The future of work isn’t inching forward, it’s rapidly accelerating. AI is transforming productivity, agentic systems are reshaping decision-making, and skills-first strategies are redefining how organizations grow.

According to new research from SAP, employees using AI are saving 75 minutes a day — time that’s being reinvested into innovation, connection, and impact. 

But with economic volatility, shifting regulations, and a global skills crunch, organizations face a critical challenge: how to connect their people and their business in ways that drive agility, resilience, and growth. This isn’t just a moment of change; it’s a moment of unprecedented possibilities.

Unlocking new possibilities with SAP SuccessFactors

SAP SuccessFactors is powering that transformation with trusted intelligence, operational strength, and innovations that turn disruption into advantage. With over 10,000 customers worldwide, we are privileged to work with the world’s leading brands and help them guide their people and their organizations through change. 

The SAP SuccessFactors HCM suite is a robust offering that connects all the pieces for an organization’s people strategy — from core HR and payroll, to talent acquisition and talent management, to people analytics, and beyond. SAP Business AI is infused across our HCM suite, and SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) enables our customers to expand and extend to meet their needs. 

We are constantly investing in our solutions based on market signals, ensuring our customers have the tools they need to stay at the forefront of innovation. 

Today at Success Connect at SAP Connect in Las Vegas, we announced the latest innovations designed to elevate the employee experience, optimize operations, and deliver actionable workforce insights. 

Elevating the employee experience  

New Joule Agents  

Agentic AI is redefining the employee experience and transforming the way work gets done by automating routine tasks, accelerating decision-making, and unlocking new levels of productivity. Joule, SAP’s AI copilot, is embedded into enterprise-wide applications to deliver real-time intelligence and automation through a simple conversational interface.  

Joule currently supports 80 percent of the most-used tasks in SAP systems, and we are continuously expanding its capabilities. Joule is available in 11 languages, and next month the first HR-focused Joule Agent — the Performance and Goals Agent — will be generally available, with many more to follow. This agent is designed to empower managers to lead high-impact performance conversations by providing tailored insights, goal progress updates, and personalized talking points.

We’ll continue to release new agents that will continue to work behind the scenes to make managers, employees, and HR teams more efficient. Today, we announced the next four agents, available in SAP SuccessFactors in the first half of 2026: 

• The Career and Talent Development Agent, which automates succession planning and helps managers identify and develop future leaders
• The HR Service Agent, which serves as a direct point of contact for employees and reduces the amount of time HR staff spend answering routine questions
• The Payroll Agent, which helps employees better understand their pay by combining paycheck details with time data, enabling intelligent “explain pay” scenarios such as highlighting unexpected overtime and suggesting follow-up actions
• The People Intelligence Agent, which connects the People Intelligence Insight application in SAP Business Data Cloud with Joule and SAP SuccessFactors, allowing managers and HR teams to ask questions in their own words and receive intuitive, accessible workforce analytics

Introducing the workforce knowledge network

Building on these new capabilities, we are also introducing a workforce knowledge network, a first-of-its-kind integration that brings third-party content from industry experts directly into Joule, delivering enhanced insights for employees.  This is a major step forward in enabling agent-to-agent interaction in order to deliver the most relevant information in one seamless experience.

Content from leading HCM industry experts from G-P (Globalization Partners) and The Josh Bersin Company will flow directly into Joule. These integrations allow Joule to ingest third-party content and interact with various agents so employees can receive guidance that is grounded in real-world insights and trusted research.

For example, HR leaders can access G-P Gia, an HR agent developed by G-P, directly within Joule, providing access to expert global employment guidance. Additionally, they can ask Joule, “What are best practices for hiring engineers in a high-cost location?” and Joule can respond with research-backed insights and recommendations provided by Galileo, a trained AI agent developed by The Josh Bersin Company, with over 6,000 users across more than 800 companies.

“Joule offers a revolutionary technology to speed and simplify the lives of every business person,” said Josh Bersin, CEO of The Josh Bersin Company. “We are very excited to connect Galileo, a leading AI agent for HR, to all SAP users and give them deep insights into all their human capital decisions.” 

Optimizing Operations

Innovations in Core HR

Operational strength is the backbone of every great employee experience; it enables scale, consistency, and confidence, especially in times of change. That is why we continue to invest deeply in core HR.

With localization support across 104 countries and usage in 179, SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central remains the industry’s most trusted foundation for global HR operations. And today we have announced that it’s getting even stronger:

• New SAP SuccessFactors Workforce Scheduling
  Early adopter January 2026
  This new solution enables shift planners and supervisors in manufacturing and production to create smarter schedules aligned with real-time business demand and required skills, reducing administrative burden, helping to prevent costly overstaffing and understaffing, and maintaining compliance.
• New enhanced time-off capabilities in SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central
  Generally available next month
  This enhancement allows our customers to meet country-specific and complex leave regulations in markets including but not limited to Australia, Germany, and the U.S., helping them stay compliant while simplifying processes for managers and employees.
• SAP SuccessFactors Enterprise Service Management
  Generally available now
  Announced earlier this year, our new HR service delivery solution extends the power of core HR by automating workflows, streamlining service requests, and freeing HR teams to focus on high-value, strategic work.

Delivering best-in-class insights

People Intelligence

Operational excellence lays the groundwork, but true transformation happens when data becomes insight. That is where People Intelligence in SAP Business Data Cloud comes in. Initial capabilities in People Intelligence announced at SAP Sapphire in 2025 are now generally available. People Intelligence transforms people, skills, and business data into actionable, AI-driven insights that help HR and leaders make better, more strategic decisions for the business and its people.  

At Success Connect, we unveiled additional prebuilt insights for recruiting, learning, succession, career development planning, and performance and goals management. People Intelligence continues to expand, with more prebuilt insights for rewards and recognition, benefits, time management, and onboarding planned for May 2026. 

SmartRecruiters

SAP is also advancing the way organizations attract, recruit, and hire top talent. Last month, we acquired SmartRecruiters to build the future of AI-driven talent acquisition. At Success Connect, we showcased how this move strengthens our vision. By combining the scale of SAP SuccessFactors, the power of SAP Business AI, and the expertise of SmartRecruiters, we’re delivering an intelligent, end-to-end global hiring solution that simplifies recruiting and ensures every hire is aligned to business and workforce goals.

Where innovation meets impact 

Innovation in HR has entered a new era that is defined by connection. By uniting people, processes, and intelligence, organizations can move beyond incremental change to unlock unprecedented possibilities for impact, agility, and growth. With continuous advancements in AI, a trusted global foundation, and intelligence-driven insights, SAP SuccessFactors is helping organizations meet today’s challenges head-on and shape the future of work with confidence.

To catch our Success Connect keynote replay and learn more about the latest innovations in SAP SuccessFactors, register for SAP Connect Virtual on October 9.

Dan Beck is general manager and chief product officer for SAP SuccessFactors.