Integration Monitoring in action: How to keep critical data within SAP and SAP SuccessFactors in sync

Hi, everyone. Welcome to our session today. I think people are still joining the call. So we're just gonna give a little introduction, and then we'll get started. So today's session is integration monitoring in action, keeping critical SAP and SuccessFactors data in sync. I'm Sarah Enders. I'm on the marketing team here at EPI-USE Labs, and, we're so happy you could join us today. So today, we'll show how integration monitoring helps catch, and resolve SAP and SuccessFactors data mismatches before they impact payroll or downstream processes. So we're gonna be recording this session today, so we'll send it to you all after, the, after the session. I'm joined by Dominic. He's in South Africa, so thanks for joining us this evening. He's a product delivery consultant here at EPI-USE Labs, and he works hands on with our clients to help improve SAP and SuccessFactors reporting and data analysis. And he has deep experience in experience implementing Query Manager and Variance Monitor, two of our products here at Labs. And, yeah. So he has a lot of experience in, the topic that we're gonna discuss today. So, we will take some questions at the end, but we'll, we'll wait until the end. But you can still type them as we go into the GoToWebinar questions panel, and then we'll read those out at the end. So I will go ahead and turn it over to you now, Dominic. Thanks, Sarah. Yeah. I just wanna quickly go through what we'll be discussing today, and then we can jump right into it. So first thing we'll be discussing is just common SAP SuccessFactors replication challenges that we see clients have across our hybrid land or across their hybrid land landscapes as well as common use cases of the solution and its integration by merging, how you can use integration by merging with Query Manager, or give us a real life demo in our real system just to show how easy the solution is to pick up as well as highlight some of the features we see in our solution. And at the end, I'll just give us a little tip on how we can actually take integration merging one step further. So without any further ado, we know that integration sounds simple, and that is simple until it isn't. So data replication is designed to be seamless, but large scale complexities and the complexities of the hybrid landscape do sometimes just make it more complex, and it gets in the way of our everyday doing within SAP and SuccessFactors. We know that hybrid SAP and SuccessFactors landscape really do add a layer of risk since our data is now split across two different environments, and you wanna really get a hold on how your data looks and is it being replicated in both of those environments. Small mismatches often do go unnoticed until it's payroll or audit season, and that's then impacted by such a small mismatch. And that's the reason why you would want to have a grip on small mismatches so that by the time it gets to a payroll or an audit, those are already squashed. Then we do know that replication logs do exist on the SuccessFactors side, but most teams don't really have the time or the clarity to act on these, and sometimes they just do lack a layer of detail that we do need to see within our integration. Then as SuccessFactors adoption grows, the same data issues are showing up in different clients, and that's why we wanted to create a solution that not only helps you to validate but also reconcile your data. So before we move further, just wanna have a quick poll question just so that we can see what your current hybrid SAP system looks like. And if you can just vote in the poll, that will be appreciated. So you'll see we've shared the results, and as expected, most of you are on a SAP HCM plus an employee central type hybrid scenario, which is interesting. We also have some of you that are then also on a SAP HCM SuccessFactors and other third party HR solutions, and then there's a few of you that are also on SuccessFactors only. So that's the whole reason why we have this integration monitoring solution, and then that's exactly what we're gonna delve into further. So common SAP slash SuccessFactors replication challenges we do see across hybrid landscapes. And that's where we're gonna go to another poll. What would you describe as being your biggest challenge in your hybrid environment? K. And then there at the poll, we can see data replication and sync issues are the biggest challenge that most of you face along with. And tied to second place, we have the other three, lack of confidence in data accuracy, lack of consolidated reporting, and troubleshooting issues before payroll or key processes do appear, which does actually help because, luckily, integration monitoring is designed to solve all of those issues that we do face. So moving on, these are the typical data replication challenges we do see and how we can actually solve them through integration margins. So complex data landscapes does make it harder for you to spot discrepancies quickly. So your your teams do tend to waste times mainly tracking these solutions, and we do know some of the logs provided by SAP in SuccessFactors sometimes don't have the necessary detail that we do need. So in order to increase efficiency, an automated process such as integration marketing helps you to identify data issues faster, more accurately, and more reliably. And as I mentioned, replication logs don't always tell the whole story. Detail is provided in logs that we sometimes don't find that we are missing. So in order to improve data quality, we do have the integration monitoring solution not only gives you details with regards to mismatches, but it could also provide key details such as the user that lost edited the data within your ECP system, for example, as well as also gives you real true data checks, not just log reviews. This helps to minimize replication errors across systems. As we've seen with the poll, it's also important to notice and to realize that we need