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Article by Richard Leonard
If you speak with customers, when asked what they think of using SAP to perform their day-to-day tasks at work, they may make a funny facial expression or the remark of “sometimes it can really stand for ‘Suffering And Pain’”. Remembering all those SAP transaction codes can take a fair amount of effort. The SAP NetWeaver Portal has been around for a number of years, but now1 customers are realising that the Portal can be a friendlier web-based gateway to their daily use of SAP to perform their business processes, not to mention a way to effectively leverage their investment in SAP’s Human Capital Management (HCM) solutions that help run their business.
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- The SAP NetWeaver Portal is one of the building blocks in the SAP NetWeaver architecture. With only a Web Browser, users can begin work once they have been authenticated in the portal which offers a single point of access to information, enterprise applications, and services both inside and outside an organization. The NetWeaver Portal also provides the tools to manage this knowledge, to analyze and interrelate it, and to share and collaborate. With its coherent interface, role-based content, and personalisation features, the portal enables its users (be it employees, external suppliers, or partners) to focus exclusively on data relevant to daily decision-making processes.
- The SAP NetWeaver Portal also provides Knowledge Management capabilities companies can use to distribute and access unstructured information within an organisation through a heterogeneous repository landscape. An example of this might be HR policy documents set up in a directory where anyone can access them regardless of the physical location of the documents, or SAP BI reports published out to a directory where managers can access the reports they are allowed to view.
- Collaboration through the Portal brings users, information, and applications together to ensure successful cooperation. All collaboration tools and channels are easily accessible directly from the portal. These tools include collaboration rooms, discussion forums, instant messaging, chat, e-mail, and calendar integration.
- From a content perspective, the SAP NetWeaver Portal has been used to be the gateway for SAP HCM solutions such as Employee Self-Service and Manager Self-Service. These two areas are perhaps the most popular functional areas to implement with the Portal – freeing up employees to maintain their personal information, view or print out their payslips, and (an employee favourite) apply for leave without filling out any paperwork, and receiving approvals from their managers for leave requests.
- The SAP NetWeaver Portal can also make use of pre-defined role-based business content from SAP called Business Packages There are SAP Business Packages that can be used for a number of HCM-related business processes such as Employee Self-Service, Manager Self-Service, Self-Service Administration, HR Administrator, Compensation Specialists, and Learning (part of the SAP Learning Solution).
What’s Next with the SAP Portal?
According to SAP, in 2010 there are two major planned activities for this year which involve the SAP NetWeaver Portal:
- 'SAP NetWeaver Enterprise Workspaces': (tentative name) A new add-on product for the SAP Portal, which will provide a flexible, intuitive User Interface composition environment, enabling enterprise end users to integrate and run structured and unstructured assets using a self-service approach.
Enterprise Workspaces - Module Gallery view:
Enterprise Workspaces - Workspace Directory view:
- Next major Portal release (7.3): SAP plans to release a beta version for a limited and selected list of customer for the next major portal release by Q2 of 2010, and expect to make the release available for ramp-up customers by the end of 2010. In this release they gave extra attention to usability, supportability, TCO reduction and special requirements coming from our customers and partners.
With a wealth of experience and knowledge of SAP HCM solutions Presence of IT is uniquely qualified to provide customers the knowledge transfer and services to successfully deliver HCM Portal-based solutions and greatly leverage their investment in SAP and its integrated solutions.
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