When global technology services company Kyndryl Holdings Inc. was spun out of IBM in November 2021, it became the world’s largest provider of IT infrastructure services. The company has over 80,000 employees in 60 countries and 3,500 sales reps. With a focus on continuously improving the vital systems at the heart of the digital economy, Kyndryl works with partners and customers worldwide to co-create solutions to help enterprises reach their peak digital performance.

When Kyndryl spun from IBM, a transition service agreement (TSA) was put in place with a two-year deadline for Kyndryl to complete the disengagement of its IT systems from IBM. One of the challenges Kyndryl faced during the separation was how to transition tools over and apply them in the best way for the new business. This was not an insignificant task given its sales operations extended to more than 60 countries.

Kishore Kancharla, director of Sales and Incentive Systems at Kyndryl, was tasked with working out how best to clone these systems and work on the go-to-market transformation. “When we separated from IBM, we had close to 100 people supporting these mainframe applications, which were very expensive to maintain. As the legacy systems were built for IBM’s operations, there was significant complexity,” he explains. “We wanted to simplify the systems and streamline the processes as well, but it was also very difficult to make changes to support our needs as a new company.”

The nature of sales incentives means there are many dependencies on other core systems. In the planning stages, reliable data is needed to set up territories and quotas and then track sales and calculate commissions, making sure sales reps get paid accurately and on time. The company also had to factor in the transition service agreement exit in terms of sunsetting the legacy applications and moving to stand-alone applications while complying with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX).

Seeking another way, Kyndryl evaluated several different products against its needs, making the decision to invest in sales performance management solutions in the ���۴�ýSuccessFactors portfolio. The portfolio offers integrated solutions for compensation and territory and quota management in the form of ���۴�ýSuccessFactors Incentive Management and .

But one major challenge stood in its way. The company needed to go-live with the sales performance management solutions before the start of its fiscal year beginning in April 2023. This was well ahead of its TSA deadline in October 2023 and gave the company less than a year.

To make it happen, Kyndryl worked closely with the team from ���۴�ýand an SI partner Municons, a company from Munich that specializes in SPM implementations, to implement both solutions. The company also drew on additional support from a systems integrator partner to configure .

“The team from ���۴�ýwas a wonderful partner all through the project. In the beginning, I was not 100% confident because of the scale of the task. The idea of replacing the entire legacy solution we inherited seemed daunting, but we had the right people come together with the right skills to make the impossible possible,” Kancharla reflects.

With the successful go-live before the start of its fiscal year, Kyndryl untangled a labyrinth of more than 45 legacy modules supporting sales performance management, now needing just one integrated solution. It moved from 10 different applications to feed sales quota business flows into one. It moved from cluttered and replicated data in multiple places to a streamlined and simplified data landscape, centralizing all sales data in one place. In addition, Kyndryl simplified territory and quota processes, reducing complexity in its business processes by more than 60%. The streamlined business processes also drove savings in operating expenses and mitigated business continuity risks for financially significant applications.

Elsewhere, integrated functionality from DocuSign helped eliminate the need for in-person signatures and the company has simplified support staff roles to clear separation of duties (SoD) conflicts. With the new setup, Kyndryl has minimized the potential for errors and non-compliance while enabling its business teams to develop intricate sales strategies through user-friendly, drag-and-drop interfaces and ready-made templates. And commission details are now accessible through dashboards that are available anytime, anywhere though a mobile app.

At an operational level, the company has reduced the processing time needed to execute the monthly commissions cycle and streamlined integration with its HR system for delivery of pay files. By streamlining year-end close activities, Kyndryl saved weeks of effort from both business and technical teams.

The close relationship with ���۴�ýhas continued past the initial go-live date. ���۴�ýparticipated in multiple workshops to understand intricacies for some of Kyndryl’s most challenging business processes related to territory and quota and financial planning. A second-year fiscal planning process is already taking advantage of these new offerings, further simplifying and streamlining the company’s complex processes.

Rahul Iyer is general manager of Sales Performance Management at SAP.

FC Bayern, one of the most successful global football clubs, continues to raise the bar on and off the field. With a relentless focus on excellence and innovation, the world-renowned club has extended its usage of ���۴�ýSuccessFactors software with AI-enabled solutions to enhance its HR functions and processes.

A clear key to the club’s success are the more than 1,000 employees in Munich, New York, Bangkok, and Shanghai who are as integral to the club as the players on the pitch, meaning each job experience and career path must enable employees to continuously develop themselves professionally to reach their full potential.

Streamlining HR Operations with ���۴�ýSuccessFactors

FC Bayern initially adopted ���۴�ýSuccessFactors to optimize its  talent management, modernize HR processes, and foster a culture of continuous learning and development. Over the years, the club has expanded its utilization of ���۴�ýSuccessFactors to manage everything from employee onboarding to performance management.

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By leveraging ���۴�ýSuccessFactors, FC Bayern benefits from:

• Increased Efficiency: Automated workflows and streamlined processes have significantly reduced administrative burdens, allowing HR teams to accelerate complex processes and continually reduce time on the recruiting journey.
• Insightful Analytics: Real-time data and analytics providing managers with valuable insights into employee performance, engagement, and development, enabling holistic decision-making across an employee’s career path.
• Scalability: As FC Bayern continues to grow and evolve, ���۴�ýSuccessFactors offers scalable solutions that adapt to the club’s ever-changing needs and requirements. Employees can now access their personnel data securely from anywhere using any device, with self-service options for employees, managers, and HR admins.

Transforming Recruitment with AI-Enabled Solutions

���۴�ýBusiness AI has the ability to transform the employee experience for employees, managers, recruiters, and HR professionals. Recognizing the importance of hiring top talent to maintain its competitive edge, FC Bayern will use AI-assisted capabilities in its recruiting process.  Now, the talent acquisition team at FC Bayern will be able to create compelling job descriptions — a previously time consuming and manual task — at the touch of a button, as well as be prompted with AI-generated interview questions based on job descriptions.

AI-enabled capabilities embedded in ���۴�ýSuccessFactors solutions empower organizations like FC Bayern to:

• Redefine Recruitment: Recruiters and hiring managers can benefit from the use of generative AI to create tailored job descriptions based on data from within ���۴�ýSuccessFactors solutions.
• Interview Questions with AI and Interview Evaluations in Microsoft Teams: Using Microsoft Teams integration, interviewers can now generate interview questions on the spot based on the job description in the job requisition by using generative AI capabilities.
• Elevate the Employee Experience: FC Bayern will empower their workforce to excel by providing seamless access to all HR systems, optimizing career development with ���۴�ýSuccessFactors Learning, and fostering engagement through experiences that prioritize and organize an employee’s individual needs, skills, interests, and aspirations, helping organizations like FC Bayern reinforce their reputation as an employer of choice.

The Future of HR at FC Bayern

By leveraging the ���۴�ýSuccessFactors HCM suite and ���۴�ýBusiness AI capabilities, FC Bayern will set new benchmarks in HR excellence, driving innovation and fostering a culture of professional growth and learning.

When organizations invest in their people — and in their passions and potential — they return the investment over and over. This happens when they are provided with intuitive self-service tools such as the ���۴�ýSuccessFactors Mobile app and access to HR systems that empower them to perform at their true potential. An improved employee experience in turn leads to better business outcomes.

As the club continues to evolve and face new challenges, FC Bayern remains committed to leveraging technology to stay competitive and bridge the skills gap of today to be better ready for what tomorrow brings.

Learn more about how ���۴�ýSuccessFactors Recruiting uses AI to transform your organization’s HR processes and drive success:

Maryann Abbajay is chief revenue officer at ���۴�ýSuccessFactors.

This finding confirms what thousands of midsize organizations using ���۴�ýSuccessFactors solutions already know. Accelerating the shift to digital HR isn’t just a critical advantage; it’s a game changer for business growth, especially as the need for new skills intensifies due to emerging technologies such as AI.

Oxford Economics’ research explains why: “As AI-enabled technologies like chatbots and personalized recommendations become the norm outside the workplace, HR functions will need to strategize to incorporate similar self-service experiences and other AI-driven use cases into their employees’ way of working.”

Driving Growth with a Talent Management Edge

Midsize organizations often seek a human capital management (HCM) solution that supports scalability and can match the pace and extent of their business growth. Yet, they frequently operate with limited HR capacity, hindering their ability to compete in a complicated talent landscape where a shortage of a million experts is expected by 2030.

Expanding midsize organizations particularly struggle to secure or develop talent with the skills required for growth. Oxford Economics reports that 49% of surveyed organizations cite the inability to find the right talent to maintain operations as their greatest near-term risk. Similarly, 41% of HR executives believe their organization’s inability to reskill and upskill workers to adapt to changing needs is a top threat.

With , midsize organizations can address both concerns. The HCM solutions can help run a cohesive, organization-wide strategy for upgrading outdated technologies and implementing modern, foundational capabilities such as workforce management tools and AI-enabled functionalities.

Here’s a sneak peek into the outsized outcomes ���۴�ýSuccessFactors solutions can deliver:

1. Inclusive Job Descriptions and Assisted Candidate Screening

AI is transforming skills-based hiring by creating compelling job descriptions and enabling inclusive applicant selection so organizations can find the best talent quickly and efficiently. We have thoughtfully embedded these capabilities into the  solution to provide organizations with tools to help attract and secure candidates with the right skills. 

Embedded AI assistance helps talent acquisition teams make better, more equitable hiring decisions while reducing time spent on manual, tedious tasks such as creating job descriptions. Insights into applicant skills – extracted from résumés using AI – allow recruiters to quickly identify and rank top candidates based on their match to a job, removing unconscious bias from the process. 

2. Integrated Learning and Talent Management

As the nature of work evolves, so does the approach to HR technology solutions. Integrated learning and talent management systems are pivotal in addressing this dynamic, facilitating a smooth flow of development opportunities for employees.

By leveraging  solutions, organizations can tie learning initiatives with talent management processes to help create a cohesive, impactful talent strategy and employee experience. Employees can access learning resources based on their career goals and performance, aligning their development with personal goals and organizational objectives.

3. Intelligent and Personalized Skill Recommendations

The Oxford Economics survey reveals that 30% of HR and IT decision-makers are starting to understand how AI can help meet talent development and retention goals critical to their company’s growth. This includes helping employees stay on track with a personalized view into what they have to, need to, and want to learn.

Adopting a learning management system that includes AI, such as the solution, gives organizations capabilities that can enhance the learner’s experience. For example, instead of a “search and find” approach to identifying relevant courses and content, an AI-driven system can offer learning options highly relevant to the learner by automatically surfacing personalized recommendations based on the employee’s role, skills, needs, and preferences.

This approach can help save time by pointing learners toward the most relevant and valuable resources, instead of requiring learners to search for them alone. Most importantly, access to self-directed learning and development opportunities fosters a habit of continuous learning and personal growth.

4. New Opportunities for Employees to Grow

Both consumers and employees expect personalized experiences that are easy to navigate and relevant to their needs. Reflecting on this trend, organizations are leveraging solutions – such as the  solution – to support upskilling and reskilling efforts. 

The solution can connect employees with relevant projects, learning opportunities, mentors, and dynamic teams, presenting recommended matches through centralized access. Integrating talent intelligence into these recommendations can enhance their effectiveness by enabling the identification of skills gaps and the analysis of individual preferences and career aspirations. In return, employees can be empowered to grow and develop in ways that benefit them and the organization, helping to create a more engaged and motivated workforce.

Additionally, with the  solution, organizations can optimize employee experiences by properly preparing them for their next role. For instance, employees can feel empowered to own their career development by exploring career options with AI-driven recommendations and intelligent skills gap identification. Also, with AI-assisted goals, employees can quickly create more ambitious development goals aligned with their growth plans.

5. Holistic Skills Management

Competing for and retaining top talent remains a significant challenge for midsize organizations as the skills gap widens. While visibility into current skills and those required for the future can offer a competitive edge, tackling this issue fully requires a more comprehensive approach beyond skills alone. 

 can address all sides of this complex challenge by considering individual competencies, aspirations, and preferences. Leveraging talent intelligence, the suite allows organizations to enhance the talent experience with a strategy that can cater to the “whole self” of the employee.

6. Enhanced Productivity and Engagement

Aligning employee goals to business objectives is crucial for enhancing productivity and performance. With AI-assisted goals, employees can craft meaningful and aspirational goals in a fraction of the time it usually takes. 

The  solution enables flexible and continuous performance modeling. Real-time coaching and feedback are included in the flow of work, helping employees feel more supported and engaged while enabling continuous insights and growth.

Building a Workforce Culture of Growth with AI

���۴�ýSuccessFactors solutions can offer a holistic approach to take advantage of the critical role of talent management strategies in driving business growth, as highlighted in the Oxford Economics report. With innovative AI capabilities, the solutions are helping many organizations worldwide win the race for talent and skills and build an agile workforce.

 is not just about cutting-edge technology. We create HCM solutions that are relevant, reliable, and responsible. Backed by this AI principle, ���۴�ýSuccessFactors solutions can offer a competitive edge in the current dynamic talent landscape. Organizations are not only empowered to keep up – they’re also prepared to lead the way with talent management strategies that drive ongoing growth, innovation, and success.

Discover how growth-focused midsize businesses prioritize their HR and IT strategies to help them grow and remain competitive. Read the Oxford Economics study, sponsored by SAP, .”

Margit Bauer is director of Product Marketing for ���۴�ýSuccessFactors.

For the majority of employees, work comprises enjoyable projects and duties but also routines and tasks that can be tiring or difficult. To make the work experience as positive and efficient as possible, experts and companies around the globe seek to continuously improve the realities of their workforce. This is also true for SAP.

Meetings, All Kinds of Meetings

An important facet of today’s work reality is meetings. They are where all sorts of work decisions are prepared and made, where briefings take place, where teams build up their team identity, exchange thoughts, solve challenges, share updates, align across geographical time zones, and much more. In many cases and for many roles, meetings consume a considerable part of overall working hours. So it comes as no surprise that, in their most recent project, the Future of Work team at ���۴�ýand ���۴�ýAppHaus colleagues joined forces to develop an easy approach for teams to improve their meeting routines.

“As featured by Forbes in May 2023, an average . This is a challenge we want to address with the Meeting Workout game,” says Andreas Hauser, SVP and head of ���۴�ýAppHaus Network. “By innovatively blending play with productivity, we can transform these hours into opportunities for meaningful engagement and collaborative innovation, paving the way for a future where every meeting is a step towards building stronger, more dynamic teams.”

The Imperative for Efficient Meetings

According to a , inefficient meetings have been identified as the top disruptor to productivity, with an excessive number of meetings following close behind. As ���۴�ýChief Future of Work Officer Christian Schmeichel states: “The way we are working is changing rapidly, and both the rise of hybrid work and new technologies have increased the number of meetings for many of us. Hence, it’s an imperative to foster meetings that best utilize our time, spark energy, and drive outcomes. The Meeting Workout game can help with an engaging workshop format that can not only improve meeting effectiveness but can enable teams to set new standards for workplace collaboration on their journey into the future of work.”

