A few months have passed since the official announcement of
S/4 HANA, and during SapphireNOW 2015 SAP executive held the Cloud Edition to
baptism. Guides, reviews have been published, and analysts offered their
opinions. Then in June, during the HR2015 conference in Nice, a specific
announcement covered S/4 HANA and HCM platform(s) options and go forward
offerings.
But I still wonder: from the HCM point of view, is it hype,
or is it real?
Understand what is S/4 HANA
After more than 40 years of focused, continued developments
to bring to reality what is arguably today the most complete suite of
Enterprise Business Software on the market, SAP has taken a hard look at two
issues:
·
on one side, the massive amount of data
accumulated in storage has turned accessing and extracting it into a true
challenge
·
on the other hand, process complexity has
reached a zenith, requiring very extensive deployment projects and deep
expertise – technical and business alike.
While the original SAP’s value proposition was being an
integrated suite (with all pieces built in the same data format and structure),
this was lost with the addition of multiple mySAP complementary modules, such as EIC, CRM, SCM
and others - outside of the “ECC” core; in fact, from the HCM perspective, even
the Organizational Management (“OM”) module introduced the need for an internal
integration that made many data manipulations complex and required extensive
expertise.
With the launch of HANA, the recent in-memory database
brought forward by SAP and heralded by SAP’s founder Hasso Plattner, a new
generation of applications has become
possible. HANA is the foundation of the new version of the ERP, first with the
development of Simple Finance, and now with its extension into a full suite of
functional applications, with more to come in the future.
R/3 was a new product compared to the mainframe-based R/2; S/4
is also a completely new tool. It carries through much of the same data
semantics existing in the SAP Business Suite we well know, with a simplified
data model, eliminating the complexities related to the previous database
performance and technical limitations.
What about HCM?
Unlike all other functional parts of the Business Suite, SAP’s
HCM has found its next generation tooling set in the SuccessFactors Suite. It
is a pure-cloud, SaaS product that will not be made available on premise;
similarly, there doesn’t seem to be a place within the S/4 suite for the
complex and never ending tables and data structures that made SAP HCM
infinitely flexible and complex.
HR data fields exist in S/4 HANA, and are able to support
the integration of tools as well as the end to end processes to Finance and
other functions – leveraging the popular concept called a “mini-master”, but it
is important to understand that there is no HR Data Management, nor any HR
Processes built in S/4; in other words, no transactional layer.
Adding to the situation is the fact that ECC 6.0 mainstream
maintenance has been extended multiple times
- most recently until 2025, giving a good visibility and planning time.
So when we look to the options customers have to choose from
in SAP landscape, we can only outline:
Option 1: Move to
the public cloud with your HCM requirements by leveraging the SuccessFactors
modules. The solution set provided is extensive and growing every quarters with
multiple developments; the missing functionalities are being considered for
development and prioritized, while being covered in the interim by strong
partnerships with external providers. From the Cloud HCM solution, extend the set
with productized integration available to S/4 HANA cloud edition; an
alternative productized integration with S/4 HANA on premise is being
finalized, expected availability before end of 2015. It remains a fact that in
this case, a separate solution will have to be found for Payroll, either by
using the EC Payroll (hosted, single tenant SAP HCM), or by outsourcing the
process.
Option 2: Decide
to remain on premise, knowing that the cost of support will grow after 2025,
and keep informed on the solutions made available by SAP. Productized
integrations connecting S/4 HANA to the traditional on premise HCM are
announced and should be available in Q4 2015. In SAP’s mind, this step is only
taken to help customers needing more time to migrate to cloud solutions, so only as an intermediate step in your eventual move to the cloud.
Participation in User Groups and associations (such as
ASUG,
DSUG and many others, full list:
http://www.sap.com/communities/user-groups.html)
can support you in keeping aligned to the product roadmap and possibly influence
it; it has never been more relevant than in times of change.
Important points
- User Interface is being harmonized across all
systems. Fiori was launched in 2014 as a set of design guidelines for
applications, and was quickly adopted as a harmonization tool. First the On
Premise tool was “fiorized”, the SuccessFactors’ applications alignment is
announced for this year, and S/4 has been built on these principles from the
start. So independently from the tools that will best fit each customer’s
landscape, the user EXPERIENCE can be end-to-end.
- Choice of delivery. While SuccessFactors is
offered only as a public cloud solution, S/4 HANA is available today in both on
premise (so on customers’ hosted premises, with yearly innovation packages) and
Cloud Edition, benefiting of the accelerated quarterly release cycles.
- Integration packages developed for SAP On
Premise have been designed around the mini master record concept, and will
remain the basis of the integration of SuccessFactors to S/4 HANA.
- SuccessFactors solution to payroll – EC Payroll,
is strongly based on the original on premise powerhouse. I am not aware of any
plan to introduce an S/4 HANA payroll… although one can only hope.
Interestingly, there is no HR sitting at the board on this capture: is that for lack of graphic space?
