Migrate Payroll from SAP On-premise to Employee Central Payroll Using Lift & Shift

Created on August 15, 2022
Last updated on September 1st, 2022 at 12:36 pm by Abhishek Jain


Remote, hybrid, or in-office?

Seems like new articles arguing one way or the other pop up daily. Throw in employees in multiple countries with ever-changing laws and regulations. The resulting complexity has many SAP® customers looking at a cloud-based SuccessFactors solution to help make sense of corporate HR and Payroll.

Are You Ready?

If that describes you, SAP is stepping in to help. SAP created a Readiness Check for SAP SuccessFactors.

According to SAP, “SAP Readiness Check for SAP SuccessFactors solutions allows subject matter experts to have the required level of insight into key topics areas (such as implemented functionality, degree of customization, number of interfaces, and existing data footprint) necessary to properly assess the complexity of an existing SAP ERP HCM productive environment.”

On-Premise to Cloud

Bigger implementations aside, let’s look at the specifics of moving SAP HCM On-Premise Payroll to SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Payroll (ECP).

You can move to the cloud either by “lift and shift” or “rip and replace.” Deciding which approach is better is a matter of looking at factors including:

  • Current system complexity
  • Data quality
  • Acquisitions
  • Timelines

Read a deeper comparison of the two approaches in our article Weighing the Benefits of Lift and Shift vs. Rip and Replace in SAP Payroll.

SAP built ECP on its payroll engine. Only the payroll tool is cloud-based; the product itself stays the same.

Rizing Lift and Shift

For an on-premise payroll system with no significant changes expected, use Rizing’s lift and shift approach. This is a like-to-like copy of your configuration from one system to another, with the ability to adjust things if necessary.

Our lift and shift approach uses tools from our partners to help your cloud payroll migration project go faster with fewer errors.

The process has three phases:

  1. Migration of SAP On-Premise payroll configuration to SAP SuccessFactors ECP
  2. Migration of Employee Data from SAP On-Premise payroll to SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central & Employee Central Payroll
  3. Payroll parallel run process

Migration of SAP On-Premise Payroll configuration to SAP SuccessFactors ECP

Our process:

  • Uses a payroll configuration copy feature that helps select the necessary SAP tables for migration depending on your country-specific needs.
  • Copies your payroll configuration to the ECP development server with the same configuration available in the transport requests. The configuration can also be migrated to your quality & production ECP systems.
  • Has an option to migrate all or partial sample test data for post-migration validation. The data can be scrambled for privacy.
  • Has built-in reports to validate the migrated configuration, with specific reports to verify results between your legacy system and ECP.
  • Takes days rather than the months required by a conventional migration process.

Migration of Employee Data from SAP On-premise payroll to SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central & Employee Central Payroll

Our process:

  • Migrates historical transactional data, including payroll results to ECP.
  • Has data mapping and scrambling to support any transformation requirements.
  • Can also migrate data from SAP On-premise Payroll system to SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central. The tool generates .csv files for EC to import.

Payroll Parallel Run Process

Our process:

  • Compares data and payroll results between SAP On-Premise payroll and SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Payroll using a secure Remote Function Call (RFC) connection.
  • Has reports to highlight data differences between two systems. If the process finds discrepancies in the data, you can set status and add notes to the records.
  • Compares payroll results between two systems and highlights inconsistencies. You can drill down into the reports and navigate directly to source data for further analysis.

Need help?

If you are considering moving your payroll from on-premise to SAP ECP, feel free to contact us. We’ll help determine the proper process, tools, and staffing required to make your project a success.

Talk to a Rizing Expert

Whether you’re just getting started or are well on your way, we can help.