Year-end is a good time to take a look at where you have been and make some course corrections. Or, ponder what went well and not so well the past year and make a list of things to keep doing, to work on, and importantly to stop doing. Looking back at the past year's work with all sorts of SAP HR clients, I have five things that seem to keep coming up.
Now, taking on all five might feel like too much, too soon. But then, there are always reasons to put off doing the hard work of improving, changing and growing. So think of these not as Five New Year's Resolutions for SAP HR, but more as Five New Year's Principles to Govern SAP HR:
Use more of what you have. There is plenty of functionality in the SAP HR module to satisfy most every client, yet many only use a small portion of it. You don't have to go through big implementations to take advantage of much of what's there. Here are some simple examples I came across in 2010 that come to mind:
- A firm programmed the new hire report from scratch, instead of using the one delivered from SAP that works just fine. It's also supported by SAP and kept up to date for regulatory changes.
- A company downloaded salary data, massaged it in Excel, and then uploaded their annual pay changes via Winshuttle (a fine product), instead of using the Compensation Management processes to do the changes completely within SAP. No need to go all the way with ECM (Enterprise Compensation Management) for this, you could even use the old-school pay change process for this.
- Many firms I've come in contact with are not using the ALV (ABAP List Viewer) functionality in their custom reports. They put the output to a simple list, which end users then download, import into Excel, sort, filter, and subtotal as needed. All that can be done right there in SAP if the report is coded to put the output to ALV. With SAP's move to a more object-oriented framework, this is easier than ever before.
- Some customers who outsource benefits administration duplicate the 401(k) savings plan functionality for limits and such, instead of using the built-in and supported payroll/benefits integration. Instead of interfacing into Recurring Payments & Deductions (infotype 0014) just send it to the Savings Plan infotype 0169 and let the system you paid for do all the work on limits and such.
Join the online real-time world. Migrate away from batch input, flat files, batch jobs and user exits to SAP PI, SOA, RFC, IDocs, Web services and decoupled infotypes. This is a great way for HR to show forward thinking and leadership, and benefit from this new(ish) technology. While others are talking about scheduling issues or flat-file problems, you can say HR has real-time integration with its third-parties and those issues don't seem to ever come up for you. To get started with this, including making sense of all those acronyms, make friends with your Basis and Development teams. Remember – most of those folks are introverted thinkers, so tone down the HR chattiness and practice some deep listening skills while sharing lots of food and caffeinated beverages.
Focus on process quality. I would bet that your staff spends at least 25% of its time and effort fixing the damage done by broken processes. When something doesn't go right, someone has to fix the problems – so putting some effort into fixing the root causes will free-up effort in the future. Many clients seem to accept that this 25% of staff effort is unavoidable or simply part of what they are there to do. I think that if companies could get 25% more out of their fixed assets they would jump at it, so why not jump on the opportunity of getting 25% more productivity from your human assets? Start by choosing a couple processes to monitor, and every time you have someone clean up a process mess, also do some investigation to find out just what caused that mess and what it takes to fix it. And then fix it.
Make HR data available via Business Warehouse (BW) and/or Business Objects (BO). Start with a couple things, like headcount reporting, payroll posting documents or working time - SAP includes all the extractors already. Get some experience with the basics of creating the queries, authorizations, roll-out and training before moving on to higher visibility (and higher value) endeavors. If you are starting a new SAP HR implementation, make BW and/or BO part of it. There simply is no better way of providing distributed access and analysis of SAP HR data.
Invest in your users' and analysts' SAP HR and related skills. You've most likely spent millions on licensing and implementing SAP HR, and you spend around 22% of the license fee each year to get maintenance services from SAP. You have one of the best pieces of HR software out there. Just as SAP will keep investing in changes and improvements to the software, you have to invest in the people who use and manage that software. Many SAP HR clients were not trained properly at implementation and resources were not allocated to keep them up to date as SAP improved the software, so there might be a lot of ground to make up. It has always struck me as ironic how small or nonexistant are the training and development budgets for SAP HR staff. Shouldn't HR lead the way in employee development? It can start with its own staff in the SAP HR area.
Work with SAP and your SAP consultants as partners. OK - I know this is number six, and I decided to add it because it will help you with all the rest. Once you go live with SAP HR, it still pays to keep working with SAP and your consulting partners. As you can see from the previous five points, there is still plenty to do after go-live. Keep an active relationship with your team from SAP. When you find an error in the software, report it and be persistent in getting it resolved. That will, unfortunately, take some significant effort but it does pay off since you will end up with better software. Also keep, or form a new relationship with an SAP HR consultant or firm. While you won't always need consultants to help out, there will be times when you need something outside your own expertise and experience. Having a trusted resource available is important.