Integrating SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central and Variable Pay

Many of the records in Employee Central are effective-dated, meaning each time a transaction is entered, the system prompts to provide an effective start date, which creates the historical, present, and future records in Employee Central. The worksheet effective date controls importing dated information from Employee Central into Summary Rows of Variable Pay ONLY.

• Effective date DOES NOT apply to VRP employee history records, only Summary Level (that is, Entry Level) fields
• ALL Summary Level fields must use the same effective date (that is, cannot pull salary as of plan end date, but department as of most current date.)
• Effective date DOES NOT affect VRP plan eligibility rules. Eligibility rules will always be related to the dates in the Employee History as EEs can move during the plan period.
• Note that not all Employee Central objects are effective-dated (Employment Details, for example). The effective date is ignored for those Employee Central objects.

There is a special scenario which exists for some companies called a hybrid template.

• A hybrid template is where some users are stored in Employee Central, and others outside Employee Central, though both are planned within Variable Pay. A hybrid scenario can greatly increase complexity and is generally not preferred. A recommended alternative is to have a template for each separate population.
• Hybrid templates use both file-based data importing as well as data integration.
• Two types of employees:
  1. Employee Central data mapping will still be used for Employee Central employees.
  2. User data file data mapping (importKey) will be used for employees with imported history records.
• Hybrid does NOT mean you can have mixed data sources for a single employee. It is NOT possible to select some field-level data from Employee Central and the remaining field-level data from the user import for the same user.
• Hybrid plans may still apply non-MDF eligibility rules to history records, so you may need an eligibility rule file to apply rules to these users.
• An EE's VRP history should appear EITHER in Employee Central OR in the history import, not both.
• Employees MUST still exist in SAP SuccessFactors (that is, they must have user ID records and Employee Profile records).

Publish settings reflect how nonrecurring pay components are mapped and configured in XML. The effective date is editable so company administrators can easily update payout dates within the UI.

User Publish Filter: Controls which reportable custom field can be used as a filter when publishing selected employees. You can use up to five custom fields as criteria when you publish data back to Employee Central.

• Allow Employee History Import: Choose yes if some employee records are not in Employee Central, such as a hybrid scenario.
• Run Bonus calculation by non-EC eligibility rules: Choose yes if using eligibility file to assign bonus plans to employees.
• Merge Similar Employee Central Records: Choose yes if you want to merge adjacent records which do not affect employee data and eligibility fields coming into Variable Pay.
• Enable global eligibility rule: Global eligibility rule is used to filter out user records. When selected two additional fields will be displayed, one to define the rule and another one to define the effective date of the rule. If the latter is left blank, the end of the Variable Pay program is considered the effective date for the eligibility rule. A sample case for using this option would be if the client's variable pay program contained a global rule specifying only for employees active as of January 1st. If a global eligibility rule is created for status equal to active, and the effective date is set to January 1st, only employees that meet this criteria will be selected for further eligibility processing. Another example is to award bonuses only to employees who have had less than a determined number of days of unpaid leave.
• Configure multiple rules by EC entity for the program: Choose yes if you want to create different eligibility rules for different entities. This is a solution that allows you to split complex Employee Central rules into smaller rules, making them more manageable. This option also has an impact improving the performance of the program.
• Eligibility rule for Employee History Records: Determines which records will be considered for bonus calculation. If global eligibility rule exist, only those records which passed the global rules will be considered for employee history processing.

Variable Pay forms contain many fields belonging to different sections. To successfully integrate, you must know the supported Employee Central objects on each Variable Pay form section. One thing remains constant, all fields used in Compensation and Variable Pay must exist in Employee Central in accessible tables.

These are the fields which appear in the summary line and data pulled based on the template effective date. It’s important to note that not all Employee Central objects are dated. The effective date is ignored for noneffective dated Employee Central objects. Currently available objects supported in summary field mapping are as follows:

• Job Information
• Compensation Information
• Recurring pay component
• Non-recurring pay component
• Pay Component Group
• Personal Information
• Employment Details
• Job Relationships
• Person Info
• Employee Profile (Standard elements in Succession Data Model)
• MDF Custom Objects

Guidelines in using EC-Field mapping in Summary level:

• Associations, or values populated by business rules should be avoided.
• Field type should match. Fields should be mapped to the correct element type. A "string" filed should not be mapped to a "number" field or vice-versa.
• No-dual loading, some fields via flat file and others via integration unless using hybrid templates.

