Category Archives: HANA

Spring 2014 conference circuit – My Top 5 Takeaways

Cloud, ESS, HANA, HR2014, Hybrid, PaaS, SAP Fiori, , , , ,
Photo in action during one of my self-service sessions in Nice, France.
Photo in action during one of my self-service sessions in Nice, France during HR2014 Europe.

After my “spring conference tour” (HR2014 in Orlando, Mastering SAP & Payroll in Johannesburg, HR2014 in Nice, and SAPPHIRE/ASUG 2014), I have listed five key takeaways from my interactions with customers.

  1. Customers are still struggling with the basics. Topics such as security/authorizations, reporting, organizational updates, portals, authentication, mobile enablement continue to plague customers. Throughout this exciting time of HR systems innovation, we often overlook that ‘business keeps happening’ (i.e., organizations are dynamic, employees need to get paid – and paid correctly). As consultants, we need to remember that we can’t mess up the basics as we are looking at the “new and shiny”.
  2. There is significant interest from the SAP install base in HR Renewal and other ways to refresh the overall user experience for employees, managers, and HR Professionals. The update of the current portal interface using SAPUI5 (SAP’s take on HTML5) is a popular topic on the ground. Furthermore, and specific to HR Renewal (and other SAPUI5 services), knowing now that we can couple SAP Netweaver Gateway and SAP ECC provides customers with an even a lower TCO.
  3. Hybrid (core HR on premise, full/partial talent in the cloud) will be commonplace for companies in the next 5-7 years. After talking with many organizations, the reality of integrations and their complications are here to stay. Integration strategy and middleware choice is increasingly important for customers running SAP HCM.
  4. The “fury” over Fiori has been laid to rest. SAP Fiori is now included as part of the standard SAP maintenance fee for customers. It’s a pity that SAP customers had to fight for this like they did, but it does give some comfort in knowing that the user community is a force to be reckoned with when they believe something is unjust. The UI merging of HR Renewal, SAP Fiori, and SuccessFactors will seem to be a top priority. The vision of (since-departed) Vishal Sikka of a unified HTM5 UI may not be as farfetched as I originally thought.
  5. HANA is still a nebulous term for customers (no pun intended), but some are starting to understand that it’s not just a database anymore. More and more professionals are starting to understand the importance of PaaS (Platform as a Service), and the capabilities of the SAP HANA Cloud Platform. As partners, many in the SAP eco-system look forward to the day when the HANA Marketplace will be as robust as AppExchange.

Feel free to comment below if you would like to add.

Jeremy

@jeremymasters

 

Getting Ready for HR2014… are you???

Cloud, HANA, HR Renewal, HR2014, Integration, Mobility, SAP Fiori, SAPInsider, Self Services, SuccessFactors, Talent Management, , , , , , ,

HR2014

Like many of my colleagues attending HR2014 (produced by the @SAPInsider team), I am getting ready for HR2014 in Orlando March 11-14, 2014. I will be delivering 4 sessions this year:

podcast

I recently did a podcast with Kristine Erickson (twitter handle: @SAPinsiderKE) from @SAPInsider to sum up my SuccessFactors Talent Management Fall 2013 Seminar as well as look at the year ahead including the conference: What’s next for SAP ERP HCM Jeremy Masters shares his advice on SAP HR on-premise & cloud and the trends to watch at HR 2014. We chatted on the overall SAP HCM roadmap, SuccessFactors integration, HR Renewal 2.0, SAP Fiori, and Employee Central among other topic areas.

I will also be doing an Ask-The-Experts session with several other industry colleagues during one of the evenings. This is an underutilized part of the event where you can grab a beverage and sit with someone in a relaxed atmosphere to discuss anything you want. For this year, the SAPInsider team was able to compile a great group of folks including:

There will be a great group of speakers this year with fresh content. You can see who is speaking here. Too many sessions to mention that sound great, so I won’t even attempt to list…

hot_button

Some of the hot topics from this year will surely include (in no particular order):

  1. HANA roadmap for HCM, specifically anything in addition to the payroll work that has been done so far…
  2. SAP Fiori and the roadmap for HR apps. Wave 2 brought no HCM apps, will we see what Wave 3 will bring for HR?
  3. SuccessFactors Talent Management enhancements (such as the new “Presentations” functionality which was just released 1402).  By the way, if you haven’t already done so, please join the new LinkedIn group dedicated on SuccessFactors Talent Management.
  4. SuccessFactors Employee Central updates.  I am looking forward to hearing the 12 month roadmap especially around Time management.
  5. Updates related to the Customer Connection program in areas such as on premise Compensation, Learning (SAP LSO), and E-Recruiting.
  6. Further integration of SAP Jam into everything SAP HCM and SuccessFactors.
  7. HR Renewal 2.0 and the roadmap ahead for SAP Core HR innovations.