to understand when we have deadlines, and we don't want any integration or replication errors to affect that. That's why integration monitoring streamlines your communication and how it allows you to see when you have mismatches and to easily squash those before you miss any deadlines and failed audits. The scheduled and automation feature within Query Manager does help you to stay on top of it. Therefore, you can actually schedule your reports to run as well as, for example, you could set up an email thread or an email that could then automatically alert you of any mismatches you do have between your two systems. And lastly, there is limited visibility across systems. It's very difficult sometimes to see mismatches or to understand where the data is wrong between SuccessFactors and your payroll systems. So integration monitoring offers you data transparency. It allows you to actually compare the data across two systems from one report. It's not necessary to delve into two different reports just to enable to compare that. Using integration monitoring, you can then use the same report, see which field value is in SAP and which field value is then in SuccessFactors. So data replication challenges, and these are just some of the issues that I know most of you are facing. Replication errors do cause in data inconsistency between SuccessFactors, ECP, or SAP payroll systems, and this does likely affect the way that your payroll runs. It does sometimes mean that you need to jump when there is a issue faced within the system before payroll does run. We do know that manual reconciliations to identify mismatched employee data does take a long time, as well as I've mentioned this previously, but missed pay day pay date deadlines and failed audits are really just a issue faced by most employees or any employers that do run hybrid systems, and the lack of inconsistent reporting and compliance risk does then add up. And as it says there, most hybrid environments experience replication issues and aren't caught until it's too late. And so with all of that in mind and the common issues and challenges we do face, that's why we've introduced integration monitoring as a solution to really help you to get on top of your replication issues. So what exactly is integration monitoring? And integration monitoring is basically a service that leverages Query Manager. It helps to improve your data, your HCM data quality across your hybrid SAP and SuccessFactors landscape that includes SAP and employee central payroll as well as any on prem payroll systems. This is done through what we call implementing process controls for your integration flows with ease, Meaning, as soon as your integration flow does kick off, you can also run a similar report within Query Manager that allows you to then understand how my integration flow has done, are there any mismatches, how many mismatches, and so forth. We do give proactive integration marketing with prebuilt content and reports. You'll see later when I delve into the live demo. There are numerous amounts of reports that we can develop. We also have the ability to add custom fields and strings with ease in order to monitor those within your reports. Say you have a large amount of custom strings and fields within your SuccessFactors that does replicate to SAP, and you want wondering if you can add it with our no code solution. It's quite easy to add those. It's as easy as just understanding which fields you want us to add, getting the definitions from SuccessFactors, and then we can add in those to your replication. So what this does allow us is to easily detect and resolve integration and replication issues between your SAP and SuccessFactors systems before they impact your business. I just added this slide to help us understand the integration monitoring process. There's three key bits that I wanted to discuss within the integration monitoring process. The first bit is the one that I think most of us do know, and that's Query Manager. So the first bit, as you can see, on that graph or on that graph graphic, we do see we know Query Manager sits pretty much next to your payroll system, and it does live inside your payroll system. This is then installed and configured. And if you already have Query Manager installed and configured, that's a good thing. You're you've already completed the first step to integration monitoring. Query Manager, as you can see, is a very flexible solution. With any report that we do have. You'll see the flows to flow to Excel, SAP Fiori with slash web, a visual representation such as a dashboard, as well as even a PDF. The second process we do then need in order to get integration monitoring working is then it needs to be connected to your SuccessFactors system through an add on we call SuccessFactors connector, and that just allows us within query manager or that allows query manager to access the necessary data within SuccessFactors. This is then done through ODataLinks, and I'll be just quickly be discussing that on the next slide. But then the third option you do need in order to get your integration monitoring setup is what we call the integration monitoring then just needs to be set up within Query Manager. But this as a service is then offered. It really allows us as the consultants the we get the flexibility from tools that we've designed at labs, at EPI-USE Labs. We can then understand how your two environments do replicate data together. That then allows us to set up the relevant queries or integration launching reports. And as you'll see in the live demo, these reports are just not just static reports, but they're all flexible reports that do indicate with a quick notice or with a quick glance what's missing or what's mismatched. As I mentioned earlier, the SuccessFactors add on, I'd just like to touch a bit more on this to explain what the SuccessFactors add on does mean and how we do get data from SuccessFactors. So it's an easy way to report on both your on prem SAP system as well as SuccessFactors through our add