Here at Microsoft, our large and diverse external, non-FTE workforce plays a vital role in our success. For us, external staff includes contractors, consultants, freelancers, and business guests who provide services, expertise, and support for various projects and products. As a company, we partner with more than 110,000 external staff in 119 countries and regions, representing almost 40% of our workforce.

Too many of our onboarding processes involved manual tasks that created inefficiency and introduced the potential for error.

— Himanshu Wadhwa, senior product manager, HR Foundational Services team, Microsoft Digital

Managing such a large and dynamic population of external staff is a big challenge for our Human Resources Operations team, which handles onboarding, data management, compliance, and reporting tasks for external staff.

Until recently, we in Microsoft Digital (MSD), the company’s IT organization, used our own internally built solution to help HR handle these tasks. However, our application was showing the symptoms of a legacy application in a modern workplace.

“Too many of our onboarding processes involved manual tasks that created inefficiency and introduced the potential for error,” says Himanshu Wadhwa, a senior product manager on the HR Foundational Services team in MSD. His team is responsible for investigating and building a new solution for managing external staff at Microsoft.

Wadhwa lists several ways the previous solution was struggling to meet the dynamic and changing needs of the business and the external staff, including:

• Real-time tracking and status visibility for external staff requests wasn’t possible, leading to thousands of extra queries and delays.
• It didn’t offer self-service functionality for external staff to update their personal information, resulting in heavy reliance on the operations team.
• It didn’t integrate well with other systems, such as procurement, finance, and third-party vendors, causing data inconsistency and duplication.
• It continually required development changes to support compliance with global and local regulations, exposing Microsoft to potential risks and penalties.

To address these challenges and achieve its vision of having a single HR source system for our entire workforce, the team decided to migrate external staff management to SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central, a cloud-based human experience management (HXM) solution that offers a comprehensive and flexible platform for employee and external staff lifecycle management.

[Discover upgrading Microsoft’s core Human Resources system with SAP SuccessFactors. Explore boosting employee engagement at Microsoft with Dynamics 365 and Power Platform. Unpack how we’re helping Microsoft employees understand their value with the Total Rewards Portal.]

Building on a solid HR operations core

We had already migrated the company’s core HR system to SuccessFactors, and for many of the same reasons, we were examining the external staff management solution. By rebuilding our HR core system at the company, our team provided a unified experience for all our employees.

In short, we wanted to extend the unified experience developed for our internal employees and managers to include the people and processes involved in managing our external staff.

Moving our contingent staff into the same solution as our full-time staff was a huge win for our HR team and it transformed how they can manage the employee experience for every person contributing to Microsoft’s success—internal or external.

— Kishore Rajaraman, principal product manager, HR Foundational Services team, Microsoft Digital

SAP SuccessFactors made perfect sense to our project teams. It’s already played a foundational role in our bid to transform our vast array of secondary HR systems, such as improving mobility, supporting new acquisitions, or transforming payroll. It also helped that the cloud-based SAP SuccessFactors HXM Suite runs on Microsoft Azure. SAP has a longstanding partnership with Microsoft as a preferred cloud provider.

“Moving our external staff into the same solution as our full-time staff was a huge win for our HR team, and it transformed how they can manage the employee experience for every person contributing to Microsoft’s success—internal or external,” says Kishore Rajaraman, a principal product manager for the HR Foundational Services team in the MSD team that implemented the SuccessFactors-based solution for external staff.

Implementation involved massive amounts of coordination from Rajaraman and his team. The implementation involved massive amounts of coordination from the core program team, which conducted a comprehensive study and analysis of user behavior, feedback, and pain points involving over 25 stakeholder groups. The team also performed multiple mock runs and data quality checks to ensure a successful data conversion from the previous solution to SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central, involving over 5 million rows of data for external staff.

We had many complex, unique requirements for our contingent staff. We wanted to create a solution that met those complexities with a consistent user experience and integrated with our other dependent systems.

— Kishore Rajaraman, principal product manager, HR Foundational Services team, Microsoft Digital

Creating integration with SAP BTP

The migration to SuccessFactors Employee Central was by no means simple.

“We had many complex, unique requirements for our external staff,” Rajaraman says. “We wanted to create a solution that met those complexities with a consistent user experience and integrated with our other dependent systems.”

The MSD Engineering Team used the SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) to extend and customize SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central and SAP Fiori to create a consistent and intuitive user experience.

