Many customers today question if a move to the cloud from in-house payroll would be a worthy investment. SAP offers a few options in this arena, whether you already run SAP On Premise payroll, you outsource currently, or you recently implemented Employee Central, we will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each to help you better decide.
With SuccessFactors Employee Central, SAP offers a few approaches in delivering the payroll framework:
1. Continue using SAP On Premise Payroll (Your staff members execute all payroll functions and backend processes.)
2. Use the functionality of SAP EC payroll (Some infrastructure and costs can be eliminated.)
3. Continue to integrate with hosted payroll solutions (for example, Ceridian, ADP, etc.)
There are pros and cons to each; let’s review some of these key considerations.
So why integrate EC with your existing SAP On-Premise Payroll?
The On-Premise SAP Payroll solution is a proven payroll solution (supporting more than 60+ country versions). This solution makes a lot of sense if you’re already live on it and when stability and flexibly are key. SuccessFactors decided to reutilize the SAP Payroll Engine to offer a complete cloud solution; a total rebuild would have cost an extreme amount of time and effort when they already had a proven solution. Below are some specific points to consider:
1. You operate and process SAP Payroll in a non-supported EC Payroll country (SAP lists 41)
- Where do you sit in terms of your roadmap?
- Where do you see yourself going in the global market, acquisitions, line of business, etc.?
2. If your payroll is highly customized to meet key business requirements, the standard EC Payroll out-of-the-box solution won’t be ideal.
3. Your payroll is heavily integrated with SAP Time Management and evaluation, includes complex rules within the collective agreements, or you have external time systems integrated as part of your SAP Time on premise solution. Those processes will need to be reevaluated when considering EC Payroll for ease of integration.
Other Considerations:
EC Payroll is a hosted system provided by SAP to Cloud customers who possibly have never had HR or Payroll in house or a larger customer base with an ECC background; the incentive is to integrate HR and Payroll On-Premise with EC and leverage SAP’s latest offerings in moving the cloud.
