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For anyone involved in the SAP HCM software, the SAPInsider conference HR2014 is a must-attend event. This year’s conference was, once again, very good and informative. More than ever, we heard a lot about Successfactors and Cloud HR. There are a lot of good blogs that will review what was done at the conference – and we should all read them – but in this blog I’m going to share my vision of the future of SAP HCM because that is on everyone’s minds at this conference.

There has been a lot of disruption in the SAP HCM consulting market in the past couple years. When SAP acquired SuccessFactors and made it the focus for Talent Management functions, every SAP consultant working in that area suddenly became very interested in getting retrained. There has always been price competition, firms have emerged, split, combined and disappeared. Partnerships have come and gone – but the good ones survived. Independent consultants have flourished since the early days of the SAP HCM product, though it hasn’t always been a stable choice for some.

Why do companies let people in HR, Benefits, Payroll and their related IT support groups stay in the same position for 10, 20 or even more years? Job rotation is a good thing, but I don’t see it happening in many clients I work with – and it is to their detriment; both the companies and their employees.

One of the benefits of being in the HR Technology area for a long time is being able to have experience with all the trends. For example -

It's always dismaying to hear HR managers say I'm not technical when working on anything related to their HCM system. Maybe it's an interface issue with their benefits provider, understanding how a certain report works, or running a BW query - those things are no longer 'technical' but they are integral to how modern HCM processes and systems are run. Effective HR managers need to leverage both system and non-system knowledge to gain value for their customers because the days we could decouple the two are long gone.

When you encounter an error in the SAP HCM software, what is your first thought for moving forward? Too often I see clients skip reporting it to SAP, and proceeding to work-around it. While there are times that is the speediest way forward, it is most often not the best way forward for either SAP or the client's best interest.