SAP BTP is an open and integrated platform that enables customers to build, extend, and integrate applications in the cloud. SAP Fiori is a design system that provides a user-friendly and responsive interface for SAP applications. Using BTP and Fiori enabled us to take the broad functionality of SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central and build in the customization and specialized functionality that a business of our complexity required. By using SAP BTP and SAP Fiori, our team was able to:

• Provide real-time integration with third-party systems, such as Adobe Sign, e-learning, and procurement, to ensure data accuracy and completeness and enable end-to-end automation.
• Automate process checks that were previously done manually. This eliminated the need for human follow-up and reduced the number of requests managed by External Operations team by approximately 65%.
• Enable self-service functionality for external staff to access and update their information, such as name, personal email, and evacuation assistance, improving their satisfaction and engagement.
• Provide dashboards and reports for managers, business admins, and operations teams to monitor and manage external staff requests, data changes, and compliance status, enhancing visibility and transparency.
• Support global workforce enablement and compliance with local labor laws and regulations in more than 100 countries and regions, ensuring alignment with our company policies and best practices.

We had capability requirements specific to Microsoft that no out-of-the-box solution could account for. SAP BTP allowed us to extend the platform to support those requirements while still staying within SAP’s development stack. It was a huge part of why we chose SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central for this solution.

— Manoj Lakshmanan, principal software engineer, Microsoft Digital

“Approximately 40% of our final solution was built by extending SuccessFactors using BTP,” says Manoj Lakshmanan, a principal software engineer on the MSD engineering team. His team helped build extensibility solutions that fulfilled specific use-cases for Microsoft.

“We had capability requirements specific to Microsoft that no out-of-the-box solution could account for,” Lakshmanan says. “SAP BTP allowed us to extend the platform to support those requirements while still staying within SAP’s development stack. It was a huge part of why we chose SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central for this solution.”

The team also used the SAP Analytics Cloud solution to enable data-driven decision-making and taxonomy management for our external workforce. Analytics Cloud includes BTP integration components in its reporting data, so the custom capabilities and integration built with BTP are monitored by Analytics Cloud right alongside the built-in capabilities. With SAP BTP and Analytics Cloud, our team was able to create an end-to-end solution that monitors the user experience, and increases the efficiency of our HR operations, managers, and external staff.

Supporting SAP BTP integration with Microsoft Azure

Microsoft’s partnership with SAP makes Microsoft Azure a perfect fit for SAP BTP integration processes. Critical components hosted in Microsoft Azure support custom integration and functionality in BTP. The scalability and reliability of Azure make it simple and efficient for our engineering teams to create and maintain these integration points, regardless of workload scale and demand.

In the Microsoft process for external staff onboarding, we have rules we must validate to confirm information about external staff that comes in from partner systems and data sources. This information could be anything from an individual’s background check to purchase order and supplier information. Azure-based APIs enable us to connect to those partner systems, get the incoming data validated, and then respond with the details.

— Ramkumar Perumal, principal software engineer, Microsoft Digital

Microsoft Azure Functions hosts a large number of API-to-API integration points in the solution architecture that allow us to retrieve and store data from some of our internal business systems that are external to Employee Central, including CRM, e-signing, identity management, employee training, finance, purchasing, and many more. We can also perform real-time validation and—if necessary—data transformation from these systems as it passes in and out of Employee Central.

“In the Microsoft process for external staff onboarding, we have rules we must validate to confirm information about external staff that comes in from partner systems and data sources,” says Ramkumar Perumal, a principal software engineer in MSD. “This information could be anything from an individual’s background check to purchase order and supplier information. Azure-based APIs enable us to connect to those partner systems, get the incoming data validated, and then respond with the details.”

The time saved by automating partner system integrations is a huge part of the cost savings realized from the new solution. Each integration point removes the need for manually tracking the progression of transactions, allowing them to focus on the areas of the onboarding process where their attention is most required. API-based integration with partner systems has automated more than 65% of the 70,000 onboarding transactions that go through External Operations each year.

It’s a significant win for the External Operations team, MSD Engineering, Microsoft HR, and the entire organization.

Realizing the benefits of Employee Central across the enterprise

Successful migration has provided immediate benefits for our external staff, managers, business admins, HR operations team, and other dedicated teams involved in the external staff management process. Employee Central provides extensive automation for external staff policies.

External staff require access to buildings and technology that can change often, depending on the contract or project they’re involved with. Employee Central provides oversight of external staff from beginning to end. Managers and stakeholders in the onboarding process can use Employee Central to determine the status of any external staff member, and external staff members have that same visibility into their assignment with Microsoft.

Integrating our internal and external staff management solutions is a critical step for Microsoft HR. Centralizing HR data administration opens opportunities to manage Microsoft’s workforce more wholistically and to leverage shared support models.

— Cari Paddock, architect, HR Service Data Next Administration

“Integrating our internal and external staff management solutions is a critical step for Microsoft HR,” says Cari Paddock, an architect in HR Service Data Next Administration. Her team ensured that the Employee Central solution met the diverse requirements for managing external staff. “Centralizing HR data administration opens opportunities to manage Microsoft’s workforce more wholistically and to leverage shared support models.”

