The future of SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central beyond 6K customers

[00:00:00] Hi everyone, welcome to the podcast today. I got really two special guests today. Two

[00:00:09] people who really don't even need an introduction have Brandon Toomes and Becky Murray. Brandon,

[00:00:15] you have your YouTube series and I think you got thousands of followers, the work you've

[00:00:22] done with SuccessFactors has been nothing short of amazing. And Becky, you've been a some of the history of Employee Central, Employee Central payroll? Yeah, yeah, so I thought that since, just to kind of turn the tables around a little bit, since I know that Becky was around a lot early on with Employee Central, even though she 2012. So just before SAP acquired success factors, a colleague and I kind of got a heads up that that was probably in the pipeline and coming down the SAP cycle of things.

[00:03:03] Now can I ask how you got that information upfront

[00:03:06] because obviously you're way more connected just call it Employee Central, not version two. But there was a whole legacy layer of customers that were running a prior iteration of Employee Central. And really it was more of an enhanced employee profile type view. It didn't have things like effective dating. It didn't have the actions and transactions and things

[00:04:20] that we're used to seeing today.

[00:04:22] So it was more of like a top of stack master data record

[00:05:22] So we did have those items. All the configuration and setup was done in the old,

[00:05:27] the data models, the XML data files.

[00:05:30] So you'd export those and make your changes

[00:05:33] in a configuration editor or I use Notepad to be honest

[00:05:37] for quite a bit of it.

[00:05:38] And then you load that back up into provisioning,

[00:05:42] like many of us started out doing.

[00:05:44] I was all done exclusively there at that point in time. level and tighty unions and things like that just through, you know, series of custom tables and then custom data fields that reference that. So we could actually do quite a lot. But now, of course, so much is standard delivered and available to use. We don't have to go quite to those extremes anymore. I noticed you've said we a lot.

[00:07:01] Was it at that point?

[00:07:02] We, the people who worked in success factors at the time, it was actually mostly success

[00:07:08] factors. been in that internal training, but nonetheless, I graduated and got my little certification to implement SuccessFactors. So for a while, outside of one or two core partners where they did some training directly with SuccessFactors themselves, I was one of the first few outside of SuccessFactors to configure and implement Employee Central. And also became trainer extraordinaire.

[00:09:22] So it was pretty comprehensive at that point in time.

[00:09:26] So just to fast forward a little bit, I would do this for hours,

[00:09:28] but I have a feeling that podcast format

[00:09:30] really doesn't allow for that.

[00:09:32] So just talk about why all this change

[00:09:34] in the pace of change that you've seen

[00:09:36] over the past few years as the product has evolved.

[00:09:40] I mean, it's kind of, in my view from what I've seen

[00:09:44] over the, it's become a challenge

[00:09:45] because as the install base grows larger, strategic in how they approach HR and people management. So I feel like it's become really more of a core or central component of the overall solution. Whereas before, it definitely was an important part. But at the time, things like performance management and compensation and LMS were really some of the front runners that we saw. Now I think, you know,

[00:11:02] employee central has definitely become the beating heart of the

[00:11:05] solution itself and adding in of organizations large and small and All right, so allow us to hijack your podcast. Gladly. Gladly. Yeah, I would sit here and listen actually. It was awesome, but okay. With ECP, it was initially launched, I want to say 2012, so somewhere around that time, right around the acquisition also of SuccessFactors 2013, somewhere around there. I got involved probably a couple of years later,

[00:13:43] so not right at the launch.

[00:13:45] This controversial, but at the same time still a little bit skeptical of, OK, is this a big enough target market demand? And then early on, there was not a big differentiator or much of a differentiator at all with just the SEC with SAP payroll. But that has changed so much over the last years.

[00:15:02] Like if you remember at the beginning with the on-premise payroll days, oftentimes you are in the same system as finance and supply chain and the whole ERP, whereas this payroll actually has the ability to update the system when it makes sense for them. I think all of that is a very positive thing.

[00:16:20] It's been amazing to see the growth of that.

[00:16:24] You start with just a few that was you have to look at it and see, okay, so part of it is,

[00:17:40] you could go and build a brand new payroll system too,

[00:17:43] but that's not something that anything like that, but, you know, that's going to take time to really get to the maturity of ECP and they're going to work together and all of that. But I think it's been an awesome ride to kind of see ECP and what it's

[00:19:02] become today. And I'm obviously a big fan now, even though it's kind of skeptical at the beginning.

[00:20:02] the adoption train of EC payroll, however many years ago that was.

[00:20:04] Then to your point, since then,

[00:20:06] it's really just taken off and evolved in ways,

[00:20:10] I don't know that we could have predicted at the time,

[00:20:12] but really fantastic options for folks out there now.

[00:20:15] Yeah, for sure. You bring up

[00:20:18] an interesting point too with the Payroll Control Center.

