SAP Community - SAP Workforce Management

If EC Time Management is catching up, then what is the role for WorkForce Software?

2016-12-02T15:47:16+01:00

Hi all,

As I wrote in my previous post Employee Central Time Management is developing at a fast pace. And of course, SAP still offers SAP Time and Attendance Management by WorkForce Software.
After my last post, I received many questions about what WorkForce Software’s role is in the SAP portfolio going forward? I want to provide some clarity, which supports a better judgment.

Of course, many things have changed over the last releases. Employee Central Time Management has evolved from mainly an absence management solution to a real attendance and absence management solution. However, for us it is very clear that we need both solutions to serve the different needs of our customers.

So, just as SAP HCM Time and Attendance Management never did, Employee Central Time and Attendance Management will not care for all use cases. And for the use cases which are not, and will not be, supported in Employee Central we have a great partner in WorkForce Software.

In this post a great outline for this partnership has been given by Luke Marson, who interviewed many stakeholders inside the SAP organization. But let’s explore further why ~1000+ customers in more than 55 countries trust WorkForce Software’s Time and Attendance solution to address their organizations complexities to ensure their remain in compliance for time, scheduling and absence and leave. To dig into the functionality and how it differentiates from Employee Central Time Management, I will use the same framework as in my last post. This allows you to compare and provides a deeper understanding between the two solutions.

To refresh memories the 5 step framework is:

Planning

Recording attendance and absences

Evaluating the recorded time

Analyzing the data

Integrating into follow up processes, such as payroll

Planning

The planning component explains the value add for the SAP Time and Attendance Management by WorkForce Software solution within the SAP portfolio.

For many organizations and (e.g. blue collar) populations within organizations, planning goes much further than administrating work schedules and configuring overtime policies. These organizations need capabilities to schedule employees. Either based on available skills and competences, or based on rotations and patterns. These scheduling processes within organizations can be very complex.

They need to easily balance skills, certifications (incl. expiration dates), employee availability, labor costs, union requirements, and other unique factors. At the same time the managers and supervisors need to keep an eye on regulations such as minor employee work restrictions. Of course, organizations expect solutions to cover these scenarios without manual effort to do the thinking and balancing.

These planners and supervisors often need to schedule thousands of employees and jobs with just a few mouse clicks. Following is a screenshot of the scheduling functionality for a specific group of employees:

When looking at the edges of the screenshot you also notice that the Workforce Software Solutions are nicely blended into SuccessFactors.

In addition, auto scheduling is offered and that is extremely helpful in more advanced use cases. Via auto scheduling, scenarios can be processed taking things into account, such as qualifications and skills, but also union agreements which decide that lowest paid employees or the ones with the least overtime, to ensure they get scheduled first to reduce an organizations labor costs. In addition, fatigue regulations are also processed in the auto generated shift schedules. Here is a screenshot of the advanced auto scheduling:

When a shift is open, the manager can simply call out for new employees:

The employees, which are called out, can be addressed in specific orders, like best qualified first, only exact qualified, least overtime first, and many more scenarios. After the call out to employees, it collects all responses from employees, and based on rules, the best proposal is made to the manager:

After schedules are generated, employee’s availability may change due to unforeseen situations at the time. Employees get sick and personal appointments arise changing their availability, therefore creating the need to be able to easily swap shifts with qualified peers. The application provides employee’s easy insight into their shifts and which employees are available and qualified for them to swap shifts.

So as you can see and compare to my previous post, this planning component really caters for much more advanced use cases. With that, it can also address a very specific and highly regulated population within an organization.

Recording

So now that we have explored the planning component, let’s deep dive into how employees record their time and absences. As you would expect, employees can easily track time and view schedules through the solution. They can do this directly through embedded functionality in Employee Central, or they can leverage their dedicated app on their smartphone. Our Workforce Software solutions allow recording to be done through terminals, tablets, and more.
Also very helpful is the ability to push information (like text messages, or terminal messages) as soon as they are identified at e.g. a terminal.

If needed, employees can record hours for multiple jobs across various departments as well. In this case, the employee would have one time sheet per department or job. Each time sheet can have completely different rules specific to the job. One time sheet can cater for project based time recording and the other can be setup for only duration recording, and another can be based on clock time recording. The great thing about this functionality, is that all time sheets are linked to one employee and are then aggregated so that the employee has a complete view of the their gross pay. In the screenshot below, you can see an example of this functionality.

Time sheets in the application can get really advanced and sophisticated. One example, is that it can be based on production output. This supports use cases in which employees need to record time on different products and each product can have individual target settings. See the following example of a company that produces widgets:

Time is recorded for each product the employee is assigned to work on, and each product has a target assigned of how many products can be produced in an hour. The time sheet displays a productivity per product (widget in this case), and bonuses can be linked to these productivity targets as shown on the following screenshot:

As you can see, the solution calculates by product what the productivity was, and in cases where the employee achieved 100% or more a multiplier bonus kicks in. Highly advanced time sheets!
What is also really a big differentiator to Employee Central Time Management is the role of managers, planners, and supervisors. One example, is that they are automatically notified based on exceptions. These notifications can be displayed on a dedicated dashboard or can be pushed to the manager via mail, text message, etc. In addition, these exceptions directly pop up in the manager’s Employee Central landing page, As you can see below they are warned about employees who are late, who didn’t show up, who might have shifts which are less then e.g. 12 hours apart, or who have another conflict with company policy.

It shows the Employee Central manager dashboard. One tile within the home page is dedicated for exception based reporting. Here it is positioned top left. By immediately notifying the managers and planners, it allows them to take corrective measures. As described earlier, all these exceptions are configurable based on company policies, and as within the whole application, it is configurable without any custom code.

When managers want to see the details of such exceptions they can simply click in. Here is an example of the exception tile:

And when they want to explore Brenda’s shift they click on the exception and it opens up the following detailed screen:

There is also functionality to work on exceptions for the whole team in one overview. When exceptions need to be adjusted, the manager can do that with multiple records at the same time. When managers need to reach out to employees they can simply do that from their landing page:

Approval

When time sheets are filled the solution cares for mass and team approvals. This includes automated approval in the case of no exceptions. The following screenshot shows the team approval for the manager:

Of course this includes individual route back functionality when employees need to make amendments.

And when employees need or want to make amendments the software helps by storing the amendments in different versions of the time sheet:

Employees and managers are helped with comparison functionality to point out which amendments were made:

The comparison functionality is also used in highly complex situations like union contract negotiations. It can calculate what a union change would really cost an organization. This means that it can provide real insight in what a USD $4 per hour raise would actually cost the organization versus a USD $3 per hour raise. This is hugely compelling and helpful for organizations!

Recording absences

Also for recording absences, the application is very function rich and targeted at global operating operations. Employees can easily view future projected balances, team calendars, etc. and with a simple mouse click or touch on their mobile app they can request a day off.

What is really differentiating in this area is the case management component of the solution, which is offered for North America based employees. Because North American policies are very specific and strictly regulated under FMLA and FLSA it requires specific functionality. The application provides end-to-end leave of absence management (including FMLA case management).

This unique component of the solution enforces federal, state/provincial, and municipal leave regulations. In addition to company and union policies, it stores and auto-populates required documents during a leave case. It also alerts HR and employees of missing documentations or other deadlines, and it guides HR with one-click access to a knowledge base of 300+ leave regulations.

In addition, it helps HR make objective leave determinations through a branching questionnaire and it delivers visibility via reporting on leave usage in compliance with US law. For employees it tracks leave banks for all eligible leave types, with intuitive graphic displays.

And as required by US law, it captures a complete audit trail of leave case transactions. What is truly great about it is that (because it is a cloud based solution) customers receives rules updates when new regulations are due to be enacted.

Evaluation

After time is recorded it needs to be evaluated and processed for payroll calculations. This means that local regulations and corporate policies from across the globe need to be worked into the application in order to automate complex pay rules. Often they need to include things like shift differentials and premiums. Because the application is primarily focused on time management processes (and not payroll processing) it is a great benefit that it includes the preview gross hours & calculate gross payroll. In the following screenshot you an employee who fills out the time sheet. Based on the entries made in the time sheet, results are displayed in real-time and they include gross payroll consequences.

In the following screenshot you see an example of the results tab, which immediately provides insight into the gross payroll for an employee:

This is also often helpful for planners and management and avoids them from logging on (or requesting access) to the payroll application(s). So everything which is expected from a global player in this space is offered and it is truly best-of-breed.

Analyzing

The application offers 250+ standard and predefined reports out-of-the-box. These reports can be executed directly from Employee Central and even visible on the Employee Central dashboard, providing insight to managers and supervisors in real-time. See the following screenshot which includes KPIs tiles directly on the SuccessFactors dashboard:

The reporting provides full insight into schedules, exceptions and other labor statistics. The other important aspect is of course compliance. The application provides out-of-the-box reports that provide insight in compliance with local law and company policies.

Here is a brief description of the reporting functionality, and lets start with the dashboarding functionality. It shows a role-based dashboard, and these can be tailor made for each employee group:

When users wants to dig deeper they can open up a report, and based on their role select one of the more than 250 predefined reports:

It also contains report scheduling functionality because often times managers and planners expect to get periodical updates which help them to get exceptions cleaned up before handover to payroll or similar. Therefore, they can easily schedule a report based on a certain pattern to be sent to their (or any other) inbox.

Integration

The most important integration is of course the data integration between HR Core (Employee Central or SAP HCM on-premise) and WorkForce Software. Our integration guides explains in detail what the integration contains. You can find it here: link This integration is provided out-of-the-box as part of our SAP SuccessFactors offering.

As you can read in the guides there is a much deeper integration than just data integration. We also offer a user experience (UX) integration and obviously single-sign-on. The UX integration avoids employees, managers, planners and HR to flip flop between applications. All processes can be initiated via the SuccessFactors landing pages and it is accessible via the ‘module drop down’. So next to the landing page tiles, which I have described earlier the following screen shot displays how functionality in can be executed directly from within SuccessFactors.