Successful migration has provided immediate benefits for our external staff, managers, business admins, HR operations team, and other dedicated teams involved in the external staff management process.

“Improved efficiency and productivity are definitely at the top of the list,” Wadhwa says. “Reduced manual tasks, errors, and queries enable faster and more accurate responses for everyone involved in managing external staff.”

This integration enables External Operations support to enter the process at exactly the right time and to focus on the relevant transactions. Previously, Operations had to act on ever onboarding transaction.

Some of the other notable benefits include:

• Enhanced user experience and satisfaction by providing a modern, intuitive, consistent interface for accessing and updating external staff information and performing other HR-related tasks.
• Increased data quality and consistency by eliminating data duplication and inconsistency and ensuring data integrity and completeness across different systems.
• Strengthened compliance and risk management by adhering to global and local regulations addressing audit and reporting requirements.
• Enabled data-driven decision-making by providing a single source of truth for all workforce-related information and enabling advanced analytics and planning capabilities.

Our success is a testament to the power of collaboration and co-innovation between Microsoft and SAP, two industry leaders who share a vision of using technology to empower organizations and their employees. By working together, Microsoft and SAP have delivered a solution that highlights the best of both worlds: Microsoft’s engineering innovation and SAP’s HXM expertise.

— Himanshu Wadhwa, senior product manager, HR Foundational Services team, Microsoft Digital

By simplifying and streamlining the external staff management process with SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central and SAP BTP, we now have a single HR source system for both internal and external workforce while providing an excellent HR experience for our external staff and internal stakeholders.

Our solution also lays the foundation for future innovation and transformation, such as using artificial intelligence, machine learning, and predictive analytics to optimize and enhance the external staff management process.

“Our success is a testament to the power of collaboration and co-innovation between Microsoft and SAP, two industry leaders who share a vision of using technology to empower organizations and their employees,” Wadhwa says. “By working together, Microsoft and SAP have delivered a solution that highlights the best of both worlds: Microsoft’s engineering innovation and SAP’s HXM expertise.”

If you want to learn from our experience and improve your external staff management process with SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central and SAP BTP, consider the following:

• Evaluate your current external staff management process and identify the pain points and opportunities for improvement. Consider aspects such as data quality, user experience, compliance, scalability, and integration.
• Explore how SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central can help you streamline and standardize your external staff management process by providing a single source of truth, flexible workflows, and comprehensive functionality.
• Investigate how SAP BTP and SAP Fiori can help you extend and customize SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central to meet your specific needs and preferences by enabling rapid application development, seamless integration, and user-centric design.
• Examine how Microsoft Azure can support SAP BTP integration with data from external systems and data stores.

SAP SuccessFactors Integration with Microsoft 365

As an admin of your organization’s SAP SuccessFactors system, you can configure it to collaborate with Microsoft 365 applications. Here’s how:

• Configuration: Set up your SAP SuccessFactors system to be ready for users to explore and collaborate in Microsoft 365 applications. You can find detailed instructions in the SAP Community and the official SAP Help Portal.
• Service connection: Enable integration between SAP SuccessFactors processes and Microsoft Outlook and Teams. This allows users to schedule interviews using both Outlook and Teams online meetings.
• User mapping: Ensure proper user mapping between the systems.
• SAP SuccessFactors for Teams app: Download the SAP SuccessFactors for Teams app package to enhance collaboration.

• Discover upgrading Microsoft’s core Human Resources system with SAP SuccessFactors.
• Explore boosting employee engagement at Microsoft with Dynamics 365 and Power Platform.
• Unpack how we’re helping Microsoft employees understand their value with the Total Rewards Portal.

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The post Simplifying external staff management by extending SAP SuccessFactors on SAP Business Technology Platform appeared first on Inside Track Blog.

Microsoft has migrated its internal Human Resources portal to the cloud, a key step in its ongoing companywide digital transformation. Called HRweb, the portal is the second busiest at Microsoft, and represents the last major internal employee portal to move to the cloud. The migration has transformed the experience the company’s employees have when they engage with HR.

The move from SharePoint 2010 to SharePoint Online created many improvements, including serving up smarter personalized information to employees and delivering better search results, says Jay Clem, general manager of Industry Solutions in Microsoft Digital.

“Shortly before I joined the group, plans were in place to move from SharePoint on-premises to SharePoint Online,” Clem says. “It was largely a technology transition, but we knew that, for employees to have the best experience possible, we also needed to change core business processes in HR.”

The shift wasn’t without challenges.

The first attempt to move to the cloud was two and a half years ago. The team had scoped the move but was closely watching two HR services that had just launched that were not performing as well as expected. In addition, the team’s plan to copy the existing HRweb portal to SharePoint Online using a “lift and shift” model wasn’t robust as it needed be across multiple devices, and it didn’t do enough to take advantage of the benefits of moving to SharePoint Online. For those reasons, a decision was made to call off the migration and go back to the drawing board.

