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The role of change management in SuccessFactors implementations

Posted on June 21, 2020July 13, 2026 by

Overview

Sabya Mitra

Change management and SuccessFactors

Cloud computing and software-as-a-service (SaaS) are highly disruptive forces that can help organizations transform their HR operations and achieve more significant business impacts. It is crucial to understand the implications of cloud computing and the role of change management in this new world so that you can make informed decisions and leverage your investment. In this blog, I will try to explain my thoughts, experience, and understanding of change management and its impact on SuccessFactors.

SuccessFactors is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution that enables the HR function to cost-effectively integrate processes, improve operations, and standardize technology globally to achieve greater business agility. It is essential to understand the impact of change management in making the system adaptable for all.

What are the key benefits of adopting SuccessFactors?

SuccessFactors with Core HR (Employee Central), Talent Management, Learning, and Workforce Analytics allows HR and business users to have a holistic view of the company and its workforce, which helps them make the right decisions for the right set of individuals at the right time. A greater user experience allows enhanced adaptability, which in turn increases the productivity of employees. Companies that use SuccessFactors for all their processes can have consistent processes for hiring, learning, succession, and performance management across the entire company. For senior management, this allows better availability of information, reporting, and actionable analytics for smarter decision-making.

Companies migrating to cloud-based products like SuccessFactors are mainly moving away from their decade-old ERP, homegrown, or off-the-shelf systems. Moving to the cloud makes the HR and IT departments leaner and helps them focus more on strategic tasks than administrative tasks. Take performance management as a case in point: earlier, HR and IT spent more time and effort on building the solution and less on its adaptability and success. Now with cloud solutions, they can focus on how to make it useful through a series of steps within the organization. The organization, as an entity, becomes more nimble and flexible.

Organizational service delivery mainly consists of centers of excellence, employee service centers, and HR business partners. SuccessFactors, with its intuitive product design, intelligent services, and workflows, makes the integration of all the service delivery processes seamless. It also helps shift many responsibilities through ESS, MSS, and the employee service center to employees, managers, or service center agents. Hence there is less administrative work on HR, and the dream of an inverted pyramid looks real.

Finally, no software can make HR strategic, but it does free up HR time so they can actively look at things that are more strategic in nature. This could be an excellent beginning for most organizations in the right direction.

Why is change management a crucial part of a SuccessFactors implementation?

Gartner studies indicate that 70 percent of IT implementations fail, and cloud migration assessments indicate that overcoming an organization’s cultural barriers is a frequent challenge. It is fascinating that the same solution is a big success in one organization and a massive failure in another. Sometimes it is tough to pinpoint what went right and what went wrong.

One significant difference in cloud projects is that you are moving away from your current processes and adapting to the best-practice solution offered by your vendor — SuccessFactors, in this case. That difference creates a massive requirement for active change management to help organizations adapt to the processes offered by the cloud product.

The change management plan enables HR to secure stakeholder buy-in and clarify everybody’s roles and responsibilities throughout the change process — from the SuccessFactors implementation to its adoption and beyond. A few areas you need to take care of:

A clear communication strategy to explain to everybody why you’re moving away from your current situation to SuccessFactors. Surprise is the one thing most employees will not like.
Articulate how SuccessFactors will help the organization and how the change aligns with overall business objectives.
The cloud touches every employee in some way; role changes have to be articulated positively well before training starts. You will see a spike of service tickets in the initial months post-implementation, but with effective change management it stabilizes to an acceptable number.
Be prepared for post-implementation upgrades twice a year, which bring many changes and innovations. Change management and communication is a continuous process.

Identify the change management challenge you would face in your organization

A “one-size-fits-all” change management approach does not achieve organizational change in SuccessFactors implementations. Every organization is different, and their challenges are very different from each other. Culture plays a significant role in deciding how much effort will be required for the right kind of cloud adaptability.

One must understand that SuccessFactors isn’t a turnkey solution. Just like any other software, it demands a process and talent framework, data migration, integration, testing, training, and support — even though the nature of many of these is very different in the cloud. One of the worst things that can happen is that you put all this time, energy, and effort into implementing SuccessFactors, and then utilization is low.

If you have never conducted an HCM Health check in your organization, that is the first thing to start with. It tells you where the organization stands today on essential dimensions like Strategy, People, Process, Service Delivery, Organization Structure, and Technology — and where it wants to go. Follow it with an organization-wide Design Thinking session to understand the most crucial factor in user adaptability: the user. In the end, success depends not on what the software does, but on what the user does.

Design Thinking approach

To be successful, you need an effective change management process, and to have one you need to understand the needs of your employees. Design thinking can help in that regard. We should always remember that “technology changes; humans don’t.”

A practical change management approach for SuccessFactors implementations

The approach you take depends on various factors, and what worked for one company may or may not work for you. But there are general rules all organizations can follow. The approach we recommend is a methodology interconnected with SAP’s Activate methodology for SuccessFactors implementation; this gives an integrated plan for both change management and the implementation.