All functionality on the screen is configurable based on roles and access rights a user has.
And lastly, let’s review the predefined integration with payroll. It is our intent to make time management and payroll processes seamless. These integrations cater for all common processes, but also for more tricky things, like retro calculations and cases in, which amendments to time sheets are made by employees.

And because WorkForce Software is in this time management space since being founded in 1999, they have many other predefined payroll integrations off the shelf.

So what are the benefits for SuccessFactors customers to select SAP Time and Attendance by WorkForce Software over any other specific Workforce Management provider?

First of all, it is offered on SAP paper and maintenance is provided via SAP support channels, just like any other SuccessFactors solution. It offers a certified integration, which is explained earlier. The functionality is developed and released in close development relationship between SAP and WorkForce Software. And, because it is cloud, customers are kept up to date (and compliant) automatically.

What I personally like about the solution is that it addresses very specific processes within an organization. Often times, these are not even managed by HR, but deeper in the operations parts of an organization. That is also where, for most customers, the real business case lies. What fascinated me from the beginning is that our joint customers report tangible ROI (and not the marketing ROIs we are often being fed ;)) and payback periods as short as 3 months.

Here a clear statement about it from a project manager of one of our larger joint customers in the Manufacturing Industry: "After a thorough review of software vendors, we felt WorkForce Software would provide us with the software and services that would give us the highest payback, and we are not disappointed. The feasibility report we put together showed that we would get a 180-percent ROI, but we have far exceeded that over the past three quarters, showing we will get a return at 340-percent over three years. WorkForce Time and Attendance has more than paid for itself.”

In conclusion: I am often asked to provide guidance on when to suggest Employee Central Time Management or SAP Time and Attendance Management by WorkForce Software.
Every customer case is unique and often within one organization the needs vary. As you might have read in my previous post, Employee Central Time and Attendance Management is really becoming compelling for salaried employees and for serious payroll pre-calculations. But when you start to get into scenarios that are more complex (e.g. highly regulated by unions), based on advanced schedules, and where managers and planners take a serious part in having the best person on the right time in the right shift, SAP Time and Attendance Management by WorkForce Software is the best fit.

Of course, there is much more to the functionality than what I have described in this post. However, my intent was to provide clarity for our overall portfolio and point out where functionality differs and complements. If you want to learn more about the functionality, find the latest here: link

And if you have any questions about this going forward, please feel free to reach out to me directly.

Best regards,

Frans Smolders
Frans.smolders@sap.com

Are you really still struggling with shift planning??

2017-01-16T10:56:00+01:00

Hi all,

For those struggling with their shift plans, trying to figure out who wants to work, when they would like to work, which positions they are qualified for, etc. we now have a fantastic offering!!

Personally, I am always amazed that there are still so many organizations that rely on spreadsheet-based shift planning and are still doing this manually. It takes managers weeks to figure out how much customer traffic they had last year in this period, who can do the work this year, and when they are supposed to be available. When the manager finally has created the shift plan it is published on a central board. Then the employees come up, take a photo with their smartphone and then the real issues starts…the shift swapping…

This top down shift planning approach always results in a huge need for swapping because the lives of the employees are dynamic…they are not available all the time. In conclusion, this is a nightmare for all people involved.

After looking at SAP Workforce Forecasting and Scheduling by WorkForce Software my conclusion is that it is nothing less than pure magic. Really a gem in our portfolio because it can really solve a HUGE pain that so many planners, store managers, floor managers and many others live through…every week, month and year. This means that everyone has access to the schedule real-time anywhere, anytime.

So what does it do?

It all starts with the employee. The traditional top down shift planning approach has been questioned and re-engineered. The new bottom up planning makes SAP Workforce Forecasting and Scheduling fundamentally different.

Almost all employees have smart phones these days. With this simple solution, all they need to is download the app and logon. And then the fun starts.

But don’t worry if you have employees without a smart phone, because this solution was developed before the smart phone era there is also a browser application…;)

Let’s have a look at the solution..

On the landing page of the app, employees see their schedules and other offered shifts. You see that in the screenshot in the 2 tabs:

My schedule shows the shifts the employee is planned for, and for further out in the future, employees can look at all other available shifts so that they can pick and choose (of course when qualified, fatigue is right, and other rules and conditions are met).

In the screenshot above, you see a yellow ball icon on the 11th. Upon touching that row, it opens up the shift information for this employee. See the following image:

If the employee is fine with the proposal by the application they can simply hit ‘confirm’ and the shift is accepted.

To get a view of their great team for the day they can also check who else is working and which shift:

And if the employee would like to work but not on this shift it is also possible to look at potential other shifts on the 2nd tab.

This functionality is also really cool for employees to let the employer know when they want to work. Especially in retail, hospitality or leisure industries where there is a high dependency on when people would like to work.

For these use cases it is nice when the planning can work bottom up so that the planner can rely on the employees and software to do most of the work. It saves managers from having conversations via multiple channels (WhatsApp, SMS, e-mail, etc.) and administrating this to come up with a plan which is outdated the moment it is finalized.

So if you look at the screen above you see that it is very easy for employees to check when shifts are available and when they would like to offer their service. This can also be fine-tuned further by allowing employees to record their own availability and shift preferences as you see in the screen below:

A crucial aspect in the shift plan is also time off for the employee. Earlier in the first screenshot, you saw that vacation can also be worked into the schedule. This is particularly useful when you want to have only one place for your employees to go to for all Time Management related activities. See the following screen:

The absence records can be maintained in this solution or they can be loaded in from SAP Time and Attendance Management by WorkForce Software, Employee Central Time Off, SAP HCM, or many other sources. Even multiple sources in parallel.

All the bottom up input which has been described so far is taken into account when the application is proposing and optimizing the shift schedule.

So far no magic…

I hear what you’re thinking…very cool….but you promised me magic!

Let’s have a look at how simple the life of the planner (store manager, region manager, floor manager, etc.) has become because of all this input.

The planners use the desktop application for their planning. It offers role based access so they only see what they need to see. This means that for example, a retail customer store manager sees their store, a district manager sees a group of stores, and the executive responsible for all stores sees them all.

It all starts with a forecast provided by the application.

Before a planner starts creating their schedule, it is crucial to have an understanding of how busy the location is expected to be for that period (week / month / etc.). So there is a need for a forecast. The forecasting functionality in the application can load in historical data, such as customer traffic, card scans, payment data (cash, card and vouchers), hand held scanners, flat belt scanners, barcode issues, and tagged items. Pretty much all leading ‘output’ which is available in retail, hospitality and leisure industries.

This enables shift schedules based on historical data, enriched with future projections. The forecasts will even consider different types of week – promotions, public holidays etc. specific to that location.

Below you see the forecasting functionality:

You see that there are customer traffic numbers displayed. Based on that labor demand is forecasted.

Customer traffic is just one forecasting model that is part of the solution. The solution can forecast any kind of output that a business may use to determine how busy they are going to be. A few examples can be seen below:

These models are easily editable by the store manager. E.g. in case of an unforeseen change in circumstances – road closure, local events etc.:

This ensures that the workforce demand is based on credible data and not based on hunches of the store manager. When the forecast is in place the shifts are published and the employees can start to insert their availability in their app according to what I described earlier.

Scheduling

Apart from working on a forecast the manager also needs to ensure that there is a bullet proof shift schedule in place when the store opens. So let’s look at the scheduling part of the application.

On the screen below you see the landing page for the store manager. It shows what is relevant today for this person. E.g. the messages, which are relevant to the planning. This also allows the store manager to directly communicate back to employees. Communication can go via application push messages on the app, e-mail or SMS.

The store manager sees that a schedule for an upcoming week is below threshold in terms of quality. It has a 3 star rating and the threshold for shift schedules is 5 stars. The store manager needs to improve the shift plan for this week in their store.

As district manager you can also get an overview of all stores in your area of responsibility with e.g. 3 stars and below. This allows them to manage the quality of the schedules in their area. These district managers are actively informed and can potentially participate in the planning with their store managers.

When looking at the schedules in detail, the following screen opens first:

It shows a clean overview of all week shift schedules. For the week of December 4th you see that the schedule requires 35 employees and that there are 35 (qualified) employees confirmed. The planning also has a 5 star rating, so this means that the employees are scheduled for times when the stores expect to have their customer traffic (with no under or over staffing).

When clicking on the info icon next to the star rating a whole range of KPIs can be shown which come from the scheduling quality models which are part of the application. Here you see a couple.

By embedding these in the application there is no need for the store manager to look at separate reports to figure out if the schedule is according to expectations. This replaces many of the current different reports which store managers typically use.

Going back to planning for a minute. For the week of December 11th there is a 3 star rating and 0 out of 34 required employees are confirmed. This means: work to do. When clicking into the week the weekly view opens:

The store manager sees a lot of financial metrics just above the graphs. This is mainly related to employee cost information which comes from pay and overtime rules. These can be configured in the application to have all information present when the store manager makes their decisions. This means that they know exactly know what they will spend before they commit to the schedule.

Below the statistics you can see the shift schedule per day. The employees are represented in the purple bars and you see the demand in the green line. In a blink of an eye the store manager sees if supply meets expected demand for that day.

When zooming in to Sunday for example the graph is displayed in a larger screen for more accurate analysis:

It is clear that this shift plan is probably leading to overstaffing until 2pm and understaffing from then. Clearly this needs to be solved.

So let’s pull in the employee schedules. Employees can easily be scheduled with the slider functionality, which you see on the same line as the employee. The white spaces show the scheduled unpaid breaks which are automatically brought in.

As shown, the store manager can do the planning manually or (EVEN BETTER) use the Schedule Optimization functionality. This optimizer runs for max 30 seconds and will improve the shift schedule based on all conditions like employee input, forecasting models, qualifications for the employees, and all other things we have described earlier. See the following screenshot for a view into the optimization functionality.

By optimizing a schedule, the solution will run through millions of combinations and will come up with the best possible shift plan. It also displays a ‘Best Service Level’. This provides an indication of how good the schedule can be, given the conditions.

When the service levels of one store constantly remain low in comparison to other stores this insight can be great for senior management so that they can further improve conditions.

When the shift plan is ready (either manual or via the optimizer) the store managers can look into further detail at the employee level.

