Simplify SAP HR reporting for your clients

Hello, everyone. Let us welcome all of you to this webinar on how you as our partners can enable your clients to eliminate SAP HR reporting bottlenecks. We thank you very much for your time for joining us today. I'm Mariel from global marketing here at Epi USe Labs, and we're really happy that you could join us. Just a few reminders before we start with our topic. This session is being recorded, and it will be shared in a follow-up email. And if you do have any questions, you can send them over to the control panel. You'll be able to see them on your left side of the screen. And we'll be addressing them at the end as long as we have enough time. And without further ado, I'd like to introduce our speaker for today. We have Brett Corbett, our HCM delivery lead here at Epi USe Labs. Over to you, Brett. Okay. Yeah. Thanks very much, Mariel. Yeah. So, again, I'm Brett. I'm HCM delivery lead. I've been working with SAP HR payroll for over, seventeen years. So, originally, they always ECC on premise and then s for HANA more recently. And then, you know, now it's, a lot of employee central working with the various success factors modules and the employee central payroll. So across all those themes, it's been consistent across the projects is that reporting is a bottleneck. So we'll walk through why that happens, how the query manager tool solves it, and some scenarios where you as partners are able to deliver visible value. And, yeah, I'll go through some live demos of how it works. So, yeah, I think that we've been through a little bit about me. So a big part of my work these days is helping clients and partners, simplify complex HR, payroll reporting. So these challenges, come up again and again. It doesn't matter the country or or the underlying platform, and, yeah, we'll aim to address, those with query manager. Okay. So, here's where we'll start. Just with the agenda, why reporting slows down projects and the impact it has on, on you as partners. Introducing query manager and explaining, you know, why it even exists after all this time with, with the other various SAP SuccessFactors reporting tools. Those three live scenarios where, you know, I'm showing an example of how it creates that partner value, and I'll demo each of those. And then finally, a wrap up with some next steps and q and a. Okay. So okay. So HR SAP HR implementations are complex as we all know. So what often frustrates the end clients the most isn't, you know, working through the individual payroll configuration and the wage type catalogues or things like, the EC ECP replication, it's reporting. So reporting is often left until the end of the project because by nature, it the configuration needs to be done first to enable the data, to be reported on, and by that time, it becomes a scramble. So whether that is custom ABAP development, you know, using manual Excel workarounds, it becomes frustrating to the end clients. So instead of being a quick win, reporting becomes one of the hardest, parts of the implementation. So, this slide is really it's about the reality we see on a lot of these SAP HCM projects. Reporting is the bottleneck. So not because clients don't care about it. It's because the tools they have, they just, by nature, don't make it easy. So first, most clients, they still have to rely on IT to build or modify reports. So that means every small change becomes a ticket or a change request, a delay, and an extra cost, and it slows the whole process down. Second, they often need multiple tools just to get a single view of the data. So in SAP, they might use ad hoc query for one piece, s e sixteen table dumps for another, custom ABAP reports for certain payroll aspects, and then maybe, you know, putting it all into Excel and stitching it together. So that's time consuming manual and error prone. And then finally, the critical data like the payroll clusters or time data, it isn't readily available in standard analytics tool tools. So previously, that would have been something like, SAP business warehouse, but more commonly now the various cloud platforms, SAP annex Analytics Cloud, various data lakes. So that means that either custom extraction or just accepting gaps in the available reporting data, and neither is a good option. The net result reporting delays projects, frustrates clients, and adds risk. This is exactly the bottleneck query manager, was built to remove. It gives clients a single, secure, no code way to access the HR and payroll data they need without relying on IT or juggling multiple tools. Okay. So for you as partners, this bottleneck, it has direct consequences. It drains your resources, it stretches timelines, and increases the delivery risk. It also makes it harder to stand out or upsell additional value. And if issues surface post go live, client satisfaction takes a hit. That's why reporting matters not only to your clients but also to your delivery outcomes and, you know, eventual end, profit profitability of the project. Okay. So introducing query manager. Query manager is about making reporting in, in SAP SuccessFactors landscapes, simple and reliable. So firstly, it's SAP certified. It's created from the ground up as a no code solution, and it's built specifically for HR and payroll reporting. Functional users, not necessarily your IT, technical resources, can create reports in minutes, as they need them, and they can do this across whatever the underlying platform is. So whether it's on premise ECC, S4HANA, the various SuccessFactors modules that may be in play for the implementation, they can access the underlying data and build out the reports that they need. One important, thing to touch on is that it always respects