This newsletter brings you tips and insights about SAP HR authorisations, UK payroll incl holiday pay, Concur Travel & Expense.

Breaking news:

• iProCon will be presenting at the SAP-Insider HR2015 Europe in Nice, France, 16th-18th June. Get in touch now, if you want to meet Sven Ringling for a chat at the conference.
• We’ll also run several sessions at the SAP-Insider HR2015 Asia conference in Singapore, 2nd and 3rd September 2015. If you want an on-site workshop in Singapore or Kuala Lumpour on 4th or 5th September, please get in touch.
• iProCon is SAP Partner: After 15 years as an independant consultancy (4 in the UK), iProCon has now become an SAP Service Partner to be able to help customers with their SuccessFactors projects as well as SAP HCM on-premise. iProCon UK has already been a Platinum Advisor for Concur Travel & Expense before. With this step we are embracing the Cloud model, where a closer relationship between software vendor and consultants is required.

 

Tips on SAP HCM

InfoType 0021 Overview Ruling Out Same Sex Marriage

It is possible, generally for employees in the USA & Canada, to come across an inconsistency in Infotype 21 when recording the Spouse’s gender. If the Spouse’s gender is captured as “Undeclared” in the full screen, then in the Overview Screen it is shown incorrectly as Female if the employee is Male, or vice versa. Read how to solve this.

How to run the new time sheet (HR-forms) without authorisation for infotype 0008

When you implement the new time sheet based on HR-Forms technology, you’ll realise that the system demands authorisation for infotype 0008. However, you’d usually not want to grant the rights to see salary data to all time admins. How to solve this?

Issues when Delimiting entries in custom tables

When building more complex custom developments, we often recommend the use of custom config tables to keep developments more flexible, requiring fewer coding changes. The other day, I came across an old problem with time dependency in custom tables again at a customer, and thought it worth sharing.

Travel and Expense (Concur and on-premise)

Concur Payment Solution Currently Not Available in EMEA

One interesting part of the Concur solution portfolio is the payment service – most notably for customers not integrating with SAP Finance, or customers who want to be able to reimburse fast and independently of Finance payment cycles. Having seen the solution earlier, we at iProCon UK wanted to subscribe for our own system, but found out it’s not possible right now.

SAP Travel and Expense: 2015 expectations for Concur

I’ve been asked to contribute a piece about Concur to Jarret Pazahanick’s “The Future of SAP HCM and SuccessFactors Consulting – 2015“, and then ended up with far too many ideas for poor Jarret to accommodate in his blog. So, I created this extra article for those, who want a few more thoughts about Concur in particular

Concur Travel and Expense: a perfect tool for small and medium consultancies

At iProCon UK with our small team, but loads of travel, we are very happy with our new solution: we implemented Concur Expense in December 2015 and just started with Concur Travel. It took a lot of the pain from doing expenses and makes the day to day process as well as month close so much more efficient. If you are interested in using Concur and want to know how iProCon benefits from it – or if you want some help with configuration and reporting: get in touch to arrange a call and maybe a demo

Audit and VAT recovery services

Meridian global services presented at our conference in May and many delegates where positively surprised to learn that such a service exists. check out the slide deck „Compliance and VAT recovery made easy“ and get in touch with us, if you want to learn more.

UK Payroll in SAP HR

New UK Holiday Pay Regulations

Do you know what the new ruling on Holidays Pay could mean for your company? Part of the new ruling needs further clarification and details, but there are decisions that you should make now to ease the transition and keep changes in SAP HR Payroll manageable. Read more.

SAP PY-GB: Infotype Pensions Reform GB (3297) “lost”

Some customers using SAP UK payroll got a bit of a scare recently, when they tried to access infotype 3297 through the text rather than the number or the selection list in PA30/PA20 tab strips. Where is „Pension Reform“ gone?