The store manager can simply use the drag and drop functionality to change shifts last minute. In red the time off per employee is displayed and at the bottom it also shows unassigned shifts:

These can be simply planned from the screen by clicking on them and appointing them to employees with open availability or offering them out via the mobile application as we saw earlier.

Ultimately this needs to lead to a perfectly matching workforce supply and demand with a high service level indication as shown in the screen below.

When all positions in the shift are filled, the shift plan can be published and all employees are notified via their mobile app that they are expected to work during the shift they signed up for.
Potential shift updates are only provided to employees who are involved in that shift. No need to use e-mail, WhatsApp groups, SMS and desktop applications to figure out when employees can work and who to potentially swap with.

The beauty about this process is that everyone is happy. Managers have their shifts filled without manual work and employees can work the shifts they indicated they wanted to work!

What do customers have to say?

At a recent conference, I talked to the project manager of a very large German retailer with around 200,000 employees in 2,000 locations in 25+ countries. For their shift plans they have used SAP Workforce Forecasting and Scheduling by WorkForce Software for over 20 years now. This means that they are a long time customer before the functionality was offered by SAP and even before it was offered by WorkForce Software.

They are advocating the solution highly. The mobile capabilities and the bottom up planning approach are especially very compelling for them. The ability to make every employee part of the scheduling process is crucial for the success of their shift plan. For their employees, this ensures that their work / life balance is right. All via a simple mobile app.

For the store managers, their lives have been improved because they spend more time in stores and less time planning. They have witnessed an improvement in communication (and therefore the relationship) between managers and their employees.

The biggest benefit is of course focused on the financial aspect. They are now better able to fill their shifts and with that improve the staff availability for customers. This leads to shorter waiting lines at the cash register, better service in the shop and a higher revenue at lower cost (because they hardly have over capacity in the stores now).

How long does it take to implement?

Within 2-3 months the solution can be implemented and ready for roll out. The implementation timeline is dependent on factors like the forecasting sophistication. Typically, the approach is to replicate an organization’s current scheduling processes first and improve on them with the added visibility, quality and employee engagement pieces. Then, iteratively introduce some of the more sophisticated forecasting elements to ensure adoption and user buy in.

When it is implemented the fun starts! Customers can start working with the optimization feature to analyze existing schedules and let the application optimize them. The training aspect is very important. Not so much for the employees because they will understand the app in no time. However, the planners (store managers, region managers, and everyone else who is involved in planning) need to be trained on how to publish the best schedule. The trick is to let the application work for you to create the shift plan. This means that store managers have to build up trust in order to let the application handle it for them. This is is a vital component of the change management during the roll out. In reality, the application will free up so much time for them, that it may take awhile for them to get a comfortable with it.

What sets this apart from the competition?

Accurate, Location and Business Calendar Specific Forecasting

Schedule Quality Visibility with Simple Five Star Rating

Manager Driven and Automated Optimization Capabilities

Collaborative Scheduling and Mobile Apps

Simple and Easy User Experience

What are the tangible benefits?

As for every IT decision, it all comes down to the business case. Since this functionality has been around for over 20 years a lot of customer input has been gathered which points out the value.

Let’s name a few:

Due to the bottom up planning approach customers have reported up to an 85% reduction in staff turnover.

Managers have up to 66% more time on their shop floor because they have less work to spend on creating shift plans

Conversion rates (number of customers divided by the number of sale transactions) increased by up to 21%

And now the biggest one of them all: Major labor savings! Of course, this highly depends on how advanced organizations currently are but anywhere between 3 to 20% in labor savings (including big reductions in overtime) as a result of the forecasting functionality is to be expected. And please do the math…3 to 20% for all store labor cost 😉

Check out this video for more info: https://www.sap.com/assetdetail/2017/06/4a9b5c86-bf7c-0010-82c7-eda71af511fa.html And if you want to learn more about this functionality, or if you want to have help with the business case you are planning, then please let me know.

Best regards,

Frans Smolders

What is Advanced Asset Lifecycle Management (Next Gen APM) and Why Do You Need It?

2017-08-28T18:43:29+02:00

Next Gen Asset Performance Management (Next Gen APM) is shorthand for Advanced Asset Lifecycle Management. This emergent approach to asset management goes far beyond the traditional questions of maintenance, cost, safety systems and condition. Next Gen APM embeds operational intelligence to improve worker performance, and provides additional insights far beyond what traditional APM approaches deliver. Next Gen APM results in improved process safety performance, workforce competency, and decision support at the point of execution. At its core, Next Gen APM is an operational decision support platform.

5 Ways Next Generation APM differs from “Traditional APM”

Traditional APM has huge gaps in processes, requiring manual intervention and additional cycle time. In particular, traditional APM lacks perspective on human performance and competency, process safety, and conduct of operations.

Traditional APM doesn’t integrate Condition Assessment, Risk Based Inspection (RBI), Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM), Process Hazard Analysis (PHA), Management of Change (MOC), and other APM concepts into a single source of truth to drive equipment strategies.

Next Gen APM cuts costs, increases uptime, reduces defects, and improves performance.

Next Gen APM leverages new technologies (see below) to enable APM process convergence; creating opportunities for innovation across Enterprise Asset Management (EAM), Environmental, Health and Safety (EH&S), Process Safety, Conduct of Operations, and Workforce Competency.

Next Gen APM integrates people, processes, data, and technology into operations to give organizations a clearer overall picture, whether viewed from inside or outside of operations

Next Gen APM leverages technology to meet new requirements for compliance and operational process efficiency. Integrating key areas of information that in many organizations have existed as separate silos of data is a core benefit of the Next Gen APM approach. People, facilities and organizations can make better decisions when they are considering their assets in light of a single source of truth encompassing:
1. Asset Performance Management
2. EH&S / Process Safety / Safety and Environmental Management Systems (SEMS)
3. Operational Risk Management
4. Workforce Management / Human Performance
5. Conduct of Operations
6. Production Efficiency / Defect Elimination
Next Gen APM delivers and utilizes:
1. Mobility for driving work processes, data delivery and updates to the system of record
2. Analytics to support Condition-Based Monitoring (CBM), RCM, Predictive Maintenance, Modeling and Simulation to provide insight to workers
3. Internet of Things (IoT) / Dynamic Edge Processing to integrate real-time data from assets
4. Interoperability and simulation modeling for APM business processes
Challenges to implementing Next Gen APM occur when:
1. Facilities run equipment outside of design limits, or fail to identify process hazards.
2. Organizations only partially apply APM principles when driven by incidents, without an overall strategy.
3. Companies seek wholesale change without a limited scale pilot to prove what works.
4. Organizations attempt to justify APM solutions without a tangible measurement of a business case coupled with strategic business objectives.

The SAP® and Operational Sustainability, LLC® integrated solution for Next Gen APM improves and streamlines Operational Excellence. Together, SAP and OS improve asset performance and deliver critical operational process information directly to the point of work execution – improving worker situational awareness and decision support. Information is integrated with SAP Plant Maintenance as the system of record, capturing any changes or updates to assets as work is completed. Integration of data and records enables companies to transform operations by increasing work execution, reducing time to service, and improving overall process efficiency and uptime – leading to better utilization of people and assets.

Intelligent ERP Update: SAP S/4HANA Cloud 1811 Release – Deep Dive for Analytics

2018-11-15T00:59:40+01:00

Welcome back to the next blog in the SAP S/4HANA Cloud Analytics blog series. In the last blog on “ Intelligent ERP Update: SAP S/4HANA Cloud 1808 Release – Deep Dive for Analytics” where we’ve introduced several innovations as part of 1808 release highlights for our next-generation, Intelligent Cloud ERP solution for analytics deployment, we are happy to take the tradition of blogging series to the next level with new innovation scenario‘s for analytics.

We’re releasing even more advanced analytics features and content in our new 1811 release that motivates enterprises to run independent ERP systems in cloud with analytics integration capabilities.

Check out my video below for a quick overview of the analytics innovations that power the customer journey to the intelligent enterprise suite.

In this blog, let’s understand how the latest product features of SAP Analytics Cloud and SAP S/4HANA Cloud enrich the analytics capabilities and accelerate the adoption for best practices for analytics content.

Top 3 business driven innovations to analyze your data using Analytics capabilities.

SAP Workforce Planning & Analysis for SAP S/4HANA Cloud

Real Time Financial Planning & Analysis Analytics Cloud content with SAP S/4HANA Cloud

Professional Services Analytics Cloud Content with SAP S/4HANA Cloud

Let’s take deeper look at the first business driven innovation with Workforce Planning & Analysis with SAP S/4HANA Cloud.

One Planning & Analytics solution with SAP Analytics Cloud merging the Finance and Success Factors HR data assumptions.

Simplify headcount-related expense planning in the Cloud, Plan your workforce expenses by leveraging the appropriate level of HR and Finance data.

Visibility into your Actual workforce costs, your planned workforce costs, and the trends in your workforce expenses.

Understand the cost of Salary merit increases, changes in benefit rates, bonus rate assumptions, travel, and other employee-related expenses. Plan for new hires, terminations, and transfers and understand the financial impact of each change.

Visualize Plan/Actual data in charts and tables, allowing for drill down, trend analysis, Actual v Plan variance, and year-over-year analysis.

Users can build stories based on released CDS views relevant for Workforce Planning and Analysis or leverage own queries created by you. For list of released CDS views, see CDS Views.

Only CDS Views containing the @analytics.query: true annotation will appear in SAP Analytics Cloud. Refer documentation on help.sap.com for more details.

SAP Workforce Planning & Analysis SAP Analytics Cloud Content Available with SAP Best Practices for Analytics Package Q4 2018 Release.

Best Practices Explorer (Link: SAP Best Practices for Analytics with S/4HANA Cloud

Scroll down to Finance => Workforce Planning for SAP S/4HANA Cloud

Specific scope-item links, including documentation:

SAP Workforce Planninng for SAP S/4HANA Cloud (3DJ)

Download the free content from SAP Analytics Content library

See how here

SAP Analytics Cloud Content - SAP Workforce Planning & Analysis Dashboard

SAP Analytics Cloud Content - SAP Workforce Planning Summary Report

SAP Analytics Cloud Content - SAP Workforce Planning Time and Version Comparison Report

SAP Analytics Cloud Content - SAP Workforce Planning Trend Report

Let’s take deeper look at the second business driven innovation with Financial Analytics with SAP S/4HANA Cloud.

