Newsletter July 2007

Useful tips for your work with SAP® HR

If your answer to one of the following questions is NO it’s worth reading further:

• Do all of your employees understand their remuneration statement?
• Do you use dynamic selection screen variants?
• Do you know SAFE PASSAGE?
• Do you derive real actions from you HR Metrics?
• Do you know your role in change processes?

1 Tips in SAP® HR

Action Log in Performance Management
For many organizations it is very important to be able to retrace any changes made in appraisal and objective forms - particularly, if they do not want to keep a printed record with signatures of the manager and employee. In SAP ERP 2004 the standard action log only records the type of action (Display, Change,...) and changes in status. However, in ERP 2005 you can activate a detailed log (Tab "Processing" in the template customizing), which allows to retrace any changes of field content. Only note-fields are not included in the log, which means that some organizations may still prefer to keep a printed record, if the content of note fields is essential.

When you copy a trip - the meals indicator is not copied
Up to Release 4.6c the meals per diem indicator is not copied when you copy a trip in travel expense manager (PR05). This is due to a program error which can be solved if you implement SAP note 1069372.

Attention: New travel request contains many errors
The adobe travel request form FITP_REQUEST_FORM contains many errors. Until now only one correction can be found in OSS. Some examples:

• Wrong display of cost assignment WBS Element if you open the travel request from list of all trips in transaction TRIP: correction can be implemented with SAP note 1035469
• Wrong display of outbound and return train (wrong order)
• If you request a train or flight ticket with arrival time - the time will be displayed under departure time only

Display additional text to wage types at remuneration statements
Not all wage type texts are easy to understand for somebody who is not a payroll expert, especially technical wage types. To avoid many calls from employees at HR department you can add additional text to special wage types at remuneration statement. Enter the texts in SO10 under Text ID HR_G (General messages). For Text name use consistent format (e.g. GHB_<WageType>_<YYYYMM(from)>_<YYYYMM(to)>. Use exit-routine of program RPCEDSZ9 to read the texts and give them to the form.

Dynamic selection screen variant
Some reports are executed regularly, e.g. monthly or annually. You don’t need to change the selection variant every time if you use selection variables for dynamic date calculation. Read here how to create a dynamic selection screen variant.

2 What’s new in Human Resources?

Do you derive real actions from you HR Metrics?
All too often measurement and reporting in HR consume a lot of resources without delivering significant (proven) benefit. The problems are often very similar between different organisations. The British magazine "Human Resources" (www.hrmagazine.co.uk) dealt with this problem in last year’s March issue presenting four interesting case studies in the article "Measurement with meaning". Read here the essence of this article and our recommendation for your HR information system.

3 News from SAP AG

Assistance for migration to SAP software
SAFE PASSAGE program for migration to SAP software is still available.
It is often assumed that SAP’s safe passage program has already ended, but this is not true. The program still exists and allows organizations using certain products such as Peoplesoft to change to SAP while receiving a credit of up to 75% of their legacy system cost. There are also special deals and tools available for migration support and ongoing maintenance of the legacy system until the time of migration. The offers may be vary by country. Here are the links leading to further information for selected countries:
United Kingdom: www.sap.com/uk/safepassage
Germany: www.sap.com/de/safepassage
USA: www.sap.com/safepassage
India: www.sap.com/in/safepassage
Netherlands: www.sap.com/nl/safepassage
France: www.sap.com/fr/safepassage
Asia Pacific and Japan: www.sap.com/au/safepassage

4 News from AdManus

Between Pride and Obligation / Discharge of a Duty - Quality Management Audit in the AdManus Network
This marks the fourth time in a row that we reserved one half of a working day of the AdManus Spring Meeting for discussing Quality Management. Get to know how AdManus Network controls the achievement of the quality aims.

5 Book recommendations

Exploring Strategic Change
Julia Balogun, Veronica Hope Hailey
Change Management considers all project members involved in a change process. HR professionals should act as "Change Agents" (which is according to Dave Ullrich one of four HR major tasks). As many major projects fail due to missing Change Management project sponsors and project leaders should be able to deal with this kind of topic, too.
In "Exploring Strategic Change" the authors present a useful and applicable framework to tackle major change projects. The basis of their framework is the "Change Kaleidoscope", a tool that considers essential design choices for change projects while taking into account the organisational context. In the end, the tool can help you to get a balanced view the change from all major perspectives and to decide about the best way to go forward. Read further.

6 German Language Lesson

We invite you to practise your German language skills as our German subscribers do it reverse. In this issue the subject of the lesson is "Change Management". You find the lesson via this link.