it's 12 o'clock on the dots so let's uh start the show how does that 

sound i would um so i'm going to introduce myself i'm kendall 

and i am the host of the sap club and um so a little bit real quick about 

the book club the book club was formed so that everybody can have a um 

a place to go to learn something about sap and it's uh you know authors have 

written all these books and you know it's a a way of um discovering something different that you 

haven't seen or you know something learning and i think you know everybody does 

the uh you know everything's online nowadays and so i think it's great to pick up a book 

again that was the whole purpose behind this and um so a little bit about me i 

am kendall and i'm based out of north carolina and i don't have an accent and um 

been around the whole sap world for 29 years now believe it or not next year is gonna be the big thirty so 

uh i have um uh met so many friends throughout the years 

and this is a great way for everybody to kind of get together and do something fun and uh so i 

we we've been doing a lot of books and about a lot of different things but we have not 

hit hr yet so our book of the month is about sap success factors talent 

and um i have been waiting for this book for a while um it hadn't gotten published we were 

like is it ready is it ready so it finally got ready and 

oh oh i forgot to tell you um what i really do in life um besides the whole sap i said sap book 

club is just it's my side gig so a real gig is that i work for genesis 10 and 

i um and i work with companies to help them provide safety talent to their projects 

and i um helped help them in regards to finding uh candidates uh for 

full-time for part-time for consulting services um even down to project work if you're 

looking to you know implement s4 get up in a in the big the big league as they say um 

or even implement success factors in fact we do that too but um i find that uh 

not only you know this is my kind of side hobby where i like to just get people um give back 

so i think this is kind of giving back to help people out and learning something so our book of the month of course is 

sap success factors book one and a safety success factors book 

two and it's funny because um our last guest uh we had was um bill mcdermott 

and so when i told him our book of the month was successful i was like you got a lot of reading to do we got 

pretty thick books and i was like this is just one and we got two 

so he was laughing about that so um but the reason that there's two books 

is because there's a lot of material to cover so with that being said i would like to 

um uh talk about the authors of this book and we have three authors 

believe it or not we have susan uh mike and vinky so i would like to introduce the authors 

and let them tell them tell you a little bit about them so the first author we're going to talk 

about is susan go ahead susan thanks kendall um hello everyone um it's really great to 

be here and i appreciate the opportunity to talk a little bit about our books um as i said my name is susan traynor and i'm 

based in san diego i've been doing sap hr probably um i don't want to date myself but more than 

25 years um i've gotten into success factors probably within the last five so i'm certified in them 

uh performance management and succession and management um so i've learned a lot in the last five 

years and i just thought this book was a great it gave me a great chance to put down a lot of what i knew and also gave me a 

chance to learn a lot more so it's a really good opportunity excellent and you're based out of san 

diego san diego to be early in the morning for you oh it's nine o'clock is it nine o'clock 

okay start the day um next author is going to be venky 

go ahead tell us about yourself my dear i'm mute uh she said thank you 

thank you okay okay first um thanks kendall um this is thank you 

thank you krishnamotte um been doing erp for about 30 years now 

um sap for about 15 and success factors for about eight years 

now um i i met a lot of 

amazing people in my journey and two of those amazing people is susan and 

mike um when i started my success practice career eight years back 

mike was already a rock star at that time um so um you know i reached out to our 

mutual friend jeremy and said you know i have these questions and who could help me out he said you know 

reach out to mike so um that's how mike and i we got in videos um mike is an amazing friend amazing 

human being and a great colleague um so susan mike and i we have worked together for 

several years so um you know there's a bit of relationship there um 

at my end um these are my eighth and ninth book um and i'm very humbled and honored um 

with all these opportunities um to be more honest um it is jeremy 

masters who introduced me to book writing um so um you know that's how my journey 

lasted and i thought i should give out a short day hey um so um thanks so much 

um kendall for organizing this um this is fantastic excellent all right well the the next 

author we have is mike go ahead mike all right um mike wellins um so i've been doing 

hr and it projects for 15 to 20 years which makes me the 

new kid panel um but um you know i've had i've had a blast uh in 

my career for sure um like thinking you know was saying i mean 

and these you know these two and and we have a lot of mutual friends as well they are all awesome to work with 

um writing a marathon and so when you're when 

you're running a marathon you know you need to um you know pace yourself and and have a lot of 

support in you know in the journey to get there as well and so we've definitely supported each other a 

lot over the years on our projects and so you know these are our people that i trusted to to go on 

this journey with of of getting this book published so we have a ton of great content in 

