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Recent enhancements to SuccessFactors Employee Central integration with SAP ERP and 3rd party systems

May 19, 2015 | 2,459 Views |
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As part of a current SuccessFactors Employee Central implementation that I am leading, we are integrating Employee Central with SAP ERP and 3rd party applications (including Benefitfocus, Microsoft Active Directory, ADP, and more) so that our customer can continue to run its back office, manufacturing, distribution, and workflow functions in SAP. In the course of our work we have been advising our customer on some of the recent enhancements to the integration that SAP provides. In this blog, I wanted to highlight some of these to demonstrate the continued investment SAP is making to enable customers with a large SAP ERP footprint to ensure that they can continue to leverage this when they migrate to Employee Central.

Before we start: What is already provided by SAP?

SAP already provides a host of packaged integrations for a number of scenarios, as demonstrated in this SAP diagram:

/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/1_706483.png

SAP provides packaged integration between Employee Central and SAP ERP for the following scenarios:

  • Replicating Cost Centers from SAP ERP FICO to Employee Central
  • Replicating employee data from Employee Central to SAP ERP or Employee Central Payroll
  • Replicating organizational data and organizational assignments from Employee Central to SAP ERP

SAP has packaged integrations between Employee Central and the following 3rd party systems:

  • Benefitfocus for benefits administration
  • AON Hewitt for benefits administration
  • Thomsons Online Benefits for benefits administration
  • Workforce Software EmpCenter for time and attendance and workforce scheduling
  • Kronos Workforce Central for time and attendance
  • ADP GlobalView for BPO payroll
  • NGA Payroll for BPO payroll

SAP also provides:

  • SuccessFactors Adapter in both SAP Process Integration (PI) and SAP HANA Cloud Integration (HCI)
  • OData API for replicating data in and out of Employee Central
  • Employee Central Compound API for extracting data from Employee Central

Now, lets take at look at some of the recent enhancements.

SAP Note 2129443: EC to ERP Organizational Data Replication – Enhancements

Released on 11th February, SAP Note 2129433 contains a number of enhancements to organizational data integration between Employee Central and SAP ERP. Notable inclusions are:

  • Translations for Business Unit, Division, and Department objects
  • BAdI for replicating matrix manager relationships
  • Sample of a BAdI for replicating chief positions
  • Sample of a BAdI for replicating multiple position assignments
  • New report in SAP ERP to check organizational assignments of specific employees whom were replicated from Employee Central

The value of this SAP Note is in ensuring that the data required for routing workflows is fully available. This includes the chief position, position assignments, and any matrix relationships. Including object translations (i.e. object name or description) can also be useful for global organizations.

SAP Note 2141931: Payroll Result Export Report for data transfer to EC

A new report is introduced in SAP Note 2141931 to provide file-based transfer of payroll results data to Employee Central from Employee Central Payroll and SAP ERP Payroll. This so that Employee Central users can run analytics on their payroll results in Employee Central and Workforce Analytics.

The reports works by exporting payroll data from logical database PNP along with the Employee Central user IDs to a CSV file. The CSV file is imported and data is imported into Generic Objects built on the Metadata Framework, which can then be reported on using Detailed Reporting in the Analytics module.

Microsoft Active Directory Packaged Integration

In the Q2 2015 release of SuccessFactors, SAP introduces a packaged integration that:

  1. Creates the user account in Active Directory when a new employee is hired in Employee Central
  2. Deactivates an Active Directory account when an employee is terminated in Employee Central

This integration is fairly significant given the percentage of Employee Central customers that use Active Directory. In my time in consulting, nearly every customer I have worked with has used Active Directory.

SAP Identity Management (IDM) SuccessFactors Connector

In SAP Identity Management (IDM) 8.0, a SuccessFactors connector was introduced to enable SAP IDM to integrate with Employee Central. This integration enables two different scenarios:

  1. User account data is replicated from Employee Central to SAP IDM, which then replicates the data to other SAP and 3rd party systems
  2. User accounts are managed in SAP IDM and data is sent to Employee Central

Summary

SAP are continuing to provide a wealth of integration between Employee Central, SAP ERP, and 3rd party applications. As owners of both SuccessFactors and SAP ERP, SAP are in an unrivalled position to ensure that the complex integration scenarios are provided and covered. As we have seen, SAP are continually ensuring that customers have a starting point now and won’t have to wait long to receive the remaining functionality that they need to meet their system-to-system data replication needs.

Don’t forget to keep up with the latest and greatest with SuccessFactors in the SAP and SuccessFactors LinkedIn group. Feel free to contact me for more information on Employee Central integration or any other Employee Central topics.

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35 Comments

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  1. Jarret Pazahanick

    Nice job with this Luke and longer term the integration between Employee Central and SAP ERP & S4HANA is a real competitive advantage and positive thing for SAP customers as SAP/SF are the only ones that truly know both sides.

    (0) 
  4. Former Member

    Hi sir,

    I am not very much good in SAP but just want to know, If we want to integrate a third party employee system with SAP Employee Central, talent management modules etc then how can we do?

