1 2 3 Previous Next

    bernhard.escherich

    39 Posts

    The silent revolution(s)

    A silent revolution is going on at the moment in the area of emergency management. During the Tsunami 2004, Hurricane Katrina or the recent earthquakes web user has disseminated information even before the TV channels and have created a lot of content contributing to disaster relief efforts. They have organized the search for victims or displaced persons over the net or have delivered whole software applications to support relief operations. This marks an important change which emergency management practitioners has to take into consideration. When I look back to my own training as mission commander for disaster relief operations more than fifteen years ago the focus was very different: How to react to victims in panic? How to get information from shocked people by questioning them? These were the challenges we were trained for in order to improve the situational awareness in a disaster area in the first hours after an incident (the chaos-phase).

    In parallel the world of disaster management organizations is changing tremendously from within. Thought leaders in public security have understood that organizations in public security need a new paradigm how to support the management processes: these organizations have a strong need for an overall IT platform to support their operations. Just one example could illustrate this: If an incident like a fire takes place with dozens of injured people with burnings today the coordination of the transport of these victims is a nightmare for the commanders-on-scene. Most of the countries in the world have no country-wide register how many treatment places are available at the moment. The use-case described was the starting point for Switzerland to build up a countrywide disaster management platform.

    A (first) definition of disaster management 2.0

    As the revolutions are still underway it is a bit difficult to define the meaning of disaster management 2.0 completely. But the patterns are quite clear:

    Disaster management 2.0 means a combination of common emergency management platforms for the different actors in disaster management with Web 2.0 applications containing content created by normal citizens and victims of a disaster. These new solutions will increase the interoperability between the different actors and the situational awareness (and therefore the speed of countermeasures) at the same time.

     

    6 Predictions for the next five years

    Based on more than discussions and interviews with disaster management executives and practitioners 6 predictions have been identified:

    1. Web 2.0 trends will become much more common for public security organizations over the next five years in order to dissemeninate information quickly to the citizens

    Many people shift their focus from the medias they have been used for years to Web 2.0 applications and create content by themselves for this social network applications. Therefore they also expect public authorities to provide information via these channels. Police forces, firefighter and other first responders need to meet these expectations and the use of twitter-like applications for example will become more and more common. Alerting will become more and more important in this respect. After 1989 a lot of the alerting functionalities like sirens have been thrown away. Using social networks to spread the information about upcoming incidents like a moving chemical cloud after a fire could help to alert the population in the future. A impressive example is the Los Angels fire department which already uses Twitter today to inform about every incident they have to master.

    2. Web 2.0 information will contribute tremendously to the situational awareness after incidents and disasters in the future and will be recognized by the commanders

    After incidents like floods or earthquakes it is very difficult for the commanders to get a clear picture of the situation in the affected area. How many people are affected? How many old or disabled persons are staying in an area that needs special treatment? Where are huge assemblies of survivors located? The combined information of all the tweets, blogs and other sources of information can increase the level of accuracy tremendously. Moreover the commanders will use these information more and more as younger people are entering the workforce who have grown up with the internet and who are using these applications in their private life as well.

    3. Public authorities will provide Web 2.0 features on their emerging security platforms helping to aggregate information from Web 2.0 applications like Twitter and using these applications internally

    A single point of information is crucial for the emerging emergency management platforms. Today these are mainly information about ressources, contact information and damage reports from disaster relief forces. Information from twitter-like application will enhance the situational picture. In order to support this task the SAP Enterprise Search will be used heavily in order to find out the relevant information as no staff member will have the time to read blogs or follows tweets.

    4. ESME could play an important role in combination with the SAP emergency management platform

    Emergency management practitioners are risk-averse by nature. Therefore they will be sceptical how far they can trust the information they got from citizens via the web which are not belonging to responder forces. Therefore an application like ESME could help to overcome these doubts by managing the ad-hoc formation of citizens reporting information and exchanging knowledge.

    Besides that ESME could also help to manage the interaction between the citizens themselves as people could exchange information in a trusted environment ("Our street has still electricity. You could come over and use it) and they do not have to search for information distributed about several websites.

    5. The separate disaster management systems for the different authorities and private companies will converge

    Corporate security departments are building up security platforms in a similar fashion as the authorities do. They also use Web 2.0 technologies for security purposes. In many cases they have an advantage as they are already using these applications for their business anyway. But the concepts of corporate security have changed over the last years. They cannot concentrate their activities on countermeasures against localized threats (e.g. fires) any more. New threats scenarios like a pandemic have made clear that the incidents have a new quality and that enterprises and public authorities need to work more closely together. This includes an interoperability of their security platforms.   

