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Paula Marsh

BMP and SAP: the view so far

The BMP blueprint workshops are now underway and staff seconded to the BMP programme have completed training to familiarise themselves with the SAP system.  Paula Marsh has been on both and gives us her account of the training and workshop.

I am an HR Officer at West Wiltshire District Council and I have been seconded part time to the Business Management Programme, working on the HR/Payroll team.

I attended 2 training days at Logica’s offices in Reading, one focussing on HR and one on payroll.

These days were really helpful in starting to get used to how SAP works – we covered the basics such as logging onto SAP, using the navigation bars and seeing the different screens.

We then used the training system to follow through the process of setting up a new post, inputting a new starters details, making changes to their record, running a payroll and pulling reports from the system.

Like any system SAP gets easier the more you practice, you get used to the screen and what information to enter where.

On the training we used the full SAP system which gives you lots of options – when we build the “Wiltshire” system we will slim these down so you only see the fields that we want completed – for example you won’t need to select the currency for pay, this will automatically default.

The system guides you through the processes - to put a new starter on you visit several different screens but it automatically takes you through them all until you complete the process.

One of the key things about SAP is that it is date driven and at the start of any process you need to tell the system what date is applies from.  You don’t “overwrite” an old record – this means you can track all changes and see previous posts etc.

This also means that if you make a change in the past (e.g. you forgot to put on someone’s shift allowance) then the system will calculate what you owe the person and pull it through to the current payroll.

Although the system requires similar information to our current systems it is less tolerant of “missing” information – so we will need to make sure we have the right processes in place to capture all the data we need.  

One of the best bits of SAP is the reporting functionality – you can tailor reports to show exactly the information you want and it can pull information from all the different areas – HR, payroll, finance etc. to create comprehensive reports.

Logica have been really clear about some of the things which SAP can’t do as well as our current systems.However there are some things that SAP can do which our current systems can’t – for example if you make a change to someone’s pay you can run a “mock” payslip to see the actual effect on tax, NI, pension and net pay.

I think that it is great that we are getting to see the system being built and having input right from the start.

Part of that process is the blueprinting workshops which started on 6 May 2008.  These involve concentrating on a very specific part of the SAP system (starting with underlying structures and moving on to look at processes) and deciding how to build a system that is right for Wiltshire.  Each workshop is led by the functional Logica expert – so within our team we are working with Chris on HR processes and Bryan on payroll ones.

The teams gather information and make recommendations about how the system should work – these are then passed to the Project Board for acceptance.

There are a number of difficult decisions to make early on about how the system will work.  We are getting a clear understanding that, in order to see the efficiencies that SAP can bring us, we need to make changes to our processes and the way we work.

Some of these will be quite a move away from the way we have done things before – perhaps meaning that we have to be more stringent about ensuring managers and external partners provide us with information that is correct and on time – but without making these big changes SAP won’t bring us the benefits we are hoping for.

I feel very positive that the SAP system will help us link up our thinking and deliver effective services as long as we have the right processes running alongside it to make sure we get the most out of it.