Category Archives: Talent Management

Thoughts from HR2013

Hi gang,

Just back from a great conference held by the SAPInsider team from Wellesley Information Services. Like past years, this year was great. Here are some of my takeaways, impressions, and lasting thoughts while still fresh in the brain:

  1. The messaging was clearer, but the sales pitch needs to go. The good news from the conference was that SAP and SuccessFactors did a much better job at the positioning of the strategy/roadmap than last year. I thought David Ludlow did a nice job with the message delivery at the keynote. Outside of the keynote, the sessions largely had the same quality and diversity in previous years (great job to SAPInsider, Riz, and Amy Thistle). My session on mobility really resonated with the audience, as did many important subjects on integration and HANA. The only downer for me was that there was selling in some of the vendor-led presentations. This is a customer-driven event and it should focus on ‘how-tos’, case studies, and best practices. Let’s focus on describing the options for our customers and how we can help drive successful deployments.
  2. Impressed with access to SAP and SuccessFactors staff. This year more than any other we had more SAP/SuccessFactors representation at the conference. Also, some SAP folks were available on Twitter throughout the conference, such as @watchthewave and  @brianclendenin which enabled us to clarify some items right then during the conference. For example, I had a question around Plateau’s performance management offering that was clarified by a SuccessFactors VP in about 1 hour. I learned first hand how powerful social can be, especially in a conference setting.
  3. Innovation around HR Renewal and deployment challenges. Like others, I saw some cool things around HR Renewal, but am concerned around how quickly it can be adopted by the bulk of customers. First , it does require the customer to be at a certain version/patch: SAP ERP 6.0,  Enhancement Package 6 on with SP Stack 03. What’s difficult here is that we have alot of things being thrown in front of customers from an ESS/MSS perspective: there was the conversion to Web Dynpro ABAP (which is now complete, as of EhP6), then there was CORBU, then HR Renewal for the HR Business Partner, then an extension of this for ESS and MSS. Also, throw in the mix of SAP Portal versus NetWeaver Business Client (NWBC). For those customers who are a SharePoint shop, NWBC is a consideration (to be consumed in a web part), but the challenge now is that SAP Portal is pretty well entrenched in SAP customers and it’s hard to rip that out at this point. When surveyed at my ESS/MSS customer session, about 80-90% were using the SAP Portal. Net new clients might be a different story. So we need to guide our customers in this hazy area. [As a side note, I was disappointed with the demo during the keynote, as it appeared slow (due to connectivity issues). At one point, the screen went blank. Also, the Employee Central demo appeared a bit slow during the keynote, and it was given shorter airtime (not sure why?).
  4. Some thoughts around functionality offerings of SAP/SuccessFactors:
    1. Jobs2Web adds huge capability for the Recruiting solution from a social (SocialMatcher) and candidate User experience perspective. However, the recruiter functionality (original SuccessFactors Recruiting) needs improvement, which I hope is an area of innovation for SAP/SuccessFactors.
    2. Performance management (and goals) continues to be a strong and compelling offering. I’m not sold on the use case of the new goals app for my iPhone, but the offering in sum is functionality rich.
    3. Qualifications management is a key issue needing a solution. Since many customers maintain a qualifications catalog within their core HR system, and since the go forward solution is SuccessFactors, there needs to be a well-thought out plan to sync this within a hybrid environment.
    4. I believe the SAP on premise Enterprise Compensation Management (ECM) and SuccessFactors comp/variable pay are comparable in terms of functionality. I heard from several customers who will stay on premise with compensation since their variable pay calculations/business process need special attention.  Those that have SAP Payroll on premise, I also see value in coupling the comp with the payroll.
    5. We need more clarity in the Workforce Analytics and HANA areas. From the information I gathered, and from the customers I met with, there is still alot of confusion around the strategy on premise v. cloud, around these two items.  I suspect we will hear more about these items during SAPPHIRE in May.
    6. Employee Central needs to grapple with the concurrent/ global employment use case since it currently cannot handle multiple contracts. Again, an area SAP/SuccessFactors needs to invest in.
    7. Time management was largely absent during the sessions and throughout the conference.
    8. Cloud Payroll was mentioned at a very high level. When will we hear more about this?

Next stop is the 2013 SAPPHIRE/ASUG conference. Hope to see all my friends there, and learn more!

Please follow me on Twitter at @jeremymasters

My Impressions from the HR2012 Singapore Event

Hi there,

I just returned from Singapore this weekend, and I wanted to provide some impressions from the HR 2012 conference that I attended and presented at. I know that not all my colleagues had the opportunity to attend, so I thought I would write a few quick thoughts that I took away.