the existing SAP, security authorizations and the success factors role based permissions. So the data is always, secure. You can't bypass any existing security, roles that the user of query manager has restrictions on acting accessing the data. They can't bypass any those restrictions by using QM. It respects all those existing authorizations. Then for you as partners, it means less, custom development, faster delivery, and, and eventually a more satisfied end client. Okay. We created, query manager, to address exact issues, what we've just talked about. It replaces the need for always that custom ad app development cycle with a no code approach, and it fills in the gaps in the standard SAP tools. So enabling live hybrid reporting across, employee central and the other various SuccessFactors modules and the payroll, the payroll system. And above all, it eliminates the reporting bottlenecks and project slowdowns. So we'd probably be a lot of us would be familiar with, the traditional or the existing, SAP reporting tools. So if you, were reporting without a tool such as query manager, the you're relying on multiple tools and putting in a lot of manual work. So each tool only solves part of the puzzle and the data is static at the moment it's exported and then you go through that process of stitching together the data you know maybe it's an Excel using VLOOKUPs. This is you know, it's not repeatable. It's not secure, and it's prone to error. So this is where I've seen projects run into trouble when the end solution relies on these sorts of workarounds. Then, yeah, reporting with a an integrated tool like query manager, everything is in one place. So you have the access across HR, payroll, the org management, time, finance, the SuccessFactors data, even other data sources like your underlying configuration tables, wage type catalogs, all of those sorts of things. You can combine any of those data sources, into a single report and deliver that, that report, output into regular ALV, you know, grid on screen, Excel, PDF, you know, deliver it by email, or stream it through to an analytics, tool, which I'll be going through in the demo a little bit later. Okay. So a few things, to know about query manager before we, dive into those, demo scenarios. So firstly, it's fully certified by SAP, including on the latest s four HANA, twenty three release. And then as those new s four HANA builds or enhancement packs come out from SAP, the development team, you know, recertify on whatever the latest version is. Second, it's fully approved, by SAP to be installed into the employee central payroll, you know, SAP managed, environments. So there's a specific SAP note which lists the tools that are permitted, and it's, it's on that list. Third, it's listed by SAP as the official, live payroll partner data source for SAP Analytics Cloud. So this is that Analytics Connector, which I'll be going through a little bit later. It's fourth more than yeah. More than just reporting. So, it can also handle document creation, and distribution. So creating things like PDF end of month reports that may go out to managers or that it may be, very specific PDFs, like tax lodgment forms or something. So you need to output the data into very specific, locations on, on the existing form to line up with the fields for the lodgment. And then finally, it's proven globally. So multi languages are supported, and there's thousands of users relying on it every day. So, you know, I think these sort of things can give you confidence that query manager isn't it's not just another add on. It's certified. It's trusted and widely adopted, across the globe. Okay. Now getting into the, topic of the content, it comes query manager, it comes with hundreds of pre prebuilt reports, so you're not having to start everything from scratch. So you can adopt these existing, redelivered, report templates. There is often a need to customize them as needed because in your implementation, you may have the fields and the data sources, slightly different from standard. So, yeah, you adopt those reports and change them as needed. There's a global sort of community sharing platform, completely optional, of course, where you can download queries and, you know, review forums and, support, questions and things like that. Then you have the multiple output formats that I've I mentioned before so Excel, PDF, OData, and then scheduling and distributing these reports securely. So that sort of all of those that accelerates the adoption and reduces effort for you as partners. Okay. So one of the questions we often get asked from partners when we you know, doing demos like this is, does query manager work on all client landscapes? And, you know, there are it is getting increasingly more complex with the various on premise systems, SAP, hosted systems. So, basically, no matter what the client landscape, query manager supports it, and it adds value. So for those, HCM well, for ECC on premise or s four RISE, which is hosted by SAP, You can install Query Manager, and it's accessing all of the payroll clusters, the clustered payroll results, config time data. In hybrid environments where there is a SuccessFactors, typically employee central module, connected, you can report on the data from both systems live. So the clients can view the data in SAP directly, or in SuccessFactors, and they don't necessarily need to have the SAP GUI installed. So there's various options on accessing the data. And then finally, on, employee central payroll, you know, we have things like a best of payroll a best of practice payroll, reporting pack. So delivered out of the box, you've got a whole set of, payroll reports for your, for the end customer, payroll team, and it