In our latest webinar, we had the pleasure of sitting down with SuccessFactors expert, Heather Kuligowski, and HR and EC payroll expert, Bryan Meyers, for an informative session all about implementing SuccessFactors in the public sector. During our webinar "The Key to Implementing SAP SuccessFactors in the Public Sector intelligent enterprise suite," we discussed some of the challenges public sector organizations face, as well as best practices for preparing for implementation. This comprehensive presentation also included a SuccessFactors system demonstration.
Please read our blog for an overview of the webinar, and watch the recording!
What is SAP Intelligent Enterprise, and How Does SuccessFactors fit into this?
First and foremost, we felt it was essential to overview the Intelligent Enterprise and how SAP SuccessFactors play a role in this.
The SAP Intelligent Enterprise is an intelligent, sustainable platform that consistently applies advanced technologies and practices within a business platform framework. The Intelligent Enterprise is not one technology product but rather a mindset that the organization embodies. This mindset embraces technology to create a well-maintained and more functional operational system.
The Intelligent Enterprise comprises the Intelligent Suite (which encompasses all of the processes that most organizations need to run to function), Intelligent Technologies, and the Digital Platform. The Intelligent Suite encompasses the typical processes that most organizations will need to run, including Spend Management, People Engagement, Customer Experience, etc. The Digital Platform is the application that store data.
The question is how you connect your Intelligent Suite and your Data Platform. Connecting the Intelligent Suite and Digital Platform is your Intelligent Technologies. This is where SAP SuccessFactors plays its role as an Intelligent Business Process.
Recruit to Retire: The Lifecycle of the Employee
The recruit to retire process focuses on an employee's lifecycle within an organization, beginning with workforce planning, moving on to hiring and onboarding, and continuing with workforce management, such as employee and employment data, time recording, and payroll, and ending with a termination event and employee offboarding.
Creating a happy and healthy work environment is the core of attracting and retaining employees. Today's employees want to feel supported from when they are recruited to when they leave. When the employee's needs are met in one centralized system, the employee can better focus on the work at hand. By identifying the stages of the employee lifecycle, organizations can deliver superior employee experiences.
The SuccessFactors Suite of products supports these experiences because it provides an interactive solution with a module to support and facilitate every one of the transactions. This allows organizations to target and optimize each stage to build an end-to-end process that nurtures and retains the best talent.
Overcoming HR Challenges with Tech Innovation
Numerous external and internal factors strain public sector Human Resources, such as aging workforces, aging legacy tech systems, compensation gaps, lean budgets, not meeting diversity initiatives, and varying levels of tech competency across employees.
Historically, HR departments have relied on their HR systems to support organizational directives, but linearly, by creating processes and paperwork to enforce guardrails.
To move your HR organization forward as part of an Intelligent Enterprise, HR departments need to drive results by implementing agile processes, learning, and reskilling, and developing a culture that embraces individuals and values their feedback.
But one of the biggest hurdles for any public sector organization in addressing these issues is its budget. HR leaders are increasingly focused on ROI to get the most out of their already lean budgets. To remain relevant, Human Resources must support this investment by using their budgets to improve the employee experience, automating work processes, and refining talent management practices.
How HR departments respond to any of these challenges requires the organization to embrace digital innovation. They need to modernize their operations and platforms to consistently deliver greater value to both their workforce and their citizens.
The Value of SuccessFactors
SAP SuccessFactors goes beyond the core administrative HR and Talent Management functions (payroll, contracts, new hire tasks) to help put public sector employees' needs first. One of the ways it does this is with Artificial Intelligence. Two examples of embedded machine learning in SuccessFactors are Job Analyzer in Recruiting and Learning recommendations in LMS. One of the first impressions a potential new employee will have will be from a job listing. Ensuring that your organization attracts the diverse recruits you are looking for starts in the job listing itself. The Job Analyzer is designed to help create the best job description possible by providing salary and language recommendations. This unique capability is made possible using machine learning techniques combined with historical applicant data to determine any gender-biased language.
Modern-day employees seek more than just healthcare and 401k retirement benefits. They want to feel supported and uplifted. SAP SuccessFactors's Personalized Learning Recommendations enable users to find relevant courses from their learning libraries without the need to search through the library. Machine learning algorithms are applied, so learners get recommendations based on the information about the learner, including their profile information and learning activity.
The Recommendations engine delivers best-fit recommendations by identifying topics of interest for every learner and displaying matched preferences. These recommendations are based on the users' history, popularity with their peers, and users' topics of interest. The integrated SAP AI Business Services system with SAP SuccessFactors Learning pulls in data from the Learning system to analyze it, find patterns, apply machine learning algorithms, and then develop targeted recommendations.
Finding Success With SuccessFactors - Our Recommendations for Planning for Implementation!
1. Project Stakeholder's Buy-In: invenioLSI consultants are experts in our field, but remember that your employees are experts in your organization's business processes! One of the first steps will be to identify your project's stakeholders and ensure they are committed to the implementation process. Project stakeholders will need to be involved in the project's exploration, deployment, and training phases.
2. Project Alignment: There are three types of alignment:
Scope Alignment
There are several areas of scope alignment that are critical to project success. First is defining the strategic direction of the project or the why. Why do we need a new software platform? What are the benefits we expect to receive? What are the pain points we expect to resolve? Answering these questions will shape the implementation's desired outcome or end goal.
The second is creating a requirements document that outlines your desired features and expected behaviors. This document serves as a blueprint for managing the scope of a project, provides a reference for system testing and validation, and is a framework for project resource planning.
Business Process Alignment
The journey from your existing HR system to SAP SuccessFactors will not be a simple swap from one platform to another or "lift-and-shift." In line with the overall Software as a Service (SaaS) mentality, SuccessFactors is based on a best-practice methodology that does not lend itself to heavy customization. Therefore, reviewing and refining your HR processes, when possible, is critical to the project's overall success. The end goal for the project is to seamlessly combine your HR management processes with effective HR technology, SuccessFactors.
Identifying what your future state business process is and defining the associated requirements is a crucial activity. For example, a project goal is to utilize an out-of-the-box HR process configuration. But does that match up to your business or organizational requirements?
Resource Alignment
Public sector organizations require project participants from various groups and entities. Ensure that the project team includes the correct mix of representatives from the impacted lines of business, project management, and functional and technical users. You will also want to align this team to the strategic direction of the project that includes the desired outcome, project goals, and guidelines that provide the foundation for individual and project success.
For instance, determine if your project team will be empowered to make decisions that impact a business process. Or will those decisions be made by the steering committee or the business? Suppose this decision tree is not defined before the start of the project. In that case, the project will experience delays while waiting for a decision and potential rework if an empowered decision maker does not make the decision.
3. Project Integrations: Keep into consideration what other systems your SuccessFactors implementation will need to be able to integrate with — for example, finance to HR, HR to Time, and Time to Payroll. And be sure to monitor this integration as time goes on. Ensure you have someone assigned to manage this integration if you use an external finance system.
Learn more by watching the webinar recording! And check out our resources page for more information about SuccessFactors.
Learn more by watching the webinar recording!
Please feel free to reach out to our team with any questions!