there a lot of factual stuff but also a lot of great pointers and things that 

you know you're only going to understand or get with experience right so how did the three of 

you how did the three of you meet each other 

so um is it for the book kendall or in general just in general hey how did 

y'all meet yeah so um mike and i become we met um and as i said um jeremy introduced 

um so um and then you know for a couple of years we never met in person until 

we met in in one of the conferences and you know i was 

taken in by mike um you know amazing personality great attitude um by the time we have already done a 

couple of projects together but you know whenever i was on site you know i was not there and when he was on site 

i was not that so you know it was always you know touch and go on virtual 

so whose idea was it to write the book 

you know the publisher reached out to me um you know she was looking for um you know 

a author uh for successfactors title um so she reached out to me because soon as i 

said i already had a few books against my name um except for one title i think almost all books are 

co-authored with jeremy um so um so you're the one who's been 

you were the writer so you were the one who was a so you've written before but the other two had not right yeah you 

know um to be honest i learned a lot from both of them during this journey um so um you know as um as usual i 

reached out to jeremy and asked him you know um i have this project um should we collaborate and jeremy was like you know 

um i've been up writing i don't believe um you know i can take the project anymore 

um so um i i know when the pro when i accepted the project i know um you know not go beyond journey um 

so um you know how long was this journey that's my big question how long did it 

take so um you know when we started the journey 

you know when we had the first uh in a meet-up after deciding you know that susan mike and i will come 

together you know i still remember mike saying you know this will not go beyond this number of pages this will 

not go beyond a couple of weeks and uh you know we literally could not get completed till 

uh march of this year right mike and uh you know the initial topic initial 

discussion for about 150 pages then you know you know we discussed you know what are the topics can be included and we gave a 

proposal for between 350 to 400 pages and we ended up 1200 pages and you know let me be very 

honest here um you know the full credit goes to susan onto mike and especially susan you know she kept 

us on a tour she would not stop writing on a topic you know you know when she finished you 

know my condiment used to read the book and i remember telling mike you know 

people should not refer to the implementation guides that i should refer to this book because this brings out real project 

experiences it tells you the nuances that we do not get to see in an implementation guide 

um so you know all credit goes to mike um and to susan you know both have been you know 

tremendous partners in this project um and i'm very humbled um you know at this opportunity because you 

know i felt sick and i actually have to pull out of a full um you know consulting jobs and i was sick at times 

but both of them did not hesitate to pick up you know what i should have done 

that is so funny that the book was so big that you guys were like um 

broke the printer at a press is that true my teacher yeah they i mean they 

basically told us you know they i think it was like a thousand pages or something was the max if you go more than that it will it will 

physically break the printer so so we had to quickly yeah we thought we were done with this thing 

and we had to scramble okay how do we logically divide this into two volumes because 

we don't want to break their their printers so it's definitely a thorough book to say 

the least and has a lot of great content you know well beyond what sap is going to offer you directly 

oh i yes it goes into great detail which i love and i like the fact that you guys put 

some stories in there as well so can you think of like um 

tell me uh about like one of your clients that uh made a huge impact and putting 

success factors in like where were they at and then what how did that how did success factors 

help them hmm my consultant you should tell the story 

of that partnering company yeah i mean it was i've got i've got a couple different 

um success been planning success stories that are you know very similar because 

i mean believe it or not folks are still using spreadsheets kind of behind the scenes 

um and powerpoint presentations you know to do all of their succession planning 

i think particularly with covid um people realized wow we really need our 

succession plans up and running because you know people were you know especially when the 

economy heated back up people started you know running to different jobs left and right and 

um business continuity for you know many companies became an issue because you'd have these 

key positions where folks would leave and he had no plan how to fulfill them back 

so some of our customers have been very successful in getting off the spreadsheets 

where the data just becomes stale within a matter of days um to getting 

onto a live real-time succession planning system where everybody can collaborate 

at once and get all the data they need to make the right decisions 

and be able to um you know very quickly throw together those executive 

presentations so um you know that's kind of a vague one i 

know i can't i don't want to throw customer names out there but um i mean for sure i think succession in my 

opinion particularly if you implement a lot of the other modules to me makes the the 

biggest impact for the business well i was talking to a professor at one of the universities at 

university alliance sap alliance program and they were telling me 

that um we were talking about like success from you know who is who is the next generation behind 

us and you know i was like looking around and everybody in sap is like my age and 

we're like who's going to replace us you know when we you know retire in like 10 years and 

then we thought you know the the kids aren't taking sap classes they're taking like 

