Topaz Bridge Blog

September 10, 2009
Wrapping it Up: Driving Business Value by Leveraging “ESS 2.0″ (Part 7 of 7)
 In our final installment, I will summarize our findings and present a total comprehensive view of the ABC Corporation’s three year total cost of ownership model comparing ESS 1.0 to ESS 2.0, the associated net present value of those dollar savings, and a review of the cumulative annual ROI associated with deploying a unified portal that leverages ESS 2.0 HCM Self Service delivery.

Unlocking Employee & Manager (ESS/MSS) Productivity with ESS 2.0
In our second blog posting, I showed how to calculate the total transactions and ultimate productivity gains leveraging some example variables such as time savings associated with various transaction types; frequency of example transactions; estimated average salary and overhead for the majority of our employees. With our total ESS transactions for ABC Company running close to 3.5M transactions per year I estimated the time savings and then mapped the time savings to the average cost per employee. In terms of employee productivity alone a conservative estimate of nearly $1M per year in savings for ABC Corporation may be associated with ESS 2.0 oriented self service delivery for HCM.

The third blog posting dealt with estimated manager savings and again using example variables such as time savings associated with various transaction types; frequency of example transactions; estimated average salary and overhead for the majority of our managers – I was able to derive ESS 2.0 manager savings. In terms of manager productivity alone an estimate of nearly $2M per year in savings for ABC Corporation may be realized with ESS 2.0 oriented self service delivery for HCM.

As illustrated in figure 1, over $9M in three year total savings exists between an ESS 1.0 and an ESS 2.0 deployment.

Figure 1 Total Three Year ESS 2.0 (Employee & Manager) Productivity Savings Estimates $9,092,534

Figure 1 Total Three Year ESS 2.0 (Employee & Manager) Productivity Savings Estimates $9,092,534

Saving Shared Services Support Costs with ESS 2.0
In blog posting #4, I estimated shared service savings associated with ESS/MSS transactions at ABC Corporation leveraging variables such as # of employees – 30K; time associated with various transaction types; frequency of example transactions; estimated average salary and overhead for the majority of our employees; estimated average salary and overhead for the support personnel; and percentages of transactions requiring support in the ESS 1.0 environment as compared to the ESS 2.0 environment. In terms of shared services savings for employee and manager self service transaction of all frequencies, just over $1.7M per year in estimated savings for ABC Corporation may be realized with ESS 2.0 self service delivery for HCM.

Figure 2 Total Three Year ESS 2.0 Shared Services Savings Estimates $5,354,648

Figure 2 Total Three Year ESS 2.0 Shared Services Savings Estimates $5,354,648

End User Training with ESS 2.0
Now in blog posting #5, I modeled training savings associated with ESS/MSS transactions at ABC Corporation using variables such as estimated average salary and overhead for training personnel; and percentages of transactions requiring training in the ESS 1.0 environment as compared to the ESS 2.0 environment).  In terms of training savings for employee and manager self service transaction of all frequencies, the conservative estimate is over $1.1M per year in savings (or $3.4M for total of 3 years - see figure 3) for ABC Corporation associated with ESS 2.0 self service delivery for HCM.

Figure 3 Total Three Year ESS 2.0 Training Savings Estimate $3,484,440

Figure 3 Total Three Year ESS 2.0 Training Savings Estimate $3,484,440

Realizing Developer and Deployment Savings with ESS 2.0
As discussed, the option to leverage an off-the-shelf solution significantly accelerates business value while avoiding the commitment to long-term maintenance and support obligations for internal solutions.  Modeling this information using development metrics such as total number of forms, the number of countries involved in the deployment, the costs for in-house and third party developers and support professionals, conservative estimates of nearly $1M worth of savings over the initial three year deployment period for ABC Corporation may be realized with ESS 2.0 self service delivery for HCM.

igure 4 Total Three Year ESS 2.0 Development, Deployment & Support Savings Estimate $1,385,721

Figure 4 Total Three Year ESS 2.0 Development, Deployment & Support Savings Estimate $1,385,721

 
Netting it out… ESS 2.0 Drives Business Value Now!
Figure 5 illustrates that ABC Corporation will be able to recoup their investment in less than 6 months based on these gains and savings.  
Figure 5 ESS 2.0 Cumulative Return on Investment for ABC Corporation

