My
background is technical and focused on SAP, so invariably cloud
implementations were going to bring new challenges. Looking for
knowledge on what to expect in terms of project management I found there
are a few blogs (the new manual), some notes on Employee Central
project implementations, each giving details and recommendations on how
to be successful. No criticism on any of these, but I haven’t found the
direct Employee Central specific items that I experienced on an
implementation. The article listed the project methodology adjustments
and impacts without detailing the causes. I won’t address any of the
project methodology principles but wanted to highlight a few very
specific impacts an Employee Central implementation will have any
project.
Since
some of these items increase your project risks it will be prudent to
ensure that you offset these risks against the business decisions and
benefits that you aim to achieve from implementing Employee Central. The
project impacts and risks are temporary (months) while the
implementation and planned benefits should have a much longer lifespan
(years).
Cloud landscapes versus traditional SAP landscapes
One
of the first and seemingly simple differences are that SAP has a strict
three tiered landscape. Something etched into every trained SAP Basis
consultants mind! The three tiered landscape is supported by a robust
transport layer that was built to enable a mechanism to move
configuration between systems (development, quality and production).
With Employee Central you don’t have a tiered landscape. You may choose
to have more than one Employee Central instance and use each of the
instance for a specific purpose (development or production), but the
instances will not be linked within the landscape. There is no transport
layer and system to move the configuration and provide version control.
The configuration is moved (some XML imports can be done) and recreated
on each instance.
Without
this help on the system level, the configuration and version control
need to move up to the project management methodology. The project team
will need to track it and ensure that they care of it.
Release schedules
SAP
is known for upgrades and support packs. Both for the complexity and
regular maintenance caused. Unfortunately, some of the bad rapport is
incorrect assigned because some of the changes come from the fact the
legal requirements dictate these changes. Also, because of the power of
SAP’s limitless customization the balance between simplicity and future
maintenance is not always the easy path to follow.
Employee
Central promise to take care of all of this pain since the solution and
releases are in the cloud the releases schedules are applied and takes
care of changes. The tradeoff for this benefit is the lack of control of
applying new releases and the visibility of what is contained in each
release. You won’t have the detailed notes, version control to do
comparisons or even SPAU (you may even miss the SPAU).
EC debugging and error handling vs SAP development workbench
Good
or bad, every SAP consultants used the workbench to search data
dictionary or the trace through some ABAP code. Find the exact failure
point or even using the code as a roadmap for understand was and still
is key.
Employee
Central is a closed system. There is no application development
interface, and the only access is via configuration layer. If the only
benefit was simplicity, and reduced maintenance it would be ideal, but a
great deal of self determination and control is given up in return.
Taking into consideration that error handling is still in the initial
stages of maturity (I am sure it will improve with future releases) the
project will have to deal with very vague errors and no solution to
debug or resolve the issues. The solution in place the Employee Central
support channel and I comment more on this later.
Employee Central data migrations and data handling
SAP
started with the batch import system and later LSMW became the staple
food of many data imports. Both provided options and included enough
control with error handling and feedback.
With
EC the foundation object configuration generates import templates
(spreadsheets) that need to populated and re-imported. The design is
focused on simplicity and low maintenance. The error handling during the
import process does however need to improve. Experiences included
successful error reporting, but without any data in Employee Central.
Also because the relationships between Employee Central objects (any HR
objects on SAP as well) is so fundamental if any of these are not
correctly configured the import will fail but without a clear indication
of why or where to look to resolve the issue.
A
last point to note is that the SAP landscape firstly lacked an ability
to copy data between systems. For example from production to quality for
testing purposes. This was initially solved by the Data Sync Manager
and later developed into a huge market with many solutions. Employee
Central has reset the clock and the last few years, and there is again
no solution to move that one employee from production to quality to
test. Because Employee Central is a closed solution (no third party
software development solutions) I am not sure what the future holds in
terms of solving this issue.
Employee Central support layer and channels
Logging
a SAP support request was simple and provided direct feedback on the
progress. Granted not all requests were resolved on the first attempt,
but the support interface was simple and partly transparent. The body of
knowledge that was generated at the back of all the support was
staggering. Searching through the notes and finding a similar problem
and associated solution was very powerful.
Employee
Central will have build body of knowledge over time, but currently the
main concern is that access the JIRA support is not available in the
same sense that SAP was. It is effective an internal only support
solution that cannot be accessed for logging or even search only access.
Hopefully the access improves or alternatively that a secondary body of
knowledge is made available to assist clients and partners.
I
hope some of the expected impacts are clearer. If you are involved in a
current Employee Central implementation, I wish you success. If you are
planning an EC implementation make the adjustment and planning to
ensure that cover and manage the few items I highlighted. Lastly, make
sure have an implementation partner that is able and willing walk this
road with you.
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