Day: March 29, 2018

ICYMI: Organizational network analysis tools can help spot high-potentials and boost connections among employees. https://goo.gl/62buEu #GlobalHR #HRTech

ICYDK: CEOs report that their top HR professionals aren’t able to use analytics to forecast the company’s employment needs, they can’t effectively identify new talent pipelines and sources of talent, and they don’t link employee planning to business planning. https://goo.gl/KUPuri #GlobalHR #HRTech

News alerts about data protection always seem to indicate that something has gone terribly wrong. From electronic toy makers and nationwide delicatessens to popular insurance providers and ride-sharing services, the frequency and enormity of data breaches have prompted a global call for stricter data privacy protections and increased transparency on data use.

For the European Union (EU), the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which comes into effect on May 25, 2018, is the answer to this critical concern. Perhaps the most significant update to data protections in 30 years, the 99-article ruling imposes penalties so severe that non-compliant businesses could lose the greater of €20 million or four percent of global annual turnover and the privilege of processing data.

Obviously, the larger the business and data volume, the higher the risk for HR organizations. But what about small and midsize businesses? Will the GDPR be a moment of awakening for their HR organizations too?

How the GDPR Affects the HR Function in Small and Midsize Businesses

HR not only handles personal data on employees, contingent workers, and candidates; they also play a big role in educating and training the entire workforce on what the GDPR entails, what counts as personal or even sensitive information, how to handle that data, and what their rights are as well as those of their customers. This means that HR plays a critical role in building a culture of compliance throughout the organization – and being a data privacy role model to all.

The GDPR casts a wide shadow of concern on any business with EU interests, holdings, customers, employees, candidates, and other touch points. Thanks to rising adoption of business collaboration, cloud computing, and mobile devices, small and midsize businesses have a global workforce reach that could likely qualify them for required compliance.

Take, for example, the new guidelines for consent and for data breach notifications. Companies must communicate to their employees and applicants in detail how long data will be stored, where it will go, and how to request information and deletion. Plus, they must contact the proper data protection authorities within 72 hours after awareness of a data breach that could risk the privacy rights and freedoms of individuals.

Unfortunately, manual, ad hoc business processes will not be able to keep up with GDPR requirements, compared to highly systematized and automated operations. Smaller businesses will inevitably find it challenging to determine every touch point of personal data, leading to potential issues in ensuring proper protection of personal data and prevention of accidental exposure to unauthorized access. Plus, as the competition for data protection officers and people well versed in data security intensifies, smaller organizations may not be able to hire and retain employees with the right skills.

From a Regulatory Burden Emerges Competitive Opportunity

To handle GDPR obligations, 77 percent of companies plan to allocate US$1 million or more on GDPR readiness and compliance efforts, according to a recent survey by PwC. Meanwhile, 68 percent indicated investments between $1 million and $10 million and nine percent expect to spend over $10 million.

For smaller businesses that do not have the same budgets and staff size of their much larger competitors, GDPR compliance can be quite overwhelming and unwieldy. But at the same time, they operate with a distinct level of agility that allows them to evolve their business processes faster to meet strict data protection and privacy regulations.

For example, without the same bureaucracy often found at larger enterprises, recruiters at smaller businesses can more quickly adopt cloud-based technology to strengthen, streamline, and automate consent, purge, and anonymization capabilities with applicant data. This approach proves to prospective employees that the business is focused on prioritizing data privacy and adding value to every individual interaction.

For HR leaders, GDPR compliance brings an opportunity to help these businesses level the playing field with their larger competitors. From finance, security, and risk management to sales, marketing, and customer service, organizations can evaluate the bigger picture and view regulatory compliance through the lens of the business’ future direction. Companies that recognize information as a strategic asset in their daily operations are positioned to gain 46% higher revenue growth and enable automated and continuous management of controls to cut audit cycle time by 50%.

It’s Time to Get GDPR Compliance Right – No Matter How Small the Business

Any business that wants to stay competitive needs to adapt to our increasingly digital world. Although the GDPR initially appears to be a burdensome, unavoidable cost, small and midsize businesses can use data protection as a catalyst for harnessing the full value of their data and channeling resources into the right areas to gain digital leadership and consumer trust.
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Consider GDPR as a valuable investment for the future of your business. Read our white paper, “GDPR compliance: Where do I start?,” to explore how SAP SuccessFactors solutions and services can help fast-track business success with GDPR compliance.

