In today’s digital workplace, HR is more than a service function; it’s the engine of organizational agility. Yet fragmented, IT-centric systems, limited insights into employee needs, and disconnected data models still hold many teams back.

SAP SuccessFactors Enterprise Service Management, purpose-built for HR, helps organizations break through those barriers by connecting AI, trusted data, and intuitive experiences to help transform HR service delivery from reactive support to proactive, human-centered impact.

From helpdesk to human impact

SAP SuccessFactors Enterprise Service Management gives HR teams a unified platform to help manage service requests, automate workflows, and deliver consistent, guided interactions that can build trust and compliance. By anticipating problems instead of reacting to them, HR can operate with speed, transparency, and insight, which enables the entire organization to work more efficiently.

Unlike IT-centric tools that treat employees as tickets, SAP SuccessFactors Enterprise Service Management brings together context, compliance, and connection—enabling HR to create experiences that feel personal, intelligent, and effortless.

AI that works in context

Automation is only as effective as the context behind it. Unlike standalone AI add-ons, Joule, SAP’s AI copilot, can make every interaction faster, smarter, and more human. Employees can ask questions in everyday language and receive contextual answers grounded in verified HR data and policies. HR teams benefit from AI-generated case summaries, pre-built templates, personalized e-mail drafts, intelligent case recommendations, and proactive insights that help reduce manual effort and speed resolution. With agentic AI, the system continuously learns from every interaction, automatically surfacing insights, suggesting next best actions, and driving service accuracy. HR teams don’t just automate tasks; they deliver smarter, compliant, and more personalized support all within a single, secure HR system.

Connected data that powers intelligent decisions

Unlike many platforms that rely on integrations or duplicated data to connect with HR systems, the SAP SuccessFactors portfolio is connected by design. Built on SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central, SAP SuccessFactors Enterprise Service Management can connect every transaction, service case, and policy into a single source of truth for HR. Combined with SAP HANA Cloud and SAP Analytics Cloud in SAP Business Data Cloud, this foundation can turn data into actionable intelligence: surfacing trends, predicting service demand, and improving quality with each interaction.

Experience that feels effortless

A great HR service experience isn’t just fast—it feels easy. SAP SuccessFactors Work Zone serves as the digital front door for SAP SuccessFactors Enterprise Service Management, SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central, and Joule. Employees can find answers, submit requests, and collaborate in the flow of work. Guided experiences and AI-powered knowledge searches can reduce case volume, while seamless integration with SAP Build Process Automation allows HR to extend workflows quickly without IT dependency or external tools.

Customer impact in action

Across industries, SAP customers are replacing fragmented, IT-led tools with a purpose-built HR service platform, creating measurable gains in employee satisfaction and HR efficiency.

• “By moving to next-generation service requests with [SAP SuccessFactors] Enterprise Service Management, we’ve streamlined complex processes like 401(k) transfers and dramatically improved speed, compliance, and employee confidence.”  – SAP customer, Technology
• “Employees start in [SAP SuccessFactors] Work Zone with Joule, search knowledge first, and only create a case when needed. That reduces case volume and service rep workload.” – SAP customer, Consumer Goods
• “We’re designing for consistency—using targeted forms aligned to service categories. Data duplication is minimized while the People Profile serves as the single source of truth.” – SAP customer, Manufacturing
• “Our front door is multi-channel—e-mail, phone, and Teams chat—all anchored in the HR knowledge base with smart routing to the right teams.” – SAP customer, Aviation
• “One feature that truly stood out for us was the timeline. Finding information in our old system used to be a challenge, but with [SAP SuccessFactors] Enterprise Service Management, the timeline view has been a game changer. It gives our teams instant visibility into every interaction and drives new levels of efficiency and clarity. – SAP customer, Banking
• “The guided steps for HR service representatives have transformed how our team works. Instead of navigating complex processes, they now follow clear, intuitive paths that ensure every case is handled consistently and efficiently. It’s like having an intelligent assistant built right into the workflow.” – SAP customer, Telecommunications
• “The [SAP SuccessFactors] Employee Central data mashup within case management has been an absolute game changer. Having real-time employee data visible directly in each case means no more switching between systems. Our HR team can make faster, more informed decisions with complete context at their fingertips.” – SAP customer, Manufacturing

From service efficiency to experience intelligence

By uniting AI, data, and experience within the SAP ecosystem, SAP SuccessFactors solutions can turn HR service delivery into a strategic engine that drives business results. Organizations can resolve issues faster, deliver personalized experiences at scale, and gain actionable insights that improve both HR efficiency and employee engagement.

In a world where agility and trust define competitive advantage, HR is no longer a back-office function—it’s a driver of workforce productivity, organizational resilience, and enterprise-wide success.