Hope to see you there. If you are not able to make one of my sessions, please drop by booth #315 in the Exhibit Hall and say hi to me or one of my Worklogix colleagues during one of the breaks.

See you all soon!

Jeremy (twitter handle: @jeremymasters)

(Twitter hashtag for the event is #HR2014)

SuccessFactors Talent Management Seminar 2013 Wrap Up

Cloud, HANA, HR Renewal, HR2014, Hybrid, Integration, Mobility, PaaS, Proxy, SAP Fiori, SAP HCM, SAPInsider, SuccessFactors, Talent Management, Uncategorized, , ,
Over the past 5 weeks, several industry colleagues and I have traveled in the US (Las Vegas and Orlando) and Europe (Copenhagen) meeting with over 50 customers from over 20 countries for a seminar on SuccessFactors’ Talent Management.

SuccessFactors Seminar

The below list is in no particular order but reflects some important themes, questions, and comments:

Integration is still a main concern.  Integration has always been central to SAP’s value proposition. The recent focus on cloud cannot derail this.  I was fortunate to spend these sessions with fellow speakers from SAP. From the messaging and interactions with them, I can confirm that SAP / SuccessFactors is committed to continued investment in integration (they term them “iFlows”).  This is a very good thing for customers, to ease the transition for using cloud technologies where practical. Prashanth Padmanabhan, SAP’s Senior Director, has written a recent blog on the topics for talent hybrid and full cloud integrations. Revisiting my list of concerns from nearly two years ago,many of these items are being addressed. (That blog post alone has gathered over 3,000 unique page views since June 2012).

Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) will be the differentiator.  Like other functional areas, the HANA Cloud Platform will be a critical piece for HCM to make the suite competitive in a very competitive cloud space (Workday, Oracle Fusion, Infor).  The HANA Cloud Development environment is key to SAP’s eco-system. Worklogix is actively developing applications and excited about the opportunities here with the future HANA marketplace (think Apple’s App Store but for SAP).

In my opnion, HANA (as a database) is a distraction to HCM customers. Yes, SuccessFactors would like to dump its Oracle databases (and soon will), but we need to focus on the platform HANA so that customers and partners can develop apps on. This has been articulated by Vishal and Hasso as well, but hasn’t reached most customers yet.  My hope is that this eco-system ramps up like salesforce.com has done.

Speaker Team for Las Vegas and Orlando
Speaker Team in Las Vegas and Orlando

Can we crack the User Experience nut?  Most hybrid customers have two (if not three or four) portals by the time they implement SuccessFactors. How will we truly make the user experience seamless? This is an area I have a lot passion in, as I have worked with employee, manager and HR self service since 1998 when I was a wee lad at Price Waterhouse.  We cannot be in the business of building and supporting “Frankenstein” portals (my term). However, the reality is that we need to support customers with their own internal realities. (For example, many customers will have to make sense of how their intranet, SharePoint, NetWeaver, and SuccessFactors sites/portals all come together).  This isn’t new but is becoming a pervasive issue as we venture into hybrid customers adding SuccessFactors into the mix. Putting simple (and single) sign on aside, we still need to team together to figure out how this all will be transparent to the end user.

Access control (security authorizations) is a major pain point for hybrid customers. Since authorizations won’t (and can’t) magically port over from SAP to SuccessFactors (or vice versa), we need to put this at the top of our list during design sessions. Especially with customers using complex structural authorizations (including context-sensitive structural authorizations). This will be – GULP – a big area for SIs and customers to work out together.

