SuccessFactors Variable Pay Integration With SAP ERP HCM

The SuccessFactors Variable Pay integration with SAP ERP HCM is planned for release in November 2014. I had a look at the current design and updated the Talent Hybrid deployment model white paper with my visual interpretation of the proposed design. Please note that sometimes we make minor changes to the design and release dates. Consider this an informal update. Don't make any critical purchasing or project decisions based on this post. This is the update I made to the white paper.

SuccessFactors Variable Pay Integration with SAP ERP HCM

Variable pay is a significant element of the direct compensation package of a growing number of organizations. The trend is towards more organizations using variable pay and for these organizations to expand eligibility and to increase the prominence of variable pay in the total direct compensation package.

The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) defines variable pay  as “direct compensation that does not become a permanent part of base pay and which may vary in amount from period to period.” Other names for variable pay include: incentive compensation, incentives, bonuses, commissions, cash awards and lump sums.

Why “SuccessFactors Variable Pay Integration with SAP ERP HCM”?
The criteria and standard for variable pay are defined in the Core HR system and the pay is calculated in the compensation system. So, a near real time integration between the Core HR system and compensation system is essential to ensure timely and accurate execution of the variable pay strategy of an organization.

Integration Data Flow from SAP ERP HCM to SuccessFactors
The criteria and standard for variable pay are defined in the SAP ERP HCM system and send to SuccessFactors Variable Pay module.

Integration Data Flow from SuccessFactors to SAP ERP HCM
The variable pay amount, calculated in SuccessFactors is sent to SAP ERP HCM for payroll purposes.

SuccessFactors Variable Pay Integration with SAP ERP HCM

Data Science Course Series by Johns Hopkins University

By now, it is clear to everyone in the enterprise software industry that big data is the next frontier for innovation, competition, and productivity. I was wondering for a while about what this means to regular employees and managers in organizations. After several months of researching this topic it is clear to me that big data is not a topic for specialists alone. It is going to add to the value of every regular enterprise software person who embraces it and diminish the value of a person who ignores it.

I decided to embrace it wholeheartedly and signed up for a 9 month course series to understand the tools and the technical fundamentals. The course series is offered by Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg school of Public Health via Coursera. While the course is free, the certification is not. I paid for the certification to motivate myself. It is a nine month series with every course lasting a few weeks. I am done with two weeks of the first course and just completed part of the course project, which involved setting up the tools, such as R and R Studio, required to perform data analysis.

I must mention that the course is well designed to suit the needs to working professionals and is available for consumption as video, even from mobile devices. The content is all video so far and is designed for consumption in short spurts, like YouTube videos. There are even features to speed up the video or slow down depending upon your preference.

As a final note I want to add that corporate learning management systems can learn a thing or two from Coursera about using video in a course. Coursera is generations ahead of corporate learning management systems, which are still stuck in the 90s. I know because I designed some of them.

The first course on the Data Science Series.

What is Variable Pay and Why Does It Need Integration with Core HR Systems

According to SHRM, Variable pay is a significant element of the direct compensation package of a growing number of organizations. The trend is towards more organizations using variable pay
and for these organizations to expand eligibility and to increase the prominence of variable pay in the total direct compensation package.

SHRM defines variable pay  as “direct compensation that does not become a permanent part
of base pay/salary and which may vary in amount from period to period.” Other names for variable pay include: incentive compensation, incentives, bonuses, commissions, cash awards and lump sums.

Variable pay can be in the form of short-term (one year or less) or long-term (two years
or more) incentives/bonuses and employee ownership programs. “Incentives” are plans that have predetermined criteria and standards, as well as understood policies for determining and allocating rewards. “Bonuses” are awards delivered at the end of the period, based on a subjective judgment as to the quality of performance and the rewards that are warranted.

The criteria and standard for variable pay are defined in the Core HR system and the pay is calculated in the compensation system. So, a near real time integration between the Core HR system and compensation system is essential to ensure timely and accurate execution of the variable pay strategy of an organization.

Four Member Team To Administer Employee Central for over 10,000

At SuccessConnect 2014, our customers Densply and Timken talked about the SuccessFactors applications they use the teams that manage them. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that their entire Employee Central team was less than 4 people.

I was pleased to find out that this is one area where the cloud has truly simplified operations for customers compared to an on-premise ERP administration which requires a much larger team. Both customers repeatedly pointed out the fact that their teams were very lean. In fact the lack of resources forced them to look for innovative solutions and ideas.

They also repeatedly advised organizations to keep things simple.

HR Audit And Compliance as a Service on HANA Cloud Platform by Accenture

One of the sessions in the HR technology track at SuccessConnect 2014 was about the HR Audit And Compliance as a Service application built by Accenture. Ari Levin from Accenture, the partner who built the product, talked about the product and the value it brings for customers.

Ari Levin talking about HR Audit And Compliance as a Service on HANA Cloud Platform

Mary Kosita, Chief Learning Officer at Timken, an Employee Central customer told the audience why Timken chose the application, which is built on the HANA Cloud Platform. After the session I came away thinking that this session should have been in the Core HR and Payroll track rather than the technology track. There was so much focus on the application and less talk about technology. I think this shows the maturity of the HANA Cloud Platform technology and the coming of age of the service. Technology is becoming the enabler and the discussion is about the application and the value it brings for customers.

