The HR event from SAPInsider is almost upon us. Please visit the website to see more details on what’s scheduled. Please visit me at one of my sessions, or at booth #410 in the Exhibit Hall during the show.
The Bellagio will host this year’s SAPInsider conference, HR2015
I just recorded a podcast with Ken Murphy, Features Editor for SAPinsider & insiderPROFILES, about the conference and some hot topics. It was a great discussion with him, as we exchanged thoughts on HR Renewal, SAP Fiori, SAPUI5, user adoption, change management, security, and other big league topics. I will update this post once that podcast is released so you can have a listen.
For those customers preparing for the conference, this is what I could be curious to listen for during the conference:
What are the latest innovations within the SAP HR space around SAP Fiori? Will there be another wave of HR apps released? If so, when? How will SAPUI5 apps be expanded in the HR space, or will they?
How will HR Renewal continue to innovate, in areas like SAPUI5 replacement (of Web Dynpro ABAP services), as well as a more intuitive navigation scheme? In my opinion, the current lane approach looks fresher than previous homepage layouts, but also can cause more challenges for user adoption. This is something that I will discuss at the conference.
Will HR Renewal and SAP Fiori “merge forces”, or will we they continue to be deployed in separate releases, style sets, etc? It’s important that we hear from SAP on these roadmap items, especially after Vishal Sikka’s (relatively) recent exit.
What’s the “portal of choice” now for customers? Or, is there even a frontrunner? Currently, we have SAP NetWeaver Portal, NetWeaver Business Client (NWBC), SAP Fiori Launchpad, SAP Fiori within SAP Portal, and other 3rd party portals (SharePoint, WebSphere are top). How do we navigate these options, and which one’s best for customers?
What’s new in the HR Professional role? For this, I would attend my co-authorBrandon Toombs‘ session “Guidelines and requirements for adapting to the HR Professional role UI”. Brandon is a force to be reckoned with on this topic.
Like many of my colleagues attending HR2014 (produced by the @SAPInsider team), I am getting ready for HR2014 in Orlando March 11-14, 2014. I will be delivering 4 sessions this year:
Interactive discussion forum: Real-world lessons to deploy and optimize ESS and MSS applications – this is not a presentation, but a customer forum where I will facilitate a discussion around deploying ESS and MSS solutions within an SAP and SuccessFactors (and other 3rd parties). It is great because it is more of a knowledge transfer session among customers which always proves to be more engaging for the participants.
I will also be doing an Ask-The-Experts session with several other industry colleagues during one of the evenings. This is an underutilized part of the event where you can grab a beverage and sit with someone in a relaxed atmosphere to discuss anything you want. For this year, the SAPInsider team was able to compile a great group of folks including:
There will be a great group of speakers this year with fresh content. You can see who is speaking here. Too many sessions to mention that sound great, so I won’t even attempt to list…
Some of the hot topics from this year will surely include (in no particular order):
HANA roadmap for HCM, specifically anything in addition to the payroll work that has been done so far…
SAP Fiori and the roadmap for HR apps. Wave 2 brought no HCM apps, will we see what Wave 3 will bring for HR?
SuccessFactors Talent Management enhancements (such as the new “Presentations” functionality which was just released 1402). By the way, if you haven’t already done so, please join the new LinkedIn group dedicated on SuccessFactors Talent Management.
SuccessFactors Employee Central updates. I am looking forward to hearing the 12 month roadmap especially around Time management.
Updates related to the Customer Connection program in areas such as on premise Compensation, Learning (SAP LSO), and E-Recruiting.
Further integration of SAP Jam into everything SAP HCM and SuccessFactors.
HR Renewal 2.0 and the roadmap ahead for SAP Core HR innovations.
Hope to see you there. If you are not able to make one of my sessions, please drop by booth #315 in the Exhibit Hall and say hi to me or one of my Worklogix colleagues during one of the breaks.
Over the past 5 weeks, several industry colleagues and I have traveled in the US (Las Vegas and Orlando) and Europe (Copenhagen) meeting with over 50 customers from over 20 countries for a seminar on SuccessFactors’ Talent Management.
The below list is in no particular order but reflects some important themes, questions, and comments:
Integration is still a main concern. Integration has always been central to SAP’s value proposition. The recent focus on cloud cannot derail this. I was fortunate to spend these sessions with fellow speakers from SAP. From the messaging and interactions with them, I can confirm that SAP / SuccessFactors is committed to continued investment in integration (they term them “iFlows”). This is a very good thing for customers, to ease the transition for using cloud technologies where practical. Prashanth Padmanabhan, SAP’s Senior Director, has written a recent blog on the topics for talent hybrid and full cloud integrations. Revisiting my list of concerns from nearly two years ago,many of these items are being addressed. (That blog post alone has gathered over 3,000 unique page views since June 2012).
Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) will be the differentiator. Like other functional areas, the HANA Cloud Platform will be a critical piece for HCM to make the suite competitive in a very competitive cloud space (Workday, Oracle Fusion, Infor). The HANA Cloud Development environment is key to SAP’s eco-system. Worklogix is actively developing applications and excited about the opportunities here with the future HANA marketplace (think Apple’s App Store but for SAP).
In my opnion, HANA (as a database) is a distraction to HCM customers. Yes, SuccessFactors would like to dump its Oracle databases (and soon will), but we need to focus on the platform HANA so that customers and partners can develop apps on. This has been articulated by Vishal and Hasso as well, but hasn’t reached most customers yet. My hope is that this eco-system ramps up like salesforce.com has done.
Speaker Team in Las Vegas and Orlando
Can we crack the User Experience nut? Most hybrid customers have two (if not three or four) portals by the time they implement SuccessFactors. How will we truly make the user experience seamless? This is an area I have a lot passion in, as I have worked with employee, manager and HR self service since 1998 when I was a wee lad at Price Waterhouse. We cannot be in the business of building and supporting “Frankenstein” portals (my term). However, the reality is that we need to support customers with their own internal realities. (For example, many customers will have to make sense of how their intranet, SharePoint, NetWeaver, and SuccessFactors sites/portals all come together). This isn’t new but is becoming a pervasive issue as we venture into hybrid customers adding SuccessFactors into the mix. Putting simple (and single) sign on aside, we still need to team together to figure out how this all will be transparent to the end user.
Access control (security authorizations) is a major pain point for hybrid customers. Since authorizations won’t (and can’t) magically port over from SAP to SuccessFactors (or vice versa), we need to put this at the top of our list during design sessions. Especially with customers using complex structural authorizations (including context-sensitive structural authorizations). This will be – GULP – a big area for SIs and customers to work out together.
Mobility, mobility, mobility! Should I say it again: mobility! I don’t need to mention how important this area is for SAP HCM / SuccessFactors in order to keep up with customer demand as well as the competition’s offerings. How to offer one customer-facing (i.e., employee-facing) mobile app (or apps?) will be a challenge, and will be huge over the next 5 years. If/when SuccessFactors will go device-agnostic (e.g., HTML5) is to be determined. (Secondary question: how does SAP Fiori come into play here – if it even does?). Mobility is another passion of mine, and one that I will speak on during next year’s HR2014 conference. Here are the session details.
Speaker Team in Copenhagen
Proxy functionality needs to be killer. In fact, I will call proxy (or delegation) management the third (or fourth?) killer app (this is self-proclaimed, but where can I copyright this???). SuccessFactors has done a nice job with proxy management. You can both manage proxy assignments, as well as use the proxy functionality easily within the tool. Compared to SAP HCM functionality, customers will be enthused. On premise SAP HCM has always struggled with transactional and approval authorization (in part why Worklogix built the Proxy Manager product).
Social collaboration is great, but its benefits are not yet well understood. SAP Jam is a great tool (we use it internally, during our SuccessFactors trainings, as well as to share knowledge within the SAP/ SuccessFactors eco-system), but many customers don’t understand its context in the (corporate) world. They ask: “Why do I need a LinkedIn / Facebook for the enterprise if I have access to LinkedIn and Facebook?” We need to evangelize on the importance and power of team collaboration, especially with video at our disposal. (Can you imagine what the internet would be without YouTube, Vimeo, SlideShare, MOOCs, Khan Academy?). SAP has a huge asset with Sameer Patel who I think is doing a great job in this area. You should follow him on Twitter you are not already: @SameerPatel
Being clear with messaging around on premise and cloud innovation will be important for SAP/SuccessFactors. We need to be clear with customers that there is HCM innovation happening in both SAP’s on premise (e.g., SAP Fiori and HR Renewal) and cloud offerings (SuccessFactors, HCP, Jam). This is a good thing for customers, as they move to cloud at their own pace but are still looking for continuous improvement with their current HRIS investment. We know where massive innovation is happening, but we do need to remember that some customers will either never have an option to go to the cloud, or won’t have the opportunity to get there sooner than they wish.