Playing for a Better Meeting Experience

From the initial idea to create a game for teams to improve their meeting routines, it took the New Work Practices team and ���۴�ýAppHaus a few weeks to design, test, and produce the Meeting Workout game. However, what might look like a fun project was very similar to any other design and innovation project.

“In our planning meetings and test sessions we really tried to put ourselves in the shoes of all kinds of teams in different organizations and setups,” recall project members Beate Riefer, UX designer at ���۴�ýAppHaus, and Filip Weidenbach, HR project expert in New Work Practices. “Through a very generic phrasing of the cards and in simple steps, the game should be applicable in the most diverse, if not all, environments. It’s not as easy as it might seem – and it’s the reason why we established breaks in our meetings to keep the energy and concentration levels up. Here’s an important recommendation for all teams playing the Meeting Workout game: have plenty of sticky notes and a variety of snacks available!”

50 Meeting Workout Games Available

The Meeting Workout game can be a perfect opportunity to help actively inspire and support teams in restructuring their current meeting formats. Users can choose between the virtual version available on Mural, a do-it-yourself, , and a tangible board game version.

The Future of Work team at ���۴�ýis gifting 50 board game versions on a first-come, first-serve basis. People or teams that would like to test and use the board game can contact SAPFutureOfWork@sap.com, thereby acknowledging that their postal address and contact information will be used only for the delivery of the game shipment, in accordance with the .

Waltraud Grimm is communications lead for ���۴�ýFuture of Work.
Imke Vierjahn is communications lead for ���۴�ýAppHaus.

Top photo courtesy of Hyun Lee

“At TrustRadius, we pride ourselves on providing unbiased and transparent insights into the software industry,” said Allyson Havener, senior vice president of Marketing and Community at TrustRadius. “Receiving a TrustRadius Top Rated award is a testament to ���۴�ýSuccessFactors HCM’s exceptional performance as validated by unbiased user feedback. This recognition highlights ���۴�ýSuccessFactors’ commitment to delivering innovative human capital management solutions that truly meet the needs of businesses.” 

This year, ���۴�ýSuccessFactors earned awards across the following categories: Applicant Tracking, Compensation Management, Talent Management, Workforce Analytics, Sales Incentive Compensation Management, HR Management, Workforce Management, Employee Performance Management, Sales Performance Management, Corporate Learning Management, Succession Planning, and Internal Payroll. 

We are grateful to our more than 10,000 global customers whose partnership allows us to help make every employee a success story by harnessing the to elevate every experience, guide every people decision, and connect HR across every aspect of the business. 

In the past year, ���۴�ýhas introduced new AI capabilities that span the entire ���۴�ýSuccessFactors HCM suite and help transform how organizations unlock individual and collective potential. , SAP’s natural language generative AI copilot, helps employees and managers work faster and smarter by making it easier to find information and complete common HR tasks. With an embedded AI-driven skills framework, ���۴�ýSuccessFactors solutions help power an organization’s learning and talent strategy and address critical skills gaps. The combined force of these innovations helps customers better meet the business challenges of today and tomorrow.  

Below are a few reviews from our customers:

“We chose ���۴�ýSuccessFactors over competitors for its comprehensive HR suite, superior integration capabilities with ���۴�ýsystems, and global scalability. Its user-friendly interface and extensive analytics stood out, offering more in-depth insights and a seamless experience compared to other solutions in the market.”

“The benefit of [SAP] SuccessFactors is its flexibility. I have implemented [SAP] SuccessFactors at companies with as little as 1,500 employees and also with as many as 120,000 users. It can handle the complexities of global requirements while still being able to scale to a small, midsized business in a cost-effective manner.�Ũ�ċ

“���۴�ýSuccessFactors has a clean employee view of data and offers a wide range of functionality to support midsize to large companies.�Ũ�ċ

Learn more about and read our customer reviews on . For more information about these recognitions, visit the . 

Aaron Green is chief marketing & solutions officer for ���۴�ýSuccessFactors.

A confusing benefits enrollment experience is a significant source of frustration for many employees and can leave them feeling uncertain about their benefits elections. The majority of employees struggle to understand their benefits options and navigate through the enrollment process.

As a result, many employees choose to simply roll over their previous year’s elections rather than review and update their choices to ensure they are getting the most out of their benefits. This often leads to missed opportunities to take advantage of lower-cost options or benefits that are a better fit for them and their family and can even lead to increased attrition of top talent.

With the first half 2024 release, updates to the solution can enable you to empower your employees to take control of their benefits with an intuitive guided enrollment experience.

Making Benefits Enrollment More Seamless, Simple, and Intuitive

The new benefits enrollment experience in  introduces a process-driven approach to benefits enrollment that helps simplify and streamline the activity. Available for insurance, savings plans, and pension benefit types, this new enrollment experience can enable employees to make better, more informed benefits choices without the unnecessary hurdles.

Here are some key highlights:

Guided Enrollment

A step-by-step progression flow guides employees through the process, working to simplify navigation and helping them complete benefits enrollment. Real-time benefits eligibility updates help employees continually understand the choices and options available by presenting them with all the benefits for which they are eligible to enroll.

Personalized User Experience

Customizable text and instructions enable a tailored enrollment experience aligned with organizational policies.

Flexible Framework

Benefits admins can now have more flexibility in designing the enrollment experience to meet their organization’s needs with a new framework that helps support the capture of life insurance guaranteed issue amounts, customizable terms and conditions, and enhanced localization capabilities.

Anytime, Anywhere Access

Available on both desktop and the ���۴�ýSuccessFactors Mobile app, employees can complete benefits enrollment from any location using a mobile-friendly platform that helps ensure a seamless experience across devices.

Employee Educational Resources

Simplified on-screen access to additional resources and information helps employees better understand their benefits and can promote more informed decision-making throughout the enrollment process.

Side-by-side benefit plan comparisons of costs and plan details help employees assess their plan options and select the best-fit plan. Localizable instructional text on each page helps ensure that the benefits and enrollment processes are well understood. Additionally, flexible options for defining contribution amounts within the IRS limits can make it easier for employees to make decisions regarding savings plans and pension elections.

Consolidated Benefits Enrollment Process

Employees can complete all benefits-related tasks including reviewing and updating dependents, completing health declarations, enrolling in benefits, managing beneficiaries, and more through a single consolidated process, helping to improve employee engagement and satisfaction.

to learn more about the new enrollment experience in ���۴�ýSuccessFactors Employee Central Global Benefits.

To learn about all the other innovations in the ���۴�ýSuccessFactors first half 2024 release, read the and watch the .

Nicole Ramirez is senior director of Product Marketing at SAP.

And for you and your business, you can tell all those success stories – and more – with the ���۴�ýSuccessFactors HCM suite and our first half 2024 release.

As your organization and employees begin to embrace AI, HR has the opportunity to drive new levels of employee productivity, engagement, and growth. ���۴�ýSuccessFactors HCM can give you everything you need – the global foundation, skills framework, people-first experiences, and purpose-built AI capabilities – to help take HR to the next level. With the ���۴�ýSuccessFactors first half 2024 release, we are delivering more than 250 innovative features and enhancements.

���۴�ýBusiness AI

In 1H 2024, we are thrilled to introduce more than 25 new AI capabilities to enable better employee experiences and new levels of productivity.

Among these capabilities include the ability for applicants to provide skills during the application process. This can enable recruiters to see a skills compatibility for each applicant based on matching the applicant’s skills and the job requisition, helping improve applicant screening and time to hire. Furthermore, personalization in ���۴�ýSuccessFactors Opportunity Marketplace is enhanced with new AI-driven recommendation categories, “Ignite Your Role” and “Reach Your Aspirations.” These guided experiences can enable employees to proactively take steps to reach their development goals.

Generative AI continues to be embedded across the ���۴�ýSuccessFactors HCM suite, including new capabilities to help employees create ready-made performance and development goals and AI-assisted writing to help improve the quality, clarity, and conciseness of writing across a variety of areas within ���۴�ýSuccessFactors solutions.

Further, with this release, insights based on an employee’s compensation and job history are available to help support managers in having effective and well-informed compensation discussions. 

We have also added more than 15 new capabilities in this release to help both managers and employees get work done in a conversational way, such as creating or changing a position, creating spot awards, clocking in and out, and viewing pay statements as well as time capabilities like requesting time off, checking leave balances, and syncing holidays to Outlook calendars while managers can review and approve time off. Further, employees can now clock in and out using Joule, Microsoft Teams, or the ���۴�ýSuccessFactors Mobile app.

���۴�ýSuccessFactors Employee Central

We are excited to unveil two new people profile experiences – the profile preview and the spotlight view. The profile preview can provide a snapshot of key areas of the employee profile, including job, manager, location, and contact details, to quickly view and connect with others. Additionally, the spotlight view can showcase employee skills and competencies, mentoring and target roles, and other relevant personal and organizational information.

We are also introducing a new org chart experience with a refreshed look and feel. Available on desktop and mobile, users can explore their organizational structure with improved expand and collapse capabilities, which helps provide full accessibility to an employee’s profile preview, with an option to open the new spotlight view.

Customers can now automatically process new hires from ���۴�ýSuccessFactors Recruiting and ���۴�ýSuccessFactors Onboarding into ���۴�ýSuccessFactors Employee Central. This capability helps further reduce the time to hire, which is especially important with mass, seasonal, and high-volume hiring.

���۴�ýSuccessFactors Employee Central Global Benefits

With this release, we are pleased to introduce a new benefits enrollment experience for insurance, savings, and pension benefit types. Available on both desktop and mobile, the guided experience for benefits elections can give employees increased convenience with improved navigation and increased confidence with side-by-side plan comparisons and embedded instructional text. Additionally, employees can update dependent information and manage beneficiaries directly from the benefits enrollment process, which helps further streamline the enrollment experience.  

���۴�ýSuccessFactors Time Tracking

We are thrilled to share the launch of a new time sheet experience that integrates the latest version of My Timesheet in ���۴�ýS/4HANA with ���۴�ýSuccessFactors. Employees can now record time for payroll, as well as against activities and cost objects, from a single time sheet across applications. This helps organizations leverage real-time connectivity between HR and finance operations to keep track of employee activity and labor costs and to pay employees accurately and on time.

Additionally, a new monthly calendar view for time sheets can give employees and managers a complete picture of recorded time over a month. Users can drill down into specific days and submit or approve time for pay periods beyond a week, such as biweekly or monthly.

For managers, a new time approval center helps simplify approvals with a centralized dashboard highlighting anomalies for swift resolution. Managers can monitor team working hours effectively, helping to ensure accurate and timely payroll processing.

���۴�ýSuccessFactors Onboarding

With enhancements to the onboarding journey experience, new hires can now use the new Your Onboarding Checklist page to reference and complete all tasks – onboarding data collection, compliance tasks, additional onboarding tasks, and exploring the onboarding guide – from one place with a single view. Available for new hires, rehires, internal hires, and employees with global assignments, this improved experience can save time for onboarding participants while helping to ensure productivity from the start.

And that’s only a fraction of all the innovations we’re bringing to customers in 1H 2024. There’s much more in the release, including new and exciting updates in:

• Generative AI and Joule capabilities
• ���۴�ýSuccessFactors Opportunity Marketplace
• ���۴�ýSuccessFactors Compensation
• ���۴�ýSuccessFactors Succession & Development
• ���۴�ýSuccessFactors Incentive Management
• ���۴�ýSuccessFactors Work Zone

Read the and watch the to find out more.

Bianka Woelke is group vice president of Application Product Management at SAP.

By shifting towards a skills-based approach to talent acquisition and development, companies can build a workforce that is not only capable of meeting current demands, but also equipped to navigate future challenges effectively. Here are three strategies for building a dynamic organization with a skills-based approach to talent.

1. Identify and Prioritize Critical Skills

The first step in implementing a skills-based approach is to identify the key skills that are crucial for the organization’s success. This involves analyzing the current and future needs of the business and understanding the skills that are in high demand in the market. By prioritizing these critical skills, organizations can focus their hiring efforts on candidates who possess or have the potential to develop these competencies.

With the ���۴�ýSuccessFactors talent intelligence hub, organizations can have the power and simplicity of a single skills model from recruiting, onboarding, learning, and development, all the way through to performance and succession. It helps to better understand, build, and leverage the skills of workforces. It can connect individual skills, attributes, strengths, and preferences to both people and experiences throughout ���۴�ýSuccessFactors solutions.

By creating a comprehensive overview of the skills available within the organization, managers can identify gaps and areas for improvement. This information can inform talent development initiatives, such as training programs or job rotations, to help employees acquire the necessary skills to excel in their roles. For example, within the talent intelligence hub there is a team growth portfolio view, which allows managers to quickly assess skill gaps and search for prioritized skills within their teams.

2. Foster a Culture of Continuous Learning

Building a dynamic organization requires a culture that supports continuous learning and skill development. Organizations can encourage employees to enhance their skills through internal training programs, mentorship opportunities, and access to external resources. By creating a learning environment where employees are motivated to upskill and reskill, organizations can ensure that their workforce remains adaptable and competitive in a rapidly changing market.

AI-enabled learning platforms can deliver personalized and adaptive training programs based on individual skill gaps and career aspirations. with embedded AI can give organizations a wide range of capabilities that help enhance a learner’s experience with relevant recommendations that are unique to each learner and based on their needs and interests. In addition, has AI-driven recommendations to help match employees with assignments, career opportunities, mentors, and more. This solution considers not only qualifications but also skills, experiences, and preferences, so that organizations can ensure better talent alignment and engagement.

3. Embrace Flexibility and Adaptability

In a skills-based approach to talent management, organizations need to be flexible and adaptable in their recruitment and development practices. This means being open to hiring candidates with transferable skills and potential for growth, rather than focusing solely on specific job titles or qualifications. This can be made possible with technology that supports skills-based hiring.

With , skills can be aligned to job requisitions and skills-based candidate evaluations. This can allow hiring managers to view rankings of candidates and determine the best candidate based on their skill proficiency. In addition, recruiters can leverage generative AI capabilities to help enhance job descriptions, including the proper skills and competences, which helps recruiters hire the best talent for a role. By embracing a more flexible approach to talent acquisition, organizations can build a diverse workforce with a wide range of skills and perspectives, driving innovation and creativity.

A skills-based approach to talent management can help organizations build a dynamic and resilient workforce that is equipped to thrive in today’s fast-paced business environment. By prioritizing critical skills, fostering a culture of continuous learning, and embracing flexibility in recruitment and development practices, organizations can create a competitive advantage through their most valuable asset – their people.

To learn more about how to build a dynamic organization with a skills-based approach to talent, register for this  on Thursday, April 25, at 1:00p.m. EST.

Christina Russo is a global director of Product Marketing at ���۴�ýSuccessFactors.

