Angelika Dammann, Executive Board Member of SAP AG

Angelika Dammann’s appointment to the SAP Executive Board nearly a year ago represented two firsts for SAP: the first woman on the board and the first time a board member has been appointed solely to manage, as the company’s Chief Human Resources Officer called it, “people-related issues.” While the latter achievement tends to draw less attention, it is a big deal—calling into focus a shift from considering human resources not simply as a service provider but a strategic business enabler.

“If we keep HR in the background, if we look at HR as a service provider only, companies will miss out on the opportunity to drive the strategic changes that all have to do with people,” Dammann said from her executive office at Sapphire Now 2011. “It is people and technology that will dictate future business success.”

A lawyer by trade, Dammann arrived at SAP in July 2010 with two decades of experience leading legal and HR departments, as well as executive roles in marketing, finance and communications.

At Sapphire Now, Dammann spoke with ASUGNews.com about running SAP’s global human resources department—from the business benefits of allowing employees to telecommute, to the business benefits of HANA.

ASUGNews.com: SAP’s big on “SAP runs SAP” these days. What SAP software are you using to manage human resources related processes?

Angelika Dammann: SAP uses SAP more and more; I don’t want to say it’s 100 percent, but it’s already a long way.

We will have HANA available inside at the end of the year. It starts with workforce planning, then goes on with the e-recruiting (Nakisa is our partner talent review and succession management system). We use the HCM upgrades every couple of weeks as they come along, and we use our own portal technology to manage ESS and MSS areas and the shared services way of managing ticketing, services and the like. We actually have a lot of customer visits who want to learn how we do it and how they can benefit from it.

ASUGNews.com: What are the benefits having human resources-related data in real-time?

It’s important for me to understand what the demographics are across the globe, in all of our key locations. And then, looking at attrition rates, understanding who we have and understanding how the business is going to evolve. We’re matching our own internal analytics with the external trends that we see in society, in order to manage recruitment and not to be taken by surprise.

When you look at matching the internal picture of your workforce with some of the business strategy focus areas—be it your M&A strategy or your location strategy—then, you can easily foresee where you might have different needs, down to the skill levels that you need. Knowing that in real-time, particularly in fast-growing markets such as India and China, where attrition is usually higher than in some of the other places around the globe, that is really critical in order to proactively drive your business and in order to ensure your future success, so that [employee] development can take place. That is all difficult if there is no good planning.

With all the changes we see in society—there’s a lot of research that tells us that young people want to enhance knowledge and they’re not looking for a job for life anymore — how do you deal with those challenges unless you plan ahead? Unless you really understand how the external forces are developing and you’re matching that with internal strategy?

ASUGNews.com: What are the business benefits of HANA from a line of management point of view?

If you know real-time what the attrition rate is in a particular department, you have it available on an iPad, as we will have very shortly, where you can really determine your KPIs—from the female ratio to the attrition rate to absence rates –the line manager down to the very last level will be able to manage  business irrespective of HR. That’s because they will then be able to proactively drive their needs and come to HR and say, “This is what I need, can you help me manage?”

That’s a very different way of managing our people and responding to what we see as happening in society than how we were operating in the past. The information is available in the moment.

ASUGNews.com: SAP seems to be a company that more and more allows people to work where they live. Why the philosophy on promoting telecommuting?

To me, this is very strategic and very simple. Clearly, as we look at getting the best people and retaining the best people, we’ve got to provide some flexibility. You can’t always ask people to move to one place. Forward-looking companies like SAP must be able to accommodate those needs.

Secondly, the technology is at hand to allow for a very flexible and virtual way of working, while still accommodating personal and human needs. I think that speaks to the changes in society as well. I believe, particularly from an HR point of view, we are much stronger and better positioned in retaining our talent and attracting our talent if we have more flexibility in how we operate, while still operating in a clear framework where we set clear goals for people. This means people are focused on delivering results and not focused on demonstrating presence in an office.

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