    6. Software projects like Sahana will use the public security platforms as their backbone for information

    Open source applications like SAHANA can contribute to the disaster relief efforts. Therefore interoperability with security platforms from the government is crucial in order to exchange information like ressource availability. Double entries of data which is already available in the systems could be avoided.

    Digital natives and their behaviour

     

    "It is just a matter of time with a new generation entering the workforce which will bring a broad adoption of new technologies." I bet that all of us have heard such a statement or made it ourselves. But recent projects in the area of higher education and discussions and thought-provoking discussions with a colleague from our solution management forced me to rethink my own position in this game.

    Digital natives are people born after 1980 which grew up in a world of video games computers and later on the internet. They use these technologies in the same way as we speak our native tongue. In contrast people like me who were born before could master the new technologies very well but there will also be a slight difference to a "native speaker". Many of us could notice this difference every day with our kids.

    Higher education as a front-runner

    As BPXer we have to take care of these people in our projects as well. Students in universities expect that the Web 2.0 applications they use every day - Facebook, StudiVZ, Twitter just to name a few - could be used in their work and learning activities as well. Bringing Facebook and SAP’s Student Lifecycle Management system together has blogged about a very interesting mash-up between Facebook and SAP´s Student Lifecycle Management just recently.

    But at the same time we are facing the situation that some appraiser (e.g. outstanding scientist from universities) in grants management processes still ask for paper-based solutions if they should deliver their evaluations. Due to their importance it is not a request which you could simply deny. In a current project a very good solution was implemented from my point of view: The whole process was transferred in a digital one but with the possibility to print out the documents if the user requests it. This solution seems so simple but it took a lot of the heat out of the discussion.

    Non-adopter support instead of a management decision

    This could be a blueprint for a lot of other projects with many forms involved: If BPX target the digital natives and the non-adopters a broad adoption could be reached. This way digital immigrants will be satisfied as well as they could choose which behaviour to adopt. Besides it will help to overcome a lot of difficulties in document management projects. Consultants normally outline that management support is key. But in reality it is not the management support which is decisive but the broad employee support. Without the acceptance people will find ways work around and still use their paper.

     

    Digital Natives should join forces with digital immigrant BPX to find the best solution

    In the project mentioned we have young colleagues in our team who are 100% digital natives. The opportunity we have had with this was unique as the mix of the user was equally represented in the project team.  

    The financial crisis is causing reactions throughout all enterprises globally. Several members of the BPX community - Preparations to run the after-recovery phase., Redoubling Your Focus On Innovation - have already shared their insights concerning the current situation. From a BPX point of view this situation is clearly a call for action. If the definition of the BPX as "a person with the ability to quickly understand business needs and translate that understanding into a form that leads to the creation of better solutions" (Process first, p. 31) is correct we all have the obligation to act now:

     

    Match the deliverables of your ongoing implementation project with the new market needs and adjust it

    Implementation projects of all kinds can contribute to the resilience of the companies in the current situation. BPX could be the thought leader who proactively analyse the new challenges with the current project underway and propose readjustments if necessary. Let us just take the example of an HR implementation with a focus on master data management and payroll in the first phase. In case your company cannot hire new employees for strategic projects due to the economic situation an overview of the qualification profiles could be essential to staff the projects out of other areas. This would require a readjustment of the project with personnel development shifted to the first phase. The initial push for this readjustment is exactly what a BPX could do and what will make a difference in order to ensure further growth.

     

    Deliver functionalities in business-critical areas without new huge  investments

    Several GRC projects have been successfully implemented in the last years. These activities could now be reused as risk management have become business-critical for many organizations. The BPX working in or for such an institution could create attention for the potential in this area. Although it is clear that the set up of an enhanced risk management would require ressources GRC could serve as a starting point for this new solution and would reduce the investments tremendously.

     

    Create proposals for new growth opportunities based on the SAP platform

    The financial crisis has a negative impact on many enterprises in the financial sector. Nevertheless some of them are gaining market shares. This is mainly due to a reputation of stability. Therefore quick and proactive information is essential at the moment. Again a BPX could initiate these activities by providing a solution proposal how to use an external call center for a campaign in order to set up such an activity in a quick and privacy-compliant way.

               

    Create proposals for cost-efficiency

    Cost efficiency is the last area in our enumeration. This is done as a key mission for the BPX is to introduce growth opportunities in the discussion replacing a pure cost-cutting point of view. BPXer have gained a lot of process knowledge in the last years. This should enable them to create solutions for cost reduction measure à la BPX. These measures are always based on extensive process knowledge and are no pure cost-cutting. An example could be the replacement of a mass paper-based process with a digital process based on the current infrastructure and (!) a small process effort.