I want to thank SAPInsider for supporting my idea back in February 2013 for this SuccessFactors seminar. It was a huge success and, as always, the events in all three cities were interactive, engaging, and educational for all involved.
Conference time again. This time the SAPInsider team is bringin’ it to Amsterdam for HR2013. I was here in 2011 for HR2011 at Amsterdam RAI, and it is a great venue, and of course, beautiful city.
HR2013 – This Week in Amsterdam!
I wanted to write a quick post to include some blogs and Twitter information so you can maximize your time while in Amsterdam this week.
Several colleagues have already wrote some nice posts on some sessions they will be attending. The line up is great. Here are some posts:
I also wrote a short post on the Insider Learning Network: Getting Ready for HR2013 Amsterdam which highlights the sessions I am doing as well as some key topics I will be on the lookout for.
Some SAPInsider peeps to follow: Allison Martin (@AllisonMartin14), Riz Ahmed (@rizalahmed),Benny DiCecca (@bdicecca) and tweeting from stateside: Amy Thistle (@AmyHThistle). Not sure who else from SAPInsider will be there, but you can catch the action on the #HR2013 hashtag.
Like some of you, I will be attending SAP’s annual customer conference next week, SAPPHIRENOW, May 14-16 in sunny Orlando, FL. It is also co-located with ASUG, the annual customer-focused conference for SAP’s largest user group. The event is an exciting conference since we get to hear directly from SAP, on hot topics and the overall roadmap. Specifically, within HCM there will be much focus on several topic areas which I will be listening for.
Here’s my top 5 list of SAP HCM topics I will be looking for during the conference:
1.What will HANA do (and be) for HCM? Jarret Pazahanick wrote a nice piece on HANA for HCM on SCN here. With some of the topics on the roadmap and under consideration (e.g. Compensation and Benefits modeling), it makes me wonder how (and when) on premise customers will consider using HANA. Of course, after yesterday’s announcement of SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud, SAP’s direction is clear for those companies ready for cloud. For those on premise customers, there is still more information they need to understand what HANA can deliver for them. I will be looking next week at how HANA’s value can be realized for both customers on premise and those seeking cloud-based HR solutions.
2. What options do customers have for a refreshing User Experience? (i.e. what about HR Renewal and the other options that customers have for improved usability?). I wrote a blog on HR Renewal a few weeks back which you can read here, where I talk about “refreshing the UI”. Certainly, the new HR Renewal will be a welcome option for many customers (already on, or upgrading to ECC 6.0, Enhancement Package 6). Robert Moeller, Solution Owner, Core HR at SAP, also just wrote a nice piece on this here on SCN, around Feature Pack 3 of HR Renewal which became available on March 13, 2013 to customers. Also, if you haven’t listened to the recent podcast from Insight Consulting Partners, please check it out here. I was honored to join Insight Consulting Managing Partner Steve Bogner, and podcast members Brandon Toombs and Martin Gillet. Both Brandon and Martin will be at SAPPHIRE this year as well.
3. Any news about Payroll in the Cloud from SAP? If you haven’t already read this piece from Holger Mueller, do yourself a favor a read his blog “And suddenly…Payroll matters again!“. SAP has been very light around this topic since the SuccessFactors acquisition. The question on the table of course is whether SAP will build out a full cloud payroll solution, or keep with their instantiated hosted payroll offering (complimented with vendors like ADP). Next week, I will be keen on understanding if there is any buzz on the ground at SAPPHIRE regarding a payroll cloud initiative.
ASUG Annual Conference 2013
4. Continue feeling the customer pulse around on premise v. hybrid v. full cloud On Tuesday, I will be co-presenting asession on a success story of how our organization, Worklogix, helped a leading pharmaceutical company with their global ECM (SAP Compensation) on premise solution. You can view the abstract of this session here if you would like to attend. There is also a variety of SuccessFactors sessions as well, which you can see here. I will continue to meet with customers (existing and prospective) to get their perspective on this critical topic area – always one fiercely debated with lots of strong opinions.
Menu screen for the Mobile Desktop by Worklogix
5. Understand the traction around mobile HCM. I wrote a blog on mobility and held an HR Forum Q&A for the Insider Learning Network which you can check out the transcript here. Did you know SAP has a store like iTunes, and specifically for the HR Line of Business? Check out SAP’s apps, as well as those from software vendors who drive innovation in this great eco-system like Worklogix, EPI-USE, and hyperCision. I will be looking to understand SAP’s direction with mobile applications, especially with regards to pricing and future innovation both using SAP HCM (Afaria as MDM and SUP as MEAP) as well as SuccessFactors offerings.
Whoever is going, please drop by booth (pod) #2027b to say hello to me and the rest of the Worklogix team who will be in the Exhibit Hall. Hope to see some of you soon!
Alright, maybe the title is a bit extreme, but I have seen a lot of excitement lately around mobility and HR. The question is not if mobility will hit mainstream HR platforms (be it on premise or SaaS), but rather how fast it will catch on.
So first things first, do you remember this?
Motorola DynaTAC8000X
It’s the Motorola DynaTAC8000X. For those old enough, the DynaTAC may be best known for being used in the 1987 movie Wall Street, starring Michael Douglas as corporate raider Gordon Gecko. Whether or not you were a fan of the movie, it’s pretty amazing to see this phone in action.
We have come a long way from the Motorola, having lived through the rule of Blackberry in the corporate world, until Apple came along with its iPhone and iPad innovations and flexed its muscles…
And now I reflect further on mobility, as I am getting ready for my HR Forum Q&A on the SAP Insider Learning Network, for Wednesday, April 17, 2013 at 12:30-1:30pm EDT. The session title is Leveraging HR mobile apps: Mobility with SAP ERP HCM and SuccessFactors. (Please register for this ahead of time – you can also go ahead and leave questions already on the site.)
During my session at HR 2013 in Vegas, I felt a strong connection with my audience. Lots of interest – as well as – lots of questions around what SAP and SuccessFactors has in their offering. During my session “Guidelines and Best Practices for Deploying ESS and MSS on Mobile Devices“, (which I am also presenting at the SAPInsider Europe conference in Amsterdam in June), I was able to articulate a few themes that seemed to resonate well with colleagues.
Performing HR transactions on a mobile device?
Yeah! Performing HR transactions on a mobile device will become the norm and not the exception in the not-so-distant future. In 2011, Gartner predicted that 40% of ESS and MSS transactions will be performed on a mobile device by the year 2015. Whether or not we will achieve this number is not the point here. Another interesting stat: In 2015, projected sales of smart phones/tablets will be 1.7 billion units, whereas the projected sales of PC/laptops will be 400 million units. Definitely makes you scratch your head.
Bring Your Own Device
BYOD is leading the charge where consumer IT is the pioneer. We demand our HR apps to work a certain way since we use Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Amazon, and Google on a daily basis. In fact, on the same device we shop Diapers.com, we can also update our performance management plan, or approve leave requests, or look at the current headcount numbers. Pretty amazing.
Consider This!
If you are going mobile for HR, here are some quick consideration areas:
Functionality – will depend on several factors including your device type (tablet, smart phone) but think about what processes actually make sense to be on a mobile device and what processes don’t;
Size/User Experience – screen real estate matters; be sure to think about the user experience when operating a smart phones or tablet;
Connectivity – between WiFi and cellular networks, you can connect just about anywhere (work, home, airport, plane!);
Security and Infrastructure – understanding options around MDM (Mobile Device Management) software like SAP Afaria, and MEAP (Mobile Enterprise Application Platform) like SUP (Sybase Unwired Platform); and lastly,
Deployment Model: Are you developing native applications or web mobile applications? This is an ongoing debate that has no winner. Some are of the ilk that there is no match to developing native mobile applications (using Objective C for iOS, Java for Andriod, etc.) so as to fully unearth the powers within the device (including its hardware, like camera functions). And then, there are others who believe HTML5 is the holy grail and browser-based access to applications is the most efficient and sensible option (e.g. for upgrades). There are pros and cons in both camps.
The Store is Open for Business
Last, did you know SAP has a store just like Apple has iTunes, Google Android has Google Play, Windows has Windows Store, and BlackBerry has AppWorld? You can find it at http://store.sap.com/. There’s also a mobile app for it on iTunes.
SAP Mobile Application Store
In addition to the SAP-built applications, the SAP vendor eco-system is also pushing the envelope and making some important innovations in this area as well. My company, Worklogix, has created some incredibly powerful mobile applications that our clients are loving. See below screen shot of Worklogix’s Mobile Desktop – which gives HR and Managers the ability to view their team (span-of-control), and initiate or approve transactions such as promotions, changes in position, termination, and hire/rehires.
Worklogix Mobile Desktop
Have any questions on the above? Please don’t hesitate to leave a comment, or contact me directly. Thanks!
