Top tips for getting the best from SuccessFactors Q3 16 universal update

by Raul Camacho & Katy Powell

From an innovation perspective, quarterly release management ensures that you get the greatest return from your SAP SuccessFactors investment.

From a people management perspective, the updates ensure that employees have the best tools available to deliver results easily.

From an application management perspective, it means you need to be ready to deploy new features and manage an adequate change process addressing the needs of administrators, managers and employees.

The major updates in SuccessFactors Q3 16 Universal Update effect Employee Central, Employee Central Payroll (including new country versions for Poland and Philippines), People Profile, and Recruiting Management.

What’s new in Employee Central Q3 16 Universal Update

• Leave of Absence – new rule revises pay and performance reviews around periods of leave including maternity and long-term sickness
• Workflow request management – provides full transparency of all workflow changes within an activity log
• Pagination on pending requests – improves the resolution of requests
• Employees savings plans – this new field makes it easy to configure plans based on country and entitlement
• Performance review forms – direct links to employee profile
• Gender-based insurance rates – new legislations in many countries specify that insurance and healthcare rates should be set on gender. This feature automatically sets the calculation
• ‘Back-to-the-top’ button – simple and timesaving return to search and module selection features
• Local language setter – automatically recognizes the language of uploaded data

What’s new in Performance Management

• Changes to improve usability and user experience of the following user interfaces:
• Performance Form; Route Map, and Team Overview – major changes to UI for better usability and employee experience
• Launch Performance Management Forms – simplified access to multiple employee forms without needing to use employee search
• Goal Management – greater UI consistency across the suite, and improved readability

What’s new in Recruitment

• Access to Recruiting Groups introduced – all permissioned users can view and manage groups set up by other administrators
• Employee Referral Information text translation – introduces the option to disable the ‘Add’ button and referral amounts from showing in the UI
• Active Applicants new display columns – shows current number of active applications on the Requisition List page. Disqualified statuses are excluded
• Applicant List name sort – you can now set the name sort permeameters to suit e.g. by first name, last name, etc
• Maximum failed log-ins – now possible to set the number of successive failed log-in attempts to 10 for added security

Q3 revisions enhance communications and add clarity to many of the employee lifecycle features in SuccessFactors, therefore, increasing visibility and adding data streams to your analytics and reporting.

Remember why you invested in SuccessFactors

You originally invested in SuccessFactors because it makes the management of HR and payroll processes simple – for employee and employer, but as with all applications, even more so Cloud apps, the speed of change means that features and functions just get better, but you have to apply the updates to get the rewards.

You need to be sure that you are ready and waiting for your quarterly updates. Whilst some are nice to have (and should be had!) others really mean the difference between competitive edge and not.

While the updates are critical, they put a lot of seasonal pressure and demands on the IT team, which unless you have surplus resources, takes capacity away from strategic IT management.

The question is:
Do you spend the time and money to train up a team in readiness for the quarterly updates, or do you hand this to experts who live and breathe SuccessFactors, and can guarantee that the updates will fully integrate and not impact IT performance or hinder employees?

App Management As-a-Service

Increasingly, businesses are handing this process, and other HR application management over to specialists like NGA Human Resources. NGA HR has been identified by NelsonHall “As a Leader in Cloud-Based HR Services Overall, and with Special Focus on SAP SuccessFactors.”

The Cloud Application Management Model ensures that you maximize your investment in SuccessFactors, apply timely and accurate updates while reducing complexity and business risk. The business case for taking this route is strong.