Moving to SuccessFactors? Take your SAP R/3 and ECC history with you.

Why companies leave SAP R/3 and ECC

As an SAP R/3, ECC or cloud customer you know the heavy install base and infrastructure requirements of the legacy ERP days. Streamlining your landscape in the cloud, with SuccessFactors or otherwise, means tackling the sensitive data history problem in front of you. R/3 and ECC are being phased out, and the infrastructure behind them is winding down: licenses, backend databases, servers, IT support resources and ticket volume. Security is a fast-moving field, and an aging system cannot be patched for vulnerabilities in a timely fashion forever; it has to be proactively retired.

What Fuse archives from SAP

Fuse can port your entire work history for employee, applicant and contractor data and documents to the cloud, with access directly from SuccessFactors, so HR, Payroll and Legal can keep responding to:

• Employment verifications
• Unemployment claims
• EEO audits and subpoenas
• Federal and state department of labor subpoenas
• Wage and hour law disputes
• Historical inquiries from managers and employees
• Pay stub and tax form reprints, including self-service options
• Data subject requests under privacy law

That history is rarely packaged neatly in tables. Alongside the structured records in PA, OM, Payroll, Time and Benefits it includes semi-structured information such as performance reviews, pay stubs and timecards, and unstructured documents such as onboarding paperwork, applications and CVs. See how archiving works on the platform.

Pitfalls for SAP R/3 and ECC customers

The built-in R/3 archiving feature keeps the infrastructure alive

Using R/3’s own archiving prevents the eventual decommission of the infrastructure and the heavy maintenance expense that goes with it. Look for an agnostic cloud solution instead.

Archiving personal data is harder than it used to be

To fully decommission R/3 you need to balance local record-keeping laws with the other needs typically associated with historical data for at least the next 5–7 years.

Raw SAP data follows a highly proprietary data model

It is not necessarily future-proof for HR and payroll reporting, and R/3 experience will be in shorter supply in years to come. Employee group, employee subgroup and payroll area exist only in SAP and nowhere else in compliance record keeping, which is exactly why archiving needs domain-expert staging of the data in a flattened and denormalized fashion, on a system-agnostic model such as HR Open Standards.

Extracting data from SAP requires technical expertise

It takes expertise across PA, OM, Payroll, Time and Benefits. Many SAP data objects are unique, and where customer-developed programs, infotypes and features are involved, standard SAP archiving options will not suffice. Expect a mix of ad-hoc queries, standard reports and custom ABAP.

How the migration works

1. Extract. Pull the structured history from PA, OM, Payroll, Time and Benefits, plus the documents, pay stubs and timecards that live outside the tables.
2. Load. Stage the data into a flattened, denormalized, system-agnostic model so it no longer depends on SAP-specific concepts or R/3 skills.
3. Validate. Reconcile the archive against the source with the business users who will rely on it.
4. Retire. Decommission the R/3 or ECC landscape, its databases and servers, and keep the history in Fuse, accessible from SuccessFactors.

If the exit is part of a larger HCM and payroll transformation, plan the archive alongside the new implementation, not after it.

Compliance and retention

There are minimum retention requirements in most countries, including the US, where federal agencies have established norms for data and document record keeping. Globally you now also face competing maximum retention laws under GDPR, CCPA and the wider trend toward data protection and data sovereignty, such as China’s Personal Information Protection Law. An archive has to satisfy both. See how Fuse handles compliance.

Already migrated to SuccessFactors?

As long as you still retain access to the legacy system, Fuse Analytics can help you sunset it and reduce license costs and legacy infrastructure.

Fuse Analytics is an independent provider and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by, or a partner of any HR or payroll software vendor named on this page. All product and company names are trademarks of their respective owners.