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Edith Bevers is head of SAP SuccessFactors EMEA North http://bit.ly/2GEAkGw #SAP #SAPCloud #AI

One of the housekeeping tasks I generally perform in the instances I use to develop actual applications is to upgrade the Web IDE. Not only because some minor bugs are swept away, but also because there’s always some additional functionality that makes development easier.

You would generally need access to the marketplace and a proper license for this. However, the engineering team has made this patch available for download in the download manager in revision 23.  If the following rings a bell, you might want to give this a try:

“Request failed: Gateway Timeout URI: /che/runner/workspace”

The upgrade process is pretty similar as with any other MTA upgrade, only that this time it is easier because you can download it straight into the instance using the console-based download manager.

Using a Virtual Machine? Add 1GB more RAM to the default, it will need it during the installation process.

Check your version

These steps apply to revision 23 of HANA express (HANA 2.0, SPS02). You can still go ninja mode and upgrade your MTAs but you will need to perform some manual work and checks (outlined below).

If you do not have that version, it means you need to go into the marketplace and look for SAP HANA RUNTIME TOOLS 2.0 and SAP WEB IDE 2 in the software downloads.

You also need the *.mtaext file in this note. The one oyu get from the note has some differnt parameters than what HXE uses. I would recommend you use the file you already have from the original installation as a reference. Command sudo find / -name *mtaext should find the original file.

Whlle you are there, make sure you have the compatible versions of the other MTAs. The command to know what your MTA versions are is xs mtas.

Once you have all of the necessary packages, upload them into your instance and jump to “Upgrade time” below.

Download the patch

Don’t you just love the console-mode download manager? Use it to download the patch straight into the same lucky server that is getting the upgrade.

Login to the xs CLI if you have not already and check the versions of your MTAs while you are there: xs-admin-login xs t -s SAP xs mtas

Now list the packages available for download: cd /usr/sap/HXE/home/bin ./HXEDownloadManager_linux.bin -X

You need to pay attention here. The Download manager will offer packages for different platforms. In my case, I am using a launcher instance on Google Cloud Platform. The linuxx86_64 version applies here (there is no difference between the VM or Binary method for this particular component), it is the platform what will cause you trouble. Use linuxppc64le if applicable. ./HXEDownloadManager_linux.bin installer webide_patch.tgz

Install the upgrade

For the second time, we are going to make sure you are on the right space (SAP) after extracting the files: tar -xvzf /usr/sap/HXE/home/Downloads/webide_patch.tgz xs t -s SAP

You might want to give some more room to the backend processes. I have found that life flows more swiftly if you allocate more RAM to the backend processes for Web IDE. These are di-core and di-runner. In previous versions they could even crash and throw an awful

Request failed: Bad Gateway URI: /che/project/workspacee…..

And some other unhandled technical errors.

This randomly would happen after running node.js modules, Fiori wizards and syncing Git repositories. The problem is that this will make these processes take up more memory, which may mean less memory for the rest of the processes. This should not be a problem in cloud environments  and I have already pushed the RAM up to 32 GB, so here I go:

Once we are ready, let the installation begin: xs install ./HANA_EXPRESS_20/DATA_UNITS/XSAC_SAP_WEB_IDE_20/sap-xsac-devx-4.2.31.zip -e ./HANA_EXPRESS_20/DATA_UNITS/XSAC_SAP_WEB_IDE_20/sap-xsac-devx-4.2.31-hxe.mtaext

If you have manually downloaded the runtime tools package, you can install it too with: xs install XSACHRTT0.ZIP

Go get some coffee, pet your cat or dog or dedicate some minutes to mindful meditation. This will take some minutes. The success message will appear when ready:

And command xs mtas will confirm the upgrade has been successful.

Re-run the space enablement tool

Go into the space enablement tool (https://hxehost:51024 – or whatever xs a | grep space says) and redeploy the development space to update the di-builder:

You are all set now. Enjoy your new Web IDE!

  http://bit.ly/2GHhIWk #SAP #SAPCloud #AI