Attract, promote and retain
Individual promotion of qualifications is an aspiration of career starters and young employees and, in addition to work-life balance (flexible working hours, home office, good work-life balance, etc.), makes a significant contribution to loyalty and interest in the employer.
According to the empirical study Bewerbungspraxis 2015 (Application Practice 2015) with 7000 job seekers and people interested in a career, "according to their own statements, participants only accept offers from companies if these, [...] offer the possibility of further training (82.7 percent), show clear development opportunities (75.8 percent) [...]."
Successful talent management therefore requires a holistic view: good recruiting campaigns or measures only pay off in the long term if the next step is an equally good onboarding process as part of the company's HR development.
Bring in employees
How onboarding (the "bringing in" of the employee into the processes and knowledge of the new company) of career starters and young employees can look varies depending on the company and industry.
This article will show how this can be organized in an SAP service company. The focus is on the technical part of onboarding, which covers the area of (individual) software development in particular.
Aspects such as open communication during the application process, preparation for the first day of work, orientation in the company and getting to know the contact persons as important upstream measures will not be elaborated on here.
Since aligning all processes to the needs of customers is a particular focus for service providers, the article first looks at developments and market trends in the SAP services sector that have a significant impact on the onboarding process.
Change in the SAP market
The SAP services market has changed over the last ten years. Today's customers expect consulting in the best sense of the word - that is, the delivery of their own ideas and best practices - rather than the mere placement of project staff.
The contribution of SAP special knowledge and expertise is in demand from the first minute of the project. This makes it increasingly important for consulting companies to provide new young colleagues with the necessary tools through internal training programs.
Universities cannot (and should not) provide such (provider-specific) training, or can do so only incompletely. There are reasons why customers' expectations have changed.
On the one hand, the discipline of software development in general has matured as an essential component of IT services. Where once creativity and individuality were in demand for both solutions and approaches, today the focus is much more on standardization, proven and uniform methods, and best-practice approaches.
This is particularly evident in software development processes (SCRUM, iterative-agile models, etc.), but also in software architectures (e.g. SOA, SOLID principles). The aim here is to reduce the costs of creation and, above all, to make the complexity of the resulting software controllable throughout the entire lifecycle.
On the other hand, the portfolio of SAP solutions in particular has grown in recent years and the technology has become increasingly complex. In order to master this complexity of today's SAP system landscapes, specialists are needed.
For cost reasons, these cannot be kept on hand in the IT departments of SAP user companies for each individual specialty area. This is when the knowledge of the external SAP consultant is in demand.
Excursus: Banks
Particularly in the banking environment, detailed knowledge of the solutions from the SAP-for-Banking portfolio is required in combination with specialist banking know-how as well as background knowledge of relevant external influencing variables such as regulatory requirements.
One of the reasons for this is that banks are much less free to develop and operate their systems than they were ten years ago. Today, regulatory requirements influence both structural issues (e.g., BCBS 239) and process models (e.g., process documentation according to GOBD).
The trend for these requirements to have an increasing impact not only on pure business areas but also on classic IT issues appears to be unbroken.
Internally, the banks cannot or often do not want to provide the necessary specific expertise in the form of human resources on an ongoing basis. They consciously make a strategic buy instead of make decision and purchase consulting services for SAP systems.
The training of SAP consultants must take account of the change described above. The prerequisite for a successful entry into SAP consulting is usually a bachelor's or master's degree in business information systems or computer science.
Comparable courses of study that are strongly oriented toward logical processes and ideally also include programming components, such as physics, are also possible. Since, as already mentioned at the beginning, SAP-specific training at universities is either non-existent or only superficial, prior knowledge of SAP systems is a "nice-to-have" but not a prerequisite for employment. The onboarding process at an SAP service provider must be tailored to this initial situation or build on it.
Onboarding process
The profile of employees in Development & Integration Services is that of the "consulting developer". As part of the onboarding process, the ability to develop software in SAP environments is part of the basic equipment.
Newcomers usually start their careers with a focus on software development, since the knowledge for this has usually already been imparted in very good quality by the universities.
The field of application is then - depending on individual interests and skills - steadily expanded on the content side in the direction of requirements analysis, conception and test management and on the organizational side in the direction of task control and project management.
At innobis, this is a standardized process that has proven itself in onboarding in SAP consulting. The speed at which it runs is adapted to the skills of the individual employees.
Why is this path beneficial? Software development is a high-value technical skill, means knowledge advantage and is the stepping stone to a qualified consulting job. The university education has laid the best foundations for software development - the SAP-specific developer skills (e.g. Abap) are acquired by the young professional in the onboarding process.
Through his developer activities, the employee is quickly deployable in projects, can gain practical experience on site at the customer, in different houses and can achieve success in a short time through his developer know-how.
A win-win situation for all sides: The customer receives specialized knowledge, the young professional quickly gains recognition, and the SAP service provider has satisfied customers. The experience gained in the projects then makes it possible to successively expand the field of activity and become "consulting capable".
In initial interviews with applicants, there is often a certain reticence about the field of activity of the software developer. On closer inspection, this often masks the concern of being isolated from customers and topics and solely responsible for implementation "in the basement".
At Innobis, we can quickly resolve this because all employees are involved in finding solutions, advising customers, and creative processes in research and development right from the start.
However, candidates must not underestimate the software developer's high-quality qualifications. Our appeal is then to stand confidently and actively by the skills acquired.
All in all, every young professional in Development & Integration Services undergoes a standard training catalog in the first three to six months, in addition to any individual training that may be required.
In addition to mandatory certification in Abap software development, this includes soft skills training as well as external and internal banking and IT technical training.
Measure success
For targeted and successful talent management, it is important to understand the market, the universities and graduates, and to align onboarding accordingly. The most obvious measure of success is when the SAP consulting company gains the desired number of new, suitable employees through the content and communication of the onboarding process.
A low fluctuation rate and long service with the company are the next indicators of a functioning system. And last but not least, positive feedback from customers and good company ratings from employees on social media platforms such as Kununu speak for a coherent concept.
