The Latest on SAP SuccessFactors Visa and Permits Management

Let’s look at some major innovations over the last year and a half in the following functional areas.

Analytics
Cross Suite & External Integration
Workflow Improvements
Process Monitor Enhancements
Mass Actions

Analytics

We have followed the SAP reporting strategy of using SAP Analytics Cloud for reporting and analytics. Users can get critical insight for stakeholders (visa and HR-specific) to be able to make decisions and stay compliant with regulations.

Also Read: SAP SF Succession Certification Preparation Guide

Here is a look at our delivered reports across four functional areas (dashboards) as of H1/2020 with more to come in future releases (Including a roadmap item for H2/2020):

Legal Compliance: –
- Identify employees whose jobs do not match their legal professions
- Identify employees who are hired in a company different than their sponsoring entity
Document Renewal Planning: –
- Identify documents already/recently expired with no action taken
- Identify documents about to expire without any action taken yet
- Identify documents expiring soon before the contract end date
Process Optimization: –
- React to current status/milestone for requests in process to know where they stand
- React to requests needing attention and the current processor (overdue milestone)
Cost and Budgeting: – H2/2020
- React to the historical average cost of visa/permits for decision making on headcount and additional applications

One of the most common requests for customers is to report on visas/documents expiration as listed above for document renewal planning. With this information, customers can have critical context to know if the renewal process has already been started and if they should act. They will be able to see trends, look across entities, and see available documents in different countries.

Cross-Suite Integration

SuccessFactors Suite

SAP SuccessFactors Visa and Permits Management extends suite capabilities with unique functionality and provides delivered integration with Employee Central, Recruiting Management, and Onboarding to help ensure visa and permit processes are easily incorporated with recruiting, onboarding, and new hire processes. It is critical for organizations to start their visa and permits process as early as possible, including for new employees, so they can hit the ground running. With that, let’s look at some of the areas we maximize the SAP SuccessFactors suite with built-in integration.

Recruiting Management

With SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting Management we use candidate data to trigger a request for a visa for candidates.

This allows a candidate’s documents (passport or contract copies) that have been entered during the Recruiting process to be used in visa and permit requests. This allows easy and efficient re-use of what is already in SAP SuccessFactors.

Here are a few screenshots showing this in SAP SuccessFactors Visa and Permits Management along with what it looks like in SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting Management. In these screenshots we can see a candidate Alice Murray has gone through the recruiting process and is ready to hire. We can also see that Alice has already gone through a business process and been issued a visa. She has completed pre-requisites such as getting a medical test and filling out the appropriate work. In this example, Alice will be 100% ready to go on the day she is hired.

Onboarding

With SAP SuccessFactors Onboarding we use onboardee data to be able to process a request and issue document/visa including prior to them being hired. This allows customers to have flexibility in streamlining the hiring process so customers can start visa or permit process as early as possible in order to maximize efficiency and have new employees hit the ground running on day 1.

Here is a screenshot showing a new onboardee Tori Fleming’s data in SAP SuccessFactors Visa and Permits Management, which allowed the organization to start a UAE residence visa process as part of the onboarding experience rather than waiting for Tori to be hired and then start the paperwork later. With the ability to use onboarding data, Tori can get her residency visa ASAP.

This integration is currently available for Onboarding 1.0 with plans to include Onboarding 2.0 in the H2/2020 release as follows:

Onboarding admin will be able to initiate a visa request for a new hire and their dependents entered in Onboarding
To trigger an automatic visa initiation request for new hire from Onboarding 2.0 right after the personal data collection is done

Employee Central

With SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central we can use employee and dependents data to initiate a request to issue, renew, or cancel documents or visas. We also allow administrators the ability to replicate the documents from Visa and Permits Management to the National ID in Employee Central.

Admin can use Visa and Permits Management as the primary system for handling employee and dependent’s documents and stay synced with their employee master data. This allows HR administrators to generate letters or reports using data that already exists in core HR.

External/Third Party

Another area of focus to make customers lives easier is by providing external/third party integration with entities such as governments. We have started this process with the Immigration Authority in Saudi Arabia and their Muqeem System.

This integration allows an employee to use a self-service tool to request a new visa by specifying travel dates. This request will be sent to a visa agent for them to trigger the appropriate internal process. This includes the ability to submit visas to the Muqeem system. Once the process has completed, the employee will be notified and will have the ability to download and print their visa.

After all of this is completed, SAP SuccessFactors Visa and Permits Management gets updated automatically with the visa details from Muqeem without any manual work.

Workflow & Approval

We have made significant enhancements to our workflow abilities to include initiation of the visa/permits request, multi-level approvals, and the ability define and monitor steps to different processors until a request is complete.

We allow organizations flexibility to setup rules for their population for different document types so requests can be routed to the right person for approvals, which are automatically tracked in the system for audit compliance.

For example, we can create workflow path of a new H-1B Visa for an employee, Sarah Smith. The Manager would initiate this process which would automatically get Sarah’s details from her profile in Employee Central. After submission, it would be routed to other relevant parties such as the HR Manager for approvals, and we could setup multi-level approvals as needed.

Here is a look at the creation of a new request for Sarah:

After all milestones are completed, we would have a record of the issued visa or permits for the employee in the system.

As shown in the example below, the H-1B visa is now created for Sarah Smith, with all the relevant information. In the future, an admin can request for renewal of the visa once a system notification is sent prior to the expiry date. All incurred costs, such as application fee or the agency fees, can also be tracked in the system as well as the attachments and any notes.

We have the flexibility to set up different workflow process for a candidate, dependents, and for different types of documents!

Visa & Permits Process/Request Monitor Application

We have made significant improvements in our Process Monitor application. For those not familiar with it, this app provides an admin full visibility of all requests including a status update and key information. The user can drill into details of each request, such as who it was requested for, who is currently processing it, current step, and estimated completion date to stay fully informed and react accordingly.

The screenshot below shows how the user can easily search and filter.

It also allows the admin to take direct actions for any processes that needs attention. In the example below, the admin is reassigning the visa interview milestone that is past overdue to a new processor Paul Taylor.

Mass Actions (Initiation, Renewal and Cancellation)

One of the most requested features from our customers from the time we launched our product was the ability to make changes in mass in order to process multiple employees at once so they can work in the most efficient manner. We rolled the mass initiation functionality in Q1 2019 and have continued to make incremental enhancements. Our latest mass renewal and cancellation functionality released in Q1 2020 allows admin to renew and cancel multiple documents that are about to expire in batch so they can work in the most efficient manner possible! No more having to go into the system one by one!

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