SAP Learning Journey

Navigating Workforce Data in SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition

Objectives
After completing this lesson, you will be able to:

After completing this lesson, you will be able to:

  • Explore workforce data in the intelligent enterprise

The Recruit to Retire Business Process

Challenges managing the modern workforce

In the subsequent figure, click on each of the highlighted boxes to reveal further information.

Business Processes in the Intelligent Enterprise Suite

SAP developed the concept of the Intelligent Enterprise to support businesses in tackling these types of challenges across the entire organization. The four end-to-end business processes that drive SAP's vision of an Intelligent Enterprise are: Lead to Cash, Recruit to Retire, Source to Pay, and Design to Operate.

The Recruit to Retire process addresses the challenges of workforce management by providing easily integrated systems that deliver a clear line of sight into the organization's business objectives, employee and contingent worker activities and engagement, and the financial impact. Within the SAP portfolio, this includes integration of SAP SuccessFactors, SAP Concur, SAP Fieldglass, and SAP Ariba to SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition.

Recruit to Retire Business Process & Sub Processes

An Intelligent Recruit to Retire process enables the end-to-end business processes of planning, sourcing, and managing all aspects of the workforce (employees and external workers), with a clear line of sight into the financial impact to support the enterprise in achieving their business objectives.

Click on each of the three blue boxes to reveal further information.

Note
Learn more about the comprehensive Recruit to Retire process in the SAP Help Portal and the SAP API Business Hub

To realize the complete Recruit to Retire business process, the following SAP solutions are integrated:

SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition

SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition is the core ERP solution and financial system of record that supports activities across the relevant Line of Business and Industry business processes. The Finance Line of Business (LoB) supports activities such as updating financial statements, making corrections, processing, maintaining journal entries, and closing the quarter end. The Professional Services LoB supports activities such as creating customer/internal projects, assigning work packages that define staffing needs to project activities, and maintaining project financials.

SAP Analytics Cloud

Embedded in the SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition analytic applications such as those supporting modeling the demand for talent.

SAP SuccessFactors

  • Employee Central is the HR system of record, which supports activities such as changing employee/employment information, employees requesting time off, and termination/offboarding.
  • Employee Central Payroll supports payroll processing for internal and contingent workers.
  • Recruiting Management and Recruiting Marketing support staffing activities such as recruiting new hires, opening requisitions, finding candidates, and making offers.
  • Onboarding supports new hire activities such as employees completing required paperwork, receiving necessary equipment, training, and meeting new team members, in addition to offboarding activities for internal and external resources, such as initiating offboarding and employees signing required paperwork.
  • Learning supports ongoing training and development for employees.
  • Performance & Goals support activities such as creating goals and targets for the upcoming year, and facilitating performance-related discussions.
  • Succession and Development supports the organization in preparing for staffing changes and aligning learning activities for employees with current gaps in the workforce.
  • Compensation and Variable Pay support activities such as defining and adjusting fixed salary, and short-term bonus or merit-based incentives.
  • People Analytics (formerly Workforce Analytics and Workforce Planning) supports organizations in creating planning models based on HR metrics to determine the talent demand, and visualizing and modeling HR data using a variety of interactive analytical dimensions and reporting tools.
  • SAP Jam enables employees to collaborate, communicate, and share content in dedicated groups targeted toward different activities or business initiatives.

SAP Concur

Supports travel and expense-related activities, such as planning and booking travel, processing expense reports, and reimbursement of business expenses.

SAP Fieldglass

Supports resource managers in staffing activities, such as opening requisitions, creating purchase orders, and working with suppliers. Contingent workers submit their time sheets through Fieldglass, which are then approved by the supervisor in SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition.

SAP Ariba

Supports sourcing and procurement activities, such as an employee purchasing a new laptop, or a project manager procuring services from a third-party for a customer-facing or internal project.

SAP One Domain Model

SAP One Domain Model

The SAP One Domain Model is a single, coherent domain model for business objects in SAP's Intelligent Suite and cloud applications. The purpose of mapping objects to a central domain is to simplify the exchange and ensure consistency of data, regardless of which application it's viewed or accessed in.

The term, domain, has many definitions. In the classic sense, a domain refers to a territory over which rule or control is exercised. It has roots in the Latin words dominium, meaning property, and dominus, meaning lord. A domain could also refer to a field of knowledge (e.g. mathematics), or a group of people that share a common characteristic (e.g. university professors are in the domain of academia). A webpage has an address, or domain name, that is purchased and owned by someone. In software engineering, a domain typically refers to a subject area for an application, and the domain model describes the relationships between domains. There are several types of domain models, including entities, aspects, codes, types, and enums. The highest level is an entity, with aspects, codes, types, and enums providing specific information about attributes within the entity domain model. Domain models are then connected to each other through different types of relationships.

