What are Packaged Integrations?

Today a colleague emailed me and asked me what we mean by packaged integrations and how they are different from say a custom integration that a consulting team can build. I wrote him this email and thought that it might be useful for everyone.

1. Productized integration components provided by SAP
Productized components of integration include: packaged integrations, standard integration templates, best practice content for implementation, custom integrations from SAP professional services teams, and application programming interfaces. Packaged integrations cover the common integrations needed by most customers. They take very little time to implement; usually about 20 percent of what it would take to build and implement a custom integration.

1.1.1 Packaged Integrations
SAP has invested in identifying, developing, documenting, delivering, and maintaining a library of functionally rich integrations that most customers need to connect SAP cloud solutions to on-premise and 3rd party applications. This approach makes it faster, easier, and cheaper for customers to implement such integrations.

Each packaged integration is designed by SAP software architects using knowledge gained by studying thousands of customer implementations, and in collaboration with tens of co-innovation customers. Packaged integrations are managed by SAP product managers like any other software product, and are subject to the same design, testing, documentation, and release rigor as any other SAP product. Such rigor significantly reduces the risk of business interruption for customers.  With packaged integrations, customers get access to SAP deep domain knowledge and best practices for hybrid deployments of on-premise and cloud applications. Packaged integrations cover most foundational integrations required by SAP cloud applications.

1.1.2 Standard integration templates
Standard integration templates are built to connect SAP cloud products with 3rd-party software vendors in multiple categories. For example, there is a standard integration template to connect SuccessFactors Employee Central with 3rd-party time management software vendors.

1.1.3 Best practices content and custom integration services
SAP provides best practices content, for many integrations scenarios. Customers and partners can use these to implement integrations in a predictable manner. These best practices content is delivered free of cost to all customers and partners from service market place.

Packaged integrations cannot cover every integration scenario. To address this, SAP consulting teams provide custom integration services to build customer-specific integrations. SAP consulting teams have deep expertise in connecting SAP cloud products to 3rd-party solutions both on-premise and in the cloud.  They also maintain a library of reusable code that can be used to significantly reduce the risks and cost of implementation.

1.1.4 Application Programming Interfaces for customer specific integrations
Customers and partners often strive to build unique integrations to differentiate themselves from competitors. To help customers build integrations unique to their needs, SAP offers a rich set of open, standards-based, APIs to leverage for custom integrations. SAP customers and partners have already built thousands of custom integrations using these cloud APIs.

Side-by-Side HCM Deployment Model Integration Guide

There are three cloud deployment models for the SuccessFactors HCM Suite of applications. The third deployment model is the Side-by-Side HCM deployment model. In this model, SAP ERP HCM customers who want to run human capital management software for a subsidiary, or a certain geographic region completely in the cloud can do so. For customers who are not ready to move Core HR for all their employees to the cloud, this might be a good way to test the waters for Core HR in the cloud. For certain other customers this might be a good way to keep implementation costs down for integrating a new acquisition.

For example a couple of weeks back I met a customer from the chemical industry who is planning to divest some of their divisions but continue to be the information technology provider for all those divested divisions. At the same time they did not want to start an SAP ERP HCM implementation project for those divested divisions.That would be expensive, time consuming and risky. The Side-by-Side HCM deployment model suits the needs of such customers too.

This is not something we recommend for all customers. Customer needs and current landscapes need to be carefully studied before recommending this deployment model to a customer.

The first packaged integration that supports this deployment model was released as part of the August 2014 release. The configuration document is now available in service market place.

There are a number of design boundaries that the implementation team needs to be aware of. If you a colleague recommending the Side-by-Side deployment model to a customer or a customer considering the Side-by-Side HCM deployment model, I urge you to read the document and understand the possibilities and limitations. This document is the most authentic source of information.

What is Fieldglass?

Fieldglass was acquired by SAP in 2014 and is now a subsidiary. We are in the process of integrating Fieldglass products with Ariba procurement, SAP ERP HCM and SuccessFactors Employee Central. I believe this integration is important because a significant percentage of today's workers are contingent workers (independent contractors).

American businesses spend more than $425 billion per year on contingent labor, according to a 2009 Staffing Industry Analysts Contingent Workforce Estimate. The strong contingent workforce is evidence of a shift in current employment models.  Businesses are pulling resources from the labor force when and where needed, creating a new, more fluid dynamic in the overall workforce. [Source]

This is how Wikipedia describes Fieldglass
Fieldglass provides a vendor management system (VMS) called Fieldglass VMS, a cloud-based technology used to manage the non-employee workforce of contingent workers (independent contractors). The various business processes that such management comprises include procurement, statements of work, project management, and payment. In 2014, Fieldglass was recognized in The Forrester Wave: VMS, Q1 2014 by Forrester Research, Inc., as the highest-scoring VMS provider in Contingent Workforce Management/Vendor Management System (CWM/VMS) functionality and market presence.

If you are HR Technology professional, this is an area where you may have to develop knowledge and expertise. At the very least you should know what is Fieldglass and how it is integrated with SAP ERP HCM and SuccessFactors. My colleagues have already started the integration plan. We will be outlining them soon at upcoming events and communications. Here are some resources to get started.

1. A report on the contingent workforce by Deloitte Consulting
2. An infographic on the independent workforce from hireright.

The Art Of Thinking Clearly

The Art Of Thinking Clearly by Rolf Dobelli talks about the many biases we have and how they influence us in our life and work. It is very popular in Germany, I found out. He mostly refers to writings by other famous authors such as Nassim Nicolas Taleb and Daniel Kahneman.

Let us make the world run better

I get up every day and go to work not to create a feature, not to make a screen look better, not to answer a customer question, not to fix a bug or to market a product. I go to work because, what I do touches and improves the lives of most people alive today.