Note: This blog post represents my personal views and not necessarily of my employer.
Purpose of the blog post:
- Every organization has different investment priorities. And if you are still couple of years away from the big HR transformation or already on a multi-year transformation journey, I would like to share a point of view on how you can make the best of the current investments to realize some of the transformational values early in the journey and better prepare for an impactful HR transformation.
This blog post is relevant for organizations with below architecture:
- Your full HR solution is running on SAP ECC 6.0 (aka On-premise SAP HR solution).
- You are currently on a hybrid model (Using one or more cloud applications (e.g. SF EC for core HR, SF LMS for learning, etc.) and rest of the solution is on-premise (e.g. SAP Payroll, Time Management, etc.)
In coming few mins, I will try to answer following key questions:
While your organization is contemplating the move to the cloud HR technologies,
- What options are available to extend the life of current investments, given the 2027 deadline for SAP ECC 6.0 maintenance (or till 2030 with additional cost)?
- How do you realize some of the key transformational values much early in the move to new HR solutions such as?
- Improved user experience
- More automation to free up the time of HR administrators so that they can bring more value to the organization
- How best you can prepare for the big transformation while you have time?
- What options are out there to extend the life of current investments, given the 2027 deadline for SAP ECC 6.0 maintenance (or till 2030 with additional cost)?
- Following two options will help you retain and extend the life of current investments in SAP ECC HCM.
- How do you realize some of the key transformational values much early in the move to new HR solutions?
- It is easier to argue that investing in a dying technology would be a throw away work. However, in reality our approach to measure the ROI could be incorrect. Let me explain this with an example.
- E.g., SAP On-premise Payroll has a 'new' functionality called, PCC (Payroll Control Center). It is the same tool that you would use with it's cloud version, ECP (EC Payroll). Let's say you are planning to move to a cloud payroll solution in 2 to 3 years (it could be SAP or non-SAP). The question is, Is it worth spending time and money to optimize the payroll processes so close to decommissioning on-premise payroll system? And here is what you would want to include in the ROI assessment:
- Increased payroll accuracy will help you save on overpayments and stay compliant.
- It will help you identify your typical data issues leading you to identify process improvement opportunities & be able to maintain accurate data for upcoming move to cloud payroll.
- The ability to identify issues much earlier in the tight pay execution timeline, allows your payroll team to be more relaxed, leading to a better experience.
- The time freed up from above improvements will result in Payroll team able to take on more initiatives and bring more value to the organization & employees.
- And let's not forget, with all these improvements and additional initiatives, employees will have higher confidence and better experience.
- In summary, if you add up these tangible and intangible returns, this will definitely surpass the implementation cost of the "PCC" as an example.
- Below are few more improvement opportunities for processes such as Core HR, Time Management and Benefits & Pension.
- How best you can prepare for the HR transformation while you have time?
- Finally, I want to leave you with few key considerations that will help you be better prepared for the HR transformation while you have time.
- (Mitigate project cost overrun) Keep track of all pain point across all processes (Payroll, Time, Core HR, etc.) and classify them across Type of issue (User / Admin Experience issue, Process issue, Cost of maintenance) & Priority (H/M/L). This will greatly help you with software selection & implementation scope determination.
- (Mitigate timeline risks) Identify and plan to correct data issues as much as possible. Incorrect data can cause delays in data conversion process and your team may need to take last minute corrective action in production environment before go-live.
- (Mitigate timeline risks) Document your complex processes and encourage cross-training to have multiple experts on the complex topics. This will greatly improve your ability to support day to day operation and project needs in parallel.
In summary, If you are still few years away from the HR transformation or have already started multi-year transformation journey, you do not necessarily need to delay some of the key transformational benefits. You have already invested millions of dollars in the existing technologies and a little further investment could have substantial returns (tangible & intangible).
Hope you found this helpful. Please let me know your thoughts or share your experience down in the comment section.