Line Manager Portal

By Karsten Erxleben and Markus Kuppe, SAP AG – December 22, 2000

Disclaimer: Please note that this edition was written in 2000. Therefore, statements in the articles, particularly those regarding SAP's products, product strategy, branding strategy, and organizational structure, may no longer be valid.

This article introduces the Line Manager Portal, a portal project from the Greenfield initiative. As with all the other portal projects in this initiative, the Line Manager Portal was primarily a feasibility study. However, the valuable insights gained during this project are already influencing the work taking place on the next version of this portal.

First of all, this document describes the line manager's role and asks what the daily work of a line manager involves. This is crucial information for the development team when determining how a portal can support a line manager. It then goes on to outline the budget & monitoring view, the main view of the line manager portal, focusing on the MiniApps used in this view.

This article concludes with a short summary of the other views of the Line Manager Portal and with some customer reactions to this prototype. We will also touch on what should be included and improved on in a future version.

 

The Line Manager Role

The Line Manager Portal

Figure 1: The Line Manager Portal - click for larger image

The line manager

  • Is primarily responsible for personnel and costs
  • Uses a range of SAP data / reports / transactions with relevant contextual information

In addition, a portal has to offer general support for tasks, which every employee in a company needs, such as communication support (e-mail, calendar and to-do functionality), employee self-service (applying for a vacation; ordering goods and tracking the order status; travel planning and expenses, etc.), news feeds relevant to the company as well as external news (news streaming), and Intranet integration.

This role definition implies that the addressee could be a manager in any field, such as a plant manager, production manager, development manager, or a sales manager. This also means that the portal design uses the generic information needs of the line manager as a focal point.

The prototype described in this article was created by inputting data from a user-centered design process, that is, interviewing and observing managers as users to base the design on real customer data. This resulted in a proposal which suits every customer. In other words, a portal only "comes into being", if it is tailored to the needs of its users.

The portal is limitless in that it allows managers to access the whole Web and not just SAP information and tools. In addition, the portal provides more than just information. It enables managers to work more efficiently by providing access to different tools and reports, such as SAP WebSurvey, Cost Center Planning, Employee Self Service, Internal Service Request, BW reports or MiniApps – and, last but not least, normal Web content.

 

MiniApps for Supporting the Line Manager's Tasks

The tasks for which the line manager is responsible are supported by several MiniApp sets specifically tailored to the line manager's needs. Using the portal, managers should find answers to the questions with which they are confronted. These could be:

  • Are there any figures that give cause for concern in the areas of cost centers, employees, projects or orders?
  • Where can they get to the heart of the matter?
  • What is the latest company information?
  • What are the current sales figures for their product?

Further questions include:

  • Where is the meeting at 2 PM taking place?
  • What is the presentation for the meeting like?
  • Is Karen Brown still ill?
  • What was the content of Peter's mail?
  • Is John Danton still on vacation?

Alerts

Cost Center Alerts

This MiniApp shows alerts on the user's cost centers concerning high variances. Each user can choose his or her own cost centers to be monitored. And he or she can edit personal rules to be checked on these cost centers.

Cost center alert

Figure 2: Cost center alert - click for larger and extended version

Orders: Budget Consumption

This MiniApp shows the actual budget consumption on internal orders. Low consumption is shown green. If the budget is almost totally consumed it is shown in yellow. If actual consumption is above planned it is shown in red. Each user can personalize this MiniApp by choosing his or her own orders to be monitored.

MiniApp showing budget consumption for orders

Figure 3: MiniApp showing budget consumption for orders - click for larger version

Projects: Budget Consumption

Like the MiniApp above ("Orders: Budget Consumption"), but this MiniApps checks the budget consumption on projects.

Monthly Reports

Cost Centers

This report shows the costs on the manager's cost centers. He can either see the cumulated costs for the year-to-date or the costs in the current month. He can also see the cost of all of his cost centers or for one particular cost center.

MiniApp for monthly reports on the cost centers

Figure 4: MiniApp for monthly reports on the cost centers - click for larger image

Orders

This report shows all internal orders the manager is responsible for. From an overview list he can drill down to a cost element report for each order.

MiniApp for monthly reports on the orders

Figure 5: MiniApp for monthly reports on the orders - click for larger image

Projects

This report shows all projects the manager is responsible for. From an overview list of all projects he can drill down to the WBS elements per order an from there to a cost element report for each WBS element.

MiniApp for monthly reports on projects

Figure 6: MiniApp for monthly reports on projects - click for larger image

Planning Reports

Planning reports show all planned costs on the whole range of cost objects the manager is responsible for.

In Particular: Orders

This is a BW Web Cockpit. Initially a list of all orders is displayed at the left hand side and the cumulated planned cost on all orders is show in two detail reports on the right hand side. When the manager clicks on one order on the left hand side, the two detail reports show the cost for that particular order.

MiniApp for planning reports on internal orders

Figure 7: MiniApp for planning reports on internal orders - click for larger image

New Planning

The system calculates a cost element planning for the cost center using the values of several entry fields like number of employees, number of company cars, etc.; the system uses the logon language for the respective results. The rules determining how the cost element planning has to be calculated from the entry fields, have to be defined once for the context of a specific company by a cost accountant. To sum up, every manager can enter then planning for his or her cost center on his or her own and immediately sees the cost implications of his or her planning.

