TOP 10 Tips to Move from SAP HCM to SuccessFactors Employee Central

We have seen the subject of integration between on-premise SAP HCM (referred to as SAP HCM) and SuccessFactors Employee Central as a widely discussed topic in various forums. While the relevance of the subject cannot be undermined I have always believed it to be the easier challenge to tackle. I have been working with various customers that currently run on-premise SAP HCM as their core HR system and are transitioning to the cloud with SuccessFactors Employee Central so they can leverage a fully integrated cloud solution.
In this post I would like to share some of the more tactical considerations that any SAP HCM customer must be looking at when building their cloud migration strategy. You will probably not answer all the questions, nonetheless it is important to ask these questions to determine the readiness of your organization from a system, process and people perspective; The 3 major cornerstones that will herald the success of your cloud migration.
Here are some insights that have been gained through working with various customers across industries. They are in no order of importance as the criticality of one or more factors is contingent upon where the customer lies on the maturity curve of their business process framework and their appetite for cloud adoption.
1. Intangible Return on Investment

• What is the ROI in terms of increased employee engagement, collaboration and efficiency in the execution of business strategies?
• What is the ROI in increased retention of multi-skilled talent?

2. Quantifiable parameters for ROI when migrating from SAP HCM to SuccessFactors Employee Central

• What are the savings in labor cost performing transactions in Employee Central versus SAP HCM?
• How can we use Employee Central to increase adoption of Manager Self-service and eliminate the traditional delegation of work to HR?
• How can we use the powerful workflows and Rules engine in Employee Central to empower the key users with better and more informed decision making?

3. Ancillary systems being fed from SAP HCM

• What is the plethora of systems that relies on SAP for information in the current state?
• How many of these systems can be transitioned from SAP to Employee Central as the system of record?
• How can we ensure that all data with strategic and tactical relevance is incorporated in the Employee Central solution?

4. Global and Local Compliance

• What is the maturity of your organization with regard to global and local compliance?
• Is growth by acquisition a key organizational strategy, if yes how can the robust standard delivered compliance functionality in Employee Central reinforce your growth strategy?

5. Custom Infotypes and Business Add-Ins (BAdIs)

• How will custom infotypes and BAdIs being used in SAP HCM be handled in Employee Central?
• How can you leverage the Metadata Framework to extend your Employee Central solution to provision for custom infotypes?

6. Segregation of Duties (SOD)

• How will SOD be reflected in Employee Central?
• Does the cloud solution offer innovative ways of managing SOD that you could investigate?

7. Security and Authorizations

• How does the current design of security and authorizations change within the Employee Central solution?
• How can we use the flexibility of the Role Based Permissions framework in Employee Central and at the same time maintain checks and approvals for critical roles in the organization?

8. Time, Benefits and Payroll system

• What are the key considerations to determine migration from current HCM systems for Time, Payroll and Benefits (SAP or non-SAP) to the cloud?
• What are the strategic vendors for Time, Benefits and Payroll providing delivered integration with Employee Central?
• Is Employee Central Payroll on your cloud migration roadmap? If yes, do you need to examine the custom infotypes being used and if they can now be accommodated by standard portlets in Employee Central?

9. Integration Strategy

• What are some of the best practices for the integration strategy?
• What do we need to consider before retiring interfaces or changing their system of record from SAP HCM to Employee Central
• What are the available middleware options?
• What are the SAP delivered packaged integrations?

10. Global or Local Rollout

• If you are a global organization what will be your rollout strategy?
• If you are running multiple SAP HCM instances, what is the phase out plan of these instances to a single Employee Central instance?
• What are the considerations to decide on a full cloud or Side by Side deployment model for Employee Central?

I hope that SAP HCM customers building a business case for a cloud migration strategy will find these factors helpful. Being part of boardroom discussions it is evident that it will be valuable if in the longer term SAP would provide a vendor delivered migration path from SAP HCM to SuccessFactors Employee Central but until that time the above factors should provide a good starting point for all the cloud champions out there.