on. It reads both data from SAP and SuccessFactors using an OData link. This is real time on demand data. It's not being duplicated of any sort, and you will see that SuccessFactors data then is available as a data source within Query Manager, meaning that you can combine any data from SAP or an external system. Part of the reason why we can then offer the integration monitoring solution is a is as a result of this add on. It allows us then to, as I've mentioned earlier, to create a report where both data or data from both systems is then visible. For security, we use we can use OAuth two with it. We use OAuth two with certificate based SAML authentication. This is recommended by SAP, and it will always adhere to your role based authorizations in SuccessFactors as well as approved for users who can report on both solutions. In layman's terms, if you're not authorized to view data on the SuccessFactors side, you can't suddenly log into SAP and then to QM and then run a report in order to get the data from SuccessFactors. Common use cases we've seen with integration monitoring are the following. The first one we've seen are HCM and payroll data validations for upgrades. This is a use case where you can actually validate the accuracy of your SAP and HCM payroll data during upgrade projects. So by extracting and analyzing your core data, you can then also double check the configuration using Query Manager before moving that data to SuccessFactors. So before the data is then moved to SuccessFactors, you can use Query Manager to double check, ensure that the data is as we have left it or the data is correct before being uploaded. The second and probably the most common use case you do see is what we call this SAP to SuccessFactors data replication auditing. And this is as the name suggests, we will just audit and validate the data replication between both SAP and SuccessFactors by actually comparing the records in both those systems. This way, we can highlight discrepancies. We can also ensure that we have automatic reporting so that only exceptions are picked up for faster resolution. And this is very relevant in one of our recent clients I've been working with. In their case, they are a multinational company. They have approximately, I'll say, more than twenty or thirty thousand employees. And in their case, it was very relevant to quickly identify where the mismatches were happening, and it was important for us to do that at a rapid pace so that not only could they identify which records were mismatching, but also if they could also pick up certain patterns, it could indicate if there was a data replication failure and if certain data didn't replicate. What we did was we then wrote a few custom reports for them, which included multiple portlets, portlets that they also specified within these portlets. Within the reports, we also had a lot of custom fields and tables, and we were able to then really quickly, easily give them a product and solution that they can use most of the auditing purposes of their data being replicated. It allowed them to quickly pick up a few mistakes. It also allowed them to filter out for only data that's mismatching. And that way, when it came to certain deadlines, they felt more prepared. And I think it's really it's a good case for using integration matching and probably the one that we've received the most. And that brings in on to the third point where we have unique cases. And because of the versatility of integration monitoring, we've seen that if there's a certain case that you feel like it's not probably mentioned on this slide, we can have a discussion about it. The service is flexible. It can be customized according to your needs, and this is why we really do think it's a good service because if there's a extra layer of complexity to your hybrid environment, we're willing to hear about it. We just wanna have a discussion about how we can then cater for that. And that's just the uniqueness of integration project. I'm gonna quickly jump into a live demo so we can quickly discuss some of that. I'm gonna quickly just jump to my SAP. And what you'll see is I'm already logged into my Query Manager just as a reference. I've then have a sample report as well as there are a few other reports that we can also highlight that we are able to do on the screen. So jumping into Query Manager, it's a standard version of Query Manager. Nothing is different. Just the report itself as well as it's connected to SuccessFactors that makes it unique. So you'll see it is a SuccessFactors based report based on the selection criteria as well as we can see from the employee selections. If you were to then jump into our last run, you'll see immediately see this is then one of the integration monitoring reports we do use. It's the job information report. Okay. Soon as you then run the report, the one thing that does immediately stand out is the fact that you can, yeah. Any employee that is now in your SuccessFactors system that's being replicated to SAP system will then be picked up here unless or, obviously, you do run the report to only show mismatched data. What you'll immediately see is there's a bunch of conditional formatting applied. This makes it easier for you as the user to identify which data is being mismatched. You can immediately see that there is some of our employees have mismatched data. Some of them have matched data. The report's also set up in such a way to make it more easy for you to identify which of the fields in that portlet. Some of the reports are sort of a simple portlet basis, so it's easier to identify which fields as well as to quickly take a snap if you need to then send this to a manager or someone that needs to report. So most of your fields are then conditional format to make it easier for you to highlight. We've added in all the fields in this case. And as I've mentioned before, you do have the ability to add in more custom fields, more custom strings. And then as you move to the right, you'll see the reports also written in