SAP boasted that it now has more than 100 applications to compliment SAP SuccessFactors HCM Suite as SuccessConnect drew to a close in Las Vegas. In fact, a look at the SAP app centre reveals exactly 150 apps relate to SAP SuccessFactors. Of these 128 are directly related to human resources.
Greg Tomb, SAP SuccessFactors President commented: “SAP has a vibrant partner ecosystem building innovative app extensions to SAP SuccessFactors solutions on SAP Cloud Platform. These extensions help customers solve business problems, differentiate and innovate, and accelerate their digital HR transformation. With the power of our strong ecosystem, we enable our customers with cutting-edge technology that helps them execute against strategy and put their people at the center of business.”
Without actually calling out Workday, it is clear that SAP have their sights targeted on its rival. Workday announced their platform earlier this year. However, while Aneel Bhusir, CEO Workday mentioned that they are working with ISV’s there are no actual announcements on applications. With Workday Rising, possibly the place where these will be unveiled, SAP clearly wanted to state their case strongly at their own convention.
Four of its favourite apps
Four of vendors that were present at SuccessConnect were highlighted in the press release.
EnterpriseJungle has two applications that customers can take advantage of. The first is EnterpriseJungle for SuccessFactors. This allows employees to discover other individuals within the organisation with specific skills. The solution links to social media platforms including LinkedIn and Xing. Examples given are “Who in my company used to work at Nike, speaks Spanish and has experience with marketing at the Olympics?”.
The second app is EnterpriseAlumni which allows companies to manage their alumni community within their existing HRIS solution. This allows companies to retain contact with alumni, organisaing events and also using them as a resource for recruitment and networking.
Ingentis Softwareentwicklung GmbH have three similar applications on the app center. These are Ingentis org manager, Ingentis Org manager(web) and Ingentis Org Manager(Mobile). The solution graphically displays organisational structure and allows for users to drag and drop employees across different hierarchies. The solution is useful for organisations that carry out M&A activity, as it allows for rapid and intuitive workforce planning. The different applications are similar but work across different platforms.
Semos has six different applications on the app center. This includes applications that support recognition and rewards, continuous feedback, organizational surveys, health and wellness, and employee work productivity.
Sodales Solutions inc are even more prolific with 49 applications on the app center, though only two relate to SuccessFactors. These are its Labor Management App and the Employee Health And Safety Extension App. The former tracks labor relations across the company. This includes support for unionised companies with specific support for grievance procedures. Disciplinary actions are tracked and the documentation retained should later issues be raised. The second provides companies with a tool to administrate across both OSHA and WSIB compliance. The tool includes functionality to support reporting, risk assessments and continuous safety management in organisations where it is critical.
SuccessFactors platform is app ready
SAP is hoping to extend their ecosystem further. The SAP Cloud Platform includes application extensions that allow the rapid development of new features for SAP applications. With a common user experience extensions are now easier to build and deloy to customers looking for additional functionality.
There is also the value that SAP HANA brings with VAR’s able to build analytics solutions tailored to specific industries that can cross between SAP applications. These could include SAP S/4HANA and SAP SuccessFactors.
France Lampron, President and CEO of Enterprise Information Resources Inc. commented: “Enterprise Information Resources Inc. (EIR) is an SAP Cloud Application partner, expert in optimizing and transforming compensation systems to provide business value immediately. Capitalizing on the extensibility of SAP SuccessFactors solutions by leveraging SAP Cloud Platform provides us with an ideal development platform for EIR’s extension application — EIR Compensation Analytics.”
ADP also announce availability on SAP
Many of the companies listed on the SAP app center will be looking to see what Workday make available for developers on the platform. For some who have gained little traction from SuccessFactors they will wonder whether they will gain more success with workday. Others, who have the right architecture will look to develop for both platforms.
One of these is likely to be ADP. They recently announced that both ADP SmartCompliance and ADP benefits are available on the SAP App Center. Doug Politi, President of Added Value Services at ADP commented: “ADP is making it easier for SAP clients to discover the value of our compliance solutions. In today’s ever changing regulatory environment, the potential benefit to businesses in the area of compliance is no small matter when you consider the potential cost of fines and penalties for noncompliance.”
This is not the first platform that ADP compliance integrates into. They announced last month that ADP SmartCompliance was also available with Infor HCM. With their string relationship with Workday, one suspects that they may be one of the launch partners for the Workday platform.
What does this mean
As Apple has showed, in the mobile industry, the strength of ones platform is critical to success. SAP has more than 1,423 applications on their App Center. While only 150 relate to SuccessFactors that is a large number for Workday to catch up with. If SuccessFactors can continue to grow that number successfully it will help in their battle for HCM supremacy with the other players.
This announcement seems focused on countering the Workday platform announcement. But, if Workday has prepared better than they appeared when the news was first “leaked” by Aneel Bhusri, they could make a telling counter blow.
SAP’s performance management applications provide a highly-effective solution by integrating strategy, planning and execution into a seamless process. Each application module can be deployed independently and delivers a high degree of value, but they work better together, integrating strategic, financial, and operational management processes while delivering a low cost of deployment and ownership.