This blog post is based on the the white paper written on the same topic by prashanth.padmanabhan Padmanabhan, the solution manager for SAP SuccessFactors Hybrid Solutions and Ganesh Kudva, the engineering product owner for these packaged integrations.
1. Introduction
1.1 The Business Need
SAP ERP customers in multiple industries use employee qualifications stored in the Employee Qualifications Profile in SAP to make day-to-day operational decisions. For example, a supervisor working for an SAP customer in the oil and gas industry, may refer to the Qualifications Profile of an employee in SAP before giving that employee a particular work assignment.
An employee acquires a qualification, in most cases, by completing a training program. These training programs are managed in a learning management system. Hundreds of SAP customers use SuccessFactors Learning, SAP’s learning management system in the cloud, to manage such learning. Before June 2014, when an employee acquired a qualification as a result of a course completion in SuccessFactors Learning, that information was not sent to the Employee Qualifications Profile in SAP.
In some cases changes in an employee’s qualification might come from a system that is not a learning management system. For example a performance management system could update an employee’s qualifications. Hundreds of SAP customers use the SuccessFactors Talent Solutions suite which has applications that influence or directly update an employee's qualifications. Before June 2014, when an employee acquired a qualification as a result of such an update, that information was not sent to the Employee Qualifications Profile in SAP.
1.3 Terminology
No | SuccessFactors | SAP ERP | Description |
1 | Competency Library | Qualification Catalog | Group of Competencies available in a given Enterprise. There can be multiple Catalogs available. |
2 | Competency Type | Qualification Group | Collection of similar Competencies. |
3 | Competency | Qualification | Individual Qualification that can be assigned to an Employee. |
4 | Curriculum | Qualification | Individual Qualification that can be assigned to an Employee. |
5 | Employee Competency | Employee Skills | Relationship between a Competency and Employee. This relationship will also have an associated rating. |
6 | Employee Curriculum Status | Employee Skills | Similar to Employee Competency. There is no rating, but only an associated status . For example a status could be ‘Completed’ |
1.4 Pre-requisites and Assumptions
The packaged integration makes some assumptions about the customer’s landscape and business requirements. This section talks about those assumptions and pre-requisites.
SAP HCM supports the implementation of Qualifications either in Personnel Administration (PA) or in Personnel Development (PD) modules. SAP supports the migration of Qualifications from one module to the other. If customers migrate Qualifications from one module to the other, they need to re-implement the packaged integrations discussed in this document.
Both integrations require the packaged master data integration between SAP and SuccessFactors to be in place.
2. SuccessFactors Competencies integration with SAP Qualifications
This integration is planned for release in June 2014.
The SuccessFactors HCM suite has a competency library where an employee’s competencies are maintained. Applications such as SuccessFactors Performance and Goals, SuccessFactors Learning and SuccessFactors Succession and Development utilize the competency library for talent management processes. SAP ERP has a Qualifications Catalog, where employee qualifications are maintained. Several ERP applications make use of this qualifications catalog and the qualifications assigned to individual employees for business processes.
Why “Competencies Integration with SAP Qualifications”?
Customers who use the talent hybrid deployment model need a single source of truth for their competency library and the competencies of their employees.
2.1 Data Flow from SAP to SuccessFactors
2.1.1 Transfer of SAP Qualifications to SuccessFactors Competency Catalog
Customers who currently have an SAP ERP Qualifications catalog can export the qualifications into a file using a program provided as part of the prepackaged integration. This file can be then used by the customer’s SuccessFactors administrators to populate the SuccessFactors competency library. This is a one-time manual upload. There is no middleware technology used.
| 2.1.2 | Transfer of Employee Qualifications as Employee Competencies in SuccessFactors |
SAP ERP customers may have Employee Qualifications stored in the SAP ERP system. When such customers decide to start using the SuccessFactors competency catalog, they can migrate the Employee Qualifications data from SAP ERP to SuccessFactors using the packaged integration. The data migrated will be available for viewing in the SuccessFactors Competency Profile.
| 2.2 | Integration Data Flow from SuccessFactors HCM Suite to SAP ERP |
Once the SuccessFactors competency catalog is populated, customers are required to maintain the catalog in SuccessFactors. Changes made to the SuccessFactors competency catalog will be sent to SAP ERP Qualifications catalog periodically. Competencies associated with a person are also sent to the SAP Qualifications Profile.
| 2.3 | Prerequisites |
The packaged master data integration between SAP ERP HCM and SuccessFactors Talent Suite should be in place.
| 2.4 | Known assumptions and design boundaries |
- The SuccessFactors Platform has two versions of Competencies. The newer version is built using a technology called the Meta Data Framework. The packaged integration does not use this version of competencies.
- Competency data object in the SuccessFactors Platform has relationships with multiple objects. For example, it has a relationship with the Job object. This packaged integration only supports the relationship between a competency and an employee.
- The SuccessFactors competency Library has objects such as Skills, Behaviours, Teasers and Tuners. These are not supported.