���۴�ýis pleased to introduce add-on packages for the GROW with ���۴�ýoffering, which are uniquely tailored to the needs of finance and HR functions. These packages integrate the latest cloud solutions, infrastructure, and services into a strategic toolkit, addressing the challenges and opportunities growing companies face. 

The add-on packages provide a dependable, company-wide view that strengthens financial and HR management practices as strategic pillars for growth. In return, businesses can operate more efficiently, sustainably, and effectively — even when expanding their operations. 

Here is a summary of our new add-on packages.

Digital Banking Package for GROW with SAP

Connect your banks, financial institutions, and payment service providers directly to ���۴�ýS/4HANA Cloud Public Edition through a single, centralized platform: The digital banking package provides a multi-bank, digital channel between ERP systems and banks with optional embedded SWIFT connectivity. Integrated payment and statement processes are also available, bringing more comprehensive visibility across the payment value chain. 

With the digital banking package, businesses gain critical capabilities; for example:

• Smooth connectivity to financial and payment services to accelerate the onboarding of providers and strengthen compliance with PCI DSS standards  
• A cloud service for processing incoming credit cards, incoming and outgoing payments, and API-based instance balances 
• Reduction in cash reconciliation efforts while optimizing IT costs and increasing flexibility when choosing providers

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GROW with ���۴�ýAdvanced Treasury and Risk Management Package �į�į&�Բ�����;

Invest confidently and mitigate financial risks while doing more with fewer resources: The GROW with ���۴�ýadvanced treasury and risk management package gives treasurers the comprehensive solution they need to capture exposure data, classify and qualify risks, and trigger trade actions. Predefined connectivity and integration capabilities are available as well, connecting businesses to trading platforms and providers and supporting cash, investment, and risk processes in ���۴�ýS/4HANA Cloud Public Edition.   

The package includes proven solutions, such as: �į�į&�Բ�����;

• Financial risk management 
• Debt and investment management  
• Advanced treasury analytics and executive dashboards 
• Hedge management and hedge accounting in compliance with IFRS and U.S. GAAP requirements  
• Smart trading using ���۴�ýBusiness Technology Platform and smooth integration with an external trading platform

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GROW with ���۴�ýAdvanced Compliance Automation Package

Address evolving regulatory and industry compliance requirements with greater ease and confidence: The GROW with ���۴�ýadvanced compliance automation package empowers finance teams to transform and standardize their processes globally while adhering to local standards efficiently. Furthermore, the package helps meet e-invoicing mandates while keeping order-to-cash processes efficient and internal controls adequate. 

The advanced compliance automation package features proven compliance offerings, including:

• ���۴�ýDocument and Reporting Compliance solution to fulfill local compliance mandates and automate compliance processes
• ���۴�ýRisk and Assurance Management application to centrally manage internal controls over financial reporting, improving performance and protecting core data and processes

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GROW with SAP, Core HR Add-On 

Drive continuous alignment between HR and finance to achieve better business outcomes: The GROW with ���۴�ýcore HR add-on provides a modern cloud-based core HR system that serves as the source of people data in ���۴�ýS/4HANA Cloud Public Edition. It contains the ���۴�ýSuccessFactors Employee Central solution, allowing organizations to use a common data model for HR and finance.   

The core HR add-on helps businesses realize key benefits, such as:   

• Improve people and financial data quality with pre-delivered integration
• Drive more effective workforce planning with holistic real-time insights
• Embrace the latest innovations, such as AI, with a single cloud platform
• Engage users with consistent experiences across HR and finance applications
• Get up and running quickly with pre-configured processes and best practices

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Business Growth with the Best of Finance and HR

Add-on packages for GROW with ���۴�ýprovide fast-growing organizations with the tools they need to not only enhance their finance and HR operations, but also lay a solid foundation for future success. They can navigate an increasingly complex and competitive landscape with the insight and power to confidently embrace change, fuel innovation, and achieve ongoing growth in an ever-evolving economy.  

Eric van Rossum is chief marketing and solutions officer for Cloud ERP at SAP.

Each year, the conducts in-depth research on the latest trends and predictions impacting the HR function. Our PhD-level organizational psychologists and market intelligence experts aggregate and analyze a mountain of HR trends and predictions data to deliver a list of actionable “meta-trends.” For 2024, a list of 611 individual trends were broken down into nine key themes.

Above all, there is no question that 2024 is the year of artificial intelligence (AI). No longer just hype or speculation, AI is officially here. Exciting possibilities have become realities and organizations must embrace AI or risk being left behind. And while our number one HR trend is AI, you can also see its effects across every trend.

Below is a snapshot of the top three 2024 HR meta-trends, with examples of how ���۴�ýSuccessFactors solutions can help organizations stay ahead of the curve.

1. AI Upends the World of Work as We Know It

I don’t go a day – or maybe 10 minutes – without a customer asking for all the latest and greatest on AI innovation. That makes sense, as AI has dominated the 2024 trends discourse and it’s increasingly become seen as a way to augment human work.

Trends indicate that using all forms of AI to improve day-to-day productivity will be top of mind for organizations in 2024. In particular, self-serve AI tools like copilots are poised to increase employee productivity on various day-to-day tasks. As employee sentiment about using AI tools at work has improved, so has the ability of these tools to make employees more efficient and effective.

HR use cases abound, particularly within talent acquisition, but concerns continue about data privacy, ethics, and regulatory compliance. There’s a lot of noise and movement in the space, and regulators and enforcement agencies are acting quickly to keep up.

With the tech landscape and market realities in mind, the HR leaders who head AI implementation programs, maintain a strong policy posture, and avoid overhyped or underbaked propositions to take advantage of the most valuable capabilities will steer their organizations down the right AI path.

Embedding an AI copilot in HR solutions, like , can help employees and managers work faster and smarter by making it easier to find information and complete common HR tasks, such as updating personal data, giving feedback, and initiating a promotion.

2. Skills Become the Center of HR Practices

As AI needs rise within organizations, many organizations will need to immediately respond to determine what AI skills are needed, who possesses those skills, and how to fill skill gaps – whether build, borrow, buy, or bot. On the other hand, AI capabilities will also drive the ability for organizations to more effectively engage in strategic workforce planning.

Furthermore, in today’s increasingly complex business environment, traditional top-down human resources approaches fail to address employees’ increasing expectations for flexible and personalized career development. In 2024, HR will need to meet employees’ growing expectations for bespoke career paths while also solving the broader organization’s growing skills gaps and talent shortages, which present a major concern for leaders.

Looking forward, it will be interesting to see whether the average organization fully engages in long-term, strategic, skills-based workforce planning, which has long been a strategic objective for many but often remains out of reach as they react to immediate priorities. AI skills could work as a forcing function here – and contribute to other trend areas like learning and employee potential.

can drive better employee experiences and business outcomes by using a common skills framework across recruiting, learning, performance management, internal mobility, and development.

3. Hybrid Work Returns to the Office

Looking back at our yearly analyses of HR meta-trends, we saw the hybrid work topic shift from a focus on remote work as a reactive tactic to protect employees’ health and safety in 2020, to a focus on flexibility in 2021, to maintaining productivity and collaboration while working flexibly in 2022, and finally to an emphasis on underlying flexibility and the need for and benefit of malleable guidelines and principles in 2023. With the recent increase in partial and full return-to-office (RTO) policies, 2024 trends data suggests that the pendulum has swung back to hybrid, referring specifically to work location versus a broader perspective centered on flexibility.

Companies in 2024 will continue to experiment with motivating employees to return to the office in ways that promote productivity, collaboration, and cost savings but don’t alienate their top talent. But some organizations are focusing more on redesigning the nature of work rather than just mandating where or when work gets done.

help employees adopt a hybrid working model by providing options for common HR tasks regardless of when and where they are working, such as clocking in and out via desktop, mobile, or Microsoft Teams.

There are plenty more strategic takeaways in the full report – the entire paper is a must-read for HR leaders to learn more from our research team on the latest trends in:

• Diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEI&B)
• Employee mental health
• Leadership trust
• HR skills and agility
• Compensation
• Sustainability

For additional insights, .

Dan Beck is president and chief product officer for ���۴�ýSuccessFactors.

, a consultancy and ���۴�ýpartner based in Cologne, Germany, emerged stronger and better positioned to serve its clients following a that brought together three former consultancies: Axxiome Health, ConVista Consulting, and enowa. With 25 years of experience delivering transformation projects to its clients, Convista used that expertise in its own rebranding to present its capabilities to clients and employees: a vibrant people culture as well as a respected and trusted brand supported by for ERP and for core HR.

“Trust and transparency are common values that we share at Convista,” declares Convista CEO Martin Hinz. “Combined with a dynamic team spirit and passion, it’s what we bring to our clients every day.”

With a workforce of around 1,200 employees, Convista has made a name for itself through its dedication and expertise providing end-to-end solutions to clients throughout the world with a presence in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Poland, Spain, Brazil, Israel, and further locations across the globe. It supports client projects primarily in four sectors: insurance, industry, healthcare, and energy/utilities. In recent years, Convista has twice been awarded ���۴�ý in the Financial Services sector.

“At Convista you meet everyone on the same level, independent of your skill level or where you are in your career,” says Stefanie Weber, project lead of People and Culture – HR Systems, Convista. “Also, when we’re working with customers, we try to approach them at eye level, which makes quite a good working environment. The implementation of ���۴�ýSuccessFactors came as a natural extension to our brand and our culture.”

The Challenges of Data Siloed in Three Systems

Weber says one of the reasons she joined Convista in 2012 while studying business at university was the high priority its leaders place on trust and transparency, values that permeate the entire organization and empower employees in their work and career development. “Trust is one of our main values,” she underscores. “Also, the trust that people are willing to do their best to get motivated and move the company ahead.”

Convista grew quickly both organically and as a result of mergers with other consultancies. In 2019, IT service provider Axxiome Health joined the ConVista Group to deepen the organization’s expertise in the health insurance sector. In 2021, enowa joined the group, infusing its knowledge of industries and insurance. With the mergers complete, the incipient organization became on January 1, 2023.

Though team members were highly motivated to collaborate from the start, Convista’s vision for itself as a modern organization was held back in both its daily work for projects and internal services. Using disparate tools based on older technology and a patchwork of third-party solutions that lacked integration proved to be inefficient and unsuitable as a basis for decision-making.

“Whenever we wanted to have a report, even something as simple as a headcount, we always had to go into three different systems, collect the data, and report on that,” Weber recalls. “It’s just one of the many examples of why we really urgently needed one IT platform.”

Project ONE Achieves Milestone Integration

To build a strong foundation for future growth, Convista embarked on “Project ONE” with the goal to have one digital platform flexible and powerful enough for the entire organization. For this, it chose ���۴�ýS/4HANA Cloud Public Edition and ���۴�ýSuccessFactors solutions with self-service capabilities for employees to log time-off.

Overall, implementing ���۴�ýSuccessFactors Employee Central with ���۴�ýS/4HANA Cloud Public Edition can result in streamlined HR processes; end-to-end integration with seamless connectivity between HR and finance functions for accurate and up-to-date employee data across the organization; greater transparency of data for analytics and reporting on workforce trends, costs, and profitability to enable better strategic planning and resource allocation; and compliance with regulatory requirements and data security.

Among the key advantages is the ability for employees to access their own HR-related information, such as personal details and time-off balances. This self-service capability helps empower employees, improve transparency, and enhance the overall employee experience.

Convista’s project team decided for a phased approach to the implementation by first introducing the ���۴�ýsolutions in Poland and later in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland – with ���۴�ýS/4HANA Cloud Public Edition planned to launch in the German-speaking countries during the course of 2024. To optimize success, the project team used the combined best practices of Convista and ���۴�ýand hosted regular meetings that provided clear communication to steer the project. “We were always aligned on the requirements of the other teams,” says Weber, who managed the HR workstream. “We all knew the main goal of the implementation. This was helpful for everyone on the project.”

In-house experts from Convista certified on ���۴�ýSuccessFactors solutions contributed valuable knowledge for the implementation. Consultants from ���۴�ýServices and Support successfully integrated the cost center replication from ���۴�ýS/4HANA Cloud to ���۴�ýSuccessFactors and the workforce replication from ���۴�ýSuccessFactors to ���۴�ýS/4HANA Cloud, and delivered a detailed administration guide on the integration setup for Convista. Additionally, they provided an overview, the architecture guidance, and the navigation through major hurdles in performing the configuration to set up identity access governence (IAG), identity provisioning service (IPS), and identity authentication services (IAS). The ���۴�ýEarly Adopter Care program supported Convista for the master data integration (MDI) during the implementation and helped to solve all roadblocks efficiently.

On January 1, 2023, Convista’s 80-person team in Poland was the first to go live with the new ���۴�ýsolutions. “It was really a great experience for them and quite an advancement,” says Weber, citing the benefits of the new solutions that provide optimizations and intuitive workflows. The project took a pivotal turn on January 1, 2024, with the launch of ���۴�ýSuccessFactors solutions for Convista’s 800 employees in the German-speaking countries.

“The biggest milestone was to have [���۴�ýS/4HANA Cloud Public Edition and ���۴�ýSuccessFactors Employee Central] speaking with each other,” says Weber, who emphasizes how valuable it is for the team “to have an end-to-end process within one platform.” With an integrated IT platform in place, she says that it is no longer necessary to do workflows, authorizations, or any other processes in other systems.

The seamless synchronization of data by using a common data model for ���۴�ýbusiness applications helps reduce the need for manual data entry and redundant processes. This means, for example, employee data that is maintained in ���۴�ýSuccessFactors Employee Central is available in real-time in ���۴�ýS/4HANA Cloud Public Edition; while master data, like cost center data, flows seamlessly from ���۴�ýS/4HANA Cloud Public Edition to ���۴�ýSuccessFactors Employee Central. Eliminating data silos enables the HR and finance teams to work with consistent, accurate data for all-important employment decisions and legal reporting obligations.

Now Convista’s team is unified in its brand, values, spirit – and employee data. 

More Transparency and Intuitive Workflows Are Just the Beginning

Feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, according to Weber, with employees speaking favorably about the improved transparency and workflows. “The first thing I heard from everyone was, well, this is simple and intuitive. They were so happy about it,” she says. “They are big fans of the mobile application. They find it very transparent and easy to use.”

For some colleagues, the new solution lets them view their own data for the first time. “When we went live, everyone was viewing their profile,” says Weber. “This was also quite new that you are able to see what data is maintained for your person, your address, but also job information – to view it and have this transparency. People like this very much and also the ability to have the self-services in ���۴�ýSuccessFactors.”

To strengthen communication between HR and employees, Convista will bring more people processes onto the new digital platform. In fact, the team very recently implemented the ���۴�ýSuccessFactors Performance & Goals solution for annual employee appraisals, goal setting, and project feedback. “It’s just the beginning,” Weber says. “There’s still a lot of work ahead of us.”

Hinz says, “We have been careful to preserve our workplace culture during the transformation. Now that we are rebranded as one organization, we are seeing the benefits of that early effort. With SAP, we now have the digital platform to build people-centered processes that advance our vision as a unified, high-performing organization serving our clients.”       