These are the fields related to employee assignments which can be used in cascading business goals. An important distinction between Employee Central and Non-Employee Central integrated plans is the relevance of employee history to assigning bonus plans. For non-Employee Central integrated plans, the information in employee history is used to determine how employees are assigned to incentive plans, which is not the case for Employee Central-integrated plans. Employee Central-integrated variable pay plan uses business rules in assigning employees to bonus plans. For easy validation and troubleshooting, the recommended approach is to include the field used in business rules to employee history mapping.

Employee Central objects supported in history field mapping include:

• Job Information
• Compensation Information
• Recurring pay component
• Non-recurring pay component
• Pay Component Group
• Personal Information
• Employment Details
• Person Info
• Employee Profile (Standard elements in Succession Data Model)

The configuration of the background element used for employee history remains the same, with the exception of a new field, recordType. The background element MUST have this field for Employee Central-integrated plans. After field mapping, business rules must be created to run employee history process. Mapping employee history fields does not pull data from Employee Central unless a business rule is created to filter the eligible employees. This is discussed further down in the Business Rules section.

After looking at Employee History mapping, it is important to know how the history is generated:

1. Global and History Eligibility Rules determine which record is pulled.
2. A different row will be pulled for each data change an employee had throughout the year.
3. All rows will be compared, and identical rows will be consolidated.
4. The basis is calculated based on how bonus target and percentages are mapped (discussed further in the next section).

Initiate the employee history processor to pull data from Employee Central. When pulling data initially, leave all three options blank. Take note of the following descriptions for succeeding runs:

• Import only changed records: Selecting this option will import records only for employees whose assignment information has changed in Employee Central. This approach is recommended only if you have a small set of changed records to be updated in Variable Pay. If this option is not selected, Variable Pay will import all eligible records from Employee Central.
• Do not Update Completed Forms: Selecting this option will not update employee history records that are already present on a completed form. If an employee is on a completed form, their record will not be updated.
• Run Bonus Calculation & Update Launched Forms: Selecting this option will trigger the Bonus Calculation and Mass Update jobs following import of the records. Bonus data for employees that have changed records will be updated in any forms that have already been launched.

The basis for Employee Central-integrated plans is mapped separately from the employee history. Currently, the following Employee Central objects are supported for basis mapping:

• Job Information
• Compensation Information
• Pay Component Group

For integrated programs, the basis can be derived in one of several ways:

1. Bonus target and "%" derived from Job Info – best for person-specific programs, or for programs based on earnings (for example, nonexempt or hourly employees) OR programs where there is a need for externally calculated basis.
   1. Earnings/Basis can be loaded in Employee Central
   2. Earnings/Basis can come from a loaded table
   3. Percentage can be a custom field in jobInfo or a custom field on pay range
2. Bonus target derived from pay component group and "%" from Job Info – best when the starting point of basis calculation is a static value, like a pay rate or combination of rates that are then multiplied by a target percentage.
   1. Pay component group is the "sum"
   2. Percentage on Job Info gives the percentage
3. Bonus target and "%" derived from pay component group – best when the pay component group is the entirety of the basis and the target percent included. Used when target percentages are stored as pay components.

   Pay component group is the "sum" inclusive of the percentage.

The system allows the use of all three options. If more than one source is selected, the priority for each user is based on the preceding order listed.

By default, Variable Pay calculates a bonus target amount (basis) based on job changes. However, not all companies use the same calculation in the exact granular way intended by Variable Pay, where job changes and effective dates drive the process.

An option in Variable Pay supports the use of point in time calculation. For example, always use the salary as 12/31 even if the pay changed throughout the year. This setting can be applied to salary/earnings and/or target percent.

Employee Central can apply a robust set of eligibility rules. Just like Compensation, Variable Pay does not need the THEN condition in the rules. There are several eligibility rules involved in Employee Central-integrated Variable Pay plans and different ways on how it is used:

• Global Eligibility Rules is an optional rule which can be applied to filter employees before being processed for Employee History. This rule requires an effective date.

  Example: A company has 10,000 user records in the system of which 1,000 are inactive. The global eligibility rule can be used to filter only active employees as of 12/31/2019. Keep in mind, the effective date is not entered as a parameter in the business rule, but applied at the plan settings.

• Employee History Rules filters the records for bonus calculation.

