If you're a regular follower of the NGA Human Resources blog, you will know that lately we've been running a series on SAP SuccessFactors Managed Payroll.
The reason for this is that as the migration of core business processes including HR and payroll, is moving from ‘idea stage’ to ‘starting to act’, and this, quite rightly, is starting to open up some business case questions, some of which you are likely to have yourself.
When's the right time to move payroll to the cloud, how and, in some instances, if at all?
Should we manage these processes ourselves or buy the as-a-service?
Blog 1 Delivering the Future of Payroll Today, with SAP SuccessFactors Managed Payroll
Our general introduction to SAP SuccessFactors Managed Payroll was followed by;
Blog 2 A Step-by-Step Guide to Payroll Migration
A step-by-step guide to the migration from onPremise to the Cloud.
Today’s post focuses on what happens after Go-Live.
This Q&A responds to many of the questions we have already received from our customers, and lots more HR and IT teams considering the future of their payroll processes.
Q1) Who applies and tests support packages, legal changes and notes?
NGA HR will apply support packages and, depending on the contract, will provide the testing.
Support packages are based around your SuccessFactors global release management calendar. This calendar is agreed with you on a yearly basis.
Q2) Who tests the integration elements inc. interfaces, integration to finance, and rendering of payroll in self-service solution?
When we move your onPremise payroll to the NGA HR Cloud infrastructure, the project team will ensure that your existing integrations work as before.
The integration in itself, from a functional perspective, will not change. It’s predominantly an infrastructural change and so the integration of external systems (finance, self-service solutions, or others) will be part of the migration project.
End-to-end integration testing will be a joint NGA HR / customer responsibility and is included as part of the migration project’s UAT testing.
And of course, the project is only completed when everything works as before, and all parties are happy that they do!
Q3) What happens when I have changes to a legal entity, personnel sub areas, employee sub-groups, and so on?
There are several service options offered with SAP SuccessFactors Managed Payroll. It is, however, your responsibility to initiate the conversation about changes.
NGA HR will run as many payrolls as you require. As a part of this, the NGA HR team takes care of the functional, as well as the technical changes to ensure that your payroll is continuously updated and remains on the latest stage.
When we engage with you, we will introduce the service options to you, providing a thorough overview of each so you thoroughly understand what is available. These options are flexible. We know that no two will have the exact same needs.
Q4) What about Payroll Control Center?
Payroll Control Center simplifies and optimizes the entire end-to-end payroll process, helping your organisations to increase the efficiency, transparency and accuracy of payroll processing.
As a payroll client, you have the option of implementing and using this tool. If you have not yet installed it, NGA HR can add this to the migration project. In fact, we strongly recommend that you do so, because it greatly enhances the user experience for your payroll administrators.
Q5) My W2s &W4s are in self-service how will this change? If an employee edits an addresses in Employee Central, is there logic to update local taxes?
When we migrate your onPremise Payroll to a Managed Payroll service, we don’t change the architecture or the functionality and interfaces will be restored. This means while addresses may change, the overall functionality won’t be any different from before.
Existing self-service solution will continue working as a first step, and will be checked for compliance as part of the project requirements. The migration of PA/OM to Employee Central will, of course, change that.
While the question above pertains to the US, every country has specific forms to collect local and legislative information and in that sense it becomes a generic question.
Q6) Time is imported for payroll from multiple places including SAP CATS and third party providers. Do I need to change these data file imports?
There is no need to change anything. The Time interfaces and calculations are not altered, unless you decide to move to a different Time solution in the future.
Q7) What about compliance reporting: how will that be impacted where data elements are needed from payroll?
When we migrate the system, we will test the compliance reporting with you. Since we don’t change functionality, any compliance reporting that runs within the system remains the same.
What will be different from before is the physical system compliance?
NGA HR partners with T-Systems to deliver the hosting infrastructure. The data centers comply with a minimum Tier III standard or equivalent, with access control, video surveillance, redundant air-conditioning and power supply including UPS systems, early-warning fire detection and extinguishing systems, and redundant connection to various WAN providers.
The datacenters and operations are certified ISO 27001. All data centers provide Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Plans. We will discuss the details of these with you as part of the migration.
Q8) In an ongoing maintenance mode, what are the services provided to us?
The SAP SuccessFactors Managed Payroll service comprises of at a minimum the following services:
- Hosting
- SAP Basis services
- Application maintenance
- Integration management
- Version updates
- BSI TaxFactory (US Only)
Detailed descriptions including a RACI matrix, are available upon request. NGA HR can extend the service package above with additional services, up to a complete Outsourced Payroll Service.
In this instance, we maintain and run the functional payroll for your including data entry and employee voice support. Again, we will go through these with you at the start of our engagement.
If you are not ready to switch to a full model yet, there is always the option to stage your migration, adding on more services at a later stage.