Hi everyone!
We are only a few days before HR2013 Amsterdam and I hope to see most of you there. I’ll have the honor to run a few sessions and cover two hot topics: one about the trends in talent management and how SAP’s portfolio supports them, and the other on today’s blog topic, SAP and Successfactors’ hybrid model. For our purposes, we define hybrid as the ability to deploy, run and manage end-to-end business processes from SAP and SuccessFactors in a loosely coupled suite experience. For the remainder of this blog I will recap on last year’s software deliveries that enable SAP ERP HCM’s hybrid model, and give you some fresh news on what is next.
What did SAP deliver until now?
SAP is very fortunate to have a very enviable install base of 14,000 SAP ERP HCM customers. The ambition of the HR hybrid model is to allow our customers to leverage years of investments and trust in SAP ERP HCM software, and help them smoothly expand with SuccessFactors’ market leading cloud solutions. Since the very beginning, SAP has been delivering integration capabilities called “People Cloud iFlows” around three strategic pillars: data foundation integration, process integration and user experience integration. The first half year of 2012 was focused on setting up the data foundation. The data foundation iFlows were delivered to help customers with master data and organizational data integration. With this foundation, HR departments can benefit from a “single point of truth” between SAP and SuccessFactors in order to build end-to-end business processes upon. By Q3 2012 SAP shipped the first business process integration “pay for performance”: i.e. the ability for managers to automatically get key payroll data from SAP ERP HCM when executing compensation in SuccessFactors. The payroll allocations defined in SuccessFactors Compensation are transferred to SAP for the next payroll run. You can find great blogs nn that topic on SCN.
What’s “around the corner?”
Currently we are in the midst of delivering the process “define to hire” which supports the end-to-end recruitment process. In the first step, customers can integrate SuccessFactors Recruiting to SAP ERP HCM’s core (ramp-up is planned for July 2013) to simplify and shorten the related admin tasks. We are happy to report that many customers are adopting this hybrid approach as the natural evolution of their HRIS. You can find great resources on this hybrid model, the HR scenarios and the technology supporting them here:
These resources are updated regularly so be sure to save them as favorites in your browser.
What is SAP planning next on the hybrid integration roadmap?
I am happy to share new elements of the hybrid roadmap, and introduce the business scenarios and cross-suite topics we are planning to address going forward. This information is subject to change at SAP’s discretion, but it will provide you with the direction we are headed:
- Recruiting integration from SAP to SuccessFactors “step 2”: we will close the loop with step 1 mentioned above and integrates the vacancy to the SuccessFactors requisition. This is planned for 2013.
- In 2014, we will focus on skills and competencies integration. These are fundamental to manage talent effectively cross-company. The Learning integration is planned for 2014 as well. We all know “Learning” is a market in itself, but integration with the HRIS and beyond enables organizations to determine its real business value. Here we are looking at updating the learner history and the employee qualifications from SuccessFactors Learning, and sending the learning cost allocation to SAP ERP Financials for booking.
- SuccessFactors social onboarding integration with SAP ERP HCM which will enable organizations to support future employees before they join the company.
- Other integration topics like Succession and Development are under consideration as well.
- In addition, we plan to continue to service the SAP and SuccessFactors integration via the extension of the current Rapid Deployment Solution (RDS) with the incremental content. Find out more details on the RDS solution here.
- As far as integration technology is concerned: both SAP NetWeaver Process Integration and SAP HANA Cloud integration are the platforms of choice to support these HR business processes. As many customers are largely embracing the SaaS model for HR, I am personally convinced that many will consider PaaS as the best and natural option for HCM processes integration in order to lower the TCO, take advantages of all the life cycle management services or the support, just to name a few.
I am planning to provide more insights in Amsterdam at the HR2013 Conference during my session An introduction to the integration between SAP and SuccessFactors on June 12. I will consolidate the roadmap information in another blog after that event. As always, I am happy to hear your feedback on our hybrid roadmap and efforts, and look forward to meeting you in person in Amsterdam.
If you cannot attend the event, I am pleased to announce that we are planning a tweet-chat session on the hybrid roadmap where I will be joined by other HR market experts. So get your questions ready and stay tuned for more details on this upcoming event.
Follow me on Twitter: @ypeterschmitt
Follow SAP ERP HCM on Twitter: @SAPHCM
