SAP AG has added another rapid deployment solution to its growing list of packages to help organizations get its solutions up and running relatively quickly.
The latest is SAP ERP HCM Integration to SuccessFactors, for bringing data from Human Capital Management suite to the cloud-based SuccessFactors service. SAP bought SuccessFactors in 2011.
Steven Birdsall, the company’s senior vice-president of rapid deployment solutions, said this is the fourth RDS package the company offers for its cloud products. (Others link SAP CRM to SAP Jam, a social software platform; SAP ERP to SAP Information OnDemand for procurement; and SAP Business Suite to SAP-owned Ariba trading market).
In all SAP offers over 150 rapid deployment packages.
An RDS package includes software, step-by-step installation and business process guides, accelerators, tools and certain SAP services – delivered either by SAP or system integrators — to cut the time when a customer can start seeing benefit from their purchase to weeks from months or more, Birdsall said.
There’s also an RDS “cockpit,” a social networking tool for customer staff who are part of teams in a distributed enterprise using the software, which can also be accessed by staff outside the project team who can add their expertise.
The guide even breaks down the type of individuals who would be assigned tasks for using the software.
“This way you have a complete document you would follow to ensure that you’re going to deliver the RDS package the way we prescribed it,” Birdsall said.
The hybrid rapid deployment solutions SAP is now getting into allows organizations to leverage their on-premise SAP installations with cloud-based applications – albeit only ones from SAP.
But it lets customers decide to – for example – keep core data on premise and put others in the cloud for remote workers.
There’s also real-time integration between SAP and SuccessFactors or Ariba for certain functions, Birdsall said, so when data is changed in the cloud it is also changed in the core.
The HCM solution links version 6.0 of SAP ERP Human Capital Management to SuccessFactors Business Execution (BizX) suite. Data such as employee address, salary, benefits, performance reviews and recruiting information can be uploaded to SuccessFactors.
