Transforming HR with SAP SuccessFactors Extensibility

There was once a time when all HR processes were attended to manually such as recruitment, performance management, onboarding, employee data management and so on. These time-consuming, traditionally executed HR processes, that required months to complete were the key challenges faced by executives and HR professionals of small, medium and large enterprises. A technology that could disrupt legacy processes and transform the way HR professionals work was the need of the hour. This is when the demand for HR transformation came to the fore as an industry need, and paved the way for digitization of human resources, as an opportunity. “Digital HR” or digitization of HR means a transition in how HR as a line of business and its processes are conducted. It has helped organizations to cut down time spent on all processes from months to weeks or days with little or no dependency, thereby cutting costs, and improving employee experience by many folds. 

The need for SAP Cloud + Extensibility

We have seen and heard about HR transformation through digitization of HR, however, to achieve a true and comprehensive “Digital HR” experience, companies need to evaluate whether they are digitizing existing processes or overhauling the face of HR with solutions that offer new ways of interacting with, and engaging employees productively, and enhancing their overall experience. 

What are the ways in which you, as a company, can change the HR experience? What are the many Digital HR possibilities you can explore to scale your employee experience? For this and for many other capabilities, there is SAP cloud platform with its extensibility foundation.  

Extensibility is a measure of the ability to extend a system and the level of effort required to implement the extension. Extensions can be through the addition of new functionalities or through modification of existing functionalities. Extensibility projects are driven by HR professionals and require them to be invested in wanting to improve the current employee experience into a profound one. SAP cloud platform provides HR teams the opportunity to make these improvements and transform the experience.  

The need to go for cloud extensibility is to be able to face HR disruptors – which are basically new and emerging expectations coming from an organization’s workforce that arise due to the emergence of new technologies. Disruptors can be termed challenges, or in other words, HR trends that HR departments face from time to time, which they need to address. This is why HR departments need to be agile in order to meet the emerging needs. Cloud extensibility helps HR teams with the agility they need. To illustrate, extensibility can help HR to meet the increased competition to rope in the best candidates in a surging market. Extensibility can help HR during mergers of two organizations with two separate HR systems. Cloud extensibility can also help with rewards and recognition programs for employees based on their targets and achievements. 

If as an HR department, you’re using SAP SuccessFactors features as part your core HR system, and would like to take advantage of extensibility, SAP offers both SAP SuccessFactors Extension Center and SAP Cloud Platform. SAP Cloud Platform makes it possible to tap into the extensibility provision of SAP SuccessFactors features. There are extension applications on SAP Cloud Platform that you as an organization can take advantage of to meet your industry-specific and niche requirements.  

How SAP SuccessFactors helps in HR Transformation

SAP SuccessFactors’ HCM Suite is SAP's SaaS human resources solution. With SaaS, your organization does not need to purchase or install any software. Instead, you can subscribe to software that is developed and deployed remotely and accessed via a web browser. 

It offers a variety of applications from Core HR applications like Employee Central or Employee Central Payroll as well as Talent Management including for example, Recruiting and Onboarding. You can integrate SAP SuccessFactors features with your on-premise system, either via SAP Integration Suite - Cloud Integration, via SAP PI (Process Integration), or file download/upload. 

SAP SuccessFactors features, part of the Human Experience Management Suite (SAP SuccessFactors HXM Suite) offers individualized experiences and strategic solutions with mobile self-services available anytime, anywhere that empower employees to reach their full potential. 

Step-by-step deployment approach  

SAP SuccessFactors features allow organizations to take a step-by-step deployment approach. You can choose to deploy one module at a time, allowing your users to adapt their work habits gradually. Then, adoption can be expanded slowly to eventually cover the entire employee life cycle fully in the cloud. 

Yet, one of the challenges most companies face is knowing and understanding which deployment options can best help them move at their pace to the cloud. In short, there are three to consider: 

1. Talent Hybrid 

A first entry point for cloud adoption that delivers immediate value is running talent management in the cloud and maintaining processes for core HR, payroll, time management and benefits on premise. By using talent management solutions and people analytics, HR departments of organizations can adjust or completely reimagine recruiting, onboarding, performance and goals management, compensation, learning, and succession. 

2. Core Hybrid 

The core hybrid option is recommended for HR organizations that want to move their HR core processes to the cloud but keep payroll and time management on premise. This deployment approach allows HR leaders to rethink their talent management capabilities as done with a talent hybrid. Organizations can add cloud-based personnel administration and organizational management solutions and integrate data with their existing instance of SAP SuccessFactors Human Experience Management Suite. Then, they can keep the payroll and time management solutions from the suite on premise, without disruption. 

3. Full Cloud

The full cloud option is what most companies envision when considering true HR transformation through a move to the cloud. HR organizations can bring together all their core HR-related data and applications. Some of the key benefits of a full cloud transformation include: 

• Innovating quickly, meaningfully, and with a low total cost of ownership innovation.
• Reimagining business processes and taking advantage of standardized best practices.
• Eliminating the need to convert outdated and legacy HCM processes and solution configurations.
• Adopting a complete set of modern, cloud-native capabilities that improve the speed and scale of HR processes and application experiences. 

If you’re looking for cloud extensibility for SAP SuccessFactors, reach out to us; our consultants are here to advise and guide you on the process.

Shilpa Kadam 

Consultant, SAP SuccessFactors