What’s new in SAP HCM On-Premise?
I had the opportunity to attend the annual SAPPHIRENOW ASUG conference in Orlando in early June. One of the sessions I attended was an on-premise HCM Update by Michael Fruectl, Michael Bonrat and Umarani T M.
In the session, I learned that there is still a continuing commitment to SAP’s approximate 13,000 on-premise HCM customers, and there are programs in place to assist them. The first one is called the SAP Improvement Finder.
© SAP SuccessFactors 2018
SAP Improvement Finder
They provided an overview of the new and improved improvement finder accessible at https://sapimprovementfinder.com/. According to SAP, the SAP Improvement Finder provides customers with detailed information about improvements and roundups delivered within the framework of the SAP Customer Connection Program. The tool allows customers to find improvements by name, topic or timeframe, and understand how to benefit from these improvements.
© SAP SuccessFactors 2018
Above is a sample of navigating the website, starting with the Human Resources category and then viewing the improvements as shown in the middle of the screen. A user can select an item to see additional information about that specific improvement on the right-hand side of the screen, as shown in the picture above.
Photo by Danielle Larocca of slide presented at the 2018 SAPPHIRENOW ASUG Conference
You can even export the data to Microsoft Excel as shown in the image above.
Photo by Danielle Larocca of slide presented at the 2018 SAPPHIRENOW ASUG Conference
Delivery Call
Next, they talked about the HCM On-Premise quarterly delivery calls. They started with a live poll of the audience to see who was attending them. Of the approximately one hundred or so attendees, there were no hands raised. After some discussion, the end resolution seemed to be that the delivery calls were not a known item and customers simply did not know about them or how to access them. I myself was not in the know and was happy to hear of their existence.
© SAP SuccessFactors 2018
Customer Influence Program
In the slide Michael presented above, he included hyperlinks to past updates. I accessed the first link https://influence.sap.com/sap/ino/#campaign/22 and was able to connect with my SAP Partner credentials to the SAP Customer Influence Program.
Via a quick Google Search I learned that the SAP Customers Influence program gives you the opportunity of collaborating closely with SAP development teams in development projects. I must admit that it is a bit frustrating to add another SAP website to keep track of, upload a picture to etc. in my ever-growing SAP Arsenal. I intend to blog about that separately. To get more information about SAP’s Customer Influence programs and to start participating, please visit influence.sap.com
Anyway, the website, as shown above, provides access to improvement requests submitted, delivered improvements and blogs. More importantly it provides access for you to connect with Michael Fruechtl and Michael Bonrat whom you can contact to learn more about the Delivery Call and how you can join in, in the future.
I hope that these three items were helpful to you in your effort to stay in the know on all things SAP Human Capital Management on premise.
Sadly for 12K+ loyal maintenance paying customers not much more than "keep the lights on".
I was VERY actively involved in the last customer connection and sadly here is what I had to send almost a dozen customers who didn't have their idea considered (multiple were highest vote getters)
Some good news and bad news regarding the Customer Connection Program as your items did not end up getting in scope nor sadly did any or the more complex items as it become obvious after the fact that SAP went into this with a limited technical budget. I had multiple calls on the Wage Type Information/Configuration Report (By far the Top Vote-Getter by customers) as I have put this request in a dozen times throughout the last 20 years through various programs to explain to SAP why this was important for both SAP Payroll, Employee Central Payroll (which is based on SAP Payroll) as well as keeping their Payroll customer base happy. I spoke with Greg Tomb (President of SAP HCM/SuccessFactors) as well as Andreas Tziovaridis (Head of the Customer Connection Program) and Amy Wilson (SVP of Product for SAP HCM/SuccessFactors) on individual calls and while they seemed to understand and knew customers wanted this (due to the high number of votes) they fell back on company line that the program was designed for broad international items and not country specific which they considering the Wage Type Configuration Report and EFT to EFT Replacement. My take is these items were considered more complex and that is the reason they were not select which is very disappointing.
Now to the “good news” is that SAP announced this morning the items that did make it in scope and most of them are being released with the May HRSP.
On a side, I totally get not investing in SAP HCM but SAP Payroll is a different story especially given the timeline (?) on Next Generation Payroll and the fact that EC Payroll is not a viable path for them to move to + any development for SAP Payroll can also be new functionality for EC Payroll so a win/win.
At the end of the day keeping 7K SAP Payroll customers happy is important and I got almost 70 customers (many large F500) to vote on the last customer connection and many are true gaps in the software (not nice to haves) yet the program was more marketing and actually delivering regardless of how it was spun. I even offered free consulting to help SAP/SF with some of these as well.
Thanks for sharing this post with us.
For SAP HCM training empowerit Successfactors online training is the best one across the globe. From different countries more than 800+ have learned from the past one year.
Visit www.successfactorsonlinetrainings.com for more information of the course.