SAP HCM & SuccessFactors- Inputs

[former_member223824]

Hi Experts,

I have gone through some f the docs that have been posted on scn & inputs provided by Jarret Pazahanick,Yannick Peterschmitt, Luke Marson who have been regularly updating on the integration points & other areas of HCM & SuccessFactors.

I have few basic questions on both the areas.I know that it may sound bit naive,

1/ How SuccessFactors Scores more against SAP HCM Vis-a-Vis- HCM over SuccessFactors.

SuccessFactors Offering:-Compensation,Employee Central, Jam (Collaboration),Learning, Performance & Goals, Recruiting, Succession/ Development,Workforce Analytics, Workforce Planning.

2/ HCM has strong built up i mean mature products like OM, PA, Time, Payroll, ESS/MSS which are on premise & secure even HR Renewal is on its way at the same time SuccessFactors traditionally operated in the Talent Management space but have moved in the more traditional or core components including HRIS (Personnel Management, Organisational Management, etc).

The SuccessFactors solution is Cloud-based meaning the time to value is faster, maintenance and hardware costs are diminished etc.

So both of them looks strong in their areas,so what is the way forward.

3/ Is SucccessFactors is going to take the center stage & Core SAP HCM on Premise will be put on the Back Stage.

4/ Is SAP going to give both the products its own importance & push for deployment of both the products in the long run by only creating integration points between both the application as one is On Premise & the other is Strong Cloud Based.

Thanks.

[Yannick_PTT · Accepted solution]

Dear colleague.

Thank you very much for your questions. I’ll try to answer them in few words. But let me first add that for talent management (incl. LMS and Recruiting) we've announced early 2012 the "go-fowards strategy", saying that customers should consider first the market leading solutions from SuccessFactors. Regarding SAP HR core you'll find more below.

1. We do not position them against each other because they are truly complementary and provide extensible combinations. SuccessFactors talent management is the best complement for SAP HR core, and SuccessFactors Employee Central is the best complement to SAP HR core for customers that want to run an core system in the cloud linked to their existing “headquarter” SAP system of record. Alternatively, some customers want to run the entire HRIS in the cloud.
2. SAP has uniquely two rock-solid HR core solutions in its portfolio. Analysts and researchers confirm that many customers want a cloud solution for HR core today. We can offer SF Employee Central to those. In addition, we are constantly improving our SAP HR on-premise solution, see for example this recent post on HR renewal http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-45275
3. The customer will decide what is the appropriate “center stage”, and most of them will want to evolve progressively to a full cloud HR landscape.
4. I think my answer for point 2 answers this one as well. Every customer is unique, SAP can uniquely provide “à la carte” options.

Hope this helps you a bit. I am sure the SAP mentors will be able to give you complementary information from their personal experiences with customers.

Best regards, Yannick

[former_member223824]

Hi Yannick & Luke,

Thank you both for providing such detailed analysis, it has provided a good idea about both the products.

In the current scenario it seems R3 is going to have its own identity for sometime but as SucccessFactor grows further its going to be the only thing in terms of Employee Personnale Data, Payroll Data, Talent Management etc.

I went through a webex on SuccessFactor EC recently, the EC looks impresive with so much flexibilty available to the user, in that case i am wondering what happens to a consultant who has worked extensively on R3, how the combination of both going to help the traditional SAP HCM consultant.????

[lukemarson]

Hi,

I wouldn't say that Employee Central will replace core HCM any time soon (although eventually I think it will) and for Payroll it depends on when SAP are able to build a genuine SaaS Payroll solution that leverages the benefits of SAP HANA and the Cloud to provide real-time, on-demand, Payroll with Payroll reporting and modelling. Talent Management is certainly moving to the Cloud now.

Upskilling to SuccessFactors is not straightforward because the system is different, but if done a SAP HCM on-premise consultant that understands business processes and Cloud computing can provide a lot of benefits to customers. It is a path I have taken and recommend to others.

Best regards,

Luke

[Yannick_PTT]

Hello,

I totally agree with Luke. In addition, let me mention that any good SAP HR expert should feel home pretty quick with Employee Central from a pure business process perspective. Payroll is payroll, time off is time off, even if the processes can evolve overtime.

To start off your project moving things from SAP HR core to SuccessFactors Employee Central, make sure you have the right skills at hand. If you do not have the rare pearl that brings both SAP and SF expertise, I’d strongly recommend a tandem SAP&SF. But such pearls are becoming less rare those times, many partners can provide you with such dual profiles.

Best regards, Yannick

[lukemarson]

Hi,

Yannick has provided an excellent answer, so I will try to compliment from my perspective.

1) It is hard to compare because the Cloud solutions are built on a different methodology to SAP HCM and provide additional innovations. SuccessFactors' talent management solutions (Performance & Goals, Compensation, Learning, Recruiting Execution, and Succession & Development) are considered superior to what SAP offers on-premise by many of the leading analyst firms. This is not to say that some individual on-premise solutions are not better than their SuccessFactors counterpart - it depends on what functionality the customer is looking for.

2) It depends what the customer wants! But I would say that Employee Central is the future. Although adoption is low (only around 200 customers at present), it is steadily rising and will continue to grow over the next 2 to 3 years with more significant upwards curve.

3) As Yannick mentions, SAP are providing customers with choice. Certainly from a development perspective on-premise talent management is taking a back-seat compared to SuccessFactors. SAP are still continuing to invest in core HR.

4) SAP are investing a lot in standard integration content. Dell Boomi AtomSphere is already strong for Employee Central integration and SAP have released additional add-on's on the SAP side for Employee Central. For talent management I would refer to the following 2 blogs:

http://scn.sap.com/community/erp/hcm/blog/2012/06/04/sap-hcm-and-successfactors-integration-packages...

http://scn.sap.com/community/erp/hcm/blog/2013/07/24/sap-and-successfactors-talent-hybrid-model-what...

Best regards,

Luke