  1. Same challenges, different time zone. No matter which time zone you’re in, country you live in, or language you speak, I am continuing to see the same challenges with HR and IT professionals. User adoption (usability), roadmap questions on SFSF and SAP, and the need for strong online form processing (eForms)-among others!- continue to plague SAP customers in all areas in the world. This year, I had the fortune to speak in Vegas, Milan, and now Singapore, so I got a decent sampling from customers in the North America, EMEA, and AsiaPac markets.
  2. User experience continues its dominating theme. User adoption of self service for employee, managers, and HR is still a huge part of successful implementations. My session on usability was well-received, with many heads shaking in the audience as we looked out for usability challenges with SAP portal applications as they are today. The audience was intrigued by the new HR Renewal functionality that I discussed. A good blog with some screenshots can be found here, authored by Jarret Pazahanick. SAP has hit a cord on this one, as I imagine most on premise customers will be interested in exploring how to exploit this innovation.
  3. SuccessFactors story re-introduced. Raj Sundarason, VP Human Capital Management Solutions from SAP, did a nice job at the HR Plenary address, especially re-introducing the SuccessFactors story and the benefits offered by a cloud solution. The options (full cloud, on premise, and hybrid) were again explained to the customers, and there was definitely some interested faces in the crowd.  There was also the same general concern on the roadmap and, especially questions on how talent management in the cloud would/could play into their existing framework since some of them were already implementing (or had recently implemented) some or all of SAP’s talent management modules.  This is a work in progress of course, but kudos to Raj for a job well done.
  4. Mobile. Interest in mobile, but not as pronounced as I was expecting considering how heavy SmartPhone usage is in this area of the world. However, I suspect folks (desperately) want this but know that they need to “walk before they can run” with respect to their existing situation (i.e., most customers I talked to were still trying to nail down a self-service strategy).
  5. Singapore is a fabulous city and country. This was my first time in Singapore and had a great time, meeting some really great people, and seeing some really amazing sites.

Looking forward to the opportunity of being back next year for the AsiaPac HR2012 conference.  Although the flight was a tough one (20 hrs in all: JFK-NRT-SIN), it was well worth the trip.

Thanks again to everyone at SAPInsider for this opportunity, and for the customers and friends I met while there.

@jeremymasters

Singapore Conference 2012

I am excited about my upcoming trip to Singapore for the first ever SAPInsider HR conference, October 16 through October 18.  For additional details on the conference, check out the website here: www.hr2012.com

A few weeks back, I was able to sit down with Dave Hannon, Senior Features Editor with SAPinsider & insiderPROFILES at Wellesley Information Services (twitter: @Daveatwispubs) and record a short podcast on the sessions I will be delivering in Singapore.

To read about my session on ESS and MSS, click here:

To read about my session on Usability and User Experience, click here:

I will be doing an “old school”, “back to basics” session on Org management. Click here for more info.

And, of course, one of my favorite topics (always), compensation management.

Obviously, one of the themes throughout my sessions will be around the recent acquisition of SuccessFactors, and what this will mean for SAP customers now and going forward.  I have had many conversations with my customers since SAPPHIRE around this topic, and it’s evident that many questions still exist out there.  I have previously listed some of the top integration challenges between SAP and SuccessFactors in a prior blog.

Thanks, and for those of you who will be in Singapore, I look forward to meeting up with you!

Jeremy

@jeremymasters

 

How SAP’s purchase of SuccessFactors will affect SAP HCM consulting

I was recently asked to provide a few comments on the recent SuccessFactors purchase and what it means for SAP HCM consulting. Some other leading industry experts and I gave our slant on how the recent news may influence how we do our work differently within the HCM space.  Click here to be taken to the article posted in the SAP Community Network’s website.   The blog offers some nice perspectives, broken down by some of the major areas within the SAP HR module including:

  • Core HR (Payroll, Time, Benefits, PA, OM)
  • Enterprise Compensation (ECM)
  • eRecruiting
  • Learning Solution (LSO)
  • Talent Management
  • Performance Management
  • ESS/MSS
  • SAP HCM Technical

Q&A on ESS / MSS in EhP5 – Understanding the Latest Innovations

Check out the transcript of my Q&A blog session on the Insider Learner Network website: http://www.insiderlearningnetwork.com/go/thread/view/91053/28907403/New_features_for_ESSMSS_with_EhP_5:_QA_with_Jeremy_Masters_on_SAP_self-services

In this post, I answer questions from several panel members who ask some very good questions on the latest Enhancement Package 5 functionality for Employee and Manager Self Service. Some highlights include the move to the new Web Dynpro ABAP launchpad, as well as the new deployment options within the framework.

All of this information and more is discussed. One thing you will need is a log on (username is free) to access the information on this site.