Tips & Tricks for a Successful SAP SuccessFactors Implementation

It is important to define business objectives for the project to give it a clear path forward. The business objectives should be based on the understanding of the organisation's needs and what it wants to achieve with the project. These would then be part of the project charter and help shape the success criteria (more on that later). 

Business objectives vary from company to company, but include such goals as enhancing the employee experience, improving employee retention, or reducing payroll processing errors. 

As mentioned earlier, strong project management is needed to keep a project on track.  On top of that, strong governance enables oversight of the project from key stakeholders, some of whom may not be part of the day-to-day project. It is recommended to create a governance structure that includes:

• The project management
• Stakeholders
• Defines aspects of the governance, such as a steering committee and escalation path. 

While it goes without saying, appointing a dedicated project team with clear roles and responsibilities will facilitate the delivery of the project and ensure that deliverables are provided by the right people. 

To guide a project towards success, it is important to define what success looks like. This is done in the form of Success Criteria.  

• What does success of the project look like for your organisation?  
• What are the measurable Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that you can measure success against?  
• While things like cost versus budget are measurable indicators of some form of success, it is often criteria related to adoption, efficiency, and ROI that can show whether a project really met its objectives. 

And remember, go live is not a sign of the success of your project! 

SAP provides Best Practices content for each of the SAP SuccessFactors applications, which provides a set of standard processes, configurations, and more to enable you to get off running quickly with a baseline. This means you do not have to start from a blank canvas or have to envisage what your future business and system requirements look like without any context of the SAP SuccessFactors system and what its capabilities are. 

In general, it is recommended to use standardised processes where possible and to adopt best practices without too much customisation or personalisation to the process. This will make it easier to optimise your processes and align them with the system. Too many customisations should be avoided, although there will always be some need to tailor the system to your unique needs. But bear in mind, you may not be as unique as you think! 

If you are going to make process changes, tools like SAP Signavio can help with process design and mapping. 

Data migration is a big part of core HR and payroll implementations, as well as some other modules, depending on what data you want to move over to your new solution. And data migration takes another turn once you consider migrating historical master data and some process-specific data like payroll results or time entry history, for example.  

A well-defined data migration strategy and data migration plan is critical to ensure this segment of your project is successful and doesn't cause delays or disruptions. The strategy should define what data you want to migrate, how much data to migrate (i.e. how much history you want to retain), and from what systems. The data migration plan will define what you do, such as:

• Data cleansing
• Data transformation 
• Migration
• Validation 
• Testing loads 

The importance of clean data cannot be underestimated. Your business processes – especially critical processes like payroll – rely on having reliable, accurate data. Employee-facing AI capabilities that rely on your data will not provide accurate outputs if the data it is trained on or is reading is not correct. The likelihood is that you will have some degree of bad data in your current system that needs to be cleaned. The extent of how bad this data can be is not usually understood until it is too late. It is recommended to already begin examining and cleaning data prior to the start of an implementation project. In some cases, just identifying data to be corrected later is a good starting point, as you can assess the effort needed to clean the data early on. 

Another big and potentially complex area of an implementation is integrations. Without the right preparation, this is a workstream that has the potential to derail a project, even when all other workstreams are on-time and within budget.  

Even before a project has begun, it is recommended to create an integration inventory (if one doesn't exist) or review the existing integration inventory to ensure it is up-to-date and complete. Another important activity to undertake before a project begins is to contact any of your third-party vendors that your new system will be integrating to, to inform them of your project and begin planning for their support during the project. Many third-party vendors often need a long lead time to line up resources to support an integration project. For a new integration, these vendors need to provide their integration specifications for you and your partner team to utilize during the project. 

If you are going to be migrating data from SAP ERP HCM to SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central using Infoporter, then it is important to check that your SAP ERP HCM system meets the minimum requirements for the SFSF EC INTEGRATION (PA_SE_IN) add-on that needs to be loaded into SAP ERP HCM (officially called “SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Integration to SAP Business Suite”). The requirements can be found here. It is important to do this early, in case any components need to be upgraded, since some component upgrades will require some effort for the upgrade and subsequent regression testing. And if the add-on cannot be used, an alternative plan for migrating the data can be made; this plan will require more time and effort than if the add-on was used, so it gives you time to prepare for this additional effort and cost. 

Change management is one of the most important aspects of a software implementation. Humans are naturally change averse and so change management plays a critical role in the success of your project. 

Change management encompasses a range of different activities, deliverables, and disciplines. These include, but are not limited to:

• Stakeholder engagement plans 
• Communication plans 
• Training and enablement 
• User Acceptance Testing (UAT) cycles 
• and many more. 

It is recommended to develop a comprehensive change management plan that encompasses the different aspects mentioned above. The communication plan and training plans are important parts of the overall change management plan. Tools such as SAP WalkMe can add additional value in the adoption of your new system and processes. 

UAT should be considered a strong change management tool that can get users to understand and become excited about the new solution before it is rolled out. 

Naturally, testing is a significant part of your project. A fully functioning and error free solution is important because you need to rely on the solution to what it is intended, but also not to create problems for employees and users. If someone has problems completing a process or a process fails – such as paying employees – then the workforce can become quite disparaged by not only the solution, but by your company too. In some cases, the negative effect of the fallout of issues with the solution can leave to employees leaving. 

A testing plan should include:

• All of the different types of testing (i.e. unit testing, end-to-end testing, integration testing, UAT, etc.)
• The users to be involved 
• The criteria to close a phase of testing 
• The scenarios to be tested 

Multiple phases of testing should be involved and tests for regional compliance should be considered as part of the test scenarios. 

For payroll, at least two cycles of parallel payroll testing should be performed, although in some instances three cycles might be the recommendation. 

Go live is not the end, but just the beginning of the HR transformation journey. That is why it is important to begin planning for what you will do once your new system is live. Post-go live is not just about supporting the new system, but also about continuous improvement and management of the bi-annual SAP SuccessFactors releases. If you are new to cloud software, then the way SAP SuccessFactors deploys new releases twice per year could be new to your organisation, and it is important to prepare for this change. 

A successful SAP SuccessFactors implementation is not just about the technology; it’s about the people and processes that drive it. By focusing on thorough planning, effective communication, and continuous training, organisations can ensure a smoother transition and maximise their ROI.  

Remember, the journey of HR transformation is ongoing, and leveraging the right strategies will help you achieve long-term success and adaptability in an ever-evolving business landscape. Embrace the change and let your new HRIS empower your workforce to reach new heights.