Sap SuccessFactors Interview Questions
1. What is the importance of success factors? how can we select the correct one?
Answer: By using the job analysis information and suggestions from the HR and another manager in desired roles one can predict the success factors. It can be made easy by practice.
2. What is the different PLM software available?
Answer: Some of the important software are Teamcenter, Enovia, Windchill, Creo, Aras, Arena PLM, Agile PLM, SAP PLM, Sharp PLM.
1) Important benefits of PLM
Improved cycle time
Less rework and decreased room for errors
Better use of resources
Increased productivity
Enhanced Quality of product
Better design integrity
Better analytics
3. What type of evidence can be expected in accessing success factors?
Answer: Analyzing the last 12 months and picking the best-suited one which describes the success factors positively.
4. If Success Factors are important – how do you pick the right ones?
Answer: Use the job analysis information and advice from your HRO and other managers with the same roles to determine the 3-5 core success factors. It will become easier with practice.
5. I am trying to record a video or upload content to SAP Jam and/or SuccessFactors LMS, but it won’t work?
Answer: Sometimes users of SAP Jam (either as a Social solution or as part of our Learning Management System) see a message that says “You’ve reached your file storage limit.” If this is the case, your company will have to contact SuccessFactors to resolve the issue. For this or any other issue related to SAP Jam, please contact the individuals within your company with access to the Support Portal.
6. What type of configuration is done in the country-specific succession data model?
Answer: Country-specific succession data model is configured by address formats, country-specific fields and by all the international standards.
7. What would say are the weak spots of Employee Central?
Answer: There are some features that I believe have the potential for improvement and can further enhance the value of Employee Central. The first one is when Foundation Object data changes (for example, the head of a department changes), the data must propagate more seamlessly to the employee Job Information record. The other main area of improvement that I have already mentioned is data imports. The transport mechanism from the Test instance to the Production instance has seen enhancements, but it needs to be further improved as that will have a significant impact on the implementation timeline.
8. What Is Defined In The Country -specific Corporate Data Model?
Answer: In here foundation objects fields for a separate country are defined.
9. A request or instruction to Purchasing to procure a quantity of a material or service so what is available at a certain point in time?
Answer:
Purchase Requisition.
10. What If The Employee Doesn’t Agree With The Success Factors That Their Manager Has Chosen?
Answer: The manager uses the job analysis information to determine the Success Factor for the role in conjunction with discussions with the individual. However, it is ultimately the manager’s decision.
11. what is Preventive and predictive maintenance?
Answer: It Allows maintenance to be carried out at predetermined intervals, or to other prescribed criteria.
12. Explain Automatic reports shipping?
Answer: Ensures the consistency of information exchanged between business and environmental, health, and safety processes with automated shipping of material safety data sheets. Current data is instantly available, redundant data maintenance is avoided, and reports are shipped in the respective language the recipient country.
13. In What way can Employee Central be Integrated with Successfactors Products?
Answer: With the help of HRIS sync by SuccessFactors Products, Employee central can be Integrated Internally.
14. If you could give one piece of key advice to a customer who is going to implement Employee Central, what would it be?
Answer: My one key piece of advice to customers would be to utilize the Employee Central implementation as an opportunity to re-examine the ways that they do business. The fact that the solution is so flexible and agile is an avenue for organizations to adopt the product design to build a solution that turns them into an agile organization and hence better suited to thrive in a competitive landscape.
Often many customers do not have forward-looking or streamlined business processes and lack an overall and well-defined strategy for core HR and Talent solutions. It helps to get a head start on that organizational strategy as then it is relatively easy to achieve a high ROI. It is also important to identify your champions of the cloud early on within the organization as these are the folks that will drive the adoption of the newly implemented software working in tandem with your implementation partner.
Employee Central is an excellent excuse to transform the way that HR and the business have been operating and move from transactional to strategic integrated HCM.
15. What is meant by DTD?
Answer: It is a data model defined by the Document type definition.
My view is to construct a highly unified hr in the cloud. A highly unified HR is the main person to maximize the business outcomes of the organization.
16. Do they apply to academic staff?
Answer: yes! partially, there is the same kind of framework for strategic leaders and as well as for researchers which depend on success factors. The idea is to have similarity to all the groups in the university.
17. Can we ‘get rid’ of people by using success factors?
Answer: No, this is not the reason why they are developed. They are employed to grow individuals, despite if the behaviors are compulsory for the job there will be no development and it can be a performance issue.
