Steve Bogner is Managing Partner at Insight Consulting Partners and worked with SAP HR/Payroll since 1993. Follow Steve's thoughts on SAP HR technology, process and people, as well as the consulting profession here at the Insight Blog. Steve is also on Twitter at 'SteveBogner', and the Steve Bogner's Insight podcasts are available on the blog as well as iTunes.
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There have been too many times in my consulting career when I've come across new SAP HR functionality that just didn't work. I always wondered why that was? Is that a problem in the other modules, too? Or is it just an HR-thing? Or maybe I - and the customer - didn't know how to set it up properly (never-mind that there are rarely any detailed setup instructions)?
I used to think - back in the 90's - that this was just a growing pain. So much of the software had been tweaked coming from R2 to R3, and all sorts of new functionality was being added. With that much development going on, there are bound to be some bugs and issues. But the core-HR functionality should be mature now, and with maturity (we hope) comes stability. Or maybe not.
If a customer spends $1 million licensing the SAP ERP, that means they will spend around $200,000 in annual maintenance fees (I'm sure the actual amount depends on all sorts of things - but it's a significant amount). For that amount, I don't believe it's too much to expect bug fixes to come through in a reasonably timely manner, and for new functionality to work - and be documented - when it is delivered. Yet, I've come across too many maintenance failures lately.
A client reported a bug, SAP didn't fix it because it impacted too many other areas of the system. Another implemented some new payroll functionality that not only didn't work but even made things worse. And yet another implemented some HR/FI integration that failed - it even caused employees to be rejected from the payroll calc.
I advise my clients not to use new SAP HR functionality until it has been out for a couple years. Let someone else be the first to find all the bugs and get them resolved. It's pretty sad, but it has been an effective approach. Sometimes there is new functionality a client just has to have, and then they/we are the ones working out the bugs. In general - I recommend waiting a while if you can.
Developing this software is complicated, but it isn't rocket-science, either. When something is delivered, why can't it just work? When a bug is reported, why do clients have to spend so much energy to get it resolved? Just what is that maintenance fee for anyway?
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Comments
Re: It should just work
You bring up some great points as always as for the amount of the money in maintaince fees you would/should expect more at times.
I have been around long enough for example to see the SAP Payroll product go from having lots of issues to becoming very stable. Even in a stable state there are solutions to meet new requirements that are glorified work arounds (HIRE ACT) or poorly tested (AZ Tax Changes) that cause customers issues which is not acceptable.
You bring up an interesting point on advising new customers to avoid new SAP HR functionality. I have seen the other side being at a ramp up client for one of the first ERP Employee Interaction Center (EIC) projects in the world in 2006 as well as more recently in 2008 a ramp up for EHP4 for ECM. When you take part in a ramp up you are in some ways beta testing the prodect (sad but true) but one of the real benefits is the ability to work directly with SAP as well as strong influence the future direction of the product. My client that implemented the Employee Interaction Center in EHP1 got all their major pain points address by standard solutions in EHP4. It is a judegement call on whether being early was worth it.....but they got to be cutting edge (great for staff morale), got to influence the SAP product design, established a great relationship with SAP and SAP product management and got to use an SAP product that filled an core business need. Now the fact we had to put in the first 60 OSS notes was another matter :-)
I think we would all agree in a perfect world the new software would be delivered in a more "finished" state and maybe that is the new direction SAP given their recently delay of EHP5 just prior to launch.
Re: It should just work
Jarret - Good points on ramp-up. If the consultant and client know what they are getting into - the effort, notes, debugging, etc - then that's fne. And for ramp-up, it's understandable that such beta-testing will require a lot of effort. For regular releases & support packs, it should just work :)
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