A decade of SAP HR and Payroll Expertise

Absoft SAP student Placement

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Teresa Hainey SAP HR Consultant

What started as a student placement has flourished into an established career in SAP for Teresa Hainey, who joined Absoft over 10 years ago.

Soon after graduating from Business Studies at The Robert Gordon University, Teresa grasped a full time opportunity of employment working in the HR and payroll team with SAP specialists Absoft.

As a new trainee consultant, Teresa was wary of having no experience in SAP, but quickly began to develop vital subject matter expertise through recognised SAP qualifications and implementations, whilst embarking on her journey through the ranks to Senior SAP Consultant.

Teresa commented: “From quite early on, I was involved in an HR implementation, and being plunged into the deep-end was really the best place to learn. I would emphasise the importance of getting hands-on experience for anyone who is at the early stages of their SAP development, it really is the best way to learn and it also helped me to understand all stages of the project lifecycle”.

“Initially I was involved in supporting smaller projects, but gradually got more involved in large-scale HR and Payroll implementations from blueprinting through to delivering end-user training”.

“Over the years, I’ve gained expertise in all SAP modules relating to HR and payroll: including Personnel Administration, Training & Events Management, Personnel Cost Planning, CATS and Employee / Manager Self Service.  I am also skilled in the design and build of security authorisations across these modules which determine which employees have access to certain security privileges, dependent upon their role in the organisation.

Just recently, I completed my SAP Human Capital Management (HCM) certification for Enhancement Pack 7. ERP 6.0, but regardless of what certification level you achieve, as a SAP consultant you are always facing new challenges and learning something new every day.

“Every day, I’m working across different industries for HR and payroll projects, and as part of our remote SAP Support centre. During my time at Absoft, I’ve supported the delivery of SAP solutions in the pharmaceuticals, manufacturing, higher education, public sector and oil and gas industry”.

“At the moment, I’m switching between a UK council project to understand their customised payroll processes, as well as an HR optimisation project which involved examining existing configurations and processes to ensure that the customer’s system has developed in tandem with their business workflows and organisational growth”.  

ESS and MSS enables employees to take responsibility for their own personnel data such as address changes, time-writing and requesting annual leave etc, and intuitive workflows allows managers to approve these requests from their subordinates, most recently via their mobile devices.   There are new user interfaces for HR and Payroll Professionals too.  This is an area of SAP that is constantly evolving in line with new technical developments.

“SAP has changed a lot during my time at Absoft. SAP is a recognised market leader in Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solutions and innovative technology which is exemplified by their HANA, Cloud and Mobile service offering.  Within HR specifically, there has always been improvements within ESS / MSS and HR renewals is the latest development which introduces an intuitive user interface (known as SAP UI5) to greatly improve the look and feel of SAP for all users, including HR and payroll administrators. Combined with the SAP Fiori Applications for mobile devices, it is an exciting time for SAP. 

“I’m grateful for all the development opportunities I’ve had while working at Absoft.  I’m excited to see how SAP solutions will continue to serve the HR community in the next ten years and to continue my personal learning journey with SAP.”

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Colleagues at work at Absoft SAP Consultancy