Find out more about .

Jacqueline Prause is a journalist at SAP.

Leaders need to embrace generative AI as a way to address these challenges with talent intelligence and advanced analytics. According to , 26% of CEOs rank the talent shortage as the top damaging factor to business outlook, and 76% of HR leaders agree they will be lagging in organizational success if they don’t adopt and implement generative AI in the next 12 to 24 months. 

 At SAP, we have a proven track record of providing HCM solutions in the cloud for leading organizations around the globe. Our customers trust us to not only manage their sensitive employee data and payroll, but to help them understand their workforces as they prepare for the skills they need in the future. 

The provides truly global HR cloud software with powerful AI capabilities to help organizations meet the challenges of today and innovate for tomorrow. Our more than 10,000 customers – from startups and midmarket companies to large enterprises – use our solutions to help bring out the best in their people by harnessing the to elevate every experience, guide every people decision, and connect HR across every aspect of the business. We do this with: 

• : A single source of truth is key for any organization to enable insight into the entirety of its workforce: employees, contingent workers, and dynamic teams. The ���۴�ýSuccessFactors HCM suite can provide localized support for over 100 countries and territories and cloud payroll for 50 countries and territories, plus additional modular solutions for time, benefits, and HR service delivery.

• : Skills gaps and talent shortages have been persistent challenges that continue to exist across all industries. Addressing them starts with an understanding of skills that currently exist, followed by pathways for employees to find new opportunities, learn new skills, and access mentors and feedback. The talent intelligence hub across ���۴�ýSuccessFactors solutions uses AI to continuously help organizations and employees understand their skills and match people with personalized career pathways.  

• : Every person has unique needs and preferences – in how they work, how they communicate, and what’s required for their role. Along with a refreshed, modern user experience, we’ve built in generative AI capabilities throughout our solutions to help people work smarter. And with Joule, SAP’s copilot, they can quickly complete HR tasks and get conversational responses to their questions.

• : Having access to people data connected across the business is critical to building agility, speed, and resilience within an organization. With the power of the broader ���۴�ýportfolio, organizations can improve end-to-end business processes across the entire business. This is also complemented with our partner ecosystem, which includes over 350 apps for HR.

We firmly believe that when organizations invest in their people – in their passions and potential – they return the investment over and over. And with the rapid acceleration of AI, it’s more important than ever to build pathways to employee growth, including new ways to upskill, reskill, and discover opportunities that align with a person’s skills, interests, and aspirations. 

Learn more about the .

Dan Beck is president and chief product officer for ���۴�ýSuccessFactors.

With the widened availability of AI, the race for skills is impacting both people and organizations. While people are learning how to use AI to drive more efficiency within their individual roles, organizations are also under pressure to adopt AI technology that can deliver more personalized development opportunities and greater talent intelligence.  

Over the last year, ���۴�ýhas made significant investments across , specifically in , to deliver these capabilities. 

These investments are part of a broader strategy to help our customers focus on accelerated skills growth and build a future-ready workforce. Recently, we released a redesigned integrated learning experience that can deliver an entirely new way for people to experience learning at work. The highly personalized experience can guide the learner to not only accomplish compliance trainings – what they “have to learn” – and organizational goals – what they “need to learn” – but also helps to drive an intrinsic culture of learning around what they “want to learn,” tapping into each individual’s needs, aspirations, interests, or preferences based on their growth profile.  

Furthermore, the AI-powered talent intelligence hub is now available across all ���۴�ýSuccessFactors solutions. It is a framework that helps organizations understand the skills their employees have today, the gaps that exist, and how to close those gaps. With this intelligence, ���۴�ýSuccessFactors Learning can continue to deliver even more personalized learning and development recommendations. 

“The level of innovation within the learning systems market continues to accelerate rapidly – specifically around AI and skills,” said David Wilson, founder and CEO of Fosway Group. “As a major vendor in this space, ���۴�ýcontinues to invest significantly in innovating its learning and talent capabilities, reflecting its focus on enhancing the value it delivers to learning buyers as well as its wider HCM audience.” 

Both multinational and midsize companies leverage , along with our partner ecosystem, to help drive upskilling and reskilling and create a culture of continuous learning. 

San Pablo Farmacia, a Mexico-based pharmacy retail chain, created an intuitive and engaging training experience that employees can consume at their convenience. By integrating the learning solution with other talent management applications, it can design personal training and development plans in line with its growth strategies and the individual needs of the entire workforce. The company delivered certified training to 1,800 employees without the need to transport its people to a training location and take them away from their pharmacy stores. 

Delta is also embracing AI to drive upskilling and personalized development opportunities. “We are incorporating disruptive technologies like our AI-driven skills ontology that automatically incorporates industry trends with embedded intelligence,” said Tim Gregory, managing director of HR Innovation and Workforce Technology at Delta. “We can say which skills are most important to Delta Air Lines and the employee can easily combine those with their current capabilities, strengths and styles, and aspirations to create a personal career path. All of the content is based on Delta-specific skills and personalized to each employee’s career goals.”  

Looking ahead, we will continue to deliver more learning-specific enhancements and new AI capabilities throughout 2024 across all ���۴�ýSuccessFactors solutions so leaders can hire the best talent and grow their personal skills with individualized plans while building up the compliance and strategic skills needed by the organization.  

Vinita Venkatesh is vice president of Product Management for ���۴�ýSuccessFactors Learning. 

High-performing sales teams are using solutions from ���۴�ýSuccessFactors to manage and optimize sales compensation and incentives – rewarding sales reps for their performance – while streamlining sales processes and using real-time insights to improve operational efficiency and drive revenue.

“There’s this renewed emphasis on efficiency,” said Rahul Iyer, general manager, Sales Performance Management, ���۴�ýSuccessFactors, speaking to ���۴�ýcustomers at the , held February 13-14, 2024, in Dallas, Texas. “Customers want faster, simpler outcomes – and they want to provide a great seller experience, as well. At ���۴�ýSuccessFactors, we’ve threaded the intelligence of connected cloud applications throughout the SPM solution portfolio. This allows us to deliver the efficiency, transparency, and rich experience of ���۴�ýin a comprehensive platform that covers a full range of end-to-end processes in sales compensation.”

Together for Success

Under the banner “Together we can make it better,” the summit event provided a venue for ���۴�ýcustomers – some of whom came from as far away as South America – to meet one-on-one with experts and gain valuable knowledge from product road maps, demos, and deep dive sessions, as well as learn from one another’s experiences in customer sessions. 

Iyer affirmed SAP’s commitment to deliver the advanced innovations customers need to be competitive: “As a strategic partner to our customers, we have the moral responsibility to help them receive progressively more out of technology innovations, while accelerating with the best-in-class capabilities ���۴�ýhas to offer. We are simplifying from every angle to make it easy for our customers to adopt, so they can achieve business outcomes faster.”

Barbara Rubis Linning, ���۴�ýSuccessFactors global vice president, Product and Engineering, presented the latest innovations and features across the sales performance management solution set, which includes , , , and . With features like territory planning and incentive compensation, ���۴�ýsales performance management solutions enable organizations to optimize their sales performance for better business results. The solutions use advanced features – for tasks such as drive time analysis and mapping to optimize territories – to streamline processes and make workflows easier so that customers realize value faster. The ongoing introduction of the visual theme on key administrative pages delivers a fresh, modern user interface (UI) for an elevated user experience. 

“We want our customers to have winning sales teams,” said Linning. “Their success is why we continuously look for new ways to build innovations and relevant features into the portfolio to accelerate business outcomes. ���۴�ýis building intelligence that is relevant, responsible, and reliable because we believe it leads to smarter, data-driven decision making and results in better sales performance. Our new intuitive UI helps simplify tasks and puts people at the center of business for improved productivity.”

���۴�ýSuccessFactors solutions deliver , SAP’s natural language processing AI copilot, to help people be more productive in their jobs using ���۴�ýbusiness solutions.    

The integration of sales performance management solutions with and ���۴�ýDatasphere enables seamless access to real-time data and analytics, empowering organizations to make informed decisions and drive sales success.

Winning with Sales Compensation

As the all-important link between an organization’s products and services and its customers, the sales team is a principal driver of bottom-line growth for the whole organization. Correctly incenting sales teams requires the use of proven strategies and solutions to align the pay program with organizational goals, said David Cichelli, revenue growth advisor at , who presented “Leading the Sales Design Compensation Project.”

He advised sales compensation leaders adopt an annual review process that includes assessment, strategic alignment, taskforce design, and comprehensive communication phases. “Sales compensation design needs to reflect the consensus of key stakeholders: sales, finance, product management, and HR,” he said. “By following a proven design process, you can develop a strategically aligned, effective, and motivational pay program.”

Supporting Customer Success for Better Outcomes

The summit showcased the ���۴�ýecosystem with sponsorships and informative sessions from , , , , , and .

���۴�ýexperts highlighted SAP’s message of ongoing support for customer success: “We’re here for you,” said Tak Kusano, global chief operating officer of ���۴�ýSuccessFactors. “���۴�ýhas a tight-knit community of sales performance management experts that bring deep domain knowledge to this niche space. That’s why we’re able to work so closely with customers to gain consensus on the road map and product innovations, like AI. We’re passionate about bringing the best of technology to ���۴�ýcustomers.”

A total workforce management strategy allows businesses to keep the whole workforce in focus for increased agility, productivity, and bottom-line impact.  

OG&E’s experience with contingent and contract labor is unique. Despite the 121 years under its belt, OG&E has embraced the changing landscape of employment with open arms. For over 25 years, OG&E has been utilizing ���۴�ýsolutions, including for over a decade. Together with the HR solutions of , ���۴�ýFieldglass solutions – a comprehensive vendor management portfolio for external labor – help pave the way for the successful workforce management of permanent and contingent and contract labor. 

The challenge lies in determining which positions to fill with contingent workers or profile workers, a process OG&E has mastered over the years. The decision hinges on the specific skills required and the immediacy and duration of the need. This flexible approach has enabled OG&E to successfully bring in workers with diverse profiles for various projects, such as its recent ���۴�ýSuccessFactors Human Experience Management (HXM) Suite implementation project.

Ownership of this process is shared between the departments of HR, the business units, and procurement, reflecting a trend observed across various organizations. A study conducted in 2022 revealed that HR was responsible for external worker functions about 51% of the time.* This is a testament to the rising importance of contingent and profile workers and the need for HR to engage them effectively.

However, this process isn’t without its complexities, necessitating collaboration between HR and procurement. Issues such as rate cards and other procurement-specific processes require strong cooperation between the two functions.  

Previously, a lack of comprehensive understanding about OG&E’s workforce made everyday HR and finance decisions increasingly challenging. The management of contingent workers through ���۴�ýFieldglass solutions was handled by a third party. However, the transition to internal management provided more visibility.  

This has empowered OG&E to make more informed decisions. For example, OG&E had 10 excellent candidates from different suppliers for a position, two of which came at a significantly higher cost. Recognizing the value of the other eight candidates, it challenged the high markup, resulting in one supplier lowering its rate. This type of negotiation was previously not possible for OG&E due to the lack of visibility, but now it’s an integral part of the process. 

In contrast, Brightspeed, a company that has recently started out, is managing a dynamic workforce of  4,200 employees and almost as many contractors. Its mission? To lay high-speed fiber in the South and Midwest of the United States. Alongside this, it also had a recent divestiture from Lumen, with hundreds of inherited applications and a fresh contingent workforce.

But its workforce needs are ever-evolving. With a contingent workforce that ebbs and flows according to the company’s needs, Brightspeed is flexible and can adapt, from field workers laying fiber to IT specialists building new applications.

Brightspeed utilized SAP’s suite of applications to help streamline its operations post-divestiture. Lumen had already implemented ���۴�ýSuccessFactors solutions and ���۴�ýFieldglass solutions, so Brightspeed decided to create a seamless transition and continue to use these solutions. The suite it uses now includes ���۴�ýSuccessFactors solutions, ���۴�ýFieldglass solutions, and ���۴�ýS/4HANA.

The ���۴�ýFieldglass portfolio is used to help manage contingent workers. Within this context, Brightspeed’s managed service provider plays a crucial role. It liaises with the hiring manager, handles candidate selection, and ultimately delivers the temporary worker in ���۴�ýFieldglass solutions. These workers are then trained in compliance and technical procedures, with all the information interfaced back into ���۴�ýSuccessFactors Learning. From an ���۴�ýS/4HANA perspective, cost center project activities and other elements are pushed out to its time system and raw time is imported to ���۴�ýS/4HANA, capturing millions of dollars in project cost every pay period.

However, the journey wasn’t without its challenges. As a young company, Brightspeed had a massive task ahead of it in getting these systems up and running in just 10 months. The team successfully navigated this initial hurdle, but soon realized it hadn’t fully prepared for the post-go-live period due to the compressed implementation period. This led to a challenging few months, as it scrambled to train personnel and resolve system errors. Despite this, the team has since stabilized operations.

As these examples show, the role of contingent and profile workers is evolving and becoming increasingly integral to the success of organizations. They are no longer just field workers but are being relied upon for specific skill sets. This allows companies like Brightspeed and OG&E to stay agile, adapt to business needs, and manage their contingent and profile workers as well as their permanent employees.

A , when done right, can leverage the full potential of a diverse workforce and make companies more agile. ���۴�ýSuccessFactors solutions and ���۴�ýFieldglass solutions can work together to help create and manage a dynamic, flexible workforce that can easily adapt. The experiences of OG&E and Brightspeed highlight the importance of strategic planning and the effective use of technological tools in managing the workforce.

Andrea Domhardt is part of Product Marketing for ���۴�ýSuccessFactors.

*“Workforce Solutions Buyer Survey 2022, Americas,“ Staffing Industry Analysts, 2022.

At the recent NRF event, the world’s largest retail conference, the mantra of “adjust and adapt” echoed through the halls. AI and digital acceleration took the center stage, making innovation the heart of the conversation. Retailers also highlighted a crucial focus on a motivated workforce, emphasizing how an empowered workforce is critical to delivering exceptional customer experiences.

In a landscape challenged by high turnover rates, retailers showcased their commitment to navigating complexity through strategic investments in their most valuable asset – their people. One of the pivotal elements that drives employee motivation and engagement in the retail industry is incentive compensation, where associates are often paid on commission.

During NRF, Daniel Jasper from Neiman Marcus shared insights into how incentive compensation automation transformed the company’s commission payment process. With over 40 stores and a complex commission structure, Neiman Marcus faced challenges in managing incentive compensation. Its previous incentive management system was cumbersome and complex, which led to errors, delays, and frustration among sales associates. Implementing helped streamline the process, providing real-time monitoring of commission calculations. This allowed Neiman Marcus to identify and resolve issues proactively, resulting in improved accuracy and timeliness of commission payments. “Rather than waiting to hear from associates that something is wrong, we can monitor the calculations in real-time and resolve issues in advance,” said Jasper. This shift has been a game-changer for Neiman Marcus, driving better sales and revenue growth.

