Another Reason Why HR Professionals Need To Care About Data Integration

I attended a very good presentation on healthcare reporting requirements of the Affordable Care Act by an Ellen A. Feeney, VP Councel of ADP Healtcare Compliance. It was an excellent educational session. I was curious about the integration requirements that this reporting will require.
Ellen pointed out that while healthcare reporting is like W2 reporting, it is a lot more complex and requires data to come from HRIS, Payroll, Benefits and other systems. This is another reason why HR professionals need to care about integration between these systems. If this is not done the penalties are very steep. You can read more about this here http://www.adp.com/solutions/employer-services/health-compliance.aspx

The reporting requires employers to collect social security numbers of dependents. This will require better security and robust integration between systems.

Here is a good infographic about health care reform from ADP.

Content Governance Model For Product Managers Using SAP Jam

The good thing about SAP Jam is the it makes it easy to create content repositories to collaborate. In the SAP SuccessFactors Integration Jam group, I manage, I kept the pages open for all participants. Almost anyone inside the company could add, edit, even delete content.

Image from http://www.graftlandscaping.co.uk/

Ease of use and open policies sometimes leads to content proliferation, the same way rich soil in a garden invites weeds and unplanned growth. Such unplanned growth and unwanted content needs to be controlled when possible and removed on a periodic basis. Governance for a collaboration site is a bit like weeding an organic garden. You cannot use harsh pesticides and in some cases have to use hand weeding to avoid harming the plants that thrive there.

We faced the same problem last year with the SuccessFactors integration Jam group. So this year I wrote a governance document for asset creation and maintenance. I studied the content governance models of universities and read the best practices shared by various experts to come up with the model. I wanted to strike a balance between good content governance and too much bureaucracy.

Here is the document and its table of contents. I posted the governance document in the SAP SuccessFactors Integration internal Jam group. You have to be in the SAP network to access it. If you are a non-SAP Jam user and would like the document to use as a template, please leave a comment or email me.

How To Avoid Changing Your Bulbs 500 Times In 10 Years

The Experiment

Last December, I bought three FEIT Electric bulbs from Orchard Supply Hardware store and kept them on for six weeks straight to see if they work fine and provide the necessary illumination. They worked fine and no one in my house noticed the difference.

The Execution

This week, I went ahead and bought the same bulbs for most fixtures in the house. The bulb below worked fine for outdoors, indoors, hallways and even on chandeliers.  I replaced 15 bulbs in my house with LED bulbs.They cost about $18 each compared a regular Thomas Edison light bulb that costs about $1. However the manufacturer claims that an LED bulb consumes about 20 percent of the electricity used by a regular bulb and lasts for 25,000 hours compared to a regular bulbs life of about $1000 hours. Some interesting things to note are that if you use 20 bulbs in your house, you can avoid replacing bulbs 500 times in the next 10 or so years. I also save on the time it takes to go and buy a bulb. It might sound trivial. But it all adds up.

White Light Was Not Inviting

I found that the bulbs that emitted white light were not elegant enough to use inside the house. The light they emitted has a cheap feel about it.  I felt that the bulbs that emitted yellow light made the rooms more inviting. I can't explain why I felt that way.

Return on Investment

I used a LED bulbs cost and savings calculator. I found out that it pays back within a year and over 11 years will save me close to $2000 in electricity costs.  Since time is valuable for me, the time saved by not changing bulbs 500 times was also an important reason for the switch.

Here is the cost calculations from https://www.ledwaves.com/led-calc.html

LED technology is pretty disruptive, I think. Such technologies are going to contribute to the already declining per capita energy consumption in the US. I wonder what that will do to the business models of American energy companies whose business model assume increasing energy usage by Americans.

Zillow Talk Book

The book Zillow Talk by the founder and chief economist of Zillow, the real estate information website and service is very interesting. Using large volumes are data they try to correct some assumptions that are usually not questioned. I like it because is uses real data to arrive at evidence driven decisions. Useful book to read for home owners, real-estate investors, renters and those living in their parents' basements.

Admin Guide for SuccessFactors Onboarding Integration with SAP ERP HCM

The administration guide for SuccessFactors Onboarding integration with SAP ERP HCM is now available here. The administration guide talks about what is in the February 2015 release and outlines what is on the roadmap. If you are a customer using the Talent Hybrid deployment model or a partner selling to such a customer, please download it, read it and share it with your customers.

Here is the table of contents.