     

     

    Some of the areas mentioned are really challenging but who promised us that it would be easy as a BPX? One is for sure: We could make the difference!

    The spotlight is on HR due to the looming talent shortage in many industries already today. In addition globalization means a lot of pressure on the HR departments to design and support global processes especially in areas like recruiting, training - i.e. talent management.

     

    Creating a global HR application architecture out of a very often very heterogeneous system landscape is a challenging task. This paper provides you some tips and tricks from former projects in this area in order to facilitate your task to create a global HR application architecture. It is important to state that the creation of an HR application architecture is much more about the data model and the process model than about technical details. Very often the first workshops start with questions like: "How could we filter the organizational data which is distributed from the one HR system to the other?" Although this question is an important one it should not be the starting point for the whole project. Therefore the tips and tricks provided in this blog are divided in three parts: analysis phase, design phase, implementation phase. The last one will focus on technical tips and tricks (filtering, change pointer, serialization etc.) and will be covered in a second blog.

     

    The analysis-phase

     

    In a global company without a global HR application architecture you will normally find a variety of different HR systems. In some cases the company does not know how many HR systems it has due to mergers. This first phase could be very time consuming but it is decisive for your project to gather all the necessary information.

     

    Tip 1: Create a system inventory

     

    In my first global HR-project many years ago we invited representatives from all the subsidiaries of a global company to a workshop and tried to gather all the necessary information about the system. The workshop was a nightmare as so many information were missing and the discussions were very lengthy. Up from then I always collected the information about the different systems with spreadsheets before the workshop. The mapping is much easier that way and people understand much better what kind of knowledge they need to provide.

    The sheet below is an example which could help you as a template to create your own adapted analysis sheet to meet your needs. Emphasis should be put especially on two key questions: Are the personnel numbers harmonized throughout your company? Does a unified organizational structure already exist (with a harmonized catalogue of jobs, positions and organizational units)?

    image"

     

    After you the collection of all this data you could easily work out the areas and data where the system differ and what they have in common. Put all the information together on a slide or a visio diagram with a box for each system including the information of the spreadsheet to get the whole picture.

     

    Tip 2: Collect all the policies and legal requirements

     

    HR is much about policies and legal compliance. Therefore it is very beneficial if you could collect all the information about HR policies and legal requirements for the different countries before the project. A very popular statement in global HR projects goes this way: "No, we cannot create a global HR system as the national law mandates that the HR data must be stored on a server in the country." If you have already collected and analyzed the legal and compliance requirements in this early phase you could manage this discussion very easily. A assessment from your corporate legal department concerning these needs should be included in this phase. In past projects I have never encountered a legal requirement which has really prohibited a single global HR instance.

     

    The design phase

     

    Even in the design phase technical details ("How can I reduce the HRMD_A Idoc") are of minor importance at the beginning of the work.

     

    Tip 3: Create a global data model

    In the analysis phase the spreadsheet has been filled with the data snapshot for each system. A global data model for your landscape is now needed in order to be able to create the application architecture. Two elements are essential here: the harmonization of the personnel number and the harmonization of your organizational structure. Since R/3 Enterprise your task has become much easier due to the Global Employment functionality. The person ID functionality is a unique identifier for an employee who works in different subsidiaries of your company in different countries. By using the infotype 709 for your person ID you have a unique key to identify your employee throughout your company.

    Enhanced functionality makes your life also easier in the area of organizational management up from R/3 Enterprise. The key challenge here is to harmonize the root elements of the organizational structure which are the common denominator for all the organizational structures of the different subsidiaries. A lot of requirements for the later distribution and filtering of the data could now be meet more easily due to the enhanced ALE filtering capabilities up from  R/3 Enterprise. (I will describe them in the second part of my blog)

     

    Tip 4: Design the system landscape as global as possible

    The preferred landscape for a global HR application architecture would be a single global instance. All the features concerning language support, country versions, ESS, Management of global employees and payroll have been summarized by my colleagues Michael Wulf recently.  The benefits of such a solution are overwhelming in terms of data consistency, efforts and maintenance costs. But I am also aware of the fact that resistance from strong local HR system owners is sometimes very hard to overcome and that concerns about the complexity of the global system ("How should we then be able to implement a functionality we need for our local payroll?) could become predominant.