���۴�ýSuccessFactors Incentive Management is one of the sales performance management solutions in the ���۴�ýSuccessFactors portfolio, and it offers a sophisticated platform for tailoring incentive programs to suit the unique needs of retail associates. With powerful analytics, embedded intelligence, and built-in workflows, this solution can revolutionize compensation management. Its intelligent design can not only foster trust but also ignite motivation among store associates. Through a user-friendly mobile app, retail customers can enjoy a comprehensive and easily accessible view of both store and individual performance metrics, promoting transparency and a unified understanding of team dynamics and trends. Personalized recommendations, relevant insights, and interactive monitoring help enhance the user experience, while the mobile app helps ensure that store associates can access their incentives anytime, anywhere, from any device.

The solution’s agility helps facilitate a swift rollout of new and updated compensation plans, offering the flexibility to manage broadly or tailor plans to individual needs. With a steadfast commitment to accuracy and traceability, associates can trust the fairness of calculations, fostering a positive work environment. The effective dating functionalities help further empower organizations, allowing seamless management of associate promotions and transfers.

“Retail businesses more than ever need the ability to design and manage incentive plans that align with ever-changing organizational goals, with a focus on store-level personalization and granularity that allow for improved accuracy and timeliness of commission payments,” said Rahul Iyer, general manager of Sales Performance Management at SAP. “With ���۴�ýSuccessFactors Incentive Management, retailers can incorporate key performance indicators, such as sales per hour and units per sale, into their incentive structure. The mobile app can provide visibility and transparency into individual and store performance, effectively motivating and ensuring optimal performance from their associates.”

In essence, ���۴�ýSuccessFactors Incentive Management emerges as an indispensable tool, helping to empower retail customers to optimize workforce performance and drive sustained success. Displaying key performance indicators and incentives has proven to be a game changer, helping to drive focus on store and individual performance. The result? Associates are more attentive to customers, guiding them through purchasing decisions and enhancing overall satisfaction.

In the always-changing retail world, success comes down to three things: using better technology, having happy employees, and keeping customers in focus. The story of Neiman Marcus proves that automating incentives can be a game changer. It shows how a motivated and well-connected team can not just boost how things work but also bring in more sales and money.

To stay ahead in retail, you need to be ready for change and invest in both tech and your team. This is a clear lesson for retailers planning for the future. Learn more about how . To learn more about how sales performance management solutions can support your organization, visit the .

Kevin Coxwell is vice president of GTM for Sales Performance Management at SAP.

Global specialty materials company overcame its HR reporting challenges by implementing story reports in ���۴�ýSuccessFactors solutions, making its reporting easier and more efficient. For example, a standard talent report – once a labor-intensive task that took several days of precious time – is now generated in under two hours complete with detailed graphics that are continuously updated with live data. Indeed, an ���۴�ý found that with the analytics tools available in ���۴�ýSuccessFactors solutions, customers reported a 74% decrease in time spent on report generation, saving days and even weeks on HR reporting.  

“The ability to give our [HR] information to leaders as they need it is huge,” says Nina Nabors, manager of Talent Systems, Eastman. She summarizes the transformation in improvement over past reporting methods. “Before, it was lagging data. It was never data that was live. Having that benefit of building the story report in ���۴�ýSuccessFactors and it continuously updating with the latest information is very nice.”

Based in Tennessee, U.S., Eastman Chemical Company was founded in 1920 as a subsidiary of Eastman Kodak. It has a workforce of 14,000 employees in 15 countries. Energized in its purpose to “enhance the quality of life in a material way,” Eastman engages with customers in 100 countries to deliver innovative materials found in items people use every day, including safe, durable medical materials; premium plastics for eyewear frames and lenses; food and beverage packaging; sustainable fibers for luxury home furnishings; and energy-efficient window glass for the construction industry, among others.

Cloud HR Delivers Sustainable Value with Exceptional Employee Experience

To future-proof its workforce, Eastman set itself up for success by moving to the cloud with ���۴�ýSuccessFactors solutions. Eastman was already using an on-premise human capital management (HCM) solution from SAP, but wanted the scalability and cost-effectiveness of a cloud-based HR solution. “Delivering [HR] services in the cloud gives us an opportunity to make the technology available to our employees in a way that is more sustainable than having it housed on our servers,” says Nabors.

Prachi Sathe, director of Global HR Technology and Solutions, Eastman, underscores the value of receiving the latest innovations and new features with each biannual ���۴�ýSuccessFactors release update. “We also wanted to make sure our HR platform is sustainable in terms of how we support it, how we grow it, and how we make more functions available to our employees. Going to ���۴�ýSuccessFactors just made sense for us,” she says.

Eastman uses a range of solutions in – including ���۴�ýSuccessFactors Employee Central and modules for recruiting, learning, compensation, variable pay, performance and goals, career development planning, and succession – to help harness the efficiency of end-to-end integration and provide an exceptional experience throughout the employee journey from hire to retire.

The ���۴�ýSuccessFactors Recruiting solution, for example, is a key driver of Eastman’s talent strategy. “That’s how we bring our new talent into the organization. That’s really their first introduction to our tools,” says Nabors. “We’re bringing great talent into the organization. How we do it is very important, and ���۴�ýSuccessFactors is a part of that.”

Accelerating Efficiency with Real-Time Analytics

Eastman needed a streamlined approach to HR reporting that accelerated efficiency and optimized value by fully using the analytics and data in ���۴�ýSuccessFactors solutions. “We were using separate tools outside of ���۴�ýSuccessFactors solutions to pull our reporting together,” recalls Sathe. “The challenges with that [were figuring out] how we get data out of ���۴�ýSuccessFactors solutions and feed it into those reporting tools.”

Eastman’s customer success partner for the plan identified ���۴�ýresources to help Eastman increase value from its use of ���۴�ýSuccessFactors People Analytics. Eastman also joined a hands-on lab session at SuccessConnect 2022 to gain experience working with story reports, a tool available in the report center of ���۴�ýSuccessFactors solutions. Story reports can deliver real-time data analytics and generate reports faster by using live data from across ���۴�ýSuccessFactors HXM Suite, displaying presentation-style reports in a clear format with detailed visual graphics that communicate insights in an understandable way. As Sathe notes, “When we saw [story reports], it was so motivating for us that data is already there and tools are there. We came back and started working on our first dashboard.”

“We’re so happy Eastman joined us at SuccessConnect,” says Maryann Abbajay, chief revenue officer, ���۴�ýSuccessFactors. “Hands-on lab sessions like the one Eastman participated in are invaluable learning experiences. Eastman is a great example of how customers are applying that new knowledge to unlock value with ���۴�ýSuccessFactors. With story reports, they are already able to deliver the type of data-driven insights that transform HR into a strategic partner for the business.”    

Data-Driven Insights That Advance People Strategy

Eastman began working with a manager dashboard, one of the many time-saving templates preloaded in story reports, and later built its own version tailored to the information requirements of its organizational leaders, supervisors, and people managers. The HR team also developed custom objects to use in its story reports, including an organizational hierarchy table with extensive drilldown capabilities and a currency exchange table to help executives track international labor costs. The story reports, customized with the look and feel of Eastman’s branding, quickly gained broad acceptance with Eastman’s organizational leaders.

The HR team recently built a dashboard showing a holistic view to help leaders identify opportunities to advance the organization’s people strategy. This dashboard uses data from ���۴�ýSuccessFactors Employee Central and will later be augmented with data from the recruiting and learning solutions. A talent dashboard is also forthcoming to Eastman’s HR community, which includes talent partners and leaders. Sathe notes, “By creating the stories, as its name says, we are bringing various data sources together.”

Michael Glenn, talent assessment and analytics manager, Eastman, is building a new learning dashboard that will go out to all learning administrators and supervisors to enable them to see how many people are overdue on their learnings and what learnings are coming up in the next 30 days – and how many hours are required to complete the learning sessions. This information is especially important for production teams that work on fixed schedules, as it enables managers to plan the learning hours into the employee’s schedule.

To ensure the reports provide the right level of information to each recipient based on their role, Glenn intends to use the role-based access permissions available in story reports. So far, he is impressed with the feature, which saves him time from performing manual activities and distribution list maintenance. “We’ve been testing out role-based permissions and it is just working great,” he says.

Empowering HR Administrators with User-Friendly Solutions for Improved Productivity

Nabors says that though she has no background or training in analytics, she found that she was able to get up to speed with stories very quickly. She recalls previously spending several days to build a single report that integrated data from ���۴�ýSuccessFactors Employee Central and ���۴�ýSuccessFactors Recruiting. In stories, she is now able to generate the same report in just one to two hours.

Also, troubleshooting and addressing gaps in data is much easier. “If there’s an error somewhere – for example, requisition data that shows up under the wrong person’s name – being able to see it in a story is very easy,” she says. “It’s easy to address that error quickly because you can go right to the error without having to dig through lines and lines of data, rows and columns of data.”

Better Analytics for Faster Decision-Making

Eastman plans to build on its early success with story reports to drive more insights for the organization. For example, there are plans to integrate data to track progress towards Eastman’s ambitious inclusion and diversity , which include increasing diverse talent and supporting employees in bringing their whole selves to work. Real-time information from ���۴�ýSuccessFactors solutions supports organizational leaders in advancing Eastman’s strategy to build a high-performing organization.

“We really believe in sustainability and sustainable outcomes,” says Sathe. “We want our employees to be self-service reporting employees and create better analytics that give them information versus data. What we were doing previously was giving them data. Story reports transformed this.”

For more information, read “.”

Being at the forefront of innovation and with a steadfast commitment to enhancing existing solutions, ���۴�ýcontinuously strives to future-proof its solutions to adapt to the ever-changing landscape of business needs.

When ���۴�ýannounced the transition from CallidusCloud solutions to sales performance management solutions on the ���۴�ýHANA database, it was because these solutions have reached a significant maturity milestone and can meet even the most complex customer requirements.

The move aimed to leverage the maturity of the solutions, providing more robust and adaptable systems capable of handling intricate customer demands effectively. As a column-oriented in-memory database, ���۴�ýHANA runs advanced analytics alongside high-speed transactions — in a single system, ensuring the applications run faster.

Some of the largest CallidusCloud customers are now running ���۴�ýSuccessFactors solutions on ���۴�ýHANA. In some cases, they are running hundreds of millions of line items at scale, with over 100 payees being credited individual line items. It is possible, as they get up to 10x compression, allowing for greater storage capacity.

Being on ���۴�ýHANA offers the advantage of the open cloud platform, ���۴�ýBusiness Technology Platform (���۴�ýBTP), which brings together application development, data and analytics, integration, and artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities into one unified environment. With embedded analytics, multi-factor authentication, and many other capabilities, customers can have confidence that their incentive management solutions will continue to meet the global technology standards that are expected by their organization.

With ���۴�ýBTP capabilities now embedded into sales performance management solutions, customers can run a technology stack that is enabling thousands of other organizations to solve complex business problems — from subscription billing to financial reconciliation and everything in between.

SAP’s strategy is to launch sales performance management solutions on hyperscalers. This means customers have the elasticity they demand during peak runs, helping to ensure their system grows and keeps up with the needs of the organization. Available on Google Cloud Platform, solutions leverage Kubernetes (K8s)​ platform, moving from monolithic to microservices architecture to provide a more robust and scalable solution with market-leading performance and global reach. It simplifies operations, brings down costs, and deploys innovations faster.

With this enhanced backend technology, the solutions gain superior speed, concurrency, scalability, and performance, helping to achieve lower downtime and higher availability. Enhanced application UI load time provides for an immediate improvement in user experience and efficiency of work.

When it comes to ���۴�ýSuccessFactors Incentive Management, formerly CallidusCloud Commissions, the ways in which the solution has not changed is important. This is critical from the standpoint of risk reduction.

While the solution now runs on the ���۴�ýHANA database, the data model remains consistent with its proven pedigree.* And while the sequels have been changed to perform better with a columnar database, the proven sequence of a calculation run remains the same.

Similarly, the tooling has been changed to enable the validate and transfer steps to perform better using the express data loader, but the file formats remain the same. Embedded analytics provide a better analytics framework, but the capability to use external schema is now enhanced.

In short, this is a now a world-class solution full of new capabilities, while still retaining the best of the original offering.

���۴�ýSuccessFactors Territory and Quota has seen more than 200 new developments since migrating to the ���۴�ýHANA database, and ���۴�ýSuccessFactors Agent Lifecycle Management, formerly CallidusCloud Producer Pro, also takes advantage of new capabilities on ���۴�ýHANA. These developments help ensure that the new sales performance management portfolio can meet and exceed demands of the most discerning customers at scale on one of the most secure platforms available in the industry.

We are excited to share this information with CallidusCloud customers and look forward to helping your organization make the strategic move to the ���۴�ýSuccessFactors portfolio.

To learn more about how sales performance management solutions can support your organization, visit the .

*Remains consistent with its proven pedigree

People and culture are increasingly becoming some of the most critical aspects of an organization. It’s what attracts new talent to join and keeps current employees growing and developing. Whether that’s scaling up, diving into a new market segment, or pivoting to meet changing customer demands, having the right people in the right roles determines success.

From midsize organizations to large enterprises, having a single view of employees across all countries is a differentiator. It’s no longer about just maintaining a system of record. It’s the foundation to manage the total workforce – from setting organizational goals to establishing the talent intelligence that’s needed to build a workforce that is agile and adaptable.

Organizations of all sizes, industries, and regions use ���۴�ýSuccessFactors Employee Central to help improve experiences for managers and employees, automate compliance for more than 100 locales, manage benefits and absence management, and standardize processes across multiple locations. Here’s what some of our customers are saying:

• “���۴�ýSuccessFactors is our people backbone. It provides the common processes, systems, and data that let us create engaging people experiences at scale.” – Giancarlo Pala, head of IT HR / Nestlé S.A.

• “With the ���۴�ýSuccessFactors Employee Central solution, the company now has a single HR and payroll system providing a single source of truth, instant access to employee data, automated approval workflows, and enhanced reporting – available on the go, anytime, anywhere.” –

• “The ���۴�ýSuccessFactors Employee Central solution, branded at Woodbridge as Teammate Central, supports the company’s core HR processes and provides teammates with intuitive, fast access to HR self-services. The solution’s localization capabilities support Woodbridge’s operations at 50 locations in more than 10 countries, while its position management feature helps smooth the plant acquisition process.” –

• “Using ���۴�ýSuccessFactors Employee Central, we have mitigated the need for manual monthly and quarterly data input efforts from our local HR teams and can now automatically generate reports whenever required with access to global workforce data.” –

Additional organizations, including Versuni, , , , and many more, have chosen ���۴�ýSuccessFactors Employee Central to help manage their workforce.

Continued Improvements to Enhance the Employee Experience

Since ���۴�ýSuccessFactors Employee Central was introduced over a decade ago, we have continued to adapt and innovate to help our customers meet the changing expectations of their employees and the rising demands from HR to deliver greater insights and data.

