12/27/23, 2:33 PM Employee Central Side-By-Side: Deployment and Solution Architecture Considerations | SAP Blogs

Community
Follow

 Mark Your Calendars 

 Like
Mark Your Calendars with these Here’s what you need to know to prepare.
Important Dates. SAP Community is
moving in January 2024!  RSS Feed

Ask a Question Write a Blog Post Login

Product Information

Gabriel Henrich
April 24, 2019 | 2 minute read

Employee Central Side-By-Side:

Deployment and Solution Architecture
Considerations
 2  3  3,250

When starting an Employee Central implementation, whether coming from an

existing SAP ERP HCM installation, from a non-SAP HR system landscape or even
from a mixture both, the question arises on the deployment model to be chosen for
the Employee Central roll-out.

Although SAP’s recommendation is clear: “…Employee Central is the leading global

HR-Core system and it replicates data to the connected HR systems for payroll and
local processes…”, sometimes customers are not able to achieve this outcome all at
once, especially starting from a heterogeneous country/HR system vendor
landscape. That’s where the Employee Central side-by-side deployment model
comes into play, allowing at first for a global HR data consolidation and transitioning
to a EC-leading setup (such as the Core Hybrid setup).

https://blogs.sap.com/2019/04/24/employee-central-side-by-side-deployment-and-solution-architecture-considerations/ 1/5
12/27/23, 2:33 PM Employee Central Side-By-Side: Deployment and Solution Architecture Considerations | SAP Blogs

In order to provide more insight into the Side-by-Side deployment model and to state
a clear scenario-based recommendation, we released an “Implementation Design
Principle” covering the subject. You can access it as a customer here, and as an
implementation partner here. The document´s abstract and problem statement you
can read below.

Abstract

“Side-by-Side” is a deployment model which allows companies to consolidate

workforce and organizational data in Employee Central while keeping existing HCM
systems as system(s) of record for those data. This document details the
recommendation for Side-by-Side solution architecture, explains how it can be
applied to a cross-country multi-system environment and how it is possible to
transition from a Side-by-Side deployment to a Core Hybrid deployment. This
document also covers implementation considerations for supporting use-cases in
the area of global mobility in the Side-by-Side model.

Problem Statement

Customers end up with a distributed HR system landscapes due to multiple factors.

Sometimes, it is the result of continuous mergers and acquisitions, sometimes it is
the need to have independently, locally optimized HR processes running in local
systems blocking the consolidation on a single globally harmonized system. In all
cases, customers are lacking a global consolidated view on their HR data and
suffering from the consequences.

Side-by-Side provides a globally consolidated view on HR data while at the same time
respects the need to leave the distributed HR system landscape (their SAP HCM
systems) basically unchanged. By doing so, Side-by-Side also enables customers to
focus on implementing EC for a specific country while leaving the rest of the system
landscape unchanged.
https://blogs.sap.com/2019/04/24/employee-central-side-by-side-deployment-and-solution-architecture-considerations/ 2/5
12/27/23, 2:33 PM Employee Central Side-By-Side: Deployment and Solution Architecture Considerations | SAP Blogs

In all these cases, EC will be leveraged as consolidation system plus optionally as a

system of record for a subset of the global population. The way Side-by-Side
achieves the consolidation is by means of multiple data integrations feeding HR data
from the to-be consolidated SAP HCM systems into EC. Chapter 5 will explain
different use-cases in more detail…

We encourage you to read this and other IDPs and bring your comments and ideas /
feedback to us either by commenting on this blog or by contacting us at
SAPSuccessFactorsIDPDoc@sap.com

We are planning to continuously publish more documents addressing relevant topics,

hence it is worth to drop by regularly and bookmark the links!

Alert Moderator

Assigned Tags

HCM (Human Capital Management)

SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central

SAP SuccessFactors HXM Core

idp

side-by-side

Similar Blog Posts 

Implementation Design Principles for SAP SuccessFactors solutions
By Sharath T N Apr 15, 2019

Employee Central Side by Side Deployment – SapphireNOW presentation

By Eva Woo Apr 27, 2015

Today at #SapphireNow: Learn about Employee Central integration with SAP HCM through NY Life case-study at 8
am in S320A
By Parvathy Sankar May 07, 2015

Related Questions 
https://blogs.sap.com/2019/04/24/employee-central-side-by-side-deployment-and-solution-architecture-considerations/ 3/5
12/27/23, 2:33 PM Employee Central Side-By-Side: Deployment and Solution Architecture Considerations | SAP Blogs

Success factors BiZx

By Former Member Aug 12, 2013

SF: Sync data between SAP and SSFF

By Former Member Apr 19, 2016

Versions
By Former Member Jul 08, 2011

2 Comments

You must be Logged on to comment or reply to a post.

Sharath T N
April 24, 2019 at 10:36 am

Good read for customer going live country by country

Like 0 | Share

Umesh Chaudhari
May 10, 2019 at 7:04 pm

One of the key criteria is also Time Management solution as with current limitations customer still wants to
keep SAP HCM systems.

Regards,

Umesh Chaudhari.

Like 0 | Share

https://blogs.sap.com/2019/04/24/employee-central-side-by-side-deployment-and-solution-architecture-considerations/ 4/5
12/27/23, 2:33 PM Employee Central Side-By-Side: Deployment and Solution Architecture Considerations | SAP Blogs

Find us on

Privacy Terms of Use

Legal Disclosure Copyright

Trademark Cookie Preferences

Newsletter Support

https://blogs.sap.com/2019/04/24/employee-central-side-by-side-deployment-and-solution-architecture-considerations/ 5/5