SAP Readiness Check for SAP SuccessFactors Solutions – Now in Pilot Phase (until GA 9/2022)

Please note: SAP Readiness Check for SAP SuccessFactors solutions is released to customers (blog) since September 2022 – the functionality described here is now available to all customers.

Dear All,

A new SAP Readiness Check scenario is available under controlled availability:

SAP Readiness Check for SAP SuccessFactors solutions 

The pilot phase of the solution has just started, and customers who are interested in participating can submit a request here.

With SAP Readiness Check for SAP SuccessFactors solutions, SAP provides a self-service tool to analyze the existing SAP ERP HCM implementation in preparation for a transition to SAP SuccessFactors. SAP Readiness Check for SAP SuccessFactors solutions allows subject matter experts to have the required level of insight into key topics areas (such as implemented functionality, degree of customization, number of interfaces, and existing data footprint) necessary to properly assess the complexity of an existing SAP ERP HCM productive environment.

This information is intended to be used as input for discussions between customers and SAP or partners to identify the best-fitting target solution architecture and transition scope, as well as to help define an initial plan and effort estimation for the transition project.

Unlike the existing verification points presented by SAP Readiness Check for SAP S/4HANA, where the checks are used to reveal “must-dos” in support of a possible conversion project to SAP S/4HANA, SAP Readiness Check for SAP SuccessFactors solutions is purely informative.

SAP Readiness Check for SAP SuccessFactors solutions can help answer questions such as:

• What functionality has been used in SAP ERP HCM?
• What is the volume of data associated with a specific function?
• Roughly how much data would be required to be migrated to new target solutions?
• How can I easily identify, measure, and categorize the transactional and master data in a productive SAP ERP HCM system?
• How many enhancements does my SAP ERP HCM system currently have?

Based on the analysis of the source system, the tool provides a comprehensive overview of specific parameters throughout various topics:

• Employee Insights: This reveals the distribution of employee master data figures per region, process, or status to be used in further discussions with an implementation partner to assess the migration project complexity.
• Organizational Structure Analysis: Insight into the organizational structure master data will help to establish an understanding of key figures related to the allocation of employee-related data.
• Important HXM Data: This provides insight into other HCM objects relevant for the HCM system setup. Examples of these objects are payroll calendars and payroll frequency defined within the analyzed system.
• Custom Code Analysis: This provides insight into the volume and variety of custom code objects.

Detailed Information on the Analysis

1. Employee Insights

As the Employee Central component within SAP SuccessFactors plays a focal role in the solution, insight into the existing employee master data will help to scope and plan the transition.

Employee Master Data analysis is part of the following checks:

• Employee Overview
• Administrative Structure
• Process Results

When transitioning from SAP ERP HCM to SAP SuccessFactors, existing employee data needs to be migrated from one or more legacy systems into the Employee Central environment. This can involve several different scenarios depending on various types and statuses for the migrated employees. Some of these data migration scenarios might include re-hired employees, terminated employees, active global assignments, active leave of absence, and so on. This will require different strategies as well as varying levels of included data to ensure a successful migration to Employee Central. Successful data migration is also affected by critical project decisions around topics like historical data, multiple module deployment, multiple legacy systems, phased implementation versus big-bang approach, among other functional and technical considerations.

a) Employee Overview

This card provides an overview of the employee master data in the analyzed system, displaying the infotypes used per country and the distribution of employees by country. Employees are shown as active or inactive. Inactive employees may indicate potential obsolete master data which could be included in a data cleansing step before the migration.

b) Administrative Structure

This card provides an overview of the administrative structure and how employees are assigned to this structure and contract elements in the analyzed system.

c) Process Results

This card provides an overview of how payroll, time management, and other processes are managed in the analyzed system.

2. Organizational Structure Insights

As the existing organizational structure could influence the Employee Central component within SAP SuccessFactors, insight into key figures related to the structure will help to scope and plan the transition.

a) Organizational Structure

The scope of the check is to show the current state of the organizational structure master data and to focus on those topics that need to be analyzed to assess implementation complexity and readiness.

b) Organizational Structure Objects

The organizational structure consists of objects and their relationships; in particular, Organizational Units (O), Positions (S), and Persons (P) within the SAP ERP HCM system. These objects are linked by the relationship between the objects. The analysis highlights object types used to help identify the scope of objects that may need to be created in Employee Central.