develop they wouldn't be developers or do analytics or something like that so then they we were talking about how 

you know sap and success factors are the core business you have to have hr you got to pay these 

people you know but we've got to get the younger talent to learn and then when i started reading about 

the whole success you know succession and and how it's planned and how it 

goes to like performance reviews and and it was a huge ordeal and i was like you know that's fascinating because that 

actually does play into who's going to be filling the job 

after someone retires and you know based on this guy's performance or he was really good or that he was you know 

that or this or this would be a great person here and you know um 

you know they took this type of training and that you know they learned this and that so um it was fascinating that that's 

being able to be tracked because i thought the same thing spreadsheet was you know i didn't 

realize it until you know i saw the whole thing in so it has played a big 

you know factor i'm sure with several companies 

um kendall can i just take a couple of seconds 

uh mike and susan we would like to give a shout out to gabe powell um she um she's um attending this um 

gave us our technical editor um you know um she was introduced to us by 

mine but you know um this is the first time i met kay but susan and mike um like i know her very well um you know 

um gay did a very um amazing job a great job she was very patient in going through all of her you know manuscripts 

and asking us pointed questions on why are you talking about this why are you sharing this 

you know i mean should it bring um in an additional flavor to the book my conclusion if you want to add thank 

you thanks again gabe for your um support enough during the project 

that is pretty cool and then he also kept us honest i mean i was gonna say yeah it made me 

probably i mean i really made sure everything i wrote was correct and i think just 

knowing that i had an audience a technical writer that was going to be checking everything just made me double check and 

triple check everything just to make sure i didn't speak out of you know did y'all learn anything did you 

actually learn stuff when you put in this book together about you know different functions or features that 

like oh my god yeah i did you did yeah i did i mean they can be going 

through every little detail of each of the modules you know i just tried to find things 

that i knew i had had problems with and try and explain things and i ended up finding other things so it was really it 

was a learning experience it was really very valuable for me that was great was there anything in the was there anything that you guys learned 

by putting this book together that you were like i had no idea or that if i had known 

that oh my gosh was that or anything like that that kind of just stood out 

i think for me it was i wish this book had existed when i first started with some inspectors because it was a very 

painful process just to get going because there was it wasn't a lot of documentation um it was hard to get 

answers and it was maddening um the implementation guide wasn't really specific in things 

so it spent hours and days just trying to figure things out and you know as i went along i learned things i'd write things down make them 

screenshots make my all my little how-to documents and you know over the years i've got a huge 

amount of these documents and it just yeah i thought it would be nice to be able to share what i learned because it was a painful experience this mic can attest 

because we worked together on my first project and i mean it really is helpful to know all these little ins and outs and the 

details so it's great to be able to put it all together and put it in one spot 

that's pretty cool well one thing um you know it's like you said it's changing and evolving 

and you know um one thing that i was wondering is like with um with the whole covet thing and there 

are like clients in hospitals and so forth that might be running success factors and and then all of a sudden you know they 

say hey everybody's got to get vaccinated well is there like a place now that 

successfactors actually thought about oh my gosh maybe we need to put in that into i mean how did that 

did play into this i mean does it yeah um so probably on 

i'd store that kind of information on employee central so the book covers more the talent modules but i did have 

customers on employee central they they didn't record we had the vaccine or not 

um but they would record the type of position and you know in terms of is it going to 

be in a location where there's a lot of other people in close proximity is it a remote position 

that kind of thing so with you know with the mdf you can expand um what the structure of all the 

different data objects looks like and you'll be able to add fields like that to them so 

the telemodules are catching up with the mdf slowly over time um recruiting's got 

quite a bit of them but um the job profile builder has a lot of mdf objects now and we cover some of that in the 

book as well well i remember i was asking you about the whole job profiler i was like 

who writes all of the job descriptions i was like you know how does it work and i you're like the job profiler i'm 

like what can you kind of explain how that works 

thank you you wanna take that one that was your chapter the job profile builder is still 

in a very popular with many of the customers who are on a telling journey um because it's it acts as a 

glue to many of the talent modules um you know career development um 

requisition learning um you know succession performance career 

development planning so um yeah the job descriptions um maintaining them it's painful but 

once you migrated over to success factors um it's not that painful um you know 

learning how to import the data into job profile builder is not a rocket science you know i i um 

you know um i i've seen customers who have started you know oh my gosh how am i going to go 

get this done and ended up you know teaching me a couple of tricks um and um there are also third-party 

providers um you know who provide that content that can also be imported into success factors um so if 

