October 9, 2013 Understanding Integration: SAP’s HCM Integration ... · PDF...

Research Bulletin | 2013

BERSIN BY DELOITTE180 GRAND AVENUE

SUITE 320OAKLAND, CA 94612

(510) [email protected]

Copyright © 2013 Deloitte Development LLC. All rights reserved. This material is licensed to SuccessFactors, Inc., for distribution only.

October 9, 2013

About the Author

Katerine Jones, Ph.D.Lead Analyst

Bersin by DeloitteDeloitte Consulting LLP

The Latest in Enterprise Learning & Talent Management

Preface

Our members at Bersin by Deloitte ask us questions almost daily about

application integration—what it means, how it works, and how to

accomplish it. This research bulletin looks at integration in the light

of an on-premise solution, SAP ERP1, and a cloud integrated talent

management solution, SuccessFactors; this report discusses many facets

of integration in an effort to clarify how to achieve the benefits that

integration provides.

Introduction

Application integration is essential. It is not just a technical issue, but a

business issue. Users require one source of the truth about their people

and their processes in order to manage, monitor, and measure progress

and success. Yet understanding how solutions that are used in business

actually can connect remains elusive. This research bulletin is an attempt

at clarifying the many questions our members ask on the “how-tos” of

application integration.

SAP ERP is the production basis for a great many of our customers;

likewise, many use SuccessFactors applications for varying areas of

talent management, including learning, performance and, increasingly,

core HR in Employee Central. With the acquisition of SuccessFactors,

the expectation for integration was exacerbated, leading to points of

confusion as the on-premise and cloud worlds appeared on a potential

1 “Enterprise resource planning” (ERP) is a category of enterprise software that typicallyintegrates financials, HR, manufacturing, order processing and customer relationship management in an integrated solution.

Understanding Integration: SAP’s HCM Integration Strategy with SuccessFactors

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Understanding Integration: SAP’s HCM Integration Strategy with SuccessFactors Katherine Jones, Ph.D. |

Copyright © 2013 Deloitte Development LLC. All rights reserved.

collision course. During the ensuing months since the acquisition, SAP

has made great strides in clarifying the often difficult path to a smooth

product integration.

Prior to the acquisition, more than 500 customers had successfully

integrated SAP HCM2 and SuccessFactors themselves with the existing

available APIs3. SAP’s goal was to provide a standard set of supported

integrations to relieve customers of having to define and build

these integrations themselves. For the past 18 months, SAP has been

productizing tools to enable customers to integrate the systems faster.

Why Integration Matters

There are many reasons why companies want their HR software

platforms to be integrated, including the following.

• Data and Analytics—In order to run meaningful reports, understand

the state of the business, and implement talent analytics4,

companies need the equivalent of a “single system of record.” Well-

architected systems integration helps to make sure that all data is

coordinated, easy to find, and accurate.

• User Experience—People will not log-in to multiple HR systems to

get their work done. If systems are not integrated, employees and

managers often have multiple systems with multiple user interfaces

to use, making HR systems difficult to learn and not well-adopted.

2 “Human capital management” (or HCM) represents the practices and processes formanaging people in an organization. In our research, we define HCM as the people processes and systems which comprise an organization’s entire range of systems - a superset of talent management, which refers to the organizational processes of recruiting, onboarding, leadership development, succession, performance management, pay for performance, career development, training, workforce planning, employee collaboration, and other organizational design-related practices and systems. HCM, in contrast, includes other additional practices, such as HR management systems, payroll, workforce management (hourly scheduling), expense management, contingent workforce management, employee leave management, and other more administrative or transactional parts of managing people.

3 “Application programming interfaces” or APIs offer the ability for one application ortool to speak to or be embedded within other applications or tools.

4 For more information, Big Data in HR: Building a Competitive Talent Analytics Function –The Four Stages of Maturity, Bersin & Associates / Josh Bersin, April 2012. Available to research members at www.bersin.com.

Application

integration is not

just a technical

issue, but a

business issue.

KEY POINT

This material is licensed to SuccessFactors, Inc., for distribution only.

http://www.bersin.com




• Accuracy and Compliance—Most HR programs have some legal

and regulatory requirements. Did a certain employee complete the

mandatory compliance training, for example? If systems are not

well-integrated, then these processes may not be easy to track, and

it may be impossible to verify or report on compliance issues.

• IT Cost—When systems are not integrated by vendors, IT has to pick

up the bill. IT organizations are not tolerant of multiple systems

(especially from a single vendor) that do not work well together.