Figure 5 ESS 2.0 Cumulative Return on Investment for ABC Corporation

Additionally, the total ESS 1.0 three year total cost of ownership for ABC Corporation is $72,719,186 as compared to the total ESS 2.0 three year total cost of ownership $53,401,843 representing a net three year savings of $19,317,343 minus the initial software license investment and year 2/3 maintenance or $2,737,500.  The total net present value of ESS 2.0 three year savings is $13,652,294 using an annual NPV discount of 10%. 
The combination of SAP® ERP/HCM and Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server Line of Business applications has the potential to transform and unify a workforce by integrating - in a single portal - key corporate business processes (structured data) with relevant and process/role-driven unstructured content.  The business value in terms of 3 year TCO savings associated with unifying unstructured, contextually rich and role driven information with line of business operationally structured data results in a rapid-fire return on investment (ROI). 
As I have been discussing in this blog series on HCM Self Service Business Value, the ROI is measured by the significant productivity gains and cost savings in terms of employee/manager productivity, shared services savings, training, deployment and development savings.  For a final illustration of this three year total cost of savings please note the following graphic generated using the Topaz Bridge Value Calculator (see Figure 6 below).  Please note the net annual savings, the various components of TCO and the initial investment figures.  For further information about how we can help model your business value for ESS/MSS Self Service delivery, just ping me at jim.ofarrell@topazbridge.com.
Figure 6 Topaz Bridge Interactive ESS 2.0 Business Value Calculator

Figure 6 Topaz Bridge Interactive ESS 2.0 Business Value Calculator

 

 


Filed under: Business transformation, Configuration, Self-service — Tags: , , , , , , , , —

james.ofarrell@topazbridge.com @ 1:35 pm

Realizing Developer and Deployment Savings with ESS 2.0 (Part 6 of 7)

In this morning’s discussion, we focus on how ESS 2.0 drives significant cost savings relating to a unified portal implementation and associated development, deployment and on-going maintenance.

SAP® Human Capital Management (HCM) and Microsoft® Office SharePoint® 2007 are industry standard enterprise software solutions that have been deployed in a broad range of companies worldwide. The integration of the two represents an ideal solution for self-service HCM applications. SharePoint, even given a relatively late start in the enterprise software market, is quickly becoming the de-facto industry standard for portal and collaborative solutions, especially for managing unstructured data (documents, images, etc.). As the requirement and benefit of managing and presenting unstructured data alongside structured information and business processes becomes more apparent, many companies are considering how to integrate information that resides in their line of business applications in unstructured, collaborative scenarios. Forward-looking organizations are evaluating a deeper level of integration, which enables reading and writing critical information and processes between the SharePoint user experience and their back-end Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and HCM environments.

In today’s economic climate, business and technical decision makers are also under more pressure than ever before to deliver value quickly. At the same time, these organizations cannot afford to compromise productivity and efficiency. Integrating SharePoint and SAP HCM presents a unique opportunity for a high visibility, low-cost success that improves employee productivity and creates measurable efficiency benefits, if delivered quickly on an accelerated development timeline.

How do you deliver productivity and efficiency while optimizing for the best overall return on investment and the lowest possible total cost of ownership? Do you build the solution by hiring and/or leveraging the skills and resources of your information technology team or do you leverage well-supported, off-the-shelf solutions to meet the needs of your enterprise. This blog posting is intended for business decision makers considering sponsoring a SharePoint/SAP self-service integration project.

User Experience – Ease of Use Critical
Strong user acceptance is a prime objective when maximizing the return on investment of a production self-service application. In many instances, poor usability prevents the wide adoption of these solutions and becomes a major roadblock to realizing the full potential business value of self-service solutions. In most cases, the alternative of relying on a shared services center (onshore or offshore) to provide the necessary manual data entry, reporting and updating of essential business data is an extremely expensive option.

The right answer for many organizations is to leverage a single portal environment, with contextual information and processes integrated with back-end SAP systems, to preserve existing governance, workflow and security.

Build vs. Buy – Be Prepared!
Given this goal, the next decision is whether to build or purchase this solution. ERP integration projects are generally known to be complex and expensive. Decision makers, no doubt, weigh the build versus buy decision carefully, evaluating potential minefields, including staff experience required and unforeseen integration challenges. Whether the decision is to build or buy, the resulting integrated application will contain significant amounts of new software. In spite of useful features provided by both SAP and Microsoft, integration remains a significant software engineering project resulting in custom or non-standard code that needs to be maintained for the lifespan of the created solution.

Who is going to do the work? This is a real challenge and one of the most significant factors to consider if you are going to staff an integration project. There are a lot of moving parts, many of which are new in the market, and not a lot of people have mastered all of the skills at this time. Required skill sets include .NET programming, SharePoint configuration management, and custom ABAP™ coding and customization experience. Additionally, one must account for the program and product management skills necessary to manage the usability specifications and overall project schedule to ensure the right product is built for the right employee and delivered at the right time.

