Five years ago, SAP made a major addition to its human capital
management portfolio by buying SuccessFactors, one of the biggest
vendors of HCM software as a service. But with human resource features
starting to appear in SAP's next-generation ERP system, S/4HANA, what's
the right SAP HR module to buy?
In a podcast, TechTarget contributor Luke Marson, who co-founded a consultancy that specializes in SuccessFactors implementations, offers advice on choosing an SAP HR module.
"If you're looking for core HR with S/4HANA, Employee Central
would be the HR system you would look at," Marson says. "They're
designed to integrate together and work together, and that's the
long-term roadmap for SAP."
The choice is different, however, for organizations that are
already running the on-premises SAP HR module, SAP HCM. They can still
use S/4HANA with the on-premises HCM, he says.
Integration issues vary, too. Marson says the integration tools for
sharing data between S/4HANA and Employee Central are better than those
for Employee Central and SAP ERP (part of Business Suite,
S/4HANA's predecessor). In contrast, the on-premises SAP HR module and
finance module are "very tightly coupled," and run in the same software
instance.