does things like ensuring replication accuracy between, the employee central system and employee central payroll. And, again, yeah, making sure that the data is available for, to feed into some downstream process like analytics cloud or finance, those sorts of things. So what does this mean for you, and your business as partners? First,ly, it helps you accelerate project timelines. Reporting is delivered faster and your team can focus on higher value work. Second,ly, it increases delivery confidence. So by removing reporting bottlenecks, you reduce those last minute issues that can derail a project and threaten GoLife. Third, it boosts client satisfaction. So when clients get accurate, easy reporting, from day one, they have more trust in the system, and they trust you as an implementer, that, you know, everything's on track for the big go live. Fourth, it unlocks new revenue opportunities. So query manager, it's usually a simple upsell during or after the project, and, one clients can see the value in immediately. You know, it cutting out that need for that ABAP, development cycle especially. And finally, it ensure it ensures you deliver visible post go live value. Clients see the return on investment right away, which reflects directly on the quality of your delivery. Okay. So now let's look at, three of the, you know, sort of high impact scenarios, that are typical. So the yeah. Basically, the three that I'll go through are replacing ABAP reports, validating employee central, to payroll system data, and then streaming payroll data into an analytics solution. So I'll demo each one live, so you can see how QM works in practice. Okay. I'll just switch over to my, my demo instance here. Okay. So traditionally, partners would need to build ABAP reports to make them, s four compliant, for example, so that takes weeks. With query manager, we can build the same report in minutes, no ABAP required. So here I'll pull employee data from EC and also from, the payroll results into one report, and then we'll have a play around with the formatting and the output. Okay. So here I am. I'm logged into query manager in my demo environment. Over on the left, I've got all the folders of reports. So these can be, you can put security on these folders. So, you know, maybe there's a set of reports that should only be accessed by the payroll team. You can modify all that around with security roles. So I'll just create a new, so I'll call it new test two. Now when I'm creating a report, I don't I typically create the report from an existing, template. So it just means I'm not starting from a blank slate. I've already got the standard, fields that are typical, selections. So I'm going to start with a payroll, template, and I'll enter that. So by default, I've got my a few employee fields, the employee, the employee personnel number, the name, and then the payroll results that are added. So what I will do now I'll start adding in some extra fields. So I will add in so from the SAP side, I'll add date of birth. Now what it's doing behind the scenes, it's you don't necessarily know as the report you don't need to know as a report creator that, okay, I wanna add this from Infotype two. You can search for the field that you need by the description and add it in. So all the linking and the joins of the underlying tables is being done for you, in the background. Now I am going to I'm going to add a related business object, which is my SuccessFactors employee. So this is not now not only am I extracting the data from the system that I'm on, I'm also there's also a linkage through the OData, API that's set up to the SuccessFactors system to bring in the linked SuccessFactors data. So I'm going to select I want to report on employees, where there is an the employee record on both sides just for demo purposes. Okay. So now on the SuccessFactors side so I've got the SuccessFactors information here. Now I'll add in a couple of other fields. So, yeah, maybe country of birth. We could add in something on, the position. So if I search for position so that we that's filtering down to employment information. Okay. Position. So all of these fields are being built up into our selection. Now if I've got it with just the descriptions turned on. But if you wanted a more technical view, if you knew the what the underlying entities like amp job per person and the fields, you can turn that on and get a view of the underlying data as well. So what I will so now I've got my fields. I've got the payroll results. Just for this purpose, I'll take an extra field like the wage type, and I'll add that to my selection screen, so that we can when we run the demo, we'll, run the report. We'll we can filter on which wage types we want. Okay. So then we start working our way through the various tabs across the top. Here, yeah, we're not applying any aggregation or transformation of the data. But, yeah, this is where you can come in and you could, you could start doing more complex operations on the data like grouping by, certain fields. You could select you know? So rather than outputting the result, you could do an average account or all those sorts of things. But I'll, yeah, I'll leave that off for now. And then the format output, so you would be coming in here and rearranging the columns as needed. I'll just come in and I'll color my SuccessFactors columns just a different color just to make it clear. So these were all the ones that were coming from, employee, ECP, and these are the ones that are coming from, the EC system. Okay. So at this point, I mean, this is an iterative process. You're coming into doing your formatting, going back to select the data. You'll be doing this multiple times, as needed. So now I will