successfactors global benefits: finding the most value ...€¦ · employee central as the complete...

by

Adam Kvist LamaaHCM Consultant

Sean KennedyHCM Consultant

GP Strategies®

White Paper:

SuccessFactors Global Benefits:Finding the Most Value from New Functionality

http://www.gpstrategies.com/

White Paper: SuccessFactors Global Benefits: Finding the Most Value from New Functionality

GP Strategies Corporation 1

IntroductionSAP SuccessFactors Employee Central is evolving at an ever-increasing rate, and each enhancement promising to close a core functionality gap raises an underlying question for customer adoption: Is the new functionality enterprise ready? Steering a business towards adoption is easier when there is confidence that the solution can meet the requirements. This knowledge, however, is only clear after early adopters have paved the way and identified an implementation approach for others to consider.

In November 2014, the Global Benefits module was introduced as another milestone towards reinforcing SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central as the complete HRIS solution for global companies. Upon its release, the capabilities and configurations were best understood from the Global Benefits implementation guide. As for key points to consider in an implementation project, not a lot was available.

One of our clients, a global insurance company with over 10,000 employees in almost 30 countries, became an early adopter and accepted the risks of using an untested product. Their goal was to migrate off a custom, on-premise SAP solution to further consolidate their HR solution landscape and improve end user experiences of HR-related processes. This client had complex requirements. Some even stretched the system beyond what SAP Product Management initially envisioned and required concessions from the client. Nevertheless, in January 2016, Global Benefits rolled out company-wide, and the final solution is a demonstration of the product’s flexibility to scale along with the complexity of a company’s constraints.

This document shares GP Strategies’ implementation experiences and suggests our best practices from SAP’s first global rollout of Global Benefits.

About This PaperWhile a full discussion of SAP SuccessFactors Global Benefits is well outside the scope of this paper, in terms of depth, it will discuss many fundamental concepts. It does not outline other vendor products, provide step-by-step instructions, or attempt to suggest a “one size fits all” solution. Rather, this paper presents a high-level outline of topics and best practices to adopt when structuring a Global Benefits project for your company.

In this paper, you will find conclusions from our implementation through the following topics:

• Overview of Global Benefits

• Requirement definitions

• Extensibility options and considerations

• Benefit data: sensitivity, access, and migration

• Notifications and reporting

OverviewWhat is SAP SuccessFactors Global Benefits, and what does implementation require?SAP SuccessFactors Global Benefits functionality is built on the Employee Central metadata framework (MDF) to bring globally diverse benefit requirements under a single system of record. Companies will no longer need individual, fragmented country or regional solutions that require integration, maintenance, and administration.

Fundamentally, Global Benefits provides the same functionality of any market-ready benefit solution. Employees receive a company benefit based on eligibility criteria, currency, and schedule. These benefits can in turn be automatically assigned or employees can manually select them. The manually selected benefits collect information from an employee that can then optionally go through a workflow for administrators to review, edit, and in due course approve or deny.

The extended enterprise capabilities stem from building Global Benefits on Employee Central where the product automatically leverages the available system functionality and employee data. Existing customers will already be familiar with features such as customer-specific business logic, notifications, approval workflows, and reporting. Additionally, real-time employee data is accessible to drive employee eligibility and entitlement calculations—a clear advantage compared to other modules such as Performance Management where only select data is fed through Employee Profile synchronization.



From an implementation standpoint, the dependency on a company’s unique Employee Central setup means it is strongly recommended to begin the implementation of Global Benefits only after going live with Employee Central. Trying to achieve a simultaneous go-live is not realistic as the data models and compensation structures constantly evolve throughout the Employee Central implementation. The benefit module relies on and requires stable configurations to define employee benefit eligibility. Additionally, a Global Benefits project is likely more complex due to the multifaceted aspect of defining a benefit’s requirements, as will be illustrated in the next section, when compared to capturing more straightforward employee data points for Employee Central.

Requirement DefinitionsIn SAP SuccessFactors Global Benefits, the foundation starts with an understanding of the system-defined benefit types.