Real Time Financial statement- KPI Report enriched with sign treatment driven by the semantic tags. The calculation of these KPIs is purely based on the aggregation of line items that are enriched by semantic tags.

Analytical view C_FinancialStatementKPI is used to calculate a subset of financial statement-based measures. Analytical view is based on the CDS cube I_ActualPlanLineItemSemTag, which combines actual and plan data and enriches the data with semantic tags

Leverage new S/4HANA Cloud Accounts Payable and Cashflow Analytics providing insights on business KPI’s such as Days Payable Outstanding, Return on Equity and Debt to Equity ratio.

Carryforward balance support with Pre-built integration jobs in SAC

Robust Integration between SAP S/4HANA Cloud and SAP Analytics Cloud with Integration Jobs for data acquisition.

SAP Analytics Cloud - Financial Analytics Dashboard - Balance Sheet & Cash Flow

Best Practices Explorer (Link: SAP Best Practices for Analytics with S/4HANA Cloud

Scroll down to Finance => Financial Planning & Analysis for S/4HANA Cloud

Specific scope-item links, including documentation

SAP Real-time Financial Analytics for S/4HANA Cloud (1U8)

SAP Financial Analysis for S/4HANA Cloud (2IJ)

SAP Financial Planning for S/4HANA Cloud (2EB)

Download the free content from SAP Analytics Content library

See how here

Let’s take deeper look at the third business driven innovation with Professional Services Cloud Content with SAP Analytics Cloud.

Analytical capabilities empower users making better decisions for professional services activities with a self-learning analytics solution.

Latest update’s on Real-time Professional Services analytics cloud content enables a project manager to dive into S/4HANA Cloud using a business KPI’s such revenue contracted, pipeline revenue, backlog in work. Accelerators include a pre-built set of LIVE analytical dashboards, key performance indicators, and reports.

Actual data in charts and tables, allowing for drill down to generate insights for project manager such as Revenue by Project Type for projects which are In Contract Preparation, In Execution and In Planning.

Trend analysis with revenue contracted, revenue pipeline, revenue for backlog in work and contribution to margin growth.

Close the gap between Finance and Project assumptions by merging the assumptions into one analytics solution.

Stay tuned for more updates in the next quarters!.

For more information on SAP S/4HANA Cloud, check out the following links:

SAP S/4HANA Cloud release info: http://www.sap.com/s4-cloudrelease

Sven Denecken’s SAP S/4HANA Cloud 1811 Release Blog

Best practices for SAP S/4HANA Cloud here

SAP S/4HANA Cloud User Community: register here

Feature Scope Description here

What´s new Viewer here

What’s New here

Help Portal Product Page here

Follow us via @SAP and #S4HANA, or myself via @har1234 (Hardeep Tulsi)

Workforce Management for Oil and Gas and Utilities in the Intelligent Enterprise

2019-02-19T18:56:16+01:00

External workers (contractors, contingent labor) have served as a critical workforce segment for the utilities and oil & gas industries for decades. While external workers augment full time employees and allow an enterprise to quickly scale a workforce in response to shifting skill and labor demands, their use can also create risks related to worker capabilities, organizational commitment, and workforce alignment and collaboration. In this session, we will discuss external workforce management from both employer and worker perspectives and consider how organizations can optimally manage their total workforce, including contract labor, to foster positive business and worker outcomes. Join this half-day workshop to gain a better understanding of SAP’s Total Workforce Management Intelligent Enterprise Scenario, including how intelligent technologies and psychological science are being combined to allow organizations to assemble a more effective and engaged total workforce that is better able and more willing to execute. Address your questions to SAP professionals, hear insights from your peers, and take away best-practice insights that you can apply to your own operations.

Workshop Highlights include

How technology can support more intelligent and effective utilization of a Total Workforce, including Operational Workforce Planning, Employee and Contractor Integration, Worksite On- and Off-Boarding, Scheduling & Shift Planning, Workforce Safety Management with wearable devices, Time Writing, and Analytics.

How findings and recommendations from SAP’s external workforce applied research program and discuss how to apply these to your organization.

How to build an operational plan for how to more effectively source, manage, and engage your total workforce through its lifecycle.

A People-Centric Approach to Total Workforce Management for the Intelligent Enterprise

2019-04-01T22:35:39+02:00

With our first quarter of 2019 behind us, one theme we continue to see is our employee ecosystems driving towards technology and financial efficiencies in building out their workforce management processes. One of the topics that often comes up is why is looking at total workforce management (TWM) so important? Maybe you’re a new process owner, or evaluating technology improvements as you move along a digital transformation. Wherever you are in your journey, TWM is critical to gain the data insights and fiscal responsibility your stakeholders are expecting.

Data is the new digital currency. New sources of data appear continually, and many times these new data sources look nothing like anything you have seen or dealt with in the past. Combining your existing and new data into a single data universe help address the demands that business is expecting. SAP is committed to helping every customer become a best-run business, and to improve people’s lives – this is SAP’s mission. Our strategy is to deliver the intelligent enterprise for our customers, to achieve desired business outcomes, and ultimately make the world run better. Companies that effectively leverage this overwhelming volume of data that is accessible to them by using technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Analytics, Internet of Things, and draw truly meaningful insights, gain competitive advantages. We call these companies “Intelligent Enterprises”. Intelligent enterprises operate with visibility, focus, and agility to achieve game-changing outcomes. They deliver a best-in-class customer experience, by proactively responding to customer expectations, and invent new business models and revenue streams. To truly become a best-run business, organizations must master how to combine data, applications and smart technology, build innovative business models and processes, engage with customers and talent in new, personalized ways, and achieve desired outcomes faster – all with less risk.

We believe SAP’s leadership in enterprise applications and analytics puts us in the best position to bridge data management technology to business value. Our customers need a coherent and unified digital foundation. Without it, the value inherent in their data, processes and applications is as good as lost.

As stated by SAP CEO Bill McDermott, “We share the belief that every human voice holds value, every experience matters and that the best-run businesses can make the world run better”, and that statement couldn’t be truer than when looking at the future of total workforce management. According to HR Technologist (1/7/2019), the top 7 workforce management trends are:

1) Workplaces will become more collaborative

2) Employee Engagement will become a fiscal imperative

3) Self-service will become the norm

4) AI & ML must be working behind the scenes

5) The workforce will be more diverse and multi-generational

6) Integrations will be a staple for Workforce Management apps

7) The Gig economy will continue to grow

More than ever, it is critical that companies ensure they are engaging with their people in meaningful ways, provide a more collaborative and interactive work environment, and hire, retain and foster fiercely loyal top talent.

We bring these processes together within our intelligent enterprise, first through our intelligent suite of products. These core solutions include HR processes from SAP SuccessFactors, the contingent workforce from SAP Fieldglass, and then finance from SAP S/4HANA and Travel & Expense from SAP Concur. These solutions create the core standard processes and workflows based on over 30 years of expertise in their respective business solutions. Where we begin to see the magic and future of the “intelligence” are the technologies and services you can embed into the solutions. Then we move to the connective tissue of our solution, where SAP utilizes its digital platform as the foundation of the intelligent enterprise. SAP Cloud Platform is a business Platform as a Service (PaaS) that provides agile innovation for customers and partners; it has in-memory capabilities that can be leveraged using SAP HANA, core platform services, and unique business services for connecting, creating, integrating, and extending cloud applications. For those that need to extend any workflows outside of standard solutions, SAP Cloud Platform allows organizations to build exactly what they need more quickly, easily, and economically – all without the requirement of maintaining or investing in on-premises infrastructure. This is a way to “future-proof” your investment, because you can innovate and embed those latest technologies, seamlessly as they are created. By having this extensibility, we can take manual processes still happening outside of traditional SaaS solutions, and bring them into SAP SuccessFactors, not only creating more efficiencies but bringing that digital currency into the solution, offering more insights for leaders to manage their workforce and an improved ecosystem.

Here are a couple of highlights in these areas, to give you a flavor of what you can do:

EC + Fieldglass (video clip) – creating streamlined experiences when searching for new contract workers for a new project, utilizing SAP Fieldglass Digital Network you gain a streamlined experience of not only sourcing employees for what your need, but seeing detailed information as to the skills and capabilities your options would have.

Labor Relations – utilizing Labor Relations (Sodales) built on SAP Cloud Platform, allows you to automate your grievance management, discipline management, arbitration steps, seniority Rules and reporting processes. Often, we see these as very manual processes, with the digital data living outside of your SaaS solution like SAP SuccessFactors. By automating this process, you enhance the experience, and complete the lifecycle of your total workforce management while gaining audit controls and process efficiencies.

As you embark upon your Total Workforce Management initiatives for your intelligent enterprise, we look forward to the collaboration, so you keep your people at the center of your business, and innovate for more effective hiring, more effective retention of top talent, and to ensure the right people at the right time are engaged with a more productive outcome for the business. With the tools available, there are no reasons to limit the experiences you can offer your diverse workforces, while operating a premium HR engine.

So where can you go to learn more? The first place where we highlight all these trends is within our new SAP SuccessFactors Gold Guide. This document connects our suite of HR solutions with SAP SuccessFactors and SAP Fieldglass, highlighting amazing customer stories and use cases, plus innovations leveraging SAP Cloud Platform from our partner ecosystem that can accelerate your TWM initiatives! Next, our product team has provided some amazing scenarios (blueprints) for you to leverage greater ROI from your existing solutions by continuing your journey with SAP Cloud Platform, or discover, try, and buy pre-built apps at the SAP App Center.

Managing Talent Across Multiple Channels Through SAP Fieldglass

2019-08-20T11:34:05+02:00

SAP Fieldglass is revolutionizing how organizations are managing talent across multiple channels - including contingent workers, Statement of Work-based consultants, freelancers, independent contractors, gig workers and many more - to achieve total workforce visibility, maximize cost savings, improve worker and supplier quality, and enforce compliance.