IT often puts “integration projects” on the back burner, furthering

complicating HR’s ability to provider services to its stakeholders.

Application integration between unlike products is not trivial. Products

created at different times use different data models—basically, they store

information in vastly different ways. Consider naming conventions as an

easy example. One application may ask for first name, last name, while

another may do the reverse; but neither have consistency in dealing with

hyphenated names. One application may refer to the technical company

as IBM, while another as International Business Machines, Inc.; as the data

is passed between applications, will it appear as two distinct companies?

Therein lays the difficulty with integration—getting the data between

the two or more points in the way the user expects to see and use it. It

is for this reason that integration is so important and, without sound

practices, analysis of data is impossible across applications.

SAP and SuccessFactors Integration Overview

Here we look at what our members ask about integration between

these product sets.

Question 1: We are using SuccessFactors for performance management and SAP HCM as our employee system of record. How do we manage the employee profile and the talent profile?

Let us consider any of the talent management areas5 (e.g., learning,

recruiting, compensation planning, or succession planning) in addition

5 The SuccessFactors talent management suite enables the integration of employee data,organizational data, compensation data, application data, and data that is required for evaluation purposes.

Getting the data

between two or

more points in the

way that the user

expects to see and

use it is the reason

why integration is

so important.

KEY POINT





to performance management as we look at this common question.

Here, the employee master data (including reporting relationships)

resides in SAP ERP. The talent profile in SuccessFactors Talent Solutions

provides more talent information than that of the employee system of

record in SAP HCM; SAP anticipates that it is indeed the SuccessFactors

talent profile that is most often accessed by HR and the employees

themselves. Users will likely keep employee master data in SAP HCM,

while pulling relevant data from SAP HCM into the talent profile.

Today’s integration, provided by SAP, supports:

• Theemployeeaccessingemployeeself-serviceportals,whetherin

SAP HCM or SuccessFactors, which have a very similar look and feel

regardless of actual application location, and which can be done

through single sign-on

• ConsolidatedaccessfortheHRuserdatainbothSAPHCMand

SuccessFactors—single sign-on, and a very similar look and feel

• Tobeclear,usersretaintwoseparatesourcesofemployee

information—personal information (e.g., name, address, bank

account, contact information, I-9 information) in SAP HCM and the

richer employee talent record within SuccessFactors; details on the

integration between the two follows (see Figure 1).

Source: SAP, 2013.

Figure 1: Integration between SuccessFactors Talent Management Modules and SAP HCM

Users will likely

keep employee

master data in SAP

HCM, while pulling

relevant data from

SAP HCM into the

talent profile.

KEY POINT





How It Works: iFlows for SuccessFactors Talent Solutions—SAP HCM Connectivity

Both SAP and SuccessFactors have long supplied standard,

documented APIs for practitioners to use in connecting to a variety

of third-party products. The key here is that these connectors (called

iFlows) are tested and certified for the use to which they will be put

in the user’s environment.

iFlows are SAP-provided connectors that support the

integration of SuccessFactors applications with an SAP or third-

party application. Some iFlows are dedicated (and certified) for

use between specific applications (these are discussed in more

detail later) and some are generic, enabling integration with

other solutions that may be used by the organization. iFlows

are platform-specific, and provide the integration content,

mapping, and translation between the two systems. e

The following are descriptions of the four integration examples that

SAP has delivered under these scenarios.

1. Foundation

• Basicemployeedataandorganizationaldata(includingitems

such as personal and position data, pay grades, and the like;

see Figure 8 for specific examples) are transferred from SAP

ERP HCM to SuccessFactors applications to support all of the

talent management processes. Specifically, employee master

data and reporting relationships derived from SAP Organization

Management are replicated in SuccessFactors.

2. Workforce Analytics

• WorkforcedataistransferredfromSAPERPHCMto

SuccessFactors Workforce Planning and Analytics to support

workforce planning and workforce analytics.

iFlows deliver

the logic to

integrate disparate

applications,

whether on-premise

or in the cloud.

KEY POINT





3. Compensation Management

• Theintegrationforcompensationdataisbi-directional—

Compensation data is transferred from SAP ERP HCM to

SuccessFactors to support compensation planning processes

there. When the planning has been completed in SuccessFactors,

the compensation planning results are returned to SAP ERP

HCM, so that this data can be included in payroll and other HR

processes. Compensation adjustments (such as bonuses) are

maintained in the SuccessFactors Compensation Management

solution, and are replicated back to SAP ERP HCM to update

core HR information and payroll payouts.