you're in a talent journey you know i'd strongly recommend that you take a look into 

um job profile builder um you know um it's like you know the seat in three 

legs too um you know there's no point in having a three licks tool if you cannot sit on it and that's where 

in a job profile builder so just so do that so like uh the 

recruiting department so they would talk to like one of the managers and so forth and then managers 

is like you know hey i need you know you know an sap fico and they're like well 

more detail and then did they just go into the joe prop the job profiler and then start picking like 

okay if i seo and then it starts bringing in pieces of like you know things that if i see a person 

would do and then they can go back to the manager and say hey does this look right and i mean is that kind of how it works 

yeah your understanding is um you know is pretty much aligned um you know many of the hiring managers 

that really do not have the time um you know to fill in the entire um requisition right when they stop create 

the requisition so they're basically going to say you know this is the position that i want to fill um and then you know that's where the 

job profile builder builds it so you know the recruiter basically be going to the job profile builder you 

know pick out sap hcm or success factors there might be several 

you know descriptions of success factors but they'll probably pick something that is very closest to what this person will 

be doing um based on the manager's requirement they pull into it and they also have the ability to customize it 

further add more details specific to what they're looking for hmm 

it also seems like um compensation plays a big part um a lot of times they'll already have written their own job descriptions 

so then a lot of that information gets incorporated with recruiting so then they cannot actually use all that information and the chat profile does it 

so it's an arduous task to actually get all that all the job descriptions written um especially we've got hundreds of 

thousands of jobs um so there's a big pain point when you actually start out but once you get the 

job descriptions you know set up and then get the job profiles um built i mean that's just a matter of maintaining that in the 

system clearance and passwords became inactive i was looking at um one of the questions 

somebody submitted about uh key position uh compromises in your job 

description hierarchy um clearances and passwords 

like i guess this would be within federal uh obviously within job descriptions you can put different 

you know like you know what kind of you know clearances you would need and those are just 

different fields that you would fill out based on the job profile pretty much so like if you 

needed somebody who had an active secret clearance or you know you could have like probably a drop down 

menu for that and it just so that would be a federal project that you know they would build out the 

job profile builder differently than say a commercial client who that just didn't have you know need 

i guess it would be based upon you know um your customer and what their needs were 

yeah you cannot maintain multiple templates in the job profile builder and depending on the customer or even 

the job requirement now many customers um in a professional services for example 

um you know they do have a a commercial um division as well as a federal 

division and um you know the federal division obviously has a lot more guard rails compared to the 

um the commercial division so you know such customers end up maintaining two different templates and 

your federal template obviously say you know security clearance required or not and then you know you can um if 

selecting what level of security clearance is required and you know doesn't need to have a 

background in you know a veteran services for example so yeah i mean you can actually you know 

end up building some custom needs um you know depending on what your actual requirement is good 

yeah because we were talking about the whole remote thing now with people going remote and um 

you know different clients are saying oh like this job you can work anywhere you want or you know this is you have to be here or that 

kind of thing and um it kind of gets tricky i think for recruiters you know to determine that based on you 

know what um so like they would say oh it's remote until september you know obviously there's now 

new things that you would have to put into the job profile instead of you know so those are obviously things that you 

would build into it or how does all that work yeah so that's a great question right um 

you know um even prior to um the covet you know some of the positions were in a 

remote you know like they obviously don't need a on-site presence though you know over 

90 percent of the workforce were you know on site but the core with you know it was um 

a seismic shift you know to the remote workforce so um you know job profiler obviously 

got updated based on the new work conditions you know whether an on-site presence is 

needed or not or you know much of on-site presence is required so all of those you know additional needs where you know 

um were captured or you know for an existing customers their templates were updated you know to 

capture this new information that's a great question yeah and also within the job profiler does it 

capture salaries and so forth as well based on positions or 

so you can you know capture your salary needs um you know it may not 

necessarily you know drill down into positions because an organization could have you know multiple positions and it's difficult to 

maintain the salary needs or the position level so customers typically do it um 

you know on some basic uh foundation object and they will say you know this position will carry you know 

this minimum to this maximum range and then you know they'll obviously will adjust it according to what the needs 

and this also goes back to what uh susan shared with us a few minutes ago right 

um you know on the compensation so you know i've also seen customers and susan can add further 

you know on the range penetration and the copper issue so um you know it's an amazing tool um 

you know to be very honest job profile builder has come a very very long way um compared to 

the days um you know um success factors saying you know you should start using it so yeah well i've noticed that some of 

these jobs you know the salaries are like way too low and i'm like dude man you're 

