Three New Year Resolutions for groups using SAP HR

The good part about ending one year and beginning another is that it is a natural time to review and plan, to evaluate what's been done and plan what needs to be done. For many HR, Benefits and Payroll departments this transition comes at a bad time of the year – right in the middle 941's and W-2's, and at the closing of Open Enrollment for example. Many HR-folks are really busy this time of year so I'll keep this short and simple. Here are three SAP HR New Year's Resolutions for 2010, and some ideas for approaching each one:

Resolve to use more of the software you already have, or use it better:

• Put Position and Job descriptions & requirements in the system and make a plan for keeping them up to date – this is a good starting point for building the basis for a system that will provide more strategic HR analysis and reporting
• Use Process Models for your payroll processing to streamline and standardize the process as well as giving you more management information on how the processes are performing
• Roll-out additional Employee Self Service (ESS) scenarios and/or HR Forms for managers to use – wring out the low-value HR data-entry work as you ring-in the New Year!
• Do something about HR-related reporting – determine what HR information your managers and executives need, take a look at Business Warehouse for HR data, or get a third-party reporting toolkit such as GRTK from SpinifexIT
• Network with other customers to see how they are using the system or get a consultant for a couple days to analyze your system and suggest some ways you can get more value from it

Resolve to start documenting your Process Framework:

• Make a simple list of the Inputs, Processes and Outputs in your department – just getting them on-paper is a great start to analyzing and improving your work
• Take a hard look at processes, particularly those that don't have inputs or outputs, and determine if you really need to keep them around – do they serve a valid business purpose now?
• If you have any outputs that are not getting used – spreadsheets, files, reports, etc – then find out why, and if they really aren't needed then stop producing them

Resolve to start tracking issues and inquiries:

• Keep a spreadsheet to document the inquiries from employees and other departments as well as problems that get reported to your group to be fixed – as each one is resolved record the solution and mark it as completed
• After a month or two of tracking inquires and issues review them to determine some quick-fixes and easy-wins that you can put in place to show everyone the value of this activity