book buying process. If you do not know the process ask our librarian Elizabeth Anselm, in Palo Alto and she can guide you.

I have posted the preface of the book below to describe what is covered in the book and who it is meant for.

Preface

In a January 2014 article in the Wall Street Journal, Marc Andreesen, the Internet pioneer and venture capitalist compared the cost of starting a technology company today to the cost of starting a technology company in the 1990s. He said that if you wanted to build an Internet company in the 90s, you needed to buy Sun servers, Cisco networking gear, Oracle databases, and EMC storage systems and spend a ton of money just to get up and running. He said that today’s companies can go to Amazon Web Services and pay per use to get the same services for about 1000 times cheaper. Such reduction in cost is speeding up the progress of technology and pace of innovation.

This innovation has revolutionized the consumer software industry and is spilling over to the enterprise software industry starting with customer relationship management, procurement, travel and expense management and human capital management. Today, almost all innovation in the areas mentioned above are being done by vendors who provide their software as a service rather than as a package that can be installed behind the firewalls of an organization.

Book Goals

This journey to the cloud, for most areas of enterprise software, is inevitable. However, unlike consumer software where the costs for consumers are low and switching technology vendors is easy, enterprise software investments are huge and costly to abandon. So while the journey to the cloud for some customers will be swift, for some it will be in stages. This is one area where integration plays an important role. Integration can help organizations start their journey to the cloud from a place of their choice and at a pace of their choice. In this book, we attempt to explain the evolution of enterprise software and how integration content and technologies from SAP and SuccessFactors can help you make your move to the cloud. We have split the book into multiple chapters. Each chapter addresses the needs of a specific audience and a specific set of topics.

Target Audience

This book will be valuable guide for senior executives such as the chief information officers, chief HR officers, and chief financial officers, who have a need to move their human capital management software to the cloud. The book will also be a valuable guide and useful reference for SAP and SuccessFactors functional consultants, cloud solution architects, integration designers and integration middleware consultants who implement a packaged integration that connects SuccessFactors to SAP and 3rd party applications or create a custom integration to suit their needs.

How This Book is Structured

Chapter 1 is about the evolution of Human Capital Management Software architecture, the current trends in enterprise software and SAP’s strategy to respond to those trends. If you are a chief financial officer, a chief information officer, chief people officer, vice president of human resources or director of information technology, this chapter is for you. We provide an overview of what is happening in the human capital management technology industry and describe how the technology landscape is evolving. We then discuss SAP’s strategy to respond to this evolution and talk about how SAP is helping you move to the cloud with various software deployment options supported by integration content and tools. We also talk about SAP’s integration strategy and the components that make up the productized integrations provided to customers.

Chapter 2 is about how information technology teams within organizations and software technology service providers can help customers make their journey to the cloud. If you are chief information officer, director of information technology, a partner in a software consulting firm, a solution architect or vice president of professional services in a technology service firm, this chapter is for you. We start by talking about who is moving human capital management software to the cloud and elaborate on the factors driving the movement of human capital management to the cloud. We then talk about the three main stages in the decision making phase of the journey to the cloud. The three stages are the business architecture review stage, the product review stage and the solution architecture review stage. We end the chapter by providing a case-  study of a customer’s journey to the cloud.

Chapter 3 is about the Full Cloud HCM deployment model of the SuccessFactors HCM suite. We start by discussing the architecture of the Full Cloud HCM deployment model and the target customers for the deployment model. We then detail out the packaged integrations that support this deployment model. Finally we cover the integration technology options and the roadmap for packaged integrations.  If you are a chief information officer, chief people officer, vice president of human resources or director of information technology in an organization running HR technology that is more than 10 years old, or have problems with employee administration and data consistency, then this chapter can tell you how you can take a huge jump in technology and user experience innovation while reducing total cost of ownership for human capital management software at the same time.

