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People, processes and technology all have to work together to have a successful HR organization. We – consultants and companies alike – know that, yet so often we seem to lose track of it. Or more precisely, we lose track of the importance of balancing our effort among all three components. We tend to favor and emphasize technology all too often, at the expense of improving processes and people.

It's easier to focus on how technology investments help us out because technology is impersonal (though it can have a personal impact). We can easily and objectively debate the merits and weaknesses of any given piece of HR technology. It's more difficult to objectively debate the merits and weaknesses of our own business processes, and most difficult of all – our people. It's tough for many HR leaders to go there, to admit their processes are messed up and they are at a loss on how to improve them, or that their staff don't have the skills to take the HR function to the next level of performance. Instead of those tough discussions, let's implement a new recruiting system, or let's outsource benefits administration. That's the easier, lower-hanging value-fruit.

I've worked with HR technology since the mid/late 80's – it has advanced by leaps and bounds every couple years. I like technology, and I know my way around code and configuration. However, in most every case, project and client I've worked with, the amount of value we can achieve is limited most often by people and processes, not by the HR technology. So although it is important to select the right technology for your given situation, I believe it is much more important to develop the business processes and people so that they can keep up their end of value-generation.

According to 'The Psychology of Design' in the latest SAP Spectrum magazine, research found that roughly 10% of software users' time is spent dealing with usability issues. That is really a significant amount of time! Let's say you are using software half of your work day – not an unreasonable portion, I think. In the course of a week that means you are spending 2 hours dealing with software issues: it doesn't work well, you can't get it to do what you need, it has bugs or crashes, or you simply spend time trying to figure out how to do what needs to be done.

If I could gain 2 hours of time in a given week, I would be sure to do that! Multiply that 2 hours by the number of 'knowledge workers' you have and it's apparent that this is a serious productivity issue. If you could get 10% more productivity out of your physical assets – printing presses, airplanes, paper machines, foundries and so on – the only question people would ask is why you hadn't recognized and solved that problem long ago. Perhaps we could be as disciplined about knowledge workers' productivity with software as we are with productivity of fixed assets?

There are guidelines for making software more usable. For example, there are ISO standards 13407 and 9241. There are all sorts of books written specifically about developing usable software; one of my favorites is 'Don't Make Me Think' by Steve Krug, and there are dozens of others. Why is usability very seldom much of a concern when SAP HR is being implemented? Over my 14 years of consulting it has only come up a few times, from the more forward-thinking IT groups.

SAP HR in the R3 GUI is not a very intuitive experience. Learning how to be productive with employee data maintenance (transaction PA30 for example), or navigating and working with the Organization Structure (transaction PPOME) takes quite a while. The Off-Cycle Workbench (PUOC_10) for US Payroll brings a lot of functions together, but I still to this day want to double-click on a given paycheck to see the detail. Why can't I double-click to see the detail? Why do I have to select the paycheck then navigate over to another button and click it to see the detail?

The Self-Service and Portal applications are easier to use, but still clunky compared to other web/intranet experiences. With HR Forms and Processes we can now use Adobe forms and SAP workflow to do a lot of custom processes. How much effort do we put into designing an easy to use, functional and efficient user experience with those? Where do you draw the line on feature-creep with a form?

What role does usability have in your process and user interface design? To what degree are end-users included in those design processes? From my experience, the answer in most cases is 'not enough', and that needs to change. Reducing that 10% by half is quite a gain, and very realistic to achieve if we put some focus on SAP HR usability.

Why is it that firms are willing to outsource - both off-shore and near-shore – critical business processes yet they continue to insist on implementation teams being together onsite every week for months or years at a time? Many firms trust a business partner in some remote location to process their benefits and payroll, which are two complex and critical business functions. If people don't get paid, it's a safe bet they won't come to work – that is critical! Yet, when implementing systems such as SAP HR, firms insist on flying consultants from all over the country to a central location – week after week for months or years at a time. That's no longer a necessary or beneficial way of doing projects.

Software firms create big, complex systems with teams spread out over the globe. They have the project management methods and technology to make that work. Other products are designed, created and rolled-out by teams that are spread out over the globe. Companies have office staff working from home 2 or 3 days a week now. And aside from off-shoring some ABAP development, we don't see offsite work happening much if at all with SAP implementation projects. Why is that?

Familiarity

Many SAP consultants and project managers don't know any other way to do it. They have always relied on and sold the model of having everyone onsite together, in a big team-room, working all week (or maybe Monday-Thursday) face to face. If I can see you here in the team-room, I know you are working on something. If I can't see you, I don't know if you're working or not. And that is, I believe, one of the big reasons we still fly consultants in every week. Measuring work by walking around and seeing people at work is different from measuring the progress & delivery of tasks on a project plan.

We Will Lose Business

Another important reason we fly consultants in every week is that we're afraid that if we don't, someone else will, that they will gain the client's favor, and we will lose some business. The flip-side of that is the client will get only those consultants willing to travel every week, which isn't the same as getting the most qualified and appropriate resources for the project. Many experienced consultants no longer want or need to travel every week, yet their contributions are valuable. I believe many in the consulting profession don't want to really recognize this trade-off because it's uncomfortable to talk about.

Quality Will Suffer

Many successful firms have had geographically diverse teams working together for years. Even for the traditional office jobs such as those we find in HR, accounting and IT, some firms have had a lot of success letting employees work from home 2 or 3 days per week. If quality suffered or it was too expensive, they wouldn't continue doing it.

Technology

In the past few years there have been many advances in using technology to bring disparate team members together to work on projects. The big favorite? Microsoft Sharepoint – the all-pupose site for bringing teams together to work on projects. And new from SAP there is Streamwork – a site for collaborative work. Don't forget Skype and dozens of Instant Messaging systems. There is plenty of technology to help dispersed teams work well; perhaps the challenge here is to determine how best to use the technology.

Sustainability

Is this merely a buzzword? Or, do we take it seriously? How sustainable is it to fly consultants in every week, drive to an office, stay in a hotel, and fly back? A year of flying alone generates tons of CO2 emissions; round trip from Cincinnati to New York City for a year generates about 15 tons. SAP itself has made quite a commitment to sustainability, as have many of their customers and prospects. Will consulting firms join them in that endeavor, and if so, how?

Working for Balance

There are some definite advantages to working together onsite during certain phases of the project. Project Preparation and a good deal of Blueprinting are best done face-to-face. And even though working from disparate locations, it's still a team and having face-time is a critical part of team cohesion. Still, that is nowhere close to being onsite for the whole project. It's time for SAP implementation practices to catch-up with the distributed way that work can be done today.