(Part 1 of a 3-Part Blog Series)
At SuccessConnect 2015, SAP SuccessFactors launched a radical new innovation that expands across the entire SAP SuccessFactors HCM Suite - Intelligent Services. Many of you may have seen the keynotes, webinars, whitepapers, interviews and the awards we've received for Intelligent Services.
However, the skeptics still ask me - "What's the big deal?", and "How is this relevant to my customer?"
In this blog, I'm going to keep the answer simple.
I will provide ONE concrete example of how Intelligent Services improves HR service delivery, while reducing the cost of HR.
Global Mobility - The Problem
Companies today spend more than $150 billion annually on global mobility. According to PwC and Deloitte, companies will increase their spending on global mobility by 50% by 2020. However, only 2% of the companies surveyed rate their global mobility practices as being world-class.
Workforce mobility programs today have not kept up with recent trends - they're complex, costly and inefficient. HR is required to manually update multiple systems, manage each employee's tax liability and work with multiple relocation vendors just to help a single employee relocate to a new country. There's no question that e frequent business travelers and employees who accept global assignments need a reliable and self-service technology that can support their global mobility needs. Intelligent Services was built to help our customers solve this strategic issue.
Take SAP for example, a global leader in enterprise software that employs ~ 70,000 employees. Say 10% of our workforce (7,000 employees) must travel frequently for their jobs or take on short/long-term global assignments. There's a HUGE cost in managing the processes for 7,000 employees! Typically, a much smaller HR organization (SAP's global mobility team consists of 40 employees) is required to manage all of the processes end-to-end. From when an an employee submits their request to go on an international business trip or global assignment, HR is responsible for hand-holding the employee all the way until they show up for work in their new country - all while keeping costs low.
Intelligent Services - The Answer
Rather than having HR spend hours/days/weeks on manually updating systems, Intelligent Services can automate and simplify the processes for them. HR Admins log into the SAP SuccessFactors Event Center to enable predefined events (such as when an employee changes their location). HR is able to set rules for what happens once the employee's location changes - ie: show a Recommended Community or trigger a ToDo for the employee to complete a particular task. Employees no longer have to guess what they need to do before taking on their global assignments.
Example of ToDo's delivered via Intelligent Services
Example of Recommended Community for Global Relocation
Intelligent Services - The Future
I have shared ONE example of how Intelligent Services can help our customers address their issues with employee mobility.
Intelligent Services may not solve all of our customers global mobility problems 'out of the box'. However, I anticipate that as more customers and partners leverage this new technology we will find more creative solutions in addressing the issues in global mobility. I have listed some questions that we ask ourselves as we continue to build out Intelligent Services and our global mobility use case:
- How can we help our customers simplify the process of obtaining employees' work visas and permits?
- How can we help our customers communicate better and protect the safety of their employees in the wake of a natural disaster, terrorist incident, or business outage?
- How can we help frequent business travelers simplify their travel and expense reports?
SAP SuccessFactors continues to work closely with our customers and partners to build new events for future releases that will expand beyond the SuccessFactors HCM suite. For more information on Intelligent Services, I encourage you to take a look at the Intelligent Services digital hub.
My next blog will focus on how Intelligent Services addresses the Leave of Absence.
*Many thanks to Tanya Thouw, Head of Global Mobility at SAP for contributing to this blog.
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