Most organisations need about 80% of enterprise functionality at about 20% of the complexity. Knowing what not to build is the discipline that makes HR platforms succeed.
SAP SuccessFactors is one of the world’s most comprehensive HR platforms. It can support everything from employee records and recruitment to performance, learning, succession planning and global workforce management.
Its greatest strength is also its greatest risk.
Because almost everything can be configured, organisations often configure far more than they actually need. Every extra workflow, approval, custom field or exception seems reasonable during workshops. Over time, these small decisions create a system that becomes difficult to maintain, expensive to change and frustrating for employees to use.
After more than twenty years of implementing HR technology, we’ve learned a simple lesson:
Successful implementations aren’t the ones with the most features. They’re the ones people actually use.
Complexity rarely arrives all at once
Most projects don’t become complicated because of one major design decision. Complexity accumulates through dozens of small ones:
- A workflow designed around rare exceptions instead of everyday business.
- Custom fields added “just in case.”
- Five approval steps when only one person is making the decision.
- Replicating outdated legacy processes instead of improving them.
- Advanced features introduced before the organisation is ready to adopt them.
Individually, these decisions seem harmless. Together, they create unnecessary work for HR, managers and employees.
Focus on what creates value
Our implementation philosophy follows a simple Lean principle: eliminate work that doesn’t create business value. That means building robust core HR processes first:
- Clean organisational structures.
- Reliable hire-to-retire processes.
- Leave management that meets local regulatory requirements.
- Performance processes managers can complete without frustration.
- Reports that answer real business questions.
When these foundations work well, employees trust the system. Adoption increases naturally. New capabilities can then be introduced at the right pace.
How we apply the 80/20 principle
Every implementation starts with proven SAP best practices rather than a blank page.
- If a process needs to be different, we ask why.
- If a feature can wait, we document it for a later phase.
- If additional complexity doesn’t create measurable business value, we recommend against building it.
Our role isn’t simply to configure software.
It’s to help clients make good design decisions.
Sometimes that means saying “not yet.”
Sometimes it means saying “not at all.”
Simplicity is a business advantage
The best implementation isn’t the one with the longest configuration document.
It’s the one HR can confidently manage after go-live without relying on consultants for every change.
That’s what the 80/20 principle is really about.
Not delivering less.
Delivering exactly what’s needed — and nothing that isn’t.
Avyan implements SAP SuccessFactors for mid-market organisations across Southeast Asia, applying the 80/20 principle from the first scoping workshop. If you’d like to see what we’d build — and what we’d advise against — start a conversation.