Client success: Global coal producer keeps seven years of SAP HCM data with Archive Central

No access to historical HR data after corporate separation

Following a corporate separation from its former parent company, our client faced the challenge that the new organisation no longer had access to historical employee data in the legacy SAP® HCM system. Retaining access to HR records – including over seven years of payslips, tax certificates, and remuneration data – was essential for compliance, auditing and internal operations. However, maintaining a full legacy SAP environment was not a cost-effective or sustainable option.

Adding to the complexity, technical restrictions meant the team could not access the original SAP source system directly. Our client needed a solution that would integrate easily into daily operations, and meet strict internal security requirements such as Single Sign-On (SSO), and secure, role-based access aligned with data privacy regulations.

A secure, SSO-enabled archive delivered around access limitations

Our client explored several archiving solutions, keeping ongoing costs and usability in mind. They needed to ensure that administrators could access historical data quickly and easily.

From the client’s side, the project involved compiling detailed specifications of the data required and the historical periods to be included; and facilitating secure access to the original systems. They collaborated closely with EPI-USE Labs throughout the process, participating in user acceptance testing, ensuring compliance requirements were met, and supporting the transition to the new system.

Our client decided that EPI-USE Labs’ Archive Central solution met their requirements. We implemented the solution, working around access limitations by first extracting the necessary data into a staging environment, and then importing it into the archive system. Despite evolving requirements during testing, we delivered the solution in full.

Benefits included:

secure, role-based access to archived data with tailored permission levels
SSO for a seamless user experience
structured archiving of historical remuneration data and tax documents
one-off data extraction using Archive Extractor™ (part of the Data Sync Manager™ Suite)
hands-on support and consulting from our specialists.

Secure, compliant access to legacy data

Archive Central now provides easy, secure access to all critical legacy data via SSO. We established role-based permissions for around 20 user profiles, covering both standard users and super users, so that sensitive HR data remains strictly protected. Administrators can retrieve documents such as payslips and tax certificates effortlessly as part of their regular operations.

Tangible outcomes included:

Seven-year data availability: Kept seven years of historical HR and remuneration data fully accessible without the expense of keeping the legacy SAP system running.
Familiar SAP look and feel: Staff access archived records through an interface that maintains the same look and feel as SAP, enabling simultaneous multi-user access across departments to consult prior-year data directly without raising IT support requests.
Ongoing reporting capability: Beyond read-only storage, the archive supports active consultation, comparison, and reporting, allowing teams to continue generating the reports they relied on before our client decommissioned the SAP system.
Built-in authorisations and security: Role- and permission-based access controls carried over the production governance model, ensuring that only authorised users and departments can access sensitive archived records.
Net business impact: Achieved full compliance with statutory seven-year retention requirements, eliminated the total cost of maintaining a legacy SAP instance purely for historical access, and freed up budget for core operations.
Regulatory compliance: Full alignment with local and global data privacy regulations.
Enhanced control: Improved visibility and governance over sensitive data access.