SAP and Open Text expand global reseller agreement to include Employee File Management Capabilities

SAP AG and Open Text, provider of enterprise content management (ECM) software, have announced continued expansion of their strategic relationship to include employee file management capabilities. Under the expanded agreement, SAP will resell Open Texts solution for employee information management under the name the SAP Employee File Management application by Open Text.

SAP has had great success reselling a number of Open Text solutions for document access, archiving and invoice management, among others, and the companies announced in February of this year an expansion of the agreement that enables SAP to resell Open Text Digital Asset Management (see SAP and Open Text Expand Global Reseller Agreement to Include Digital Asset Management. The announcement allows SAP to resell a robust Open Text solution that lets companies create complete digital records of all personnel-related documents natively integrated with the SAP ERP Human Capital Management (SAP ERP HCM) solution for out-of-the-box productivity from day one.

Transforms Human Resources by Shifting Focus to Strategic Activities
Human resources (HR) organisations are under constant pressure to process high volumes of employee requests accurately and in compliance with complex requirements for data retention and security. At the same time, companies use a wide variety of HR and related forms to fill out employee records over the lifecycle of a workers engagement with a company. The HR department is expected to produce, maintain and retrieve these employee documents at a moments notice whether electronic or paper records.

With this solution, companies can create a complete digital record of all these documents and organize them for instant search and accessing. All paper and electronic documents related to employees, retirees, contractors and job applicants, as well as master data from SAP ERP HCM, can be pulled from digital employee files that enable HR staff to perform administrative activities more quickly and easily.

SAP Employee File Management can help transform the HR department from one that is primarily administrative into one that is primarily strategic, said Tom Roberts, global vice president, Software Solution Partners, SAP. Instead of spending the majority of their time on labor-intensive administrative tasks, HR staff is freed up to focus more of their time and effort on recruitment, skills development and serving as a more productive resource for the operational areas they support. By joining forces with Open Text, we are bringing new capabilities to our customers that can help deliver significant, sustained return on investment.

Enables Self-Service and Shared-Services Models
SAP Employee File Management supports a wide range of self-service scenarios that free HR staff from time-intensive, routine inquiries from both colleagues and management. The application also makes it easier to comply with service level agreements in shared-service environments by assisting HR staff to find everything they need quickly and helping staff to process service requests faster and more efficiently.  

HR staff accesses SAP Employee File Management functions from the GUI or the Business Client, while other staff can access files for which they are authorized via employee self-service and manager self-service portals, based on SAP NetWeaver in the SAP ERP HCM solution. Using a guest access feature, each employee can easily access his or her online employee file via the Web, and managers can see their employees files. Employees can see only the contents of their own files and have limited access based on their legal right to see the documents. Other key features and capabilities of SAP Employee File Management include:

Paper and digital file consolidation Scanning and image capture functions help eliminate paper files, allowing organisations to collect, digitise and centralise all employee HR documents.

Search Intuitive folder structures and thumbnails help users find documents quickly and jump directly from digital document records into SAP ERP HCM transactions.

Process automation Integrated workflow supports comprehensive review and approval processes and routine, document-related inquiries.

Document retention management and archival Staff can more securely archive employee documents in accordance with legal regulations such as BDSG in Germany, the Data Protection Act 1998 in the United Kingdom or Chapter 357-22 WAC in the United States.

This latest agreement is the direct result of the strong, 20-year relationship between Open Text and SAP, said Patrick Barnert, vice president of SAP Solutions, Open Text. Through this relationship, we have jointly helped thousands of enterprise customers significantly increase the return on their investment in SAP solutions and manage growing volumes of content. Now we are joining forces to help companies transform their HR operations to better support the needs of a global workforce.

For more information, visit the SAP Employee File Management by Open Text page on the Solution Extensions section of sap.com