Making the most of HCM data visualisation

Luke Marson 02-Nov-2009

Recently I’ve seen a big increase in the use of SAP’s Talent Visualization by Nakisa (TVN) OrgChart tool by organisations to get their HCM data right. As you may know, HCM data is critical to a number of business and SAP processes and maintaining accurate and valid data integrity is essential if organisations are to get the best return on investment from their SAP ERP system. SAP functionality such as Payroll, Workflow, Self Service, Talent Management and Structural Authorizations are just some of the SAP processes that rely heavily on accurate HCM data. Stephen Burr’s previous blog talked about realising talent potential using Talent Management. You cannot manage talent if you don’t know where your talent is or if the data about them is wrong!

While Towers Perrin have found that accuracy of data has become less of an issue with organisations over the last couple of years (14% 2009, up from 12% in 2008 and down from 18% in 2007), for those few organisations where this is still an issue a solution is required to identify inaccurate data. And of course once they have found that solution they need the processes in place to get that data corrected.

I’ve also seen OrgChart being used for business transformation. Business transformation involves re-engineering OM and HR processes to benefit the business and invoke change and change management throughout the organisation. OrgChart offers benefits here for the organisation because it enables elements of the transformation to be visualised as it is taking place.

I talked about similar items in my SAP Developers Network (SDN) blog (http://weblogs.sdn.sap.com/pub/wlg/16346) that is currently featured on the SDN Business Process Experts (BPX) Enterprise Resources Planning (ERP) homepage (http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/bpx/erp). Here I looked at using OrgChart from a consultants view  for the SAP community but the general principles can also be interpreted for SAP customers.

I think in summary it is important for organisations to look into visualising their data because it is one of the best ways to notice errors and inconsistencies within their HCM data – and this will help drive critical business processes to increase operational efficiency within organisations.