Will Cloud HR Solutions Change Maintenance Service Practicalities? | SAP Innovation Forum 2017

Going to cloud with HR solutions seems to be the topic of the day in HR. Stand-alone on-premises systems are soon history. According to the vendor statements all known cloud HR solutions are easily implemented and smoothly integrated to the existing environments. Sounds excellent.

What is less discussed is the post-implementation life with cloud HR applications. From application vendor perspective there are practicalities for frequent version releases, support packages and other technical features. They are to be processed either by the customers themselves or with vendor support.

For customers it seems to become more challenging to see, how to deal with the frequent updates. What is the content, which updates to install, what are the impacts to processes, end-user instructions and workflows? Should you limit your actions to the technical implementation only, or should you request for some additional services for impact evaluation – or even some support to re-define your work processes if needed? Thinking of cost-efficiency, which actions should be executed by the internal key-user team and in which parts consultants should be involved? Empiric data for reference may be difficult to find.

Looks like the vendors leave quite a number of decisions to customers. How do you define the best service set-up for your company? Some vendors have described the service offering for customers. The aim is to make it easier for the customers to understand what kind of service model could be the best for their company. It seems to be about the balance in internal delivery and consultant support combination, which most likely will be different compared to the current on-premise support models.

If the combination of internal and consultant work will change, will the consultant role change too? Yes, or at least the consultant profile may move closer to the customer processes and in the maintenance services there may be more room for advisory-oriented services. Interesting trends and changes in the near future.

Heleena Kiviranta

Heleena works as a Head of Consulting at EPI-USE Finland.

EPI-USE is one of the event partners in SAP Innovation Forum 2017. #SAPForum

With payroll experience in over 100 countries, EPI-USE is the world’s largest and most experienced independent SAP HCM specialist and has emerged as a leader in designing, building and implementing SuccessFactors Cloud-based, hybrid and on-premises HR/Payroll systems for large, complex multinational corporations. With a suite covering 34 countries, EPI-USE is the world’s leading independent purveyor of SAP country versions for regions in which SAP does not offer a standard payroll solution. In its 30-plus year history, EPI-USE has implemented or been involved with more than 1000+ SAP HCM-based solutions around the world. Through a proprietary range of add-on software products, EPI-USE’s clients have access to world-class productivity tools to enhance their existing or planned implementations of SAP SuccessFactors HR/Payroll solutions. EPI-USE Labs, the Group’s software arm also offers non-HR related SAP data management and landscape transformation software and services. EPI-USE is a groupelephant.com company.