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Easy Reporter – More than just a reporting solution
 Easy Reporter – More than just a reporting solution 1024 683 SpinifexIT

Easy Reporter - More than just a reporting solution

Experience seamless data integration and diverse export possibilities.

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When discussing Easy Reporter, the conversation naturally revolves around reporting needs. In most cases, this is aimed at addressing the immediate requirements of the Payroll Team, including Reconciliation, Payroll Audits, or General Company Reporting.

However, for many customers, there is also a need to integrate and distribute information to other areas, such as SAP Analytics Cloud (or other BI Solutions), create interface files for external transmission, or enable internal consumption of these reports via Employee Self Service or Managers Self Service.

Easy Reporter offers much more

Over the years, Easy Reporter has evolved into much more than just a reporting solution. Many of our customers now use it to integrate data into their own internal systems or even external solutions.

The advantage for our customers is that Easy Reporter provides access to the majority of the data they may need to export into external systems. This includes not only the complex tables within the SAP environment but also SuccessFactors Data, and the ability to import data from external files. Moreover, the HR or Payroll Team can build the reports themselves. Once they have the data in a report, setting up the required export file becomes a fairly simple process.

This blog aims to provide an overview of some of the available output options.

What are the output options?

When it comes to consuming the reports, the first and most common option for our customers is to run them directly. All our reports are built within SAP, and our customers can use the Easy Reporter interface directly from SAPGUI, SAP Business Client, or WebGui. Typically, these users are within the HR or Payroll Team itself, and they have access to the complete solution, including the creation of various interface options.

Secondly, many of our customers want to share reports with different teams within the company. For this purpose, we offer a Web Fiori solution for Manager Self Service or Employee Self Service, enabling managers or employees to access any reports they need.

The final area involves exporting the report data from Easy Reporter. Here, there are several diverse options available.

Easy Reporter – Import & Export options

  • Emailing the Report: Any report can be emailed to either an internal or external person within the company. The email can be sent with the report data as an attachment in any of the formats listed below.
  • Saving to a File: Any report can also be written to a local directory on the SAP server (or Internal Network if accessible from the SAP system) or to a local PC file. This can be useful if it needs to be imported into another system or consumed by another team.
  • oData API: The Easy Reporter reports can be called as a SAP Service. This allows calling reports and returning the data in oData format. This is typically the case in scenarios such as:
  • SAP Analytics Cloud: When data needs to be imported into SAP Analytics Cloud, the oData API can be used.
  • Excel or PowerBI: Similar to Excel or PowerBI, both of these can be pointed to the Easy Reporter API.
  • SAP Cloud Integration (CPI): Starting from our upcoming release (2023.R2), Easy Reporter will be able to connect to the CPI solution hosted on the Business Technology Platform (BTP). Any Easy Reporter report can create an external file, which can then be passed to an iFlow on the BTP platform for transmission.

File Formats

When sending a file, there are many formats available, including:
  • Excel XLSX
  • Tab Delimited
  • Comma Delimited
  • Interface (Header, Body, Footer)
  • XML
  • And many more

Summary

As seen from the information above, the Easy Reporter solution offers more than just reporting capabilities. It not only provides access to the majority of the HXM and SuccessFactors data sources but also offers multiple output formats for consumption by other solutions.

This is one of the advantages of Easy Reporter that makes it the most versatile solution for SAP HXM customers.

Darren Souter

Co-Founder & Product
Chief Technology Officer - Easy Suite

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The Significance of Payroll for Business and CEOs
 The Significance of Payroll for Business and CEOs 1024 683 SpinifexIT

The Significance of Payroll for Business and CEOs

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Payroll is the process of calculating and distributing employee compensation, including salaries, wages, benefits, and bonuses.

It is a critical component of any company, directly influencing the financial stability of employees and potentially affecting the company’s overall performance. Below are several significant reasons why payroll holds a vital place in a business, and its CEO.

Why is payroll accuracy so crucial to a business:

  • Financial management: Payroll often represents a major portion of a company's expenses, and precise payroll information is essential for financial management and forecasting. Analyzing payroll data can assist businesses in recognizing labour cost trends and formulating strategic decisions on employee numbers and compensation.
  • Reduce risks, increase compliance: As mentioned earlier, payroll must comply with various laws and regulations. If payroll is inaccurate, it can lead to compliance issues and legal problems. CEOs are ultimately responsible for ensuring the company follows all laws and regulations, and accurate payroll processing is a key aspect of this responsibility.
  • Employee satisfaction and retention: Accurate and timely payroll processing ensures that employees are paid correctly and on time, which can boost morale and improve job satisfaction. Satisfied employees are more likely to remain with the company, reducing turnover and associated costs.
  • Reporting and analysis: Payroll data can be used to generate reports and analyze employee performance, productivity, and compensation. This information can help businesses identify areas for improvement and make data-driven decisions.