not gonna get anybody for that obviously they clicked the wrong buttons on the uh 

the job profile builder to get the right salaries but also like with the remote does that 

have a do they like is there a place in there where you can say like okay if it's remote the salary is going to be less 

or you know you get you know then on-site person is there like a gauge in 

there or something they could put in or something yeah susan and mike can chime in on this but um i don't believe 

um it's a good hr policy or an employment policy to say you know if your remote your salary is going to be 

different compared to um you know where you are on site um you know because with this new um 

culture of um you know the workforce having to be removed you know because of you know the necessity of it and 

many of my customers um i've agreed that i have not seen that dip in productivity um you know they're 

actually saying um employees are more productive but um in hr i've also said you know that we 

have to innovate on what new benefits we could offer you know for such a large benefits um in 

a large population of the workforce were remote um so so i meant to see a customer who 

have actually made a salary differentiation based on whether they're remote or um or on-site 

so mike and susan yeah i haven't seen a difference in 

salaries between the two um you know and then 

over the right time we're into negotiations too with um you know on the recruiting end of things 

um but you know i don't think most people would spell that now you know in the system 

so everybody living in those very expensive cities need to live like in the middle of nowhere 

because you can get the same salaries but that's that's what i'd be doing and also a state with no taxes so 

that's another big thing like if it's remote and um someone's in a state that's like you 

know there's no taxes or if there's a you know you gotta capture where they're located is there 

um are there places in there where that can be done because you know yeah that i mean that's more 

employee central payroll employee central so we our book would be probably you 

know 20 000 pages if we try to include all that so we just stuck with the talent modules 

right so so when we talk about success factors talent we're talking about like um job profile builder to an extent jump 

profile builder really encompasses the whole solution right including employee 

central but um really the employee kind of talent profile performance and 

goals succession planning you know 360 evaluations 

um what am i leaving out folks cdpm calibrations yeah calibration that 

was very confusing can you explain that because i was very confused on that chapter 

calibration's all yours susan i was going to say that i guess that would be me um i guess it's just a way to make 

sure that people are um rated equally across the um 

organization because maybe some managers aren't as objective as others so it doesn't seem fair to have you know 

people getting these extraordinary ratings when um people that probably are doing the same job are 

getting lower ratings so it really gives the company a chance to come together and 

you compare people in terms of you know is this rating appropriate um this is a probe not appropriate it 

just gives them a more concise a more um consistent rating system so they can just use more 

than just you know one one different thing they can use multiple um multiple multiple criteria 

so that isn't just based on one thing um so that way when you have a whole group within an organization 

looking at a group of people they can only speak more objectively i think that helps out with success 

training too because then if somebody gets you know promoted and you look at the other guy and he's you 

know so that's so that kind of gives everybody equal playing field really 

i mean they can look at them not just you know the work they've done this year but they can look at you other people that worked with them 

so you can get more of a perspective interest other than just what the manager says that gives a greater rounded um 

perspective on life what do you guys think is the biggest trend like what are most companies doing 

with you know what are they in what are they putting in everything or are they really this one 

part so performance and goals is really the 

flagship product of success factors that was where the product started and if you um 

if you look today too it's it's still where the most new customers sign on um it's one of the 

simplest to implement in terms of you know time to value very quick 

and um but it's also very robust as well i think that was some of what you know 

the whole team who wrote the book started to realize is just how much capability is hidden down in there you 

know you start peeling away the onion and you just keep finding more and more and more and next thing you know you have a 100 page 

book so you know most most companies only use probably about this much of the 

capabilities of the performance and goals module in reality it can handle all kinds of different 

scenarios in order to get people to collaborate on what the business objectives of the company are 

and then in turn rate how people are you know fulfilling those objectives 

i even thought it was funny that you can give people badges like there's nothing in there yeah 

yeah i haven't had a lot of customers implement the badges um but they are they are pretty cool the 

employee of the month i would be like where's my badge you know i think at one point there was a limit 

of how many badges you could have and one company had an issue with that because they said well they want more than eight so i think now they have expanded the 

numbers that are available so it's just kind of funny wow that's a lot of badges they didn't think that was enough so 

so what fiori apps have y'all been um seeing uh relate to what you're doing now 

within talent anything i've i haven't seen a whole lot 

of add-ons to the talent modules per se right the modules that we listed 

i've seen some neat ones assist with like recruiting and onboarding work but 

you know i mean you can definitely integrate fiori with success factors if you're willing to use middleware to 

have the two systems talk to one another and create your own custom apps on the cloud 