Customers using ���۴�ýSuccessFactors Employee Central can have access to:

• A single foundation for HR, with consistent and standardized HR processes for over 200 countries and territories around the globe
• A proactive approach to worldwide regulatory compliance with localization delivered and maintained for more than 100 locales
• Self-service functionality to help support automation, improve data quality, and elevate HR service delivery with efficient, real-time processes
• A consumer-grade user experience with live insights to help make data-driven decisions

The newest innovations in the 2H 2023 release include:

• Simplified self-services allow employees and managers to make updates directly from the ���۴�ýSuccessFactors home page. For example, employees can quickly update their chosen name and personal pronouns, while managers can initiate a transfer, promotion, location change, and more

Self-service actions are integrated into the flow of work, including within Microsoft Teams, ���۴�ýSuccessFactors Work Zone, and Joule, SAP’s AI-powered copilot. With use cases across the ���۴�ýSuccessFactors Human Experience Management (HXM) Suite, such as the ability to clock in and out and to view pay statements from within Microsoft Teams, employees can quickly complete their most critical HR tasks without switching applications.

Learn more about the latest and visit the event site for a replay of the keynote, expert sessions, and other on-demand content.

Maryann Abbajay is chief revenue officer at ���۴�ýSuccessFactors.

Each year we deliver over 800 legal changes to meet the needs of our global customers. Local compliance and staying on top of legal changes is a huge challenge in running a business, but we continue to invest heavily in payroll.

Additionally, with the power of our ecosystem, our partners can release their own local versions as part of our partner localization process, extending our reach even further. We also have over two dozen partners globally offering services to give our customers choice and flexibility.

“With 50 native calc engines and many more through partners, ���۴�ýremains the team to beat in the HR tech multi-country payroll race,” said Pete A. Tiliakos, principal analyst and managing partner at 3Sixty Insights. “Paired with its heritage and experience supporting payroll for the largest enterprises globally, ���۴�ýis positioned well amongst multinational HCM buyers seeking highly localized solutions.”

Organizations of all sizes – including many over 100,000 employees – industries, and regions use ���۴�ýSuccessFactors Employee Central Payroll to help manage payroll efficiently, compliantly, and accurately while providing their employees with a great payroll experience. Here are a few examples where our customers are seeing value:

• , which supports farming businesses across the U.S. and Canada, is able to run payroll remotely to support both its own workforce of 3,600 people as well as an additional 4,200 employees at its member companies.
• , based in the UAE, can complete month-end closing processes 33% faster than before and can process HR requests, such as time-off, 40 times faster.
• , a private education group based in Malaysia, has been able to achieve 100% payroll accuracy because of data flowing between systems, along with 35% faster payroll processing time.
• , South Korea’s biggest global leisure booking platform, has been able to automate employee payments by using ���۴�ýSuccessFactors Compensation with ���۴�ýSuccessFactors Employee Central Payroll.

Additional organizations seeing value using ���۴�ýSuccessFactors Employee Central Payroll include , , , and many more.

Along with the localization of Greece in the 2H 2023 release, additional innovations include being able to view a pay statement directly within Microsoft Teams, enhanced retro visibility for payroll administrators, and a home page engagement card for employees in the U.S.

Read more details on the and view a supported by SAP.

Amy Wilson is senior vice president of Products & Design at ���۴�ýSuccessFactors.

Guided by the organization’s clear , Coles’ team of 120,000 employees is dedicated to making a difference in the lives of customers and the local communities it serves.

In fiscal year 2020/21, Coles Group hired nearly 30,000 people to deliver on its business needs. Mike Virgo, head of Talent Acquisition for Coles Group, said this hiring volume was necessary to make sure the company was “positioned well to support our customers.”

The business environment, however, dramatically shifted as the public health crisis of the pandemic unfolded, resulting in repeated lockdowns and restrictions. As a neighborhood retailer dependent on in-person interaction to deliver most of its services, Coles found its workforce impacted by the pandemic. Faced with supply chain disruptions, panic buying behaviors by consumers, high employee absenteeism, and increased turnover, Coles urgently needed to step up its volume and pace of hiring to support its customers.

“Around 2020-2021, we started to experience one of the most significant shifts in the employment market we’d ever seen,” Virgo said in a at . “It started to create huge challenges for organizations around the world – around how we attract, retain, and hire talent.”

Catalyst for Change and a New Way of Working

To meet pressing business demands, Coles doubled its hiring volume from 30,000 to 60,000 people and increased recruitment advertising spend by a factor of three. Its talent acquisition team grew proportionally to manage the increased workload – but then labored under manual transactional activities that slowed processing times. As a result of the huge strain, variability in the candidate and hiring manager experience became noticeable.

Due to the volume of work, Coles looked for ways to evolve its system to create more speed, efficiency, and scalability. With a list of criteria, Coles began to review technology solutions on the market to find one that could support its vision for a new way of working. “We wanted to reimagine how we recruit for our stores,” Virgo said. “We needed automation and AI to remove a lot of the manual work in our systems. We wanted to create more consistency and uplift the experiences we were giving our candidates and our hiring managers. And ultimately, [the solution] needed to drive commercial benefit for us.”

As a key requirement, the new solution needed to integrate with . In 2020, as part of an organization-wide digital transformation that introduced ���۴�ýS/4HANA and ���۴�ýAriba solutions, Coles modernized its HR and payroll processing, replacing a patchwork of outdated systems with ���۴�ýSuccessFactors solutions. It became the first organization in the southern hemisphere to launch all modules of the ���۴�ýSuccessFactors portfolio in one go. With all HR processes unified on a single platform, Coles benefits from having a single source of truth for people data that is accurate and available in real time for the entire organization.

Two-Way Integration Ensures Single Source of Truth in Data

To help with the project, Coles chose , an ���۴�ýpartner whose AI-powered Intelligent Talent Experience platform provides two-way integration with ���۴�ýSuccessFactors solutions. Virgo said the two-way integration “allows us to have a holistic view of the candidates that progress through the process, no matter whether the team is operating in Phenom or ���۴�ýSuccessFactors, and it allows ���۴�ýSuccessFactors to be our single source of truth.”

There are several key benefits of Phenom’s solution at Coles. One is candidate attraction and engagement, which is achieved primarily through the Coles career site and chatbot. Another is recruiter automation and interview management, which provides automation and process efficiencies from when a job requisition is created in ���۴�ýSuccessFactors solutions and replicated into Phenom until a hiring manager chooses a candidate for the job. Once a candidate is chosen, the two-way integration enables the HR team to access the data in ���۴�ýSuccessFactors solutions and complete all compliance aspects, such as working rights, contract generation, and onboarding.

The Coles team gains additional efficiencies in its onboarding programs through the application of robotic process automation (RPA) powered by two bots that work in the background: Ashbotty processes the working rights and Usain Bot processes onboarding and manages pending recruits. “They take a lot of the transactional, manual work that we used to have team members doing. It can do that quickly, accurately, and it can do that 24/7 – which is particularly important for us as a seven-days-a-week business,” Virgo said. 

AI-Powered Experiences for Candidates and Recruiters

Coles reimagined the candidate experience to launch a modern, tech-enabled career site – which has been chosen as a two-time winner of Australia’s Best Careers Site. The site includes an AI-powered chatbot to guide candidates as they look for information, search relevant job postings, and submit their applications. It also includes Coles’ Expression of Interest, always-on advertising that drives the growth of its talent pool and advances its talent marketing by reducing the need to advertise every role. A Hosted Apply process, facilitated by integrations with Phenom, presents a consistent candidate experience and increases the conversion rate on applications.

Phenom AI Scheduling, a key part of Coles’ hiring experience, enables candidates to book themselves an available interview slot and automates the coordination of hiring team calendars. The new solution provides a fully mobile-enabled experience to meet the demands of candidates for an omni-channel, real-time experience where they can learn, read, and apply for jobs where and when they want.

Inundated by nearly 1 million applications each year to review, Coles also took steps to elevate the recruiter experience and increase the speed and accuracy of candidate screening and job matching. It implemented Phenom Fit Score, an AI-powered feature that assesses a candidate’s suitability for an open role, based on location and optimal travel distances, availability, and working rights; then, assigns a fit score and surfaces the most closely matched candidates to the recruiters. In addition, the new solution empowers in-store managers to collaborate with recruiters to review candidates and make quick hiring decisions with confidence.

Talent Pools Grow with Improvements to Hiring Speed and Efficiency

With the new augmented solution, Coles is experiencing tangible benefits across multiple categories and key metrics for success: time-to-fill is down six days; time-to-hire is down two days, which is impressive considering candidates can book the in-store interview up to two weeks in advance; and advertising spend is down 50%.

Most notably for Coles as a people-centric organization is the development of its talent pool, now numbering 2 million potential candidates. It achieves an 85% application conversion rate on up to 1 million applications per year. Through its to be a safe, inclusive, and diverse workplace, Coles has applied the new solution to provide greater accessibility for more diverse candidates, resulting in an increase of 24% more hiring for people who identify as having a disability. 

Virgo said that the talent acquisition team will continue to evolve its solution and assess more opportunities for AI and automation to bring value to the recruitment process. Although these technologies are not cure-alls for every recruitment scenario, they can save recruiting teams precious time and resources to focus on more high-touch interactions further down the recruiting funnel. In sharing lessons learned, Virgo noted, “I think the important call out is the level of automation you can inject in your process will likely diminish as the seniority, complexity, and requirements of your roles increase because they are likely to be more high touch, perhaps need more interpretation or judgment calls from your recruiters to identify who the right talent is for your organization.”

Watch on demand.

In this interview, Gaurav Dabur, head of Support for ���۴�ýSuccessFactors Employee Central, Analytics and Integrations, gives insight into what ���۴�ýSuccessFactors customers and users can look forward to.

Q: What does this mean for users?

A: In the past, if customers using an ���۴�ýsolution needed to raise a case or find information, they needed to leave the application and go to either the or the for answers. With the introduction of , users can stay within the ���۴�ýSuccessFactors solution and find the right information, which is based on enhanced search capabilities powered by artificial intelligence (AI). AI pulls the context directly from the application. This enables it to provide a tailored search experience that can recommend the specific content to best solve their issue.

Our focus is to give customers a consistent support experience and help them get their answers more quickly. Customers can get direct access to support content, tools, and channels from ���۴�ýsupport – right at their fingertips and with no implementation efforts required.

What will ���۴�ýSuccessFactors customers notice that’s different?

Let me give three key examples. First, Built-In Support can provide live recommendations and access to more personalized support content and the latest and most-used knowledge sources directly within the ���۴�ýSuccessFactors solution.

Second, it also provides a personalized and guided support experience that can shorten the time to resolve issues. This means users can get their issues solved on their own without needing to wait on support. The feature also has comprehensive case management, which helps the user better manage their cases directly within the ���۴�ýSuccessFactors solution.

And finally, users can really collaborate with ���۴�ýexperts in real time using our channels.

Why is Built-In Support valuable for customers?

Built-In Support helps provide customers with an industry-leading, harmonized, in-product experience that is available in many ���۴�ýproducts. Customers that use multiple ���۴�ýproducts can have a homogenized and harmonized experience across different applications.

Within ���۴�ýSuccessFactors solutions, customers can now make use of the enhanced self-service options that leverage our internal, AI-based search mechanism. This helps provide more comprehensive, focused, and personalized search results. Customers can be more self-sufficient and can get their issues solved more quickly.

I encourage users to explore the new functionality of Built-In Support and to take advantage of ���۴�ýsupport’s knowledge base and content repository as they explore the ���۴�ýself-service solutions. They can also read more about the availability for ���۴�ýSuccessFactors solutions in “” and this .

Regina Postman is part of Customer Support and Innovation Communications at SAP.

Our team of conducts ongoing research on the evolving landscape of work, workplaces, and technology. This research, along with customer feedback and our commitment to accessibility for all users, helps us design solutions that can meet your employees’ needs and enhance your organization’s DEI&B efforts.

Let’s explore five key ways in which SAP’s focus on UX helps organizations advance their DEI&B strategies by offering employees an interface that can address their needs in the flow of work.

1. Experiences Designed for Employee Preferences

A core principle of UX is designing with a user-centered approach. ���۴�ýSuccessFactors solutions allow personalization for users with different backgrounds, abilities, and preferences, helping to ensure everyone can benefit. For example, offers individualized, AI-generated learning recommendations that can prioritize courses based on individual goals, skills, and organizational objectives and categorize them into “need,” “want,” and “must” sections. The solution can enable individuals to identify skill gaps against target roles within their career path and take ownership of their career development planning.

2. Cultural Sensitivity and Awareness

We recognize that many organizations operate on a global scale, with diverse cultural norms and practices. Our solutions can accommodate diverse cultural contexts, helping to promote inclusivity and reduce the risk of exclusion and discrimination in a global context. With localization options, users can have experiences tailored to their needs. For example, can enable your employees to record their name pronunciation and post it to their profile for others to access. This helps ensure colleagues can address them accurately and confidently in meetings. includes cultural competency as a performance parameter, promoting awareness and sensitivity to cultural differences in interactions and work.

3. Systemic Bias Mitigation

���۴�ýSuccessFactors solutions help combat biases in hiring, promotions, and decision-making. Our UX focus helps promote inclusivity by using non-discriminatory language and content, aligning with organizational efforts to help eliminate bias. Our technology can support your organization in creating job postings equitably with gender bias detection and providing AI-generated, recommended interview questions based on details from the job description to help ensure the interview process is more objective and focused on assessing candidates’ skills and qualifications only. Employees can also add their preferred pronouns to their profile for respectful and identity-aligned addressing by colleagues.

4. Designing for Accessibility

We prioritize to help ensure inclusivity for all users. Our products are designed to accommodate your employees’ diverse needs, with features such as screen readers, keyboard support, text resize to 200%, and text spacing with no loss of meaningful information. These inclusive experiences can empower every user to navigate the application without compromising the integrity of content, functionality, or efficiency.

5. Data Collection and Privacy

Ensuring absolute transparency and unwavering privacy is essential when it comes to data collection and protection. Our commitment to these principles includes incorporating AI explainability into our policies, which means that your employees not only have control over their data but also can understand how our AI systems make decisions, helping to prevent unintentional discrimination. Our help ensure data privacy by anonymizing and aggregating information in compliance with regulations. This includes masking individual data, combining it with other information, and incorporating features like consent management, data access controls, and data retention policies. Furthermore, with , you can analyze diversity and inclusion patterns and trends without compromising individual privacy, fostering a climate of trust and data integrity.

���۴�ýis committed to UX and DEI&B alignment to create inclusive workplaces. With ongoing research, adaptability, and cutting-edge design, ���۴�ýSuccessFactors solutions can empower organizations to drive DEI&B success and foster a culture of belonging. Explore and take a step toward building a more inclusive and equitable future for all.