18. What is the case if the employee doesn’t agree on the success factors that are given by his manager?
Answer: The manager keeps the job information and analysis to estimate the success factors in conjunction with discussions of the individual. Finally, it depends on the manager’s decision
19. What is present in the Succession data model?
Answer: All the records of the employee are present in the succession data model. This type of succession data model constructs the fields both internal(information related to employment) and external(personal information of employee) works.
20. what type of support can one have by success factors?
Answer: managers can get training. By using its proper guidance and documentation will also be present on the HR website, all the team members of HR can provide advice.
21. will the assessment of success factors take much time?
Answer: At first, assessment can take time as it is a new process since we are working on new concepts they can bring benefits.
22. What if the Success Factor for a role is what the job requires as a technical output e.g. communicating for a careers’ adviser?
Answer: There may be a ‘technical’ requirement to do that but success factors are about ‘how’ the job is done / the behaviors required in carrying out their job.
23. Tell us a bit about Employee Central Payroll?
Answer: Simply put Employee Central Payroll is a solution that allows you to run payroll in the cloud using SAP’s proven and powerful payroll engine while maintaining core HR data in Employee Central. The core HR employee data is maintained in Employee Central and replicated to Employee Central Payroll. Most of the payroll relevant master data such as the Tax info types, Bank Details, etc. can be maintained in Employee Central through the UI mash-up screens and are replicated to Employee Central Payroll. Once the payroll is successfully run the employees can view the payslip in Employee Central.
24. What is CN24N?
Answer:
The CN24N is involved in overall network scheduling transactions with selected options.
25. Won’t the choice of the Success Factors be too subjective?
Answer: There is always an element of subjectivity in any process dealing with people. However, Success Factors are objective standards or benchmarks with good examples.
26. How much evidence in assessing Success Factors will we be expected to produce?
Answer: Look over the previous 12 months for examples and pick out the 2 or 3 which demonstrate the Success Factors the most.
27. What If A Person Achieves Most Of The Success Factors Will It Be Beneficial In Getting More Payment/promotion?
Answer: the success of the individual can explain the job performance, behaviors at that time it can be used in any type of job application or the payment review.
28. I am a job candidate who applied for a position at a company whose website says “Powered by SuccessFactors” or “Powered by Jobs2Web”. How do I receive technical support or ask questions about my application?
Answer: You applied for a job at a company that uses SuccessFactors’ Recruiting Marketing product (formerly known as Jobs2Web) to host its career site. Please direct any questions or support requests to the company to which you applied.
29. How Do You Integrate Employee Central Externally With Other Products?
Answer: There is a cloud-based integration platform available for external integration.
30. Who are the individuals within my company who have access to the Support Portal and can interact with Support?
Answer: In general, these users are within your company’s HR department and they are responsible for administering SuccessFactors software. This person controls access to SuccessFactors data within your company and can reset usernames and passwords, restore locked accounts, and perform other functions.
31. Why are there three levels within the framework?
Answer: They describe a range of different types of behavior which are relevant to a range of different job roles. However, the levels are not hierarchical.
32. What are the key features would you like to see added to Employee Central?
Answer: it is very exciting to share that a few features like the matrix relationship on positions and the manual delegation of workflows were at the top of my features wish list and they have been released in the latest 1402 release. I am busy implementing both of them at a customer and I will keep the community updated on my findings. Some of the other features that I would like I also know are on the roadmap, including Concurrent Employment and managing and generating documents (such as creating exit interview letters or uploading and storing documents required for managing employees on Global Assignment).
33. Are they going to apply to academic staff as well?
Answer: There is a similar framework for Strategic Leaders Framework and one for researchers that have been based on Success Factors. The idea going forward is to have something similar for all staff groups in the university.
34. What Does The Succession Data Model Contain?
Answer: Employee Records are contained in the Succession Data Model. The succession data mode configures the fields that will appear in the Employee’s Personal Information (outside of work) Employment Information.35. What Is Configured In The Country -specific Succession Data Model? _text]Answer:
Address formats, country-specific fields, and international standards are set in the country-spe, succession data model.
36. What Does The Corporate Data Model Define?
Answer: Foundation Objects and their relationships are defined in the corporate data Model. Foundation, Objects are also called Foundation Tables. They include Organization, Job and Pay.
37. What’s so special about Employee Central versus SAP HCM. What is the value proposition that appeals to customers?
Answer: That’s my favorite question and one I have been answering frequently for customers. Let me answer this question from the 3 perspectives that I see as valuable and beneficial for the customer:
Easy-to-use data structures
38. Is it too subjective to choose the success factors?
Answer: Success factors are examples of objective standards as well as benchmarks with subjectivity in all the elements dealing with people.