Change management approach for SuccessFactors projects

Strong sponsors and leadership are essential for organizations to realize the benefits of cloud solutions. Leadership support should be definite and visible to the entire organization. Create superusers or solution champions; train them well, make them understand their role clearly, and you have a group of leaders who can advocate the advantages of the program during and even after implementation. They can help with intelligent troubleshooting and assist in navigation each time a quarterly upgrade is introduced.

SuccessFactors follows the approach of “start anywhere and go everywhere,” which means not everything is implemented at the same time or for the entire organization at once. That gives the organization the ability to deploy the right solution for the right set of people. During the design phase, it is crucial to get everyone’s perspective on issues that could affect them — and for change management to succeed, people need to know their point of view is considered even if they are not going to use the system right away. The last thing people should feel is that the initiative is being thrust upon them.

Training remains one of the most crucial ingredients for change management success

Training is where adoption is won or lost. Plan it around real roles and personas, deliver it close to go-live, and keep reinforcing it through each upgrade so the new ways of working become the normal ways of working.

Stopping COVID-19 spread: implement these workplace controls

Posted on April 22, 2020 by

Overview

Leon Reingold

Why every organization has a role

Public health authorities, medical facilities, and healthcare professionals all over the world are stretched to their limits to contain the novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. But it isn’t just the healthcare sector that alone can stop the spread of COVID-19. Businesses, non-profits, media houses, and other organizations also need to rise to the occasion.

Organizations need to plan and implement various workplace controls to contain the pandemic — if COVID-19 has not arrived in the communities where they have their offices, factories, etc., or when they prepare for the eventual return of employees to the workplace.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), U.S. Department of Labor, recommends the use of a framework based on the ‘hierarchy of controls’ to determine the most effective ways of controlling workplace hazards. The fundamental approach is to systematically eliminate a hazard from the workplace instead of relying on employees to reduce their exposure.

Recent reports suggest that COVID-19 appears to be most contagious 1–2 days before symptoms appear, before people even know they are infected. Given the highly contagious nature of the virus, it isn’t possible to completely stop the spread in the workplace or in a community — but organizations can implement control measures that are known to be effective.

Engineering Controls

Engineering controls help reduce exposure to workplace hazards in a cost-effective manner. In this case, employers need not rely upon worker behavior to ensure positive outcomes. In the case of COVID-19, you don’t just have to focus on isolating workers from hazardous areas; you need to think of ways to isolate workers from each other. A selection of engineering controls employers can implement:

Increase ventilation rates in the workplace, be it a corporate office or a manufacturing plant.
Investigate all air filters for their efficiency; if necessary, upgrade air filters at the earliest.
Install physical barriers such as transparent plastic sneeze guards over cubicles and in front of desks, at all locations where workers and customers are likely to come face to face.
Separate employees into discrete areas in the workplace, such as cubicles or offices.
Remove or make unavailable community amenities such as break rooms, sitting areas, lunch halls, coffee stations, and snack plates until we all move past the pandemic.
Keep customers far apart from each other and from your workers; if possible, do not allow customers inside the office. If customers must enter, limit their proximity to each other and to workers — especially receptionists and customer relationship managers.

If possible, set up a drive-through window for handling customers. This will help minimize contact with asymptomatic people who may be carrying the active virus.

Administrative Controls

Administrative controls are alterations in work procedures to minimize exposure to a hazard. They are the most practical form of COVID-19 prevention for most facilities, though employees or their supervisors need to act in a certain manner for them to be effective. Some examples:

Ask all sick employees to stay at home, whether they exhibit COVID-19 symptoms or not, and encourage employees to inform their supervisor if they have sick family members at home.
If employees show symptoms such as fever, cough, or shortness of breath on arrival or during the day, promptly separate them from others and send them home.
Avoid face-to-face meetings; conduct virtual meetings to minimize contact among employees, vendors, and clients. Prevent gatherings even when workers are physically present.
Reduce the total number of workers in a facility at a given time — for instance, with different shifts or alternate workdays.
Prepare an emergency communication and response plan; senior managers or HR leadership should pass on authentic information (from sources such as the CDC or WHO) and address concerns.
Educate employees through awareness campaigns on how to protect themselves at work and when traveling to work.
Train any workers who need Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) on how to put it on and take it off, with material suited to their literacy level.
Disinfect frequently touched surfaces — desks, door handles, elevator buttons, handrails, light switches, counters — with an alcohol-based disinfectant; the virus may survive on inorganic surfaces for three days.
Institute compulsory hand-washing times (for example, soap and water for at least 20 seconds, once every 30 minutes), and provide hand sanitizers with 60% ethyl alcohol or higher.

Travel Controls

Employees and contractors should seriously consider national and regional travel advice before business trips to other states or countries, and business travel to high-risk cities, states, and countries should be restricted.