Benefit Type Description Examples

Reimbursement Employee incurs an expense to the company or receives a one-time payment Medical Bills, Club Membership

Allowance Employee receives a payment on a recurring basis (e.g., monthly) Fuel Allowance, Gym Membership

Deductible Allowance Employee incurs a deduction on a recurring basis (e.g., annually) Lunch Plan, Union Dues

Pension Retirement fund contributions from the employee and/or employer Provident Fund, Pension Fund

Insurance Employee makes policy selections and regular payments for financial protection as part of life events and uncertainties Life, Medical, Dental

Wallet Payment to employees in the form of credits, instead of money, that are redeemed as payment for other benefits Employee Recognition

As part of a Global Benefits project, each company benefit is aligned with a type, which in turn structures data requirements and drives system functionality.

For example, an automatic monthly stipend for each C-level employee best aligns with an Allowance type where requirements can dictate how often payments are made and if payments continue once an employee is on an extended absence such as maternity leave. In this simplified scenario, the Reimbursement type does not align as it is intended for non-recurring payments.

Once a benefit type is identified, the project team begins to document the many details needed to build a benefit in the system. Which employees are eligible? When are they eligible? How much money do they receive? How often? Along with a company’s benefit administrators are a lot of topics to collaborate on and capture. Generally, however, requirements emerge from seven categories of information.

Basic Details Name, currency, activation date

Target Employees Employee eligibility criteria

Payment Calculation formula and frequency

Schedule When can employees claim/enroll and when can they claim/enroll again?

Information for Employee Policy documents, forms to fill out, a point of contact for questions

Input From Employee Receipt, comments, form uploads

Approvers If admin approval is required, who?



It is important to know that identifying the data points, calculations, and target audience of a benefit is rarely straightforward. Maybe a subject matter expert missed the discovery meeting or an exception to the rule is found during testing. For example, is marital status of “Married” equivalent to a “Domestic Partnership” in all countries?

A key factor for successfully implementing Global Benefits is to have an adaptable team and an iterative approach to build, test, and refine the solution. In fact, it is recommended companies follow the agile SAP Launch methodology, which best guides a project through successful implementations of SAP solutions such as Global Benefits1.

Benefit Considerations for a Global WorkforceCurrency exchange rates, local approval teams, text translations, and government-mandated requirements are just a few of the challenges defining benefits globally. Bring internal stakeholders and local experts to the table at the beginning of a project to help decide what can and cannot be streamlined under a global benefit solution.

Additionally, plan for functionality nuances and limitations. Maybe the requirements for a benefit need to transform into two similar but distinct benefits. Or, multiple validation rules should merge under one combined rule. The important takeaway is that Global Benefits is not as mature as other SAP SuccessFactors modules and may not immediately meet every expectation. In the end, consider challenging the status quo, and when possible, change business processes to achieve a workable solution.

Extensibility OptionsStandard Functionality in the CloudSAP SuccessFactors product suite offers no customization options when standard functionality and module-specific configuration settings cannot meet a company’s requirements. Instead, the company will need to change their internal processes or find an alternate solution. Although this is a common outcome when implementing enterprise cloud solutions, such as SAP SuccessFactors, it is not entirely undesirable.

Limiting customers to use only standard functionality allows vendors to offer ongoing support and regular product enhancements. This is often a strong business driver when companies consider implementing a cloud solution instead of a custom-built solution. Nevertheless, despite such ambitious intentions, many clients struggle during implementation to adapt their existing business processes to only standard functionality of cloud solutions.

Benefit Standard Functionality: Allows an employee to enter an amount and a comment, and upload an attachment.

If, for example, the amount needs to be prorated based on duration of employment, then an administrator should validate the amount entered by an employee before payment is issued.



Product Flexibility Is Both a Strength and a WeaknessEmployee Central’s MDF, which Global Benefits is built on, takes functional configurability to the next level through product extensibility. Through extensibility, customers can change areas of the product to closer align with their own processes and conveniently deviate further away from standard functionality—all the while maintaining product support.

After a project team understands how standard benefit functionality aligns with the requirements, the team can then consider the available extensibility options to overcome gaps. Is the right solution a specialized user experience that matches the company’s “ideal” outcome? Or, is it better to change business processes so they better align with standard functionality? Somewhere in between? Unique to each business and the project requirements is a balance between rewards, risk, and cost.