test I'll test the query. So I'll just run it for a limited data source. I'm running it for okay. So for this, US, payroll area, and I'm going to just run it for the wage type one zero one, the total gross. Okay. And then it's outputting to ALV. Yeah. Yeah. We're not gonna select any of the other, output options at this point in time. Okay. So it's running. So in the background, this is a new report. It's it's compiling this report into an ABAP program in the background. Then it's running. It's extracting the payroll, the payroll results from the payroll cluster. But, yeah, you could also have it, rep use the declustered results, both the live or test results from Payroll Control Center if, if that was relevant. And then because we've got that SuccessFactors data source, it is sending those OData requests across to SuccessFactors and returning that data from SuccessFactors. So here yeah. It's output, some information. So what we're seeing is that these fields yeah. This comes directly from SuccessFactors. So there's no it's live reporting from both sides of the system, at the exact run time that we execute the query. There's no staging of the data into some sort of, you know, cloud or something. It is it's live reporting on both of the both sides of the system. Now if we were to from this point at this point, you could export it to Excel, to, you know, various formats, PDF as needed. But what I will do quite often, what for partners in a in an implementation, there will be some legacy file format where you will be required to match the file format exactly for upload into some downstream system. So this is common where there might be a downstream, a finance system, or it could be, a statutory like a government upload. We have those here in Australia for things like gender equality reporting. So by default, your output type is the ALV grid, but I'm adding in an additional output type, which is a file output. So now the same report that we've already built up, we've already got all our data sources selected. We're doing all the transformations as needed, but now we can have a second output format being a, you know, a CSV file, a text file, and you can get very, very granular on how you on the format of this file. So you can have things like if there's a header with certain fields required for the upload specification. Here, we're using a comma delimited file, but, you know, some uploads that I've worked with instead are, like a fixed width. So every character and it could be I've worked with some that are, you know, seven hundred characters wide is the upload specification, and you have to get you can you have to get every field into exactly the right, the right placement. So okay. So here we've just I'll leave it as the comma delimited just for this, sample purpose. And then now I'll come in, I'll come into the test mode again. Alright. I'll just I'll enter these again. Alright. Now the difference is this time I'll select the file output type. So this was the new one that I've selected. And then I'm going to download this to my local, my local drive. But I mean, more commonly, you would be putting this into a server, like an application server directory. That way for auditability, For auditability, you know, you're you're running it. You could run this on a schedule overnight, and then, that file gets picked up, and processed. Okay. So I'll run that. It's saving it to that directory, test three. Oh, sorry. I didn't see that. Allow the file to be created. Okay. So it's created the file. Now if I go and look at the result okay. So it's created my file output type, with the, you know, the comma delimited format. So, yeah, this is you can have one single report for your ALV viewing the data on screen, and then you can schedule it to do a file extract for integration with other for other, other systems as needed. And, yeah, that's something that we use quite often, in implementation projects. Okay. So the second scenario I'll go through will be, for the, replication monitoring. So, I mean, that standard replication monitoring between, SuccessFactors, employee EmployeeCentral, EmployeeCentral payroll, it, I mean, it has some limitations. It it only catches outright failures. It doesn't, you know, necessarily check whether the data values match after mapping or if payroll users make, make changes. So what has been quite popular is using Query Manager to provide an integration monitoring, comparing EC and payroll data side by side, and applying mapping tables. And, therefore, you can flag mismatched data, instantly. And this is particularly useful during an implementation project, to highlight where there are underlying issues with the, with this you know, getting that initial integration set up. So gives assurance, for you as partners, but also the clients who will be doing, you know, things like UAT testing that the data is aligned and, they're heading, you know, ready for go live. Okay. Now switching over to my demo environment. Okay. So this scenario, what we are going to do is we'll open this existing report, compare SAP and SuccessFactors address data. So again we've seen, here we've got the standard selection criteria. We also have these custom check boxes for running different options for running this report. So if I go into this report, okay, what we can see is, again, we've got the two standard, business objects. We've got the employee data from the, from the payroll system and the SuccessFactors, linked, data as well. So one different thing that we have here is we have these, formula fields. So these fields, they allow you to manipulate the data using Query Manager formula language. And this formula language, it is essentially it's very close to Excel form Excel