NTT DATA Aligns HR and Finance on Single Cloud Platform

NTT DATA Business Solutions A/S manages its HR and Finance operations from a single cloud platform with the SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central solution and SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition. By leveraging a common data model to power end-to-end processes, NTT DATA Business Solutions is improving business performance while reducing risk, complexity, and cost.

Based in Germany, NTT DATA Business Solutions helps companies transform, grow, and become successful with SAP solutions. The organization, part of NTT DATA Group and a global strategic partner of SAP, recently received the SAP MEE Award for Partner Excellence 2024 for Cloud Performance, and additional SAP partner awards for customer success management and intelligent enterprise value realization.

Integral to its success is a workplace culture built around advancing the skills and capabilities of its 15,000 employees. Enabling its people strategy to create value for its clients was a motivating factor in its decision to move to the cloud by implementing SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central and SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition.

“It’s all about having the right people with the right skills and the right availability,” says Marianne Mia Jensen, senior director and head of Operations Region North and Eastern Europe for NTT DATA Business Solutions. “In our company, our employees are our most valuable asset. We need to make sure that they have the right skills and the right competencies to create the most value for our clients.”

Modernizing for the Future of Skills and Innovation

Founded in 1989 as S&P Consult, NTT DATA Business Solutions became one of the first SAP partners and went on to expand rapidly through both organic growth and acquisition. Over time, the organization accumulated a great deal of legacy technology, which created information silos and impeded business processes for staffing client projects.

Lacking visibility into its global HR processes and data, it needed to modernize its digital technology to deliver more centralization and harmonized processes, as well as sustain a lean administration to support the business. Also, as an exemplar for its clients, it wanted to have a robust, flexible platform for future innovation and technologies.

For its cloud journey, NTT DATA Business Solutions chose SAP as its technology partner. In October 2019, shortly before the pandemic, the organization launched SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central for its global workforce. When the pandemic began in 2020, NTT DATA Business Solutions was well positioned to manage its workforce through the crisis. Jensen recalls, “That implementation, plus a couple of other apps, gave us a good foundation [during the pandemic] because we were very digitalized.”

To modernize its ERP, NTT DATA Business Solutions chose SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, launching the solution in the Nordic countries in April 2023.

Jensen summarizes how the technology supports the business strategy, referring to SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, SAP SuccessFactors HCM, SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP), and SAP Concur solutions as she says, “That is our foundation for finding the right person for the right job.” She notes, “We also look at the trends in the market. What are the needs of tomorrow? And map the skills gaps, while also looking at what the preferences of our consultants are when it comes to professional and personal development and growth. SAP SuccessFactors is key for us.”

Finding the Right Person for the Job – with Data

Now when a project staffing request comes through, NTT DATA Business Solutions has a data-driven process in place to find the right person with the right skills and availability to staff client projects. It starts with an analysis of the data in NTT DATA’s own resource management app, built on SAP BTP, to check the consultants’ availability and an analysis of the skills database in SAP SuccessFactors solutions. The project is set up in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition.

Once the actual work begins, the consultants record their time in the SAP BTP time registration app and expenses in the SAP Concur solution. Financial processes are performed in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, where the data synchronization is facilitated by SAP’s common data model. As a final step, reporting is performed in SAP Business Warehouse and SAP Analytics Cloud.

Power of a Common Data Model

Together, these two SAP solutions – SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central and SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition – can be a powerful basis for improved efficiency and business agility because they leverage a common data model. As a result, organizations can benefit from streamlined HR processes; end-to-end integration with seamless connectivity between HR and finance functions for accurate and up-to-date employee data across the organization; greater transparency of data for analytics and reporting on workforce trends, costs, and profitability to enable better strategic planning and resource allocation; and compliance with regulatory requirements and data security.

The seamless synchronization of data by using a common data model for SAP business applications helps reduce the need for manual data entry and redundant processes. This means, for example, employee data that is maintained in SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central is available in real time in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition while master data, like cost center data, flows seamlessly from SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition to SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central. Eliminating data silos enables the HR and finance teams to work with consistent, accurate data for important employment decisions and legal reporting obligations.

Visibility Advances People Strategy and Client Projects

With SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central and SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, NTT DATA Business Solutions benefits from having a single source of truth. “We have all our consultants and contractors [visible to us] from SAP SuccessFactors all the way to the billing. That provides us with a very detailed view of all the things that are going on in the system,” Jensen says.

It now has global HR processes in place and visibility across different skills and capabilities within the organization, independent of where people work – whether finance, supply chain, or sales. Additionally, a new financial model for activity-based revenue recognition provides detailed financial insight into projects and client engagements.

Each updated release of SAP SuccessFactors solutions, delivered biannually in the cloud, introduces the latest innovations for the organization. Reflecting on NTT DATA’s journey to the cloud, Jensen says the key to integrating innovation is to focus on processes rather than technology.

“There are a lot of technology and systems that need to be set up, but it is important to focus on the processes that you are implementing, to have a focus on the data – make sure you understand how it works – in the new process with the new system. And finally, change management is critical.”

She adds, “You need to understand how to work with the new technology, not just today, but also tomorrow.”