3 Tips When Moving to SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central

If you're currently utilizing SAP HCM on-premise for Core HR and Payroll and are planning on moving to SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central, here are some tips to consider for a smooth transition.

Data Mapping is Critical

• Data will flow from Employee Central to your Payroll system and critical Payroll data has to match such as Paygroup, Payroll Area, Employee Group, Employee Sub Group, Frequency, Pay Components (Wage Types), etc.  If the data does not match, the records will fail to update in the payroll system. 
• Make sure this is addressed EARLY in the project and all data that will flow is identified and mapped.
• Determine which data elements will reside in Payroll ONLY and which data elements will be sourced and maintained in Employee Central and flow through to Payroll.
• Pay attention to country specific data and identify all country variations of the data and be sure to TEST each country.

Historical Data - Determine How Much Will Be Migrated to Employee Central From Your Previous System of Record

• It is extremely difficult to migrate job and comp history into the system defined portlets (Comp Info, Pay Components, Org Info and Job Info.) Best practice is to have two (2) entries of history.
  1. Entry 1 is hire date
  2. Entry 2 is conversion date
• Maintain your historical data in your previous system OR we can create a custom MDF object without referential integrity (so you don’t have to create all of the history of your foundation objects) and you can load the data directly into that custom portlet.
• Plan early on how you will migrate the data into Employee Central and obtain the necessary resources.
• There are numerous options for data migration.

Test (and test and test)

• Did I mention testing? It really can not be stated enough as this is the MOST critical success factor of an Employee Central to Payroll integration. Make sure you test every scenario, every country, every type of employee, etc.
• For an Employee Central project, we recommend testing after each iteration and then final User Acceptance Testing that includes integration testing.
• For Employee Central with Payroll integration, we recommend that on top of the standard testing mentioned above that you do at least one (two is better) full Payroll parallel testing.

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