adManus

Newsletter July 2005

Improve usability and quality within your SAP HR application

Most organizations that have implemented SAP HR are now looking for ways to improve their SAP-supported HR-processes in terms of usability and quality. This is not only triggered by the requirements of various audits but also a question of gaining a more efficient system and reducing the costs of HR-processes.

The experts of AdManus helped various customers to improve quality and usability with workshops, coaching, customizing, and custom development. This article provides valuable advice based on our experience.

Part I

Under the pressure of tight schedules and budgets many SAP HR implementation projects end up with a system, that works somehow and in most cases produces the correct payroll results … for the moment. However, most projects fail to provide an application that supports its users in the best possible way to ensure high quality of data, let alone procedures to support quality management for future changes, such as support packages, upgrades or new functional requirements.

So, the improvement of quality and usability should be subject to a project following the implementation itself. The good news is: This project can be spread over a longer period of time with low intensity. Once the framework and the objectives are established, the project can be decomposed into many small pieces of work, with each of them delivering some value of its own.

In this article we want to give you some ideas to include into your own quality initiative. All these activities have been implemented by the experts of AdManus in various projects and have proved to be highly beneficial. It always turned out that good usability improves both data quality and efficiency. We recommend to build an action plan based on the ideas in the following list, assign priorities to each action and than implement one by one.

1. Improvement of the user interface

  • Make sure, that there are no fields or buttons on the screen, that the users don't need. This can be achieved by various customizing options (such as table T555m for infotypes), screen variants or the GUIXT-technology.
  • The F4-help in any field should not contain any entries, that are no longer used. In most cases it is just a matter of discipline to delimit entries in customizing tables, that are no longer used. Especially in larger applications, it may be difficult to decide which entries are still in use. From time to time, this should be checked out for items that notoriously tend to get out of hand. E.g., we use a tool to check the usage of work schedule rules automatically.
  • To make the usage of the F4-help efficient, there should be a reasonable rule in place, that determines how the keys and names of the corresponding customizing entries are composed (e.g.: part time work schedules start with a "P" followed by the number weekly working hours).
  • Wherever possible, data entry fields should contain reasonable default values, so that the user doesn't need to enter data manually that can be automatically determined in a particular case.
    • In many cases, the defaults can be determined via customizing, often using features. One popular and simple example is Infotype 0008 (basic pay). If wagetype "1510" must be entered there for each piece rate worker, than this could as well be done automatically by the system. In this particular case, the specific IMG-customizing for infotype 0008 allows such a configuration easily.
    • If there is no customizing option for a specific case, screen variants are always an option for straight-forward default values.
    • In the case of infotypes the BAdI HRPAD00INFTY or the function exit PBAS0001 allow very flexible defaults by adding your custom ABAP coding. Further function exits and BAdIs are in place for other cases.
    • For some widely used fields, you can determine default values for each user individually via the user parameters. You can maintain them either via transaction SU01 or each user can maintain his or her own parameters via transaction SU3. To find out, whether a particular field can be filled by a user parameter, position the cursor into the field, press F1 and then click the button "technical information". If there is a user parameter corresponding with this field, than it is shown in the field "Parameter ID". The following picture shows, how the currency field of a job posting is filled by the user parameter "FWS".
      Create Postion Note: the value coming from the user parameter can be overruled by other default values determined from customizing settings.
  • A very effective way to improve data quality and save a lot of time with error-handling is the implementation of plausibility checks. In many cases the system can determine that the data entered in a particular context must contain some mistake and produce an error message. Alternatively, if a special combination of data is unlikely or potentially dangerous but in rare cases possible, the system can submit a warning message so that the user will think again. There are various ways to perform plausibility checks:
    • The customizing provides specific configuration options for many cases such as collision of different time infotypes, limited budgets in compensation planning, collisions of a seminar attendance with a planned holiday, permissibility of wage types for employee subgroups, personnel subareas or infotypes, etc.
    • The above mentioned BAdI HRPAD00INFTY and the function exit PBAS0001 allow very sophisticated checks with small effort. E.g.: "have more than two employees the same bank details in infotype 0009?"
    • Using infotype 130 you can avoid a defined group of data to be changed too far into the past.

2. Other ways to improve data quality

  • You can create your own ABAP reports to do certain checks, which cannot be performed during the process of data entry. E.g.: a list that compares the gross or net pay of the current period with the last one for each employee and shows all employees where the difference exceeds a certain percentage.
  • The payroll run itself can perform various checks. You are very flexible, when using a custom function (created via transaction PE04) to perform your own checks and stop the payroll for a particular person, if any inconsistencies are found. We call this an "emergency brake" as it prevents wrong data to enter into payroll at the very last minute.
  • Authorizations and roles are very important to prevent users from entering data they are not supposed to. This does not only aim at illegal actions but also helps to reduce the number of mistakes. Of course, the whole area of authorizations is crucial for quality, security and audits. However, let's focus here on one specific aspect that can avoid many mistakes: provide your users with a role-specific menu where you include all transactions and reports they need to perform and exclude all others. This allows you to block transaction SA38 completely for normal users thus preventing them from using wrong or outdated reports.

…to be continued

If you want our experts to help you with any issues concerning quality and usability, contact us via e-mail: mailto:kontakt@iprocon.com

In the next issue of our newsletter we will deal with "process automation" and "test procedures" to improve usability and quality in your SAP HR environment

Back to Newsletter 07/2005
adManus