If an employee has recently traveled to or from a high-risk zone, offer them a mask to commute safely home and ask them to work from home or take leave for at least four weeks. Ask employees to contact the local public health department with details of recent travel to affected countries and any symptoms; if necessary, direct them to a designated assessment facility using rapid COVID-19 detection kits.

Elimination Controls

Elimination is the best way to stop COVID-19 spread, but it is also the most challenging. Once the virus has entered an environment such as a building, you cannot just remove it permanently or conclusively, and you can never be sure it will not enter again.

Therefore, if there has been an outbreak in the community in an area where you operate, the best way to eliminate your workforce’s exposure is to temporarily close your business. This way, you can be sure your employees won’t transmit the virus to each other.

Substitution Controls

Substitution controls work by replacing a hazard with something less risky to achieve the same outcome. Organizations that cannot afford to remain closed for an indefinite period can opt for substitution — replacing the workplace with another, safer, more isolated environment.

To prevent the spread of COVID-19, an organization can have all or most of its employees work from home. The possibility of workplace transmission is eliminated if there’s no shared environment.

The importance of pre-employment background checks and drug screening

Posted on April 13, 2020 by

Overview

Leon Reingold

Why pre-employment screening matters

Pre-employment background checks and drug tests are not signs of mistrust or invasion of an individual’s privacy. These are crucial components of modern-day hiring processes, designed to identify the best talent and protect an organization from the risks that come with unreliable workers.

Most companies run background checks and perform applicant drug testing to avoid hiring candidates who may pose a threat to others in the workplace or become a liability at some point in time.

Here in this post, we will discuss why employers cannot afford to ignore pre-employment background checks and drug screening.

Highlight Criminal History

The chief reason most companies run pre-employment background checks is to find out if a job applicant under consideration for a vacant position has had any criminal convictions in the past. At times, criminal charges may posit an individual as undependable, dangerous, or otherwise not fit for a particular job role. In some cases, the charges are minor, very old, or largely irrelevant to the job at hand.

In either case, an employer needs to establish whether an individual has a criminal record in order to assess the risk of having them join the workforce. Thus, criminal record checks help employers make educated hiring decisions. Besides promoting the safety of workers and customers in the workplace, criminal background checks also help protect an organization’s assets and reputation.

Flag Past Infractions

Some pre-employment background checks will flag past infractions that may directly impact an individual’s ability to perform a set of duties in the workplace. Depending upon the nature of the job, an organization may want to find out if an applicant has a spotty driving record with DUI charges, license suspensions, speeding tickets, or traffic violations, or a poor credit history full of debts and missed payments.

Such information does not always have a bearing on a candidate’s ability to perform a job to the satisfaction of an employer. However, if the job at hand involves driving a truck or handling cash, knowledge of such past infractions certainly becomes important.

Avoid Liability

In most jurisdictions around the globe, employers are held responsible for incidents that happen in the workplace if background checks on potential hires are not conducted.

Say you don’t run a background check on a candidate and you hire them for a truck driver’s position. One day, the truck rams into passenger cars on the highway, injuring more than a dozen people. The police arrest your employee for driving under the influence, and it turns out the driver has had DUIs in the last three years. Since your company did not do due diligence, you may be held liable for the damage caused by your worker.

Workplace violence, thefts, and accidents are a few examples of unfortunate incidents for which employers can be held liable. Background checks fulfill due diligence and help you avoid liability arising out of the actions of your workers.

Verify Employment Qualifications

Job applicants do not always provide accurate or complete information about their education, projects, and employment history in their resumes. For instance, a candidate may intentionally hide information about a recent job they quit within two months, or list certifications they didn’t acquire. Therefore, verifying all education and employment claims on the resume is important.

According to a CNBC report, 75% of human resource managers said in 2017 that they had caught applicants lying in their applications or resumes. At the basic level, a background check helps employers determine if the information provided by a candidate is true and accurate, and gives hiring managers a better picture beyond what is described in a resume or discovered in an interview.

Highlight Dishonesty

Job applicants put in great effort to charm interviewers and present themselves as thorough professionals. They act in a manner they believe the hiring manager wants to see and often present partial or distorted information.

But many candidates are downright dishonest on their applications. From fake work histories and changes in employment dates to incorrect information about job responsibilities and inflated job titles, some applicants can lie about anything to get a job. A pre-employment background check may involve calls to former colleagues or supervisors to make sure the claims on the application match up with the truth. If they do not, hiring managers will know the candidate has been dishonest — and no company wants to hire someone they cannot trust.

Drug-Free Workplace

Drug abuse in the workplace can lead to fatal accidents, theft of company assets and data, violent or non-violent crimes, illegal sale and distribution of drugs, absenteeism, low productivity, and high employee turnover. Businesses all over the world incur huge costs in terms of lost profits due to drug abuse, and healthcare and workers’ compensation costs also shoot up if workplace drug abuse goes unchecked.