Chapter 4 is about the Talent Hybrid deployment model of SAP and SuccessFactors. We start by discussing the architecture of the Talent Hybrid deployment model and the target customers for the deployment model. We then detail out the packaged integrations that support this deployment model. Finally we cover the integration technology options and the roadmap for pre-packaged integrations.  If you are a  chief information officer, chief people officer, vice president of human resources or director of information technology in an organization running SAP ERP HCM for employee administration and looking to move or adopt talent solutions in the cloud, then this chapter is for you. Finally we discuss two case studies of customers who made their move from on-premise talent management systems to SuccessFactors Talent Solutions in the cloud, while keeping their Core HR and Payroll on-premise.

Chapter 5 is about the Side-By-Side HCM deployment model of SAP and SuccessFactors. We start by discussing the target customers for the deployment model and discuss the packaged integrations available. If you are a chief information officer, chief people officer, vice president of human resources or director of information technology in a large organization that would like to move Core HR to the cloud for a subset of employees, say in a subsidiary, in a cautious and step by step manner, this chapter is for you. The chapter discusses the target audience, the integration technology and the packaged integrations for the Side-by-Side HCM deployment model. The chapter ends with two case customer studies.

Chapter 6 This chapter introduces SuccessFactors’ integration layers and APIs. After reviewing this chapter, you will better understand SuccessFactors’ logical integration architecture as well as the capabilities of its various APIs to integrate with SuccessFactors modules. If you are an integration designer, HR business analyst, integration consultant from a customer or a partner organization, you will find this chapter useful.

Chapter 7 This chapter talks about how you can integrate your instance of SuccessFactors Talent Suite with some of the leading cloud-based service providers. A large number of SuccessFactors customers use flat file imports to add data to the talent suite. There are several data templates for standard imports to talent modules. So that chapters talks about that standard data imports available in SuccessFactors which can be used to integrate with systems that don’t have a packaged integration. If you are an integration designer, HR business analyst, integration consultant from a customer or a partner organization, you will find this chapter useful.

Chapter 8 starts by outlining the target audience for the Talent Hybrid deployment model. It then walks you through the step by step process of implementing the available packaged integrations that support the Talent Hybrid deployment model in the form of case studies. If you are an integration designer, HR business analyst, talent solutions integration consultant from a customer or a partner organization, you will find this chapter very handy. It will also serve as a good companion for the implementation guide.

Chapter 9 starts by outlining the target audience for the Full Cloud HCM deployment model, where customers run all their human capital management applications in the cloud and connect them with on-premise business applications and other cloud service providers. It then talks about implementing the packaged integrations that support the Full Cloud HCM model. In this chapter we discuss specific examples on how SuccessFactors modules are integrated, when a full cloud model is implemented. The chapter will contain specific examples, tips & tricks and best practices that were followed while implementing the integrations. Where possible sample code will be provided and discussed. This chapter is meant for HCM functional consultants who configure SAP and SuccessFactors Employee Central, technical consultants who configure middleware technologies to implement the packaged integration and ABAP programmers who extend the integrations to suit customer needs.

Chapter 10 All cloud deployment models start with a one-time migration of foundational data. Getting, cleaning and migrating data to a Core HR system is critical to the success of an implementation and integration projects. The key to successful data migration is standardized and engineered rapid data migration content for a fast and simple go-live with valid and clean data. In this chapter, we’ll explain the migration of data from an SAP ERP HCM or third-party system into Employee Central by leveraging the rapid-deployment paradigm. This chapter is meant for HCM functional consultants who configure SAP and SuccessFactors Employee Central and technical consultants who migrate employee data as part of an implementation. The chapter also provides insight for implementation project managers who need to plan an Employee Central implementation.

In summary, this is a good source of insight and information for executives who are planning their journey to the SuccessFactors Human Capital Management Suite in the cloud, partners who are advising customers on such a move, HR professionals who want to understand why integration matters, HR functional consultants who configure the software, HR IT professionals who want to plan the integration between SuccessFactors and other systems, integration architects who design integrations, middleware consultants who configure the integration and ABAP programmers who extend the integrations to suit customer needs.