Application Decisions for HR Strategy and Planning

Michael_Raih · ‎2024 Dec 16

Summary

This article seeks to provide guidance on defining the most suitable target application architecture to support HR Strategy and Planning needs of an organization in the Business Domain of Human Resources.

With SAP SuccessFactors and SAP S/4HANA both delivering solution capabilities around HR Strategy and Planning, enterprises now have multiple applications to choose from and need to make their selection by comparing their organization’s business capability requirements to the solution capabilities SAP applications offer.

Licensing aspects of the solution components discussed should be considered during target architecture design and are beyond the scope of this evaluation.

Business Requirements

Typical variety of business capabilities and supporting applications that altogether constitute HR Strategy and Planning can be seen in the illustration below:

Solution Options

Typical deployment choices for HR Strategy and Planning for most common cases are the following:

SAP SuccessFactors is SAP’s strategic Public Cloud HCM system operated as Software as a Service and includes the newest and future proof innovations for workforce management with a powerful HR information system and extensive self-service and workflow capabilities. Integral part is SAP SuccessFactors People Analytics as the overall solution for all reporting, workforce analytics, and workforce planning in the SAP SuccessFactors HCM suite. It includes the SuccessFactors Workforce Analytics which empowers you to quickly and accurately answer questions about your workforce to influence business decisions with data-driven insights and an evidence-based approach to HR. Whereas the SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) solution and SAP SuccessFactors solutions are bidirectionally integrated, so you can e.g. use the latest HR data to build workforce plans and once completed transfer the results to a financial planning model within SAC. Another possibility for the Public Cloud HCM system is to use the broad capabilities of the SAP SuccessFactors Work Zone where you can access relevant business applications and processes, information, and communications from a single entry point.
You can also use HR Reporting with the proven SAP FIORI UI as part of SAP S/4HANA Private Cloud or RISE which is the successor of HCM in SAP ERP 6 with all advantages of a private cloud environment and the flexibility and extensibility known from the classical HCM solution. It can either be run in an integrated ERP scenario together with Finance and Logistics or separated in a standalone HCM scenario. Alternatively, you can connect your HCM system with SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) or an SAP BW/4HANA system as the data warehouse layer.
Another option is to keep the existing SAP ERP 6 (not lower than Enhancement Pack 6) until 2027 (with mainstream maintenance) or 2030 (with extended maintenance option at additional cost) and use the classical HCM Analytics, then migrate to SAP S/4HANA Release 2023 or higher and activate the business function for HCM for S/4HANA (H4S4). Please see SAP Note 3091160 for further details.

Criteria to determine the most suitable target solution

The following questions are seen to be crucial to determine the most suitable target solution and to define the course:

Do you want to keep your existing HCM solution by SAP for longer?
Do you have any policies or regulations preventing you from using a public cloud solution?
Have you been planning to use an enterprise-wide Analytics solution?

Decision Tree

Conclusion

The SAP SuccessFactors solution with its various Reporting and Analytics solutions is proven to be the best choice in case you need to adopt SAP HCM innovation at maximum speed and are already running and taking advantage of SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central and/or SAP SuccessFactors Talent Management solutions.
The deployment choice SAP S/4HANA Private Cloud Edition or RISE Edition offers the highest degree of flexibility with highly complex and customized process flows. In addition, it is the alternative for Public Cloud solutions, if there are regulations or policies in your organization preventing to store employee data in public cloud solutions.
Depending on corporate policies and business requirements SAP S/4HANA Private Cloud or RISE can either co-host HCM functionality in the integrated S/4HANA scenario or a standalone HCM instance, as required.
ERP version 6 is guaranteed to be under extended maintenance for HCM solutions through 2030 after which you must migrate to one of the options listed above. Most commonly, transition from ERP HCM to HCM for S/4HANA is being conducted by a system conversion (known as “Brownfield” transition approach)

Look out to similar decision accelerators in other HR scenarios (e.g., HR Administration, Talent Management etc.) in the adjacent articles in this community.

Should you need subject matter expertise from SAP with regards to this or other architecture decisions, please feel free to ask your Technical Quality Manager or your Account Executive at SAP.