Mobility, mobility, mobility! Should I say it again: mobility! I don’t need to mention how important this area is for SAP HCM / SuccessFactors in order to keep up with customer demand as well as the competition’s offerings. How to offer one customer-facing (i.e., employee-facing) mobile app (or apps?) will be a challenge, and will be huge over the next 5 years.  If/when SuccessFactors will go device-agnostic (e.g., HTML5) is to be determined. (Secondary question: how does SAP Fiori come into play here – if it even does?). Mobility is another passion of mine, and one that I will speak on during next year’s HR2014 conference. Here are the session details.

Speaker Team in Copenhagen
Speaker Team in Copenhagen

Proxy functionality needs to be killer. In fact, I will call proxy (or delegation) management the third (or fourth?) killer app (this is self-proclaimed, but where can I copyright this???). SuccessFactors has done a nice job with proxy management. You can both manage proxy assignments, as well as use the proxy functionality easily within the tool. Compared to SAP HCM functionality, customers will be enthused.  On premise SAP HCM has always struggled with transactional and approval authorization (in part why Worklogix built the Proxy Manager product).

Social collaboration is great, but its benefits are not yet well understood. SAP Jam is a great tool (we use it internally, during our SuccessFactors trainings, as well as to share knowledge within the SAP/ SuccessFactors eco-system), but many customers don’t understand its context in the (corporate) world.  They ask: “Why do I need a LinkedIn / Facebook for the enterprise if I have access to LinkedIn and Facebook?” We need to evangelize on the importance and power of team collaboration, especially with video at our disposal. (Can you imagine what the internet would be without YouTube, Vimeo, SlideShare, MOOCs, Khan Academy?). SAP has a huge asset with Sameer Patel who I think is doing a great job in this area. You should follow him on Twitter you are not already: @SameerPatel

Being clear with messaging around on premise and cloud innovation will be important for SAP/SuccessFactors.  We need to be clear with customers that there is HCM innovation happening in both SAP’s on premise (e.g., SAP Fiori and HR Renewal) and cloud offerings (SuccessFactors, HCP, Jam). This is a good thing for customers, as they move to cloud at their own pace but are still looking for continuous improvement with their current HRIS investment.  We know where massive innovation is happening, but we do need to remember that some customers will either never have an option to go to the cloud, or won’t have the opportunity to get there sooner than they wish.

I want to thank SAPInsider for supporting my idea back in February 2013 for this SuccessFactors seminar. It was a huge success and, as always, the events in all three cities were interactive, engaging, and educational for all involved.

Please follow me on Twitter @jeremymasters

Until next time!

Jeremy

HR Wrap-up from SAPPHIRE/ASUG 2013

ESS, HANA, HR Renewal, HR2013, MSS, SAP Fiori, SAP HCM, SuccessFactors, , , , , , ,

Hi friends,

I attended SAPPHIRENOW/ASUG 2013 conference this past week.  I went in search of some answers to questions I discussed in my last blog.  I will touch on all those items and more in this blog.

Quick Thoughts on the Keynotes

I had overall mixed feedback for the keynotes. I thought Bill McDermott’s segment with sportscaster James Brown and guests was impactful, with a great customer endorsement from Under Armour. In the afternoon, Seth Godin was a great speaker and thought provoking. On Day 3, Professor Hasso Plattner also gave a nice summary of HANA within a Q&A format. This worked well for the most part, though it did get too technical at times for the audience, who were looking for more practical applications to how HANA will make their business/life better.  It was disappointing to not hear from Lars Delgaard (who was absent due to a personal matter), especially for the HCM folks in the audience.

Overall, the timing on the Keynotes was not managed well – starting late (approximately 10-15 minutes) and then ending a good 25-30 minutes late on certain days. The audience for those venues can be engaged for one and a half hour max. Any more, you will start to lose the audience and the crispness of the session looses its impact. Hope that gets adjusted next year.

What’s in a Name, and Should We Care?

During the keynotes, I exchanged several tweets on the product name and correct capitalization of SAP HANA, since I had been seeing it written in a variety of ways: hana, SAP Hana, HANA, and SAP HANA.  Thanks to Jonathan Becher, CMO of SAP, he set the record straight:

So, we all now know from the source: the official name is SAP HANA.