- There are multiple instances of competency ratings in SuccessFactors. Employee Competency ratings from multiple sources are stored individually in SuccessFactors. However, SAP Qualifications stores just one rating per employee qualification. So ratings from SuccessFactors are coverted into a single rating. Customers need to configure this conversion during the implementation phase.
- In SuccessFactors, the Competency rating of employee does not come with a validity period.
- Replication of the deletion of a Competency is not supported by the packaged integration. If a Competency is deleted in SuccessFactors, the packaged integration will not delete the corresponding SAP Qualification.
| 3. | SuccessFactors Learning Curricula Integration with SAP Qualifications |
This integration is planned for release in June 2014.
Some SuccessFactors customers use sources other than the SuccessFactors competency library to track the competencies of their employees. The prepackaged integration is flexible enough to accommodate the integration of data from sources other than the SuccessFactors competency library.
Why “SuccessFactors Learning Curricula Integration with SAP Qualifications”?
Customers who use SAP ERP HCM in combination with SuccessFactors learning sometimes use the curricula feature instead of the competency library to track the competencies of their employees.
3.1 Data Flow from SAP to SuccessFactors
No data is sent from SAP to SuccessFactors Learning. The curriculum is created and maintained in SuccessFactors learning.
3.2 Integration Data Flow from SuccessFactors Learning to SAP ERP
Once the SuccessFactors Learning Curricula is populated, customers are required to maintain the curricula in SuccessFactors. Changes made to the SuccessFactors curricula will be sent to SAP ERP Qualifications catalog periodically. Competencies associated with a person are also sent to the SAP Qualifications Profile.
3.3 Prerequisites
The packaged master data integration between SAP ERP HCM and SuccessFactors Talent Suite should be in place.
| 3.4 | Known assumptions and design boundaries |
- There is no support for a one-time upload of the SAP Qualifications Catalog to SuccessFactors Learning.
- While the SuccessFactors Learning Curricula is mapped to SAP Qualifications, SuccessFactors Learning Item is not mapped to SAP Qualifications.
- Deletion of Curricula is not supported by the packaged integration. If a Curricula is deleted in SuccessFactors Learning, the packaged integration will not delete the corresponding SAP Qualifications.
- Determination of the validity period incase of SuccessFactors Learning is derived.The Curriculum contains Items that have an expiry dates. Each item can have a separate expiry date. To arrive at the validity end date of a Curriculum, all the items within a Curriculum are processed and the earliest expiry date among them is interpreted as the Curriculum validity end date. If Items do not have end date specified, its assumed that the Skill will never expire (31st December 9999).There is no begin date supplied. Current date is considered as begin date. In every replication, the data for Employee skill is updated to start with current date.
| 4. | Integration Technology |
| 4.1 | HANA Cloud Integration |
Both the packaged integrations use SAP HANA Cloud Integration as the integration middleware technology.
| 4.2 | SAP NetWeaver PI |
SAP NetWeaver PI on-premise integration middleware technology will be supported in the upcoming releases.
The one-time upload of SAP Qualifications is done as a manual file upload as part of the implementation.
| 5. | Implementation and Enablement Resources |
| 5.1 | Administration Guide |
The detailed administration guide will be available in Service Market Place at service.sap.com as part of the release.
| 5.2 | Rapid Knowledge Transfer |
A rapid knowledge transfer session will be conducted by product managers to enable implementers. A recording of the session will be made available in service market place.
| 5.3 | Help Portal |
Help.sap.com will be updated with the appropriate help documentation as part of the release.
| 5.4 | Rapid Deployment Solutions |
There are no Rapid Deployment solutions covering these packaged integrations as of June 2014.
5.5 Additional Learning about SAP Qualifications and SuccessFactors Competencies
julien.tuerlinckx has written an excellent blog post on the topic of leveraging SAP Qualifications. A second blog post by him on the same topic is here.
A primer in SuccessFactors Competencies is available here.
| 6. | Summary |
SAP ERP customers use employee qualifications stored in the Employee Qualifications Profile in SAP to make day-to-day operational decisions.
An employee acquires a qualification, in most cases, by completing a training program. These training programs are managed by many SAP customers in SuccessFactors Learning, SAP’s learning management system in the cloud. The SuccessFactors Learning Curricula integration with SAP Qualifications integrates the Curricula and the Curricula completion status of an employee with the SAP Qualifications Catalog and the Employee Qualifications Profile in SAP, respectively.
In some cases changes in an employee’s qualification might come from a system that is not a learning management system. For example a performance management system could update an employee’s qualifications. Hundreds of SAP customers use the SuccessFactors Talent Solutions suite which has applications that influence or directly update an employees qualifications. The SuccessFactors Competencies integration with SAP Qualifications integrates the SuccessFactors Competency Catalog and the Employee Competencies with SAP Qualifications Catalog and the Employee Qualifications Profile in SAP, respectively.
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