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Integrate SAP SuccessFactors

Human Capital Management (HCM) software refers to a suite of HR applications – from payroll and recruiting to performance and benefits management – that is intended to help an organization manage and maintain its workforce. While just decades ago employees were referred to as “personnel,” the emerging term “human capital” represents a fundamental shift in the way companies are now engaging their workforce, distinguishing themselves in the market, and recognizing top talent are key enablers of strategic growth.

 

SAP SuccessFactors is a leading HCM suite including the traditional "four pillars" of talent management: recruiting, learning and development, performance management and compensation management. In addition, it has onboarding and time and attendance software, workforce planning, and people analytics. SAP Successfactors has also recently joined other HR software makers in adding artificial intelligence (AI) to augment its analytics functions and to automate HR processes with chatbots and machine learning.

SAP SuccessFactors use cases

In addition to improving the employee experience, organizations are also seeking to improve the operational efficiency of workforce management by adopting new digital HR technology such as SAP SuccessFactors. Some of its core capabilities include:

  • Core HR – SAP SuccessFactors’ Employee Central helps automate core HR processes, enables employee self-service, tracks time and absences, streamlines benefits administration, and provides a 360 view of employees.
  • Recruiting and onboarding – a solution to help recruiters and hiring managers source, nurture, hire, and onboard talent through a CRM-like platform, career sites, applicant tracking management (ATR), and dashboards for new hires.
  • Learning and development – provides access to personalized e-learning content across the organization through SAP Successfactor’s learning management system (LMS). This helps develop employee skills and improve talent management, among other benefits.
  • Performance and compensation solutions – improves employee performance through ongoing coaching, feedback, and recognition.
  • Workforce planning & HR analytics – produces dashboards and reports related to hiring, diversity, performance, turnover, and more to improve HR decisions and business strategy.
  • Employee experience management solutions – through survey creation, design, and reporting HR can gain insights from employees to drive improvements.

While SAP SuccessFactors delivers a robust HR solution, the reality is that many vendors have had challenges keeping up with innovative talent management practices, leading organizations to mix and match best-of-breed solutions over the years to fill the gaps. Further, in today’s digital enterprises, many non-HR processes depend on accurate, up-to-date people data. True digital transformation requires connecting data, systems, and applications across a business’ entire ecosystem, including all HRM applications.

SAP integration challenges

Since SAP acquired SuccessFactors in 2012, it has become a centerpiece of SAP’s offerings and has been integrated with SAP application suites, including on-premises HR systems, such as SAP HCM. However, a large part of its original customer base kept their original core HR modules and ERP systems from different vendors, which is in line with current HR technology trends.

According to Deloitte’s 2019 Global Human Capital Trends, the average HR department now has more than nine systems of record — up from eight a year ago. The same study found only 5% of HR respondents reported having a fully integrated HR cloud platform, while the majority still used a combination of cloud and on-premise software, and 29% reported using no systems at all. 

Ensuring data flows seamlessly between HR and other lines of business’ systems is not only key to improving employee experiences and operational efficiencies, but is the only way to ensure investments in technologies such as intelligent automation truly pay off. Other common HR integration scenarios include:

  • Sending core HR data to the payroll application of record, such as ADP.
  • Sharing quota or activities from CRMs like Salesforce to goals in HCM solutions such as Workday.
  • Integration of employee data between ERP and core HR to enable ERP processes such as travel expenses or purchase orders.
  • Integration of financial data, such as cost center and cost center assignment integration between finance ERP and core HR.
  • Migrating data from legacy systems or databases to ensure that no data is lost in transitions to the cloud.

The multitude of systems in the average enterprise in addition to SAP’s notoriously challenging integration methods – given its proprietary language, logic, and processes that do not easily extend beyond the SAP ecosystem – presents significant integration and data migration challenges.

Finally, as business needs change, new use cases will undoubtedly emerge. Designing a software architecture that will accommodate future use cases and enable developers to quickly build new applications and integrate with SAP is crucial. And with the right platform, a future-proof architecture is easy. 

SAP SuccessFactors integration with Anypoint Platform

Regardless of how customized your SAP instance(s) may be, or how mismatched the object models may be between SAP and third-party solutions, MuleSoft’s Anypoint Platform is purpose-built to abstract the complexity of any system and its proprietary language by leveraging an API-led approach.

API-led connectivity provides a means of connecting and exposing SAP and other systems with APIs. With this approach, every asset, application, or system becomes a managed, modern, developer-friendly API that is discoverable through self-service while maintaining security.

Uniquely built as a single solution, Anypoint Platform eliminates the need to navigate multiple, disparate tools across the organization. MuleSoft also provides a library of over 50 SAP integration assets, including prebuilt SAP SuccessFactors connectors, giving businesses the power to easily integrate popular HR, payroll, LMS, ERP, and financial systems such as Taleo, Jobvite, Zuora, Salesforce, and Concur. Further, Anypoint Exchange provides integration templates between SAP and common endpoints such as Salesforce and Workday.

Unlike SAP interfaces, SAP Gateway, and other integration approaches, our connectors do not require specialized skill sets or custom development; they only require simple configuration, making it fast and easy to access a single, consolidated 360 view of employees.