From what point should the standard organizational structure be divided geographically?

[adriangalisteo]

Dear colleagues:

Regarding the company structure, our current client, and I guess it may extend to many companies, complains that the company structure overview does not filter by location, so what is the point of creating a location object and attaching it to the legal entity if it is not going to appear there?

The THR81 guide mentions that the business unit is not geographic, so then,

At what point in the Standard Structure should you start separating by provinces/states (depending on the country) from division, perhaps department? The THR81 guide mentions that the business unit is not geographic.

What would be a perfect standard Structure according to what successfactors has in mind at the beginning for a company that exists in different countries (states and provinces)?

Thanks,

Regards.

[nlgro023]

So the perfect structure would be (and these would all be 1 to many in this order) is something like:
Company -->
(multiple possible under each Company) Business Unit -->
(multiple possible under each Business Unit) Division -->
(multiple possible under each Division) Department -->
(multiple possible under each Department) Cost Center

That way you basically cannot go wrong as its like an expanding funnel from an org chart point of view.
The association for location is often rather done for filtering in job info / position, because then you have fewer locations to pick (as the earlier chosen company reduces it).

In reality this often is not the case due to namings, stuff like sub departments, many to many relations (i.e. any business unit can belong to any legal entity) and organizations that have departments tied to different legal entities for instance.

The org structure itself is more built based on views (so in principal you could due to your association create a location based view to sort of get the desired filtering). Keep in mind it's still something used by a broad audience, so therefore it always has some limitations. For that reason customers use addons like ingentis

[adriangalisteo]

hello team,

i understand the basic structure thanks to the blogs and training.

The issue here is, from what point should I start to introduce country objects and province objects for a multinational company? for example:

Business Unit- Should i start with Business Unit Motors USA Business Unit Motors Spain etc?

Or that is more recommendable to be done at Division level?

What are your experiences with this?

Best regards

[nlgro023]

I'm just a guy, not a team :), but the unfortunate answer is it depends.

A business unit or division is a way the company chooses to structure itself, not the way we ideally put it in the system (therefore I would rather switch the discussion the other way with the customer --> How does your current structure outside of the systems look like, so that we can see how to best fit it in SuccessFactors). I've sometimes even renamed business unit to something like business area or sector, because it was simply what the customer called it (hence, why then make them call it something like Business Unit if that doesn't mean anything to them?)?

Generally speaking I have seen companies rather use business units without any nation reference (i.e. Marketing, HR, Operations), while division would then be something like HR Services / HR Advisory / Talent and where department would rather be something (for instance for HR Services) like Payroll / HR generalists etc. I did see cases where cost center or department had country references (especially with cost centers as with international teams you have to pay different currencies, potentially within the same department).

I think I've only seen 1 case where a customer chose to start with country reference in business unit, never seen it with divisions and sometimes saw it with departments or cost centers. Either way, it shouldn't be about what's the best place to introduce countries, as the best way to setup a structure is by seeing what a customer has and how it fits. If you for instance want layers to be more bound to a country you can also give them multiple associations for that (I've for instance had customers that in their department put division, business unit and legal entity as association, so that the filter would always work correctly in job info).

[Neeraj_Jain]

Hello agali,

Please refer below SAP Blog. Might be it's helps to you.

https://blogs.sap.com/2021/04/29/handling-complex-org-structures-in-successfactors-replicating-from-...

Confirm if it's works for you.

Regards,

Neeraj Jain

[candyenglish9]

Is there any guidance on creating and managing a holding company structure?

parent holding company over multiple companies and under each company the standard structure; BU, Division, Dept. Cost Center, location.

Thank you,