SAP SuccessFactors People Analytics Embedded Edition - first impressions

Meaningful people analytics enabled organizations to measure the business impact of people policies. It helps detecting patterns, predict outcomes and help suggest actions. I have been thinking for some time to try and shed some light on the new much anticipated SAP SuccessFactors People Analytics Embedded Edition which is the new power-tool in the SuccessFactors analytics toolbox. So does the new framework support better People Analytics? Let’s have a look at some of the capabilities.

Core Workforce Scenario

So you want to know what type of employees your workforce consists of? How this is split by business unit, regions or countries ? What types of employees based on employee job attributes do you have ? How many externals ? On Leave ? Part time employees ? This can all easily be visualized with simple numeric components (any component can have filters applied based on your data set).

Available data is practically everything you have in Employee Central Job Information so the possibilities are quite endless. In Employee Central we have Hire Date so this would need to be converted to a Tenure Range if you want to group employees into ranges; same goes with Date of Position. Creating custom analysis dimensions is possible both on the query creation time (point & click) as well as in the dashboard building time. This provides great flexibility as you can use this to analyze position tenure vs. promotability, impact of loss or predicted reason for leaving (if you are tracking these data points in Succession Management).

Creating relevant dashboard filters is possible on the individual dashboard level which means you can use any data point in Employee Central as filter criteria. This is a great improvement compared to the existing YouCalc Dashboard use case where filters are either hard coded or platform wide.

So my take is that People Analytics Embedded Edition will provide dramatic insight into the Core Workforce of any given organization.

Workforce Diversity Scenario

So you want to know what employee demographics characterizes your workforce? Are you in risk of losing intellectual property due to ageing workforce ? Are your hiring and promotion policies favoring men over women ? How this is all split by business unit, regions or countries ? In Employee Central we typically have date of birth so this would need to be converted to an age range if you want to group employees into ranges; same goes with. Just like with Hire Date, creating custom analysis dimensions is possible both on the query creation time (point & click) as well as in the dashboard building time. Furthermore, custom measures such as "Female Workforce %" and "Female Manager %" can also be created, something that is next to impossible in the current reporting framework.

So my take on the diversity topic is that People Analytics Embedded Edition will provide dramatic insight into the Workforce Diversity of any given organization and allow you to gain better understanding of how your organization deals with different groups and minorities.

Talent and Performance Scenario

Many companies have reinvented part of the annual appraisal process to focus less on the rating and more on a meaningful dialogue to promote development and up-skilling; and good for that. But most are still conducting an annual review that provides an overall evaluation of the individual. This data point is also available in People Analytics Embedded Edition. So you want to include how performance management stacks up in your workforce? Are you concerned about high performers who have held the same position for years, who are high risk of loss due to lack of career opportunities ? Talent reporting in People Analytics Embedded Edition lets you uncover these questions any many more. All these measures can be analyzed by Business Unit, Division, Job Families, Part Time or Full time employees. In fact, any data point you have in Employee Central Job Information (Organizational, Job) or Personal Information (such as Gender, Age) can be used for slicing and visualization. 

Available data points are Performance Management ratings (including Performance, Potential, Competency), Continuous Performance Management data, Goal Management Data, Career Development Planning data as well as Succession Management Data. Data can be blended into the same dashboards or in different pages (tabs) in the same story or in different stories.

So my take on the performance management topic is that People Analytics Embedded Edition will provide dramatic insight into this of any given organization and allow you to gain better understanding of how your organizations performance processes work.

Concluding Remarks

These were just three small samples of people analytics dashboards created in the new toolset. So, does People Analytics Embedded Edition enable organisations measure the business impact of people policies ? Does it help detecting patterns, predict outcomes and help suggest actions ? Well, it does support detecting patterns, that is for sure. Helping prediction depends on the usage and depth of your analysis. If you only use the tool to create the simple report stories, you will likely not get the understanding of causalities and dependencies that impact your organization. And with regards to suggesting actions, this is largely up to the HR Analytics Team to help business leaders to understand what it is they see. The example above in the diversity dashboard is one way to help the business understand why a topic like diversity is important. As a People Analytics enthusiast I am delighted about these new capabilities due to the value added insights they will provide. The combination of data visualisation and exploration capabilities allows us to identify correlations and causalities that we previously could not get. People Analytics Embedded Edition supports data from different data sources to blend data into the same dashboard or in different pages (tabs) in the same story or in different stories altogether. What is right for you depends on the use case and business requirements. People Analytics Embedded Edition will no doubt be one of the hot topics the coming months and it will be a game changer if you ask me; and will place HR much higher on the boardroom agenda - a place HR so deserves and has to fight for every day.

If you have any comments or questions please do reach out to us.

Erik Ebert, GP Strategies is an experienced SuccessFactors Solution Architect with 15 years experience in SAP SuccessFactors and 25 years in IT professional services. GP Strategies is a longtime trusted partner of SAP and have more than 750 SuccessFactors & HR Digital Transformation engagements behind us and 150 live clients being supported. Contact us for expert guidance on any SAP SuccessFactors topic, SAP Cloud Platform, SAP Analytics Cloud, HR Metrics, HR Analytics, SAP Cloud Integration and Dell Boomi.

Web: www.gpstrategies.com/successfactors-services and www.gpstrategies-sfpractice.com