4. Recruiting

• TheintegrationofSuccessFactorsRecruitingintoSAPERPHCM

allows selected candidates to be hired for positions in SAP HCM.

The candidate will be either hired, rehired, or transferred to

a new position, depending on whether the candidate is new,

an alumnus, or an internal candidate. New-hire information

maintained in SuccessFactors Recruiting Management solution

is replicated back to SAP ERP HCM to update personnel

administration data. Another point of integration provides

the creation of a job requisition in SuccessFactors Recruiting

Management from a vacancy created in SAP ERP HCM.

All delivered iFlows are built with on-premise NetWeaver PI

middleware technology; the details are discussed below. The

“foundation” and analytics scenarios are also delivered as point-

to-point connections (think SAP HCM <-> SuccessFactors) using

flat-file data delivery between the two disparate environments.

This is a relatively unsophisticated way to address integration,

but it does move data items from one product to another. File-

based integration is supported by:

○ An extract tool in SAP HCM that feeds the SuccessFactors

employee data file with employee and organizational data

○ Extractors in SAP HCM to feed workforce data into

SuccessFactors Workforce Analytics

A point of

integration

provides the

creation of a job

requisition in

SuccessFactors

Recruiting

Management from

a vacancy created

in SAP ERP HCM.

KEY POINT





○ The inclusion of standard coding for data extraction, SAP

and SuccessFactors field mapping, generation of the.csv files,

and error handling

○ Delta data extraction support

This kind of data upload/download uses the file transfer protocol (FTP)

in the TCP/IP data communications technology stack.

Technical Implications

SAP HCM is either physically located in your own data center or perhaps

hosted for you at a third-party data center. Offered as a Software-as-

a-Service6 application (SaaS), SuccessFactors is “in the cloud,” meaning

that it is accessed over the Internet from SuccessFactors’ data centers. In

this model, the two differing data or process locations are transparent

to the user; amalgamated data is visible from users with appropriate

access logging on to either SAP HCM or SuccessFactors applications.

Data is bi-directional, meaning it moves in both directions between the

two applications.

Encapsulated as “objects,” data is passed from one application to the

other. For example, in the recruiting process, employee, vacancy, and

organizational data may be pulled from SAP ERP HCM and passed to

the SuccessFactors recruiting module—in which the recruiter might

create the requisition, manage the recruiting and hiring process; then,

the data which creates the new employee in the system of record (in

the ERP HCM system) is passed back to the on-premise SAP system. The

important factor here is that this “pushing” and “pulling” of data is

transparent to the users and happens as automatic processes between

the applications.

To the end users in your organization, the result of such integration can

appear as is illustrated in Figure 2.

6 “Software as a Service” (or SaaS) refers to the business of selling software over theInternet as a web service. In this business model, the software vendor charges an annual “subscription” fee and can predict recurring revenues far more reliably than with the licensed software model.

Data is bi-directional,

meaning it moves

in both directions

between the two

applications.

KEY POINT





Talent Management

HR Core

HR Portal (ESS, MSS,…)

Unified Access HR Processes

Inte

grat

ion

CloudTalent,

Analytics Solutions

On-PremiseCore HR

This diagram demonstrates a similar, albeit not identical, look and

feel to the HR data in the on-premise SAP ERP HCM and talent data

(in SAP SuccessFactors in the cloud), though differences should not

create difficulties in use. The key takeaway here is that, with a single

sign-on in either application, the end-user can see the HR or the talent

information on an employee.

Question 2: We are using SuccessFactors applications, and want to integrate with other applications both in the cloud and on-premise. How would we accomplish this?

Many users today integrate their SuccessFactors applications with third-

party products and services. There are multiple ways to accomplish this

integration, which may include:

Source: SAP-SuccessFactors, 2013.

Figure 2: SAP HCM and SuccessFactors Data User Experience Integration





• Integratingwithathird-partyapplication(perhapsanotherlearning

management system or workforce planning application)

• IntegratingwithanHRISsystem(otherthanSAPERPHCMor

Employee Central)

• Integratingwithservices,suchaspayroll,tax,orbenefitsproviders

These applications or services may or may not also be in the cloud, that

is, accessible over the Internet via browser or mobile device, rather than

running natively in your data center. Users have choices in the way they

choose to integrate (see Figure 3).

Recognizing the heterogeneity of the technology requirements today,

SAP is supporting an integration partner ecosystem (e.g., Boomi, IBM,

Cast Iron, MuleSoft, and others) to provide a choice to application users

that need to integrate SuccessFactors applications to either third-party

on-premise or other cloud solutions.

