Overview
- Sabya Mitra
Increase user adaptability with a great user experience
One of the main objectives of HR Transformation is to improve the effectiveness of the process — and processes can only be effective if a number of people use them. We have seen in the past that great processes remain largely underutilized because wider user adaptation hasn’t happened.
For SMB organizations, it is essential that they have great user acceptance, and that the process or product they are using is highly adaptable without much user training and change management effort. These organizations simply don’t have those additional dollars to spend here.
Extensibility
You may have often heard that cloud-based solutions are configurable but not customizable. Customization is a feature, extension, or modification of a software feature that requires custom coding and/or some form of implementation. A configuration is where you use native tools in the system to change its behavior or characteristics.
With the advent of SaaS/cloud-based products, there has been a far-reaching and important shift in how we fundamentally think about purchased software. Purchased software tends to be based on the industry’s best practices and is suitable for very large to very small companies. SAP SuccessFactors is a SaaS product and is highly configurable to fit your business-specific requirements.
Not all functionality can be delivered out-of-the-box, and most innovations aren’t delivered through a single vendor. Customers also need to evolve with the changing and demanding needs of their business. Hence SAP SuccessFactors has taken extensibility — a core design principle in software development — very seriously. Extensibility enables customers to deliver new and differentiating capabilities in their organizations.
The Metadata Framework (which we also refer to as MDF) is SAP SuccessFactors’ robust extensibility framework that enables customers to extend HR cloud functionality and create company-specific objects that support their unique business processes, without the need to code. Often, a single screen, field, or UI — such as requesting time off, managing pay structures, or company assets — can be a differentiating business process in an organization. The Metadata Framework enables customers to deliver differentiating capabilities without extensive customization or integration with third-party applications. This also helps SMB organizations future-proof their HR solution.
Integration – Why should you worry about it?
As we discuss why flexibility and extensibility are important for all SMB organizations looking for their next HR system, it is crucial that the solution they purchase coexists with their existing and future Core HR, Talent, Finance, or any other internal or external systems. We have also discussed an organization’s ability to purchase and deploy SAP SuccessFactors as per their business needs (start anywhere, go everywhere), so there is no denying that integration in the cloud world is crucial for business continuity and success.
The ultimate goal of cloud integration is to avoid silos among processes and systems within the organization. Users should be able to access and manage applications, data, services, and systems seamlessly across the organization. Cloud integration also saves a lot of maintenance hours for your IT team.
As a customer, you have multiple choices. You can use the “Integration Center (IC),” a functionality offered by SAP SuccessFactors that comes with the product, or use SAP Cloud Platform Integration (SCI), which is also complimentary when you purchase Employee Central (SuccessFactors Core HR or HRIS). The Integration Center enables HR business analysts to build, run, schedule, and monitor simple file-based inbound and outbound integrations quickly and easily through a guided workflow, with predefined templates available and the ability to create your own.
Depending on the size of the organization and the type of business or industry, they may need a more robust and sophisticated integration platform such as SAP Cloud Platform Integration (SCI). SCI lets you easily exchange data in real time between cloud apps, third-party applications, and on-premises solutions. Key benefits include:
- Accessing a deep catalog of integration flows.
- Integrating both processes and data through unified technology engineered for the cloud.
- An integration service that is secure, reliable, and delivered and managed by SAP in SAP’s secure data centers across the globe.
- Lower TCO with an affordable, pay-as-you-go function.
Cloud integration, or integration platform as a service (iPaaS), is not restricted to only IC or SCI — you also have a wide choice of third-party integration tools, such as MuleSoft Anypoint Platform, Dell Boomi, IBM App Connect, Cleo Integration Cloud, and Microsoft Azure BizTalk Services. We recommend SAP’s tools, as a lot of investment has been made to make them incorporate all you need in an inbound or outbound integration from SAP SuccessFactors; they also offer pre-built templates, which save costs and help keep the implementation cost down.
Superior and large partner community
Unlike its competitors, SAP’s strategy is to go to market exclusively with its partners, based on market, product expertise, and industry knowledge. Hence the partner ecosystem is extremely important to them, and the value and knowledge these partners have about specific industries is the key to success in the SMB market.
You have a choice of many SAP SuccessFactors partners who are completely focused and dedicated to the SMB market. The more extensive selection of partners gives you the ability to choose the right one for your business, and it makes partner offerings very competitive. SAP SuccessFactors has more partners in almost all geographies compared to its competitors.
Data-based decision-making with SAP Analytics Cloud
Most SMB organizations decide to implement an HR system when their employee base grows, they add locations, or the business gets more complicated. SAP SuccessFactors offers embedded insights and analytics out of the box, with the option of using the powerful all-in-one (BI, planning, and predictive) SAP Analytics Cloud. This offers SMB organizations a means to get a higher level of business analytics than previously available. For more, see our blog on big-data HR analytics, which highlights the advantages of SAP Analytics Cloud for SMB customers.
Post-implementation support
In the world of cloud computing, the HR transformation journey does not start and stop with the implementation process; it continues through the life cycle of HR processes throughout the year. SAP SuccessFactors offers four quarterly updates, which more often than not bring market-leading innovations — the distinctive advantage cloud software has over on-premise software. Most importantly, everything comes as part of your subscription cost, so SMB organizations can enjoy the benefits of SAP’s R&D investments.
It comes with a big challenge: how to maintain the system post go-live. SMB organizations typically don’t have a large IT team, so most support has to be managed by business users or administrators themselves. SAP SuccessFactors offers two types of support — Enterprise Support, cloud editions (foundational engagement support with a focus on customer interaction and issue resolution), and SAP Preferred Care (billable), an add-on to SAP Enterprise Support. These include strategic guidance and customer-specific best practices to help drive user adoption and value realization. There are also regional and national user groups and annual SuccessConnect events, and SAP partners offer innovative, affordable support options that can coexist with what SAP offers and what the client has internally.
A great user experience drives adoption
This is where a great UI can help, with distinguishable and predictable actions — crucial when offering a great product experience. A great UI’s job is to simplify things so users can easily interact with the product. As users become more acquainted and become regular users, they begin to trust the product more and use it more willingly. The end goal is to provide users with a consumer-like UI that needs no explanation.
SAP SuccessFactors’ design-thinking-based approach enables you to deliver an exceptional experience to all your people, no matter who they are or where they work. Its user-focused design is people-centric (built around how people best engage with technology across mobile and web), flexible (intelligent and adaptable to each of your people), and holistic and connected (continuous, connected, and tied to key business outcomes). SAP SuccessFactors leverages user research, partnership with consumer brands such as Apple, and powerful SAP technologies infused across the suite to help ensure your people’s experiences are at the heart of your business transformation.
Digital buying experience
Large enterprise customers with complex requirements, previous enterprise buying experience, larger teams, and bigger pockets are used to a long, drawn-out process of buying HR software. The same is not true for SMB organizations — they want the digital buying process to be faster, cheaper, and better.
SAP has streamlined its digital buying experience to match something we are all familiar with: going on Amazon and purchasing what we want, when we want it. With SAP’s store and SAP App Center, business users can buy existing and new digital technology and services on their own — all without the help of SAP or one of its partners. The SAP App Center provides customers with real-time access to nearly 1,500 innovative partner solutions that complement and extend their SAP solutions, enabling digital transformation. App Center customers can buy solutions directly from partners and centrally manage purchases, billing, and vendor communications.