right if you if you use um the hana cloud you can build fiori apps that you know do something a little extra that 

you want to have success factors exchange data with with that app 

so you can run success factors completely separate from any system yeah i mean the idea is 

it's kind of plug and play right so i mean within a matter of months you can get a performance and goals system i mean just 

a few short months um you know performance and goals implementation up up and running from 

start to finish i've done the same with succession i'm working on a succession project right now that's 

three months long right so um you know it's very quick everything's 

really already built you're just configuring sap hey bring up this instance and then we 

configure it and you know you run a test instance and then you move it to production some folk some 

have more systems than that maybe you have a production support and also kind of staging 

system but um you know very fast you're not building any of these apps from from scratch so how long does it 

take usually for a customer to install success factors 

you don't have to install it you request an instance and it's there and it functions and 

you're just configuring the kind of the nitty-gritty details of what you know okay what's the exact 

process for a performance form should go through should go through employee first and then manager should the manager start 

start it right what um you know what fields are being added to the goal plan those 

kinds of things so you all sit down and do a lot of workshops with hr and figure out what they would like it 

to do and or what would they like to do or you have three not a lot three so you've done 

three iterations of excuse so you know it's probably probably about four workshops in an 

idealized right um implementation and using some customers have a very 

strong idea of what they want going in so it's just a matter of making sure that the system is going to work the way 

they ask there is um they have no clue what success factors does or how it works 

so i always like to um configure a sales demo some instance and just show them all the different possibilities just so 

they can get an idea of what's out there and what they may decide to implement 

i can only imagine some of these great big companies and all those employees and how you you know 

get them all in there and you know who reports to who and is that a bigger challenge like the 

hierarchy um with success you know with secession planning and i 

mean or not there's a standard um 

file format um and so you typically just give the customer hey this is the 

the format to load the employee data in and that's that i mean so 

normally they if they're using employee central it's a simple mapping within the system so i mean 

there's not even anything um to import in there third-party system 

or if they're using sap on premise then sap on premise already has a 

program that outputs the employee data in the format that you 

need if you're using a third-party system you just say here's the template just put the data in that format put it up 

so woodward what are some big changes in success factors that you've seen like the biggest ones over the years 

that within you know what do you think the biggest one has been within you know 

within the talent i think um continues is becoming um more used and now um with 

the latest release it is it's integrated with um performance and goals in a greater 

depth than it was before so a lot of people are finding that's a really helpful tool to use yeah because i've noticed that 

recruiting and retainment are the big things now that companies are going 

after and how do you you know how do you find it and how do you retain the talent and how 

do you keep the talent so this whole you know what what you guys wrote is really 

all of that because that's in a nutshell isn't it yeah um and as we said um you know 

the book brings in our live project experiences um as you write you said in a recruiting 

retention on the highest cost you know um that an employer you know incurs 

in their bitcoin budget and this book kind of covers those covers 

you know what we thought are the practices that we implemented out of customer locations 

um you know it could vary from you know scenario to scenario customer to customer industry to industry geography 

location to geographic locations but the core theme on how you can leverage success factors 

um you know to minimize the cost of your hiring and retention is kind of you know spelled out in the 

book yeah because i mean that's huge i think that companies 

you know you spend so much money trying to get these employees or find them and then but 

retaining them you know that's huge so you know with the success with secession planning and being able 

to promote from within is um something that a lot of companies i think would be looking at 

right now i think also part of it is um there's a career development component 

um so that gives employees a chance to kind of see what positions are available within the corporation um so they can 

try and you know strive to reaching those those higher level jobs so they can then do a 

set of competencies that they're trying to work for so they can you know work on things that they want to grow 

into so it's a chance for people to take ownership of their own career and figure out where they want to go 

within the company and what skills they need to get there so that's cool it's like with the career 

worksheet so you can look at all the different job roles and the job descriptions based on the job 

profile builder um and then just kind of see how ready am i yet for this position and you can 

kind of figure out what development goals i need to uh set up to kind of move along that path so if i want to be 

cio will it tell me who's going to retire at what date and then i would take their job i know it'll tell you the 

competencies that you need or the behaviors or skills to reach those up yeah some things are 

out of your hands but at least you'll know you know the qualifications you would need so you can kind of prep 

you know make sure you've got the right skills going in the right direction that's pretty cool so now you guys 

dedicated this book to certain people so who did you dedicate the book to 

dedicated to my brothers jeff and randy um my dad died but actually young so they were kind of they're older and they 

were kind of you know helped me along they like guided me and supported and encouraged me so 