[00:20:22] You're right, on-premise customers can use it,

[00:20:25] but it was an important thing to have that there, was a big differentiator and it's improved quite a bit now, with some of the things now where you can do configuration more similar to business rules engine in employee central. Yeah, I completely agree with that. Where did that mindset change come from? How did you all get to that? Because one of the nice things about having you on here

[00:21:41] is that you can talk a little bit from

[00:21:43] an insider's point of view on what it's been like. but back then right database size really mattered, right? You didn't have what you have now where X terabytes of data and I can go buy a flash drive with, you know for super cheap for that space. So you know like with the architecture of it being in clusters and how it runs and I think both of you know that you know because it being in clusters and

[00:23:01] not in transparent table,

[00:23:03] that means it's not super easy to read that or

[00:23:05] run SQL queries and just pull things out so you

[00:24:02] if you are familiar with how PCC works, it also has regular transparent tables

[00:24:05] with those payroll results.

[00:24:06] That makes things a lot easier

[00:24:08] in terms of auditing payroll.

[00:24:11] Then how do you do this proactively?

[00:24:13] Well, those results have to be available.

[00:24:16] You create them in transparent tables.

[00:24:18] Then of course, the whole UX thing.

[00:24:19] It was a lot of years.

[00:24:23] There's now different UXes of it that have evolved,

[00:24:26] just like Employee Central things like that. What are your thoughts on that in in 2024 now? So as far as what I would say from an employee central standpoint and really just talking about it almost a little bit from the cloud standpoint, just in general, you know the difference between an on premise

[00:25:42] solution versus SAP versus success factors.

[00:25:44] For one thing, of course,

[00:25:45] with the cloud multi tenant solution,

[00:25:47] you can just move moving someone from account one to account two, that doesn't necessarily

[00:27:03] make sense to make that a two-step transaction where you have to first go create the position it would be if you were doing this on-premise. Agreed. For me, it's a little bit more about the experience. I feel like the on-premise edition started as a data collection and management tool for transactional type things. It was a tool initially just designed to be used by

[00:28:20] system users like your HR business partners,

[00:28:22] and then eventually introduce manager desktop,

[00:28:25] and then we got to manager self-service and employee self-service. experience for your team members. Looking to allow managers to do a little bit more of their own team management and have tools for engagement with their employees. It's you know success factors all the way for me. Yeah, yeah, and you bring up a couple interesting points actually. So one of them actually is you guys

[00:29:41] talked about the experience that

[00:29:42] like how technical it was an SAP HCM.

[00:29:45] I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the I know Brandon you've mentioned it, were the workflows. I'm like, yes. In on-premise, it was a specialized resource, right? I remember probably like someone. You had a person just for that. Just for that. They were expensive people too. I remember, I think maybe our buddy Jeremy Masters

[00:31:00] might have even been one of the guys that really did that,

[00:31:02] but I tried it one time.

[00:31:04] I think it was some, I don't remember the transaction code,

[00:31:07] SU something, and I looked at it, set up permissions and roles for you. It was just all right there at your fingertips and didn't require a PhD and SQL and ABAP to make it happen. Definitely a more user-friendly experience on the setup and administrator side too. The transaction you were looking for was sweet to freak. I think it's the SAP workflow transaction.

[00:32:23] You got that sharp, Brandon.

[00:32:25] You just recall that one. actually delivering on a requirement that we've had for years and years, which is, as you said, everyone's in teams. Everyone's in Microsoft Office products. I don't know if you remember, but there was a hot minute where there was going to be something, I think it was called Project Mendocino at the time, where there was going to be the ability to create leaves

[00:33:41] directly out of just the old non-cloud based office.

[00:33:46] But it never really got off the ground

[00:33:48] because it never of the way. They can be kind of cranky and annoying or annoyed at the process. And so the best thing you can do is make it as simple as possible. Let them do what they need to get done

[00:35:00] and get out of the way and do it from a place

[00:35:02] that they're already used to working with,

[00:35:04] which is Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Office products. creating positions in Jewel or using a chatbot, or maybe it's more employee focus, because to your point earlier, Brandon, employees and managers do some of these activities so sparingly that maybe a chatbot is really helpful for them because they don't know how to do it, and that can simplify it quite a bit. What are your thoughts on those two personas,

[00:36:22] the HR admin and a employee manager actually using that type of functionality? into the solution to kind of meet people where they are in terms of the other technology mediums they're used to using. And then of course AI tools, you know, when deployed properly and used appropriately, you know, certainly'll be able to talk to it and it's going to spin up a picture of, here's what this position looks like, does this look right to you? And it will be maybe, maybe it will be the actual employee central position

[00:39:01] that you're looking at.

[00:39:02] And you'll be able to just click a button,

[00:39:03] say, yep, that looks right.

[00:39:04] And it'll go on.

[00:39:07] In which case and you know, we have the name changes and things like that. And, you know, like, we'll allow the office workers to do it, but not the folks on the floor, because right, they don't have access to the same technology. But nowadays with everyone having, you know, smart devices and tablets available and in community areas, people are just more

[00:40:21] accustomed to technology. And I think over the next few years,

[00:40:25] you know, people will start to have expectations around the