Standard background checks may help flag candidates who have been charged with possession or distribution of controlled substances in the past. But not all people with drug problems get caught or have a trail of information that can show up in a background check, so it becomes important to supplement background checks with applicant drug testing.

Pre-employment drug screening allows employers to determine if an applicant has a recent history of drug abuse. Different drug testing methods have varying detection windows, so it is possible to determine if an applicant has used certain controlled substances in the last 24 hours, one week, one month, or six months. For companies that employ workers in safety-sensitive jobs in construction, mining, security, transport, and manufacturing, pre-employment drug testing may be one of the most valuable components of a hiring process. The laws concerning how and when applicants can be drug tested vary across the world; in most US states, employers generally need to make a conditional offer of employment before a drug test is conducted.

Keep Employees and Customers Safe

From violent criminals and sex offenders to habitual liars and drug addicts, hiring managers may come across individuals they just cannot risk hiring. But what if hiring managers are not aware that certain applicants are high-risk individuals? What if a company hires a sexual predator or a drug addict without running a background check or testing this person for drug use? Just like the truck driver example above, the company could be held liable for the actions of that person in the workplace. Screening is how you protect your people, your customers, and your organization.

How SMBs should prepare for a SuccessFactors implementation — Part 2

Posted on June 25, 2019July 13, 2026 by

Overview

Sabya Mitra

Process standardization is not a BPR (Business Process Reengineering) exercise

Business processes will play a key role in your implementation plan. How much effort you need to put in there will be based on what approach of implementation you embraced in the first place — an integrated approach or a hybrid approach.

Please pay attention to the fact that SAP SuccessFactors is not an old ERP solution where Business Process Reengineering (BPR) was a term used very frequently, and a lot of time and effort used to be spent on it by every organization to mold the ERP solution to behave as a customized solution that mimics your existing business processes. To read more on the difference between “Business Process Standardization” vs. “BPR”, please check our website.

That is not what is needed for SAP SuccessFactors, as it is a solution that is configurable and extensible but not customizable. You can read more on this in our blog titled SAP SuccessFactors for the Small & Midsize Business (SMB) Market.

Build a team

Whether you are implementing one single business process or multiple business processes, please do yourself a favor and build a good and strong team. At a minimum, this team should contain a business process owner for each process, a technical team lead, and your executive sponsor(s).

Involving key stakeholders from the preparatory phase has its share of advantages. The key employees who will be part of the implementation later become your key change agents among their colleagues and reports inside the organization. Information flows more laterally than vertically.

The team starts working — and more importantly starts thinking — about the upcoming implementation, which helps instill a sense of ownership. The core members of the team should be involved with the project from preparatory work through finalizing and signing off on the workbook requirements. They should also be the ones who sign off on the solution once it is built, and they play an important role in UAT before go-live. Call these committed stakeholders “Super users” or by any other name — they are the key resources for your project.

Project sponsors getting involved early means they will be much more aware of the higher-level decisions being made and their impact on the overall organization.

Last but not least, involve business process owners from other non-HR streams who are mainly the receivers of employee data, such as expense, payroll, and finance. They are important people to have on the team on a part-time basis so they are aware of the change coming with SAP SuccessFactors and how it will impact them. People outside HR also play the role of good change agents — so do not ignore them.

What should you do about the existing and future process?

Let us elaborate on what we mean by “Process Standardization.” When you are doing preparatory work, you should first focus on documenting your current HR processes. This is essential when you start discussing the workbooks with your implementation partner. Process maps are very useful to have, but if you don’t have them, do not try to create them from scratch — just document the process flows you have, or what you desire to have in the new system.

Accurately defining or documenting the process helps in designing the data flow between processes and, subsequently, identifying the integration between HR processes (if you have taken a “hybrid” approach) or with other non-HR applications. When documenting the processes, also remember to document any business-specific rules or workflows you would like in the new system. Early creation of these helps prevent longer workbook cycles and easier solution walkthroughs.

A few suggestions to keep in mind while documenting the processes:

Identify and pay attention to known pain points in your current processes.
Document those processes that are working well, and why.
Understand which processes are broken, and why.
Identify all manual processes and document why they are manual — is it because your current system can’t do that, or because there are too many exceptions? The answers will help you find out what you would like to do going forward.
Find out all business rules, associated tasks, workflow requirements, and critical decision points.

Data Migration

While you look at process integration, you should also look at data integration. One common issue we see across industries is that adequate knowledge and information is not available regarding how to migrate data from the legacy system, or any data you are taking out of a SuccessFactors module to another part of a third-party HR system. This has the potential to delay the data migration process during implementation. Connect with the vendor and your technical consultant well in advance and plan this out.

What you need to do will depend on the approach you have taken — integrated or hybrid. The three more data-centric modules in SuccessFactors are Employee Central (Core HR or HRIS), Recruiting, and Learning. As you map the data across the systems (mostly in a hybrid setup), document the data conversions necessary to transfer information into SuccessFactors or vice versa.