Compensation Integration Was A Popular Topic At The Talent Hybrid Session

Jyoti Sharma of HRIZONS and Andreas Muno from the solution packaging team spoke at the session on Talent Hybrid Integration at SuccessConnect 2014. I am the solution owner for that topic and was looking for particular areas of interest. There was a lot of interest in compensation integration including the upcoming variable pay integration. In fact there we so many questions, I promised the audience that we will plan for multiple sessions for these topics in future conferences that I lead.

Lots of customer interest for the Talent Hyprid Integrations topic. Photo by Chiara Bersano

Customers and Partners Can Sell Innovations Built on Meta Data Framework

This week, I managed the Technology Track at SuccessConnect 2014 at Las Vegas. There were 9 sessions on topics such as integration, extension, cloud technology, mobility and security. I had the opportunity to closely work with customers, partners, product managers and solution managers who are experts on all the above topics. I also decided to actively moderate all the sessions and support the speakers by answering customer questions when I can.

One of the sessions was on Extending SuccessFactors using SAP HANA Cloud Platform, which is a Platform As A Service (PaaS) offering from SAP. Brian Collet from AspireHR and Abhijit Salvi from SuccessFactors presented on the topic. Brian talked about the US Benefits application AspireHR has built on the HANA Cloud Platform and showed a live demo of the product. Abhijit is the platform product manager responsible for the meta data framework. He talked about how SuccessFactors can be extended using the meta data framework and HANA Cloud Platform.

A day before the session Brian, Abhijit and I reviewed the content of the session at a coffee shop in the Mirage Hotel, Las Vegas. We discussed the difference between the meta data framework and HANA Cloud Platform. That is when Abhijit mentioned to me that customers and partners can build small applications using the meta data framework and sell those applications to other organizations via the SAP Store, the same way applications built on the HANA Cloud Platform are sold today.

I suspect that the technical details and the commercial details are neither well understood nor widely known at this time. Abhijit and I discussed that we should work on this once we get back to the bay area.

Build A Translation Mobile App using @MITAppInventor In 10 minutes

In the video below, I show you how to build an Android app that translates English text to Spanish and speaks it out. You can build this app in 10 minutes.

Here is the code for the mobile app

Translation and Text To Speech Feature In MIT App Inventor

Today after dinner, I created a rudimentary mobile app that can translate any text you type in it,  to Spanish and then speak it out in Spanish. I wrote it using MIT App Inventor. It is possible to write a more sophisticated app that enables you to translate from any language to any other language with a bit more effort.

Here is the logic. You have to have some basic understanding of App Inventor. The most important thing is that App Inventor lets you develop mobile apps for the Android platform without writing any code using programming languages. Instead you create your apps by dragging and dropping components on screen.

Even though it has its limitations, apps created in MIT App Inventor can be published to the Android Market place and sold like any other app build in Java.

Here is a video on App Inventor. Go to http://appinventor.mit.edu for more info

LinkedIn Peer Rated Skills Are a Useful Proxy for Success

I am planning to conduct an integration workshop for a few of my pre-sales colleagues so that they can tell the integration story to customers, prospects and partners. When I wanted to get a clear idea about their skills and backgrounds, I went to LinkedIn rather than going to an internal source because there is no reliable internal source of information for skills and competencies of an employee. I suspect that is the case in almost all organizations in the world.

I found out that LinkedIn skills provide a reasonably accurate picture of a person's skills. I looked at the top 5 skills (based on peer ratings) of all the colleagues planning to participate in the training and created a word cloud of their skills. Enterprise Software was on the top followed by Pre-Sales and then interestingly enough - business intelligence. That is because many of the successful enterprise architects at SAP came from Business Objects and have the skill to explain complex concepts in an easy to understand manner. This is eye opening to me. It looks like colleagues with Business Intelligence backgrounds may be able to explain cloud to on-premise integration better than those with a human resource technology background. The fourth skill is SaaS followed by SAP.

I also looked at their previous organizations. I found out that If they have worked at SAP, an SAP customer or another large enterprise software vendor, their chances of succeeding in the role we are planning for them is high. If they came from a very small software vendor with a narrow area of expertise, they may find it difficult to succeed in this role.

SuccessFactors Compensation & Variable Pay Integration With SAP ERP HCM

We are in the process of integrating SuccessFactors Variable Pay with SAP ERP HCM. We are thinking about writing a separate white paper that covers the SuccessFactors Compensation and Variable Pay integration with SAP ERP HCM. It might take a month or so to write it. The plan is to make the document available along with the November 2014 release. The release is internally referred to as the 1411 release.

The purpose of this document is not to influence the design. The purpose is to communicate the design and outline assumptions, prerequisites, limitations and the process flow. If you are a variable pay expert and would like to review the document and provide feedback, please let me know. Leave a comment, message me on twitter or email me. 

The packaged integration between SuccessFactors Compensation and SAP ERP HCM is documented in service market place.

If Data Is The New Oil, These Are The Oil Wells

It is evident that data generated by everyone and everything in the world is the new resource that will drive the world economy and improve living standards for the next generation. Experts say that those who own data will be powerful in the future. A bit like Saudi Arabia for oil. There will be a lot of people who will organize that data and make that data available in a useful format. Think of them as the refineries.

Data.gov is the US government's source for government data. It is free, which means it is funded by tax payers. I find this source very interesting.

Another interesting data source is Quandl. I tested some of the Finance and Country data APIs from Quandl using Google App Inventor's API features. The data platform is well organized and well documented. I am amazed at the ease with which all this data can be accessed and consumed. A good programmer working with a good product manager can work wonders with this new oil.