formula language. So you can easy easily replicate what you may have been already doing in Excel or, you know, the person writing the report is going to be pretty familiar with this standard, standard, you know, language. So what this is doing, it's selecting the various data sources, these other fields and applying some logic, and then it's out it's going to output that, into the new columns as needed. But what we are doing here yeah. So it's what it's doing, it's pulling the various bits of data from SAP and comparing it to SuccessFactors and then, outputting whether it's a match, whether the data is missing on one side or the other, whether it's a complete match, or whether it is existing in both but, but different. So I'll go back and I'll I will I'll select a if I yeah. Select a run where, yeah, we've run it for a group of employees. Now this is, yeah, this is pulling the SAP data from the info type six. And so as we can see here, like, the this column is the SAP address line one, and then we've got the SuccessFactors address line one. So we can see that there is an issue with a lot of these. You know, maybe this one here, there's a field in the per address entity and success factors where, you know, it's not combining the street number and address into one data one, you know, one record. It's split across two. So but in SAP, it's all combined into one. But then there are other records where the data on one side completely matches the data on the other. So those records will be listed as in both and, you know, a total match, Whereas other records will be like this one. There is slight differences in the data. They will be listed as, that the data is existing but mismatched. Okay. So when you this is something that you would be typical to kick off, nightly and then come in and review it, the next day. Now if we go to the all runs tab, we can select, say, two different runs and then do a side by side. So if you've got if you wanted to compare the difference of one report versus a previous report, You don't have to, you know, export them to Excel, and line them up manually. You can do that within, within query manager. And then, yeah, this all runs tab here, you can always come back and review those previous, previous runs. So, I mean, there is a cleanup job you can run to delete very old results that are no longer needed, but that can be configured as needed. So here we've got a side by side display. We can even see, what the selections were for both of the reports at run time, because, yeah, maybe the there's a reason why the reports are different. They might have been run with different selections. So you can always go back and see what was, selected at the time of, running. So those sorts of reports, this yeah. In this SuccessFactors, replication, these can be set up you can easily sort of replicate this for the various, info types underlying entities. And, yeah, a lot of our, implementation partners find that quite useful, especially during the implementation to highlight when those issues may be, maybe, coming through with the, with the integration. Alright. Now finally, the third scenario is to stream payroll data directly into an analytics tool. So normally payroll data, getting that payroll data from something like employee central payroll into your analytics solution it requires flat file extracts and then something like an SFTP job and nightly batch run to export the data, move it across, and then in your, tool of choice to ingest or import the data and process it. So query manager, there is an optional analytics connector add on. So what this allows you to do is stream the data directly into platforms like SAP Analytics Cloud, Power BI, various, data lake solutions. You stream it over the an OData API secure with a secure, settings turned on. And that enables things like executive or project dashboards, from day one and, you know, no extra build overhead. Okay. So going back to the demo environment. Okay. So the third, demo, we I'll go into this payroll with SuccessFactors manager info existing report. We'll just go in display mode. So we're not changing anything for now. It's still pulling the employee and the SuccessFactors data. It's got a couple of, also the payroll data. It's got some formulas that have been added. Now in this final publish query tab here, this is where we can add, you know, modify the selection screen. You can add custom, selection boxes, check boxes, those sorts of things. You can assign transaction codes, to run the query, run the ABAP report that is generated in the background, you can assign it a transaction code. You can do things like the localization, you know, different languages, that sort of thing. But for this scenario, we're interested in this OData API tab. So this is where you optionally choose to publish the feed of data, of your existing, report out over a secure OData API connection, and then you load that into your analytic an analytics tool of choice. So that cuts out the batch jobs, the overnight waits, and, you know, it's the data is live as at the time that the query runs. There's no delay or, yeah, no delay in the data. Okay. So here we have the a p the fields that are in the report. We can choose whether they, are to be included or excluded from the from being published over that API. You can sort of manipulate the data in various ways. Now I have customers that I've set this up for that they're using this in various ways. So some of them are using this as just a very simple data extractor. So they want to get something like the SuccessFactors position, entity. They want all the raw data of all the positions and just extract that raw feed into something like, you know, Azure Data Lake. And then they