Business ByDesign Integration with SAP ERP

I spoke to my Business ByDesign colleague Mike Morel to understand how they go about integrating Business ByDesign with SAP ERP. Mike explained everything to me and was kind enough to share a lot of resources. To get my head around it, I mapped what they do to what the SuccessFactors, Ariba and SAP Cloud for Travel teams are doing to integrate the respective solutions to ERP. Here are my notes based on my understanding of what Mike told me.

1. What is SAP Business ByDesign?
SAP Business ByDesign is ERP in the cloud designed for small businesses and subsidiaries of large companies.

2. What are the Business ByDesign deployment models for subsidiaries?
Subsidiaries  using Business ByDesign can use the Two-Tier ERP deployment model.

Many companies that run the SAP® ERP application as their corporate enterprise resource planning (ERP) system are moving to a two-tier model to support their subsidiaries. With this model, they choose a subsidiary ERP system that meets subsidiary functional requirements and is less expensive to deploy, easier to change, and simpler to manage. Yet it also satisfies corporate requirements, which typically include regulatory transparency, operational metrics visibility, use of centralized business functions, and key data rollup.

3. What are the packaged integrations available for this deployment model?

SAP Business ByDesign supports multiple  integration scenarios with the HQ SAP ERP system. Packaged integrations are provided for master data integration, financial statement consolidation, procurement integration, payroll integration and analytics integration, Business ByDesign provides a set of web services for scenarios not supported by packaged integrations.  

4. What are the integration technologies used?
There is a proprietary ERP Add-On available. Certain packaged integrations use files to exchange data. Almost all other packaged integrations use iDocs or web services to integrate. SAP NetWeaver PI is optional. Customers who want to use SAP NetWeaver PI as middleware can choose to do so.

You will notice that the approach the Business ByDesign team has taken has a lot in common with all other cloud products from SAP. The only difference is that different teams think about these integrations slightly differently. Sometimes they tend to use slightly different terms for the same thing.

However, the underlying approach and integration architecture is more or less the same for all cloud products.

Journey To The SuccessFactors Cloud For Utilities

According to the Center for Energy Workforce Development, the Utilities industry in the Americas is facing a looming talent shortage, which is going to get bigger in the next decade. These talent shortages are coinciding with disruptive technology changes, cyber attacks and changing business models.

I am not a utilities industry expert. However, I spoke to a colleague who is experienced in the industry and thought about how the SuccessFactors cloud can help address some of these problems. I wrote this in a story format to share with Utilities Customers in an innovation event next week. While doing this I borrowed patterns from the Oil and Gas industry customers I worked with and brought some of those lessons to the table.

Customers in the Oil and Gas industry, who face talent management problems similar to the Utilities industry, started with SuccessFactors Workforce analytics to study their problems. Armed with that data they implemented certain talent management solutions in the cloud. Once they became effective in the talent management area, they moved their employee administration to the cloud.

Here is my hand written story. I am done with the presentation, which I plan to share with several customers at the Los Angeles Utilities Innovation day on May 14, 2014. My colleague Darrell Lew will be joining me to share his experiences and show the product. I look forward to seeing you there, if you are going.

Are you a Utilities expert? How do you think cloud HR can help address challenges faced by utilities today.

SuccessFactors Platform, API and Integration Help Documentation

The SuccessFactors product management, engineering and knowledge management teams have started writing help documentation for SuccessFactors Platform, API and Packaged Integrations in the help.sap.com site. Go to help.sap.com/cloud4hr. This location has documentation for the packaged integrations that support the Full Cloud HCM deployment model.

Details of the packaged integrations supporting Talent Hybrid integration can be accessed from help.sap.com/erp_sfi. Please bookmark these locations. Effort are underway to add more documentation to these sites. I have added these links to partner integration Jam groups.

You might be wondering why we have two locations for integration help documentation. We are wondering the same. That might change soon.

Side-By-Side HCM Overview Update

I added a couple of slides to the SAP SuccessFactors integration strategy and road map presentation. describing the Side-By-Side HCM deployment model. SAP and SuccessFactors colleagues can find the slides in the internal Jam group for integration. Partners can find it in the partner Jam group.

We are debating if we should specify more Side-by-Side scenarios or just stick to just this scenario to keep things simple. I'll keep you posted.

Hybrid Integration Scenarios In SAP Service Market Place

My colleagues in the SAP Service Market Place team have created a section that described all the hybrid deployment scenarios for SAP Cloud For Human Resources and SAP Cloud For Sales, Service and Marketing. Many of my solution management colleagues contributed to these pages.

The information provided in these pages about SAP Cloud for HR goes one step beyond the overview presentation I have shared in the internal integration Jam group and the partner jam group. It goes into the level of details that a white paper normally goes into.

That makes it a useful site to learn about the packaged integrations, understand what they do and share them with customers and colleagues who need this information. You can access the site here. The address is service.sap.com/public/hybrid. Information about hybrid scenarios in other application areas will be shared the in the future.