While on the subject, do we even know if HANA stands for something? Usually capitalization indicates an acronym, right? For example, SAP stands for Systems, Applications, and Products in Data Processing … Say that five times fast ;o)

SAP’s new UI offering, SAP Fiori, was also getting its name hacked in the Twitterverse during the conference. There were also folks confused whether Fiori was FIORI.  At least we didn’t hear Fury.  Again, Jonathon set the record straight:

 

That said… should we really care about all this grammar? I’ll let you decide, but I would think consistency will help with the marketing behind this important product from SAP.

SAP Core HR and Employee Central

I chose to leave this section SAP Core HR and Employee Central instead of SAP Core HR versus Employee Central. The reason being: it was clear from the sessions that SAP is investing in both. In his session on “The 2013 Guide to SAP HCM Improvements: On-Premise and Cloud”, Jean-Bernard Rolland made it clear that SAP will not be forcing any customers to migrate from SAP Core HR to Employee Central. In fact, SAP has been and will continue to make investments in the SAP Core through the HR Renewal program.  (Manager and Employee landing pages are planned to be released in July of 2013). This is good news for on premise customers who are not ready for the cloud. Vendors, like Worklogix, also offer an option for improved usability on premise of Core HR for HR professionals, Managers, and Employees. (You can check out that solution, HR Desktop, here).

Bottom line is this: as SAP consulting partners, we need to continue offering customers options since each customer’s roadmap is situational on a number of factors including their existing investments, and technology/organizational readiness.

Also kudo to the entire ASUG HCM team, as I heard most attendees say that the sessions were valuable and informative.

Yet Another UI Option: SAP Fiori

SAP’s latest UI offering (available version 1.0 as of May 2013) is SAP Fiori, which boasts a rapid deployment of 25 of the most used applications (some HR, some non-HR like Procurement and Sales).  It’s framework is based on SAPUI5 (i.e., SAP’s HTML5) but also needs the SAP Gateway (exact version: SAP NetWeaver Gateway 2.0 SPS 06) for consumption of these services. It is device-agnostic, meaning it will work on any device such as smart phone, tablet, or desktop.  Part of the appeal is that it can work on current investment, with an intuitive and “responsive design” (i.e., the screen will re-format based on device).

Current offerings within an HR context for ESS (employee self service) include the following:

  • Time Sheet
  • Leave Request
  • Paystub
  • Benefits Overview

Current offerings within an HR context for MSS (manager self service) include the following:

  • Approval of Time Sheets
  • Approval of Leave Requests
  • Generic Approve Requests

You can check out the Fact Sheet here, the pre-requisites here.

Remembering some recent innovations around SAP, we saw Eh5 UI Renovations in 2010, the MSS Add-on 1.0 and CORBU in 2011, HR Renewal in 2012, and now SAP Fiori. SAP Fiori is the first “mobile first”-developed technology from SAP which is a step in the right direction. That said, the app list for HR is basic and many SAP customers will balk at the price ($150 per user, one time setup).  It also lacks any role for HR (current roles: Employees, Managers, Sales reps, and purchasing agents).

It’s too early to know whether SAP Fiori will be an attractive option for customers using SAP HCM. SAP hopes that it’s not another flop like Duet, which got little to no traction, despite being a very cool concept. On the ground, I am still seeing customers wanting to leverage their existing portal investments, whether it be Netweaver, Sharepoint, or Websphere. And I don’t see that going away anytime soon.

What are your thoughts?

SAP HANA and its application for SAP HCM?

I attended an informative session “Leverage the power of SAP HANA in HCM” with Srikanth Gopalakrishnan and Michel Wulf from SAP on the developments and innovations around SAP HANA for Human Resources.  The discussion was mostly payroll-focused, as some of customer pain comes from longer-than-desired SAP Payroll processing times. The in-memory capabilities around SAP HANA will be able to power the business suite, as a platform, by greatly speeding up processing and analytic time. This innovation will be available for customers running SAP Payroll on premise, as well as for customers using the SAP Payroll cloud option (i.e., SAP R/3 instantiated payroll in the cloud).

Oh, and still no word about a full, native cloud payroll on Employee Central, but this could be in the making behind several closed doors.

Next Stop: Amsterdam!

It was great seeing customers, partners, and colleagues at the show. It was an enlightening week for me and my colleagues – thank you SAP and ASUG!

