Weekly Insight - July 12, 2010

SAP Enterprise Services for HCM

Enterprise Services (ES) is SAP's term for their implementation of SOA – Service Oriented Architecture – which is a way of making SAP processes available to other systems. For example, SAP's Enterprise Services can enable other systems and applications to read an employee's basic data or change their address (just a few of the dozens of services available for HR). This is a standards-based method of integrating systems that need to know about processes and data inside SAP.

SOA and ES allow for more dynamic systems. Instead of waiting for interface files to be exchanged, systems can share the data and processes through online, real-time integration via ES. Some data and processes are not available via ES, though SAP is adding more as customers adopt this approach.

SAP keeps their list of ES scenarios online at http://esworkplace.sap.com. From there you can browse all their services as well as do some prototyping – either in a system hosted by SAP or downloaded into your own SAP system. Currently for HR there are services for employee master data, organization management, time management, and enterprise learning.

Showing Up and Getting It Right

Administration and compliance is a fundamental responsibility for HR, whether it is actually performed internally or outsourced. Getting administration and compliance right is like getting up and to work on time, reliably: it is the baseline expectation, and you're not going to get big rewards for showing up on time. But if you don't, people will notice and your credibility and reputation will suffer. How well is your HR group known for mistakes in administration and compliance? How has that affected HR's credibility in the firm? Or is your HR group so good at administration and compliance that no one really notices? If so – congratulations!

Steve Bogner, Managing Partner
www.insightcp.com

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