Now let’s talk about why payroll accuracy is crucial to a CEO:

  • Financial management: Inaccurate payroll can lead to errors in financial planning and budgeting, which can have a significant impact on the company's bottom line. CEOs rely on accurate payroll data to make informed decisions about staffing levels and compensation.
  • Reduce risks, increase compliance: Payroll processing must conform to several laws and regulations, such as minimum wage, tax, and labour laws. Noncompliance with these regulations can lead to legal repercussions, fines, and penalties.
  • Employee satisfaction and retention: Inaccurate payroll can lead to underpayment or overpayment of employees, which can cause dissatisfaction and reduce employee retention. Inaccurate payroll can also cause delays in payment, which can cause financial stress for employees. A CEO wants to ensure that their employees are happy and motivated to work, and accurate payroll processing is essential to achieving this goal.
  • Reputation: Inaccurate payroll can harm a company's image, making it challenging to hire and retain talented employees. CEOs understand the significance of employee trust and strive to create a reputation for their company as a fair and ethical employer. Accurate payroll management is a crucial component of maintaining this reputation

In summary, payroll is an essential aspect of any business, and accurate payroll processing is crucial for compliance, employee satisfaction, financial management, and reputation. CEOs have a responsibility to ensure that payroll is accurate, as it directly impacts the success of the company and the well-being of employees.

Mat Katakis

Chief Operating Officer

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Customer Mandate “Move entirely away from ABAP Dependency”
 Customer Mandate “Move entirely away from ABAP Dependency” 1024 683 SpinifexIT

Customer Mandate

“Move entirely away from ABAP Dependency”

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I recently heard a quote for an existing SpinifexIT customer, who recently purchased our Easy Payroll Control Center solution.

The Project Manager involved said ‘We have a mandate now to move entirely away from ABAP dependency’.

Whilst I’ve been an ABAP developer for over 20 years, I also can see the rationale. These days, I see many customers who are looking at what to do with their ABAP customization that they have built over the last few decades.

This is especially the case when customers are taking on a system upgrade to S/4HANA or even Employee Central/Employee Central Payroll. With these migrations, there are often decision points on whether to migrate current custom code, or to leave it behind.

Sometimes the code needs a redesign

Often though, it isn’t just a decision on whether to move the code or not. In many cases, there are scenarios where we see the need for redesign of existing ABAP code. Some common cases we are seeing include:

  • Customers upgrading to Employee Central and need data from Employee Central being imported into existing reports
  • When implementing the Payroll Control Center (PCC) and the current reports don’t work with the Decluster results
  • Customers who have moved from SAPGUI to Fiori views, such as the PCC, but their existing reports are not Fiori enabled
  • Customers who have moved away from SAPGUI (Such as Employee Central Users) but are not happy with the WebGui look and Feel

What are the alternatives?

For many customers, that code that they have built over the years, is also very similar to some of the commercially available products that you see on the SAP store. I would highly recommend checking these out before completely deciding on whether to take on a large project to re-engineer your functionality, or even build new functionality.

I might be biased (I’m a co-founder of SpinifexIT), but after working with building Addon software for the last 20 years, I have seen the value that this can bring to many customers, without them having to take on the IT burden with additional technical debt.

For many of the key tasks around SAP HXM/SuccessFactors, we purposely look to build out robust solutions for many of the most common areas that customers often need additional functionality. More than just solving the problem you might have today, we also take on the responsibility of adding functionality to make our tools work as SAP evolves.

Take for example our Easy Reporter solution.  This has now been available for nearly 20 years, but over this time, we have seen constant evolvements as SAP changes.  With the constant need for additional data sources inside of SAP, the addition of SuccessFactors, with the Payroll Control Center Decluster reporting, and then working through various Employee Self Service / Manager Self Service solutions over the years, our customers have been able to keep up with this without needing a development team. SpinifexIT simply supplies a new release every 6 months.  

As an example: Our latest upcoming release has brought out a complete new Fiori front end for Easy Reporter report execution.

Use your ABAP team to differentiate your business

I’m not saying to go and fire your ABAP team tomorrow. But, having them constantly making small modifications or additional versions of reports to meet the business needs, isn’t the best use of their time.

My suggestion is to keep a core team of developers on hand, we use them in areas that truly can differentiate a customer. Having an ABAP team build reports or other functionality that can be brought off the shelf doesn’t make sense. Not only is it costly and time consuming, in most cases it also won’t have as much functionality.

Using that same team to build functionality that truly differentiates the customer from their competitors or makes them more efficient though, makes sense. For example: A customer who has a unique type of business that needs additional screens or functionality to enhance that business makes sense to build that, as there is likely nothing commercially available.

