Following the attention my posts around Oracle's Application Unlimited program have gotten, it was interesting to see how SAP's David Ludlow (@dHRLudlow) solved the challenge of new and old products next to each other in his keynote of HR2013 today. Interesting live tweets are in Storify.
First of all kudos go to Ludlow, for spanning a huge product range in little time, and for doing this with impeccable candor. When would anyone expect a SAP executive state, that the company had a hard time to compete with anyone - the talent management vendors in this case?
But the user interface for the HR professional looks slightly different:
Personally I did not like the way how EmployeeCentral displays detail screens, in one long scrolling list, one field under another, one per row. That's easy for developers (reminds me of the early versions of the Oracle e-Business Suite) - but not very good for the usability. Users are faster with their eyes than with their pointing device, which means - if the user sees the information that he is looking for - great, if you need to scroll for it - the user may never find it. More density of information in logical groups, using the whole screen estate, will help usability in EmployeeCentral.
SAP HCM - Now Unlimited?
Ludlow announced today, that the latest version of the R/3 based HCM functionality, Business Suite 7 - will be maintained and supported until 2020. With significant investment in newer functionality. As usual, to create trust into the strategy, a road map was presented:
 |
| Screenshot taken from Ludlow's presentation, from Twitter. |
Some analysts and bloggers commented (rightfully) that this now comes to a similar strategy for SAP as it has for Oracle - with their Applications Unlimited. As Ludlow said - from 2013 till 2020 is an eternity for software.
How attractive is the cloud?
It was nice to see some live software, with the latest release of Employee Central, the former SuccessFactors go to product - which has become SAP's future HCM cloud platform. But all beginnings are hard and I haven't seen too much of progress between the demo today and demos given about 12 months ago.
The appeal for SAP and SAP customers to use Employee Central lies in the ability to provide a jump start to the cloud and enable the integration to the SuccessFactors talent modules. So all that needs to be added is localization, a lot of localization and payroll. And SAP is exactly doing this, with adding support for 14 countries on the payroll side. More details will be needed to really understand the intricacies of moving the ABAP based payroll to the cloud.
Innovation for SAP HCM
It looks like SAP has listened to the usability concerns in their customer base. When an employee cannot figure out the usage of a self service transaction, he will pick up the phone and take up the time of an HR professional or a call center HR support individual. Both options are costlier, so getting the usability right is key.
So SAP tried with new user interface:
 |
| SAP's new ESS / MSS from @JeremyMasters Tweet. |
 |
| Screenshot from HR2013 Keynote. |
When user interfaces break down
It's relatively easy for an enterprise vendor to create a new, good looking portal - but it's very hard to take the new acquired usability down to the transaction, where users usually experience a usability break, as they mostly are exposed to the new UI. [A UES strategy by the vendors / partners could help here, but is food for another post].
SAP stumbled into this twice - both with EmployeeCentral, which has a stark user interface change, when moving from EmployeeCentral to any of the SuccessFactors talent modules. And again with the new SAP HCM portal, which breaks the user interface paradigm when getting to the transactional UI.
 | |
|
In the meantime - integration
To bridge the numerous interfaces between the cloud solutions and the on premise SAP HCM core installations, SAP plans to release a number of pre-packaged integrations, so called iFlows. The lack of integration has been raised since quite some time and it's good SAP is working hard here. SAP needs to make sure that the integration packages really add value and allow the uptake of SAP products in these hybrid deployments. And customers will have to make sure that they get the integrations they need, as with any n to m problem that the integration scenario poses, prioritization is key.
What about...
... the new SAP leitmotivs Mobile and inMemory. No event without Hana - but it was good to see, that these two didn't get too much room in the keynote. It was a bit disappointing however, to see no mobile demo, as mobile functionality is key to speed up HR processes. And likewise it seems that the HCM development team has not fully thought through the potential of Hana. If the only functionality to put on Hana for HCM is faster reporting then SAP and SAP HCM are showing a remarkable deficit in thought leadership. But wait - there is a roadmap for HCM on Hana, too:
 |
| Screenshot from Ludlow's presentation, from Twitter |
MyPOV:
SAP HCM development resources are spread thin between staffing EmployeeCentral, core SAP HCM on premise and the integrations in between. And don't forget mobile and in memory. Social wasn't even mentioned in the keynote. So SAP is doing the right thing by announcing a long support and maintenance horizon for SAP HCM - till 2020 - garnered with significant enhancements. Understandably only the next 24 months are covered in their roadmap, but as long SAP will deliver to the roadmap and gain the customer community's trust, this can work very well for SAP. After all key competitor Oracle has put a successful similar strategy in place with their Applications Unlimited program. The difference is that Oracle is in year 7 of executing this strategy, SAP is in year 1.