4.0A Development in IPA

Description

There are a number of major new developments, changes and enhancements
to the International Planning and Administration (IPA) product for release 4.0A:

• A new application component called Compensation Management

• New functions in and enhancements to the following components:

For detailed information on changes in each component, see the relevant release notes.

Compensation Management

This offers a comprehensive method for planning and administering your organization's compensation policies. It incorporates:

• Compensation Planning and Administration

• Plan Definition

The Planned Compensation infotype has been changed and refined.

Benefits

This component now offers a flexible user interface and numerous functional developments to enhance your company's ability to administer employees' benefits plans:

• IMG
  The Benefits IMG is now enlarged and reorganized to reflect the substantial development in the component for this release. The Benefits IMG steps are now more precisely assigned within the Application Component Hierarchy (ACH).

• COBRA
  The COBRA component now includes enrollment in COBRA health plans and payment tracking for these enrollments.

• BAPIs
  The component now contains numerous Business Application Programming Interfaces (BAPIs), which allow other application systems to integrate with SAP R/3 using standard interfaces.

Career and Succession Planning

With the new changes, you can now:

• Create and name as many careers as you require

• Use a range of independent criteria to perform career and succession planning

• Perform career and succession planning independently of careers

• Define suitability ranges

• Simulate multi-step succession planning on the basis of predefined criteria

Organizational Management

There are a number of new developments, including:

• A matrix management tool
  Using this, you can now maintain complex organizational plans. The tool enables you to create a wide variety of matrix organizations, including project matrix organizations and team matrix organizations.

• A new object 'responsibility'
  You can create responsibilities which:

There are also various enhancements in Simple Maintenance and changes to the user interface.

Personnel Administration

In this component, you can now:

• Control screens in the infotypes Recurring Payments/Deductions (0014)
  and Additional Payments (0015) via a new modification group

• Use a number of new BAPIs

• Execute several personnel action types for an employee on one day
  using the new infotype Additional Actions (0302)

• Make all references to currency (to accommodate new country versions
  and preparations for the European Economic and Currency Union [EECU])
  in a new HR-specific, time-dependent currency table (T500C)

• Add fields to infotypes in Personnel Administration and Recruitment

• Use new extended fields

• Define the number of periods for annual salary calculation
  in the Basic Pay (0008) infotype.

• Define periodicity of basic pay in the "Pay Scale -> Period Parameter
  Assignment" view. This means periodicity is now based on the period
  parameter, and no longer on the time unit.

• Access the new user interface layout

• Use a new check table (T777D) for HR infotypes

Personnel Cost Planning

This component has undergone changes:

• IMG
  Customizing activities have been reassigned to the Compensation Management IMG structure. You can now set additional control parameters.

• Integration
  Two new payroll reports RPCIPE00 and RPCIPK00 reflect changes to integration with Payroll Accounting.

• User Exit
  The component contains a user exit, which you can use to assign additional cost elements or change already assigned elements.

Personnel Development

This component - which includes Qualifications and
Requirements and the Career and Succession Planning - has been completely revised.

Changes to Personnel Development include:

• A redesign of user navigation

• An enhancement enabling you to temporarily change the user parameters

• The ability to restrict personnel development to one organizational
  unit

Qualifications and Requirements

With the new or changed functions you can now:

• Group qualifications in the qualifications catalog

• Define proficiency scales

• Assign proficiency scales to qualification groups

• Create alternative qualifications

• Use profile views to define profiles and sub-profiles for object types

Recruitment

There have been a number of changes and new developments in this
component, including:

• A logical database for applicant master data

• The ability to telephone an applicant directly from applicant master
  data maintenance

• The ability to send one or more applicants a letter via fax or E-mail

General Changes Personnel Management

General changes include:

• Enhancements to the basic transactions PP01, PP02 and POnn

• Definition of accounting infotypes

• Ad-hoc Query

• Scheduling across all systems

• New fields in structural authorization

• Automatic creation of events

• Enhancements to the infotype copy function

• Transports using the object lock

Payroll Country Versions

Changes to the following payroll country versions include:

• France

• Great Britain

• Japan

• South Africa

• Spain

• United States