Darren Souter

Co-Founder & Product
Chief Technology Officer - Easy Suite

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First looks S/4 HANA 2022 including SAP HXM
 First looks S/4 HANA 2022 including SAP HXM 1024 683 SpinifexIT

S/4HANA 2022 including SAP HXM - First looks

Good news for customers who want to keep
SAP HXM or Payroll longer

S/4 HANA 2022 including SAP HXM – First looks

Good news for customers who want to keep SAP HXM or Payroll longer

Many of you likely know, SAP previously announced their “End of Life” dates for the current SAP ECC solutions. This is 2027 with extended maintenance up to 2029. 

Previously, the only option for customers seeking a long-term Payroll solution was to switch to the Employee Central Payroll (ECP) option.

At the same time, many customers have been migrating their core ERP solution to the S/4HANA release.  Payroll, including HXM, can be  installed into this environment using a compatibility pack, but it would require installing the EHP 8 version into the system.

Here comes S/4HANA 2022 with SAP HXM Embedded

SAP has recently released the S/4HANA 2022 release, which now includes SAP HXM integrated into its core package. This provides customers moving to S/4HANA with a simpler landscape and upgrade options. Customers will no longer have to use compatibility packs or go through separate upgrade processes.

This also means that SAP HXM is now part of the standard SAP supported solution until 2040. This allows customers who are not quite ready to upgrade to SuccessFactors to continue utilizing this solution in the foreseeable future.

“With SAP extending the HXM solution and making it available on S/4HANA up until 2040 gives the customers the most flexibility over the coming years. Customers have the option to maintain their current Payroll and HR systems, and replace parts or all of their HR functionality with SuccessFactors at a time that suits their business needs. SpinifexIT solutions enhance the capabilities of standard SAP HXM and SuccessFactors, enabling customers to continue take advantage of their existing HXM solution with specialized solutions for reporting, document generation, data copying, and implementation/migration tailored to HXM and SuccessFactors.”

Darren Souter

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

What is the difference between the ECC Version and S/4 HANA 2022?

Well, other than providing the HXM solution, which includes most of the commonly used features such as Payroll, Employee Infotypes, Organizational Data, Time Evaluation and more, there is not much new. This is primarily a technical delivery, but it allows for upgrades with minimal changes.

As part of this delivery,the transactions, tables, code, etc. remain largely unchanged. Over time, it may receive additional enhancements ahead of the ECC version of SAP, however, the majority of SAP’s product development efforts will continue to be directed towards cloud solutions such as SuccessFactors. 

In addition, certain advanced features such as the Payroll Center, which previously required separate installation, are now included in the core delivery.

This also means that SAP HXM is now part of the standard SAP supported solution until 2040. This allows customers who are not quite ready to upgrade to SuccessFactors to continue utilizing this solution in the foreseeable future.

SpinifexIT Solutions on S/4HANA 2022

To support our customers, we will also be setting up a complete S/4HANA landscape for Development and Support. As part of our 2023.R1 release, we will be collaborating with SAP to certify it on the S/4HANA 2022 release. 

In the next few months of 2023, SpinifexIT will release a S/4HANA specific release.  This release will include new features for customers who are migrating to S/4HANA. Easy Reporter, in particular, will have a new user interface that is Fiori-enabled and aligned with the S/4HANA design. Additionally, the default reporting capabilities for decluster tables from the Payroll Control Center will be included to take advantage of the HANA performance. We are committed to continue to enhance this version and align our other solutions with the HANA version in the future.

Customers Upgrading to S/4HANA 2022

While the standard SAP upgrade process and SUM Tool (SAP Upgrade Manager) will apply to many customers, those looking to maximize the benefits of migration may choose to use the SpinifexIT Migration Solutions. These solutions allow for customers to perform tasks such as consolidation of naming conventions, deletion of unused configuration, and selective migration of employees of payroll history. Whether you want to streamline your configuration or just move the latest decade of payroll data, the migration solution can help you achieve those goals.

The SpinifexIT solutions, Easy Migration and Easy Go Live, are designed for this purpose.. Infact, during our internal testing, we found that these solutions made the migration process extremely efficient. For example, by using these solutions, we were able to quickly copy the Australian Configuration and data for 20 employees, including historical payroll results, infotypes, and organizational data, to the new S/4HANA system. Within just two hours of setting up the test system, we were able to run payroll and validate it against our ECC 6 EHP system, where the configuration and data originated. This highlights the ease and speed of our migration solutions.  You should discuss this possibility with your implementation partner on using these solutions as part of the migration.

The Easy Suite solutions can be used not only for migrating and implementing SAP HXM, but also for day-to-day operations. While many of our customers are familiar with the capabilities of the Easy Suite, they may not be aware that we also offer migration solutions to speed up the migration process. These solutions can help you to make the transition to SAP HXM as smooth and efficient as possible.

