SAP SuccessFactors People Analytics: Report Story Design & Implementation Considerations

This blog is an introduction to the SuccessFactors Implementation Design Principles (SFIDP) document – SAP SuccessFactors People Analytics: Report Story Design & Implementation Considerations

The current SAP SuccessFactors Reporting and Analytics tools consist out of 3 pillars, Reporting, Workforce Analytics and Workforce Planning.

Current SAP SuccessFactors Reporting and Analytics Portfolio

Workforce Analytics and Workforce Planning are Analytics Applications that require separate licenses (and implementation effort) whereas Reporting is part of the SAP SuccessFactors Platform license. It is SAP’s strategy to only use one tool for Reporting, Analytics and Planning that covers all kinds of SAP solution deployment, which includes On Premise, Hybrid and Cloud. This tool is SAP Analytics Cloud that has numerous advantages of which a few are listed below:

• Leverage the power of HANA;
• Blend data from multiple sources into meaningful stories;
• Give users the freedom to analyse the specifics of their business;
• Simulate and predict what could happen next;
• Implement decisions to derive immediate value

In order to follow that strategy, SAP SuccessFactors has now introduced People Analytics Report Story. This new tool is now available (for upgrade) on all Preview Data Centers and is currently being rolled out to all Production Data Centers. This will be a phased approach. A schedule for the availability of People Analytics – Report Story for your Data Center can be found in this Blog on the Customer Community. Once your SuccessFactors instance has been upgraded with People Analytics report Story and all permissions have been set correct, you will have a new Report Type available,  called Report – Story.

New Report Type called Report Story

The legacy reporting tools consist of 3 Report Types, Report – Table to easily build adhoc reports. Report – Canvas to build formatted multi page, presentation ready reports with lists, charts & graphs and aggregated tables including calculations. Tiles and Dashboards to provide managers “Birds eye” view on their team using a simple graphical visualisation of different operational HR business processes with drill to detail capabilities.

Depending on the reporting requirements one of these Report Types can be selected in the Report Center to build an operational or transactional report that can be shared with the final Report Consumers like managers, HR operations, HR Business Partners or Senior Management.

The new Report Story uses an embedded instance of SAP Analytics Cloud allowing you to create queries and use those queries in Story reports using a single unified data model with a live connection to your SuccessFactors transactional data. This data model will allow you to create highly formatted, multi-page cross domain reports. Be aware that not all SuccessFactors modules will be available from the start, as well as not all features of SAP Analytics Cloud can be leveraged in Report Story yet. In the long run, People Analytics Report – Story will be the single reporting tool in SAP SuccessFactors to fulfil all reporting needs. This means that Report – Story will replace all current reporting tools in a phased manner.

In the final phase of this transition to the new reporting tool all legacy reporting tools will be sunset. it is important that People Analytics Report Story will be used for new reports but also to rebuild reports from the existing tools to new Report – Stories. This will require a new set of skills for report developers and administrators. The Implementation Design Principles document – SAP SuccessFactors People Analytics: Report Story Design & Implementation Considerations will guide you in making that transition successfully. It will guide you in:

• Understanding how the Report Center and Reports are used and by who
• How to migrate current Report types into Report – Stories
• How Report – Story permissions are working
• How to work with the Query Designer and Data Explorer
• Considerations regarding Localisations, Guardrails and the Report Center

Migrating reports in to Report – Stories, the new tool (SAP Analytics Cloud) gives you more flexibility and functionality like modern, beautiful and more choice for visualisations, interactive graphical tiles and dashboards with the ability to drill to details as well as using Data Explorer Mode. Apart from this, additional functionalities are also available with Report – Story. For example, in Pivot Tables you can now show column names of included dimensions, you can perform calculations between columns and you can re-order the columns according to your own requirements instead of the fixed alphabetical ordering. These were all limitations with the Report – Canvas type. Below is an example of a Pivot Table where the Column Names of Business Unit and Division are shown and where a calculation for the Male to Female Staffing Ratio has been added.

Example of a Pivot Table (Cross Tab Widget) in a Report Story

In order to explore more product offerings of People Analytics, Report Story and how to best leverage them to your needs, we would invite you to have a detailed look at our IDP Document here.