Recently I have watched a webinar given by Mr. Chris Paine, a SAP SuccessFactors consultant as well as SAP Mentor. This webinar discussed about the latest SAP SuccessFactors reporting/analytics tool, People Analytics.
In the webinar, the speaker introduced several scenarios how/what various tools should be used like transaction-focus list report, home page tile, dashboard, etc. He also brought out a point that SAP SuccessFactors would like to promote People Analytics as a complete solution which can gather datasources from all SAP SuccessFactors modules, but seems it is the right one, at least till now.
I have the same feeling as the speaker’s and this feeling always turns myself down in exploring new SAP SuccessFactors products (unless I am forced to do).
Throughout my SAP SuccessFactors consulting journey, there are quite a lot of reporting/analytics tools:
- Ad-hoc Reporting (only for modules built on SAP SuccessFactors BizX platform，eg. Goal Management, Performance Management, Compensation Management, etc)
- Advanced Reporting (only for Employee Central)
- Plateau Report Designer (the legacy reporting tool in Learning Management System, powered by BIRT)
- Detailed Reporting (the new-gen reporting tool in Learning Management System promoted by SAP SuccessFactors in order to sunset the Plateau Report Designer but limited data model in Learning Management System can be extracted, and thus the Plateau Report Designer is still alive!)
- Workforce Analytics / Workforce Planning (BI-Tool, separated license required)
- Online Report Designer (Aim to replace those tools above by leveraging Workforce Analytics / Workforce Planning but providing limited function, no extra license.)
- People Analytics (Aim to replace Online Report Designer by leveraging SAP Analytics Cloud but providing limited functions，no extra license)
- Integration Center
- Dashboard 1.0
- Dashboard 2.0
- BIRT-based Tile
You can see SAP SuccessFactors is still finding the best solution to solve all problems. It may be a good way to develop a new product instead of improving those existing. Just in consultant/customer-perspectives, we can’t see the value to invest on a product which will be given up very soon.
