Shouldn’t this just work?
I’ve heard that from every client I’ve ever worked with: Shouldn’t x/y/z just work? Why does SAP make it so hard? And I’ve heard it from many consultants I’ve worked with. Coming from clients, I can understand it since it’s not their job to know the software inside-out (though maybe SAP could do a better job educating them on the software’s capabilities). But coming from consultants, it’s painful to hear because it shows that they don’t have any real mastery of their profession. And even when I don’t hear it directly, I see the imprints that lack of consulting knowledge leaves in the client’s software.
For example, I was helping a client solve a problem they had with their 401k calculations in payroll. They described it to me, and mentioned that their implementation consultant wrote some custom rules in payroll to try to fix the issue. But it still wasn’t working correctly for their plan requirements. They had to manually monitor and fix employee paychecks and their plan funding and reporting process was much more complicated all because they were working around this error.
I know that SAP’s standard functionality works fine for all but the strangest 401k plans, so my hunch is that someone made a configuration mistake. Once I was able to get into their system to take a look around, I saw the problem: one wagetype’s cumulation class was setup incorrectly, leading to some weird results in the 401k wage base. One wagetype attribute - a simple one - was setup incorrectly and instead of identifying that and fixing the source of the problem, their consultant created a lot of complexity and still didn’t fully resolve the problem.
That consultant’s lack of knowledge created the issue, and their lack of knowledge couldn’t fix it either. The client didn’t know any better about the technical details; but they did know that they paid good money for the software and services, expecting it to be able to calculate 401k contributions. And they were puzzled about why there were issues with it. It’s 401k after all, practically everyone in the US has 401k plans so how could it be that they were having issues?
I could write similar stories about most every module of the SAP HCM software. The software works; too often it’s poor implementation consulting that breaks it. In my younger days I was more critical of the SAP HCM software than I am now, and that was justifiable when the core module was growing and evolving. Now, I’m OK with the software. It works, it isn’t perfect, but it’s good. Experience has shown me that the value clients get from SAP HCM is only partially due to the software; much of the value has to do with how it is implemented.
And that leads me to being more critical of the SAP HCM consulting profession. The barriers to entry are very low; there isn’t much to keep someone from saying they are an SAP HCM consultant. There are plenty of ways and incentives to puff-up a resume to make it look much better than the real, underlying experience supports. The chase for the lowest cost and highest margin consultants also has negative impacts on implementations - clients are better off selecting consultants who provide high value. And while I admire the efforts to build a robust consultant certification scheme, that will take years to gain traction with clients.
So yes, the software does work. It isn’t so complicated... when you have a team who knows the software well and can translate your business processes and practices into ways that provide more value than where you came from.