After implementing SAP SuccessFactors® Onboarding for several years I’ve developed some key recommendations to think about before starting your implementation. These will help you enjoy a successful go-live and improve your new employee’s satisfaction.
Do:
Review your onboarding process
Before jumping into system configurations, review your current onboarding process and understand how SAP SuccessFactors can support it. Identify old practices that no longer make sense.
Example: Does it make sense for HR to own most of the tasks or can some of them be completed by a hiring manager?
Review your data collection process
Offline onboarding processes usually collect a lot of data in PDF forms. See if the data needs to be collected before day one or if it can wait for the new hire to input it via an employee self-service interface.
This can save a lot of time during the new hire data collection process.
Start reporting conversations early
Have your team review your current reports and decide which ones are absolutely needed by go-live. Create a prioritized list as a key deliverable. Remember that onboarding reporting is done through People Analytics stories, which require an Identity Authentication Service (IAS).
These enablement steps need to be done before you start building reports in Onboarding. Build considerations for this and how it impacts other modules into your project plan.
Prep your data for testing
Make sure you have a list of scenarios with positions, requisitions, and candidates, etc. Prioritize high-volume first and exceptions second.
Your project team needs to understand this data from the EC and Recruiting perspective (if applicable), and how this affects the participant onboarding experience.
Don’t:
Migrate every legacy PDF form
Just because a PDF form was used before doesn’t mean you still need it. We often see PDFs that had data collected by other parties and then entered manually into a payroll or HRIS system (e.g. New Hire data forms, Direct Deposit forms).
If you are an Employee Central (EC) client, it’s possible that the data is now collected in EC via Self Service. The data can now flow from Onboarding to EC, so you don’t need to generate a PDF with that information. If you are a non-EC client, you could possibly build a custom integration to import that data.
Another example: Local or information-only documents already shared through your corporate portal so maintaining them in both places is a duplicated effort.
Let exceptions drive your entire business process and configuration decisions
Clients are often concerned about exceptions. It’s a good idea to identify exceptions in Onboarding and understand how they’ll be addressed. However, also take a step back and gauge how often this exception will happen. Avoid over-engineering an otherwise simple process.
Use employee SIDs for the Print Form Services URL setup
One of the earlier Onboarding implementation steps is generating the Print Form Services (PFS) URL. For this step, a System Identification (SID) is required.
It’s tempting for SAP admins to reuse their SID or one from the admin team. However, we don’t recommend this as the password for this account will need to be shared with your implementation partner to be entered in SuccessFactors provisioning.
Sharing an individual account password can violate company security policies. There’s also the risk of the SID being deactivated after employee termination which can disrupt the critical form generation process.
I hope you find this information useful for your upcoming or ongoing Onboarding implementation!