For my European friends, see you next month in Amsterdam for the SAPInsider HR2013 conference.

Jeremy

You can follow me on Twitter: @jeremymasters

My SAP HCM Preview to SAPPHIRE/ASUG 2013

HANA, HR Renewal, Hybrid, Mobility, SAP HCM, SAPInsider, SuccessFactors, , , , , , , , ,

Hi gang,

SAPPHIRENOW 2013 Conference
SAPPHIRENOW 2013 Conference

Like some of you, I will be attending SAP’s annual customer conference next week, SAPPHIRENOW, May 14-16 in sunny Orlando, FL.  It is also co-located with ASUG, the annual customer-focused conference for SAP’s largest user group. The event is an exciting conference since we get to hear directly from SAP, on hot topics and the overall roadmap. Specifically, within HCM there will be much focus on several topic areas which I will be listening for.

Here’s my top 5 list of SAP HCM topics I will be looking for during the conference:

1. What will HANA do (and be) for HCM?  Jarret Pazahanick wrote a nice piece on HANA for HCM on SCN here. With some of the topics on the roadmap  and under consideration (e.g. Compensation and Benefits modeling), it makes me wonder how (and when) on premise customers will consider using HANA. Of course, after yesterday’s announcement of SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud, SAP’s direction is clear for those companies ready for cloud.  For those on premise customers, there is still more information they need to understand what HANA can deliver for them. I will be looking next week at how HANA’s value can be realized for both customers on premise and those seeking cloud-based HR solutions.

2. What options do customers have for a refreshing User Experience? (i.e. what about HR Renewal and the other options that customers have for improved usability?). I wrote a blog on HR Renewal a few weeks back which you can read here, where I talk about “refreshing the UI”. Certainly, the new HR Renewal will be a welcome option for many customers (already on, or upgrading to ECC 6.0, Enhancement Package 6).  Robert Moeller, Solution Owner, Core HR at SAP, also just wrote a nice piece on this here on SCN, around Feature Pack 3 of HR Renewal which became available on March 13, 2013 to customers. Also, if you haven’t listened to the recent podcast from Insight Consulting Partners, please check it out here.  I was honored to join Insight Consulting Managing Partner Steve Bogner, and podcast members Brandon Toombs and Martin Gillet. Both Brandon and Martin will be at SAPPHIRE this year as well.

3. Any news about Payroll in the Cloud from SAP? If you haven’t already read this piece from Holger Mueller, do yourself a favor a read his blog “And suddenly…Payroll matters again!“.  SAP has been very light around this topic since the SuccessFactors acquisition.  The question on the table of course is whether SAP will build out a full cloud payroll solution, or keep with their instantiated hosted payroll offering (complimented with vendors like ADP). Next week, I will be keen on understanding if there is any buzz on the ground at SAPPHIRE regarding a payroll cloud initiative.

ASUG Annual Conference 201
ASUG Annual Conference 2013

4. Continue feeling the customer pulse around on premise v. hybrid v. full cloud On Tuesday, I will be co-presenting a session on a success story of how our organization, Worklogix, helped a leading pharmaceutical company with their global ECM (SAP Compensation) on premise solution. You can view the abstract of this session here if you would like to attend.  There is also a variety of SuccessFactors sessions as well, which you can see here. I will continue to meet with customers (existing and prospective) to get their perspective on this critical topic area – always one fiercely debated with lots of strong opinions.

Mobile Desktop
Menu screen for the Mobile Desktop by Worklogix

5. Understand the traction around mobile HCM. I wrote a blog on mobility and held an HR Forum Q&A for the Insider Learning Network which you can check out the transcript here.  Did you know SAP has a store like iTunes, and specifically for the HR Line of Business? Check out SAP’s apps, as well as those from software vendors who drive innovation in this great eco-system like Worklogix, EPI-USE, and hyperCision.  I will be looking to understand SAP’s direction with mobile applications, especially with regards to pricing and future innovation both using SAP HCM (Afaria as MDM and SUP as MEAP) as well as SuccessFactors offerings.

Whoever is going, please drop by booth (pod) #2027b to say hello to me and the rest of the Worklogix team who will be in the Exhibit Hall. Hope to see some of you soon!

Jeremy