VMS platforms help companies and organizations more effectively manage their contingent workers across any region or industry, including aerospace and defense, banking, construction, rail, utilities, professional services, etc.

External Talent Management

It is a common practice now that companies have many resources who are beyond the full-time pay rolls which includes contingent workers, Statement of Work-based consultants, freelancers, private talent channels and more. SAP Fieldglass considers this as multi-channel workforce. To be successful, organizations need to be able to deploy external workers anywhere, at any time. And they need to be able to manage them effectively. With SAP Fieldglass External Talent Management, you can automate the entire process of procuring and managing flexible labor – from requisition all the way through invoice and payment. It supports any program model including those managed in-house, through one or more Managed Service Providers (MSPs), on- or off-site.

Services Procurement

Today, the procurement of external services and Statement of Work (SOW)-based engagements represent a significant proportion of organizations’ spend on the external workforce. With SAP Fieldglass Services Procurement Software, you can simplify how service providers - from consulting firms to field services, maintenance to marketing agencies, and beyond - are sourced, engaged and managed. Services procurement platform can handle a variety of SOW engagements including projects, offshore/offsite, etc.

Worker Profile Management

SAP Fieldglass Worker Profile Management enables organizations to track All of their external talent – including workers that are not tied to a job posting or Statement of Work. With this solution, our platform becomes the system of record for your entire flexible workforce.

Conclusion
SAP Fieldglass helps organizations transform how work gets done in the digital economy. The entire process of procuring and managing contingent workforce is automated. There is greater visibility across entire extended workforce which will reduce costs, enforce compliance and increase efficiency. SAP Fieldglass will ensure compliance to be safer and adherence to security policies to mitigate risk.

Source: https://www.fieldglass.com/

Help shape the future of SAP with Usability Testing at UKISUG Connect 2019

2019-10-22T11:26:13+02:00

UKISUG Connect is the largest annual gathering of SAP users, experts and partners across the UK and Ireland. Spread over 3 days, UKISUG Connect is the 'go-to' annual conference for all SAP users, this year with unprecedented opportunities to learn from SAP experts, network with like-minded peers and collaborate together to influence SAP - one way to do so is Usability Testing.

Do not miss this exclusive opportunity to test new and existing SAP products and solutions, whilst giving on the spot feedback to the product teams designing them. The Usability sessions at UKISUG Connect are not demonstrations, they are one-to-one workshops allowing you to work directly with design prototypes. By understanding your needs and how you use SAP products ensures that the product teams continue to build software that is right for your business.

Usability Testing at UKISUG Connect 2019: Topic Overviews

Topic 1: A Holistic UX Concept for SAP HANA Data Management Suite

SAP HANA Data Management Suite enables secure, governed, enterprise-class applications and analytics by providing an open, hybrid, and multicloud-enabled solution suite that orchestrates all the data you need into a trusted, unified landscape. Help create a holistic user experience (UX) concept that provides the best possible experience across all different components for SAP HANA Data Management Suite.

Topic 2: Display Accounting Impact - New Ways to Analyse the G/L Impact of Selected Business Transactions

Come experience how SAP software for displaying the G/L impact of selected business transactions and related applications for displaying document flows can help your analysts better identify discrepancies in G/L postings and help shape the future of the SAP S/4HANA Finance Solution.

Topic 3: New BI Launchpad Based on SAP Fiori - BI Launchpad Enhancements and BI Workspace for SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform 4.3

Discover how to access and manage business intelligence (BI) reports using the new BI launchpad based on the SAP Fiori UX. The BI launchpad is entirely reshaped, simplified and modernised based on SAP Fiori 2.0.

Topic 4: SAP Fiori 3 - A Next-Generation User Experience

Come join us to see and experience the future of work in digital transformation through the SAP Fiori 3 user experience (UX), the upcoming work environment of a business user. SAP Fiori 3 will offer a seamless and coherent design experience across all SAP products.

Topic 5: Total Workforce Management - Designing for the intelligent enterprise

Join this session to experience the future of total workforce management software from SAP and see an intelligent and seamless workflow designed with the latest and best SAP user interface to date - SAP Fiori 3. The focus of this session is on monitoring projects and paying contingent workers. Learn how SAP software supports project managers along with accounts payable and accounts receivable accountants to foster exceptional tasks with the help of the SAP CoPilot digital assistant.

Find out more about Usability Testing at UKISUG Connect 2019

Your opportunity to Influence SAP – Customer Engagement Initiative Projects for SAP HR and People Engagement

2020-05-20T11:12:48+02:00

An exciting opportunity to influence SAP has begun with the second cycle of the 2020 SAP Customer Engagement Initiative (CEI). The SAP Customer Engagement Initiative enables you as a SAP customer or partner, to get early insights into SAP’s product developments and directly work with the developers to define and shape future product directions.

We are offering several interesting opportunities for customers to influence SAP’s HR and People Engagement solutions. Find here the list of all projects that are relevant for the SAP HR and People Engagement Community or browse the whole project list here.

The projects will be open for customer registration until June 19, 2020.

SAP HR and People Engagement projects for registration:

Core HR and Payroll:

Australian Capital Territory (ACT): Public sector enhancement and integration with SAP SuccessFactors

SAP ERP Human Capital Management for Spain: Redesigning the absence calculation for Social Security

Verticalization of SAP SuccessFactors for Public Services

Integration of SAP SuccessFactors with SAP S/4HANA Public Sector Financials

Human Capital Management (SAP ERP HCM):

AI Based Recommendation Service with Explainability Insights

Australian Capital Territory (ACT): Public sector enhancement and integration with SAP SuccessFactors

SAP ERP Human Capital Management for Spain: Redesigning the absence calculation for Social Security

SAP Help Portal Information Architecture

Learning and Development:

Re-imagine the Calibration Process with SAP SuccessFactors

Re-imagine the Succession Planning Process with SAP SuccessFactors

Intelligent Learning Needs Analysis & Recommendation Solution

Keep your SAP Knowledge current with mobile Learning

SAP Help Portal Information Architecture

Performance and Compensation:

Re-imagine the Calibration Process with SAP SuccessFactors

Re-imagine the Succession Planning Process with SAP SuccessFactors

Workforce Planning and Analytics:

SAP Help Portal Information Architecture

How do I register on the Customer Influence website? A short overview about how to find and register for a CEI project can be found on influence.sap.com.

Follow-up after registration: When you register for a project, you will be invited to an introductory call with the SAP project lead. At this point further participation is optional. Typically, all activities are governed by the Feedback Agreement with SAP.

Thank you in advance for your participation!

How we can live with COVID-19 and break the chain of infections: 1BL Pandemic Cohort Management

2020-07-08T22:28:25+02:00

It may not feel like this for many, but our reality is still the beginning of the pandemic. Many regions are at the beginning of multiple outbreaks, others are currently pushing down the first wave and are now loosening up social measures. We all are working on long-term strategies to live with Covid-19 and future pandemics.

We have to learn from the first wave and be better prepared with test and contact tracing strategies, a good public health system, good inpatient care and we have to protect people in health professions and vulnerable groups. Governments, companies and all other stakeholders in societies have to get together.

This project is being supported by the One Billion Lives initiative from Adaire Fox Martin and had the honour to be awarded the first project under the SAP One Billion Lives Sprint Against COVID-19.

The situation today

Pandemic can currently only be mitigated by social distancing, quarantine with potentially massive economic and social impact. Since we went public with this concept we talked to many companies that strive to safely organize work and safely conduct meetings, events and work shifts. They also need provable records to best support the critical contact tracing process to break chains of infections, but also to mitigate liabilities.

Pandemic Cohort Management is a software solution supporting organizations and companies in their combat against spreading corona virus infections among their staff, customers, and business partners while maximizing social and economic activities and minimize the risk of pandemic pushes.

This can be achieved by identifying key cohorts according to individual health statuses and allowing people in certain cohorts to personally interact for social or business activities, while other cohorts are kept distanced safely. The central goal of the initial solution is to safely plan and schedule meetings, events, and work shifts under consideration of the risk profiles and health status of individual participants.

For example a person that has been tested negative for the virus and traced from that moment on without warnings and who has been in regions with small infection rates has a very different risk profile than somebody travelling, who also is not tested or traced. An organisation with a lot of infections actually could offer for those infected but with no symptoms to actually build a cohort that can work together. As our knowledge of COVID 19 matures, we hopefully will better understand levels and duration of immunity and include this knowledge into the calculation.

While these risk profiles initially are no rocket science, the complexity to do this right and manage over time is a non trivial task with high risk, if errors occur. A software based solution is needed therefore.

The Cohort Concept explained

A basic use case is organising meetings:

In our new Reality with an invitation, visitors and employees are routinely handed out a paper form and being asked to fill in their contact details, date, time and very likely are being informed about certain rules of conduct set by local governments and the inviting party. These are required to be signed prior to the meeting. The form is kept for a period of 2-4 weeks to be able to support contact tracing by health officials, if an infection case occurs.

In our desired future: The solution replaces this errors prone, mostly paper-form driven process. To register with a site in order to participate locally in a meeting becomes a simple digital process. It provides participants with a risk assessment for themselves and their compatibility with other participant´s status, mutually increasing the safety for all participants. The critical contact tracing process in case of infections can be digitally supported for health officials. All steps are highly automated: The overall process of setting up meetings becomes much more efficient and convenient, updating risk information and to comply with privacy law is highly automated and safer. Participants feel safer, they know their privacy is being respected by design.

Solution Overview

The logic behind cohorts can be applied on many workforce related applications, e.g. for planning work shifts and contingency workers.

If you are interested in finding out more, please contact the author of this blog post.

Also please note that SAP has joined the Open COVID pledge and has provided access to patents to fight COVID-19. So if you are interested to implement cohort management in your solutions we are happy to talk to you.

Your opportunity to Influence SAP – Customer Engagement Initiative Projects for HR & People Engagement

2020-10-13T16:52:06+02:00

An exciting opportunity to influence SAP has begun with the third cycle of the 2020 SAP Customer Engagement Initiative (CEI). The SAP Customer Engagement Initiative enables you as an SAP customer or partner, to get early insights into SAP’s product developments and directly work with the developers to define and shape future product directions.