Source: Bersin by Deloitte, 2013.

Figure 3: Integrating SuccessFactors Modules with Third-Party Application or Services

SAP supports a

variety of partners

(such as Boomi,

Cast Iron, MuleSoft,

IBM, and others)

to integrate its

SaaS applications

to third-party on-

premise and cloud

solutions.

KEY POINT

SuccessFactor'sTalent Modules

Documented APIs

Dell Boomi

MuleSoft

SAP IntegrationTechnologies

Integration Choices

Third-PartyIntegration Tools

Third-PartySoftware

Legacy Systems

BusinessServices

(Benefits, Tax, etc.)

IBM WebSphereCast Iron





How SAP-SuccessFactors Integration Works

The APIs available from SAP-SuccessFactors are tools that specify how

some software components should interact with each other. Generally,

an API is a library that includes specifications for routines, data

structures, object classes, and variables—all of which are used by an IT

staffer or a third-party technologist to create the integration between

two applications, processes, or services.

Coding, however, may not be necessary at all in that service providers

may have already made the process simple. Beyond the API itself, we

have integration solutions (seen in blue in the middle of Figure 3).

As only one example, Dell Boomi, in a product called AtomSphere®,

supports connectivity to combinations of SaaS or on-premise

applications with no appliances, no software, and no coding—as

AtomSphere lets users drag and drop icons to create the desired

integrations. As another example, MuleSoft uses an integration

platform called Anypoint™ (a hub and spokes architecture) and dozens

of predefined connectors to widely used technologies.

SAP has its own version of integration middleware functionality. It

provides two distinct integration technology platforms—SAP NetWeaver

Process Integration, which resides on-premise, and SAP HANA Cloud

Integration, which resides in the cloud and is delivered as a service. HANA

Cloud Integration will be discussed in more detail later in this bulletin.

Question 3: We want to deploy Employee Central as a cloud-based HRIS system. How does that integrate with all of the things an HRIS needs to integrate to, such as benefits providers, payroll and tax management, time and attendance—the list goes on! Where would we start?

Integration is clearly an essential consideration in deploying an HRIS

system. Beyond the compliance requirements of a core HR system, HR

professionals may want to integrate data from background checks;

competency, skill, or behavioral assessments; benefits administration;

payroll and tax services; or, workforce management functions, such

as clock-ins/clock-outs. SAP-SuccessFactors Employee Central is a SaaS

application, so these different applications and services need to be

connected to it over the cloud (see Figure 4).

An API is a library

that includes

specifications

for routines,

data structures,

object classes, and

variables—all of

which are used

by an IT staffer

or a third-party

technologist

to create the

integration

between two

applications,

processes, or

services.

KEY POINT





As of this writing, there are 43 partners certified to implement

Employee Central. They may use iFlows or APIs to build standard

integrations in many areas crucial for HR, such as payroll, time and

attendance, and benefits administration. Implementers familiar and

trained on the two connected applications are necessary for installation

of the iFlows.

Every business and corresponding implementation is different. Users

may well want to integrate with solution and service providers that

are not among the 43 already provided. For this, there are generic

iFlows, enabling you to create connections between the solutions or

services required.

Source: SAP and Bersin by Deloitte, 2013.

Figure 4: HR Systems Must Share Information with Many Other Systems

Core HR Cloud• Employee Central• (May include SuccessFactors

Talent Management)

Time Management(Time entry/clocks & allocations)

Service Center/Help Desk

Identity Services(Single sign-on)

Third-Party Talent Management

Benefits Administration(Enrollment, Medical, Dental & Vision, Life Insurance, Savings

Plans, etc.)

ERP Financials & Logistics

Payroll Services(Check printing, Tax Services,

Leave of Absence,Garnishments, etc.)

Third-Party PayrollPayroll Processing





Question 4: We have a global SAP ERP and are looking to deploy Employee Central in geographies where we have smaller employee counts. We also need multinational payrolls. How would we begin?

In this instance, there are multiple connections about which users may

care—first, the connection between the HR data in Employee Central

and that in the employee system of record in SAP HR in the on-premise

ERP. While we discussed this connectivity above, in this instance, SAP

would leverage the existing Boomi partnership for Employee Central

and Payroll Integration to SAP HCM on-premise.

Source: SAP, 2013.

