Overview of SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central

SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central (EC) is part of the SAP SuccessFactors HCM-integrated suite of solutions. You can focus on an HRIS system today but we provide a platform and road map that you can use as you build your organization beyond an HRIS system.

SAP SuccessFactors EC helps organizations manage their most important resource, their employees.

SAP SuccessFactors EC also helps organizations engage and empower their entire workforce including Human Resources, managers, and employees.

This application is created with the end user in mind, providing managers and employees with a full view of the organization and how peers fit into the overall structure. This overall structure is built from three building blocks: Foundation objects, Person objects, and Employment objects. Human Resources can see that these objects come together to create the organizations' complete picture, allowing them to make informed decisions by offering a complete end-to-end life cycle for all employees.

Comprehensive Talent & Core HR Applications

• Strategy: Knowing what needs to be done.
• Assets: Securing the resources to do it.
• Execution: Getting people to do it.

SAP SuccessFactors EC requires the use of role-based permissions. SAP SuccessFactors uses these role-based permissions to set security in SAP SuccessFactors EC.

Role-based permissions use permission groups and roles to grant permissions to users. You, as an administrator, can also grant permission to standard role types such as employee or manager. When granting these permissions, an administrator can limit the permissions to specific target groups of users.

This is a dynamic method of assigning permissions. For example, when an employee is promoted to a manager, the employee is automatically be assigned all the special permissions a manager has. There is a full audit history of all changes made to a group or role.

SAP SuccessFactors EC can go beyond these basic roles, and allow organizations to set up roles based on several criteria. Role-based permissions in SAP SuccessFactors ECare dynamic in that you can create groups and permissions based on characteristics of jobs and roles. For example, you could grant the Regional HR Talent Manager role to everyone in the HR department with the country set to U.S., and then restrict the scope of employees managed to everyone in the U.S..

Role-based permissions are designed so that users match more than one role. As a best practice, we recommend configuring roles by starting with the most generic role as in "All Employees Role", and casting the net as wide as possible to include all permissions that are given to everyone.

In this section, you learn how SAP SuccessFactors EC stores data. Each organization is unique. SAP SuccessFactors EC is configured to fit your current structure. It allows you to configure what entries a user can make to create and manage company, person, employment, and country-specific data. Data belongs to one of three types:

• Foundation Objects (Company Data).
• Personal Data.
• Employment Data.

Country-specific data can belong to any of the three types.

The Foundation Objects store the company's organization, pay, and job structures. This data is used throughout the entire company.

HR Data contains information that is linked to the employee comprised of personal and employment-related information.

Foundation Objects set up data that can be shared across the entire company, like job codes, departments, and cost centers.

The Foundation Objects also help manage relationships between the data. For example, if your company has several business units in the same location, a relationship can be created so that employees using SAP SuccessFactors EC can only select business units that match the selected location.

In this video learn how the foundation objects in SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central hold the main company data, organization structure, pay structure, and job structure. Discover how these objects are linked together and how they can help manage relationships between the data.

You can group Foundation Objects together using relationships. These relationships allow the system to better organize your company's information. These relationships are known as associations.

For example, a customer can have a business unit like Corporate Global Services associated with multiple cost centers.

When an employee transfers to Corporate Global Services, the result is that only the cost centers associated with the business unit are available for the manager to select. This filtering occurs automatically based on your company's structure and configuration.

SAP SuccessFactors EC can use the Metadata Framework (MDF) to create extra objects to support business processes.

Most of SAP SuccessFactors EC's actions begin in the People Profile. Anyone can find an employee's profile by using the universal action search.

In the application, you can hover over a name to view the employee's Quick Card that provides general information about the person you are looking for. Select the employee's name to view their Public Profile, or click Action to quickly initiate transactions, or click Go to navigate to a specific section of the employee's profile.

In the People Profile, you can view and edit a person's personal and employment information on one simple consolidated page.

An integrated part of the SAP SuccessFactors HXM of applications, the People Profile drives the success of your company by helping employees, managers, and administrators track employees and their compensation, all in one place.

If your organization includes benefit and payroll capabilities in the suite, SAP SuccessFactors becomes a powerful all-in-one application that empowers your workforce to manage their career in one user-friendly system.

The personal and employment data create the structure for the Employee Files. This data typically contains information such as compensation and contact information.

Personal data is information that is not job-dependent. You can see this information on the employee's Personal Information section.

Employment data is information that is related to an employee's job. You can see this information on the employee's Employment Information section.

If your company spans across the globe, it is likely you have country-specific data to ensure that personal and employment data are entered into the system using the standards necessary for the geographical location. Your organization must decide which fields are country-specific, which different values a field can have, and which fields need a country-specific format. Examples include national ID format, and address requirements.

The Employee Information section displays fundamental job-related data and is segregated into subsections.

Your organization can determine what information is stored here, what fields are mandatory, and the order of the fields shown on the screen.

What you can see or edit is controlled by permissions.

The Personal Information page includes nonbusiness information pertaining to the employee.

National ID information, address, biographical information, and contact information are displayed separately in a subsection.

Your organization can determine which are the required fields and using Role-Based Permissions who have view/edit privileges.

