A glimpse on the SAP SuccessFactors implementation within a global brand

SAP SuccessFactors is the core, master system holding our People profiles and managing the recruitment and onboarding. The application is user friendly and flexible in its setup. The challenge is in finding global alignment and the balance on what functionalities could or should be localized, as legislation is always nearby. Once a portlet or block is enabled (for example compensation information), it becomes unavoidable visible for all end users. Even though it may hold not any data, this influences the user experience. There's also a concern of keeping both the position and people profile synchronized in the processes. The role based permissions are easy to setup and can be dynamic. Though we experienced that permissions may get lost when they are setup dynamically based on the department, when the end user is switching position and department.

Setting up business rules is flexible and easy to manage. Even as a business analyst one can find his way into this part. Despite the general positive experience, sometimes business rules do not function on specific objects. It is also possible to assign certain logic to specific permission groups, but keep in mind that changing their value would require the business rule to be updated too. Maybe this kind of configuration should have been ID based, instead of relying on the label.