Thorough Process Documentation Maximizes Your Use of SAP Integration

by Rob Lancaster, SAP HR and Payroll Consultant (February 2010)

Learn how process documentation benefits your organization by streamlining business processes both prior to and after an SAP ERP Human Capital Management implementation. These recommendations for documenting processes ensure users understand procedures and that process measurement and controls are managed efficiently.

Categories: HR, Upgrades and implementations

Key Concept

Process documentation is an area in which organizations often invest considerable effort, yet fail to maximize the benefits. However, these benefits can be realized through a small amount of additional effort: include key stakeholders in design decisions; coordinate the documentation with testing, organizational design, training, and control design; and maintain documentation post-go-live by appointing process champions.

Organizations using or implementing SAP ERP Human Capital Management (SAP ERP HCM) demand measurable business benefits, such as reducing costs as a result of restructuring HR functions. This presents an opportunity to review, redesign, and document HR processes. The documentation of these processes is often treated as a low priority activity. However, well-designed process documentation can generate significant additional benefits, particularly by:

Reducing cost during the testing cycle
Facilitating change management and organizational design
Strengthening process controls
Supporting the development of flexible, modular training materials
Improving accuracy through better understanding of end-to-end processes
Enabling ongoing process improvement
Assisting future training of new HR staff or those providing emergency coverage

The key to unlocking these benefits lies in the structure and format of the process documentation. Before presenting detailed recommendations, I will review how you can use the documentation during an implementation and after a go-live. The aim is to maximize the business benefits and minimize the effort required to create and maintain the documentation.

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