The Employment Information page contains job, compensation, and other employment details.

Administrators and managers can use the Take Action dropdown menu to update employee records, issue spot bonuses, make changes to benefit plans, and more.

Customers can configure the Internal Job History Block in the People Profile to view a summarized version of an employee's internal career history at the company. This is a read-only block, showing a filtered version of the job history for an employee based on a rule scenario configured to show selected fields from Job Information. Whereas typically only HR admins have access to the details in the job history (in the Job Information block), the selected information on an employee's history as part of the Internal Job History Block is typically useful for a broader audience.

The Job History Block was added for EC customers who wish to view a summary of an employee's internal job history at the company. The block allows a customer to filter the data based on the Job Information fields they want to see.

SAP SuccessFactors EC is a system of record, which stores dates for all transactions and certain data using effective and noneffective dating. Effective dating in SAP SuccessFactors EC means that the system stores a history of changes over time. The system defines the start date for these fields as the effective date and the end date as December 31, 9999. Upon entering a new record, the system looks at the effective date and inserts it into the history. For example, your organization hired three employees on January 1, 2010.

If your organization wants to transfer these employees on January 1, 2015, they could enter the information into the system with an effective date of January 1, 2015. The system will automatically store December 31, 2014, as the end date of the original record while the end date of the second record is December 31, 9999.

A picklist is a list of values defined for a field that are listed in a dropdown menu when the field is clicked. SAP SuccessFactors EC has a master picklist, and you can add your company-specific values. An example of a picklist is Address Type. When an employee provides a home address, they can select the Address Type. The employee can only select certain values.

The system also allows you to quickly import these changes using the picklist import/export features.

This section provides information about SAP SuccessFactors EC transactions and the corresponding approval processes.

A transaction occurs when a user changes an employee's information. These transactions can be initiated by employees to their information to change address, add new contact information, and so on. Managers can also initiate transactions for their direct reports.

Transactions may or may not require an approval process.

• SAP SuccessFactors EC using Role-Based Permissions helps organizations empower employees to make changes to their employee information.
• These self-service transactions are minor updates made to an employee record that do not affect the employee's compensation or role.
• This may include a change in contact information, emergency contact, and so on.

• SAP SuccessFactors EC using Role-Based Permissions helps organizations empower managers to initiate changes to their direct report's information.
• Manager Self-Service is typically initiated using the Take Action in People Profile or employee quick card and requires multiple approvals before the change is active.
• A quick action template can also be created to customize the fields used and simplify the most commonly used employee and manager self-service transactions.

In this video learn how to initiate manager self-service transactions in SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central. Proxy in as Karla Grant, view direct reports, initiate job information changes, and more.

The Edit or History links above employment blocks allow transactions to be executed without an approval workflow. Administrators are typically granted this privilege to make corrections to an employee's file.

SAP SuccessFactors EC records employee transactions as events, which serve as the historical record for the company. SAP SuccessFactors EC has system-defined events that cannot be changed. Event reasons are customizable and provide extra context to events. For example, your company can have a new hire process and a contractor onboarding process.

The system records both as HIRE events but you can configure the event reason for the first to be New Hire and the second to be Contractor Onboarding.

The event and event reasons can also trigger HR business processes like approval workflows for employee transactions. In the image, the header represents the event and the bulleted list represents event reasons. Since event reasons are configurable, your final system configuration can be different from what is shown. Event Reason Derivation is configured using Business Rules.

An approval workflow can be initiated once a change is made to employee data. SAP SuccessFactors EC allows your organization to create approval workflows and determine which transactions initiate workflows.

Some organizations can have permissions and business rules in place to trigger approval workflows. These can affect employee transactions, such as pay increases, job changes, job information imports, compensation imports, pay component imports, leave requests, and bonuses.

Your organization can choose different workflows for different transactions. The workflow is put in place to ensure that everyone involved in the transaction know that a change is taking place. Individuals involved in the workflow process are notified via e-mail that an approval is pending. When logged into the SAP SuccessFactors system, an EC alert displays on the home page on the To-Do Panel.

An administrator is able to manage workflows from the home page by being able to sort, filter, and mass approve workflow requests when needed.

To view the request, the approver only must select the notification to see the approval request page. The Approval Request page includes much of the information that the approver needs to make an informed decision, including:

• Request Information - The approver can view event reason (Data Change) and see who the request affects.
• View Workflow Participants - The approver can view others in the approval workflow.
• Response - The approver can approve, comment, and send back the request.
• Recent Activity - The approver can view actions taken on the request so far, including the initiator, and other approvals.

Workflows can be routed based on dynamic roles. As a result, workflows can be routed based on the attribute values of the employee.

Workflows can also be routed based on position objects. Organizations using the position of management can have a new incumbent of a position automatically receive the appropriate workflow requests without having to adjust the configuration.

There can be times when the workflow must be circumvented. SAP SuccessFactors EC uses Role-Based Permissions and dynamic groups to grant permission to circumvent the normal approval process.

It is also possible for users, who are workflow approvers, to delegate workflow requests to other users because they are maintained as managers (such as matrix manager, custom manager, or second manager) in job relationships.