We are offering several interesting opportunities for customers to influence SAP’s HR & People Engagement solutions.

Find here the list of all projects that are relevant for the HR & People Engagement or browse the whole project list here.

The projects will be open for customer registration until November 6, 2020.

HR & People Engagement projects for registration:

SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central - Information on Dependents

Hire to Retire in Public Services- Integration of SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central & SAP S/4HANA

Public Sector Scenarios for SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central

Others

New Mobile Experience at SAP - SAP Mobile Start

New request process for professional SAP Note & KBA Translations

SAP Help Portal Information Architecture

SAP Support

SAP Analytics Cloud - Notifications and Settings

SAP Analytics Cloud - Rich Text Format for Commenting Feature

SAP One Inbox

New Partner Finder Design

How do I register on the Customer Influence website? A short overview about how to find and register for a CEI project can be found on influence.sap.com.

Please note that the registration is open to valid S-Users and SAP Ariba Customers only.

Follow-up after registration: When you register for a project, you will be invited to an introductory call with the SAP project lead. At this point further participation is optional. Typically, all activities are governed by the Feedback Agreement with SAP.

Thank you in advance for your participation!

Integration Explained - Kronos Workforce Central with Employee Central and Employee Central Payroll

2020-11-16T09:18:18+01:00

With the Go to cloud Strategy the Employee Central Customer that is looking for implementation of stringent Positive time Management scenarios to manage the workforce with Shifts has opted strongly for Kronos Workforce Central.

The product that this blog focuses on is Kronos Workforce Central integration in a Cloud Human Experience Management solution.

A customer who is using Kronos Workforce Central with employee central and employee central payroll will need the HR data Integration to work seamlessly and this article throws light to the deepest level on the integration topic.

System Architecture

Above diagram explains how Kronos communicate with Employee Central and Payroll system using ECC. Each link between different system is explained in details in the links provided below.

This blog is for those who wants to run positive time management in shifts using Kronos.

Typically customer's Landscape would look similar to above where customer is using following SAP products.

Employee Central

Employee Central Payroll

Kronos Workforce Central

Employee Central being the HR system. The entry of Employee data will start from EC where an HR executive will perform employee life cycle actions from hiring to separation.

Kronos Workforce Central receives the employee data using the SAP cloud platform from Employee central as shown in above diagram through a flat .csv file.

The integration is delivered out of box and and it uses SFTP, SFAPI and IDOC protocols for complete data transfer.

The data Kronos Workforce Central receives is related to employee master, Employment and Job and compensation.

Details around integration touchpoints.

SAP Kronos Workforce Central to SCP.

SCP to Payroll

Time Data Replication (Kronos -> SFTP)

Employee Central to SCP

To check field level specification of the data please Click Here.

3 Ways To Enable A Sensible Workforce Strategy In The Gig Economy

2021-01-25T10:21:24+01:00

This blog was originally published on Forbes.

One of the perks of living with a musician is that I’m upping my groupie status. I can now sing along to most grunge rock hits of the 90s – which got me thinking about just how far the “gig” has come. A word once used to describe up-and-coming bands’ dreams, the gig economy now spans entire industries and represents our work-from-anywhere/for-any-employer reality.

Based on skills rather than roles, the gig economy is exactly what it sounds like – gig workers (you may have heard of them as contractors, contingent workers, freelancers) work on specific projects or execute specific tasks for a defined period of time. Think: the person who just delivered your dinner via UberEats or the videographer working with your team for the next three months. Employees love it because of the flexibility and speed to employment and employers love it because it cuts labor costs and enables them to agilely respond to the market (if they do it right).

What’s interesting is that this on-your-terms type of employment that gig workers enjoy is now the reality for many full-time employees engaging with their organizations externally because of COVID-19 restrictions. While some employees have always worked remotely, we’re now (and have been) doing it consistently on a mass scale with new work/lifestyles, and during a time when getting work done is almost more critical given current market volatility.

It’s also the reality for employees working at non-essential businesses who have found themselves participating in the gig economy now using their skills in new industries. Like Amazon who hired 1K workers with transferrable skills who may have previously worked at an airline or in food service. So, we’re now operating in an environment where gig economy practices are being used and are preferred across industries and regardless of your employment label.

These factors are creating a new set of expectations for all employees at work – like flexibility, lifelong career adaptability, and amazing experiences inside and outside of an organization’s walls. As employees (and employers) become more comfortable with these new work conditions and adapting/reallocating skills across roles and project-based work, the lines between internal and external employee will continue to blur and employee experience will continue to be top-of-mind. And it speaks to a needed shift from managing and engaging internal and external workforces separately to total workforce management and engagement.

This was emphasized at Davos 2020 where we learned three trends are influencing the now of work: increased desire for flexible work across generations, a continued increase in intelligent tech adoption, and a skills shortage. The World Economic Forum shared that with an increase in intelligent tech adoption, 133M+ new roles will be created. But to fill these, we’ll have to reskill or upskill 54% of employees globally on topics like tech design, emotional intelligence, social influence, and more by 2022.

To close this skills gap beyond re- and upskilling, organizations around the world have turned to supplementing their workforce with contingent employees. Recent studies from Deloitte, SAP, and the Society for Human Resource Management found that the external workforce continues to increase in size, importance, and cost from both a strategic and tactical perspective. In fact, some organizations allocate up to 30% of their procurement spend towards their external workforce. But most organizations have immature (or no) external workforce strategies.

Which matters because external workers influence brand reputation just as much as your full-time employees – they’re working with your customers, sharing their experiences with their networks, etc. and impacting brand experience. And because they’re typically the first to be impacted by workforce reductions and the first to return when cashflow is uncertain – which means impact to your bottom line. So, it’s important to empower your external workforce with the necessary tools and resources to be productive and create environments that allow them to feel connected to your culture, collaborate across the business, and feel appreciated for the value they’re delivering. Just like your internal workforce.

To get started:

1. Understand your employee experience gaps(internal and external) as they navigate this new environment. Are they productive and thriving or feeling disconnected from leadership and unsure of how to work remotely? You won’t know until you ask, and once you have this data, you’ll be able to create a better end-to-end employee experience.

2. Assess your external workforce management maturity to see how you stack up across organizational culture, the end-to-end worker experience, the use of integrated technology to source, manage, and engage your external workforce across the lifecycle, and visibility and business impact of these workers.

3. Use this toolkit to develop a comprehensive external workforce management strategy from hire to exit to re-engagement.

These activities will help you create an integrated workforce experience where all employees feel empowered to contribute to your organization’s success and become ambassadors of your brand – regardless of the gig they’re playing.

SAP Analytics Cloud Content for Public Services Workforce Management is Now Available

2021-02-23T11:40:15+01:00

Since February 2021, SAP Analytics Cloud content for public services workforce management is available for SAP customers and partners.

What It Does

The dashboard serves as out of the box template for public sector agencies to quickly build analytical insights for the following use cases:

Workforce Analytics: workforce demographics (geographical view, member role view, etc.) and diversity insights (age, gender, minority status, etc.)

Workforce Qualification Management: monitoring qualification attainment across different workforce groups as well as minimum qualification status, identifying individuals who are qualified to perform a specific task in a specific location

In particular, the content is targeting volunteer-based public sector agencies that are providing vital community services, demand for which is experiencing external shocks that can be poorly predicted. Examples of such services are firefighting, combating negative effects of floods, help provided in a humanitarian crisis, and any other type of emergency response services.

When dealing with unexpected incidents public sector agencies are required to have a great deal of transparency on those volunteers that are immediately available in the affected area and have necessary skills and qualifications.

On top of that, volunteer-based agencies are especially interested in investing in their main asset -people. They want to make sure volunteers are provided with continuous learning opportunities and stay engaged and supported to continue offering help in times of great stress and even greater demand.

On the example of a volunteer-based firefighting organization, the template content demonstrates how agency's management can use real-time (or near real-time) analytics to answer the following questions:

How does the general workforce profile of my agency look like? How many volunteers does the agency currently have and what is their diversity status? Where are the volunteers mostly located?

What is the percentage of agency's volunteers who hold a qualification(s)? How does qualification attainment status look across genders, age groups, roles, regions? What is the time trend of qualification attainment for a particular volunteer group?

Who are the concrete individuals who possess a certain qualification and are located in the region of interest?

Consumption and Connectivity

Any public agency that has an SAC licence can download the standard workforce management template out of charge. Since the content is built based on replicated data, it is ready to run without any additional effort and no additional systems are required.

To be able to make full use of the template, customers can modify the model and dashboards according to their specific business intelligence needs and feed it with data coming from any system, on which they store data on employee training and qualifications.

Local files (e.g. Excel): users can align the rows and columns to the template and all dashboards run automatically

Data sources with import connection to SAC: if users are storing their training and qualification data on a system that has a custom import connection to SAC (e.g., in SAP Success Factors modules), they might map it to the existing model or modify the model based on their available queries

Data sources with live connection to SAC: if customer data resides in a system to which a live connection can be established (for example, in S/4HANA), standard content serves more as a sample as in this case model needs to be rebuilt on the source system

How to Download

Once you have accessed your SAP Analytics Cloud, you choose Browse, Content Network and Business Content:

Search for “Volunteer Workforce Management” and click on the folder: SAP_PS_Volunteer_Workforce_Management.

On the subsequent pop-up, click import - the downloaded package will be stored in your public folder. Navigate to your Files to see the respective story:

For information details related to import refer to Importing from the Content Network.

To get the whole overview on the content package, check this roll out slide and access detailed documentation when importing the package via the SAC Content Library.

Further Information

You may be also interested to check:

The Outcome-Driven Government Chief Human Resources Officer

What is SAP Analytics Cloud

What is SAC Business Content

What is New in SAC Business Content

Overview of All Available SAC Business Content Packages & Extended Content Inventory (download the pdf to access the detailed excel file)

SAC Business Content Community

Guest Blog Post from IDC: Deskless workers should not be treated as less than office workers

2022-09-02T17:52:30+02:00

In this guest blog post, Lisa Rowan, Research Vice President for IDC responsible for global research on human capital and talent management software and services discusses the often forgotten and silent workforce - Deskless workers, their challenges and opportunities to improve their employee experience with well-designed workforce management systems that can go a long way towards employee satisfaction and retention.