Implementing SuccessFactors — or any new system — gives you the opportunity to re-look at your data and find out how clean it is and how much time and effort it will take to correct it. Effective decision-making can only happen if users have confidence in the data in the system. Depending on the volume and state of the data, you can either clean it manually or use one of the many cost-effective ETL tools available to help clean large data sets.

An interface is where two or more separate software products communicate under limited capacity; data is maintained in multiple locations, requiring more administration. You will mostly build interfaces in a hybrid approach. An integration is when two or more products work closely together to combine different functionalities into one product, with data maintained in one location — the case when you go for the SuccessFactors HCM suite. When documenting your processes, also document the existing interfaces between third-party systems and what would be needed in the future state, paying special attention to manual interfaces you would like to convert into automatic ones as part of the new implementation.

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The HR business-case template — A one-page cost/benefit structure you can take into your next budget conversation. Download

How SMBs should prepare for a SuccessFactors implementation — Part 3

Posted on June 25, 2019July 13, 2026 by

Overview

Sabya Mitra

User Adaptation and Change Management

We understand that SMB organizations might not have a lot of money or resources to spare for an elaborate change management process. But let us just break it down and understand what is required and why for a successful SuccessFactors implementation.

Most SMB organizations have seen rapid growth in some form or other. The growth could be in the diversity of the workforce in regard to country, types of jobs, region, or even geography. That is why many SMBs have a very diverse culture and a dynamic approach, unlike larger organizations where a lot of work goes into creating a unique work and company culture. This dynamism in the work and company culture is one of the principal reasons that brings about an easy acceptance of new HR systems like SuccessFactors.

Depending on the integrated or hybrid system approach, your user adaptability will be different. But irrespective of the approach you take, make sure everyone in the organization understands why user adaptation is crucial for the success of the project. You cannot achieve true transformation unless and until all your employees embrace the new platform.

We strongly recommend user participation from a cross-section of the company during the preparation phase. The goal is to design the new system keeping the end users in mind. Treat your employees like your customers and start planning a comprehensive change management, communication, and marketing plan for the upcoming project.

Create a core group of change agents drawn from your user community and ask for their input at the preparation planning stage. This group can prove to be your biggest champions. Keep them informed about why the system is being implemented, the benefits of the new way of working, and most importantly, what their role will be during planning and execution.

We always recommend interweaving change management activities with your SuccessFactors project plan. Identify each step of the change management process that can be performed independently of the other project activities without negatively affecting the phase in question. In the earlier segment of the blog we discussed documenting your current and future processes — this is the best time to start thinking about change management. Identify what needs to change in each process area, who will be affected, and what would be required to make them comfortable in the new environment.

Effectively Train your Employees

SuccessFactors is an intuitive system, and the interface is consumer-grade; hence it takes much less time for users to get trained. Having said that, moving from one technology to another still involves a learning curve.

During the preparation phase, start analyzing your training requirements for each module you plan to implement. Training needs analysis is a critical element within your change management strategy and should not be neglected at any cost. SAP SuccessFactors offers training materials to help with this, while partners like Renew HR also offer more customizable training services.

SAP Enable Now is available for the SAP SuccessFactors solution, which allows you to support your end users in adopting software faster and helps them with their daily work. It enables you to create guided tours, context help, and new content directly within the application. Additionally, existing formal and informal learning content can easily be offered directly within the application in a context-sensitive way.

The challenge with most organizations using a digital HR transformation strategy is how to encourage employees to fully utilize the new SuccessFactors system and be self-reliant for their process needs. The true business case of value and cost savings can only be achieved through more effective use of the system. The quality and ease of access to training and help resources is the key to success when implementing any module of SuccessFactors.

Business Insights and HR Analytics

One of the main benefits of a SuccessFactors-led digital HR transformation is to encourage and support managerial decision-making.

SAP SuccessFactors out-of-the-box provides plenty of useful HR dashboards, high-level reports, and real-time data related to the most critical measures of HR success. By linking the data on the dashboard to key organizational metrics, managers can extract essential insights into the business that tie HR outcomes to corporate goals.

Based on the approach you take to implement SAP SuccessFactors modules (including a hybrid approach), you may also need to consider true HR analytics that combine data from all sources. Modern data warehousing, data mining, and analytics products provide a centralized repository of selected HR data managed separately from live data.

To take advantage of HR analytics and reporting, a lot of preparation is required in the form of building KPIs, taking measures, and considering dashboard requirements. We have seen from experience that these activities are very time-consuming and need dedicated involvement from stakeholders before the start of the implementation. Big data and HR analytics are changing the way organizations do business; as the use of technology to support HR decision-making continues to evolve, organizations must take advantage of these tools to enhance HR effectiveness. You can also read our blog on big-data HR analytics.