Mayara Tabone is a solution marketing specialist at ���۴�ýSuccessFactors.

To understand the future of employee potential, the for ���۴�ýSuccessFactors hosted interviews with 57 HR leaders from ���۴�ýcustomer organizations and conducted a survey of 1,401 individual contributors from around the globe. The research focused on defining, assessing, and utilizing potential.

Expanding the Definition of Employee Potential

Before an organization can assess employee potential, they need to define it. Across the HR leaders we interviewed, definitions of employee potential fell into three different categories: individual attributes, ability to take on a certain role in the future, and current performance. Most HR leaders struggled to find a definition of employee potential that their organizations would accept, understand, or apply universally and consistently. According to the surveyed HR leaders, an expanded definition of potential would give them a more comprehensive understanding of their workforce’s potential; enable managers to better understand, discuss, and realize their team members’ potential; and ensure that employee potential practices are more inclusive of all employees.

Improving the Assessment of Employee Potential

The research uncovered many challenges in the process of assessing employee potential, including what is measured, how it is measured, and who is involved. The top challenge in assessing potential was rater subjectivity, or raters using their gut feelings, opinions, or biases to inform their assessments rather than the organization’s definition or criteria. Survey data from employees suggest that HR leaders should be concerned about this bias: about one-third of employees (30%) feel their organizations’ potential practices are unfair.

One way that organizations can minimize bias in assessment of potential is by leveraging an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered skills foundation like the talent intelligence hub. The talent intelligence hub powers and can enable organizations to better understand, build, and leverage the skills of their workforces. By understanding individuals’ skills, attributes, strengths, and preferences, organizations can make data-driven talent decisions and minimize biased decision-making.

AI can also assist in creating personalized development opportunities for employees based on their potential. By knowing an employee’s strengths, skills, and aspirations, AI can recommend targeted training and development opportunities that align with their potential growth areas. , powered by the talent intelligence hub, can surface AI-powered recommendations, such learning courses, project assignments, mentors, and internal roles, that can help nurture and retain high-potential talent.

Another challenge that was uncovered in the research is that assessments are missing valuable perspectives on employee potential. Our research suggests that managers do not know as much as they want about their direct reports’ potential. This indicates that the manager’s perspective must be supplemented with other sources.

According to the HR leaders that we interviewed, peers’ opinions of an employee’s potential are rarely included – only two of the 44 organizations we worked with included peers in a 360-degree assessment of employee potential. According to employees, peers are a valuable data source and are as aware of their potential as their managers are. Having a solution like can optimize this process significantly by using 360-degree reviews to help capture a more balanced and complete view of employee evaluations, including peer reviews. Using the 360-degree review forms, skills can be accessed and rated to highlight areas of achievement and opportunities for growth. The selected skills, together with their ratings, are then updated in the employee’s growth portfolio.

Using Employee Potential More Effectively

In general, our research suggested that HR leaders currently use potential data to make informed talent decisions in succession planning, career pathing, and performance management. However, HR leaders struggle to use employee potential data consistently across different HR practices. The talent intelligence hub can drive an organization’s entire learning and talent strategy and help use potential data more effectively. Organizations benefit from having a single skills model that covers recruiting, onboarding, learning and development, performance, and succession. With a holistic view of the workforce based on skills data from multiple locations, they can make data-driven and can more easily identify and utilize potential.

HR technology can enable organizations to assess potential to make more informed and objective decision-making when it comes to talent management and development. Organizations that can understand and ignite the potential of their workforce will not only realize their business objectives, but also create a positive experience for all employees.

For additional insights on employee potential, read the full report, “.”

Christina Russo is global director of Solution Marketing at ���۴�ýSuccessFactors.

Through mergers, acquisitions, and grassroots expansion, the company has grown from a small operation into a large global organization with a decentralized operating model and over 60 facilities and 80 offices on five continents around the world.

Attributing its success to a highly engaged workforce, a number of ATS employees have enjoyed continuous tenure for around 40 years. Committed to continuously developing, engaging, empowering, and energizing its people, the company proudly fosters a safe, positive, and inclusive work environment where everyone is respected and given the opportunity to thrive.

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Modernizing Core HR and Talent Management Operations to Improve Employee Experience

With a renewed HR focus on enhancing the employee experience, automating processes, and integrating core systems, the company envisioned a workforce management environment with fewer manual tasks. The automation company also wanted to simplify the process of onboarding new employees, as its employee population had doubled in size since 2017.

When the time came to modernize its core HR and talent management systems to help it achieve these aims, ATS reached for next-generation HR technology in the cloud to support its ongoing growth. Investing in allowed ATS to consolidate core HR and talent management processes throughout the employee lifecycle on a single technology foundation. Another bonus for ATS is that the suite helps simplify integration with various third-party solutions and other leading solutions from SAP, including and for use in expense management.

With the adoption of the ���۴�ýSuccessFactors Employee Central solution to help centralize access to employee information, the company streamlined the addition of new employees into its organization following mergers and acquisitions. An integrated suite of ���۴�ýSuccessFactors solutions helps connect processes and data from recruiting to onboarding, compensation, learning, and performance and goals management. Mike Stone, director of Global ERP and HR Information Systems at ATS, explains: “New employees gain access to the same benefits as existing employees from day one. They get access to the same learning and performance and goal management tools to support their personal and professional development. And it allows them to see what the organization offers and where they can go in terms of their career potential.”

Before adopting ���۴�ýSuccessFactors solutions, ATS was reliant on manual, paper-based processes and there was no simple way to track HR metrics. Now, the company can track employee turnover and better understand why its people leave. It can also keep a close watch on the time to fill open positions.

Bringing in the Right Resources as Skills Needs Change

As ATS has a highly trained and highly tenured workforce, including engineers and skilled tradespeople, it’s important for the company to define those skills and continue to grow its talent base in that area. The company also needs to understand which skill sets will be needed in the future and how to help its people learn those skills as needs change.

“The next stage of our HR transformation is developing a skills matrix and understanding who’s got what skills and who’s looking to grow those skills, then enhancing that skills composition within the company so that we have succession planning,” Stone explains. “With retirements, we need to know how fast we can fill those positions to get new people in place early enough so there’s a robust knowledge transfer and we don’t lose that tribal knowledge we have within the organization. ���۴�ýSuccessFactors HXM Suite helps us measure the important time-to-hire metric, meaning we can be confident hiring within a two-to-four-week cycle in North America. While in Europe, we know it’s a three-month cycle, which makes it a little more challenging.”

As ATS retools for the future, data insights from ���۴�ýSuccessFactors solutions are helping avoid situations where the company loses expert knowledge held within its people. It is also partnering with universities to create programs that align students’ learning with its needs for relevant skills and knowledge.

���۴�ýSuccessFactors HXM Suite provides the people management technology foundation supporting ATS’s employee experience and ongoing growth. With solutions for core HR, recruiting, onboarding, performance, compensation, learning, and succession, ATS has the tools needed to build a future-ready workforce today.

To learn more about the core HR and talent management solutions used by ATS, visit us .

Kristin Mestre is director of Brand Awareness and Advocacy for ���۴�ýSuccessFactors.

To help understand this evolution of the people manager role, the for ���۴�ýSuccessFactors hosted interviews with 31 HR leaders from ���۴�ýcustomer organizations and conducted a survey of 731 people managers and 716 individual contributors from around the globe. Based on the research findings, below are six ways organizations can improve current people managers’ performance and experience with ���۴�ýSuccessFactors solutions.

Utilize Co-Leadership Models

Organizations look to people managers to execute important initiatives and people practices, leading to an overload of responsibilities. Implementing co-leadership structures, even for a short period of time, can reduce a people manager’s role overload and provide individual contributors with a valuable experiential learning opportunity.

One way to provide an experiential opportunity is through , advanced capabilities available as part of ���۴�ýSuccessFactors solutions that can help create and manage cross-functional teams that exist beyond traditional hierarchies. reported that 66% of employees who had participated in a dynamic team felt a positive impact on their career, leading to higher engagement. Using dynamic teams can help organizations utilize co-leadership models for projects while also accessing individual contributor potential and incorporating those insights into future succession plans.

Update People Manager Job Descriptions

Many organizations have not updated their formal job descriptions for people managers to accurately reflect changes to their roles, leading to unclear performance expectations and ineffective systems for developing and selecting people managers. One way organizations can streamline this process is through generative artificial intelligence (AI) in the ���۴�ýSuccessFactors Recruiting solution. Hiring managers and recruiters can fine-tune job descriptions with generative AI, which allows them to incorporate supplementary content, identify biased language, and help ensure alignment with business requirements. Instead of starting from scratch every time a new position is created or requirements are updated, recruiters and hiring managers can use AI to help draft job descriptions faster and stay in their normal flow of work. And more importantly, the final content is more meaningful, inclusive, and competitive – presenting a clear and accurate view of the role to attract a larger pool of qualified and interested candidates.

Rethink Career Architecture and Pathways to Advancement

Without other options for growing, gaining status, or increasing compensation, employees will seek people management roles even if they are not suitable for or interested in this type of role. Developing alternative pathways for advancement, such as specialist career paths, for high-performing individual contributors ensures that employees are entering people manager roles for the right reason – to manage people.

Sharing career architectures more broadly can also improve managers’ awareness of internal mobility opportunities, which they cited as a top challenge. Talent marketplaces, like the solution, can improve visibility into development and growth opportunities within the organization. It can provide AI-driven personalized recommendations for learning, mentors, internal roles, and dynamic teams. This allows employees to have experiential learning opportunities and can provide them alternate career paths.

Implement Succession Planning for All

Everyone agrees that people manager roles should become more exclusive, but that also means talent pools will become shallower. Implementing succession planning at all levels of the organization allows organizations to identify “hidden” people manager talent. When developing succession plans, consider that a people manager does not always need to be replaced with an existing people manager – and that a people manager’s next role does not always need to be in management. The solution can make this process easier by helping employees expand their skills and advance their careers with visibility into continuous development dialogue, mentoring opportunities, and AI-powered career planning. It can also optimize succession planning, making it scalable to place the right people in the right roles and helping to secure the “hidden” people manager talent.

Create a Community for People Managers

People managers consider staying engaged, feeling included, and managing their well-being to be top challenges. Creating a people manager community provides this crucial workforce segment with social support, which research has shown to be a positive driver of the people manger experience. This also offers the organization a clear channel to host two-way communication with people managers. One way to foster a community for people managers is to leverage the solution, which is a personalized digital workspace that helps support and encourage collaboration. People managers can create their own community and connect with each other, allowing for more engagement, sharing of best practices, and improvement in the overall employee experience.

Leverage Technology

Cloud HR technology can help support the strategies recommended here and solve many of managers’ most pressing challenges. With ���۴�ýSuccessFactors solutions, organizations can put their people at the center of everything and create AI-powered experiences that can support current people managers while using talent intelligence to help uncover and develop the managers of tomorrow.

As the expectations of people managers from both employees and organizations undergo constant evolution, the role of people manager will increasingly become more “people-centric” – focusing on support, fostering development, and nurturing a positive culture. It’s important that organizations use the right HR technology to deliver engaging employee experiences, increase productivity, and drive better business outcomes.

For additional insights on the evolution of the people manager role, read the full report, “.”

Christina Russo is global director of Solution Marketing at ���۴�ýSuccessFactors.

And so begins a new day of service for Ana Khouri, manager for Partner Delivery Management of ���۴�ýSuccessFactors solutions. Khouri was a member of the 2023 expedition of (Doctors of the Waters), a non-governmental organization (NGO) in Brazil that provides medical and dental care, alongside essential socioenvironmental education, to the isolated communities of the Amazon River Basin. “We had such a welcome,” Khouri says, reflecting on her experiences in the villages the expedition visited along the Acari and Canumã rivers from July 31 to August 12. “We arrived there at night. The boat had not yet docked and everything was dark, and then all these kids were already at the edge waiting for the boat. They were screaming and cheering. It made me kind of emotional.” 

Healthcare for Isolated Communities

For these communities, the annual visit of Doutores das Águas, now in its twelfth year, is often the only occasion people are able to see a doctor. Their villages are so remote that they would otherwise need to travel many days by boat just to reach the nearest health center. Many have been looking forward to the NGO’s visit. Beforehand, families receive a password to access the services onboard the boat, which include health checks, vaccinations, vital medicines, dental care, and new dentures.

Doutores das Águas sends one expedition per year into the Amazon, divided into two successive stages with each taking either a northern or southern route. Khouri’s expedition traveled south, navigating the Acari and Canumã rivers for 12 days to deliver services to six villages. The boat, 21 meters long and seven meters wide, has sleeping berths for 32 team members plus 12 crew members. It travels at an average speed of 15 kilometer per hour, powered by a 300 HP propulsion engine and has capacity to carry 13,000 liters of fuel, enough to last an entire month. Two generators are also onboard. Built specially for Doutores das Águas, it is equipped with modern medical equipment, including an ultrasound machine, four dental chairs and a dental lab, and a portable wash basin for lessons on teeth brushing. It carries enough stockpiles of vaccines and medicines to support communities for one year, until the boat’s next visit.

In 2023, the expedition provided services to 36 communities in 23 days to deliver 2,081 medical treatments or vaccines and perform 1,890 dental treatments and 62 micro-surgeries. And the onboard dental lab produced 265 dental prostheses or dentures, giving many people their smiles back.

Hidden Skill Set Reveals Passion for Healthcare

In the Amazon, even winters are intense, as daily temperatures reach 37 degrees Celsius with high humidity and frequent rain. The shrill buzz of mosquitos is ever present. Creatures of the rainforest move about invisibly, eager for a free pantleg or untucked shirt to crawl into.

For Khouri, who joined ���۴�ýin 1999, life on the hospital boat is a long distance from her workspace at ���۴�ýBrazil in Rio de Janeiro, where she ensures that partners have the enablement tools and support that they need to deliver successfully to customers. Her energetic, affable interpersonal skills and tenacity for problem-solving – the same qualities that help her succeed in her work at ���۴�ý– enable her to thrive in dynamic environments. 

But there is another side to Khouri that few colleagues know about. She has a background in nutrition with a master’s degree from Michigan State University. This hidden skill set, which is an integral part of Khouri’s whole self, qualified her to join the expedition as a socioenvironmental and nutritional health expert. “I always liked the healthcare field,” she says. “So, to be there and to be able to provide this benefit to these people and to be part of the team, that’s my motivation. We are giving the people healthcare.”

Learning by Doing for Health and Hygiene

In the early morning, villagers gather to listen to the doctor, dentist, and the socioenvironmental and nutrition team, who discuss the importance of nutrition and hygiene for long-term health. Afterwards, the adults go to the line to be called in for treatment. “We stay with the kids and teenagers. We play games about food, nutrition, garbage disposal, and recycling,” Khouri says. This year, 750 children received instruction in socioenvironmental and nutritional activities.