For example, workforce is a domain. Within the workforce domain, a workforce person (employee) is an entity with a set of attributes that describe it, such as personal details, email, phone, and work assignments. This chunk of information is collectively the workforce person domain model, and is visually grouped together in a container when viewed in the SAP API Business Hub. If we focus on the work assignments attribute of workforce person, we see there is a separate domain model dedicated to information about work assignments grouped into its own container. The work assignment domain model includes attributes such as start date, end date, job details, payment details, work order details, and if the worker is contingent. If we now focus on the payment details attribute of work assignment, we see a relationship to a separate container dedicated to characteristics of the payment details. The payment details domain model includes attributes such as payment type and bank account type, and defines a maximum of eleven characters for the business identifier code.

Collectively, these different types of domain models with their attributes and relationships to each other create the SAP One Domain Model. Workforce person and cost center were the first two domain models aligned, with business partner and supplier following in a later release. As domain models continue to be aligned across SAP's applications, it becomes easier to extend and integrate between solutions. For extensibility, a developer building an app that consumes employee data can easily see the type of information and requirements (e.g. length restrictions or type of field - date, Boolean, numeric, etc.) defined in the workforce person domain model. For integration, workforce person data can easily be synchronized between different applications because they follow the same structure. With the alignment of the workforce person and cost center entities, SAP developed a new type of integration package between SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition and SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central using the Master Data Integration Service on SAP Business Technology Platform.

Technologies for Integrating Systems and Applications

Point-to-point integration

Every system or application is integrated directly with another system or application to share data. This type of integration can be set up quickly and easily, but it is not scalable. Each point-to-point integration must be individually secured, monitored, and maintained during its lifecycle. This creates a "spaghetti" architecture that becomes increasingly more time consuming and costly as additional applications are deployed and integrated into the landscape.

Hub and spoke integration

All applications share data through one central hub system. The hub routes traffic to the respective system/application, and acts as a MOM (Message Oriented Middleware) that can perform any type of translation, transformation, and routing decision. Unlike point-to-point integration, each system that wants to share data doesn't need to be directly connected to any other sharing system. All applications have a single connection point to the hub, to which they can send or retrieve data. With far fewer integrations to maintain, hub and spoke integration massively simplifies the landscape.

Middleware

Acts as a bridge between two or more applications that need to share data with each other. As it's name suggests, middleware sits in the middle of an end-to-end transaction, and therefore initiates outgoing messages from one application in response to incoming messages from another application. Middleware takes data from an application and translates, reformats, and restructures the information so it can be received by another application. It has the ability to process, route, enrich, and manipulate the flow of data between multiple source and target systems.

Note
Regardless of the integration technology, Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) are the messengers that bring data from one application to another. An integration package is just a set of several different APIs, with each being responsible for a granular piece of information.

SAP Business Technology Platform Master Data Integration Service

Master data represents the single source of business data used commonly across applications in business processes. It is important to ensure the data used by different applications is correct and consistent, however this becomes increasingly difficult as the integration landscape grows to be more complex. The Master Data Integration (MDI) service running on SAP Business Technology Platform enables SAP customers to share and synchronize master data in the integrated intelligent suite through a central repository. MDI uses the SAP One Domain Model as the exchange format to achieve a consistent view of master data across end-to-end business processes.

In the Hire to Retire scenario, MDI acts as the master data broker between the HR system of record (SuccessFactors Employee Central) for workforce data and the financial system of record (SAP S/4HANA) for cost center data. While connecting an individual application MDI constitutes a point-to-point integration, the final result is a hub-and-spoke scenario with all applications connected to the central repository, or hub to which they send or retrieve data only once.

Note
The hub is sometimes referred to as a mini-master.

In other words, MDI is a central repository of data, much like a library is a central repository of books. Instead of applications being directly connected to each other, they all have a single connection to the MDI service. A request for data is received and authenticated through SAP Cloud Identity Services, and MDI delivers the response. Just as a person looking for a book goes to the library (central repository) with their request for a specific title, then retrieves the book. The request/retrieval is carried by the API messenger to and from MDI.

