Best practices of SuccessFactors support strategies

Modifying and upgrading your current suite of HCM services definitely was one of the best business decisions you took in the last quarter. The new system apparently circumpasses the drawbacks of the earlier version, empowers the workforce enabling high-end sustainability given the rapidly changing business scenarios.

However, neither time not technology remains the same and once implemented the solution is bound to suffer bugs or issues. Similar is the case with SAP SuccessFactors. No matter how seamless is your suite functioning or how exceptional is cloud integration, you would always need to tune the services and embed maintenance features so as to ensure frustration-free business operations.

In continuation of the above, issues encountered within the infrastructure of SAP SuccessFactors has to be addressed and further raised to the support team. To make the most of these issues and have them resolved at the earliest, one thing that you need to emphasize is on communicating as much information as known to you to the support staff. A better knowledge of features and the pitfalls help them grasp better and solve faster.

This, as a matter of fact, is just one stance and there could be multiple ways, where you need to connect with the support staff to enhance the existing SAP product. And to foster a better solution, it is important that the support team employ a strategic approach for rendering post-launch service to the customers.

Also Read: A Guide to ADSO Functions in SAP BW4HANA

Need for Staff Support

In order to make sure that your cloud customers drive maximum efficacy from the HCM suite, it is important that you address and adhere to the queries in real-time, providing timely solutions. Also, it is important to keep them updated on the knowledge of product release in a manner that they stay abreast of features that add up after every release. While all this is done by staff support, integrating one within your business helps you fine-tune your business operations and maximize its efficiency.

The designates support team comprises of the

All of these combine to provide excellent support from SAP SuccessFactors.

Practices Undertaken For SAP SuccessFactors Support

To ensure the proper functioning and seamless issue resolution, several practices should be undertaken to promote SAP SuccessFactors Support.

• To Keep Your HR system updated

  In order to have the issues resolved at the earliest, it is important that you keep your team updated on the minutest detail about the suite. Sharing the response time, or the security level of the system prior to raising a ticket gives them a better view of the system.

  In order to be heard as and when the ticket is raised or at the earliest, include as much information as possible. Some support team might also expect a run down at the steps that ended up in encountering a bug. And this might include information about:

  • The user logged-in
  • The employee(s) that were affected by the issue
  • The Screens or the transactions accessed
  • The field changed along with the values they affected
  • The expected outcome or behaviour
  • The actual outcome or behaviour
  • Date and time, when the issue occurred
  • The necessary details of the contact, including the number
  • Any configuration that was performed and it relates to this area (if applicable)
  • The investigation outcome into the issue (if applicable)
  • Any history of the issue that might have occurred in the past (if applicable)

  Also, determining the extent of severity beforehand helps in segmenting the issue in the right sense and so is shared with the appropriate team. This helps early resolution as the problems are dealt with the one who has both experience and expertise in the domain.

  Consider, for example, the severity level P1 emphasizes slow downtime performance where the level P2 is accessible in terms of SAP SuccessFactors features. Employing the SLA approach would be better to analyze the support performance. Further, the performance review isn’t the only criteria for support and maintenance. The idea or knowledge you have on the newly added features needs to be intense and help in finding the appropriate partnership ecosystem.

• Mandated Global IT Governance

  It is however important that your business is in accordance with the IT regulations. Every geographical area has its own spec of rules, laws that govern the data usage, followed by privacy and/or protection. It has only been two years that we saw the inception of security laws such as Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), as a privacy law or the ones related to the cyberattacks such as Petya and WannaCry.

  Also, it is important that the stakeholders or your businesses IT partners remain adept such law and work to reduce the burden of compliance. Considering the SAP alone has more than 85000 employees across the globe, it is imperative that the support team indulge in providing continuous support to the customers, one that stays at par with their needs.

• Single Vendor Relationships

  Employing a single vendor-customer relationship is extremely important to deter the occurrence of any kind of risk or communication issue with the support team. All the management and the release activities are handled by a single partner, irrespective of how many consultants work under that vendor.

  No matter where you are or what kind of business you are part of, you would always suffer software bugs and performance issues and it is unlikely that you plan to sort this on your own. We guess not!

  Having a support team is highly crucial to cater to your end to end support requirements. One thing that you should be careful about is the extent of data or information you share with the support team. We have highlighted this point earlier and again stressing on its importance. The more you share, the better they can decode the issue and likewise, undertake steps to recover the same.