you know big shout out to them because they were they're great guys all right mike what about you who did 

you dedicate the book to uh i dedicated to um sheila mcgovern who 

was um um a partner at ibm and um my 

my boss for many years as a boss but you know really a mentor as well too so she had 

passed away um shortly before we started the book um so she had a huge impact on a lot of 

consultants careers um and so she was the one who said when sap bought 

success factors she said okay you know i don't like real sharp but figuring things out quick 

and helping others to learn um so i want him to go and learn what this does 

and you know help our practice figure out what to do so because of that you know i'm here 

today that's cool well all right vinky uh you told me a story 

earlier um that you met uh a person over coffee 

and why don't you tell me that story i think that's pretty interesting because a lot of 

people you know don't get to meet the man who uh sold success factors to bill 

mcdermott today at sap so tell us thinking about lid so um 

in a large is a very big name here so you know i'm not claiming anything here and i just want to um 

you know stress that um you know when uh last sat down you know 

uh main sacrifice was successful you know um around that time you know i was um 

um pitching my business plan in the vc circuit and i was actually looking for a mentor 

you know um who could get me started you know um because of the business plan 

i had was you know slightly different and um 

and i was also looking for an hrs solution that i could leverage and that actually you know um signed up with um 

a different solution and um you know one of other vcs 

you know i can introduce you to him um you know um extend some notes with 

so um you know i was introduced and then you know it was very kind to um you know 

respond to my um query and then um 

you know during one of his many travels he said i asked him when we can meet and during 

one of his many travels he said you know i'll be on this place so on so and so dave 

um if you want to travel there you know we can spend some time together um so um you know we ended up meeting in 

a coffee shop um and um you know towards the end of 

our meeting this is what you said you know you're going to get a lot of um 

you know people who are going to discourage you are going to demotivate you and you're going to make uh get a lot of 

people who are going to say do you really believe in your concept but you know 

if you want to be successful you know follow what you get says and if you want to be successful as an 

entrepreneur you know add the fire in your tummy and see to it that it never does yourself 

and you know never give up on your dreams so well you know um 

what lars did is amazing um you literally innovated the market um you know cloud was still there you 

know oracle at that time i'd um introduced oracle on demand and exodus was a big name 

um but you know the specific very niche um you know hrs on the cloud 

you know uh last literally innovated and as mike said you know for a very long 

time performance management was the flagship for success factors and uh when sap started looking into it 

um started doing the due diligence you know i was um i had an i have an inside story which obviously i cannot share it here 

you know it was because um success factors was beating sap in the performance um 

big time what do you mean it was really beating disabled 

terrible hr system at that time yeah so um you know um 

that made the sap team um data shifted to have a second look on what this success practice is all about and you 

know they started hitting the market make some acquisitions um they were interested in one 

particular application but you know their ass grade was a lot more than they looked at something else 

you know they didn't um but i did get introduced to my cat lingua later went on to um you know to lead success 

factors into the maturity that we see today and that's where you know they looked at successfacts 

um and they acquired it you know a lot of things happen before the media position um 

but one thing that um you know we should all thank the leadership um at 

that time is you know to the extent possible to make sure that the culture of success practice is retained 

um you know sap is not known for the quick innovation cycle that we see 

today you know um and it was the first company that said we're not going to go 

and change our sap we want to stay success yeah they wanted culture to stay the 

same so that they were the first weren't they so what lars that was all of into that 

yeah you know um i believe when lars agreed to um come on board one of the things that 

um you know it demanded is you know um that the innovation and the 

entrepreneurial spirit and the quick cycle and keeping your ears to the ground to listen to the 

customers of voices should be retained um you know and um you know the quality 

experts and also you know demanded around the same um you know uh thing that you know the 

innovation should be retained um so you know these are all the leaders you know literally you know created the market 

and ex employee experience has been around you know for a while but it never went mainstream till politics 

you know made us sit up and realize you know what experience management is all about and 

the same credit goes to lars you know for getting us you know understand 

what innovation means and how relevant it is to um employee management and how long did 

you work at success factors i never really worked for success factors um you know i was 

with sap you know okay yeah i got to meet um lars 

because you know i was doing something on my own and you know i wanted to you know bring in some additional qualities 

and i really didn't know where to get started and you know isn't it amazing how you 

bump into people and then later in life you're like oh my gosh that was him i can't 

yeah believe you know when i met lars you know um i literally got um in a 

shock because you know the man was losing with confidence you know he was literally saying no the world is there for you to conquer 