do various manipulations and reporting from there. But then we've got other customers who, you know, they're using a full query manager report, all of the, all of the manipulation of the data, and then they only pub or export or publish the results of the query through to the analytics tool. So yeah. I mean, it's just personal preference. You can either do all that manipulation within Query Manager or just use it as an extractor. Now if I'll go in here. So, yeah, this is a an example of, you know, a Power BI, dashboard. So if we were to come into edit mode and I mean, this is just the web interface, but in the full version, you would be right clicking and going, you know, select data source. You'll be pasting in the URL to the, the query manager query. And then every time you refresh this dashboard, it's pulling the latest data from, from your, you know, your landscape. So you're typically employee central payroll or S4HANA with SuccessFactors. And, yeah, that ensures that data is kept up to date and, yeah, you cut out all that risk of the manual process of processing files, having them sit on a server somewhere. And, yeah, you'll you cut all that out, load it straight into the analytics tool as needed. Okay. So that was the three demo scenarios. Now, I mean, a few you can view these on the website, more details on sort of success stories. But as of just a high level, you know, Zurich Airport, they they enabled managers to build their own reports. So that's yeah. You're enabling them to either copy existing reports and modify as needed or if they're comfortable, they can create them from scratch. I mean, there's there's no risk. You can create these reports directly in production, and the manager can only extract the data that they already have access to. They can't, bypass any security. Another customer, I mean, they're using it for simplifying reporting and interfaces in house. So this would be that, the scenario two that I went through, where we're creating file extracts. And then finally, another large German customer there. There they cut down their report development from eight weeks to one day. So I mean these are the sort of things that are available, you know, proven results at scale. So next steps I yeah. Think of clients struggle struggling with reporting or running hybrid ECP, EC, or S4HANA projects and you can engage us for a joint demo and it will be happy to show you or showcase the query manager value. And, yeah, and you can, yeah, look at adding including query manager in your project toolkit, to reduce risk and deliver that immediate client value. Okay. Thank you. Mariel? Thank you very much, Brett, for going over all those scenarios with query manager. Now we'll be opening the discussion for any questions that our partners may have. I'll start with some of the ones that have already been sent in. They're asking, can you schedule dynamic jobs in Query Manager? Yep. Yeah. So, I mean, that's some like, in those examples we went through, we it's it is very common to schedule these jobs, on a periodic basis. So that often requires the use of, like, dynamic variant. So the variant, the selection parameters, you they can tick over as this report runs week to week, to ensure that, yeah, the right data is being selected. Yep. That's certainly available. And then the results, you can, yeah, distribute them securely, over those different formats that we've, we've been through. And another question would be, how does the tool handle historical data and time series analysis? Yeah. So when you're reporting when we're adding in those data sources to query manager, on the selection, you can get quite granular on each data source how you want to select the records. So, for example, do you want to select all the records that exist, from a data source, say, you know, your payroll results or your info type one, the position or something, Or do you only want to select the records that exist in the overlapping records that exist for between the start and the end selection period? Then there's other things where you might only want to select the very last record. So no matter what span you're running the report for, just select the most recent record. And then the same on the SuccessFactors side, you yeah. You can choose around what, yeah, what data you're selecting. And, I mean, yeah, the end result is that it can either allow you to run, a point in time query, so as of today or a another point in time, or you can do, you know, sort of a mass trend analysis. Mhmm. I see. And the last question that we have, it's asking how does it handle data synchronization and ensure data accuracy and consistency across systems? Yep. So I guess the core, core answer here is that the data that you're reporting on I mean, your report results, they're always being read live from the various sources at the exact run time. So there's no data staging at any point in time. You're selecting the live payroll results. You're selecting the SuccessFactors, underlying entities and records at that runtime, combining it all together, doing all that manipulation, and then outputting that into a single, a single report. So the end user, they don't necessarily know that all of this is happening in the background. It's, you know, it's the data they need, consolidated. Alright. And thank you very much for all of those questions, and thank you, Brett, for diving into those. I'd just like to remind that all the useful links that we have for today's session will be in a follow-up email. And if you want to know more about query manager, we can definitely arrange that. And we also will be having another session in September. So that's all for today. Take care, and stay safe. Bye. Alright. Thank you. Bye.