SAP Executive Forum

What is an SAP Executive Forum?

An SAP Executive Forum gives technology leaders in the SAP space an opportunity to share stories, challenges, and ideas. It can be useful to hear from those that have the same responsibilities and are beholden to similar goals. At SAPinsider, the place for leaders to interact is the Technology Executive Forum (TEF).

What is an SAP Executive Forum?

The TEF engages with executives and leaders at SAP customer companies to hear their SAP journeys and technology-related priorities. This engagement happens through multiple avenues, including:

Virtual executive meetings
Webinars from the most important technology vendors in the SAP ecosystem
Virtual executive summits with customer and vendor speakers
In-person summits, such as at the SAPinsider conference in Las Vegas
Research reports, which utilize survey data and in-person interview to capture the trends that matter most to technology leaders

SAP Executive Forums help leaders find the answers they need to move their businesses forward. That often means finding the right technology and the TEF partners with a diverse set of key vendors such as Deloitte, SUSE, Microsoft, and Worksoft. Each of those vendors captures different parts of the SAP journey — from strategy and implementation to architecture, infrastructure, and testing automation.

Key Considerations for an SAPinsiders:

TEF’s recent research into the CIO’s Agenda for 2022 found that technology leaders are primarily focused on increasing process efficiency and visibility while reducing IT costs. The technologies they are focused on to accomplish this include SAP S/4HANA and cloud offerings.
Technology leaders are often an excellent source of thought leadership in the SAP space, as they are the ones making the ultimate buying decisions on many of SAP’s solutions. The TEF includes leadership perspectives from every industry and from companies at various stages of their SAP journeys — from SAP ECC to SAP S/4HANA in the cloud.
SAP S/4HANA remains the most strategic investment for executives in the SAPinsider community. Across the whole technology group, our research in SAP S/4HANA migration also shows that SAP’s 2027 mainstream maintenance deadline on legacy SAP ERPs is among the top drivers to move to SAP S/4HANA. Through the TEF, we are able to bring together perspectives on how technology leaders should best navigate the SAP S/4HANA migration process.

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How to Eliminate Duplicate Line Reporting

Reading time: 10 mins

Many businesses encounter the problem of duplicate line reporting in Ad Hoc or SAP Query. Our HR Expert explains why this occurs and how it relates to the date parameter setting. She then provides three different methods to achieve single-line reporting. Key Concept Dear HR Expert, I have read a lot of the documentation in...…
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Implement Field-Level Security in HR Infotype Screens

Reading time: 32 mins

Because SAP’s HR module is fully integrated with other SAP modules, they share data. Therefore, it is important to ensure that sensitive HR data is invisible to unauthorized users. The author explains how to create and configure several infotype screens to block data to some users and allow access to others. The article uses Release...…
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How to Report on Data from R/3 and an External Source

Reading time: 5 mins

Combining data from R/3 with data from another system is easy as long as both sources of the data contain a similar unique element. The author shows how using the example of a company that wants to combine employee data from R/3 with average clock-in and clock-out times from an external card key system. As...…
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Key Considerations for Implementing R/3’s Succession Planning Module

Reading time: 10 mins

R/3’s Succession Planning functionality, which helps organizations identify internal talent, requires a commitment from the business side of the organization. The continual update of detailed employee data is essential for a successful implementation. The author provides tips for designing or updating your succession planning strategy. Having the ability to identify internal talent is a goal...…
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Configure HR Actions/Events to Improve Your Reports

Reading time: 31 mins

The configuration of personnel actions such as hiring, terminations, and organizational assignments in R/3 is completely customizable. The R/3-delivered actions, also known as personnel events, can be customized to your company’s needs so that you can collect necessary data and assign specific employment statuses. The employee data collected during your actions then can be classified...…
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Ask the HR Expert: How to Handle Positions After a Termination Event in PD

Reading time: 6 mins

The author explains that when you terminate an employee in R/3, the only thing the system does is delimit (put an end date on) the A 008 (holder) relationship between the person and the position. That is why the position object still exists after the employee has been terminated. She then discusses how to distinguish...…
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Creating Org Charts Using R/3 and Microsoft Visio

Reading time: 9 mins

When her company decided to automate the process of creating company organizational charts, the author was in charge of finding a tool that integrated well with R/3. She found Microsoft Visio to be the best fit, but first, the company had to store its hierarchical relations in R/3. Like many companies, a company that I...…
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Nine Keys for Managing the Relationship Between Business and IT

Reading time: 9 mins

ManagementA successful SAP project requires the efforts of an entire team pulling in the same direction. Unfortunately, project teams often find themselves in a tug-of-war pitting the IT department against its counterparts on the business side. Scott Barrett, director at Axon Global, says getting business and IT teams to work together effectively is a challenge...…
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Four Keys for Building and Maintaining a Strong SAP Project Team

Reading time: 11 mins

ManagementProject managers at SAP ERP companies spend an awful lot of time planning the seamless integration of a variety of tools and technologies. However, they often devote far less time when forming their project teams. Anurag Barua, a senior manager at a major consulting company, says project staffing failures can doom a project long before...…
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Create Calculated Fields in SAP Query for HR and Payroll Data

Reading time: 11 mins

When you want to perform calculations on your data, you may be accustomed to downloading an R/3 report into Microsoft Excel and performing calculations there. However, you can save yourself some work by creating the calculated fields in SAP Query itself. Using an example query, the author shows you how. At some point, you will...…