Learn more about SAP SuccessFactors Enterprise Service Management.

Lara Albert is chief marketing officer for SAP SuccessFactors.

Agentic AI is everywhere, and it holds the massive potential to transform the way we work, enhance efficiency, and amplify value — all while simplifying our daily tasks.

The autonomy of AI agents in decision-making and innovative problem-solving is what makes this disruptive technology so attractive to companies, yet also one that demands focus and clarity.

Organizations need to understand where it is appropriate to deploy AI agents while ensuring they behave as intended: staying within their operational scope, using only authorized data, and maintaining compliance with the company’s guidelines and regulations.

If in the world of espionage, agents would normally operate in the shadows, in the corporate world, companies need to ensure that AI agents operate in plain sight. Their behavior should be transparent, measurable, and always under control.

As organizations scale their use of agentic AI, the specter of a new challenge emerges: understanding where exactly in their processes agents should be applied, if they are acting the way they are supposed to, and what their impact and cost really are. After all, AI agents are a business resource like any other, and should always be governed by an organization’s leadership, in alignment with that organization’s goals.

This is where agent mining capabilities in SAP Signavio solutions come into play, bringing visibility, accountability, and continuous optimization to the growing ecosystem of AI-driven process transformation.

The problem: invisible autonomy in enterprise AI

AI agents become more autonomous — and sometimes more ambiguous — as they learn and evolve. Their decisions happen in milliseconds, driven by complex reasoning that can appear as an invisible black box to end users.

Without transparency, organizations risk blind automation, which means agents operate efficiently on paper but unpredictably in practice, potentially introducing errors, inefficiencies, or unnecessary costs.

At the same time, agents operating visibly allow organizations to see and learn from the agents’ behavior, potentially revealing new approaches, creative solutions to existing problems, or unexpected positive outcomes.

The solution: AI Agent mining

Agent mining enables organizations to understand and optimize the behavior of AI agents operating across their business processes. Agent mining in SAP Signavio solutions provides the ability to:

• Trace agent behavior to see how agents make decisions, navigate process steps, and adapt to different contexts
• Analyze impact and measure the agents’ influence on key metrics like process time, accuracy, and compliance
• Monitor cost by tracking computational or LLM-related expenses, helping ensure cost-efficient performance
• Benchmark performance by comparing outcomes of agent runs to identify areas for refinement

But it’s also more than just a monitoring tool. AI agent mining is an intelligence layer for the AI workforce. By transforming invisible actions into measurable insights, it empowers organizations to:

• Increase transparency into agent behavior and decision logic
• Control operational costs by understanding and optimizing LLM usage
• Ensure compliance through auditable decision trails
• Continuously improve performance by learning from live agent execution
• Measure true business value of AI automation, not just efficiency metrics

Agent mining from SAP Signavio can extend from Joule Agents built by SAP to third-party or custom-built AI agents, offering a unified lens across an organization’s AI landscape.

A broader vision: AI agent excellence

Unless we’re watching the Mission: Impossible franchise, no one wants to see rogue agents on the loose, which is why agent mining is just one of four pillars under SAP Signavio’s comprehensive approach to AI agent excellence. The pillars that help ensure intelligent agents are not just deployed, but deployed intelligently, include:

• Agent discovery: Identifying the right processes and opportunities where AI agents can drive the greatest impact
• Agent context: Providing agents with the right process knowledge and compliance parameters to act responsibly and efficiently
• Agent mining: As outlined above, observing and analyzing how agents actually behave in operation
• Agent value impact: Quantifying the business value that agents deliver, such as efficiency gains, cost savings, or improved customer experience

Together, these pillars ensure that organizations not only automate processes but continuously learn from and improve their performance. The world is not enough; it’s critical to have both working in sync.

As SAP Signavio General Manager Dr. Gero Decker shared, “AI agents represent a fundamentally new paradigm, and a key question remains: How should we perceive them? Should we view AI agents as advanced technical constructs or as non-human humans? It’s a complex question that organizations must address as they deploy AI agents at scale.”

“At SAP Signavio, we are preparing for the future by focusing on the organizational and process dimensions of agentic AI adoption,” he said. “Our AI agent excellence approach aims to ensure that AI agents are integrated seamlessly, efficiently, and compliantly into the broader enterprise. In this rapidly evolving landscape, no company can afford to stand still. Our vision is to be an engine for innovation and reinvention, helping companies grow and adapt.”

SAP Signavio solutions can empower organizations to ensure their AI agents are not only effective but also transparent and accountable, paving the way for smarter, more strategic automation — in other words, AI agent excellence.

Lucas de Boer is a Global Marketing program lead for SAP Signavio.