3. Important HXM Data

In addition to the employee and organizational master data to be migrated, some other HXM data is also crucial for the migration project. This includes the wage types catalog, payroll calendars, and the administrative structure of the organization. The information provided in this section must be considered to understand the complexity and effort of the transition project, including the following:

• OM Infotypes in Use
• PA Infotypes in Use
• HR Action Types
• Personnel Areas
• Data Volume
• Payroll Calendars
• Wage Type Catalog
• Time Quotas

Historical configuration data, such as currently not used locations, wage types, and working schedules, do not need to be transferred to SAP SuccessFactors and should be included in the data cleansing or standardization strategy for the migration.

4. Custom Code Analysis 

Customers using SAP ERP HCM may have extended the scope of the solution by developing custom capabilities. Understanding the volume, variety, and usage of custom code used within SAP ERP HCM is fundamental in assessing how customers can transition their existing solution.

a) HCM-Specific Custom Objects

SAP Readiness Check for SAP SuccessFactors solutions provides information on the enhancements made to the SAP ERP HCM system and lists different types of ABAP developments. Reviewing this list with SAP or an implementation partner helps customers understand those enhancements that need to be carried forward to the target solution, adapted, or retired.

b) Interfaces

This section provides an overview of the standard and non-standard interfaces that were identified in the SAP ERP HCM system. Some of these custom solutions may be required in the target solution and could influence the design of the target architecture. The interfaces are displayed on several tabs, grouped by the following types:

• IDocs Interfaces
• Web Service Interfaces
• RFC/BAPI Interfaces
• BW Extractors

c) Custom Code Analysis

This section provides an inventory of identified custom ABAP objects within the SAP ERP HCM system, grouped by object type. Some of these custom extensions may be required in the target solution and could influence the design of the target architecture. It should be checked whether the functionality that is currently delivered by the identified custom code is available as a standard option in the target architecture.

Learn More Section

The Learn More side panel adds information about each check, possible next steps, and links to tools and documentation to plan and organize the transformation project, such as “Implementation Design Principles for SAP SuccessFactors Solutions” and “SAP Activate Methodology for SuccessFactors“.

How to start?

To set up and run SAP Readiness Check for SAP SuccessFactors solutions, the subsequent steps need to be performed:

Follow the instructions in SAP Note 3193560 – SAP Readiness Check for SAP SuccessFactors solutions to install the check framework and transport the changes into your target system, such as the productive client of the production system. (For useful transactional data and history, we recommend running SAP Readiness Check for SAP SuccessFactors solutions on the production system or a recent copy of the production system.)

The note provides detailed and technical information on how to set up and run the analysis.

Execute program RC_HCM_COLLECT_ANALYSIS_DATA via transaction SA38 or SE38 to initialize the data collectors.

The analysis is scheduled as a background job to avoid timeout issues. The runtime of the data collectors depends on many factors, like server size and setup, data volumes, and component usage. Therefore it is difficult to predict the runtime. To avoid interference with production workloads, the analysis framework was intentionally designed for an extended data collector runtime rather than a short, resource-intensive runtime. The best way to forecast the runtime for a production system is to execute the data collectors in a copy of production, with a similar hardware configuration.

Once the analysis has finished, the result can be downloaded to the local file system.
The data collectors provide their results in XML format, which are grouped into several XML files and compressed in a ZIP archive.

All collected data is human-readable and can be easily inspected with appropriate XML viewers. The analysis framework also allows you to examine the collected data directly out of the program and to purge any persistence analysis data from your system.

Launch the SAP Readiness Check landing page and choose Start New Analysis to upload the ZIP archive.

After a few minutes, the collected data is ready to be explored within the newly created SAP Readiness Check analysis.

Are you interested in running an SAP Readiness Check for SAP SuccessFactors solutions?

Don’t hesitate to contact us – submit your request here to become a pilot customer.

As always, we look forward to receiving your feedback!

Your SAP Readiness Check Team