39. What is DTD?
Answer:
Document Type Definition of the data model
My vision is to build a truly integrated HR in the cloud. A truly integrated HR is the key enabler for organizations to maximize their business outcomes.
40. Are the levels linked to job grades?
Answer: No. Just because someone is on a certain job grade, it doesn’t rule out any of the levels. However, if a job is more senior you would expect to see more of the university level behaviors.
41. What other two data models are used?
Answer: Data Model Workflow Rules Data Model, Event and Event Derivation Rules Data Model.
42. Once a Success Factor has been chosen for a role can it be changed?
Answer: Yes; it depends on the requirements/needs of the role at any point. It is fluid and therefore may change year to year.
43. Where you create associations?
Answer:
Corporate Data Model and object definition tool.
44. Recently enabled German for your customer’s instance. how you check?
Answer: Log in to the instance, Proxy in as a user and Options menu and change language to German.
45. Your site didn’t ask for my company ID before, but now it does. Why?
Answer: The SuccessFactors login page appears in one of two possible formats: one that asks for a Company ID and one that doesn’t. If asked, you are required to supply a Company ID to access the system. If you are not asked for a Company ID on the login page, it’s because the Company ID was included in the link you used to get to the page. We recommend that you bookmark the page or add it to your browser’s Favorites list so that you never need to remember your company ID.
46. If a Success Factor is changed during the year how do you know what you will be reviewed against at the next PDR?
Answer: Through dialogue/communication between the manager and the individual. The change can also be flagged on the PDR form.
47. What support will I have in using the Success Factors?
Answer: Managers will receive training; Success Factor documentation and guidance on its use will be available on the HR web site; members of the HR team will be able to provide advice.
48. Where does the production order use?
Answer:
The production order used in discrete manufacturing.
49. What is company code?
Answer: The company code is the smallest unit in the company, it is used in the purpose of representing a closed system for cost accounting.
50. Won’t the assessment of Success Factors take too long?
Answer: Initially, making the assessment may take some time because it is a new process and we’re dealing with new concepts but it is worthwhile for the benefits they bring.
51. Explain Environment, health, and safety?
Answer: Addresses a range of environment, health, and safety issues. In addition to enabling companies to manage risk and comply with government regulations, SAP PLM integrates a variety of environment, health, and safety functions, including, Product safety, hazardous materials management, dangerous goods management, industrial hygiene and safety management, occupational health, and waste management.
52. Explain Asset service management?
Answer: The asset service management capabilities of SAP PLM help companies manage technical assets by improving utilization rates, output quality, uptime, and the streamlining of internal processes.
Asset service management empowers enterprises with systematic planning and control of physical resources throughout their economic life cycles, as well as the execution of all related processes.
53. Where does the PLM use?
Answer: It is used in industries such as Automotive, Aerospace, Medical, Machinery/Industrial, Consumer Products and Retail.
54. If an individual achieves all the Success Factors does that mean they will get promoted/get more pay?
Answer: Not directly. Obviously, the more successful the individual is in their role / can demonstrate effective job performance / demonstrates additional behaviors, then this can be used as evidence in any job application or pay review case.
55. When the job is for giving a technical output what is the role of success factor?
Answer: Success factors are how to do the job and the behavior study in carrying a job technically.
56. What are Factors influencing Scheduling?
Answer:
Internal Processing External Processing General Costs Activity Relationships.
57. What Is The Propagation Data Model Used For?
Answer:
HRIS Propagation Data Model is used for the Auto Population from Foundation Tables.
58. What is Product configuration management?
Answer: It enables the tracking and tracing of complex products, including all components, and supports versioning and active change management.
59. Define Success factors and why are they called by that name?
Answer: Because they explain behaviors that result in successful performance in the job.
60. Can a success factor be changed if it is already selected for a particular role?
Answer: Yes, it is based on the requirements and wants of any role at any time. It is mobile and can change every year.
61. Suppose a success factor is changed in a year what will you review by the next PDR?
Answer: With the communication between the individual and the manager, the change can also fade on the PDR form.
62. If an individual achieves all the Success Factors does that mean they will get promoted/get more pay?
Answer: Not directly. Obviously, the more successful the individual is in their role / can demonstrate effective job performance / demonstrates additional behaviors, then this can be used as evidence in any job application or pay review case.
63. Do You Have To Choose The Same Level (e.g. Self) For All The Success Factors Identified?
Answer: No. However, it may be that they tend towards one level.
64. How many data models are there in Employee Central?
Answer:
There are 7 data models in Employee Central.