Process Review for Payroll and HR Administration

We found that many SAP HR customers using payroll have been in survival mode in the last few years. Tight budgets, RTI and Pension Auto-Enrolment haven’t left much breathing space to make sure processes are efficient and safe. For those customers, who know or suspect that the way they use SAP in Payroll and Master Data is far from best practise, we offer review workshops as well as help with implementing results. We’d usually find quite a few points for improvement, e.g. in pensions or absence valuation, which often pay for themselves, such as:

• Higher degree of automation in calculation
• Identifying and reducing the number of cases, where pay data is calculated incorrectly
• More user friendly handling of data capturing and payroll processes
• Standardised testing procedures and tools for test automation for fast and low-risk upgrades and support packages
• Effective reporting and reconciliation processes
• Targeted training of SAP users, where gaps have sneaked in over time
• ESS and MSS solutions to reduce HR workload and empower managers and employees
• Transforming your SAP HCM system to look like a 21st century tool using the latest SAP User Interface technology (HR Renewal, UI5, Mobility)
• Etc.

Get in touch, if you want to learn more about improving your SAP HCM based payroll and HR processes.

Cloud HRIS Strategy

iProConference 2015 from the Cloudy Perspective

A personal conference account from Chris Wilpert:

On the 6/7th of May was the 2015 iProConference, where our team and selected Partners spoke about various topics related to SAP HCM and the “new” Cloud world. I am pleased to give you a brief overview and my own personal impressions from the Conference being a brand new member of the UK team. If you want to get to know more about the content, sessions or information from the event, please take a look here. Read Chris’s full account

What SuccessFactors and Concur Could Learn from Each Other

From all the enterprise cloud software vendors I’ve watched more closely, Concur has been my role model for making best use of the SaaS concept to create real change. Not just cheaper, faster, more user friendly or more standardised, but pushing the boundaries of what’s feasible and fundamentally changing processes. So, what are the lessons?

(RP)Time to Say Good Bye?

Right after the S/4HANA announcement everybody got busy interpreting, what it really means for HR. So, now it seems that with S/4HANA, only some mini master data will be left from HR on-premise, whilst the full core HR, Talent Management and everything will be available in the cloud (SuccessFactors) only. Fine. Not unexpected. But a question many people didn’t didn’t even ask initially: what’s happening to time evaluation?

SAP HCM Insights Podcast: The Maintenance Trap, Remote Consulting, and Employee Central Growth

Joining Steve Bogner, Luke Marson, and Brandon Toombs on this podcast as we discuss the latest about the SAP Insider HR 2015 conference, the challenges and benefits of remote consulting, challenges in maintaining your HR systems most notably, when you are using payroll, the growth of Employee Central, and just a bit of S/4HANA. Read on and listen in

Selected Posts from the SCN (SAP Community Network)

The Red Button Test for the Cloud HRIS Market: are consultancies / sytsem integrators comfortable with cloud?

SuccessFactors Employee Central & Recruiting: configuring the New Hire process integration

(RP)TIME to say good bye: the future of SAP Time Evaluation

I was wrong about SuccessFactors Employee Central: revising our view on the cloud core HCM market

Events for SAP HCM

SAP Insider HR2015 in Nice and Singapore

Whether you are a speaker or delegate, if you attend a conference for the sessions only, you are missing at least half of the benefits. For me, speaking at events is primarily a means to meet new industry experts or understand customers’ needs better. I’ll be speaking at the SAP-Insider HR2015 conference in Nice, France, 16th – 18th June. A good opportunity to meet – learn more

News from iProCon

2 New Team Members in the UK

In April and May 2 new colleagues joined the iProCon UK team, both bringing valuable experience:

• Hannah Smith brings fresh expertise to the SAP HR / UK payroll team. With many years experience as an internal SAP consultant, she adds strong understanding of the customer side of things to a wide range of technical skills. She’s also training in Concur, most notably Expense and reporting.
• Chris Wilpert brings Expertise in SuccessFactors Employee Central (certified), Performance&Goals, Reporting and Recruiting – aiming at a recruiting certification end of the month.