  Continuing with the previous example: Out of the 9,000 active employees that are filtered from global eligibility, only 7,500 are eligible for bonus calculation.

• Bonus Plan Eligibility assigns the eligible employees to specific bonus plans.

  Out of the 7, 500 eligible employees processed for employee history, 5,000 are assigned to the revenue-generating bonus plan, while the rest are assigned to the revenue-enabling bonus plan.

• Manage Form Eligibility is the same as in Compensation, who would you like to see on the form?

  Example – even employees without a bonus plan can be included on the form.

To publish the bonus planning results to Employee Central, the <comp-ect-output-component> is used to define the mapping between the source field in Variable Pay and the target field in Employee Central. Currently, publishing is limited to payComponentNonRecurring entity of Employee Central. Bonus payouts can be published per employee, selected, or all worksheets.

componentType: Specifies the type of pay component. In Variable Pay, we only use payComponentNonRecurring.

componentCode: Specifies the code of the pay component.

eventReason: Specifies the reason for the payout. This is OPTIONAL for nonrecurring pay components. The event reason can be changed in the UI. When event reason is configured at the employee-level (for example, by using a lookup table), it takes precedence over the default value.

effectiveDate: Specifies the pay-date for nonrecurring pay components. If a date is specified for the hris-field, that date takes precedence. Dates can be edited in the UI.

comp-hris-field-map: Specifies the names of the field in Compensation (comp-field-id) and Employee Central (hris-field-id).

1234567891011121314
<comp-ect-output-component componentType="payComponentNonRecurring" componentCode="MIP_BONUS" eventReason="MIP_AWARD" effectiveDate="2021-04-01">
    <comp-hris-field-map>
    <comp-field-id><![CDATA[localCurrencyCode]]></comp-field-id>
    <hris-field-id><![CDATA[currency-code]]></hris-field-id>
    </comp-hris-field-map>
    <comp-hris-field-map>
    <comp-field-id><![CDATA[Final_MIP_Payout_Amt]]></comp-field-id>
    <hris-field-id><![CDATA[value]]></hris-field-id>
    </comp-hris-field-map>
    <comp-hris-field-map>
    <comp-field-id><![CDATA[customPayoutDate]]></comp-field-id>
    <hris-field-id><![CDATA[pay-date]]></hris-field-id>
    </comp-hris-field-map>
    </comp-ect-output-component>

• Multiple non-recurring pay components can be published.
  • New pay component is created from scratch with foundation object values populated.
  • Field values are set based on the comp-hris-field-map.
• The same components can be published multiple times.
  • First publishing creates a new pay component.
  • Subsequent publishing updates pay components published from the same template and creates new ones.

1. Navigate to Compensation Home → Select the comp template → Complete Compensation Cycle → Publish Data. You can select the population that can be published back to Employee Central. Publishing in multiple batches improves the overall performance of the publishing process.
   • Use Publish in Employee Central to bulk publish records from all completed forms. Processing time depends on number of records.
   • Use Publish selected worksheets to batch process records for select completed worksheets.
   • Use Publish selected employees to batch process records for select employees from completed forms. Employees can be entered one at a time or can be imported using a CSV template.
2. Choose Submit when ready to publish.
3. Monitor Compensation Jobs can be used to track the status of your request.

An Employee Central Publish Report tool can provide a detailed log of a publishing job. The tool requires the View Employee Central Publish Report admin permission to be enabled. A spreadsheet report can be generated based on user-defined criteria to identify issues during publishing process.

• Remove (or change) the custom fields using importKey tag. It is NOT supported configuration to use importKey in Employee Central-Compensation integration, so you must remove ALL references to importKey in your XML in order to launch worksheets. This includes importKeys defined in the Budgets and Rating Source sections of the XML.
• To integrate employee history data such as varPayProgramName, startDate, endDate, basis, record Type are not mapped in Employee history. Import business goals and weights.
• Business rules for Variable Pay only use varpayEligibility as rule type.
• Any updates to data in Employee Central is not automatically reflected until the next time the import process is executed. Keep in mind, Worksheet Effective Date only applies to Summary Level fields and not Employee History fields. An import job called Employee Central History Processor can be set in recurring schedule in provisioning.
• For all non-recurring pay components, it is assumed that the pay component is a stand-alone pay component that is not connected to the Employee Central compensation data.
• Money and amount fields cannot be published to a custom long field in Employee Central.