65. Why are they called ‘Success Factors?
Answer:
Because they are behaviors that lead to successful performance in the job.
66. Why three levels are present in a framework?
Answer: because they explain a wide range of behavior types that are close to different job roles. despite their levels are not ranked.
67. Do the levels are linked to job grades?
Answer: No, they are not. The reason is, that someone is working on a different job grade. It won’t guideline any of the levels. However, if the job is of seniority level then you can hope for the behaviors at the university level.
68. What is the shift order indicator?
Answer: It controls the actual dates from partial confirmations for scheduling run in PLM.
69. list the capabilities supporting service management in SAP PLM?
Answer:
- Asset service management
- Preventive and predictive maintenance
- Product configuration management
- Automatic reports shipping
70. In What Way Can Employee Central Be Integrated Externally With Other Products?
Answer: External Integration of employee central can be done by using a Cloud-based integration platform.
71. Will Success Factors be used to ‘get rid’ of people?
Answer: That is not why they have been developed. They are used to develop individuals. However, if the behavior(s) are essential to the job and there continues to be no development then it could become a performance issue.
72. I’m locked out of my account. Can you help me?
Answer: To reset a locked account, please contact the individuals within your company with access to the Support Portal.
73. purpose of API?
Answer: data extraction from SuccessFactors’ products and used in external products.
74. How Do You Integrate Employee Central With Other Successfactors Products?
Answer:
Employee Central integrates internal with other SuccessFactors products through HRIS Sync.
75. What is defined by the corporate data model
Answer: The corporate data model defines foundation objects’ fields and their interconnections. Once again they contain a type of organization, mode of pay and job role.
76. Mention the other two data models that are used?
Answer:
Data models:
1. Event Derivation rules,
2. Workflow rules.
77. What if the employee doesn’t agree with the Success Factors that their manager has chosen?
Answer: The manager uses the job analysis information to determine the Success Factor for the role in conjunction with discussions with the individual. However, it is ultimately the manager’s decision.
78. What is defined by the corporate data model?
Answer: the corporate data model defines foundation objects’ fields and their interconnections. Once again they contain a type of organization, mode of pay and job role.
79. In What way can Employee Central be Integrated with Success Factors Products?
Answer: With the help of HRIS sync by success Factors Products, Employee central can be Integrated Internally.
80. Only the HR department in Germany should be able to access German employee data but Hr department is also access data..why?
Answer:
The permission group and target group are configured incorrectly.
81. How to update the entire department with a new cost center?
Answer:
mass changes and Import job history.
82. How to create a new picklist?
Answer: Export the data format and add a new picklist ID and new picklist values to the file.
83. What would you say are the key differences between implementing on-premise SAP HCM and when implementing Employee Central?
Answer: The key differences result from the deployment model of both solutions. When implementing an on-premise solution, customers need to also to deal with the IT infrastructure topics and size their hardware correctly, negotiate or adjust the contracts with their hardware providers. This is an extra effort that does not play a role when implementing the cloud. The IT infrastructure topic in the cloud model is with the provider, not with the customer.
Implementing cloud also activities around identifying the right software or support packages and possible software dependencies is nothing the customers need to deal with, they simply get the latest code of the solution and can fully concentrate on the configuration. Configuration then is a good next aspect to look at. The on-premise solution allows customers to customize the solution towards their need, they have access to the source code and can add additional source code in the system directly. There is nothing bad about this as such, although in a lot of cases this has created the big HCM implementation beasts, has allowed various departments in the company group to add whatever they liked, and overall this is hard to be controlled centrally and hinders simplification and standardized processes, reduces the companies’ agility to mention some outcomes. Cloud instead does not grant access to source code. Customers do influence the system behavior by configuration. SuccessFactors allows a lot of configuration, including that a customer can deeply tailor the solution to their customer’s specific needs. Here are to mention the (MDF) and the extension packages available with SAP HANA Cloud Platform for SuccessFactors. This is outstanding in the market.
The overall advantage I see for cloud implementation that central governance of what the company is implementing can be achieved more easily than compared with an on-premise implementation.
84. Time off fields are available?
Answer: Work schedule and Holiday calendar
85. The function of the icon shown in the screenshot?
Answer:
Translation of foundation object
86. data model do you use to set up a National ID display format?
Answer:
Country-specific Succession Data Model
87. Time off fields are available?
Answer:
Work schedule and Holiday calendar
88. What does CNF mean?
Answer:
Finally Confirmed
89. What does PDC mean?
Answer: Plant Data Collection
90. An organizational unit in Accounting that reflects a management¬oriented structure fo the organization for the purpose of internal control?
