SuccessConnect US is happening next week in Las Vegas. Looking forward to seeing old friends and meeting new ones as we have a great community. SuccesConnect is also the time when we get insight into the direction of the solution, and this year is espeically important as it is the first full year under the the new leadership team. Here are my top 5 questions for SuccessConnect from an Employee Central Point of View.
SAP Analytics Cloud
SuccessFactors has reported that SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) is the
go-forward reporting solution. This approach is promising, but I am interested in finding getting more concrete details on timing for General Availability. Will the solution have pre-built reports and connectors? Will the solution solve current gaps/headaches in the current solution such as difficulty reporting on compa ratio? Most importantly, can the solution merge data from Employee Central and Employee Central Payroll to produce a single view of both master data and payroll results?
Clear Path For On Premise Customers
I give kudos to SuccessFactors for the
Upgrade2Success program. This is a set of tools to make the migration itself easier. However, from customers I've spoken to, the questions they're asking surround the functionality itself. There is still a lot of confusion in the marketplace. Do we keep our on premise payroll? Do we move to EC Payroll? What about the new sidecar S/4? What's the long-term strategy? SuccessFactors has done a great job of providing options, but hoping they do better about providing direction.
Progress on MDF Transition
Starting around 3 years ago, Employee Central began a migration from its old architecture to the new Metadata Framework (MDF), which allows for easier maintenance and enhancement than the the old XML-based infrastructure. Around half of the foundation objects were migrated with a promise that the remainder would be completed soon thereafter. However, there has been no movement (or even discussion thereof) in the past 2 years. Hoping to hear some roadmap for completion of this transition.
Customer Success Stories
Really excited to see some important customers discussing their successful Employee Central go-lives at SuccessConnect, with American Airlines being part of the keynote. Seeing large well-established companies touting the solution helps prospective customers and also results in a more robust solution for everyone else.
Support Status
I'm anxious to hear what progress is being made in the area of Product Support. My perspective is that SuccessFactors Support has improved immensely over the past 2-3 years, with Expert Chat being especially well-received. I do think that there are some areas where more progress needs to be made, particularly in ensuring that engineering is more proactive in publicizing known product limitations.
