Sven Ringling & Hekima Advisory

My path

• Since 1996 · SAP HRStarted in the SAP HR world, long before anyone said “digital HR”.
• 2000 · Co-founder of iProCon A boutique consultancy for SAP HCM and process design – Germany and the UK.
• International on assignmentI have lived and worked in Germany and the UK. I have been on assignment in, among others, Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Spain, Italy, Ireland, Denmark, Sweden, Chile, Malaysia and Singapore, plus remote work for clients in many more countries. I work in German and in English only – my French and Swahili are very poor.
• 2006/2007 · MBA, CranfieldCranfield School of Management. The business grounding to always read an HR system as part of the business model too, not just as a systems question.
• SAP PRESS · four books“Mastering HR Management with SAP ERP HCM”, “Concur: Travel and Expense Management with SAP”, “HR Personnel Planning and Development Using SAP” and “Introducing EXM with Qualtrics and SAP SuccessFactors”, across several editions, in German, English and once in Chinese. Plus a lot of input into other authors’ books and articles.
• More than 100 clientsIn 30 years I have worked with over a hundred organisations on their HR systems and processes, from mid-sized companies to large corporations.
• On stage on four continentsConference talks on digital HR in Europe, Africa, North America and Asia, including UKISUG, Mastering SAP, Connecting SAP and SAPinsider.
• SAP Mentor Alumnus & SuccessFactors ConfidantFormer SAP Mentor, today SAP SuccessFactors Confidant. Also SAP Community Network Member of the Month (2015).
• 2022 · Field guide in KenyaField guide certificate with EcoTraining at the Mara Camp, NQF Level 2. The basis for seeing not just animals in the savannah, but systems.
• Today · ORBIS PeopleSAP HCM Solution Advisor, and Hekima Advisory alongside it.

Why Africa appears in an HR IT consultancy

I have been connected to the nature and cultures of eastern and southern Africa for many years, as a traveller, as a trained field guide, and as someone who keeps running into exciting ways of thinking there – ways of thinking that are often missing from HR IT discussions in Europe. The language that dominates HR IT conferences stands out, too:

• Africa: “Why not?”
• Germany: “Yes, but…”

Ecosystems have been solving problems for millions of years that organisations still fail at: using resources efficiently, cooperating without central control, adapting to changed conditions, using diversity as a stabilising factor. I have written about it too: “Is corporate HR smarter than millions of years of evolution?” (in German).