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Deskless workers should not be treated as less than office workers

Guest IDC Blogger: Lisa Rowan, VP Modern HR Strategies

Date: August 2022

Sponsored By: SAP

Workers are considered deskless when they don’t have a designated working space or office. It may be surprising to learn that 80% of the global workforce -- representing 2.7 billion workers -- is considered deskless. However, only 1% of IT investments are focused on this constituency. The roles that deskless workers perform range from the frontlines to the back office and include many customer-facing roles as well as positions that are vital to their employers’ supply chains. In short, most businesses cannot operate without deskless workers. Unfortunately, this group is frequently not afforded some of the same care and attention given to the so-called “knowledge” workers or those that do have a designated office or workspace. Deskless workers should not be confused with “remote” workers. Remote workers have a desk, but that desk is just not located at the employer’s office.

So, what are some of the additional challenges that are unique to deskless workers?

Although not universal across all roles, many deskless positions suffer from higher turnover.

A majority of deskless workers have no computer or easy access to technology while on the job.

Very few even have a corporate email address.

With little regular communication coming to them from the employer, deskless workers can become detached and disengaged from their organization.

Even though deskless workers lack access to technology and communications from the employer, the work that these employees perform is often mission critical.

We need only to think back as far as a few short months ago to realize how workers on the frontlines in healthcare, retail, and manufacturing became essential staff during the pandemic. Although the circumstances surrounding the pandemic have eased, we still face talent shortages due to a high volume of job abandonment and job shifting in the last 12 to 18 months. And there appears to be no end in sight to this major job shakeup. As a result, employers need to do all they can to build lines of communication and instill a sense of belonging for all workers whether they have a desk or not.

There is one set of HCM-related functionality that engages the majority of workers that qualify as deskless, and that functionality comprises workforce management. In many instances, workforce management may be the only corporate system with which workers interact. While workforce management encompasses a broader suite of functions, those capabilities that touch the employee directly often include:

Time capture – clocking in and out

Scheduling

Absence and leave management

In today’s talent environment, it becomes critical that the primary system with which deskless workers interact provide a very positive employee experience (EX). IDC research has shown that employees of organizations that offer a mature and superior EX are:

35X more likely to feel part of one team driving business results

48X times more likely to feel that their employers’ culture is committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion

2X more likely to trust their employer and feel that there is good communication

The workforce management capabilities that directly touch deskless employees offer an opportunity to present a meaningful and substantive EX and thus realize the goal of fostering a well-engaged workforce. Specifically, employees want well-designed workforce management solutions that are easy to use, offer visibility when reviewing their schedules or making shift changes, and keep them well informed through regular communication in the flow of work. Achieving these objectives through well-designed workforce management can go a long way towards employee satisfaction and retention.

For more information

If you would like more information on workforce management and deskless worker solutions, visit our SAP Time and Attendance Management by WorkForce Software site.

About Lisa Rowan

Lisa Rowan is Research Vice President for IDC responsible for global research on human capital and talent management software and services. Ms. Rowan provides expert analysis focused on both the business services and software used to address HR and talent-related dimensions. Her research addresses developments in human capital and talent management applications, human resources consulting, and HR outsourcing services.

Guest Blog Post from IDC: The Right Person for the Job at the Right Time

2022-11-09T16:08:40+01:00

In this guest blog post, Lisa Rowan, Research Vice President for IDC responsible for global research on human capital and talent management software and services discusses the importance of being able to find the right employee, available and skilled for the job at hand and the considerations for scheduling applications in today’s day and age.

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The Right Person for the Job at the Right Time

Guest IDC Blogger: Lisa Rowan, VP Modern HR Strategies

Date: November 2022

Sponsored By: SAP

The very present threat of high turnover along with the need for maintaining high employee productivity were cited among the topmost pressing workforce challenges by HR decision-makers in IDC’s 2022 HR buyer survey. Nearly every business sector has been touched by unexpected resignations, and levels of job abandonment are at all-time highs. At the same time, the U.S. unemployment rate was reported at 3.7% in October 2022. There is an overall lack of talent to fill key roles. As a result, companies are worried they will be unable to achieve corporate objectives through the necessary employee productivity thresholds.

The Importance of Agile Scheduling in a Dynamic Work Environment

Given the current work environment with high turnover and battles for scarce talent, companies have to make the most out of the existing workforce. Employers need to ensure they have the right person for the right job at the right time to meet business requirements. Agile scheduling to optimize labor is necessary to support this dynamic environment.

Organizations first must understand their employees’ skills and competencies. Applying an overall skills ontology and doing a skills census become key. Employers can then tap the census knowledge when scheduling the workforce using availability information from time management. By doing so, scheduling ends up being personalized based on skill or role-based “fit” for the job at hand.

Taking intelligent scheduling even further, innovative companies are able to build even more efficiency by requiring employees to meet certain prerequisites to be eligible for particular shifts or tasks. Prerequisites can be achieved through specific training and certifications. By embracing intelligent scheduling, supervisors and HR departments are better able to plan for scheduled absences, support peak requirements, and to accurately locate resources to backfill when needed.

Overall objectives for an agile scheduling and time management system include the ability to:

Control workforce costs

Make smart personnel decisions that improve business execution

Manage complex workforce policy concerns including adherence to local and union regulations for fatigue management and other issues

Maximize performance with accurate labor forecasts

The benefits of an agile scheduling and time management system include the power to:

Enhance strategic management of workforce costs through insight into employee labor activities

Improve pay-process accuracy and organizational efficiency through automated time and attendance management

Boost employee engagement with greater transparency and improved communications

Considering the Employee Experience

In addition to the aforementioned benefits, it is important to provide a positive employee experience. With turnover high, companies need to offer their workers options, transparency, and overall support. Employers should seek solutions that give employees greater visibility into their work experience by providing them with real-time visibility into their data. Visibility and control enable employees to plan, adjust, and make requests to find a balance between their work and personal obligations while also reducing administrative overhead.

With advanced visibility into schedules -- along with flexible self-service request capabilities that enable shift swapping and indicate shift preferences/availability -- employees can proactively manage their time for improved work/life balance and well-being.

Employees who have options to influence their schedule based on their skills, qualifications, desires, and availability report and execute work happily, leading to greater satisfaction and achievement of company goals.

For more information

If you would like more information on Workforce Forecasting and Scheduling applications visit our SAP Workforce Forecasting and Scheduling by WorkForce Software site.

About Lisa Rowan

Lisa Rowan is Research Vice President for IDC responsible for global research on human capital and talent management software and services. Ms. Rowan provides expert analysis focused on both the business services and software used to address HR and talent-related dimensions. Her research addresses developments in human capital and talent management applications, human resources consulting, and HR outsourcing services.

Guest Blog Post from IDC: Workforce Management by the Numbers

2023-03-09T22:53:40+01:00

In this guest blog post, Lisa Rowan, Research Vice President for IDC responsible for global research on human capital and talent management software and services discusses the impact of accurate and timely information to help make data driven decisions to achieve organizational objectives. The workforce management function is one area that benefits greatly from the application of analytics, and HR organizations are well-positioned to implement and share the results with management

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Workforce Management by the Numbers

Guest IDC Blogger: Lisa Rowan, VP Modern HR Strategies

Date: March 2023

Sponsored by SAP

Having accurate and timely information to make data-driven decisions is a major contributor to achieving organizational objectives. Yet, only 39% of HR organizations report that they develop and share comprehensive analytics with their company’s management teams, according to IDC’s 2022 annual survey of 500 human resources (HR) decision-makers. According to the research, the balance of HR teams either work solely with a few metrics and traditional reports or develop metrics but do not share them beyond the confines of the HR function. This leaves ample room for improvement in the quantity, quality, and reach of key people-related information.

The workforce management function is one area that benefits greatly from the application of analytics, and HR organizations are well-positioned to implement and share the results with management. Labor is the most expensive cost to the employer. Making sure that scheduling and staffing is appropriate for the particular projects or programs underway helps keep costs contained and objectives met. Additionally, analytics can empower organizations to become agile and responsive through workforce tracking. Being able to influence cost and productivity levers through the availability of timely analytics allows management to have control over labor costs such as overtime.

Specific use cases where the deployment of analytics relating to workforce management add value include:

Being able to track and course correct for time leakage. Time leakage is the difference between actual time worked versus actual time recorded.

Cost control. Elimination or minimization of errors, which can lead to cost overruns.

Optimization of labor. Analytics help identify the work at hand and how best to staff.

Labor agility. Placing the right people into the right job.

In addition to regular monitoring of ongoing timekeeping and scheduling, analytics can be powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to identify patterns and offer predictions to improve future operations. Examples include examining behavior such as regular late arrival, Friday call outs, or early trench-out behavior. By having access to this information, management can head off labor problems and resolve issues before they become acute.

There are very real cost savings benefits associated with tracking and managing time and labor with analytics. Analytics can also help with the shortage of trained talent, a problem many industry sectors are facing right now. Despite some economic weakness, unemployment in the U.S. still remains very low, and organizations everywhere are finding it difficult to staff up to optimal levels. In the face of labor shortages, companies have to be confident that they are staffing intelligently to make sure that each shift has the right balance of talent. Analytics can lead the way toward having the right information on hand to make sound business decisions.

HR teams and their business partners on the front lines can both reap the benefits of improved oversight and visibility through the development and deployment of workforce analytics. These two stakeholder groups should come together to understand where their own analytics efforts currently lie in order to plot a course for further adoption of this technology to help mitigate existing pain points. What gets measured gets better.

For more information

If you would like more information on workforce management and deskless worker solutions, visit our SAP Time and Attendance Management by WorkForce Software site.

About Lisa Rowan

Lisa Rowan is Research Vice President for IDC responsible for global research on human capital and talent management software and services. Ms. Rowan provides expert analysis focused on both the business services and software used to address HR and talent-related dimensions. Her research addresses developments in human capital and talent management applications, human resources consulting, and HR outsourcing services.

