Date: 1 Dec 2008
By Daire O'Mochain.
At the end of the year people are often winding down at work and beginning to think of their holidays. For a lucky few, that might be as simple as settling into the pointy end of an airplane and sipping champagne all the way to a fun filled destination. For the majority, it is more likely that it will involve a succession of transportations, faulty air-conditioning, sick pets, toilet breaks every 5km per individual child and a continual chorus of "Are we there yet?". Most of us can relate to tales of missed flights, lost tempers and destinations that didn't quite match the brochure. Getting from A to B never seemed so hard.
In relation to system implementations the trip from A to B can fall into both camps and all points in between. This article discusses defining the SAP HCM roadmap to ensure a smooth SAP HCM implementation journey.
Getting the destination clearly defined upfront is critical. SAP HCM is a module with a breadth of functionality and it is very easy to get carried away all the "cool" features.
There are a couple of simple guidelines that can help:
The processes that the business will implement must be based on business need. It is not acceptable to implement a process design just because it ‘comes as standard' or looks pretty. It must support the goals of the business. For example, Employee Self Service has demonstratable ROI benefits that can underpin the client's business case - unless most of the staff are employed under seasonal or casual contracts for manual labour type roles.
Having reference sites for the functionality being considered is an important part of the roadmap development process. There are a couple of pitfalls that can be avoided; firstly, every business is different even if there are in the same market or industry. Implementing something just to keep up with the Jones' may not necessarily give the best outcome.
Another point is that SAP's HCM module has been continually improved in a number of key areas in the last few years, most notably in the areas generally seen as the ‘soft' side of HR, for example; talent management and learning and development. In terms of differentiation as an employer in a tight labour market, these are the aspects of HCM where your money is best deployed. After all, everybody pays their employees, so having a new system with which to pay people is not going to differentiate you from your competitors.
A lot of this functionality is new, and has not yet had broad take up in the SAP customer community. As such, reference sites will be either difficult to find or non-existent. That should not automatically result in a decision not to adopt the functionality, just as the existence of many reference sites for a competing product should not underpin a decision to add that product to the solution mix. The benefits of having one integrated system, provided by the largest vendor in the world should not be overlooked.
For the risk averse organisation, if the business issue in question can be alternatively addressed in the short term and the SAP option pencilled in for phase 2, that may be an acceptable outcome. That said, a CIO recently said to me, that in his experience phase 2 is the phase you never do, so blithely scheduling multiple functional rollouts may address implementation concerns in the short term, but not address business problems in the long term, if ever.
Everything costs money and when it comes to SAP HCM, there are a number of licensing options to consider when looking at the functionality available. Some of the licence fees are calculated on the number of employees, others are a fixed amount.
In addition, there's the implementation cost. This can also vary depending on the functionality being implemented as some aspects of the system are more mature than others, and there are varying levels of skilled resources available in the market. For example, the core modules of Personnel Administration, Time Management and Payroll have been around for some time and the majority of consultants have skills in these areas. However, the newer functionality in Talent Management, eRecruitment, Nakisa, etc. is less well known and it will therefore be more difficult to source skilled resources. Those with the scarcer skill sets can often be charged at a premium and this needs to be recognised when building the business case and roadmap.
If the roadmap does not clearly define the end state of the project (or projects) and is not supplemented by clear project documentation (blueprint documents, user manuals, etc.) there is a risk that the final destination may mean different things to different people. These should be definable as KPIs for the functionality e.g. "From the receipt of all employee forms, the onboarding process will be completed in 3 days", "Statement of earnings requests completion time will be reduced from 3 days to 1 minute".
In conclusion, get a good travel agent, discuss expectations and enjoy the trip!