Application Maintenance – Staying Current and Enhancements
Finally, the resulting solution must be maintained…this means keeping the solution working as SAP and Microsoft update their products and as your business priorities change. These steps include getting early access to future releases of SAP and Microsoft products, having a change management process and expensive technical staff available to keep your solution working at the level of reliability and availability required by your workforce. Supporting an in-house solution means establishing a support policy while implementing various quality assurance programs such as bug reporting mechanisms and hot fix escalation processes. Consideration should also to be given to product feature request prioritization and managing product roadmap plans, as well as the overall staffing requirements for these aforementioned programs. Finally, managing upgrades of internally developed solutions are very difficult in terms of managing the custom code integration with enterprise software upgrade releases.

Careful how you tackle building your own ESS/MSS Solution
In summary, organizations who are considering doing this should realize they are embarking on a non-trivial software engineering initiative. Resources and time used to develop ‘bolt-on quick and dirty solutions’ are not necessarily strategic differentiators for a company outside of the software industry and, therefore, may not be optimally applied to this project. Generally, internal software development resources should be directed toward strategic initiatives that build important competitive differentiation within the customer’s market. An alternative approach is to leverage an off-the-shelf solution to realize business value more quickly and avoid committing to long-term maintenance and support obligations for internal solutions.

Netting it out… ESS 2.0 Development Savings
The combination of SAP® ERP/HCM and Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server Line of Business applications has the potential to transform and unify a workforce by integrating - in a single portal - key corporate business processes (structured data) with relevant and process/role-driven unstructured content. The business value associated with unifying unstructured, contextually rich and role driven information with line of business operationally structured data results in a rapid-fire return on investment (ROI). As we have been discussing in this blog series on HCM Self Service Business Value, the ROI is measured by the significant productivity gains in terms of development savings as outlined in the following table. Additionally, a significant by-product of leveraging ESS 2.0 is the opportunity to redirect developer resources toward strategic initiatives (instead of “home spun” self-service applications).

ESS 2.0 provides numerous enhancements for developers and business analysts

ESS 2.0 provides numerous enhancements for developers and business analysts

THE BOTTOM LINE… The option to leverage an off-the-shelf solution significantly accelerates business value while avoiding the commitment to long-term maintenance and support obligations for internal solutions. So with this information we can now model estimated development, deployment and maintenance savings by comparing ESS 1.0 with ESS 2.0 ABC Corporation since we have the necessary inputs including variables such as total number of forms, the number of countries involved in the deployment, the costs for support professionals and the costs for in-house / third party developers. In terms of development and deployment savings for employee and manager self service applications at ABC Corporation, we can conservatively estimate $800K savings over the initial 3 year deployment period for ABC Corporation associated with ESS 2.0 self service delivery for HCM.

This afternoon “Wrapping it All Up – How ESS 2.0 Drives Significant Business Value”



Filed under: Business transformation, Configuration, Self-service — Tags: , , , , , , , —

james.ofarrell@topazbridge.com @ 7:17 am

August 10, 2009
Myth #2: Building an HR Portal is easy!

So here it is August 10th and we’re back at it this Monday morning with our second in a series of four myths associated with SharePoint / SAP interoperable HCM solutions. Last week, we covered the myth related to ‘investing in HR systems during an economic downturn’. This week we tackle a second myth… and that is “Building an HR Portal is easy!” Let’s dig into this a little bit.

While the benefits of leveraging SharePoint to deliver SAP® ESS / MSS functionality may be undeniable, many challenges exist if you choose the “Build Your Own” approach, including extensive development requirements and the lack of communication between imported iViews and SharePoint Server. Additionally, many security and presentation challenges exists with respect to achieving proper integration between SAP and Microsoft® SharePoint® in a way that doesn’t compromise SAP governance. If you are considering global deployments, the challenges are compounded. Building and managing a SharePoint/SAP interoperability solution in a multi-country, multi-locale environment is more than a challenging IT situation, it’s a complex business problem since each region will likely require unique usability and localization features to ensure broad user acceptance. Finally, using SharePoint’s InfoPath forms entails a number of known issues including performance, application rendering, language management, role/security management, and deployment packaging. Using an enterprise-ready application that has solved these potential pitfalls will not only speed up your deployment, but will increase your long-term ROI.

So what challenges have you encountered? And do you think creating and maintaining an HR portal is easy?

