The migration of your core Human Resources system to the cloud is among the most important digital transformations your company will conduct in the coming decade. Upgrading from an old and cumbersome legacy system and integrating your global workforce into SAP SuccessFactors training is what provides you with instant visibility, simplifies cumbersome admin work, and creates a modern experience for your employees.

But migrating the entire HR framework of an organization is not as easy as hitting a single update button. Without rigorous SAP SuccessFactors Migration Planning, projects end up facing scope creep, data corruption, long downtime periods, and even resistance from users within the organization. A proper plan is what helps you ensure an efficient and risk-free migration.

Define Your Strategy and Scope of Project Management

Without altering any parameters of software, transferring databases or working out a technology blueprint, first take time to identify the most important factors of your business. Are you planning to unite disparate regional databases, automate hiring globally, streamline the review process of compensation, or reduce the maintenance cost of legacy servers?

Setting measurable objectives at the initial stage will be your guiding principle during implementation of the project.

   • Review your present situation: List everything you use now in payroll, benefits and attendance management, including the software and custom legacy code, paper trails and third-party systems.

    • Define your launch strategy: Decide whether you would prefer a step-by-step implementation or simultaneous deployment all over the world.

    • Set your KPIs: Specify the measurable results you need for launch dates, volume of support tickets after launch, accuracy of data validation, adoption rate etc.

    • Define your scope: List additional functionalities that will be introduced later and thus keep your team concentrated on main deliverables.

Mobilize Cross-Functional Project Steering Committee

The successful execution of the project is not simply a matter of IT software upgrading or HR effort alone but a paradigm shift which requires strong governance from all the departments involved.

Create a project steering committee with defined roles and responsibilities:

   • Executive Sponsor: Senior management that will help allocate budgets, keep momentum company-wide, and address any departmental impasse.

   • HR Functional Lead: Experts in their field with full knowledge of the day-to-day work flow and validation of design decisions.  

   • IT Architecture Lead: Specialists in charge of Enterprise single sign-on, identity management, securing the data pipeline and API integrations.   

   • Change Management Lead: Professionals whose job will be to take care solely of user satisfaction, communication, and training. 

   • Certified SAP Partners: Professional implementation partners that have experience of methodologies, template configuration, and technical forethought to avoid common mistakes.

Do a Thorough Data Sanitation Beforehand

It is entirely accurate the classic statement about enterprise software: garbage in, garbage out. The input of inaccurate, duplicated or old employee information into cloud-based systems will harm the functioning of the system and the automated workflow processes, as well as destroy user confidence from day one.

 • Auditing and purging: Remove old job codes, duplicates of personnel profiles, old contact information and unnecessary historical records not covered by the current legislation.

 • Format standardisation: Make all conflicting job positions, departments, compensation levels and geographic tags conform to the standard data model.

Stick to Standardised Best Practices Rather Than Customization

A common mistake when adopting the cloud environment is trying to recreate well-established, heavily customised processes that have been in place for more than 20 years within the cloud platform. Re-creating such processes makes the system logic weak, increases costs associated with implementation, and raises future maintenance costs.

However, it is advisable to adopt a commitment to use standardised SAP SuccessFactors Migration Planning principles and native platform standards:

 • Use pre-defined best practices: Cloud environments already incorporate industry standard processes based on best HR performing organizations.  

 • Question exceptions from the past: Scrutinise each case of non-standard processes. Is there any competitive advantage in custom logic or just comfort of the old one?

  • Compliance: Make sure that data extraction and transfer processes and storage within the cloud environment comply with all applicable international privacy regulations and domestic laws on data residence.

Implementing Comprehensive Change Readiness and Training

While your technical set up may seem perfect, confusion among the management team about the platform or lack of adoption of self-service portals by employees would mean that you have not achieved your goal of migration. Enabling people is just as important as building your platform.

Develop a comprehensive change readiness process into your main implementation process:

• Appoint change champions: Encourage an enthusiastic group of peer leaders in each department who are well-trained to help in demonstrating the features of the software and provide assistance.

 • Provide personalised learning journey: Do not go for a generic training program; instead provide customised one where managers are given guidelines on how to approve leaves and review team analytics and the rest of the general employees get easy guides for updating their personal profiles.

Perform Thorough Multi-Level System Testing

Skipping system testing in an effort to meet a deadline is very risky. Proper and thorough testing will make sure all configurations, permissions, and integration streams perform without any issues under a heavy load.

Make sure you conduct your validation on three different testing streams:

• System Integration Testing (SIT): Test to ensure the seamless transfer of data between SAP SuccessFactors, payroll engine vendors, timekeeping devices, and company’s reporting systems without data loss.

• User Acceptance Testing (UAT): Let real HR power users and managers participate in hands-on testing sessions performing operational scenarios and ensuring easy usability.

• Security and Role Testing: Conduct thorough testing to confirm proper role-based security settings making sure that the users have access only to the required HR information.

Final Perspective

Planning for a successful SAP SuccessFactors Migration would be possible through well-defined goals, quality information, right choice of modules, realistic timelines, proper testing, and effective communication to the employees. It would be ideal to see migration of SAP as a project for business improvement instead of just a technological process.

Prompt Edify is a great place to learn about SAP systems, develop necessary technological skills and understand requirements for implementation of such systems. Contact Prompt Edify for your further learning on SAPs.

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