employee central

Watch On Demand: Maximize the Value of Your Existing SAP Payroll System
Watch On Demand: Maximize the Value of Your Existing SAP Payroll System 1008 740 SpinifexIT

Whether you are planning a move to Employee Central Payroll in the near future or are remaining on-premise with SAP Payroll for now, it’s more important than ever to find ways to optimize your existing payroll processes, data, and reporting.

Use the form below to sign up for the on-demand version.

In this webinar, join AJ Whalen and Brian Erickson and panelists Mary Halfmann from Central Michigan University, Steve Bogner from Insight Consulting Partners, as they lead a discussion about how you can make your existing SAP payroll more efficient, including:

Producing accurate reports & reconcile payroll differences

Optimizing processing via Payroll Control Center

Best practices for preparing to migrate data and configuration to Employee Central Payroll

Tips for validating and improving data integrity

Maximize the Value of Your Existing SAP Payroll System

Register to watch the roundtable session on-demand.

Meet our Experts

AJ WHALEN

MARY HALFMANN
HR/SAP Systems Analyst
Central Michigan University  

STEVE BOGNER
Managing Partner
Insight Consulting Partners

BRIAN ERICKSON
Director, Customer Engagement, SpinifexIT

Maximize the Value of Your Existing SAP Payroll System
Maximize the Value of Your Existing SAP Payroll System 1024 576 SpinifexIT

Whether you are planning a move to Employee Central Payroll in the near future or are remaining on-premise with SAP Payroll for now, it’s more important than ever to find ways to optimize your existing payroll processes, data, and reporting.

Join this informative webinar to hear from independent SAP Payroll experts as they discuss the actions you can take to make your existing SAP Payroll more efficient and accurate while preparing for the future and get an update from SAP on the current payroll solution roadmap.

Topics discussed will include:

  1. Tips for validating and improving data integrity
  2. How to produce more accurate reports and quickly reconcile payroll differences
  3. How to optimize processing via Payroll Control Center
  4. What are best practices for preparing to migrate data and configuration to Employee Central Payroll
  5. What does SAP’s payroll solution roadmap look like and what does it mean for your organization?

Date: October 20, 2021
Time: 2 PM EST
Webinar will be run via Zoom

Speakers

Mary Halfmann
HR/SAP Systems Analyst
Central Michigan University

Steve Bogner
Managing Partner
Insight Consulting Partners

Brian Erickson
Director, Customer Engagement
SpinifexIT

AJ Whalen
Director, Marketing
SpinifexIT

Who this webinar is for: Payroll Managers, Payroll Analyst, Payroll Vice Presidents, Business Systems Director, HRIS Director, CHRO, Business Analyst, IT Director, CFO

Watch On Demand: Moving to Employee Central Payroll: Transition or Transformation?
Watch On Demand: Moving to Employee Central Payroll: Transition or Transformation? 150 150 SpinifexIT

When it comes to moving from an on-premise payroll to Employee Central Payroll, customers often use different tactics and take different approaches, but what is right for your organization? Sign up to access the on-demand version.

In this roundtable discussion, join SpinifexIT’s AJ Whalen and panelists Imran Sajid from SAP SuccessFactors, Judy Fabrizi from Swagelok, and Mike Timm from Integrated Consulting Group as they lead an informative discussion about payroll migration, including:

What the difference is between “transition” and “transform” when it comes to payroll. This also includes the pros and cons of each.

The most important factors you should consider first when planning a move from on-premise to Employee Central Payroll.

Best practices for moving configuration, data, and results during a payroll migration. This includes the most important tools or skills.

Moving to Employee Central Payroll: Transition or Transformation?

Sign up to watch the roundtable session on-demand.

MEET OUR EXPERTS

JUDY FABRIZI
Payroll Manager
Swagelok Company 

Judy Fabrizi is the Payroll Manager at Swagelok Company, an international leader focusing on the manufacture of gas and fluid system components. With over 20 years in the manufacturing arena, Judy has implemented various SAP product lines in various organizations for system transformations on an international level.

In her current role, she is responsible for an optimized cloud-based payroll processing system, federal, state and local compliance, third party requirements and the related tax returns in the domestic US.

Judy holds a BS in Accounting from The Ohio State University and is a Certified Public Accountant.

IMRAN SAJID
Global Senior Director
SAP SuccessFactors  

Imran Sajid is an HR Director at SAP SuccessFactors with expertise in cloud and on-premise software across a diverse background of Marketing, Product Management, Education, Professional Services, and Sales/Pre-Sales.

He has authored 3 books, spoken at every major SAP conference worldwide, and is a volunteer for the Americas’ SAP Users’ Group (ASUG).

MIKE TIMM
Managing Partner
Integrated Consulting Group

Mike is Managing Partner at ICG. His 27-year career in the Information Technology industry includes positions in Accounting, Information Technology, and Human Resources. Before establishing Integrated Consulting Group in April 2000, Mike worked for Arthur Andersen and Prism Consulting Group.

ICG has consulted and partnered with such companies as CDI Corporation, IBM, British Petroleum, Marathon Oil, Cadbury Schweppes, and Walt Disney.

