SAP SuccessFactors Talent Hybrid Model: Are You Ready?

Is your HR team preparing to integrate a SAP SuccessFactors solution to your existing landscape, or are you making a journey to the cloud with all HR processes? We’ve written about the importance of a partnership between your HR and IT staff and how it’s one of the major factors to project success. This element is essential to talent hybrid implementations as well. Whether your team is moving one or more of your HR business processes to the cloud, an active HR partnership with IT is critical when aligning your organization’s processes to KPI’s.

Here are a few things for your HR team to consider when preparing for a SAP SuccessFactors Talent Hybrid implementation:

HR’s Active Involvement in Process Mapping

It often seems natural to let IT run lead on process mapping for your software implementation. However, it is key for your organization’s HR staff to be actively involved and/or leading this process. Your HR staff knows the ins and outs of the daily business needs and can work closely with your implementation partner to design business process mapping that most effectively meets these needs.

Tip: A move to the cloud may be an opportune time to consider changing or updating business processes to take full advantage of streamlining efficiencies which can be gained from SAP SuccessFactors solutions.

Focus Business Processes Towards KPIs

When designing business process mapping to move to the cloud, another best practice is to align these processes with your organization’s KPI’s.  If your organization does not have clearly established KPI’s, this is a great time to develop them and align it with your implementation. Having each unit (compensation, recruiting, etc.) involved in the implementation and focused toward the same goals gives clarity, purpose, and consistency as you develop change management messaging and processes.

Example: In a large multi-solution implementation for a national insurance company, multi-function HR teams were encouraged to collaborate amongst each other to streamline job competencies, which would touch several areas of the solution. Prior to the implementation, the client had several sets of inconsistent competencies and worked towards re-vamping a universal set of competencies necessary for optimal functionality of the Career Development Planning, Recruiting Management, and Succession solutions.

Partner with IT on Technical Integration Points

There will be several technical integration points to achieve a seamless talent hybrid solution. Integration systems and data can be a lengthy and complex process, thus it is critical to connect your HRIS resources with your IT resources to avoid unnecessary delays as you move further into your hybrid implementation. Your implementation partner should also make recommendations on key points in the project timeline to involve IT as it relates to integration. This will ensure that communication occurs at the appropriate times, and you’re not abusing IT’s time and resources.

Example: A recent success story of HR partnering with IT involved a large organization in the furniture business that runs SAP HCM on-premise. Their Project Manager was the HRIS and SAP PI Subject Matter Expert. Early in the process, they partnered with the HR Business Partners for a SuccessFactors Calibration implementation, which had challenging integration and data points and was successfully executed.  Without this partnership between the two teams, this project would have fallen behind on budget and time.

Keeping these best practices in mind will help your organization ensure a successful SAP HCM and SAP SuccessFactors talent hybrid implementation.