CubeServ HR Analytics

HR Management in a state of change
Rainer Sigg
Managing Director / Chairman

HR Management in a state of change

Classic HR Management is in a state of change. New entities such as Business Partners, Shared Service Centers (HR SSC) and Centers of Excellence (CoE) are emerging. Processes are shared and optimised, and employees are assigned new roles and job titles.

…and the HR IT?  What contribution can the HR application landscape make to provide optimum support to the organisation and to the processes on the road to excellence?

Operational process support by means of ERP software, from companies such as SAP with its modules for payroll and HR management, has been a constant in the HR IT landscape for decades. Reports and key figures are (used to be) generated directly from the operational data.

CubeServ Business Content for HR BW

For some years now, we have found that the analytical aspects of HR data evaluation are gaining in importance. HR-related factors and tasks, such as demographic change, aging (of the population), skills shortages, talent scouting, staff retention, diversification, corporate health management: they all demand new tools, applications and means to make the HR data available for viewing and analysis.

Additional requirements regarding aspects such as visualisation, transparency and remote working resources for staff and management call for more than the display of key figures in list format.

That is where Business Warehouse (BW) systems and Business Intelligence (BI) applications from CubeServ with their specialist business content for HR come in.

Benefits:

Best practice at a fixed price

Our SAP BW content has been developed based on information about the business and technological requirements for data analysis in the HR environment gained from numerous HR BW projects – and represents the best practice approach at a fixed price.

The CubeServ Business Content for HR comprises 4 different modules, based on the 4 core modules of the SAP ERP Human Capital Management software:

HR Analytics

The CubeServ content offers additional HR-specific functionalities, such as:

It is a modular application, comprising four separate modules that can be enhanced and extended individually and combined as required. This approach also allows for the straightforward integration of customer-specific enhancements in the form of Z-tables or 9xxx infotypes – comparable to infotype enhancements in the SAP Standard.

In addition to the analytics modules mentioned above, our HR Content also includes a solution for “Personnel (Cost) Planning“.

Four modules, one application

Module “Personnel Administration (PA)”

Personnel Administration (PA) constitutes the core module of the BW application. For analysis purposes, data providers are made available for Headcount (Actual/Forecast), Actions (Actual/Forecast) and Personnel Change Analysis (Actual/Forecast). This module provides the technical and content basis for your reporting. It utilises the most important infotypes of the SAP HCM modules and – where appropriate – the standard SAP extractors.

The following basic key figures are created: FTE (Full Time Equivalent), Headcount, Age, Length of Service and Amounts. In addition, characteristic values such as Full-Time/Part-Time, Nationality, Gender, Contract Type (Limited, Unlimited, Probationary Period) are made available.

In the standard solution, 20 classic HR reports on Headcount, Fluctuation, Age Distribution, etc. are delivered. Currently also included are Web Application Designer (WAD) templates for immediate integration into an SAP portal application.

One outstanding feature of the package is the Change Analysis, which analyses the movements/changes of all available characteristics (e.g. Organization, Employee Subgroup, Cost Center, Pay Scale Group) and shows the effects of changes recorded through so-called “actions” – Hiring, Leaving, Internal Change (e.g. change in working hours affecting capacity) – on the basic key figures (FTE, Headcount).

Optionally, changes can be displayed in a waterfall chart.

In addition, basic pay information from infotypes 0008/0014/0015 is evaluated with current amounts (from pay scale tables for instance) in the course of the data transfer, which means that having to actively establish a connection with the pay scale or wage type tables becomes redundant.

 

Module “Organizational Management (OM)”

This is an optional module that focuses on the analysis of the staffing assignments (Actual/Forecast). The analysis is generated on the basis of the extraction of the standard elements of the SAP Organizational Management:

Key figures and reports such as “Time to Fill”, “Number of Direct Reports” and “Number of (Approved) Positions” can be displayed for analysis purposes.  In addition – but only if the operational HR processes will cover the issue – a comparison between actual and planned pay is possible as well. Similarly, cost comparisons of actual and planned costs are possible in conjunction with our Payroll module (PY).
 

As is the case in the Personnel Administration module, planned OM data too is analysed on a monthly basis, which means that staffing (actual/planned) can be included in an EOY evaluation.

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SAP Dashboards display for a combined PA/OM/Forecast analysis

Module “Personnel Time Management (PT)”

Personnel Time Management is also an optional extension module, which focuses on attendances and absences and their analysis. Module “Personnel Time Management” allows the following components to be analysed:

The module provides the time data per day, distinguishing between planned working times (Planned), attendances (Actual) and absences (IT2001), determining the key figures

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Example of an analysis of health-related absences

Specific characteristics and key figures are made available for the analysis of health-related absences:

There is an enhancement available for including the quotas (PT3).

Module “Payroll (PY)”

The Payroll module involves the extraction of the revision information (PY_PP_1), complementing the data by replacing the symbolic account of the wage type by the actual posting account (G/L account) of the SAP FICO application.
 
This allows you to evaluate the personnel costs from the Controlling perspective (cost center | G/L account) and from the perspective of HR management (organization | wage type) – taking into account the period in which the costs are generated (For-Period) and the period in which the costs take effect (In-Period).

Flexible extension options

The SAP BW Business Content for HR from CubeServ represents best practice at a fixed price – and provides a solid foundation for further analyses and evaluations. You can integrate further modules, infotypes, tables or external sources into the content and adapt the data model logic (layer principle). You can thus connect individual data sources depending on the originating process and construct customer-specific or user-specific providers for the reporting that link and connect data from different processes.
 
The integration of non-HR data (e.g. from Settlement or Accounting) or of external benchmarking figures is also possible for mapping performance management key figures. This could include determining the “Human Capital ROI” incl. turnover/cost/personnel expenditure, comparing the company’s own data with those of competitors/the sector as a whole, and similar examples.

Frontend application – technically independent

Which SAP frontend application do you use / do you have licences for?

More recent applications such as SAP Analytics Cloud, Lumira and Analysis Edition for Office (Excel, PowerPoint) or older BO or BW applications (BEx, Web Application Designer, Design Studio), SAP Dashboards/Xcelsius?

Our content can supply data to all these applications.

Other applications that are not part of the SAP portfolio can be used as well, as long as they can process DSO/InfoCube/MultiProvider data structures; ideally, access should be made via the classic SAP Query.

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Our Offer

Interested?
If so, please give us a call or send us an email. We will gladly arrange an appointment for a presentation and a discussion of your individual requirements.

Any questions or require further information, please contact our Expert

Johannes Kumpf

HR Analytics Expert with a passion for people analytics & HR planning. Business Development & Sales HRM @ CubeServ Group