    (0) 
    1. Luke Marson Post author

      Hi Amit,

      This is quite a broad question. You can leverage SAP’s packaged integrations and extend them as necessary, or for other needs you can use the OData API or SFAPI technologies. You can also use the Employee Central Compound API if needed. I recommend visiting these websites:

      http://help.sap.com/hr_integration

      http://help.sap.com/hr_api

      https://service.sap.com/public/hybrid

      You can also get the SAP Press book on SuccessFactors integration:

      https://www.sap-press.com/integrating-successfactors-with-sap_3723/

      Best regards,

      Luke

      (0) 
      1. Former Member

        Thanks for reply,

        If a firm already using sap and i want to export all data to a employee system or want to use existing

        sap employee data with other employee system, then is it possible?

        (0) 
          1. Former Member

            We are using sap and want to use my existing Employee data into my another in house application. Because i want to do something with my my employee data,

            So can we export all SAP employee central data into my in-house application?

            (0) 
      2. Former Member

        Hi Luke,

        You’ve mentioned Data Changes for AD is availabe, in boomi i see just 2 process – create and terminate.

        How can we use Data Changes it is possible?

        Alexey

        (0) 
        1. Luke Marson Post author

          Hi Alexey,

          Data changes are not provided in the packaged integration. Only create and disable of accounts is available. You would need to create your own integration for data changes.

          Best regards,

          Luke

          (0) 
  5. Former Member

    Great information Luke.

    I have a couple of questions:

    1) What is the middleware used in this scenario? Do SAP PI/HCI have the packaged integration content mentioned above? Is this the same as the Integration Add-Ons that are provided by SAP for PI?

    2) If one has to move from an existing integration that used Dell Boomi to a PI based one, would it be feasible?

    Best Regards,

    Amith

    (0) 
    1. Luke Marson Post author

      Hi Amith,

      SAP’s packaged integrations are available for Dell Boomi AtomSphere, with some available for SAP HANA Cloud Integration (HCI). All of the integrations will be available on SAP HCI by the end of the year.

      If you wish to use SAP PI you will need to build the integration on SAP PI yourself. You can re-use some SAP components for the SAP packaged integrations.

      Best regards,

      Luke

      (0) 
  7. Former Member

    Hi Luke,

    Thanks a lot for this information!

    I am new to this and about to do Integration between SuccessFactors and SAP using Dell Boomi and leveraging on the packaged integrations mentioned on guides to replicate Employee Master Data, Organizational data and Cost Centers.

    However, comprehensive information regarding what the packaged integrations actually do are not available. I also cannot see the process in Dell Boomi so that I can investigate and study what really happens inside since it is a packaged integration.

    Couple of questions I hope you have an answer:

    1. If a record is entered for the future, will it be replicated?

    2. Is there a notification mechanism in case of errors in general and can certain kinds of errors be routed to dedicated users.

    Thanks!

    (0) 
  8. Former Member

    Hi Luke,

    Thanks for your post.

    What is the data included Payroll Result Export Report for data transfer to EC?

    If I want to show on EC to employees what is their month salary can I do it with this export?

    If not, is SAP providing a standard scenario to transfer Payroll payslip results to EC?

    Many thanks,

    /cd

    (0) 
    1. Luke Marson Post author

      Hi Carlos,

      The Payroll Results Export Report is used to run the Payroll Results report in EC, which displays the accumulated wage types amounts (for all wage types) and the periods when the amount was earned. It is used for reporting on compensation and isn’t intended for pay slips. You can already display the payslip in EC from SAP Payroll/EC Payroll irrespective of whether the Payroll Results Export Report is used or not.

      Best regards,

      Luke

      (0) 
  9. Arijit Das

    Hi Luke Marson

    Great blog (as usual)! Have you worked on an SF integration with Okta project (an IDM SaaS hosted in the Cloud)? https://www.okta.com

    Okta delivers integration with SF and Workday; and provisions the account in other SaaS like dropbox, docusign, office365 etc (there are about 100 such apps and the number is continuously growing).

    Kind regards

    Arijit

    (0) 
  10. Former Member

    Dear Luke,

    Could you please guide me i worked as an SAP HCM Consultant.

    Currently working on SAP FIORI, I am interested to do SAP SuccessFactors.

    I am confused do i need to go for SAP HCM or Successfactors.

    Please guide me .

    Kind Regards,

    Chetan

    (0) 
    1. Luke Marson Post author

      Hi Nico,

      The standard integrations only work on Dell Boomi AtomSphere and SAP HANA Cloud Platform, integration services.

      Best regards,

      Luke

      (0) 
  12. Former Member

    Hi,

    Is there any pre-packaged content integration between SF Employee central and Active Directory via HANA Cloud Integration(HCI) middleware?

     

    Abhishek

    (0) 
      1. Caitlin Kidney

        Hi There. Has there been any update on when this pre-packaged content integration between SF Employee Central and Active Directory via HANA Cloud Integration(HCI) middleware will be available?

        (0) 

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