Figure 5: Integrating HR Solutions with Employee Central

Employee Central, Payroll

Generic BusinessConnectors21

Time & Attendance

Joint Go-to-market Partners

Generic Business Connector for Benefits

Generic Business Connector for Time

Generic Business Connector for Payroll

Aon Hewitt BenefitFocus

KronosWorkForce

ADPNorthgateArinso





How It Works

Dell Boomi is the SAP-supported integration strategy to manage

distributed payroll and to integrate distributed HR environments (using

Employee Central) with one enterprisewide employee system of record

in SAP HCM back at corporate headquarters. In Figure 6, Boomi is

responsible for data movement between SAP HR and payroll, to and

from Employee Central, and between Employee Central and the SAP

cloud-based solutions for financials, travel management, analytics, and

Ariba eProcurement.

In addition, in this example, the disparate Employee Central application

may be required to transfer data within itself (i.e., perhaps country-

specific instances consolidate to a regionwide Employee Central system,

or cross-country data may be required as employees move across

borders frequently with differing regulations and currencies). This

Source: Bersin by Deloitte, 2013.

Figure 6: Distributed HR and Payroll via Employee Central and Boomi Integration





On-Premise SAP ERP, HCM/Payroll

Employee System of Record

ARIBA

TravelAnalytics

Cloud Financials





Employee Central to Employee Central integration is accomplished

through cloud-to-cloud connectivity via one of the cloud connections

discussed above. The payroll component worldwide is addressed

through the Dell Boomi integration with on-premise payroll support,

available to the Employee Central users.

Question 5: We use SAP ERP HCM and NetWeaver on-premise in our organization. How do we integrate SuccessFactors talent suite with core HR in SAP HCM?

NetWeaver Process Integration (NetWeaver PI), designed to facilitate

the exchange of data between SAP ERP and third-party solutions, can

be used to integrate on-premise SAP HCM with SuccessFactors SaaS

talent applications (though, at this writing, not with Employee Central).

NetWeaver PI is an integration broker that mediates between entities

with different protocols or formats. The delivered iFlows are provided

at no extra cost to the customer. In this scenario, if Employee Central is

required at a site, Boomi would be required.

Question 6: We are running SAP HCM on-premise with payroll. How might we move the HR parts to the cloud, but keep payroll on premise?

With NetWeaver PI, users can integrate employee, salary, and

organizational data from SAP ERP HCM with SuccessFactor’s

compensation planning module, which returns compensation allocation

for merit increases, bonuses, and lump-sum payments back to SAP

Payroll (see Figure 7).

Source: SAP, 2013.

Figure 7: SAP HCM-SuccessFactors Compensation/Payroll Integration for NetWeaver Users

*On-premise or cloud integration.





How It Works—iFlows Support Payroll Execution

SAP has created integrations (iFlows) for Employee Central and releases

of SAP which are Employee Central 6.0 and above. The integrations work

with NetWeaver PI, HANA Cloud Integration (discussed below), and with

Dell Boomi. This integration provides an HR “mini-master” —important

in an ERP because the employee data is used in many applications

beyond HR (see Figure 7). This moves employee data from Employee

Central to SAP HCM Payroll and to SAP ERP Financials. Cost center data

is then replicated into Employee Central and payment information from

Employee Central Payroll is apparent in SAP ERP Financials. Through

integration at the user interface, local payroll data is accessible to those

authorized to see it within Employee Central.

Question 7: We have SAP HCM and are looking at Employee Central. What data is integrated today and how is it transferred between the two solutions?

Solely, a few data elements are transferred from Employee Central into

SAP HCM. Those elements are summarized in Figure 8.

Transferred Information

Person Information

Personal Information

Address Information

Email Address Information

Job Information

Pay Component Recurring

Pay Component Non-Recurring

Direct Deposit

National ID Card

Source: SAP, 2013.

Figure 8: Employee Central Employee Data Integrated into SAP HCM





This data goes only one way—from Employee Central into SAP ERP.

It is referred to as a “mini-master” because it represents a subset of

employee master data. This data is used in other functions, such as

travel management or timesheets. These data elements are mapped to

matching SAP elements (see Figure 9).

Source: SAP, 2013.

Figure 9: Employee Data Mapping Between Employee Central and SAP ERP

Technical Details

Here, the ERP position hierarchy is derived out of the Employee Central

employee-manager relationship. Only changed or newly created

reporting lines are transferred from Employee Central into the ERP. This

supports HR activities, such as approval workflow scenarios, and helps

to manage position changes, such as new hires, change of manager,

termination, and leaves.





Source: SAP (Boomi), 2013.