Master Data Integration in the Hire to Retire Scenario

Master Data Owner & Consumer

Cost center data is maintained in SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition and is replicated to Master Data Integration. From Master Data Integration, cost center data is replicated to SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central. Workforce data is maintained in SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central and is replicated to Master Data Integration. From Master Data Integration, workforce data is replicated to other consumer applications, such as SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition.

Process Flow

SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central provides employee (worker in MDI terminology) data to the Master Data Integration Service, which is then consumed by SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition and the SAP Cloud Identity applications (from Business Technology Platform). SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition provides roles to the Cloud Identity applications and provides cost centers to MDI for Employee Central to consume. The Cloud Identity applications ensure authentication, authorization and SSO management in both Employee Central and SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition. It also manages the event-based identity lifecycle of employees from Hire to Retire.

Methods of Populating and Monitoring Employee Data

Three Primary Methods of Populating Employee Data in SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition

SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition covers core ERP processes, such as those in the Finance, Sales, Procurement, and Manufacturing Lines of Business (LoBs). While you can upload and maintain a user data file directly in SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition, and employees can record their time using the respective Fiori apps, the solution is intended to have a true HR system of record integrated.

There are three primary methods of populating employee data:

(1) CSV file upload via Import Employees Fiori app

Always used to create the initial users for project team members to access the system for implementation activities and to create test users for Fit-to-Standard workshop demonstrations of the business processes.

(2) Integration with SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central via SAP Best Practices packages

New integration based on SAP One Domain Model:Workforce Management with SAP Master Data Integration (4AF) and Financial Master Data for SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central (4AJ). In the new integration, the data model is aligned across all SAP applications to minimize potential replication errors, and the structure of the integration was redesigned with the introduction of the Master Data Integration Service running on the SAP Business Technology Platform to simplify the integration landscape.

Original integration:Core HR with SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central (JB1). This integration package supports transfer of basic employee data, such as employee name, ID, and contact information, in addition to employment and financial data, such as cost center and currency exchange rate. Both internal employee and contingent worker data transfer is supported.

(3) Integration with non-SAP HR system of record via SOAP APIs

Inbound service enabling you to replicate basic master data of the workforce from external HR systems to the SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition system. This method corresponds with the SAP Best Practices scope item: Employee Integration: SAP S/4HANA Enablement (1FD), although it does not set up the integration, but instead provides enablement information about consuming the package from the SAP API Business Hub.

Application Job for Workforce Person Integration Processing

Application jobs are used to monitor application-related tasks, such as monitoring the success of replication of employee data from an HR system of record. The monitor employee integration synchronization, use the Workforce Person Integration Processing application job template. This application job template enables you to:

  • Set up activities for workforce deployment replication.
  • Clear notifications for the business users who have the AIF recipient WFD_WORKER_INTEGRATION assigned to them. This applies if the Employee/Workforce data is already based on the SAP One Domain model.
  • The job also helps you run the replication based on different processing models.

Message Monitoring for Worker Integration Processing

The HR Administrator monitors the success or failure of the creation people data and work assignment of newly hired employees in the SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition system. The Message Monitoring apps are used to check the replication status for each workforce person to see if there are any failed replications in the namespace: /WFD. These apps use an interface based on Application Interface Framework (AIF). If you do not see the Message Monitoring apps available, check your permissions to ensure the business catalog granting access to AIF apps are assigned.

Employee Fact Sheet

After employees have been created in SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition, their Employee Factsheet can be found through the Enterprise Search. The Employee Factsheet provides basic employee data, employments, projects, skills, payment information (if maintained), and contingent worker information (if applicable). The app uses restricted role-based access to control visibility of different sections to users viewing the factsheet.

When using the enterprise search, you can filter by different categories; the categories relevant to searching for employee information based on the SAP One Domain Model are:

  • Employee-Workforce: Enables you to search for employees along with their employment details.
  • Employment-Workforce: Enables you to search for all employees matching your search criteria. In the search results for this model, you get basic details about the employee, such as first name, last name, full name, and skills.

Features of the Employee Factsheet app:

  • The Primary Employment tab displays basic employee data, accounting data, and communication details.
  • The Employments tab displays employment details, such as company, start date, end date, supervisor, and job code.
  • The Projects tab displays all previous, current, and upcoming project assignments, and roles.
  • The Tags tab displays the skill sets of the employee.
  • The Controlling Information tab displays information about all service cost levels per active employment. The app displays multiple service cost levels for all active personnel numbers.
  • The Payment Information tab displays payment information such as multiple bank account details (if applicable), start date, and end date.
  • The Contingent Worker Information tab displays the associated supplier per employment.

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