SAP and SuccessFactors Accelerate Unified Product Direction…from SuccessFactors

Companies Deliver Immediate Clarity on HCM Product Road Map

HRchitect featured SuccessFactors in our release of The Suite Life of Integrated Talent Management and also includes them in our list of top Talent Management Systems vendors that businesses should consider. Matt Lafata and Tiffany Appleby from HRchitect attended and sponsored the SuccessConnect event in San Francisco in May 2011 and the Insights event in San Diego in Oct 2011.

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SAP and SuccessFactors, an SAP company, today announced their unified product direction for human capital management (HCM) solutions. The combined portfolio will provide end-to-end integrated solutions to help with some of the biggest challenges that business leaders around the world are facing across all lines of business: managing their talent to top performance and turning their strategies into actions and results.

Product Direction Across Core HR, Talent Management, HCM Analytics

HCM is gaining focus in the market as companies realize that nurturing top talent and fostering a united community of employees is critical to being a best-run business. The two companies are now combining SuccessFactors Business Execution (BizX) Suite with SAP solutions to provide the most comprehensive, innovative HCM offerings to benefit existing and prospective customers.

• SuccessFactors Employee Central solution is the go-forward core human resources (HR) offering in the cloud. Backed by more than 25 years of experience from SAP in core HR, the solution is poised to grow exponentially as SAP will boldly invest in it. SAP will continue to offer the SAP® ERP Human Capital Management (SAP ERP HCM) solution on premise for core HR, now with regulatory support for 51 countries around the globe and an innovation road map of significant investments in functionality, user-experience, mobile and in-memory technology capabilities in the future.
• For talent management, SuccessFactors Performance Management, SuccessFactors Compensation Management, SuccessFactors Recruiting and SuccessFactors Learning Management with social learning from SuccessFactors Jam will be the go-forward solutions. Talent management components from SAP ERP HCM will be continued with selected innovations for the next decade.
• Analytics will continue as an important focus area within both SAP ERP HCM and the SuccessFactors product portfolios, leveraging significant assets such as SuccessFactors Workforce Analytics, SuccessFactors Workforce Planning, the SAP HANA™ platform and solutions from the SAP® BusinessObjects™ portfolio. People analytics will be revolutionized by putting SuccessFactors Workforce Analytics on SAP HANA. Together SAP and SuccessFactors can make unparalleled aggregate HR benchmark insights available in the cloud to hundreds of thousands of customers. The combination of SuccessFactors software and SAP HANA is one of the key priority areas for development of the BizX Suite, as it will help increase customer value by dramatically speeding existing processes, enabling access to large amounts of data in shorter periods of time and providing real-time access to information tailored to individual requirements.

“We’ve delivered this unified product direction for our BizX Suite within days of our tender offer close, demonstrating our agility and the power of our combined people, know-how and technologies,” said Lars Dalgaard, founder and CEO, SuccessFactors. “We are providing immediate clarity on our BizX road map to ensure we deliver the best possible suite of solutions for our customers. The customer must always win. We cannot wait to share more of what we’ll offer our customers in the next few months.”

Open Integration for All Customers

SuccessFactors will continue to support an open approach to connecting with third-party solution providers. Approximately fourteen percent of SuccessFactors customers currently run their systems side-by-side with SAP. In addition to providing enhanced value for joint customers, SAP and SuccessFactors will accelerate the development of integration solutions with third-party solution providers. For SAP customers, the two companies intend to deliver integration packages between the two offerings:

• Cloud-based talent, core HR, recruiting, learning and social solutions, and workforce planning and analytics solutions from SuccessFactors; and
• On-premise core HR from SAP

“We now have fantastic opportunities in combining SAP innovations with SuccessFactors’ expertise and assets in the cloud. We are already seeing amazing results by improving SuccessFactors Employee Central performance 1000x — from nine minutes to 200 milliseconds with SAP HANA, enabling HR executives to do real-time workforce analytics and planning,” said Dr. Vishal Sikka, member of the SAP Executive Board, Technology & Innovation. “Together with SuccessFactors, we are now able to offer our customers the most comprehensive, end-to-end HCM portfolio both on premise and in the cloud — from core HR and employee administration to talent management, strategic planning and workforce analytics.”

For more information on SuccessFactors, please visit www.successfactors.com

To learn more about HRchitect’s expertise in HR technology strategy, selection and implementation services, please visit www.HRchitect.com

 
Matt Lafata, HRchitect

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