SAP SuccessFactors Transformation for a Leading Global Development Organization

Client Context

The client is a leading multinational corporation operating across several countries and regions, with a diverse workforce supporting a wide range of programs and initiatives. Its work spans microfinance, education, health, livelihoods, youth empowerment, ultra-poor graduation, and humanitarian response, delivered through country offices, affiliated entities, and a large field-based frontline workforce.

That structure is what makes talent management complex. The organization hires continuously across many labor jurisdictions, staff’s donor-funded programmes on fixed-term cycles and must evidence mandatory compliance training to donors and auditors — none of which can be run consistently through country-level spreadsheets.

Scale Indicator	Anonymized Position
Organization type	Long-established international development organization (INGO)
Footprint	Country programmed across multiple markets in Africa and Asia
Workforce	Tens of thousands of staff, including a large frontline field workforce
Structure	Global head office, affiliated country entities, and a microfinance group
HR platform	SAP SuccessFactors, supported by a small central HRIS function

Business Problem

As the organization continued to evolve, its HR teams required effective digital processes to manage talent and employee development activities across different functions and locations.

Figure 1: From fragmented HR process to a connected and empowered workforce

The key areas of focus included:

• Streamlining recruitment processes

• Strengthening succession planning

• Supporting structured career development

• Enhancing learning and development processes

• Aligning SuccessFactors capabilities with evolving HR requirements

• Improving the overall utilization of the platform

The Role of Eitekh

Eitekh was engaged as the specialist support partner for four talent modules, taking day-to-day ownership of identifying and resolving configuration errors, keeping the modules current, and adapting them as the organization changed. Payroll, and time functions sat outside the engagement boundary.

SuccessFactors Functional Coverage

Module Supported	What Eitekh Supports
Recruiting Management	Requisition templates, approval route maps, application status sets, offer configuration, posting channels, recruiter enablement
Succession	Talent pools, nomination and succession configuration, talent review setup, successor readiness fields and reporting
Career Development	Development goal and plan templates, competency and role-profile alignment, cycle launch, adoption reporting
Learning Management	Item and curriculum management, assignment profiles and automatic rules, compliance curricula and recurrence, audit reporting

Figure 2: Where support effort is concentrated across the four modules

Support Engagement Timeline

The engagement has run for 11 months to date, delivered across four phases.

Figure 3: Support Engagement Timeline

Phase	Duration	Focus
Transition	Months 1–2	Configuration discovery, as-is documentation, backlog triage
Stabilization	Months 3–6	Backlog reduction, SLA-driven resolution, permission clean-up
Steady State	Months 7–9	change, release assessment, cycle support
Optimization	Months 10–11	Adoption uplift, reporting, capability transfer to client

Support Communication

Day-to-day communication runs through two channels. Routine requests and configuration changes are logged as tickets in Jira and confirmed by email, with effort hours tracked against each ticket so workload and turnaround stay visible to both sides. Time-critical issues are escalated directly over a WhatsApp group, giving the client an immediate response outside the standard ticket queue.

Figure 4: Four-Step Support Ticket Workflow

Business Outcomes

The engagement streamlined recruitment across different regions and locations, enabling more consistent hiring practices and improved visibility of talent across the organization. It strengthened succession planning and career development by providing greater visibility into talent pipelines and employee growth opportunities, while Learning Management enabled a more structured approach to learning and development across countries. Overall, the organization achieved greater consistency in talent processes and stronger alignment with its SAP SuccessFactors platform.

Figure 5: Outcomes from the SuccessFactors implementation

Custom Application & Integration

Beyond configuration and administration, Eitekh designed and built a custom application, integrated with the client's SuccessFactors environment, to close a gap the standard platform does not cover.

Figure 6: How the custom application connects to SuccessFactors and delivers exports to the client

• Recruiting Management — bulk export of candidate CVs, resumes, and application documents

• Learning Management — bulk export of learning materials and completion records for offline archiving

• Scheduled and on-demand exports, reducing manual retrieval requests to the central HRIS team

• Built and maintained by Eitekh, integrated directly with the client's live SuccessFactors instance

Support Engagement Challenges and Lessons Learned

The engagement surfaced several recurring lessons for organizations running SuccessFactors talent modules across a distributed, donor-funded footprint.

