On November 27th, I hosted another SAPInsider Q&A forum with over 50 participants. The good turnout did not surprise me as I have talked with many customers asking about the new ESS and MSS functionality and also the deployment options available (NWBC, SAP Portal, 3rd party, vendor-provided, Cloud, etc.).  There were a ton of great questions. You can check out my the recorded session here.

A few takeaways from the event for me were as follows:

1. Still a lot of interest for customers wanting to implement basic ESS and MSS (even for the first time).  Basic time entry and attendance is still much in demand for customers, as well as benefits, pay statement, and other more “basic” self services. This is especially true for many of the smaller or mid-size customers.
2. There is lots of talk around the newer EhP5 and EhP6 services, including the new deployment options.  I have seen some customers looking at SharePoint and WebSphere for their portal (content management), but by far customers seem to be sticking to their SAP NetWeaver Portal investment.  Since becoming enterprise-grade years back, I feel confident the SAP Portal is here to stay for most customers already running it for their HR services (and/or as their enterprise portal). Ripping it out and going NWBC might not make much sense for them right now given their provisioning is already being handled via the portal.
3. Confusion around prerequisites and sequencing of Enhancement Package upgrades. Whether the customer is going to EhP5 or EhP6, there seems to be a lack of good content. You can start here for MSS content, and here for ESS content. Also, check out SAP Note  1588625 (Release information for Manager Self-Services Add-On 1.0) as well as SAP Note 1450179  (ESS Based on Web Dynpro ABAP Available as of EHP5) . These two notes should provide some good high overview of the current ESS and MSS offerings. Customers are realizing the differences between the Enhancement Pack and the Business Functions – Enhancement Packs are a BASIS activity versus Business Functions are for Functional consultants (this is a generalization, but the point is that the business functions is where we actually switch on the functionality). For those who want a baseline, please check out my ESS/MSS SAP PRESS book  as well as Marin Gillet’s SAP PRESS book.

I am hosting another HR Forum on Talent Management, on January 23 at 12:30pm EST. Please join me then and let’s have another great conversation about Talent!

You can follow me on twitter at @jeremymasters

Best,

Jeremy