In Conclusion

We have discussed various aspects of project preparation and planning that are essential to your success. Remember that cloud implementations are much shorter in duration compared to on-premise implementations; hence a lot of project-related activities that used to happen during the implementation now occur during the preparatory planning phase. There are SuccessFactors partners like Renew HR who provide services to prepare you for your upcoming projects.

How SMB organizations prepare for SuccessFactors Implementation – Part 1

Posted on April 16, 2019July 13, 2026 by

A journey, not a destination

SuccessFactors SAP implementations, just like HR transformation, are a journey, not a destination, and the start and end, unfortunately, don’t happen with the beginning and end of the project implementation.

You start preparing for a SuccessFactors project immediately after you sign the contract with SAP.

We recommend that you consider taking these steps before you sit down with your SuccessFactors implementation partner; they will help prepare you for a successful implementation. Careful preparation and planning will lower implementation costs, reduce your risks, and prevent delays.

Future planning
Adapt to the SuccessFactors process
Look at the entire HR ecosystem and beyond

Why preparation is required for a SuccessFactors implementation

Before you begin, ask yourself a few diagnostic questions — the same ones covered in our HR Health Check & Roadmap piece: do you understand your current-state processes well enough to describe them to an implementation partner? Do you know which parts of your process are policy versus habit? Have you quantified what success looks like? Do you have executive sponsorship secured?

When to start the preparatory work?

For an SMB, expect 3–6 weeks of preparation per module. Employee Central and Recruiting typically need more time than smaller point modules, since they touch the most current-state process and data.

Technology-enabled HR transformation

SuccessFactors is not just a system swap — it is the technology layer of a broader HR transformation. Preparation work should be framed that way from the outset, not as an IT project with HR as a stakeholder.

All-integrated solution within SuccessFactors, or a “hybrid” approach?

With SAP SuccessFactors, unlike other HR solutions in the market, you have multiple options. Although it is possible to implement everything at once using the integrated solution approach, you can also decide to go for a “hybrid approach.” Each of these approaches has its share of strengths and weaknesses that must be considered when preparing for a project. Based on the approach you choose, your project preparation can be different — so weigh the strengths against the weaknesses for your situation before you commit.

Packaged solutions make happy customers successful

Posted on December 19, 2018 by

Overview

Sabya Mitra

Packaged Solutions Make Happy Customers: Happy Customers Make Successful Partners

When Sabya Mitra founded SAP partner Renew HR in 2016, he knew he wanted to focus the business on SMB clients and on cloud solutions since the two seemed a perfect match.

“I always thought the large enterprises have the money to get the best solutions they want, but because they didn’t have the resources to get a world-class solution, SMBs always needed to sacrifice. Cloud helped them reach there; it has leveled the playing field,” Mitra said.

The problem was that while SMBs could do cloud, they didn’t necessarily flock to SAP at the time, which was seen by many smaller companies as too expensive and too big. Renew HR executives studied competitive HR solutions, not only the technologies but also how those companies went to market. They surmised that to compete with SAP SuccessFactors’ competitors, they would need something that was cost-effective, quick to implement, and solved problems that SMBs were facing. Packaged solutions fit the bill.

“For the last three years, we were telling companies that they could go with the world-class SAP SuccessFactors software with an affordable budget. We found a way to bundle the cost of the application, implementation, and scope into a package that could go live in 8 to 10 weeks. Initially, they didn’t believe us, but we did it,” Mitra said. “We put everything in front of them and told them they wouldn’t have to pay for anything that was not right in front of them during the sales cycle.”

Initially, customers were hesitant to believe him, feeding off the perception of SAP being an enterprise-only software company. But Renew HR’s strategy combined with its ability to understand customer needs helped the company build several packaged solutions to bring to market. Today, Renew HR has four branded SAP qualified partner-packaged solutions.

“We tell them what we can do for them now—and what we can do for them when they grow to 1,000+ employees in the future. Our solutions and approach allow them to start where they want to start and then expand,” Mitra said. “We tell them that they’re using the same software that an American Airlines or Microsoft is using. You also have the same bells and whistles that they have. But building off a cloud platform allows us to make it more affordable.”

One prospect might want to start with SAP SuccessFactors Performance and Goals, while another wants to start with SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central. The key, Mitra said, is to achieve one goal at a time, in small chunks that are easier for a customer to consume. “They may not have a 360-degree Performance appraisal now, but next year they can. If they need more as they grow, we tell them this is what it’s going to cost. That visibility and predictability is extremely valuable to a growing business.”

Customers Don’t Like Surprises

The worst thing a partner can do is to not tell the whole truth to a customer, Mitra said. Eventually, the truth comes out, and you are likely to lose either their respect or the trust you’ve built with the customer, or worse, the customer itself, he said.

“We try to keep it simple. We tell people exactly what they will get, the time it takes, and the cost associated with it,” he said.