Some of the available extensibility options include the following:

• Define additional data fields to collect from the employee

• Use business rules to validate input, automatically calculate amounts, and display error messages

• Define more than one workflow (i.e., approval team) per benefit

• Incorporate external data as criteria for eligibility or entitlement calculation

• Modify the user interfaces to make them more intuitive

Additional Data Fields

• Replace documents an employee would otherwise download, fill out, and upload

• Conform employee input to formatted data types (i.e., drop-down, date, number)

• Create custom reports from meaningful data

• Consider the low complexity to implement and minimal impact to make future enhancements



Additional Data Fields + Business Rules

• Provide meaningful instructions relevant to the user’s unique employment/personal data

• Systematically perform calculations or derive data to reduce human error

• Validate user input and display error messages

• Reduce manual intervention by administrators

• Consider implementation complexity, which is based on requirements; future enhancements may need careful planning

Additional Data Fields + Business Rules + Custom User Interface

• Guide employees through a benefit selection with easy-to-understand information and calls to action

• Further reduce manual intervention by administrators as employee benefit selection requires less training and fewer helpdesk issues

• Consider implementation complexity, which is based on requirements; future enhancements are likely complicated

• Allow for SAP quarterly product updates that may impact the solution as core functionality is enhanced



Need and Want: The Extensibility Balancing ActCloud solutions are not known for enabling customers to have a custom solution as they are inherently a “one size fits all” product. The extensibility options available to Global Benefits shifts this model in a new direction and in the favor of a customer’s unique needs. Build a “custom” cloud solution that is still supported by the product vendor. Have your cake and eat it, too! But is that a good thing?

The tradeoff comes from assessing both current requirements and resources along with future solution maintenance. As scope expands, the project timeline increases, documentation grows, and test scenarios widen. Then after the project successfully rolls out and an enhancement is needed or bug is found, does someone in the company still understand the solution intricacies three months later? A year later? Two?

Consider including the company’s system support team as part of the project and their feedback on the solution design. Do health insurance costs change annually? Are enrollments manually changed for employees on extended leave? What solution changes are needed when a vendor later introduces new data requirements? The system support team can offer important perspectives which shape project priorities and long-term administration.

• Little Potential Impact / Best User Experience

• Moderate Potential Impact / Better User Experience

• High Potential Impact / Standard User Experience

In the end, if a project sponsor decides that a positive end user experience is a core objective, then use every extensibility option available. This will, however, have a direct impact on the overall cost both in the short and the long term. If such a mandate does not exist, identify and implement the simplest solution to meet the bare minimum requirement.

Benefit DataSensitivity + AccessEnterprise HRIS solutions, including SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central, are built on the premise of maintaining sensitive data about company employees. With Global Benefits, even more data points are introduced and companies will want to formulate a plan to manage access.

As a demonstration, companies can require employees to submit documentation as a condition of approving a claim. This has the potential to inadvertently disclose employee information that the company did not intend to collect. For example:

• Invoices and receipts with credit card information

• Medical documents with details of patient medication, diagnosis, or information about non-employees such as a spouse or child

• Copy of a driver’s license displaying a date of birth, home address, and physical attributes



The document uploads may be needed to meet government regulations or internal corporate guidelines. However, who has access to benefit data? A line manager may need only basic details, the finance approver only the claim amounts, and a country-specific approver validates document uploads.

Solutions for managing access with Global Benefits use field-level configurations on role-based permissions, MDF visibility, and user interfaces. Finding the right balance between these will achieve the best practice of displaying only information required for the employee, approver, or auditor taking an action.

MigrationReplacing one or more enterprise products often includes moving data to a new solution. When starting a Global Benefits project, the very first data migration question is simply: Can we leave behind the old data? The overall project complexity is quickly reduced both in time and resources when the answer is yes. Conversely, a company that needs historical data must then analyze their current data and define a very clear migration scope. Some initial points to consider:

• Are benefits for all countries and legal entities needed?

• How many years of history should we keep? Total number of records?

• Is only payment information sufficient?

• Do files previously uploaded by employees need to move, for example, signed forms or purchase receipts?

• Do any benefits or data points exist in the legacy solution that will not match the new solution?

• Is there any required data in Global Benefits that does not exist in the current solution?

• Are there any benefits where employees submit multiple claims up to a maximum amount?

It is worth highlighting that migrated employee claims and enrollments need to align with a benefit configured in the system. For example, an employee claim must occur when a benefit is active, the legal entity of the benefit aligns with the employee at that time, and the benefit schedule is open at the time of the claim. An analysis of current data prior to requirements-gathering discussions will help the implementation team build the right solution—one that supports both past and future needs.

