SuccessFactors Compensation Archives

The Compensation Profile within the SuccessFactors Compensation and Variable Pay modules is not new but has seen limited usage since its availability in Q3 2013. This short post explains the major areas/functions of this functionality.

To access the compensation profile, you have two options: either selecting the employee’s highlighted name (above) or by selecting the additional details “Open Profile” link (below):

Doing so will open a dialog (modal) box, that looks like this:

There can be up to four sections included in the Compensation Profile:

Compensation History
Salary Positioning
Promotion Information (hidden in the screenshot above)
Recommendations

The header (top) section of the profile contains fields that cannot be customized by the compensation administrator (e.g. status, location, etc.). These are fields included in the Employee Profile (User Data File, UDF), or within Employee Central. The top also includes access to the Quick Card.

Compensation History can be hidden. The history itself is configured by form under the Compensation Home under the respective Compensation or Variable Pay template, under [Template Name] > Plan Setup > Design Worksheet > Define Compensation Period Data

Salary Positioning is another area that can be displayed but can also be hidden. If you want to hide the section, check out the SAP Knowledge Base Article 2084776 (S-User ID required)

Promotion information can be included in the display. The screenshot below contains the platform (non-EC) fields available. Promotions within Employee Central (EC) are an entirely different subject for another blog.

The Recommendations section of the Compensation Profile contains the exact same fields as the worksheet columns. In fact, it reads from the same configuration, so whatever is visible/editable on the compensation or variable pay worksheet will be the same in this view. Same permissions, business logic, etc.

A few training points for your change management team as you roll out and support this functionality:

Managers lose the visibility to the budget when they are using the Compensation Profile. Even if you use the latest “floating” budgets options, the budget information does not update when the user is planning in this mode
Ensure that you tell your users to save after every individual planning (i.e. each screen), before scrolling to the next. The system will prompt as well, but it’s a good reminder to save and save often so there’s no unnecessary loss of data.
‘Previous’ and ‘Next’ buttons will follow the order of how the employees are listed on the worksheet

For your compensation administrators, here are a few SAP Knowledge Base Articles that are of interest in this area (S-User ID is needed to access all of them):

2084775 – Profile – Compensation

2084777 – Profile Compensation History Tab – Compensation

2084776 – Profile – Salary Positioning Section – Compensation

2084767 – Profile not Editable via Executive Review – Compensation

In traditional annual compensation (focal) processes, performing work offline is typically frowned upon by compensation and HR professionals. Whether it be for merit, bonus, or equity recommendations, discretionary increases and awards should be carefully considered by planning managers based on (typically) performance and market factors (e.g. compa-ratio). However, there are circumstances where an export and import of recommendations could come into handy during an annual (or periodic) compensation process:

A group of employees (e.g. customer service reps, manufacturing workers, etc) who – either unionized or non-unionized – need a common increase. This may or may not be driven off a bargaining agreement.
A legal requirement for a country. For example, in France or Spain, where a general or mandatory increase may have been decided by the government
A COLA (cost of living adjustment) that needs to be applied to a particular group of employees by geozone or location.

In the cases above, SuccessFactors Compensation does provide functionality for planners to export and then subsequently import recommendations.

Below are the technical details on how to turn it on and how to use it in a Production scenario.

Assuming you have the permissions to do so, you can turn on the import functionality in the Executive Review by going to Admin Center > Compensation Home > Actions for All Plans > Compensation Settings

Company Settings within Compensation Home

Select the option “Enable Compensation Excel Offline Edit”. As the help states, when this setting is checked, compensation planners may download worksheet values to excel, enter recommendations, and then import them back into the system.

Compensation worksheet with Import and Export buttons

When clicking on the Export button (with the Import functionality enabled), the following pop-up is available. You should select the checkbox to indicate that the recommendations will be imported back into the tool. You can download in either Excel or CSV format.

Worksheet Download in Excel – Ready for Input

The important thing to note here is that:

the planner should NOT insert or change ANY columns on this Excel , except to update the recommendations (input) in Yellow. These are the only fields that the system will use when it gets uploaded
the downloaded document does not contain any formulas

The import process is straight-forward. When the planner has completed their update of the recommendations/awards in yellow, use the Import button to upload the updated records.

Please note the two options at the bottom of the pop-up box:

Send email notification to original planner/manager of the affected compensation form
Send email notification to current reviewer of the affected compensation form

The first email (as of b1705 release) has the first option automatically checked. Be careful to uncheck that if you don’t want emails to be sent.

A current limitation with the functionality is that this functionality only works within the Compensation module and not within the Variable Pay module. Still TBD on whether or not this will be added to the roadmap. Those familiar with SuccessFactors Variable Pay know that it is a very different animal.

The other big limitation is that currently (as of b1705 release), there is no way to provide this Import functionality via Role-Based Permissions (RBPs). It’s an all-or-nothing switch, meaning whoever has edit access to the Executive Review (whether it be planner manager, Executive, HR, etc.) will have the exact same privileges to export and import. This could likely influence your decision to use this functionality or not in Production.

Some helpful SAP notes on the functionality include:

2084851 – Executive Review – Import Button Unavailable – Compensation

2172177 – Executive Review is not populating data after recent import – Compensation

2255189 – Unable to import the excel file in compensation executive review offline editing. – Compensation Management

2084853 – Executive Review – Offline Edit via Executive Review Export to Excel – Compensation

2084863 – Executive Review – Offline Edit Email Notification – Compensation

Any questions or comments, please leave me a comment below.

Some other links that you might like:

My ASUG Town Hall presentation on Executive Review (ASUG Webinar with Jeremy Masters)

Executive Review in SuccessFactors Compensation (SAP Blog by Jisha Jithosh)