such a way that you have indicators that help you to quickly identify what data is being mismatched. You can also include counts such as how many total keys are listed in this report, how many total keys do have a mismatch, as well as how many of those keys did pass. There's also indicators added to give you as the user flexibility in the sense of who lost change the field within SAP. So, obviously, if you do have a replication job that needs to run automatically, you would expect your replication job then to be a batch user, and that batch user should then pop up here as a user that last changed the data. So those are just ways that we've improved integration monitoring reporting. As I've mentioned earlier, there are other ways that clients have taken this one step further. One of the ways that we've heard and we've seen that clients have used that is by setting up schedules of running the reports, thereby, you know, simultaneously syncing your replication reports or your integration monitoring reports with your data rep pre applications case schedule. Soon as your data replication has ran, you can schedule your reports to run directly after that. And then as soon as your reports run, you can get a immediate picture of how that data replication run rate. I think it's very good to see and to set up schedules for that. We've also had clients take it one step further, but actually setting up automated emails along with that schedule of integration margin reports. One the one of the more interesting ways I've heard of is one of the clients that we've worked to set up a email to send out to either one of his managers or to himself that didn't include the output of the actual integration monitoring reports, but actually include a count of the number of mismatched records. So that email would send out daily. You'd get a daily email that would just indicate to him, okay. He only ran the report to show how many mismatched records they are. Let's say, for instance, one day, he'll get five mismatched records, and then that email would only include the number five to indicate him, okay. You have five mismatched records. Please log on to SAP to view in more detail. So those are just one of the ways that we've seen customers take it one step further, and that just automates your process for integration monitoring. And that's part of the reason why within the flexibility of Query Manager, they are in this possibilities of actually taking this one step further. As you'll notice also on the beneath the replication folder, there's also a bunch of different reports related to different datasets or portlets in SuccessFactors. So one of these we can also have a look at is probably biographical information, and that is then similar to what we've seen with our job information report. We jump to the last output of that. It should then be very similar with the fact that we can now highlight biographical information instead of the job information. So that's part of the service we do offer as well. If there are certain portals that you need to have a view on, we can then look at the information within your environments. We've written a small utility for on prem customers whereby we can actually just give you more detail with regards to your two systems and the fields that are being replicated in an easy to read package. And this utility is based off of a Query Manager query. Using that utility, we are able to find out more information about which fields and all of that are linked to your SuccessFactors fields, and that also helps us to get a better understanding of your two hybrid or as of your hybrid landscape. Makes it a lot easier for us to then actually understand what needs to be done as well as for you, the client, or the customer. It will also help you to understand how your environment looks and so forth. So you'll see there's also a lot of different reports related to that. And as I've mentioned earlier, if they're all portals or reports that you're looking to include, we can then have a discussion around that, and we can see how we can take that one step further. So that's just a small demo of how integration marketing looks. And as I've discussed, it's really built upon the backbone of Query Manager along with your SuccessFactors integration, and that allows us to really create more efficient reports for you and your employees. Let me jump back to the presentation. Just a one last section to conclude, and that's why I just wanna quickly touch on we've heard about what integration monitoring is. We've seen how it works, but how can we take this one step further so that it can not only assist us, but it can be easy to access this as well. That's where we are gonna discuss integration monitoring and analytics connector. So the three key parts of taking your integration monitoring one step further involve the integration monitoring reports. These would then be the integration monitoring reports from your query manager. We've set them up. They've been used by you as the customer. The second then port that you would need in order to be able to run this is Analytics Connector. Analytics Connector is an add on that we use to basically open up your system to external programs. It's done through a secure ODATA connection, and that just allows your query manager reports to be taken one step further. And thirdly, external programs such as any external program that can utilize OData connections. And that is in that OData connection is generated through Analytics Connector, and these do include programs such as Power BI, SAP Analytics Cloud, as well as SAP Data Sphere, along with any similar program such as a Data Lake or a analytics Power BI software. It's an enhancement by through using Query Manager Analytics Connector, And the analytics the Query Manager Analytics Connector can be used to share any data from within Query Manager to really share that data with external programs. You'll see an example I've then shown there. It can also be used in this case to enhance your integration monitoring