One of the highest impact cost drivers for SAP® HCM self-service in a large organization is ongoing custom development. Seemingly simple things like changing the appearance of a screen, re-labeling a field, or adding topical company information to a page (“It’s Open Enrollment Season!”) constitute major development efforts.

In fact, in a recent presentation at SAP HR 2009, a consultant with a systems integrator estimated that a moderately complex custom HCM form using Web DynPro required over 450 hours of work. Multiply this by different locales, languages and business units and very soon customization costs are tallied in millions of dollars. This is one situation where typical economies of scale work in reverse…customization costs are much higher for global, diversified companies because of the number of configurations required.

Topaz Bridge S2 gets around these costs by building on Microsoft® SharePoint® and its simple-to-configure interface, so that business analysts can make these kinds of changes without involving expensive J2EE or Adobe programmers. In this article, we discuss 5 ways that Topaz Bridge S2 lets business analysts take advantage of SharePoint customization features to quickly configure custom versions of employee and manager self service for a diverse, global workforce.

Best of all, because these customizations are implemented in SharePoint (not SAP ERP), they don’t alter the customer’s service agreement with SAP, they are easily upgrade to new versions of SAP ECC, and all aspects of SAP governance (business process, rights and authorizations, single system of record, etc.) are preserved.

So here they are: the top 5 ways business analysts can use SharePoint to configure a front end to SAP, using Topaz Bridge and SharePoint’s own customization tools.

Every page or report inherits the same look and feel, (unless of course you want something else)

Topaz Bridge S2 makes use of consistency features in Microsoft SharePoint called Master Pages and Layout Pages, frameworks described in more detail on MSDN. This means that when a business analyst creates a new page, it looks like any other page in the corporate intranet. Alternatively an analyst can also make use of a different look and feel standard for different countries or divisions. Pages created for a business unit using separate Master and Layout pages will look consistent across that unit as well. The same is true for pages created with Topaz Bridge custom web parts (which give you access to SAP HR data and business processes…more on this later).

Easily add or edit content and functionality

Imagine being able to add additional information to a self-service page based on topical or organizational needs, without using development resources. For example, let’s say it’s benefits open enrollment season. You want to highlight to the workforce that time is running out, and include a daily update on the number of days left and the number of employees who have yet to file. With Topaz Bridge S2 running in Microsoft SharePoint you can add an additional content Web Part to the screen, and then update the text daily in the web part. This update is as simple as adding an object to a Microsoft PowerPoint slide or editing a Microsoft Word document.

Modify or create new Microsoft InfoPath® forms

Topaz Bridge S2 makes use of Microsoft InfoPath Forms Services. This feature allows you to create rich, dynamic forms which run in any web browser without downloading an additional downloadable runtime engine. Office InfoPath 2007 provides a simple drag and drop interface for creating forms or for modifying the forms Topaz Bridge S2 provides. In addition InfoPath supports the use of different data masks (for phone numbers, employee ID’s, Social Security numbers, etc.) for different formats in different locales. Business analysts can also use InfoPath to impose another layer of data validation on data entered into the form within the browser itself, giving users immediate feedback on invalid entries and improving overall usability.



Topaz Bridge S2 lets you label data fields in ways that make sense for your employees

Compose new interfaces using Topaz Bridge built-in HCM-aware web parts

Topaz Bridge S2 provides a collection of HCM-aware web parts that business analysts can compose and configure to create custom screens and reports. For those unfamiliar with web parts, they are reusable, pre-packaged components that can be combined into web pages. More details on web parts can be found in this article on Wikipedia. The HCM-aware web parts provided with Topaz Bridge let business analysts directly create custom web pages. These web pages can be used to to view employee directories, update personnel or benefit information or view and access a manager’s task list, among other functions. The bottom line: Business Analysts can design, prototype and deploy new pages in hours or days, rather than weeks or months.

Custom Reports

Topaz Bridge S2 includes filter-able, sort-able data web parts that users can leverage in the same way they use Microsoft Excel. Say for example you’d like to see a list of employees in a particular department, who work in a particular building, sorted by hire date. In Topaz Bridge S2, this and other reports are a standard feature. If you’re using S2.m (the manager self-service interface to Topaz Bridge S2) and have appropriate authorization, you can request the same report for the employees for whom you are responsible and add-in the amount of time off accrued. All these features and more are “built-in” to Topaz Bridge S2, which not only cuts down on custom report creation costs, it also increases worker and manager productivity.

…and So Much More!

In reality, these five options, selected because of they can be used by business analysts with minimal training, just scratch the surface of what’s possible with Topaz Bridge S2 and Microsoft SharePoint. Tools like Microsoft SharePoint Web Designer and Microsoft Visual Studio give web designers and developers ways to provide virtually unlimited customization and integration to Topaz Bridge S2, at a much lower cost than typical J2EE portal development. To get some idea of the possibilities, take a look at this list of the 100 Best Looking Web Sites Hosted on Microsoft SharePoint. The sky really is the limit!