Weekly Insight

The SAP app store is a central place to find and learn about mobile applications that are designed to work with the SAP Business Suite (R3) software. A few of the apps are free to download but most require a license fee. The free apps include ‘lite’ versions of the timesheet, leave request, travel & expense and approvals for HR - so that is a convenient and low-cost way to give them a test drive. Most of the free apps can also be found on your mobile device provider’s app store, but not all of the free apps are available on all the platforms (iOS, Android, Blackberry).

The SAP HCM Insights podcast team’s latest podcast is a Holiday Edition - we talk about SAP’s proposed acquisition of SuccessFactors and how that might impact the HCM software and SAP overall, and we present our wish-list for SAP HCM. We’ve also decided to support UNICEF during the holidays by establishing our own fund to help children in need - we’ve contributed to it and we invite our listeners and readers to do so also. We hope you enjoy the podcast!

Software has become an integrated part of how we do business. Email is a good example - can we imagine working without it? Maybe we dream about having no email, but it’s a critical business tool. Our HR software is similar - can we imagine recruiting, managing, developing and paying employees without some sort of HR software? HR software is a central part of how companies operate.

Organizations are also dynamic, ever-changing and evolving. So when an organization changes, but the supporting software doesn’t or can’t, bad things happen. We become less efficient, we develop work-arounds that require extra time and effort. We simply say that we can’t support the organization, holding it back from its true potential. It’s clear that HR software has to grow, change and adapt alongside the organization. Organizations that acknowledge that relationship between software and how work gets done, and then plan and provide resources for it, will be more successful.

Steve Bogner, Managing Partner
www.insightcp.com
Follow me on Twitter at @SteveBogner

The SAP HCM Insights podcast is at www.insightcp.com/insights; it's also available on iTunes and via RSS. Insight Consulting Partners is on Facebook at www.facebook.com/insightcp. Steve Bogner's SAP podcast is available on the blog or iTunes.

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US Payroll clients need to review SAP’s note 1639030 to learn about the implementation of Pennsylvania’s Act 32 which has sweeping changes to how local taxes are processed. The SAP functionality is delivered via CLC or HRSP, and while SAP will provide support for the technical processes, payroll departments also need to adjust their business process for local taxes in PA. The Commonwealth of PA also has a web site that provides more information.

Every year we get questions such as ‘Do we really have to apply the year-end support packs?’ The short answer is yes, particularly for each country in which you use SAP payroll. Even if you don’t use SAP Tax Reporter for producing W-2 forms in the US, it’s not a good idea to skip the year-end support packages. We have consistently found that the longer a client goes without applying HR support packages, the more difficult it is to catch up when they really need to.

Alignment - it’s one of the basic requirements for projects and support organizations. Alignment on what we are trying to achieve and how we are working towards it is critical. When we start a project it’s common to get that alignment and communicate throughout the team. But as people come and go from the project, it pays to make sure that the same message of alignment is communicated to them. When new team members are not educated on the project’s goals and processes, they fill in the gaps with their own understanding - which might be contrary and lead to confusion, particularly when they control resources.

Does your project team or organization have documented goals and processes? Is there something you can provide new team members that gives them an idea of what the goals are and how work gets done? Do you provide mentors for new team members who can help them be successful? 

Steve Bogner, Managing Partner
www.insightcp.com
Follow me on Twitter at @SteveBogner

The SAP HCM Insights podcast is at www.insightcp.com/insights; it's also available on iTunes and via RSS. Insight Consulting Partners is on Facebook at http://on.fb.me/insightcp. Steve Bogner's SAP podcast is available on the blog or iTunes.

This newsletter can also be viewed online.

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

We respect your privacy - our privacy policy is at (http://www.insightcp.com/content/privacy-statement)

To subscribe to this newsletter use the following link: Subscribe
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SAP released a mobile app (via the iTunes store) for their ‘Support Desk’. This app provides functions to read your SAP Support Inbox, SAP Notes, manage system connections and more. All in all, a handy little application! Now I want an iPad version of it...

We’ve released our second SAP HCM Insights podcast! This one is about improving your SAP HCM implementations and projects. We could have gone on for hours, but kept it to about 38 minutes. Good implementations and projects don’t just happen on their own, they require conscious planning and effort. In this podcast we present what we’ve seen that consistently works well, and what doesn’t work so well.

We’re pleased that the SAP HCM Insights podcast series was mentioned in SAP’s October 25 Business Process Expert newsletter. The podcast is also available on iTunes and RSS. I hope you enjoy it! Be sure to leave us some feedback in the comments section, or email me directly to share your thoughts.

For those so inclined, Insight Consulting Partners is also on Facebook at http://on.fb.me/insightcp - find links to all our newsletters and podcasts there, and more. We’re approaching 100 ‘likes’ on the Facebook page and will be featuring more exclusive content there in the future. 

It’s year-end time again - yeah! What are you doing to get ready for it? Did you keep track of what worked well last year, and what didn’t go so well? Did you work those lessons into this year’s planning? You do have a year-end plan - right?

The first few year-ends with a new system can be pretty hectic and stressful. Your regular processes get executed and refined all the time through the year, so there are many opportunities to get familiar with them and make them better. But the year-end processes come, well, once a year. There are fewer times to practice and refine them, so putting extra effort into planning year-end processes really makes a difference.

If you have payroll implemented in SAP, make sure it’s reconciled and reviewed now. Don’t wait until year-end! If you have outsourced payroll or taxes, make sure you have reconciled the provider’s numbers and do some test runs with them to make sure everything looks good. Of course there are a lot of details behind all that, which is why a plan is needed!

Steve Bogner, Managing Partner
www.insightcp.com
Follow me on Twitter at @SteveBogner and on FaceBook at http://on.fb.me/insightcp

This newsletter can also be viewed online.

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

We respect your privacy - our privacy policy is at (http://www.insightcp.com/content/privacy-statement)

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