Challenge	How It Was Addressed	Executive Lesson
Configuration debt inherited at transition	A dedicated Transition phase (Months 1–2) triaged the backlog against as-is documentation before any new work began	A structured discovery phase prevents backlog work from crowding out strategic requests later in the engagement
Multi-country configuration consistency	Standardized requisition templates, approval routes, and compliance curricula applied across country offices	Standardization must balance global consistency with legitimate local labor-law and programme requirements
Donor and audit compliance tracking	Compliance curricula, recurrence rules, and audit reporting built directly into Learning Management	Compliance evidence should be designed into system configuration, not reconstructed manually at audit time
Sustaining service without a large internal team	A small central HRIS function was supported through SLA-tracked tickets and WhatsApp escalation for time-critical issues	A support-first model with clear service levels can substitute for a larger internal team
Capability transfer at engagement end	The Optimization phase (Months 10–11) built in adoption uplift and knowledge transfer to internal staff	Long-term platform ownership needs a deliberate handover plan, not just steady-state ticket resolution

Standardization across a distributed footprint. Talent processes had to work for a global head office, affiliated country entities, and a microfinance group simultaneously. The lesson for similarly structured organizations: standardize the parts of the process that don't touch local labor law or donor rules, and leave room for the parts that do.

Compliance as a design requirement, not an audit-time task. For donor-funded, audit-exposed organizations, the biggest support-model risk isn't a broken workflow — it's a compliance gap that only surfaces at audit. Building recurrence and reporting into the platform itself, rather than tracking it in spreadsheets, is what made this evidenceable.

A support engagement can still build new capability. The custom export application shows that a support-scoped engagement doesn't have to be purely maintenance — there's room to close real platform gaps if the support partner is looking for them, not just closing tickets.

Why Eitekh Was Selected

Several factors made Eitekh the right fit for a talent-support engagement spanning a global head office, affiliated country entities, and a microfinance group.

Talent module depth

The assigned Eitekh consultants have certification across all four supported modules — Recruiting, Succession, Career Development, and Learning — rather than depth in only a single area. For an organization running talent processes across many country offices at once, that mattered: configuration issues in one module often touch the others, and a single point of ownership kept fixes consistent instead of fragmented across specialists.

Support-first operating model

The four-phase delivery model (Transition, Stabilization, Steady State, and Optimization) was built for long-term platform ownership rather than a one-time project handoff. Backlog triage and as-is documentation up front gave both sides a shared baseline before SLA commitments were set, and the model was designed to scale down to steady-state ticket volume once the inherited backlog cleared.

Responsive communication

Jira-tracked tickets with logged effort hours and email confirmation keep routine configuration work visible and auditable on both sides. A direct WhatsApp channel for time-critical issues means the organization isn't waiting in a standard queue when something urgent breaks ahead of a donor deadline or compliance cycle.

Development-sector awareness

Donor reporting, safeguarding, and audit obligations were treated as configuration requirements from the outset rather than compliance work added afterward. Compliance curricula, recurrence rules, and audit reporting were built directly into Learning Management, so evidence for donors and auditors comes from the system itself rather than a manually maintained spreadsheet.

Willing to build, not just maintain

When a gap in the standard platform surfaced — bulk export of recruiting and learning records for offline archiving — Eitekh designed, built, and now maintains a custom application integrated with the client's live SuccessFactors environment, rather than logging it as an unsupported feature request. That willingness to extend the platform, not just administer it, mattered for an organization whose needs would keep evolving.

Capability building, not dependency

The Optimization phase was scoped specifically around adoption uplift and knowledge transfer to internal HRIS staff and country super-users, rather than treating steady-state support as a permanent external dependency. That gives the organization a path toward greater self-sufficiency on the platform even while Eitekh remains engaged.

Taken together, these strengths gave the organization a support partner able to stabilize an inherited configuration backlog, embed compliance directly into the platform rather than track it manually, and build toward internal ownership — without losing the responsiveness a distributed, donor-funded workforce depends on.

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