MiniApp for entering a new cost center planning

Figure 8: MiniApp for entering a new cost center planning - click for larger image

 

Structure of the Portal

The Views - Contexts of Work

The header of the portal includes a navigation bar which give access to the different views of the Line Manager Portal.

Navigation bar of the Line Manager Portal

Figure 9: Navigation bar of the Line Manager Portal - click image for larger image

On the initial screen the portal shows the Outlook functions: appointments, calendar, mails, tasks, Intranet search, employee search. There is also a cross system workflow inbox included, so this is the single point of entry for all office communication. From here you can access specific information that is structured as follows:

  • News & Favorites (Company News, Business News from Reuters, personalized favorites, e.g. My Customers, Magazine-Links, Competitors, Key Presentations, Events).
  • My Staff (my employees, vacation, birthdays/life events, employee details, skills, direct employees, Q reports).
  • Projects (Budget Reports, planning, percent complete, time situation). You can trigger a new status report via SAP WebSurvey by clicking on the mail icon.
  • Budget & Monitoring (Cost Center Alerts, Orders: Budget Consumption, Projects: Budget Consumption; Monthly Reports, Plan/Actual for Orders and Projects; Planning Reports, Cost Centers, Orders, Projects). Enter New Planning (Cost Center Planning, R/3-connection).
  • Self Services (Travel, Service Requests)
  • Intranet (in this case access to SAP Intranet)
  • Private (Hobby-Links, etc.)

Below you find thumbnails of the views. Click the thumbnails for viewing them in full size.

News and Favorites My Staff

News & Favorites

My Staff

   
Projects Budgets & Monitoring

Projects

Budgets & Monitoring

   
Self Services Intranet

Self Services

Intranet

Private  

Private

  

Figure 10: The views of the Line Manager Portal - click the thumbnails for larger versions

The views listed in detail:

Home

This is the portal startup view. It includes the following:
  • Outlook integration
  • SMS integration
  • Generic workflow inbox from multiple systems
  • Search: Intranet, Web, who is who

News & Favorites

This view provides pushed as well as pulled information.
  • News - Pushed
    • From intranet: People from PR collect and post chosen articles in this area (here SAPNet)
    • Content Providers: Here Reuters, YellowBricks, ...
  • Favorites - Pulled Information
    • Link collectors: My Customers, Magazines, Competitors Watch, Minutes & News, Key Presentations, Committees, Events
    • SAPNet (password required because of links to productive SAPNet)

MyStaff

Here are the applications for managing the line manager's team. This shows my direct employees.

  • All Employees
  • Employee Detailed Page
  • Skills
  • Benchmarking reports

Projects

This view provides an overview of the line manager's projects

  • Monitor my projects
    • Link to Detailed Page: Communication, Budget, Milestones
    • Survey to request status update
  • Monthly reports
    • BW integration
  • Link to Documents@Web

Budget & Monitoring

The main view, which is described in this article. It offers:

  • Alerts
    • Personalized rules for cost centers and sub-budgets
    • Monitor projects and internal orders
  • Monthly reporting
    • BW WebReporting
  • Cost Center Planning
  • Change rules for approval

Self Service

This view offers self-service applications like applying for a vacation, ordering office material etc.

  • Self Services
    • Who's who, Address, Leave request / overview
  • Travel
    • Overview of trips, Detailed page of trip enriched by third party data

Intranet

This view provides access to the company intranet, just showing one example how an existing Intranet can be integrated into a portal. Of course, it is also possible to integrate the portal into a company's Intranet.

Private

The content of this view is totally up to the user.
Example: Lincoln is Golf, Pittsburgh Steelers and Music fan

Launchpads

Each view of the Line Manager Portal has a secondary navigation bar to the left of the workspace. This bar can be regarded as a simplified Launchpad as it is used in the mySAP Workplace. This solution was chosen, because there are more navigation options available than in some other portals, which include the secondary navigation options in the header bar (see, for example, the Brand Manager Portal).

 

Conclusions

Customer feedback has shown that customers were interested in the Line Manager Portal, and that the prototype meets managers' needs. Actually, the prototype focuses mainly on the more controlling-oriented tasks of a manager (e.g. budgets, cost centers etc.). Therefore, we are going to strengthen the integration of human capital management functionality (HCM) in order to give the manager a coherent set of tools within his portal. But this additional support of work tasks has to be done in an open and easy-to-adapt way as the design and steps of HCM processes differ significantly from company to company. This holds to be true not only for the staff administration responsibilities of a manager but as well for his professional responsibilities, e.g. a user could have the responsibilities of a sales manager but is still responsible for one or two key account customers.

And we will need both the well-known customizing capabilities on a company level for fitting the portal content to the requirements of the company and enriched personalization possibilities for the user. That is, we will offer the managers the possibility to fit their portal according to their personal needs, likings and behaviors if they want to. For example, the user will have the opportunity to influence the layout and structure of the portal and its content in order to have the chance to rearrange and integrate additional content.

 

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