One game is a competition to see which team can collect the most garbage in a big bag. “The kids are all running, and we run after them, in this intensive heat,” Khouri says. A prize is awarded for the most garbage collected. There are lots of batteries and plastic drink bottles. “This is one exercise we do to tell them they shouldn’t just throw things on the ground because it’s going to be washed away to the river.”

Twice a day, the children receive instruction on how to brush their teeth. They each receive a dental examination aboard the hospital boat. “We teach them with games and music how to brush their teeth,” Khouri says. “In the boat, we bring a huge sink with eight places so we can have eight kids at once and we give them a small toothbrush and toothpaste.”

Children who have no cavities at their annual dental checkup receive a badge. In communities where the boat has visited previously, the number of children with no cavities is increasing – evidence of the NGO’s impact on healthcare in the region. “We have lots of little kids, 5 years old or 6 to 7. They have the badge ‘Zero Cavities,’” Khouri says. “We also teach them how to wash their hands and to always wash their hands before they eat.”

“The kids somehow get attached to you,” Khouri says. “They don’t know you, but then at the end of the day, sometimes you sit quietly somewhere to have a break and they come and hug you. They stay with you. This is something that touched me.”

Tapping Natural Resources to Satisfy Global Markets

People in the communities along the river live simply from the land and the water. They sometimes sell the fruits, cashew nuts, and mandioca (basis of tapioca) that they cultivate. Many have begun to earn money by selling copaiba oil, used in traditional medicines. The oil is extracted using traditional, sustainable methods to tap tree resin. The oil is popular in high-end cosmetics and pharmaceuticals, including sunscreen, because of its anti-inflammatory properties. “Some of the communities extract the oil,” Khouri says. “Unfortunately, they sell it very cheap to the middleman, who sells it to cosmetics companies for a lot of money.”

The NGOs that work in the region, including Doutores das Águas, are encouraging the communities to create a cooperative so they can sell copaiba oil directly and receive more money, because the oil “is really cheap and it is very ‘in’ at the moment,” Khouri explains.

One Boat Is Not Enough

Khouri wants to participate in the next expedition of Doutores das Águas, scheduled for April 2024. Also, the communities change over time, as she notes, “Some of the communities disappear. They are so small that they migrate.” One community has become more developed since becoming connected to the region’s main road, making healthcare more accessible to community members.

“What I expect for the future of these communities is that they get more access to healthcare, improve hygiene, and take care of the river by adopting the garbage collection practice that we teach them,” says Khouri. “I would like people to know that this issue exists and that the need in the Amazon is huge. One boat is not enough.”

Watch on demand.

Top photo courtesy of Ana Khouri

Employee experience is linked to a number of organizational outcomes, such as performance, customer satisfaction, retention, and innovation. So, what are the trends redefining how employees think about work and how organizations meet the needs of their people to help them be their best? From the candidate experience to remote work to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I), how can HR leaders gather the right data at scale, understand how employees feel, identify experience gaps, and take the right steps to drive positive work experiences that drive real business impact?

The , published by the ���۴�ýSuccessFactors research team, shows that there has been a clear focus on improving the employee experience in order to drive organizational outcomes. HR trends are both influenced by and influential on how employees feel, making employee experience a fundamental principle. And it all starts with listening to employees, understanding where the experience gaps are, and identifying the best actions to address the issues.

Navigating Modern Work Challenges

The results of Qualtrics research** show that employees have many wants and expectations for the future of work and organizations need to listen and pay closer attention to these five trends to enhance the overall employee experience and retain and attract top talent.

1. Employment is not only about having a job anymore. Employees want more than just a job. They want to work for organizations that have a sense of purpose and have values aligned with theirs. The more employees feel their employers embody these values, the more they are engaged and want to stay.
2. Confidence and business success also matter to employees. As markets become more volatile, employees want to feel confident in their jobs. They want to know that the organization is taking care of their needs so they have a sense of security, even during times of change.
3. Employees want a better work-life balance. People have been operating at surge levels for years and are reclaiming boundaries for a better work-life balance. Employees with a good work-life balance are willing to go above and beyond for their organization.
4. Flawed processes and inefficient systems have fueled burnout. Ineffective processes and systems remain the top driver for burnout. Giving employees the tools and technology to do their jobs effectively and efficiently  helps increase productivity and engagement.
5. Growth and development are fundamental needs. Opportunities for growth and career progression drive employee retention, well-being, inclusion, and experience expectation levels. Understanding employee skills and providing opportunities for personalized development and growth through job matching, career development, mentorship, and community building are key to meeting employees‘ short- and long-term needs.

Addressing Trends by Closing Experience Gaps

Technology plays a crucial role in enabling organizations to understand what drives workforce productivity by facilitating continuous listening. ���۴�ýemployee experience management solutions by Qualtrics help organizations listen to their people’s needs and take the right steps to close employee experience gaps. Employees are empowered to express their thoughts and impressions, while leaders have the insights and guided action planning they need to improve the experience throughout the entire employee journey. This promotes an open and inclusive environment where employees feel heard and acknowledged, ultimately boosting their confidence, productivity, and security.

Learn more about and how they can help you create a more holistic employee experience.  

Mayara Tabone is a solution marketing specialist at ���۴�ýSuccessFactors.

*U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’  via 
**

���۴�ýwas recognized based on its ability to execute and completeness of vision in the report. According to the report, “The market for cloud HCM suites is responding to HR leaders’ need to focus on delivering business outcomes while keeping a close watch on innovation catalysts such as generative AI. This research helps HR technology leaders in enterprises with more than 1,000 employees identify suitable vendors.”

provides the most comprehensive set of cloud-based solutions, connecting core HR and payroll, talent management, sales performance management, people analytics, and workforce planning to help drive organizations — and their people — forward. 

Our latest product release continues to deliver on our vision for HXM to put people at the center of every organization. We believe that future-ready organizations need to provide opportunities for people to develop and grow in line with their personal passions and the changing needs of the organization. To make this a reality, we have been steadily investing in and transforming the user experience and architecture across our solutions to be employee-centric, to provide better integrations with partners and the broader ���۴�ýportfolio, and to be infused with AI capabilities.

At , we announced the latest AI capabilities that stretch across the suite, building on the company’s Business AI strategy to build systems of intelligence and deliver AI in a way that is relevant, reliable, and responsible. For example, Joule is our natural-language generative AI copilot, which will make it easier and faster for employees to find information, get answers to questions, and complete HR-related tasks such as approving or rejecting time-off requests. 

The talent intelligence hub acts as an AI-powered engine for an organization’s entire learning and talent strategy by creating a skills portfolio for each employee that can infer skills and attributes based on data from performance feedback and dynamic teams. This provides a single skills model to drive everything from recruiting and onboarding to learning and development to performance and succession. 

Delta Air Lines is building a dynamic skills-based experience for continuous learning with the talent intelligence hub to help employees grow from an hourly customer-facing role to the salaried corporate position of their dreams.

“Delivering an elevated employee experience is important to us,” said Tim Gregory, managing director of HR Innovation and Workforce Technology at Delta. “Our people work hard to develop and hone their skills. It’s personal, and when Delta is able to go beyond the traditional lens of job hierarchies and org charts, we create the elevated experience that attracts and retains the best talent.” 

The 2H 2023 release also includes a new user experience for customers using , a new recruiter user experience, improvements to the cross-system workflow, and enhanced integrations with Microsoft Teams to put HR in the flow of work. 

We plan to accelerate advancements around our user experience and deliver new AI capabilities with every release, helping people and culture leaders embrace the latest technology to drive change within their workforce and helping organizations prepare for what’s next. 

Aaron Green is chief marketing and solutions officer, ���۴�ýSuccessFactors.

Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Cloud HCM Suites for 1,000+ Employee Enterprises, Ranadip Chandra, Sam Grinter, 18 October 2023

The report was titled as Magic Quadrant for Cloud HCM Suites for Midmarket and Large Enterprises from 2016-2018.

GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner and Magic Quadrant is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and are used herein with permission. All rights reserved.
Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

With ���۴�ýBusiness AI, ���۴�ýis laser-focused on how we deliver AI that is relevant, reliable, and responsible. In other words, AI that enables organizations to get all the amazing benefits of the technology while ���۴�ýhelps solves for the complexities. In this release, AI-driven capabilities will be generally available across ���۴�ýSuccessFactors Human Experience Management (HXM) Suite to help elevate the human experience with innovations like the talent intelligence hub, SAP’s AI copilot Joule, and generative AI use cases.

• The talent intelligence hub – a foundation for AI-powered talent development and acquisition – helps organizations align employees to the needs of their business, helps employees find opportunities that align to their aspirations, and helps improve their future workforce planning. This groundbreaking, foundational tech creates a skills portfolio for each employee in the workforce and feeds that data across ���۴�ýSuccessFactors HXM Suite to help surface more relevant experiences everywhere from recruiting and onboarding to learning and development to performance and succession.
• With Joule, employees can experience a game-changing, conversational AI that draws from a wealth of business data across your organization. Imagine your most knowledgeable colleague, available anytime.
• Finally, generative AI in this release is focused on helping recruiters create job descriptions – an example of a discrete task that can eat away at productivity when performed manually at scale – as well as be prompted with AI-generated interview questions based on job descriptions in Microsoft Teams. You can expect more of these kinds of use cases to support secondary tasks in every release.

AI is just one area we’re innovating in. Across our product vision areas, we’re delivering faster than ever on helping organizations build future-ready workforces, create elevated experiences for their employees, and maintain and enhance an agile and compliant HR. From the Horizon visual theme to a new integrated learning experience to integrations in Microsoft Teams that meet people in the flow of work to harmonization with the cross-system workflow, this release is packed with new and exciting capabilities.

Read on – then check out our preview release – and learn how our latest release can help ignite the potential in your workforce today.

���۴�ýBusiness AI in ���۴�ýSuccessFactors Solutions

At SAP, we understand that AI has the power to transform experiences for employees, managers, recruiters, and HR professionals. Available in November, this release will include a set of AI-fueled innovations.

Talent Intelligence Hub

The talent intelligence hub is generally available with this release, providing customers with the foundation for AI-powered talent development and acquisition. Talent intelligence is and will be a critical component of ���۴�ýSuccessFactors solutions moving forward, with use cases for skills information being added across the entire portfolio.

When organizations understand the skills they have today and the skills they need for the future, they can develop organization-wide talent development strategies. At the same time, talent intelligence enables highly individualized, employee-led talent development that gives employees highly meaningful and rewarding careers, but also drives organizations to where they need to go.

AI will drive the creation of skills information, as each employee will see skills inferences in their growth portfolios that suggest the skills they may already have using data from ���۴�ýSuccessFactors Performance & Goals. This can simplify the process for employees and helps ensure higher quality skills data across the organization.

With this release, the talent intelligence hub can drive individualized recommendations for employees both in the new integrated learning experience as well as in ���۴�ýSuccessFactors Opportunity Marketplace. But this is just the beginning, and you will see many more use cases for the talent intelligence hub across the entire suite in 2024.

Generative AI Use Cases for Hiring

Recruiters and hiring managers can benefit from the use of generative AI to create tailored job descriptions based on data from within ���۴�ýSuccessFactors solutions as well as external sources. Additionally, interviewers can generate interview questions based on the candidate profile as well as the job description to help ensure they are contextually relevant. Interviewers are proactively notified within Microsoft Teams to generate interview questions, creating a more efficient and streamlined interview experience.

Generative AI Copilot Joule

Joule is SAP’s AI-powered copilot that uses natural language processing to understand employee requests, helping them to quickly find information and complete tasks, such as updating their name or location and giving or requesting feedback. Joule will be able to guide through more complex journeys in the near future. Joule will initially be available in English for U.S. and European data centers and will be rolled out in other regions in 2024 and beyond.

Future-Ready Workforce

Integrated Learning Experience

Within ���۴�ýSuccessFactors Learning, we are unveiling a new, integrated learning experience that is now generally available. It features a redesigned, re-architected home page that can surface recommendations unique to each employee. This individualized experience helps drive a culture of learning by tapping into each person’s aspirations, motivations, skills, and preferences while staying aligned with organizational goals and priorities.

Driven by the talent intelligence hub, ���۴�ýSuccessFactors Learning uses each learner’s learning history and skills within the growth portfolio. And with enhanced search and filtering capabilities, such as type-ahead suggestions and key results that populate as the learner is typing, it can be easy to quickly locate the most relevant content.

Elevated Experiences

Horizon Visual Theme

With this release, we have completed the rollout of the Horizon visual theme to all employee-facing pages. This modern, elegant user interface brings consistency across the entire ���۴�ýSuccessFactors HXM Suite and will be available for every ���۴�ýcloud application by the end of 2024.

HR in the Flow of Work: Microsoft Teams App

With the ���۴�ýSuccessFactors app for Microsoft Teams, now available on the Microsoft Teams app store, we are bringing high-value, actionable HR processes directly into the flow of work. In this release, common self-service tasks, such as clocking in and out, updating location, or viewing a pay statement, can be completed directly from Microsoft Teams, helping to reduce the need to switch between multiple applications.

Enhancements to ���۴�ýSuccessFactors Employee Central

We are excited to introduce ���۴�ýSuccessFactors Employee Central quick actions, which can streamline manager and employee self-service. From the home page, employees can quickly complete common HR tasks, such as updating their chosen name and personal pronouns, while managers can initiate a transfer, promotion, location change, and more. These quick actions are also available in Microsoft Teams, ���۴�ýSuccessFactors Work Zone, and Joule, so users can complete critical HR tasks directly within the applications they are already using.

Agile & Compliant HR

Cross-System Workflow

The cross-system workflow capability is now generally available, which is designed to harmonize data and processes across platforms in a hybrid landscape, enabling increased productivity and reduced cost. This can empower customers using ���۴�ýERP Human Capital Management on premise to more rapidly unlock the value of HXM with ���۴�ýSuccessFactors Employee Central while maintaining on-premise applications like time, payroll, and benefits – as needed – so they can progressively make their move to the cloud.

Time Management

We are introducing the ability for administrators to leverage employee time data to generate leave-related forms and documents, which can be e-mailed or downloaded in multiple formats. We have also enhanced the absence-counting rules framework to allow absences to be deducted based on different day types and conditions, helping to support unique legal and local regulations.

We are also introducing new capabilities for auto-submission and mass approval of time sheets, helping ensure time information is available and processed in advance of a payroll run. To further enhance the time sheet experience, customers can now leverage a new business rule to display specific time types to relevant employees based on defined conditions. In addition, role-based time sheet alerts can now notify only the most relevant stakeholders. For example, late arrival or excessive overtime alerts can be sent to only the manager so they can address the situation separately with the employee. Administrators now have more flexibility to valuate time over longer periods, such as by quarter or year.

Each of these innovations reinforces how we are continuing to deliver on our human experience management vision – putting people at the center of every organization. These innovations will be available in production during the weekend of November 17. Select capabilities will be in preview today.

Watch the and read the ���۴�ýSuccessFactors for more detailed information.

Amy Wilson is SVP of Product and Design at ���۴�ýSuccessFactors.