In the end, data migration is a multi-layered topic where each requirement can lead to more requirements. Migrating no historical data or simple payment information is quite straightforward. Otherwise, a company’s historical data requirements, supported with a thorough analysis of the data, will help the implementation team identify dependencies and propose an overall plan.

NotificationsSAP SuccessFactors Global Benefits has two standard notification features: one for administrator approval and the other for employee enrollment.

1. Standard Global Benefits uses Employee Central workflows when administrators must approve employee selections. Workflow actions (e.g., approval, rejection, etc.) then trigger email notifications to employees and approvers.

2. Once employees enroll for a benefit and the enrollment is approved, they can receive an email notification regarding the same. Benefit types Allowance/Reimbursement, Pension, and Insurance each have a notification template.

These notifications are configurable to keep employees, managers, approvers, and other interested parties aware of benefit actions in the system. For example, an employee is copied on the progress of their submitted claim, a benefit administrator is alerted they need to approve, and the finance department is notified a payment is needed when approved.

The limited number of standard notifications is not ideal. Nonetheless, those that are available are flexible and the Employee Central system that Global Benefits is built on can be leveraged for additional options.



ReportingThere are four pre-delivered reports for Global Benefits available through Advanced Reporting in Employee Central:

• Benefit Enrollment

• Benefit Employee Claims

• Benefit Cost Analysis

• Benefit Pension Enrollment

Companies are able to adapt these reports to fit their needs, or they can create custom reports through the Online Report Designer (ORD) product. With custom reports a company can report on any benefit data points for internal analysis, government compliance, data integrity, and sending formatted employee data to vendors electronically. Including all the data previously collected in employee paperwork and now captured by an online benefit solution.

Is Global Benefits enterprise ready?There is no simple answer. At best, the answer is “Yes, but with some caveats.” Most likely, companies will need to make difficult decisions if requirements are not easily met or too costly for the project.

Global Benefits is still immature when compared with the rest of the SAP SuccessFactors product suite. There are limitations to how far the product currently bends, and those constraints are not always clear. Basic functionality continues to transition as the SAP Product Team aggressively fixes issues and simultaneously incorporates major enhancements in each quarterly release. Meanwhile, missing features that align with the complex requirements of a large company, such as administrator enrollment on behalf on an employee, may be 6 to 18 months out on the product roadmap—if at all.

A company’s own SuccessFactors maturity should be considered just as much as the Global Benefits product. As mentioned earlier, Employee Central is a prerequisite for going forward with this solution. Focus first on understanding core functionality to allow an organization to learn and build on the breadth of its capabilities. The implementation of Global Benefits will have many similarities to Employee Central, but just as many differences as well.

Ultimately, it comes down to risk aversion and willingness to change business processes when requirements cannot currently be met by SuccessFactors’ cloud solution. In time, what is already a quite flexible product will become a proper competitor in the HRIS solution space.


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Our ApproachWhile SAP Global Benefits did successfully roll out globally for our client, there were a lot of unknowns to overcome. Take our experiences and build from them when you make the transition.

• Implement Employee Central first to build on team knowledge of core functionality.

• Bring global and local experts to the table at the beginning of a project to thoroughly identify requirements and streamline a global solution. Be willing to change existing business processes.

• Clearly define the project goals, time, and cost. Align these with an extensibility approach.

• Carefully plan for and protect sensitive employee data.

• A solution without data migration is easier but not necessarily possible. Analyze current data and future needs before starting the project.

About the AuthorsAdam Lamaa is an HCM Consultant and holds a SAP SuccessFactors Professional Employee Central certification. Over the past three years, he has been a lead architect on global implementations, one which has received an EMEA SAP Gold Quality award. He has extensive knowledge of integrations and the MDF that Global Benefits is built on.

Sean Kennedy is an HCM Consultant and holds SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central, Learning, and Workforce Analytics/Planning certifications. He has over 10 years of experience in the HCM space and has led projects for clients in many industries. He has a background in computer programming and uses this to make the most of the extensibility capabilities offered by Global Benefits on the Employee Central MDF.

For more information contact Adam Kvist Lamaa HCM Consultant

GP [email protected]

Sean Kennedy HCM Consultant

GP [email protected]

Notes:1 https://connect.successfactors.com/professionalservices/Documents/Project%20Kickoff%20Deck%20-%20SAP%20Launch.pptx

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