That straightforward approach has translated to more wins, but also quicker close rates, Mitra said. “One example, we only had two calls. On the first, we presented the solution. On the second, we did a demo, negotiated the cost and arrived at a number,” he said.

“If you get to a third or fourth round, you’ve lost the deal. They’re talking to someone else. You have to make sure they see a complete picture in the first meeting—how much it costs, how much time you’ll spend on it, how much time they’ll spend on it, what type of resources that they will need.”

In a traditional sales cycle, you would do discovery and analysis and then customers wouldn’t get back to you for a month or two. The faster you can answer all their questions, the less likely they are comparing your solution to other software vendors or trying to match a price, Mitra said.

“We don’t want to compete on price. We want to compete on value. If you tell them they’re getting a solution that they can still use when they get to 500 or 1,000+ employees, that’s great news for them.”

Packaged solutions have helped open SMB doors to SAP, but they’ve also helped open technology-enabled HR transformation doors to SMBs, Mitra said.

“They could never afford a complete HR solution back in the day. And enterprise-grade software? Out of the question,” Mitra said. “The market is challenging. But if we do it well, we can penetrate that market. We have done everything we can to help the SMB customers achieve their HR transformation goals. I’m of the belief that if you try to understand their problem and pain points and come out with a solution which helps them in a short period of time, you make your customers happy and then you are happy. Packaged solutions make us happy.”

For a complete list of SAP Qualified Partner Packaged Solutions please visit SAP Partner Package Finder.

SAP SuccessFactors for the SMB market — Part 2

Posted on December 5, 2018July 13, 2026 by

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.

SAP SuccessFactors for the SMB market — Part 1

Posted on November 8, 2018 by

Overview

Sabya Mitra

How do we define a small and midsize business (SMB)?

It is crucial that before we start our exploration of HR on cloud and its applicability for SMBs, we first have a common understanding of what we consider a small and midsize business (SMB).

Gartner defines SMBs by the number of employees and the amount of annual revenue they have. The attribute used most often is the organization’s employees. Small businesses are usually defined as organizations with fewer than 100 employees, while midsize enterprises are those having 100 to 999 employees. The second most popular attribute used to define the SMB market is annual revenue. Small business is usually defined as organizations with less than $50 million in annual revenue; a midsize enterprise is defined as organizations that make more than $50 million but less than $1 billion in annual revenue.

Do SMBs face similar HR challenges as large enterprises?

SMB enterprises have different types of HR and HRIS challenges compared to large enterprises. This is due to their size, lack of resources (number and types of resources, turnover), the skill set of resources, and above all, the lack of budget.

Most SMBs would have started off being very small. They would have picked various off-the-shelf, disjointed software along their journey. Hence it becomes a real challenge for these organizations to determine the right HR software to run HR and talent management processes.

These organizations need an HR system that is best in class, easy to implement, flexible, and able to grow with the organization — and we should add affordable and easy-to-maintain to the mix as well. Unlike other ERPs, where you have various solutions for different sizes of organizations, HR on cloud (SAP SuccessFactors) fits a small organization with 50 employees as easily as it would a large organization with more than 200k employees.

A growing presence in the SMB HR-on-cloud market

Although SAP is known as the provider of ERP systems that cater to vast global enterprises, SAP SuccessFactors is making its presence felt in the crowded SMB HR-on-cloud market as well.

SuccessFactors has been around for more than 15 years in the talent management space. SAP acquired the software in 2011, and since then it has become the fastest-growing cloud product within SAP’s wide range of cloud products and services. As of today, it has 6500+ customers across the globe.

According to SAP, SMBs make up 80% of the company’s customer base. That is also the place in the market that offers the most greenfield opportunities and is growing rapidly compared to the large enterprise space. SAP is committed to packaging and pricing SAP SuccessFactors to suit the SMB market. Finally, with SAP SuccessFactors, SAP proves that there is undoubtedly an HR system that is the right one for every organization.

10 reasons SAP SuccessFactors is the best HR-on-cloud software for SMBs

In the earlier part of the blog, we discussed the market situation and where SAP SuccessFactors falls in the scheme of things. But as an SMB customer, all you would like to know is how this can help you, how much time it will take to implement, how much training is required, the flexibility of the tool, support, cost, and other such aspects. Below are the compelling reasons to consider SAP SuccessFactors for your business.

Size Does Matter

In 2017, SAP’s revenue amounted to about 23.5 billion euros — a significantly large amount compared to its competitors in the SMB marketplace. Why does that matter? It matters because SAP has significant leverage over its HR-on-cloud competitors in regard to the R&D dollars invested in SAP SuccessFactors products. They can do so not only because they have more revenue but also because they sell the same software for the large enterprise market. So as an SMB enterprise, you are taking advantage of this investment coming your way at a fraction of the cost.