As an SAP Certified Consultant, Mike has led a variety of projects with an emphasis in Human Resources, Payroll, Time Management, Support, and Outsourcing.

YOUR HOST

AJ WHALEN
Director of Marketing & Partner Engagement, SpinifexIT North America 

Moving to Employee Central Payroll: Transition or Transformation?
Moving to Employee Central Payroll: Transition or Transformation? 1024 536 SpinifexIT

When it comes to moving from an on-premise payroll to Employee Central Payroll, customers often use different tactics and take different approaches, but what is right for your organization?

In this roundtable discussion, join SpinifexIT’s AJ Whalen and panelists Imran Sajid from SAP SuccessFactors, Judy Fabrizi from Swagelok, and Mike Timm from Integrated Consulting Group as they lead an informative discussion about payroll migration, including:

What the difference is between “transition” and “transform” when it comes to payroll. This also includes the pros and cons of each.

The most important factors you should consider first when planning a move from on-premise to Employee Central Payroll.

Best practices for moving configuration, data, and results during a payroll migration. This includes the most important tools or skills.

MEET OUR EXPERTS

JUDY FABRIZI
Payroll Manager
Swagelok Company 

#Label

Judy Fabrizi is the Payroll Manager at Swagelok Company, an international leader focusing on the manufacture of gas and fluid system components. With over 20 years in the manufacturing arena, Judy has implemented various SAP product lines in various organizations for system transformations on an international level.

In her current role, she is responsible for an optimized cloud-based payroll processing system, federal, state and local compliance, third party requirements and the related tax returns in the domestic US.

Judy holds a BS in Accounting from The Ohio State University and is a Certified Public Accountant.

IMRAN SAJID
Global Senior Director
SAP SuccessFactors  

#Label

Imran Sajid is an HR Director at SAP SuccessFactors with expertise in cloud and on-premise software across a diverse background of Marketing, Product Management, Education, Professional Services, and Sales/Pre-Sales.

He has authored 3 books, spoken at every major SAP conference worldwide, and is a volunteer for the Americas’ SAP Users’ Group (ASUG).

MIKE TIMM
Managing Partner
Integrated Consulting Group

#Label

Mike is Managing Partner at ICG. His 27-year career in the Information Technology industry includes positions in Accounting, Information Technology, and Human Resources. Before establishing Integrated Consulting Group in April 2000, Mike worked for Arthur Andersen and Prism Consulting Group.

ICG has consulted and partnered with such companies as CDI Corporation, IBM, British Petroleum, Marathon Oil, Cadbury Schweppes, and Walt Disney.

As an SAP Certified Consultant, Mike has led a variety of projects with an emphasis in Human Resources, Payroll, Time Management, Support, and Outsourcing.

YOUR HOST

AJ WHALEN
Director of Marketing & Partner Engagement, SpinifexIT North America 

Easy Reporter Payroll Essentials for ECP
Easy Reporter Payroll Essentials for ECP 1024 1024 SpinifexIT

Take advantage of Easy Reporter's powerful reporting capabilities to get real-time data from SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Payroll with Easy Reporter Payroll Reporting Essentials for ECP.

What you can do with Easy Reporter

Easy Reporter for ECP icon predelivered reports

The Easy Reporter Payroll Reporting Essentials for ECP comes with pre-delivered reports to help you execute efficient, error-free payroll

Easy Reporter for ECP icon customize

Have the flexibility to add or remove fields to meet your reporting requirements

Combine data across your ECP reports

Easy Reporter for On-premise ready to use

Use the pre-configured reports listed below from Day 1!

Easy Reporter for ECP icon full support

Enjoy full implementation support and training from our experts to get started immediately!

Easy Reporter for ECP icon pay to pay reports

Take your Payroll Reporting to the next level: Upgrade to the full Easy Reporter experience anytime!

This includes the following reports:

  • Pay to Pay Comparison (Gross/Net)
  • Pay to Pay Comparison All Wagetypes
  • Terminated Employees with Pay
  • Master Data Audit Details
  • Retro Analysis Report by Employee
  • Payroll Summary
  • Employee Posting Details
  • Recurring Payments Report
  • Hot Pack Testing reports

What our customers say about Easy Reporter

Learn more about Easy Reporter Payroll Reporting Essentials for ECP

Answers to some of the frequently asked questions about this rapid deployment solution

What kinds of reports are included?

The following reports are included in the essentials pack: Pay to Pay Comparison (Gross/Net), Pay to Pay Comparison All Wagetypes, Terminated Employees with Pay, Master Data Audit Details, Retro Analysis Report by Employee, Payroll Summary, Employee Posting Details, Recurring Payments Report, and Hot Pack Testing reports

How can I get access to these reports?

To see the power of Easy Reporter Payroll Essentials for ECP first hand, contact us at [email protected] for more information and a live demonstration.

Our highly experienced team can help get you started quickly and easily.

What kinds of organizations can benefit from this new product offer?

Organizations with up to 5,000 employees who are using SAP HR and Payroll and would like to increase their investment return in SAP by reducing manual efforts, empower their business users, and automate business processes around day to day reporting

How much is this package?

