The cloud has captured the imagination of most organizations when providing strategic solutions that keep people connected engaged – and HR is no exception. With the transition planning service for human experience management (HXM) solutions from SAP, HR professionals can further accelerate their plans for more meaningful employee experiences.
While the traditional concept of how we work changes, HR organizations are hard at work defining their vision for a more flexible work environment. Will their workforce come back into a traditional office setting or remain mostly remote for the long term? Or, will organizational leaders need to balance the needs of hybrid workers?
According to joint research from Oxford Economics and the Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM), these questions are just the start of a profound wave of challenges that HR organizations will shortly face. A long list of new expectations must be navigated, such as the adoption of hybrid workplaces, inclusive business practices, and equitable and undisrupted access to tools and training.
Creating a workplace that fulfills all these expectations while ensuring the business stays on target to deliver value-driven outcomes may seem like a tall order. But it’s a requirement that HR leaders have no choice but to deliver.
Enter the Cloud-Driven Employee Experience
Many HR organizations have long-relied on cloud-based solutions to understand talent needs, build and manage the workforce, process accurate payrolls, and make data-driven decisions. And now that their workforce is changing, they are looking to further expand the technology to accommodate flexible work schedules, respond to employee needs, and unify the workforce into a productive and collaborative ecosystem.
Unfortunately, it seems that many businesses talk a better game than they are planning. The Oxford Economics and SHRM study revealed that remote collaboration tools tend to be the top technology investment for the coming year, even among the countries less focused on remote work.
Although this development is a good sign that the right technology and processes are getting in place, HR leaders still need to think about broader employee experience and development tools.
For many SAP customers, the key to overcoming this critical transformation bottleneck is twofold:
- Acknowledge that HR organizations experience different paths to the cloud.
- Accept expertise to accelerate time to value, long-term adoption of best-fit solutions, and the ability to scale.
Mapping a Unique Path to the Cloud with Reflection and Expertise
With the transition planning service for HXM solutions from SAP, our customers can embrace these two principles as part of their digital HR strategy. The nonstandard service gives our customers the opportunity to assess their individual situation, identify their unique priorities, and pick options that meet their specific needs. This is the case whether they’re new to the cloud, already have a cloud strategy in place, or somewhere in between in their cloud transformation journey.
The transition planning service offers a structured workshop experience of discovery, self-evaluation, and planning – detailing why a move to the cloud is critical, which capabilities provide the most significant impact, and how cloud solutions from SAP fulfill their vision.
Step 1: Discovery
During this initial phase, we help our customers identify potential technologies to address specific HR challenges and opportunities to achieve strategic goals. Our transition planning service experts share scenarios for moving legacy HR systems to SAP SuccessFactors solutions or SAP S/4HANA Cloud based on the customer’s existing strategy. This step provides a value proposition review, high-level visualization of desired goals, and transformation road map recommendations.
Step 2: Evaluation
This analysis-oriented stage enables our customers to scrutinize their list of potential solutions to create a transformation road map comprising the best-possible solutions.
Our experts help the customer seek out often-hidden complexity in HR processes and technology to gain a detailed understanding of crucial transformation topics and steps that should be considered when designing the overall transformation journey. Topics for discussion include existing on-premise human capital management (HCM) solutions, a deep dive into scenarios for SAP SuccessFactors solutions and SAP S/4HANA Cloud, and HXM business capabilities and use cases.
Step 3: Planning
Planning is a culmination of all the self-reflection and concrete analysis done during the discovery and evaluation phases. With all this information, our experts help the customer kick-start their move to the cloud by working to define the “to-be process architecture” and create a detailed implementation and transformation road map for a long-term cloud transformation.
Together, our experts and customer can conduct a fit-gap analysis of custom add-ons for SAP S/4HANA Cloud and SAP SuccessFactors solutions and become familiar with the customer’s new or refined HR processes, data architecture, deployment plan, transition scenarios, and business case. More importantly, an impact study and cloud readiness assessment are performed to help ensure the entire company is fully prepared to adopt the fullest potential of the chosen HR solutions and user experience.
Aligning HR and Business Needs with Confidence
As people’s expectations for work continue to evolve, the more relevant cloud-based HR technology becomes. Going beyond simply facilitating transactions empowers HR leaders to reinvent their processes to create meaningful, individualized, and seamless experiences – whether serving candidates, new hires, seasoned employees, or functional managers.
That’s why many SAP customers rely on the transition planning service for HXM solutions from SAP. By working to remove obstacles and enhance the employee experience, their people can not only be more productive, but also more engaged, well-skilled, and innovative. And for the business, such a workforce can bring a distinct winning edge.
Learn more about the transition planning service for HXM solutions from SAP by reaching out to your account manager or customer engagement executive, or read the “Transform Human Capital Management to Human Experience Management in the Cloud” document.
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Klaus Kampen is principal business architect for HR Innovation & Transformation Services at SAP.
Remko Ramakers is principal business architect for HR Innovation & Transformation Services at SAP.