and um you know i um and everybody spoke and uh you know i have no 

hesitancy to say you know it made a huge difference um you know in my thinking and to never 

give up on what you believe and uh know how to give up on your dreams so 

so who did you dedicate the book to um i dedicated this book to my mom 

um she's no more um you know but whatever i am today 

you know she is responsible um you know she never said you know that 

you need to do this you need to lead such a life and you know she said only one thing no matter what you do 

i should be proud of you you know um they should not say oh this is venky's mom you know i'd be very happy together but 

you know prior to saying this i should say this is you know our son you know which means it's a direct 

reflection on me bringing you up and making you the man you are you know never forget your 

roots you know those were the you know examples he said you know no matter what you do in life do not forget your roots 

and make sure um you take people along with you to help them grow and mature 

just as you know come up you know not every human being um is is blessed 

um you know uh to have people you know show them what 

they need to be and she said you know never is it to uh in a text in enough so well i 

think that all three of you i had done an amazing job writing this book and you're all 

blessed i don't think i could have written a thousand page book 

like you guys did and when endemic 

so who so i was uh is there um going to be updates to the 

book or is there tell us about how you all are going to continue you know keeping it current and live and 

so forth yeah we may do a um you know periodic 

update um but we'll we also have worklogics.blog 

you can go there um every quarterly or excuse me it's not quarterly anymore 

thank goodness twice annually the sap does their releases 

and so there we do a review of those releases so you know if you want to make sure 

that you're up to date um you can you can check there that will become that's cool and do you 

guys do any other kind of blogs or do you all do any kind of you know anywhere else of learning 

yeah i wait um you know twitter is um it's um it's a good place um i don't 

blog that much um you know but i do read other people's blogs 

um you know one of the new nice cultures about sap is um you know the 

product stream almost all of them are on twitter and they do not hesitate um you know to contribute their 

knowledge on product innovations or what success practice is all about so you know that's to me you know that's 

that's been an amazing experience so far and um linkedin um you know i'm part of 

um you know about 10 other people or nine other people who maintain a um a linkedin group dedicated success 

factors um it was started and uh matured by 

um jarrett majarat has taken an early retirement which he deserves 

and you put together on this team so you know a lot of nice conversations in that linkedin 

group um you know on and off i mean i also contribute to it but you know my contributions has almost 

always been you know linking to uh the sap blocks but um when 

um who's also in this call it does an amazing job of pulling 

together is it just a human experience management video series so 

you know if you haven't seen it yet you know take a moment well i would like to end this call with 

one question to each of you ready so during the couple the months that 

i've been talking about your book in the book club i have been featuring 

various animals i don't know if everybody's been checking that out but i read to the animals your books 

so i figured you know who's who would like technical books well these animals will so which animal was 

your favorite i had let's see we started off with the horse then i went to a bunny 

rabbit and then i went to dog and then i went to the bearded dragon 

so which one was your favorite i went with the dog because he's just look so sweet and cuddly and 

just um the lizard i've just thought into reptiles so i think the dog is my favorite 

what about you vicky what's your favorite um elephants um you know elephants have had 

uh you know huge influence on me i don't know why you're uh that's a little hard to explain but um 

you know on and off i have visited elephant sanctuaries um and as a volunteer i've also ended up 

you know amazed um how beautiful these animals are 

um you know just watching them you know um as its own story and i don't know why 

but kind of inspired what about you mike oh the the bearded 

dragon definitely yeah yeah what you know one because of the the matching look that's right you have 

that matching lizard thing going on but also um you know how to train your 

dragon movie my kids love that so definitely reminds me of that and you know the sap success factors is 

a great thing to train your dragon then so i definitely agree and his uh the dragon's name 

is spike and it's my neighbor's kids lizard and it started off little 

and it now the lizard is like this big and we found out that it's not a boy 

it's a girl so it's still named spike and um i have to go when they go to town i have 

to go and um feed it live crickets and worms 

and so i have these tongs and the crickets i would try to drop them in the tank 

and they would jump out but i wouldn't capture them because i was scared to go 

so i would have to know i'm sorry but there's like eight crickets running around your house right now so uh but yeah the bearded dragon he 

rocks he's the best and on my head he actually sat in his little fingernails with 

clingy he was really spiky it was not cuddly at all so anyway with that spike and i 

would like to tell you thank you so much all of you guys for joining the sap book club we've had a great time 

and i hope that everybody here um has learned something a little bit about 

you know how to get talent how to keep talent and uh 

reach your book i think it's wonderful thank you all and thanks everybody for attending and 

i know thank you bye guys