Pricing is designed to enable your organization to quickly move forward with a low-cost, yet very powerful reporting solution based on the number of employees in your organization. Please contact us at [email protected] to schedule a quick discovery call with one of our experts to learn how the Easy Reporter Payroll Essentials for ECP package can help you without breaking the bank!

See it in action

Easy-to-implement Rapid Deployment Solution

It takes just a day to get started!

Value for money

Small companies looking for an easy way to report on their SAP ECP data will find that Easy Reporter Payroll Reporting Essentials for ECP is a much cheaper, more efficient way than building their much needed reports from scratch.

Overview SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Payroll
SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Payroll
SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Payroll 1024 682 SpinifexIT

In this introduction to SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Payroll, learn about the cloud-based payroll system meant to handle global enterprise needs.

If you’re a payroll manager, finance professional or HR executive who is looking for a new payroll system, there are many choices in the market. One to consider is SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Payroll.

What is SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Payroll?

SuccessFactors Employee Central Payroll is a cloud-based payroll system meant to provide the breadth of functionality and global coverage enterprises need.

The core Employee Central Payroll system is built using the SAP Payroll engine, providing a reliable and proven engine for calculating the most complex of payrolls.

The Payroll Control Center front end brings pre-payroll and post-payroll processes, continuous data auditing, and payroll processing reporting and analytics to payroll administrators in a one-stop shop. At the time of writing, Employee Central Payroll supports 46 countries for payroll processing and localization support.

The Employee Central system is a prerequisite for implementing and using the Payroll system. So, this is a factor to consider if you are looking purely for a payroll system without changing your existing core HR system.

From a high level, Employee Central Payroll provides a number of important functions. It can run end-to-end, gross-to-net payroll, covering tax calculations, such as through partner product BSI TaxFactory in the U.S. It can print checks, remit payments, provide online employee pay slips and post payroll results to your financial system.

From a compliance and security perspective, Employee Central Payroll brings standard-delivered data formats, such as address, telephone, email, national ID and name. It provides fields for contracts and, in supported countries, the functionality to support local laws and reporting or other communication with local authorities. Examples of this include superannuation in Australia, e-filing of employees’ payments and deductions in the United Kingdom, and storing and reporting salary increase changes in Brazil.

Employee Central provides a way to manage and automate master data privacy and retention policies that uphold compliance with regional, federal, and local rules regarding data privacy.

It also includes Event Listener for Pre-Payroll Monitoring, which scans HR master data to identify any data changes. These are cross-checked against any open alerts by the system, and if any of the changes resolve an open alert, then the alert will be closed. This enables more streamlined payroll data monitoring and frees up time to focus elsewhere.

SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Payroll use cases

Vendors such as SAP, ADP and Ultimate Software are popular choices for payroll and provide a lot of functionality for running payroll in the United States, Canada and other countries. However, with many choices out there, it can be difficult to determine what system is best for your company.

Price might be a factor, but when it comes to payroll, it is often better to look at what features, functionality and compliance capabilities each payroll vendor provides. You may find yourself reviewing seven or eight different vendors before producing a shortlist. Sometimes, it is necessary to issue a request for information to identify which vendors to invite to a formal request for proposal process.

Employee Central Payroll is ideal for customers who are either global, complex or both. Typically, the base number for getting ROI on the implementation is about 1,000 employees in a country. In some cases, customers with fewer employees can get good ROI.

If your workforce has one or more unions — whether you have any collective bargaining agreements or not — then Employee Central Payroll would be a suitable option. It has an ability to handle the complexity of having specific rules and regulations defined by unions that are in addition to federal, state, local and regional laws.

If you have — or plan to have — all of your employees in Employee Central, Employee Central Payroll can serve as a global payroll option. The point-to-point integration between the two ensures that employee data from all countries can flow between the systems and can be monitored using the provided monitoring tools. No middleware integration is needed for Employee Central Payroll to use the master data in Employee Central for payroll processing.

If you want to fully outsource your payroll processing, you may wish to look at vendors that specialize in those particular services. However, some service providers do offer outsourced payroll processing for customers using Employee Central Payroll.

Reimplement your support and maintenance

SAP provides standard technical support for live systems through its SAP ONE Support Launchpad. The latest support packages — a collection of the latest legal requirements and corrections — are applied by raising a ticket through SAP ONE Support Launchpad. SAP also offers some premium support services for customers.

For payroll maintenance, applying patches and fixes, or business process outsourcing services, you can reach out to a variety of payroll service providers and systems integrators for support, depending on what you are looking for.

For ongoing government compliance, SAP has a team of more than 150 people that track and manage local compliance laws and regulations across numerous countries. SAP provides local legal changes for Employee Central Payroll for all supported countries. These legal changes can include such changes as new reporting requirements, tax rate changes and sick pay changes. These are provided as support packages, but you can also have an administrator apply them in Upgrade Center.

New features and functionality — as well as legal changes — are released every six months, usually in the second or fourth quarter. Urgent bug fixes are typically released on a weekly or biweekly basis. New features and legal changes can be applied using Upgrade Center in the system.

