SAP HR Introduction

SAP HR or SAP Human Resource is one of the largest modules in the SAP R/3 system which consists of many submodules like

1. Organizational Management
2. Personnel Administration
3. Recruitment
4. Time Management
5. Payroll
6. Benefits
7. Compensation Management
8. Personnel Cost Planning
9. Budget Management
10. Personnel Development
11. Training & Event Management
12. Travel Management
13. Environmental Health & Safety (under the SAP HR node in SAP Easy Access)

    Many of these sub modules are further sub divided into many components for eg Time Management is further divided into Time Administration, Shift Planning,Incentive Wages and Time Sheet.Environment Health & Safety is further divided into Occupational Health & Industrial Hygiene & Safety.
With the advent of mySAP , SAP HR was then called mySAP HR . What got added with my(mark this word)SAP was the web services like ESS (Employee Self-Service) and the MSS Manager’s Self Service) which gave ,empowerment to the employees and managers, employees to better manage their own data and managers to better manage their own departments/divisions. This became the turning point for SAP HR to shift from being a data repository to a strategic tool where the HR departments now focused more of strategic tasks than administrative ones which were now offloaded to the employees and managers using these self services.
Looking back at the earlier days, when the HR Head required a headcount report from all his divisions, it would mean asking for each division to provide data and than receiving this data at the HR Headquarters. Compiling the same and providing it to the management could possibly take a few days to maybe weeks where the data accuracy could be questioned, data could be redundant etc. This was due to the fact that the HR data would be sitting across in different systems in different locations and the IT practices being followed differently (if not HR) at these different locations.If one could not get an accurate HR report one could wonder trying to get information of HR integrated to other functions like Logistics etc would have made life so difficult for an HR consultant.

With the advent of SAP , and the SAP HR module , all the HR information for an organization/company got collated at one place in a very structured manner.To find a specific information for an employee (one who is on the payroll of the organization) or applicant(one who intend to be on the payroll of an organization), all one needed to do is use a transaction like “PA20″ which is Display HR master data( note this is so important because this is the basis of an SAP system ie it is a transactional system) and enter the 4 digit infotype number to view an infotype.

To see the address of an employee use the transaction “PA20″ and go the Display HR master data screen, enter the unique 8 digit employee number (this is the primary key to all employee information ), type infotype 0006 for that employee and see the current information or history (using the list view)stored there.