“Today the story is different,” says Rajamma Krishnamurthy, a principal group program manager on the Microsoft Digital Human Resources team. “This time we were fully prepared, and the technology was ready and capable.”

The Human Resources IT function is more robust, and procedures for moving internal portals to SharePoint Online have matured, she says, pointing to several other internal portals successfully making the move to SharePoint Online. Additionally, the connection between Microsoft Digital, the company’s IT group, and the Human Resources function is tighter.

There were several technical reasons why the just-finished migration went so well, but there is also a more simple, human reason. “The difference was Joseph,” Krishnamurthy says.

Joseph is Joseph Jassey, Director Industry Digital Strategy – Industry Solutions in Microsoft Digital who not only led the HRweb migration, along with Cameron Thompson and the Human Resources team, but built it from the ground up, gaining key support from everyone involved well before the actual migration started.

“Joseph, Cameron, and the team have worked long and hard to leverage our SharePoint Online platform for HRweb,” says Andrew Winnemore, a general manager of human services for Human Resources.
For a transcript, please view the video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEQrRhVJp9w, select the “More actions” button (three dots icon) below the video, and then select “Show transcript.”

Getting it rightA natural storyteller, Jassey led the migration in his own unique way.“When I came on board, I was hired specifically for this,” Jassey says. “They said, ‘Here is our portal, we want to move to the cloud, we have 90,000 global employees using this every month, can you help us do this?’The first thing Jassey did was figure out why the migration didn’t work the first time.

“You’re not just dealing with the technical aspects of it, you also need to look at the culture, about why we do things the way we do them—why people weren’t ready for the move.”

As Jassey dug in, he learned the migration was cancelled for a variety of reasons: a website that was overly complex, a host of technical challenges, a business group that was wary due to a recent bumpy roll-out, and hesitation from internal leadership for such a wholesale shift. There were tactical challenges as well, including uncertainty around using lift and shift to move the entire site “as is,” concerns that performance would be slower in the cloud, questions around search functionality, and rising security standards.

Along with a series of personal interviews across teams, Jassey benchmarked with portals that had been successful, including the IT and legal sites, which had just finished their own migrations. After a tour of the Corporate, External, and Legal Affairs (CELA) portal, he liked what he saw, and brought those lessons back to HR.

The Human Resources Microsoft Digital leadership team loved seeing the CELA success story. With their interest piqued, Jassey asked for a proof of concept—nothing big, just something that dabbled in what was possible. “I told them, ‘This is how we want to approach this,’” Jassey says. “We can start small and see how it can be done.’”

Jassey drove moving a section of HRweb documentation to the cloud, sending a small amount of real, representative information. It worked, and Jassey then asked to move the full website in the same way. “I wanted them to feel confident, and that it was easy,” he says.

The original migration was built around a “lift and shift” approach, which called for copying everything on premises on SharePoint 2010 directly to SharePoint Online. The prevailing thinking suggested that most of the work was done two and half years ago—why not just pick that up and run with it?

But there were concerns with that approach. “I felt that would put us in the same structure as before, and I didn’t think it would give us the opportunity to rethink everything. From my research and conversations, I felt we needed a fresh start, new thinking, to push through it—I knew it could be done.”

Asking ‘why not?’

Jassey, who mentors kids who immigrate to the US from his native Gambia, is always encouraging everyone he meets to get out of their comfort zone, and the HRweb migration to SharePoint Online was no different.

“A growth mindset—that’s when you feel uncomfortable, that’s when you grow,” he says.

For the kids, it means encouraging them to consider careers in technology. For the Microsoft employees who worked on the HRweb migration, it was encouraging them to feel safe starting from scratch.

By starting over, the team was able to fix many existing problems like simplifying content, reducing subsites (moving from 398 subsites down to just 12), and simplifying security. The team was also able to make the employee experience more personal.

The result is a site, by early reviews, that is winning accolades from both employees and HR.

“It’s been a real joy to watch how the team has worked together to get us to this point,” Winnemore says. “Moving to the cloud is helping us build a first-class employee experience and modernize our HR systems and processes.”

For his part, Jassey says the human component cannot be underestimated. Having a dedicated, flexible team that was willing to try innovative approaches working on the project was the key differentiator.

• Explore upgrading Microsoft’s core Human Resources system with SAP SuccessFactors
• Discover how Microsoft’s HR portal gets personal, thanks to the modern experience in SharePoint
• Read more about shining a light on how Microsoft manages Shadow IT

The post Microsoft moves its Human Resources employee portal to SharePoint Online appeared first on Inside Track Blog.