Reporting and analytics

Two of Employee Central Payroll’s weaker capabilities are its reporting and analytics. Reporting is limited to just payroll data — for example, worker, compensation and tax data — and cannot combine data from other systems, such as organizational objects or cost allocation objects. Based on your needs, you may need to augment functionality with a third-party product, like SpinifexIT.

Licensing

Employee Central Payroll uses a SaaS subscription model and is charged annually on a per-employee, per-year basis. For exact pricing, you should reach out to your local account executive at SAP.

Enterprise payroll capabilities

Employee Central Payroll is capable of handling significant complexity and provides a broad range of payroll functionality.

Here’s a list of some of that functionality:

  • Gross-to-net payroll;
  • Legal changes and localization, including country-specific reporting;
  • Tax forms, tax models and tax compliance at a country and local level;
  • Advances and deductions;
  • Retroactive calculations;
  • Payroll simulations;
  • Check printing;
  • Alerts for data errors or inconsistencies;
  • Data privacy and protection;
  • Payroll auditing;
  • Integration with finance systems for general ledger posting, time and attendance systems, pension providers and benefits providers;
  • Evaluation of time data for generating compensation data;
  • Unions and collective bargaining agreements;
  • Garnishments;
  • Analytics and KPIs;
  • Employee self-service; and
  • Mobile access through the SAP SuccessFactors Mobile application.

The Employee Central core HR system is a prerequisite of implementing Employee Central Payroll, and the two are tightly integrated.

Author

iXerv-President-Luke-Marson

Luke Marson

President, Americas
iXerv

This article is a repost from Tech Target.
Read it here.

Take your Employee Central Payroll system to the next level (Part 2)
Take your Employee Central Payroll system to the next level (Part 2) 1024 576 SpinifexIT

In this blog, we’ll step back to consider some of the challenges during implementation, both for existing on-premise customers deciding to migrate to Employee Central Payroll (ECP) and for new Customers planning to implement ECP.  

This blog will focus on Payroll Migration, but of course, you still need to implement Employee Central.

If you already have Employee Central implemented and connected to your on-premise solution, then the migration process could be much simpler as you may be able to just focus on the ECP side and know that the Employee Central configuration and setup is already there.

 

Moving from On-Premise? Implement, Reimplement or Migrate your Payroll

Many companies who are looking to move to Employee Central Payroll will be existing SAP On-Premise customers. If you fall into this category, you need to consider how much of your existing Payroll configuration and setup you would want to move to the Employee Central Payroll Solution.

SpinifexIT_April 2020 blog_Taking your Employee Central Payroll system to the next level part 2_Cost vs risk

Migrate your System

The intent of the migration is to move your configuration, and historical employee data (including payroll history) to the new Employee Central Payroll solution with the aim that it will run with minimal changes. This means less re-configuration, less testing and that you can continue to use your new system to report historical data.

Reimplement your Payroll

In some cases, customers may have areas that they have felt have always been a challenge. For example: There may be an old configuration you wish to remove, or you want to reconfigure some payroll rules to operate differently. 

This is often a perfect time to do this as you have a project team and can incorporate this work into the existing project. It is also lower risk as you are only changing some areas of the configuration.

Save yourself and your company hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars!

The best course of action is to begin planning now, so you can review all the options available to you. Part of this is learning the prerequisites you’ll need to support your project more efficiently.

Aside from the migration of the payroll configuration, there are many other areas to also consider. 

Some of these include:

– Will I migrate my prior history for the employees? For example: Do you move your payroll results, employee history, finance postings, year to date results into the new system?
– How do I best perform Parallel runs?
– Do I migrate my existing ABAP reports and other functionality into the new system?
– For any reports being migrated, how will I modify and maintain these into the future?
– Can all of my reports (Either custom reports or standard SAP reports) be executed from Employee Central, or by the Managers themselves?
– How will I cater for my Adhoc Requests that come up. Often we see customers go from 20-30 go live reports to hundreds in a period of 12 months. If you have adhoc requests, you want to know how you will cater for these?
– Will all your custom reports and manual reports be able to fit into the Payroll Control Center process?
– If I need additional Payroll Control Center checks, how can I add these?

Author

SpinifexIT Darren Souter

Darren Souter

SpinifexIT Founder & Global Architect

 

 

 
SpinifexIT April blog_Take your Employee Central Payroll system to the next level part 2 checklist image

If you need help assessing these questions further, feel free to talk to us, or even comment down below. We can schedule a quick discussion or even refer you to some of our customers who have used our solutions for their own implementations.

Ready to move to Employee Central Payroll?

The Easy Migration solution will help you de-risk and accelerate your migration to ECP with an integrated toolset that allows full configuration and data migration copies from On-Premise to ECP, reports to validate full payroll results, runs repeated payroll tests, and identifies data and configuration inconsistencies between source and target systems for corrections. 

SpinifexIT_April 2020 blog_Taking your Employee Central Payroll system to the next level part 2_Easy Migration

Easy Migration

Our Easy Migration solution helps you complete your ECP migration process 90% faster than traditional implementation times. It can help you:

  • Identify and migrate your current payroll configuration to Employee Central Payroll.
  • Copy current employee data and results into the new system, and
  • Run reconciliation reports fast using built-in reports, powered by our SAP-Certified reporting solution

Our Easy Migration solution is also 100% integrated with other SpinifexIT solutions so it is an easy step to transition to our other products if you have the need.