    Even if you are not able to implement a single global instance you should centralize as much as possible. The picture below shows the guiding principle: The master data and the organizational management data and all the global processes, especially the ones concerning Talent Management (succession planning, training and recruiting) are processed in the central HR system. They are then interfaced to the local HR system which contains the functionality for highly localized processes (payroll, time management).

    image

    Tip 5: Make your global instance the single source for initial data creation

    In some projects we implemented the reverse solution from the one described above. Data from different local or regional HR systems were consolidated in the global system. If we compare the solution with the one described above we have had a lot of additional efforts due to more complex interfaces and the need to harmonize the data when it is interfaced from the local system to the global system. Two simple questions could illustrate this: How to make sure that a person could be recognized by a unique ID throughout the system (Has the new applicant already worked for our company)?  How to make sure that the organizational structure is consistent throughout all the subsidiaries so that the organizational structures match on the root element level with one each another? These questions are hard to tackle when interfacing from local to global but without a good solution for that it is difficult to answer even simple questions (e.g.: How many employees work for the company around the globe?).

     

    Tip 6: Avoid a bidirectional distribution whenever possible

     

    If you design a distributed landscape it is very helpful if your distribution is only going in one direction (from global to local). By this you could avoid a lot of synchronization issues and even the need to have a completely harmonized customizing throughout your whole landscape. Although there are features in HR-ALE (e.g. markers which allows you to change an organizational object just in the system where it has been created) the use of these mechanisms makes your implementation more difficult.

     

    Tip 7: Beware of the infotype 3

     

    For any distribution scenario you create you must pay attention to changes of the Infotype 3 (payroll status). In each case when you distribute HR information you should always analyze before: Could this information change the infotype 3 because this could damage your payroll if not handled properly. A setup which I have described in tip 4 could also minimize the risks in this area.

     

     

    In the second part of this blog I will cover more technical details for the implementation phase of an application architecture for HR (e.g. ALE filtering, change pointer and serialization).

    Balancing the project language is a challenge in international projects or in projects when experts from one country work in another country. Although the English language is a very good common denominator mastered by most of us there are a lot of documents which are not translated - e.g. country-specific documents with legal requirements or simply a mail from an end-user with important information for a blueprint which needs to be read very quickly.

     

    A tool from Google: Google translator has helped us a lot over the last months in several projects. By using this tool we got a good overview over several documents and mails in foreign languages like Danish. There are some limitations for sure: You cannot just write a blueprint in German and then just translate it via this tool to Danish. A lot of follow-up work needs to be done then. But it works much better the other way round: Just try it out and copy a mail in a foreign language, past it to Google translator and check the result.

     

    When I noticed the new Google application for the first time I was quite sceptic as I had disappointing experiences with machine translation tools during my studies a long time ago. But after the first promising experiences I dig a bit deeper and found out the foundation for the improvements: Google uses a large amount of documents which are available in several languages, especially documents from the United Nations and the European Union. Due to the fact that these organizations have several official languages (the UN has 6) the statistical machine translation tools have an ideal starting point as they could easily match the words and phrases together in the different language versions.

     

    A feature which I use very frequently is the possibility to propose a better translation in order to enhance the translations provided by the tool in the future. Although a lot of translations needed for documents used in SAP projects are already available some translations are misleading. Therefore together with some colleagues which are also using the tools quite frequently I have proposed better translations. In many cases we have already noticed an improvement for the phrases. For me this could be really a community approach: Let us make this tool even better for the use by SDNer and BPXer.

    The debate about the question how companies could assure a sufficient talent pool for their needs - especially in the IT area - is ongoing. Today I read an interview about the future of IT experts. The key statement of this article is: Only specialists will survive and generalists will have hard times in the future. Sorry, it is in German.

    Such a statement is a challenge for all the architects like me as we should have a generalist view in our DNA. Personally it is even worse as it is completely contradicting all the efforts I am doing together with other colleagues at SAP to enable more colleagues in the area of architecture.  The reason for that is very simple: We are facing a growing demand over the last years for people who could build up a big picture - in other words: a platform or an enterprise architecture. Enterprises have understood the need to have generalists working side-by-side with specialists for the different applications.

    But one thing is important for me: You cannot start as an architect. Everybody needs to acquire deep expertise in one area before she/ he could broaden the area of expertise and develop a holistic approach. Let us just take HR as an example. It does not really matter whether you start as a payroll consultant, a time management expert or an organizational management specialist. Over time you could reach out to more areas so that you will be able to define a complete HR roadmap for an enterprise comprising all the HR modules in order to build up the HR of the future. Furthermore you will also work very closely with other areas like CRM as HR data is used nearly everywhere.

    One thing is for sure: SAP projects will need experts and generalists in the future!

    David Halitsky´s If "indie" films are cool, and "indie" music is cool, wouldn't "indie" SAP be WAY cool? about innovation with an "indie" SAP and a subsequent discussion about ERP and innovation gave me a lot to think about in the last two weeks.

