SAP human capital management tools support global HR trends

At the first meeting of the year of the SAP ERP HCM (human capital management) user group in Johannesburg on Wednesday, 13 April 2005, SAP Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) director of business development, Phillip Booth, discussed key global trends in human capital management (HCM) as defined by SAP's top 20 global customers.

The trends include the need for human resources (HR) departments to increase service capability while decreasing HR costs, facilitation of manager and employee self-service, a move to consolidation within organisations resulting in a push for HR shared services, and the use of talent management to drive preferred employer status.

Booth pointed out that while these issues have been around for some time, what is new is the HR profession's increasing reliance on information technology (IT) to address them.

"There's been a great deal of discussion in recent years about the fact that effective HCM is a strategic business asset and that practitioners should have input to board decisions. But only when practitioners achieve administrative excellence do they have the necessary credibility to influence the board. If you can't, for instance, run something as fundamental to the organisation as the payroll at minimum cost but with maximum morale-building impact on the workforce, how can you possibly advise the company on issues like mergers and acquisitions, downsizing or performance management?

"One of the easiest ways to achieve administrative excellence is through the use of IT because it enables you to automatically impose structure, procedures and control on day-to-day HR activities such as authorising leave applications, monitoring sick leave, or maintaining multiple payrolls across different branches of the organisation. And that enables you to eliminate human error, speed up response times and reduce costs.

"From there, you can move on to supporting the business' operations by applying the right talent to the right areas of the business - again assisted by technology. Technology's the key, because it gives you reliable, real-time data that enables you to analyse trends in the make-up of your workforce and match that to the company's performance. And once you have that sort of information and insight, you're in a position to provide strategic advice to the business.

"Most HR departments are in phase one - establishing administrative excellence. Some have moved on to operational support. Very few are functioning fully at a strategic level. Which is why we at SAP have focused very strongly on creating increasingly comprehensive administrative and operational tools for our customers - to help them more quickly and easily evolve from overseeing simple transactions to contributing to corporate strategy."

New SAP HCM tools demonstrated at the user group meeting included payroll configuration that halves payroll maintenance time and therefore halves maintenance costs. New support for shared services environments include an employee interaction centre, interactive voice response and voice recognition.

SAP's new enterprise services architecture (ESA) has also been applied to its HCM module. ESA integrates allied business processes, cutting cost and massively boosting productivity. A hiring event, for instance, includes links that enable simultaneous ordering of the tools and equipment the new employee needs, a room reservation system for the employee's office or seating requirements, ordering of telephone and network access, facilities management - and links to the payroll.

New talent management tools incorporate customer relationship management (CRM) principles, allowing the business to market itself to existing or potential employees, contractors and applicants.

More than 120 of SAP Africa's HCM customers - from a range of industries and representing small and medium businesses as well as multinationals - attended the user group meeting.

For more information about the user group, please contact Adam Sentonaris, SAP Africa HCM solution manager, at (011) 325 6000.