Figure 10: Boomi Process for Automated Data Replication

Question 8: How does SuccessFactors Recruiting data integrate with SAP Core HCM?

Similarly, as in the example above, NetWeaver PI users can integrate

employee, organizational, and vacancy data from SAP ERP HCM

with SuccessFactors’ recruiting module, which returns candidate

employment information back to the core HR (see Figure 11). New-hire

administration is then conducted in SAP HCM.





SAP NetWeaver PI provides integration tools deployed on-premise or in

the cloud.

Question 9: What will the impact of SAP HANA7 Cloud Integration be on my SAP HCM/SuccessFactors HCM environment?

SAP HANA Cloud Integration with SuccessFactors talent suite and with

Employee Central is strategic to SAP.

SAP HANA Cloud Integration is a cloud-based middleware technology

that is built on and runs within SAP HANA Cloud Platform (HANA

Cloud Platform is a broader Platform-as-a-Service8 offering from SAP).

Currently, SAP HANA Cloud Integration is embedded within the SAP

Sales & Operations Planning and SAP Financial Services Network. It

is available today with SuccessFactors talent suite integration with

SAP HCM, Business ByDesign, and Cloud for Travel. It is planned to be

available with Employee Central by end of the year.

7 SAP HANA Cloud Platform is a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offering that enablesdevelopers to build, extend, and run applications in the cloud. It provides developers with a set of application and database services. HANA Cloud Integration, an integration middleware technology which could be used to connect SAP and SuccessFactors applications, is part of the SAP HANA Cloud Platform. For additional information about SAP HANA Cloud Platform, visit http://www.saphana.com/community/learn/cloud-platform.

8 A “platform-as-a-service” (PaaS) provides the tools and physical infrastructure on whichto build applications in the cloud.

Source: SAP, 2013.

Figure 11: Integrating Hiring Management

*On-premise or cloud integration.


http://www.saphana.com/community/learn/cloud-platform




HANA alleviates the need for a third-party database, a cost-savings for

consumers and, because of the in-memory nature of the architecture,

enhances the performance of most applications.

Later Stages of Integration

There are general trends that companies follow in integrating disparate

products and delivery technologies. Given this, Bersin anticipates that

the future integration may resemble that shown in Figure 12.

At this juncture, users would experience:

• Unidirectionalsynchronizationofemployee“mini-master”(joband

personal information) from Employee Central to Employee Central

Payroll and/or SAP ERP

• Automatedsynchronizationoffinancialdata(costcenters)fromSAP

ERP to Employee Central

Source: SAP, 2013.

Figure 12: A Possible Future Integration Scenario

Employee Central and EC Payroll

Employee

Employee Minimaster

Cost Center

Cost Center General Ledger

Payroll Process

GL Accounts

GL Accounts

SAP ERP 6.0 (Finance)

Position Hierarchy

Org Units and

Hierarchy

Payroll Results

Employee Manager

Relationship

Departments





• Replicationofreportinglineinformation(employeemanager

relationship) from Employee Central to SAP ERP position hierarchy

• User-interfaceintegrationwithEmployeeCentralforpayslipsand

payroll data maintenance user interfaces.

Data model mapping will be ongoing and, over time, the need for an

external router, such as Dell Boomi, may be replaced by one-to-one

mapping of data elements.

Conclusion

The integration of two very different systems, not only with each other,

but with all of the related business applications and services on which

HR professionals rely, is complex—hence time-consuming—and has to

maintain the accuracy and integrity of employee data. SAP ERP HCM

and SuccessFactors data can be amalgamated via flat-file data transfer,

but that is generally insufficient in providing the degree of integration

which companies rely on today. Third-party transport and data-routing

tools exist, but often they too lack the deep integration that many

organizations seek today. Mind you, both of these measures do serve to

move data from one application to another.

Middleware, such as NetWeaver PI, presents another viable option for

integration. With the advent of SaaS and the rapid growth of cloud

computing, middleware has had to address both the on-premise to on-

premise data movement and consolidation, but also on-premise to the

cloud, and even further, cloud-to-cloud integration.

PaaS provides a common layer for integrating software, as well as for

building compatible solutions. The HANA architecture will very likely

support a major portion of the SAP product line in the future.

Today’s users of SuccessFactors talent applications or Employee Central,

whether or not they are also seeking integration with SAP ERP HCM,

have tools available to ease the task. Documented APIs exist, and third-

party applications and tools are available—many of which are certified

by SAP; SAP iFlows provide tested, packaged connectors to address

many integration requirements of users today.





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