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Former Member

It is that time of the year , when I need to make travel plans to Las Vegas to attend HR 2013 conference. I have been attending the SAP Insider conferences for last few years and every year there is something new to learn. Thanks to the hard work and efforts of Amy Thistle (conference organizer), this year seems to be bigger than the past years. This year, HR2013 is being held as an independent  five day conference. You can get full details of the conference by clicking here http://bit.ly/YCbaHr

Conferences such as these, provide wonderful opportunity to meet your peers,customers, learn new tricks from them, and understand SAP's plans for the product roadmap.

Here  is my agenda:

Learn more about Successfactors --  I was very excited when SAP acquired Successfactors. Successfactors brings usability experience, bells & whistles that SAP HCM on-premise solution sorely lacks. At the HR 2013 conference, I plan to attend these Successfactors related sessions:

Day 1

Live demo: How to leverage the cloud-based talent management capabilities of SuccessFactors

The 2020 workplace: Connected, collaborative, and social

An introduction to the integration between SAP and SuccessFactors

Live demo: How to leverage the cloud-based talent management capabilities of SuccessFactors

Day 2:

Talent management as a driver of strategy execution

Interactive discussion forum: Coca-Cola shares lessons from its hybrid deployment of SAP ERP HCM and SuccessFactors

Case study: How Remington Arms Company streamlined its performance management process using SAP and SuccessFactors

Day 3:

Live demo: SuccessFactors Employee Central

An in-depth look at SuccessFactors Learning

Understand how SAP and Successfactors will be integrated - A year after SAP announced acquisition, there is still lots of confusion on how Successfactors will be integrated with SAP ERP HCM. Recent SAP announcements such as using SAP PI (on-premise or cloud) or using flat-file transfer does not "fully" meet the customer expectations. Remember, even before the Successfactors acquistion, there were many SAP customers who had implemented Successfactors and were successful in transferring data between the two solutions. My first question about SAP PI is, what will happen to customers who do not have SAP PI. For flat files, currently Successfactors cannot "push" data.. Hence, the "push" and "pull" comes from SAP HCM. Successfactors does not use the concept of BP (business partner) or CP (central person) and relies wholly on PERNR. If you are usign global employment or concurrent employement, as a customer you have to prepare, to integrate with Successfactors.  As a consultant, I have different set of expectations from SAP, when we talk about integration. To me, integration should be seamless (datawise, usability wise) and should provide at the field level. Till now, SAP has not done a good job in answering these concerns. At the conference, I hope to meet and learn if anything is being planned to mitigate these concerns. The longer time SAP takes to answer these questions, the customers will be left with options to look at other cloud providers. (The integration "pain" remains the same).

Understand the future and potential  of SAP HCM on-premise / How popular is Successfactors after becoming a SAP company - Successfactors and SAP are putting lots of efforts into Successfactors Employee Central (which is exciting). If Employee Central does get popular, it will be matter of time, before "core" modules are transitioned to Successfactors. Is this a possibility? Last year when the acquisition was still "new" , many customers took a "wait-and-see"
approach. I expect that to be changed in the past year. It will still be interesting to see, what the current thinking and mood is. Conferences such as these, provide clues on SAP and customers thinking. 

I am looking forward to this conference to meet friends like Jarret (with whom I have exchanged several e-mails), Luke, Jeremy Masters (I get to meet Jeremy only at conferences), the hardworking folks from SAP Press (including "Sir" John), WISPubs,  and the list is long...

If you are still planning, do not wait any further. Conference from SAP Insider are top quality, and there are plenty to learn. Every session is carefully choosen, the speakers are either from SAP Solutions team or consultants with plenty of implementation experiences.  My customers who have attended in the past, always talk about the "high quality" about the sessions, materials and the take-homes.


l look forward to seeing you next week. As mentioned earlier, you can get full conference details and session agenda by clicking this link http://bit.ly/YCbaHr

Safe travels and see you soon.

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