Weekly Insight - July 05, 2010

Getting More Value From The SAP HR Software You Already Have

One method of getting more value from your HRIS investment is to use more of the software you already have licensed. Although SAP delivers a full and feature-rich HR module, many companies fail to take advantage of those features. Sometimes companies don't know about those features because they are not promoted by SAP, and sometimes because the consulting provider did not properly educate the client about them. For example, SAP offers the HR Process Workbench (transaction PUST) for managing the payroll process. It is a graphical representation of all the programs needed to get payroll accomplished, offering a red light/green light dashboard for each step of the process. Many customers are not aware that this can be used to help them with the payroll process.

Another built-in feature of SAP HR is SAP Query, and it's close cousin Adhoc Query. Customers are often told that these reporting tools can't be used in production because of feared performance impacts. Instead, the consultants create a set of custom ABAP programs to do reporting, and users download the output to other tools for manipulation and further reporting. While custom ABAP's may be a bit more efficient, they are not as flexible, require more maintenance, and typically are not as easy to use (increasing end-user effort and mistakes). The perceived issues with SAP Query and Adhoc Query can be easily addressed. For example, they can be customized to allow only certain power-users to create reports, which helps ensure the reports are done well. Careful analysis and design of Infosets also makes the tools easier and more efficient.

Other times, companies choose to not use functionality as a way of managing scope. Some companies choose to outsource their 401k processing, for example. Instead of using the built-in 401k functions (infotype 0169 and its related payroll integration), they have consultants build custom payroll rules to perform the 401k calculations. However, all the regulatory compliance needs to be integrated into the rules – the limits on employee contributions and eligible wages can become very complex. The effort to create, maintain and troubleshoot custom payroll rules is greater than the work to implement a small slice of the Benefits module for 401k processing and interface it with the outsourcing provider. There are often multiple choices of solving scope requirements, and being open to alternative approaches already present in the software can reduce costs and improve value.

Are You Ready to Improve?

As the economy starts to recover, albeit slowly and unevenly, so will hiring. Are your recruitment, hiring and onboarding processes ready? Making changes to those processes might be tough to do at this time; getting data and information on how they can be improved is always appropriate. Once a candidate accepts an offer, how long does it take for the hiring process to complete? How much does it cost to recruit, hire and onboard a person? How would hiring managers rate HR's performance in these processes? What matters most to them? How do you evaluate the processes from the candidate/employee perspective? What do they think went well, and could have been done better?

Steve Bogner, Managing Partner
www.insightcp.com

This newsletter can also be viewed online.

You are subscribed to the Weekly Insight newsletter by Insight Consulting Partners (http://www.insightcp.com/)

To subscribe to this newsletter use the following link: Subscribe
To unsubscribe to the newsletter use this link: Unsubscribe

Registered users can also login to maintain their subscriptions.