 

What if I have already implemented ECP or plan to remain on-premise for the moment?

If you have already moved to Employee Central Payroll, or are happy to just stay with your on-premise solution for the moment, this doesn’t mean that you cannot look to areas to improve.

About 90% or more of the customers who we speak to, already have Employee Central Payroll or SAP Payroll installed and running, and are looking to improve some of their day-to-day manual processes.

In this case, the SpinifexIT solutions can just be installed into your existing system.  The way that most customers then start to use the solutions is as follows:

  • Train on how to use the solutions – This is about 3-5 days training upfront
  • Identify the time-consuming processes that your team is doing, and then replace these with any of our 120 pre-delivered reports. You can also build custom reports to support your HR and Payroll information requirements. This immediately removes a lot of manual steps and starts to free up your team. Here is the YouTube case study.
  • New, ad hoc requests can be delivered through Easy Reporter. Reports can be scheduled and emailed out directly to the required person so it completely removes the need for manual processing.
  • If your payroll has Year End processes for Australia, USA or Canada, start to use our predefined Year End solutions.
  • From here, you can continue to replace your existing manual processes with the automated Easy Reporter steps.

Over a quick period, you will be able to automate the extraction, generation, and sending of your reports. Instead of spending a lot of time and effort manually building the perfect set of reports, your team can then focus on delivering a high-quality service to your customers.

In Summary

Employee Central Payroll is a powerful solution, but like most software solutions, will have areas that can be further streamlined. Whether this is during the implementation, streamlining payroll processes, report building, or reconciliation steps, there are always many ways to further take advantage of your ECP solution.

If you decide to walk the SpinifexIT path, you will find that we are not just a software solution that is dropped into your system and rarely used. 

Our team of expert consultants will work directly with your team right through the implementation and into go live to ensure you use the best practice methods from the start and build long-lasting processes, based on the best practices we have seen at hundreds of other customers.

The reporting and Payroll Control Center solution (discussed in Part 1) is just part of the SpinifexIT solution set, but if you are moving to Employee Central Payroll, this is a key building block for your journey. 

Along the way, you may have a need for our other solutions, and the good thing is that most of our solutions leverage off of Easy Reporter, so you are starting with the best-of-breed solution.

SpinifexIT solutions can be installed in a matter of hours into your system, but if you are using any of our partner’s hosted Employee Central Payroll or SAP Payroll Solutions, then our solutions are already available in their environments. Make sure to ask them about us!

As always, feel free to reach out to us at [email protected] for any questions.

On a side note, we hope you’re doing well, and that you and your loved ones are healthy, safe and well despite what the world is going through. We’re all in this together, and SpinifexIT will always be here to support you if you need help with our solutions. 

 
 
 
 

Stay connected!

Our North American team recently held a User Group Meeting for all SpinifexIT customers. Stay tuned for announcements, so you may join these online activities in the future!

Employee Central Payroll
Take your Employee Central Payroll system to the next level
Take your Employee Central Payroll system to the next level 1024 475 SpinifexIT

In this blog, we’ll provide insights on options you can take to save time and thousands of dollars in your payroll business. This includes our findings whilst speaking with our own customers when streamlining their Payroll process. 

It is always a challenge for a customer new to SAP Payroll to know some of the challenges they will encounter along the journey, so I am trying to highlight some of the areas that I know will come up during implementation and post go-live.

For 20 years, I’ve been working in and around the SAP payroll solution and have been building software that can streamline its processes from end to end.

Whilst overall, I would think that most customers would benefit from additional solutions to streamline the existing processes, I will provide a balanced viewpoint without necessarily talking about just software solutions.

Author

SpinifexIT Darren Souter

Darren Souter

SpinifexIT Co-Founder & Product Chief Technology Officer – Easy Suite

 

 

The SAP Customer’s Standard Journey

 

Now, let’s talk about the journey of a standard SAP customer.

 

SAP Customer Journey

 

SAP Customer Journey

 

Reporting takes backstage during the implementation process, but turns out to be a major requirement as time goes on. So, does this mean needing additional reporting solutions?

 

 

Let’s explore the standard reporting solutions and find out if it is enough to work with these.

 

 

Standard Employee Central Payroll Reports

Employee Central Payroll will come standard with many reports such as Superannuation Reports, Wagetype Reporter and Various Other pre-defined reports.

These are all useful reports, but they are generally hardcoded and cannot easily be altered.

Adhoc Query is a generic reporting tool that SAP provides, however this only reports specific data such as infotypes and does not combine this with Payroll or other Transactional Results.

This is often the starting place for reporting and we would recommend you understand the reports that are delivered out of the box.

 

People Analytics

This is a new Employee Central Reporting solution that sits on top of SAP Analytics Cloud. This is for reporting SuccessFactors data and replaces a number of the existing SuccessFactors reporting solutions.

At this time, this solution does not include Payroll Reporting.

People Analytics is a new solution and as of today, it is too early to indicate the overall value proposition.