solution there by making it more visual. We can really expand that to any BI software that you are using. Examples, we do have our Power BI, Tableau, SAP Analytics Cloud. So through Query Manager Analytics Connector, you can then generate an o data API mapping. That mapping can be then used to create anything as visual as you are seeing on the screen now. And just to give us a good example of how that look, I've just attached that exact dashboard in the PowerPoint. Cisco is loading. But the whole point of this is if you wanna take your integration monitoring to the next level, it's really important to and I do believe that the visual experience of this makes it a bit easier to understand. But yeah. So and then Letters Connect is a very versatile solution that, in this case, does help us, and it will help us to extend the capability of integration monitoring. So it's a good solution, and I'll quickly just here we go. So in this case, we just pulled up a proof of concept of how we could actually take integration monitoring one step further, and you'll immediately see what is relevant in the dashboard is the fact that we can now see. On the left hand side, we've included total mismatches for the different types of reports we do have. In the middle, we can immediately see the field values linked to those reports. And on the bottom side, we've included some different aspects with regards to users that last changed the records in the SAP. This just as a way to highlight, okay, did the replication job extend, or did the re rep replication job successfully replicate data, or did a different user already change the data? It's sort of an auditing process that allows you to see more and more of that. And you'll see we've even taken that to different reports on this mismatched screen. It's just a way to further extend what we already see in integration merging and make it more visually pleasing to the eye. So that is all from my side. I think we can now jump to any questions. So if you do have any questions you would love me to answer, you can quickly have a look. How does integration monitoring help reduce payroll risks specifically? So what are the key important ways that integration monitoring helps reduce payroll risks, first thing we need to understand is payrolls payroll does have a deadline, and sometimes small mismatches or large mismatches actually go unnoticed. And that's where an integration monitoring really helps us to set up a schedule. It helps us to identify those small, small mismatches before they go in our system and affect our payroll cycle. Pretty much just early detection from this. It's just early detection that helps you just to stay on top of any small discrepancy you do see. Another one, can this be used if we are using EC plus ECP with point to point replication? Yes. So it can be used with point to point replication. We do set up integration margin for both point to point as well as the rep replication. So we've also been doing it for point to point, so that's all good. Can this report on custom objects and fields that are being replicated down to our payroll system? Yes. So it's part of the versatility of Query Manager. It allows you to add in custom tables and fields. And if there are any custom tables, fields that you do replicate down to your payroll system, we can add those into Query Manager. We can then design integration, marching reports that do include those fields. So pretty much if we can set in the data dictionary within SuccessFactors, we can report on it within integration monitoring. And then what kinds of issues tend to slip through standard replication logs that this solution catches? So I think most of us are acquainted here in this call with standard replication logs. If not, standard replication logs only give you a list of if the replication did fail or if it's successful. That does not account for mismatched data, meaning that the replication did actually successfully replicate the datas as actually being mismatched. That's where integration marketing really does help. It accounts for those more defined details that gives you an exact view of the field value within SuccessFactors and SAP, and it also allows you to see who was the last known user to actually update the data within SAP. Someone said we don't have Power BI, but they utilize SAP Analytics Cloud. Can Query Manager work with SAP Analytics Cloud with payroll data? Yes. So Query Manager and the Letters Connector is set up to work with all the major BI software programs. We, at Labs, have we've been doing lots of proof of concepts in all of them. It works flawlessly with SAP Analytics Cloud, and that's also being done with payroll data. It's being done with SuccessFactors. Is pretty much being done with any data that's stored within Query Manager. It can then been extracted via OData into SAP Analytics Cloud. So this is primarily an integration between EC and ECP. Do you have any solution to add s four HANA as well? We find that's where we have the most replication issues. Let me just confirm one hundred percent if that's part of our plans. But from what I've seen, is we will we'll probably be adding it. But let me just do a confirm with our dev team, and it's definitely one of the questions I'll be taking to the dev team. Thank you very much. And our product expert is also on the webinar. He just told me yes. So Okay. In a nutshell, yes. Do you have any report built to track replication errors and resolutions? I will say we have been exploring with building different kinds of reports, and one of them was built to actually track replication errors. But I'd love to have another con conversation about that because I think it's a very interesting topic. Because naturally, when we look at integration monitoring, we look at rep replication issues, the natural course to follow is then to actually observe replication errors and the resolutions of that. So I think it's a very good question, and I think it's something in the lines that we are thinking of actually developing.