Answer:
Profit Center
91. How do you mask sensible data in a field?
Answer:
Set the attribute pii=” true”
92. What does FS mean?
Answer:
Finish Start
93. If remove the Cost Center HRIS element from the Corporate Data Model..what needs to done to avoid error?
Answer:
Cost Center field in the Job Info element set to visibility = “none”.
94. where create new positions?
Answer:
Company Info section and Manage Data tool
95. Do you have any recommendations for migrating from SAP ERP HCM to Employee Central?
Answer: Earlier I spoke about chances. My clear recommendation is to first look at what are the things missing in the current implementation, process outdated and modern things missing, what hurts most and what shall be achieved. Ideally, all of this is mapped to an overall HR strategy. Based on that analysis, a clear charter of what the future solution shall be able to cover is to be set up, followed by a defined roadmap. I really argue to put a lot of effort into that preparation work. This will help companies to their cloud implementation projects exactly to transform the company into what it should be and operate HR that way that is can support business outcomes better than currently and is prepared for growth.
96. How do you currently see the market in the DACH (Germany, Austria, and Switzerland) area?
Answer: Due to the rapid economic changes and the continued trend of a globalized economy, more and more enterprises need to be able to cope with these dynamics and at the same time seize their chances to retain market leadership. This includes staying flexible with their HR strategies as employees are key contributors to company success. All this requires solutions that can provide the right answers to the challenges just outlined. This is true for companies in the DACH region as well as it is the case for midsize companies.
Cloud solutions seem to be the right answer. At least more and more companies ask for these. Whereas in the US the decision to go cloud is often easier to take and clearly proven by the adoption already, many decision drivers in DACH have to overcome some stumbling blocks such as to convince their work council and to convince their data security managers with good arguments as to why cloud solutions do not hurt any data security or privacy requirements. This explains why the adoption of cloud is slower in the DACH region than in the US, for example. Nevertheless, DACH companies also want cloud as it helps them to offer the right solutions to employees, line managers, and HR employees far quicker and to adjust them easily when needed.
SAP – together with the partner eco-system – can be successful in the DACH market when the decision-makers are efficiently supported in solving their concerns, especially around data security and privacy. From personal experience, I have seen that SAP and the ecosystem do an excellent job during the sales cycles to provide the decision-makers with good arguments, but still, the sales cycles in DACH are generally not too fast. I think there is still a lot of work to do around providing company guidance in what solution strategy might be the most appropriate for them and fighting the prejudices about the cloud. I strongly believe that cloud is the future for DACH customers and that more and more companies follow the cloud path in a more accelerated manner soon.
97. Do you have anything else you’d like to add?
Answer: We at inside see Employee Central as well as a good option for mid-market customers and have started to look into how the inside HCM Cloud and SuccessFactors Employee Central can go together. We are strongly aligned with SAP and work together with them. All-in-all we are beginning to see growth for Employee Central in DACH and the wider region of Europe and it won’t be long until adoption reaches are high level.
Thank you very much for your time Heike, it was a pleasure to speak with you again.
98. Some customers are interested to know more about Time & Attendance and Benefits functionality in Employee Central and what other options are available. Can you offer us any insights?
Answer: Included in the SuccessFactors Employee Central subscription fee is time-off functionality. This allows companies to manage any kind of absences, such as dealing with leave requests or reporting sickness. Scenarios are also available as mobile applications and are also included in the subscription. SAP has invested in time-off functionality right from the beginning when Employee Central development got accelerated, around two and a half years ago.
When it comes to time & attendance, SAP so far follows a partner strategy. WorkForce Software and Kronos are the two go-to-market partners and their solutions are integrated with SuccessFactors Employee Central using packaged integrations. So time & attendance functionality communicating with the Employee Central master data and payroll is available as such, however, it adds an extra price tag. SAP to my best knowledge hasn’t yet officially announced whether they are going to offer comprehensive-time & attendance functionality included in the Employee Central subscription.
With regards to benefits, SAP has BenefitFocus and AON Hewitt as a go-to-market partner. Following a similar model as with time management, customers can use these solutions integrated with Employee Central. In addition, SAP released in May this year the first public release of Global Benefits capabilities, delivering control for administrators and efficient global benefit events supports for employees. Benefits content is pre-delivered and integration with payroll is available.
99. Where do you create event reasons?
Answer:
Manage Organization, Pay and Job Structures tool
100. where configure the fields in a dynamic role?
Answer:
Corporate Data Model