 

Workforce Analytics or People Analytics – Advanced Edition

Workforce Analytics (Now known as People Analytics Advanced Edition) is a useful Management Analytic Solution, but is often more higher business level reporting.

Whilst this delivers a subset of Payroll Reports, these are often not the day to day reports the payroll team will require, but focused more on Management type reporting.

This solution is not generally used for day-to-day Payroll Reporting.

 

SAP Analytics Cloud

This solution allows you to build your own dashboards and user stories using data from various systems with powerful visualisation tools.

It would be possible to build your payroll reporting, but you need to consider how to get the data into this solution, and then how to cater for things like security, regular updates etc.

This requires reports to be purpose built and then updated with data.  Much like many Business Warehouse solutions, and Workforce Analytics, this is more of a management analytics solution.

 

ABAP Custom Reports

Within the Employee Central Payroll Solution, the Internal IT Team can build their own reports. These however require a specific skill set and often end up with fairly purpose built reports.

This is not a cost effective approach for most reporting needs.

 

Excel Reports

Most customers resort to using Excel or some other tool to extract data from Employee Central Payroll. You can include multiple data sources and merge them together to produce the reports you need.

This is a very manual process and often results in many complex spreadsheets that require an expert to maintain.

 

So many reports, so little time

 

Equipping your payroll team with the right tools and expertise upfront saves you a lot of time and many thousands, in some cases, millions of dollars.

 

Here’s where SpinifexIT can help you.

 

Employee Central Payroll

 

 

Our customers have found that SpinifexIT is not just “nice to have”, but a mandatory solution for their day-to-day work. Our accelerator is powered by our SAP-certified Easy Reporter solution, our Payroll Control Center (PCC) Accelerator add-on, and a couple of localized solutions for Australian (Easy STP) and North American (Easy Balance) payroll reconciliation, and more!

 

 

PCC Accelerator

Implement your PCC without any additional code creation

Run reconciliation reports using Easy Reporter’s pre-delivered content and your custom content

Easy Reporter

Easy-to-use drag-and-drop interface so you can make your own report versions

Building reports from scratch takes minutes, not days!

Automate and pre-schedule report generation and distribution

Localized Reports

Take advantage of bundled solutions for reconciling your Australian STP process or your North American year-end Payroll activities

 

 

  • Purpose build Payroll Day to Day and Compliance Reports that can be run out of the box
  • Adhoc report capabilities to build the reports you need in minutes
  • Distribution Capabilities that can be used for sending reports out to managers, departments or even external interfaces such as Deduction Vendors
  • Full Integration into the Payroll Control Center solution as well as Employee or Manager
  • Self Service Capabilities for any report you want to make available
  • Additional Functionality delivered out of the box that can be used to streamline implementation of Employee Central Payroll and even Testing the Regular upgrades.

 

In part 2 of this blog, we’ll be featuring customer case studies where SpinifexIT solutions have been implemented and how clients have considered it a success. We’re also including a checklist you can refer to whilst planning your implementation.

 

 

Let’s continue the conversation!

Subscribe to SpinifexIT to know the latest about our solutions!

Email us at [email protected]
to book a quick 15 – 30 minute discovery call to learn more about how you can take your Employee Central Payroll system to the next level.

 

Spinifexit 2018.r3 release
Limited Release Coming Soon: 2018.R3!
Limited Release Coming Soon: 2018.R3! 1000 667 SpinifexIT

Improve your on-premise to cloud transition processes with SpinifexIT's 2018.R3

Our third solutions update for this year goes live on November 19, 2018. This release will be available for a few pre-identified customers first before its full public release. 

For any questions related to the rollout, please contact our Customer Care team.  

Below are the most requested updates we’ve made available for you:

Easy Reporter
Updates

Improving successfactors integration

Connect to SuccessFactors systems via SAP Cloud Integration

Include new Time Off Reporting Fields within Employee Central to include Time Off Absences, Leave Balances, Attendance records and more

NEW FEATURES TO ENSURE GDPR COMPLIANCE

Report on SAP system logs (most requested!) to read access logs and transactions run by users

WEB REPORTING ENHANCEMENTS

Reporting performance with regards to loading reports using the Web Reporter has been improved with more features added to the Additional Selection tab.

A new capability to add Data Input Fields to a report or document selection screen under the tab "Report Parameters" has also been added. *** Performance improvements, additional parameters (2nd paragraph) details can follow

Payroll Control Center
Integrated Solution

ENHANCED USABILITY

A new option to call SuccessFactors Employee Central when investigating errors has been added. This can be accessed within the Payroll Error Solution screen.

The new enhancements to be delivered will also enable Easy Reporter reports to be linked into the payroll processing functionality. The results of these reports can also be stored for future references.

Strato

New features to cover more successfactors modules

Aside from easily creating Total Compensation Documents using your SAP Payroll's latest data, Strato can also help you create well-designed Pixel Perfect Talent Cards including your latest SuccessFactors Talent and Employee Profile data.

additional custom data source

You can now upload CSV files to be used as a catalogue while creating new documents or new fields.