     

    I therefore asked in my next meetings with customers during the lunch breaks one question several times: Which SAP application first comes to your mind when I say the word innovation?

     

    The first 5 answers where in synch with my expectations: Portal (2), Composition Environment (2) and Enterprise Service Bundle (1). But then at one meeting with executives from a healthcare organization I got another answer: ERP/ HR. As a former HR architect I felt happy but I was a bit sceptic if they just tried to be kind to me because I have introduced myself at the beginning of our meeting. Digging deeper and asking about the reason for their answer they revealed the background for their statement to me:

    They are facing extreme difficulties in hiring qualified medical experts (nurses, doctors) in order to realize their ambitious growth plans. Their situation is made worse by the fact that their current (Non-SAP)  HR-systems do not provide them with an overview over the qualifications of their employees. There are different systems in place at the different hospitals at the moment and they have no qualification catalogue in place. Therefore they cannot answer questions like: Which doctors have we already hired whose qualifications match with the desired ones to build up new ward in a hospital in order to execute the growth strategy? Which employees have similar qualifications to the desired ones so that they could be trained to get the qualifications in such a great need? Therefore they are longing for a consolidated HR-system which could answer their questions and would enable them to outbeat their competitors in their growth strategy.

     

    This discussion with the two executives made one point very clear to me. If we define innovation = idea + execution ERP could be a cool innovation tool for a business need like the one described. It is not the tool which decides what is cool for an executive. It is the business need!

    Trend spotting is a common behaviour for most of us:

    • Which applications could offer new opportunities for my career in the future?
    • Which requirements would arise from the upcoming trends in my industry in the next years?
    • What areas will be hot for my company in the next years and should be considered in the enterprise architecture I am working on at the moment?

    In order to answer these questions you do not need to read expensive studies of futurists or try to get in contact with the strategy department of your company. Instead you could use the new Google Insights for search in order to get some hints to answer the questions above. This tool provides information how many searches have been entered for a term and compare it with the absolute number of searches. You can filter the results by location, time periods and you can also compare different terms. Although I do not pretend that these search applications answer all the questions above - you will need the canteen as well as I will show at the end of my blog - you can gather here a lot of useful information.

    • Let´s assume that you are looking for information which HR applications are promising to enter them as a new area. Here you can search for the use of talent management in the US in the last twelve months.
    • Another example could be a search for customers in your area of expertise. If you are an identity management expert and you think of entering a new market in Germany you could compare the interest there with the results for the market you know in the US.
    • Even if you write a blog for the SDN you can use the application. Let´s assume you write about Security in a public sector environment and you are not sure whether eGovernment is still a trend. You can evaluate the popularity of this term in different locations since 2004.

    But if we come back to the beginning: Despite all this analysis you will gather a lot of valuable insights at the canteen of your own company or if your are onsite working with your customers. If you listen to the discussions of the experts during lunch carefully and frequently and evaluate whether the buzzwords for some trends have been mentioned you will get a very good trend indicator as well.

    .... the Industry solution for Defense Forces & Public Security. You disagree? Let's just wait for some arguments.

    While working with defence customers since 2002 in different projects I realized that no other projects has helped me more in my career to get a complete picture of all SAP solutions. A BPX for defence solutions must have a functional understanding of numerous applications - HR, finance, logistics and Plant maintenance - just to name some of them. The reason for this is the force element as the core element of the defence solution. This force element combines the different data from different application. It is like a capsule for the different elements: e.g. organizational unit, stock element, work center, WBS elements and cost center. Therefore it is not only one of the best pieces of software which SAP has ever developed it is also the born driver for integration.

    In an implementation for a defence customer there are no isolated subprojects for HR, FI and logistics. To cover processes like the deployment of a quick reaction force to a disaster relief operation abroad all the different areas of one DFPS solution must be tightly integrated.

    This means a challenge  for every BPX in defence projects. If you are an HCM consultant for example you will discuss with the colleagues from the logistics areas how the organizational management should be combined with the logistics element in order not only to cover HCM processes but the logistic processes as well. By such discussions you will for example understand how all the equipment of a vessel - just to take one example - is covered in the SAP system. The result of the past projects you could always see in the defence projects: The BPX there are the broadest integration experts I have ever meet.

    In addition it could be noted that the market for DFPS solutions expands rapidly at the moment. In addition to the numerous defence projects more and more public security projects are underway for police forces, first responder, NGOs and disaster relief organizations.

    If you now agree with my opening statement: Hope to see you in a DFPS implementation somewhere soon.

    1 2 3 Previous Next

    Filter Blog

    By date: