Several years ago, SAP found themselves in a situation which happens to many large software companies. Two separate parts of the organization developed new HR functionality to solve for a common gap: usability. On one side, HR Renewal came to fruition – a new landing page built off SAPUI5 with a new navigation and user experience. The other – SAP Fiori – was a cross-function solution (inspired with a Google design team) with a separate entry point (SAP Fiori Launchpad) and its own user interface using SAPUI5.
Many customers are now perplexed on how to move forward given both are viable solutions to solve SAP’s long-plagued usability problems, especially in the areas of Employee and Manager Self-Service.
It’s apparent that the bulk of innovation will go into SAP Fiori apps, since SAP Fiori is being leveraged across all platforms (On premise, SuccessFactors, Fieldglass, Ariba, etc.) It is SAP’s answer to a common UX, despite the disparate systems behind it. Vishal Sikka (ex-CTO of SAP, now CEO and MD at Infosys) layed out his vision at the 2013 SAPPHIRE show.
His “Fiori UX Paradigm” – drawn by hand and reminiscent of the days when the best solutions in software began on the back of a napkin – showed his vision, which SAP is trying to execute on.
So, with all this talk on SAP Fiori, does this mean that HR Renewal is dead? No. The functionalities are still more plentiful in HR Renewal (by a long shot), and are highly relevant for HR Professionals. It is unlikely that SAP will endeavor to re-write these apps in SAP Fiori. Although SAP Fiori is the better choice from a mobile perspective (since it’s responsive and device-agnostic), HR Renewal is still a good choice for companies who want to roll out services to their HR teams (admins, reporting) who don’t want to deal with the SAP GUI. The hard-core services performed in HR Renewal (i.e., Personnel Administration and Organizational Management updates such as employee movement scenarios and organizational updates) would almost certainly be done on desktop and not on device (e.g. I can’t see an HR admin performing a complex promotion/inter-company transfer on their Smartphone). This should relieve some of the frustration from customers when they realize a majority of the transactions that are new with HR Renewal are using the Web Dynpro ABAP technology which is not mobile-optimized (as opposed to SAPUI5).
I will tackle more sound-bytes in future blogs. In particular, the question may not be HR Renewal versus SAP Fiori, but perhaps how could they work together for your organization.
Until then, please leave some questions or comments below…
I did a recent podcast for SAPInsider, the conference producer for HR2015. You can hear the podcast and view the transcript here. Many of the questions were a precursor to the kinds of the questions I am sure we will be hearing from customers this year at the HR 2015 conference as well as ASUG/SAPPHIRE. Questions specifically around the roadmap for HR Renewal versus SAP Fiori and where/when/how these roads will merge within the SAP HCM space. Lots of questions around integration, mashups, and what types of skill sets customers/consultants will need in the future around these technologies.
Here are some of the resources that are available to us out there, specifically around SAPUI5 and its related offerings:
I also suggest you check out some sessions on these topics by two of the finest in the business: Martin Gillet and Brandon Toombs. Both will both give you an independent viewpoint on what’s good (and bad) about these technologies.
Brandon’s session on “Guidelines and requirements for adapting to the HR Professional role UI” will definitely be one to check out for those interested in understanding what’s new for the HR Professional. The rest of his sessions are here. You might also want to check out his blog series on SCN on comparing Employee Central and HR Renewal/SAP Fiori here: Blog 1 | Blog 2
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.
Photo in action during one of my self-service sessions in Nice, France during HR2014 Europe.
After my “spring conference tour” (HR2014 in Orlando, Mastering SAP & Payroll in Johannesburg, HR2014 in Nice, and SAPPHIRE/ASUG 2014), I have listed five key takeaways from my interactions with customers.
Customers are still struggling with the basics. Topics such as security/authorizations, reporting, organizational updates, portals, authentication, mobile enablement continue to plague customers. Throughout this exciting time of HR systems innovation, we often overlook that ‘business keeps happening’ (i.e., organizations are dynamic, employees need to get paid – and paid correctly). As consultants, we need to remember that we can’t mess up the basics as we are looking at the “new and shiny”.
There is significant interest from the SAP install base in HR Renewal and other ways to refresh the overall user experience for employees, managers, and HR Professionals. The update of the current portal interface using SAPUI5 (SAP’s take on HTML5) is a popular topic on the ground. Furthermore, and specific to HR Renewal (and other SAPUI5 services), knowing now that we can couple SAP Netweaver Gateway and SAP ECC provides customers with an even a lower TCO.
Hybrid (core HR on premise, full/partial talent in the cloud) will be commonplace for companies in the next 5-7 years. After talking with many organizations, the reality of integrations and their complications are here to stay. Integration strategy and middleware choice is increasingly important for customers running SAP HCM.
The “fury” over Fiori has been laid to rest. SAP Fiori is now included as part of the standard SAP maintenance fee for customers. It’s a pity that SAP customers had to fight for this like they did, but it does give some comfort in knowing that the user community is a force to be reckoned with when they believe something is unjust. The UI merging of HR Renewal, SAP Fiori, and SuccessFactors will seem to be a top priority. The vision of (since-departed) Vishal Sikka of a unified HTM5 UI may not be as farfetched as I originally thought.
HANA is still a nebulous term for customers (no pun intended), but some are starting to understand that it’s not just a database anymore. More and more professionals are starting to understand the importance of PaaS (Platform as a Service), and the capabilities of the SAP HANA Cloud Platform. As partners, many in the SAP eco-system look forward to the day when the HANA Marketplace will be as robust as AppExchange.
Feel free to comment below if you would like to add.
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.