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Shortcuts to Payroll Reporting with SpinifexIT Solutions on SAP Store 
 Shortcuts to Payroll Reporting with SpinifexIT Solutions on SAP Store  1024 754 SpinifexIT

Unlock the shortcuts
to Payroll Reporting.
Discover Easy Reporter.

SAP’s spotlight blog featuring SpinifexIT’s flagship reporting solution for SAP Payroll, SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central, and Employee Central Payroll.

Unlock the shortcuts
to Payroll Reporting.
Discover Easy Reporter.

SAP’s spotlight blog featuring SpinifexIT’s flagship reporting solution for SAP Payroll, SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central, and Employee Central Payroll.

Shortcuts to Payroll Reporting with SpinifexIT Solutions on SAP Store
By Rajiv Nema, SAP Digital Commerce
View the original post here
Undoubtedly one of the most refreshing aspects of working with our partners on SAP Store is the sheer simplicity they often bring to everyday business tasks. For example, take Easy Reporter by SpinifexIT, a solution for HR and payroll departments. Easy Reporter works with SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Payroll, SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central, and SAP ERP Human Capital Management (HCM) to bring together payroll data for reporting. As a result, a task that could take days is done in minutes. 
Darren

“Payroll data typically resides in multiple systems, and the SAP software is sophisticated and multifaceted. Our solution merges all that data and calculates it for reporting. It’s designed for end users, who need only the Easy Reporter interface to create their reports; no IT skills required.”  

Darren Souter

SpinifexIT Co-Founder & Product Chief Technology Officer (Easy Suite) 

Easy Reporter comes with prewritten report templates that can be used “off the shelf” or as a baseline template. Business users can generate their own formats without coding and make changes on the fly to best suit their needs. “For companies with a lot of complex payroll variables – those that are unionized, for example, or rely heavily on contract labor – this can streamline processes and help them realize efficiencies,” he remarked. In these cases, extensive variabilities in work categories, payment rates, tax implications, and so on significantly complicate reporting. And the target customers? “Any enterprise that uses SAP software for payroll and HR processes.”    

Get Easy Reporter and explore the rest of SpinifexIT’s solutions for SAP and SAP SuccessFactors
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Get Easy Reporter and explore the rest of SpinifexIT’s solutions for SAP and SAP SuccessFactors
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From Records to Reports: A Single Streamlined Solution

A typical customer of SpinifexIT starts with around 30 reports that they identify to help them run their business. But, as their business evolves and more reporting needs become apparent, customers often scale and build hundreds of reports within 12 months, helping them deliver value and information across their enterprise. It truly streamlines their ability to access and distribute data. 

Based in Melbourne, SpinifexIT has hundreds of customers throughout Australia, North America, Europe, and APAC. The company began back in 2003 when Darren and his colleague Darren Pithie – the two Darrens – recognized that their consulting clients were all building pretty much the same reports. “They were working in silos and creating overhead for IT, who had to maintain the software and handle change requests,” he remembered. “We knew we could deliver a product for everyone, covering the basic requirements and adding more functionality. Several of our customers were glad to work with us to create and evolve the product. After six or seven years of working nights and weekends, we decided to go on our own.”

They came up with a name using “Spinifex”, a hardy desert grass, “because we’re really tough.”

Since then, the company has grown to 100+ employees based primarily in Melbourne and the Philippines, with sales and consulting offices in the U.S. and Europe.

Products have expanded to include Easy Migration for SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Payroll, which helps customers migrate to the cloud, and Easy Go Live for SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Payroll to simplify implementation. In addition, employees can use Easy Help Desk for SAP ERP HCM for troubleshooting and addressing inquiries quickly. Other options from SpinifexIT available on SAP Store include add-ons for document distribution, data anonymization, and region-specific functionality.

“Customers usually start with Easy Reporter because reporting is the most time-consuming process,” Darren noted, “and then add other relevant options as needed.” 

SpinifexIT was along for the ride when SAP acquired SuccessFactors about 10 years ago. The team gradually incorporated SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central into the reporting engine, transitioning to the cloud while retaining and improving the integration with SAP Payroll Processing
on-premise.

Collaboration with the Ecosystem: A Calculated Strategy

One key growth strategy for SpinifexIT, Darren told me, has been collaborating with SAP’s ecosystem of partners. Having been part of that ecosystem for most of their careers, working with related companies in a technical capacity with SAP payroll software, that’s come naturally – and has been entirely intentional. “SAP’s partners frequently take on the presales role, managing implementations, and helping customers in an advisory capacity in many different regions. Often, other partners reach out to us to join forces on the customer’s behalf.” As for SAP Store, he said, “Our visibility has increased significantly, which has accelerated the number of opportunities we get from customers globally, and it continues to build momentum.”

Why not check out some of the great partner solutions on SAP Store, starting with Easy Reporter?