Introducing:
Easy Single Touch

Improve your stp reporting and reconciliation

Along with the new STP Solution from SAP, we're releasing Easy STP at NO COST to all existing Easy Payment Summaries customers. Learn more about Easy STP here.

Easy Clone

MAJOR ENHANCEMENTS FOR CLONING SUCCESSFACTORS DATA

7 shiny new updates are in place to make Employee Central data cloning and scrambling a breeze. This includes new scramble rules and customisation options, the option to include data retrieval for non-key fields, and some additional Admin options to keep this process fool-proof.

Additional Resources

Visit our Customer Care Portal

View the complete set of release notes and updates by signing up, if you haven't yet.

Join our webinars

We will be hosting two webinars for 2018.R2 on the following schedules:
ANZ/APAC: TBD
US/EU: December 6, 2018.

FAQ

It's so easy to upgrade to 2018.R3. We'll answer your top release related questions here.

NOTE: 2018.R3 will be released incrementally, first to a select group of customers, prior to a full public release.

Two ways. You can e-mail us at [email protected] and ask for an upgrade, or file a ticket using our Customer Care Portal. If you’re using one of our on-premise products, the update will be in the form of a transport. If you’re using Strato, the update will be included the next time you log in. 

Of course. You can do a one time big time update rather than updating to the next version after yours. It’s easier and more practical that way. 

SpinifexIT supports three active solution versions. If you’re still on 2017.R2, an upgrade is in order.

We’ve enumerated the top requested enhancements only, but we’re really delivering over 50 new features and enhancements.  You can also view our public release notes by visiting our customer care portal. 

Great! We highly recommend that you browse our solutions section, and if you have any questions about these, don’t hesitate to send us the note using the form on the page’s footer. We can arrange for a quick call and demo. You can also e-mail us straight at [email protected].

Let’s Jump in the SAC But Keep One Foot Out of the Covers
Let’s Jump in the SAC But Keep One Foot Out of the Covers 150 150 SpinifexIT

Sap Analytics Cloud (SAC) Status

SAP has done it again.  It’s made us all rethink what we are currently doing as we wait patiently until they have a fully integrated product.  I’m of course talking about SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) which is part of their Unified Reporting strategy that will allow customers to combine data from all SAP systems including Success Factors.  I’ve written at my website recently about reporting in 2018 and this is kind of a follow-up to it.  I’ll start with the cynical approach to this with the “it’s about time” dig, but in truth, I’ve been doing HCM reporting with SAP tools for over 10 years.  It’s hard.  For SAP to finally take on this initiative with its daunting requirements I’m sure took years of planning and I’d probably shed a few tears of dread if I were sitting in their conference rooms designing how this is all going to work.  I say years of planning, because none of this works without HANA.  When they decided to build HANA, I have to imagine this was one of the use cases for building it.

What I’m finding in the market though is a polarizing effect everytime SAP announces something with the roadmap in its infancy.  To SAP’s credit, I’ve seen more innovation in this product since it launched than many of their prior endeavors. They are constantly trying to make it better, or in their case, the best – and it will get there.  The effect that it has on customers, however, is the old wait and see mentality. “Should we purchase now, no wait, on the roadmap 6 months from now is the feature we might need.  Let’s wait until they launch it and then see how the feedback is on it”.  Wash rinse and repeat.  What I’m going to try to implore upon you is not to wait – start piloting the application as it does have its merits.  

Let’s start this journey by talking about what SAP currently offers.  I won’t go in deep into the current Success Factors reporting, others have already done so.  In fact, read this article by our friends at iXerv.  It covers pretty much what you get with Success Factors.  You can also read mine if you want a shorter version .

If we look back at the ECC side of the house we still have our good old Ad-hoc Query, SQ01 – Abap Query for HR, and then point solution tools to get data out of your module of choice, Wage Type Reporter (Payroll), PT_QTA10 (Absence quotas) etc…etc.  Again, there are novels of information on these.

These tools provide you the data to do your own analysis.  You can download whatever you like, shove it in a warehouse, excel, access, your choice, and created your own analytics.  The problem of course is every time you want to produce an up to date version, your downloading the data all over again. Not super-efficient.

Let’s All Get in the SAC Together

When I look at a reporting maturity model, I see the SAC as the highest level of reporting.  If you go from reactive reporting, to proactive reporting, to metrics, to planning and finally to predictive analytics, SAC is at the top of the game.  SAC is going to bring us out of the Excel analytics that every HR department is doing on a monthly/quarterly/annual basis. It’s providing on-demand analytics that allow you to monitor your key business metrics to see if your business is performing to the levels that you desire.  SAP has other analytics products out there: BI, Lumira, but what I can see the benefit of SAC is this: It’s going to link up to your systems with ease.  Figure 1 shows all the systems SAC can speak to currently.  

Figure 1

To clarify on the slide, live data lives in the source system.  SAC reads it on the fly to get your data. Imported data will be brought out of your system into the cloud.  Currently, one of the pros of using Imported data is, it’s easier to create your own datasets of data mashed up against other imported data.  Apparently, there are still some limitations of mashing up live data with imported data, but SAP has said it is resolving that soon.