Next week we will cover our third installment in this series “Myth #3: Technology Alone Solves This Problem”.



Filed under: Business transformation, Self-service — Tags: , , , , , —

james.ofarrell@topazbridge.com @ 6:21 am

April 1, 2009
5 Ways Business Analysts Can Configure Self-Service Applications with Topaz Bridge S2

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.

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

    2. 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).

  2. Easily add or edit content and functionality

    3. 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.

  3. Modify or create new Microsoft InfoPath® forms

    4. 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 label data fields in ways that make sense for your employees

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

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

    5. 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.

  5. Custom Reports

    6. 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!



Filed under: Configuration, Self-service — Tags: , , , , , , , —

cornelius.willis@topazbridge.com @ 10:08 am

March 16, 2009
Why Self-Service? Why Now?

Recently I was renting a car from a company well known for customer service. The desk, usually staffed by four attendants, had been replaced by four self-service kiosks. So far, so good: no lines at the kiosks, and having been trained by highly optimized self-service experiences at Amazon, Orbitz, and others, I expected to be on my way in minutes, or even seconds. But when I tried to rent my car, the experience didn’t work for me.  Maybe my member number was wrong, or the credit card on file was out of date– I’m not sure what the problem was. As a customer, what I remember is that I was frustrated, and my previously “sticky” relationship with that company isn’t so sticky any more.

I bring this up because it shows how tricky self-service applications can be. Cost cutting is the new reality of business.  As large companies continue to try to do more with less, HR and other self-service applications are a great way to reduce administrative costs and drive transformation.  And most employers have an advantage my rental car company doesn’t have: they can mandate that employees don’t get paid (or promoted, reimbursed etc.) if they don’t use the system.

Better usability goes straight to the bottom line

But “because they have to” isn’t a usability strategy, particularly when employees are used to consumer web services that benefit from literally billions of hours of accumulated user experiences and metrics to sweeten their usability. The cost of poor usability is huge, and in a large enterprise it can really eat away at the bottom line. In an organization with 50,000 employees, if HR self service requires 4 hours of training  a year (and that’s a conservative estimate) 200,000 work hours are consumed per year; at $50 an hour that’s a $10 million annual expense. And we haven’t started talking about support, customization, localization and a host of other expenses related to poor usability. When every employee in the enterprise is a user, fixing application usability can, and will significantly improve overall profit.

Our Topaz Bridge S2  customers reap the cost savings of self service without the un-usability tax. We make corporate business processes, starting with SAP HCM, easier to use, so they get used by more employees, with higher satisfaction. We leverage Microsoft SharePoint to deliver HR services as a natural extension of what employees do every day on your corporate intranet, helping you bring down training and support costs. 

Preserving SAP governance

We often tell customers that we “don’t break SAP”. What we mean by that is that the HR processes we access are all managed by SAP ERP, so we preserve all aspects of SAP governance: the single system of record, rights and roles and SAP security.

Topaz Bridge S2 customers get the best of both worlds: the same level of usability as modern web applications like Amazon, Facebook, and Linkedin, and governed, auditable, controlled SAP HCM processes. This means that IT can once again be a hero to the entire organization: saving money and improving employee satisfaction.

What you want, when you want it

We also make it easy for business analysts (not J2EE developers!) to configure and extend Topaz Bridge S2 because we take advantage of all the extensive customization features of SharePoint: master layout pages, SharePoint designer, InfoPath forms, Excel Services and more. We even provide more than  100 SAP HCM-aware Web Parts, so you can compose new screens, reports and forms that extend our base functionality to match the needs of your business, locale or workforce. Two huge benefits here- (1) these customizations don’t break your SAP service agreement, because they don’t modify your SAP installation. (2) Analysts can do configuration without developers, so you save a ton of money and get self-service deployed to users in weeks or months rather than years.

How can you get started?

Look at what HR service delivery costs for your company. How much do you spend maintaining the HR database? How accurately is it maintained? How much of that could you delegate to your workforce through a self-service solution?

We assist with this through our Self-Service Rapid Readiness assessment, a 2-4 week process that helps you understand how you’d deploy self service to a global workforce, and identifies risks and risk mitigations strategies to ensure a successful deployment.

The time to start on this is now. Companies that start on this process right away can expect to realize cost savings this calendar year, companies that don’t will spend another year with high-cost, low usability alternatives. Why now indeed. Why wait?



Filed under: Business transformation, Self-service — Tags: , , , —

noam@topazbridge.com @ 10:28 pm