Guest Blog Post from IDC: It’s Time to Comply!

2023-06-02T19:52:02+02:00

In this guest blog post, Lisa Rowan, Research Vice President for IDC responsible for global research on human capital and talent management software and services discusses the challenges for organizations with the ever increasing and complex legislations and compliance needs related to leaves and absences which need to be complied with.

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It’s Timeto Comply!

Sponsored By: SAP

Guest IDC Blogger: Lisa Rowan

Date:April 2023

In the words of Benjamin Franklin, “In this world, nothing is certain except death and taxes.” Carrying this over to the world of HR, we could say that nothing is certain except for the need to comply. HR wears many hats. It is the ambassador to new employees, comforter of workers in distress, and supervisor of company policies to ensure they are carried out appropriately. What is sometimes forgotten is that HR is also ultimately responsible for all facets of employment compliance. The failure to comply brings with it the possibility of costly penalties, something employers need to avoid. One HR functional area that is particularly compliance centric is absence/leave management, which fits into the broader area of workforce management.

There are different types of employee leave in the United States. How they are handled by employers can vary based onterms and conditions set by the states. Examples of authorized absences include annual vacation, parental leave, public holidays, and medical appointments. Unplanned absences include those associated with sickness and injury. Unauthorized absence occurs when employees are absent without prior notification to the employer.In addition, there are distinctions across paid sick leave, FMLA leave, and paid family and medical leave. While these last are all types of paid or unpaid time off from work, they are also distinct policies with different laws governing them. The U.S.Department of Labor provides a guide that distinguishes these various leave types.

It is important to understand both legal compliance and best practices when it comes to leave management.

Listed below area few of the many potential risks associated with improper management of leave administration.

Beyond the legal jeopardy, employee morale may be negatively impacted by absence management that is inconsistent or difficult to understand.

All employees must be treated equally when it comes to leave management, otherwise employers could face claims of discrimination.

Companies may run into legal trouble if they are inflexible around absence. Laws such as the FMLA guarantee employees the ability to take leave if all required conditions are met. Knowing and understanding these conditions is paramount.

If leave tracking is inaccurate, the employer could find itself owing much more time than originally considered.

Leave administration must not appear to discourage employees from taking leave such as FMLA.There are rights granted to workers that employers must understand and observe.

The following example illustrates the complexities of balancing federal and state rules along with any negotiated policies between a company and its unions. Organizations need to comply and so their absence/leave management software needs to account for and support such scenarios.

Example

An employee is taking time off for surgery and rehab. This worker has been authorizedfor intermittent leave per the FMLA guidelines. The same employee is also caring for a family member and needs intermittent leave to assist with that person’s follow up and treatments. For this second leave, the employee has been approved per the company policy as well through the FMLA. Both leaves overlap. When an employee is absent with two or more leaves that overlap, it can be difficult to determine the leave banks that should be used to ensure the proper regulatory and company-specific benefits are provided to the employee.According to the company rules, the employee is allowed to use vacation concurrently with FMLA, so they are paid for absences under both leave types. They can also use sick time and short-term disability concurrently if the leave is long enough for the employee’s own health condition. Software needs to coordinate the usageand its order andpayment across all the various leave banks.It also needs toapply the rules (such as waiting periods for short-term disability) and switch to unpaid leave automatically when the leave banks are exhausted and then automatically switch back to paid leave when the banks have accrued more time.

Engaging with a well-seasoned solution provider can help an organization navigate through and ensure compliance with complex leave management scenarios such as the example above. Just as manyindividuals work with a tax professional in their personal finance area, companies should seek the same level of professional expertise when it comes to compliance with all the nuances associated with employee leave.

The right partner can help a business improve its best practices and avoid compliance issues.

For more information

If you would like more information on Leave and compliance management for today’s workforce management and deskless worker solutions, visit our SAP Absence and Leave Management by WorkForce Software site.

Guest Blog Post from IDC: Employee Experience Builds Connection - Manager Experience Builds Success

2023-08-29T18:32:44+02:00

In this guest blog post, Zachary Chertok, the research manager for IDC in employee experience (EX), discusses the role of and challenges for a Line Manager and the need for organizations to provide the tools and processes and a superior experience to support them in their everyday work life thus ensuring their success and the success of the teams and the organization they serve.

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Employee Experience Builds Connection - Manager Experience Builds Success

Sponsored By: SAP

Guest IDC Blogger: Zachary Chertok

Date: August 2023

Managers in the line of business (LOB) are only as strong and capable as the level of organizational enablement and empowerment they receive to connect LOB activities to the goals, objectives, and reported outcomes managed by operational leaders – meaning the CEO, COO, CFO, CIO, and CHRO. However, manager empowerment is tied directly to the success of employee experience (EX) transformation.

As organizations embrace EX transformation, they seek to improve operational efficiency and productivity, which means decoupling how organizational leaders gather and assess metrics from how LOB employees contribute data in their respective flows of work. Managers play a pivotal role in translating LOB insights into organizational actions and responses. EX transformation success often begins in the LOB where managers listen to employees and align resources, people, tasks, and work around employee asks, needs, and opportunities for growth. According to IDC’s Employee Experience Buyer Sentiment Survey (November 2021), LOB managers are nearly 6x more likely to steer successful EX transformation efforts than team or group leads. The same data shows that LOB managers are 4.5x more likely to drive successful EX transformation than division leads or the C-suite.

More than 80% of organizations now understand the value of and embrace concepts in EX transformation. While more than 75% embrace collecting data around the voice of the employee (VoE) – sentiment surveys, pulse surveys, feedback, and structured communications insights – fewer than 50% recognize the integral value that manager experience (MX) plays in executing on VoE-driven change, according to IDC’s Employee Experience Buyer Perception Survey. Across most work environments, improving MX helps to enhance EX and facilitate EX transformation. While successful EX transformation relies on manager empowerment, organizations still significantly disempower managers to independently respond to LOB employee pressures, make decisions, or take calculated risks based on experience and expertise. While investment in leadership training is rising, organizational leaders are still slightly more likely to pursue command-and-control decision structures than to enable real-time managerial decision authority based on experience and data-driven insights, according to IDC’s Future of Enterprise Resilience Survey (May 2023).

MX empowers LOB managers to provide the resources, insights, communications, and metrics needed to make decisions, troubleshoot, and enact change in the flow of work for a subset of employees. Managers must navigate their own experiences as employees while overseeing how daily engagements, tasks, assignments, processes, and objectives impact the experiences of employees who report into them. Successful MX empowers both aspects of what managers face, giving them insights in their flows of work to make decisions for their teams, to manage their personal workloads, and to justify their decisions, recommendations, and actions to the leaders into whom they report.

The following example looks at how enabling managers facilitates manager-employee alignment for operational success.

Retail store employees were assigned shifts two weeks in advance. The night before a pending shift, a worker called out due to a family emergency. The store manager had the timekeeping resources to automatically staff that shift by choosing from a list of available and qualified employees. The manager secured a replacement worker and spoke with them ahead of time to deter potential co-working issues based on that employee’s history with the assigned team.

Noting the missing team member’s strengths, the manager reassigned tasks based on that information and the preferences of the remaining team members and the replacement worker to ensure a seamless work environment across the day’s shifts. As the day progressed, employees reported two unexpected events that changed the task list, pushing some tasks into later shifts. The manager was able to continuously optimize task assignments across shifts as the list changed in response to the reported disruptions and differing customer traffic flows. This meant that not all employees were assigned to their preferred tasks. The manager used the task management tools to recommend that employees who took on non-preferred tasks be first for their preferred tasks in their next shifts. Through the organization’s employee recognition system, the manager also recognized the employees for their flexibility in the face of change.

The combination of dynamic scheduling resources, team preference insights, real-time communications management, shift swaps, and more enabled the manager to respond to worksite issues in real time. The manager’s primary motivation was to keep store operations moving to support operational and sales performance. However, the outcome of her actions was to minimize disruption of that day’s work so employees could engage with customers. It also ensured that workers who took on non-preferred responsibilities were quantifiably recognized. The manager was empowered to make quick decisions that reduced the risk of untimely responses that could have threatened employee morale and customer experiences and spending.

Empowering and enabling managers also empowers and enables employees. EX transformation is built on connecting the real-time realities of the LOB with how the organization responds within the context of its objectives and key results. Managers serve as a bridge between employee experiences in the LOB and how VoE data, insights, and calls to action impact the organization’s responses and direction. Consequently, MX must enable managers to make and justify decisions in the flow of business to keep employees focused on their own work, engagements, growth, and success.

If you would like more information on Forecasting and Scheduling solutions to support Managers and Employees in their everyday operations visit our SAP Workforce Forecasting and Scheduling by WorkForce Software site.

Unleash Your Workforce Potential

2023-10-20T23:46:05+02:00

Are you ready to revolutionize your HR strategies and unlock your organization's full workforce potential? In our white paper, "Unlocking Workforce Potential: A Guide to HR Transformation with SAP solutions for Workforce Planning" we delve into the essential aspects of effective workforce planning and how SAP's cutting-edge solutions can empower your organization.

Our white paper is your comprehensive roadmap to HR transformation with SAP solutions for workforce planning. We explore our workforce planning solutions in detail, focusing on operational and strategic aspects while supporting critical areas such as talent management, talent shortages, attrition, retention, and the workforce of the future.

Effective workforce planning is crucial for your organization's success, and our white paper guides you through the key elements of SAP solutions for workforce planning, allowing you to:

Elevate Workforce Insights with Advanced Intelligence: Our solutions incorporate advanced machine learning capabilities to help you uncover key influencers affecting employee retention.

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After reading our white paper you’ll learn of a comprehensive approach to HR transformation. By unleashing advanced intelligence, aligning talent needs with organizational data, and enhancing collaboration, organizations can unlock their workforce's full potential. Don't miss the opportunity to revolutionize your HR strategies—read our white paper today and embark on a journey to optimize your workforce for a brighter future. To learn more about unlocking workforce potential, download this new paper and walk away with a guide to HR transformation with workforce planning solutions from SAP.