Now we must understand the types of questions planning and predictive analytics helps us solve to understand what value SAC brings to our organization.  I’ll use some examples that were shown at SAPPHIRE.

  • Are we attracting hires by Ethnicity? (Recruiting)
  • Are we hiring a diverse workforce? (Onboarding)
  • Are we promoting across Ethnicities? (Employee Central/ECC)

SAP Sapphire Demonstration

Figure 2

With these metrics, as Chief of Diversity, I can get instant insight as to how my plans are performing, which areas of the company need my involvement, and get an overall health of workforce sliced by any dimension I see fit.  SAC can also, based on prior data, predict where your trends for these metrics will go in the future. So right now, it might look like region X is not performing, but looking at a predictive trend line into the future (not shown in the image) we can see that they are on the upside, hence I should focus my time on regions where my metrics are trending downward.  This is invaluable information for leaders and managers but also invaluable to analysts.  Analysts spend countless hours putting these types of charts and predictions together, only to have to do them all over again next month.  With SAC you have the build it once, use forever type deployment.

The SAC is Nice and Toasty, But Keep a Foot Out of the Covers

For the executives and managers of the world, I see SAC as a no-brainer.  Even if you sit and tell yourself “we’ve invested so much time in WorkForce Analytics, or Lumira or BI”, know that the SAC is going to have all of this available in the platform.  Some of it is already here and some of it is coming.  Always check the roadmaps at https://www.sap.com/products/roadmaps.html and watch the webinars. This is the future of SAP reporting and it’s something you should get on board with.  Coming from a guy who works for an SAP software Partner that does reporting, take this advice with more than a grain of salt.  If you’re a leader, get a subscription, grab an analyst, layout a one-month plan of analytics you want and point them in right direction.  You might be surprised with what they can accomplish in a short period of time.

However, if this is the greatest thing since sliced bread for managers, it still lacks some functionality and some of these use cases may never be included in the software or can be arduous to build.  SAP is great at always showing us it’s prize pony when it talks about innovation, but there is always the dark underbelly of HCM that only us on-the-ground analysts understand:  Data consistency and auditing.  This term is so broad in scope, I will just provide a few examples below of what I’ve come across in the past.  These are of course problems that every customer has and some a customer created for themselves, but remember customers of course buy SAP because of all the standards it provides, but you also buy it because you can customize it to your business processes.  The below examples are ECC based, however I’m sure those of you on Employee Central/ECC Hybrid can relate.

For example:

  1. Do I have Rehire Dates that are before my Hire Date on infotype 0041?
    1. Human Error
  2. We have a Z-table in ECC based on payroll area that stores my annual merit effective dates and I need to ensure that the base pay infotype was loaded correctly based on those dates.
    1. Customization problem.
  3. Who is reaching there 401K limits as I need to start their deferred comp plans?
    1. Seen everywhere in US as config is not always correct.
  4. I work in Wisconsin and I have this work schedule, so I’m only allowed to be in Payscale groups 12345 and 12346.
    1. Business rule localized to a customer process.
  5. I need to submit to a union by region all the hours and types of hours their employees worked?
    1. The dreaded union reconciliation.

The examples I listed above are actual examples of things I’ve worked on for customers recently.  Looking at the list I’m sure you can imagine some fun things you’ve had to reconcile in the past. And what do we use to get this data if you just have standard SAP tools?

SAP Ad-Hoc Query

SuccessFactors Ad-Hoc Query and ORD

SAP Wage Type Reporter

You look at some the use case examples and think, well actually most of these we could put into Payroll Control Center (PCC).  And you’re right. It all boils down to budget and priority. If I have an analyst who can put this together, why spend the time and the money to put some of this in PCC.  The answer is, you should always be improving your processes, but I digress and that’s a philosophical discussion for another day. (Also, PCC adoption is low. Another philosophical discussion.) The first four items I listed could be done in PCC, however the 5th is kind of an ad-hoc request that we are all too familiar with.  Someone, somewhere either in our company or outside our company requests a bit of data that we do not have readily available. So, we use the standard SAP tools to mash this data together and provide them there report.

As long as I’ve been doing this, there is no way around ad-hoc requests.  They will always be the fly in the ointment to any reporting strategy. This is where the SAC falls down.

When I go to customers and we define what they are looking for 20% of it is metrics, 40% is operational reporting like payroll, 20% is data consistency and the last 20% of the work is ad-hoc requests.  It’s typically 20% of what they are producing, but in some cases, it can be 40% of the effort.  Keep this in mind when you decide to move to the SAC.  

To end this post, move to the SAC.  It’s actually really neat, fairly intuitive and for things like basic Gender or Hiring metrics you can have those up and running quickly.  I built a gender dashboard in a day. Don’t think however that SAC solves all your reporting. It doesn’t. You will still need tools whether they are standard SAP delivered or 3rd party to assist with your ad-hoc questions, data remittance type reports and master data consistency audits.

Happy Reporting!

About the Author:

Stephen Gallo is an Employee Central Certified Consultant employed by SpinifexIT. Over the past 11 years, he has been an SAP customer, an SAP HCM implementation consultant and the Product Architect of North America for the SpinifexIT Suite of products.