Today you may or may not care about the underlying technology. Still, as you grow, it becomes increasingly important that the underlying technology is stable, safe, reliable, and scalable. One such example is the use of the in-memory database HANA in SAP SuccessFactors — the same database used by multi-billion-dollar organizations to run their entire business globally. So upfront, you know you are in safe hands. SAP’s purchases like Fieldglass and Concur enhance the ability for your organization to grow in the future and still use these products seamlessly within the SAP ecosystem. Another aspect worth highlighting is the embedded HR analytics: SAP Analytics Cloud is an enterprise-grade analytics tool capable of business intelligence, business planning, and predictive analytics, available to you for reporting purposes.

Global Presence and Compliance

In today’s business climate, rapid change is inevitable. Throughout various business changes and globalization, organizations are constantly under pressure to be compliant. When we talk about HR compliance, there are four main key areas: Payroll, Benefits, Risk & Safety, and Recruiting.

The regulatory landscape has changed, with an increasing number of workforce laws, regulations, and agency rules applying to labor forces around the globe. SAP has issued a significant number of regulatory changes across the more than 90 countries it actively monitors. Having tracked directly related core-HR legal changes throughout the world, SAP has seen a 22% increase over the last four years. These changes span wage-and-hour regulations, a multitude of reporting requirements, and anti-discrimination and union laws and amendments.

This surge in regulation has surpassed the ability of most SMB organizations to track, manage, and comply using their existing resources. The cost of non-compliance is too high a price for an organization’s reputation and finances. Hence you need an HR-on-cloud system that comes fully compliant out of the box. SAP SuccessFactors’ out-of-the-box solution complies with existing regulations as well as international laws like GDPR and Turkey’s data protection law, helping SMB organizations save cost and mitigate the risk of non-compliance.

Flexibility – Start Anywhere, Go Everywhere

What SMBs most want is not a lot of features and functionalities but a way to grow their business by leveraging new capabilities while minimizing risk. The mantra here is that digital HR transformation doesn’t happen in a day but occurs at the organization’s own pace and ability. So there is no ripping and replacing of existing software and infrastructure or retraining of staff, but rather the replacement of what is needed, when it is needed. You are the boss, and it is your call. This is one significant difference between SAP SuccessFactors and its competitors: SuccessFactors allows you to start anywhere (where there is an immediate need) and go everywhere (grow with the business).

SAP SuccessFactors’ phenomenal growth has been primarily spurred because it has a set of comprehensive tools that appeal to a broad set of HR functions from hire to retire, and because of its ability to address the HR needs of a variety of industries within the same software. This distinguishes SAP SuccessFactors from competitors that focus on one HR function like Core HR or Talent Acquisition. A large number of partners are also adding various extensions to the standard product, including apps readily available in the SAP App Center for purchase, with out-of-the-box integration with the core SAP SuccessFactors product.

HR Health Check and Roadmap

Posted on December 13, 2017 by

HR Health Check or HR Audit may be best described as a holistic overview of a client’s existing HR processes. It includes systems, organizational roles and responsibilities, service delivery, and UX.

HR Health checks or HR Audits can be run using several different methodologies, including but not limited to, diagnostic questionnaires, interviews, surveys, and workshops together with business and IT stakeholders.

Companies keep moving away from long and lengthy ERP HR/On-Premise implementation cycles, adopting the best-in-class, agile SaaS models instead. Although these systems offer great opportunities, many-a-times, these moves are short-sighted and run the risk of implementation without full comprehension.

Significance of doing an HR Health Check / HR Audit for your organization

Understanding where you are today — honestly — is the precondition for any credible roadmap.

Understanding the past

A health check starts by understanding the decisions that got you here, not just the systems you ended up with.

Past company performance

How has HR service delivery performed against expectations over the last 2–3 years?

Why your organization decided to implement HR systems in the first place

What was the original business case, and does it still hold?

Were you able to judge the success of that project?

Do you have any post-implementation measurement in place at all?

Does your current solution meet the long-term strategic vision of your organization?

Do your users have a great “User Experience” in HR?
Have you ever implemented integrated Talent Management systems before?

What was the learning from that implementation?

What would you do differently if you started again today?

What would you like to achieve from your SuccessFactors implementation?

Have you defined what “done” looks like in outcome terms, not just go-live terms?

Business case

The audit findings should translate directly into a defensible business case — not just a list of complaints.

Utilizing the HR Health Check / HR Audit data for a Strategic HR Roadmap

Raw findings are not a roadmap. Sequencing them by impact and dependency is what makes them one.

Aligning with organizational strategic objectives and value creation

Does each roadmap item tie back to a named business objective?

Current pain points, and what gives you the maximum benefits

Which pain points, if solved, would free up the most capacity or reduce the most risk?

Rationale and the role of technology

We recommend that you consider the implementation of Employee Central as a significant strategic move towards your complete progress to a SuccessFactors-based solution. Sometimes it makes more sense to implement EC first and then other modules (pre-packaged integration, out-of-the-box ESS/MSS, standardization of core processes which create a substantial foundation, etc.).