A big obstacle to digitalizing industry could soon be a thing of the past. The Manufacturing-X initiative makes a new type of data exchange possible between industrial partners – innovative, self-determined, and trust-based.
Manufacturing-X was launched as part of the Industry 4.0 platform, with the aim of promoting digital ecosystems and establishing an international standard for data exchange. It is an industry-wide initiative of the German government with various projects for different industrial sectors.
“The realization that the digitalization of industry is inevitable has become the norm over the past few years,” says Georg Kube, head of Industry Data Ecosystems at SAP SE. “A variety of use cases for different industries and new business models have been developed. They are successful – but only as long as companies work with other companies with which they already have a close partnership.”
“The most well-known of the [Manufacturing-X] projects is certainly Catena-X for the automotive sector,” Kube says. “The common aim of all these projects is to establish a new form of data exchange.”
For example, an automaker that wants to digitally integrate its direct suppliers typically requests all the data about the supplied parts from its partners, and the suppliers usually feel comfortable providing this data because of the trust that has grown over the years between the partners.
But it’s different when data is needed from companies without a direct business relationship. “A typical example is the determination of a vehicle’s CO2 footprint,” Kube says. “Suddenly, information about the CO2 footprint of the smallest plastic parts is needed, which may come from companies in the supply chain with which a company has never had direct contact. It’s not easy to access that data.”
Access to essential pharmaceutical products – like medicines, vaccines, and diagnostics – can be hindered by unreliable health and supply systems. This is where modern technology plays a critical role, enabling better tracking and management of these commodities.
The U.S. Drug Supply Chain Security Act has mandated manufacturers to improve traceability, which is essential for ensuring that medicines reach patients safely. SAP Information Collaboration Hub for Life Sciences is designed to help meet these demands by streamlining the tracking process. However, as the network of users has grown, support challenges have surfaced. To address these issues, SAP introduced Built-In Support into the hub to help provide direct, seamless assistance to life sciences companies and their partners.
I had the opportunity to interview Tarun Luthra, head of Support – Industries & CX, and Andreas Krummlauf, vice president and head of Product Management Life Sciences, Health and Ecosystem, about the project’s impact. Here’s how Built-In Support is helping to enhance operational efficiency for network users in the life sciences industry.
Get support whenever you need it, tailored to your SAP solution
Krummlauf:With the rise of global regulations, manufacturers of medicine needed to develop the ability to uniquely identify every pack of medicine they sell in those countries. This is to avoid counterfeiting in the legitimate supply chain. To support this requirement, SAP’s serialization portfolio was initiated in 2015 with the SAP Advanced Track and Trace for Pharmaceuticals application, a corporate serialization repository.
SAP Information Collaboration Hub for Life Sciences started in 2016 with a focused goal: to manage traceability and serialization data exchange for our customers and a couple of hundred of their business partners. In 2021, the hub won the Hasso Plattner Founders’ Award.
As the network expanded to tens of thousands of partners, a key limitation emerged: we did not have a simple way for business partners, acting as network end users, to directly interact with SAP support in case of critical issues, even without having a support contract with SAP in place.
Q: What support challenges were network end users facing?
Luthra: The challenge arose from supporting an increasing number of network end users that were not direct SAP customers. Without access to SAP’s support system, the network end users had to rely on their customers to resolve issues, adding unnecessary steps and risked communication gaps. This presented an opportunity to implement Built-In Support to support our customers’ business partners as network end users when they use SAP Information Collaboration Hub for Life Sciences.
Q: How does Built-In Support make a difference for network end users?
Luthra: We are now providing network end users with a direct entry point from within SAP Information Collaboration Hub for Life Sciences, enabling them to easily contact the support team. Built-In Support is seamlessly integrated into the hub. The network end user can find help by searching SAP Knowledge Base Articles or submitting a case.
Krummlauf: This streamlined process can enhance the support experience and helps ensure users can quickly find the help they need. Network end users can now resolve issues independently or submit a case without involving customers in the resolution process. This improvement leads to faster response times. Users can efficiently search for relevant product information and potentially resolve issues on their own. This autonomy helps enhance the overall support experience and empowers users to find solutions quickly and effectively.
Built-In Support Enhances User Experience and Support Efficiency
In conclusion, the integration of Built-In Support within SAP Information Collaboration Hub for Life Sciences marks a significant advancement in enhancing user experience and support efficiency. When network end users are empowered to directly access support resources and resolve issues independently, we not only help to streamline the support process but also reinforce SAP’s commitment to improving lives through better life sciences solutions. As regulatory demands evolve, our innovative approaches will continue to drive progress and collaboration in the life sciences sector. For more insights, stay connected with SAP’s ongoing developments.
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In today’s dynamic market, agile organizations require seamless collaboration among business users, IT professionals, and software developers. Low-code application platforms empower both professional and citizen developers to rapidly create and deploy digital solutions through guided development, automation, and robust governance, fostering innovation and agility.
SAP Build has been developed with the bold vision that business users and developers alike should be able to augment enterprise applications and build new functionality, automate business processes, and design digital workspaces using the tools of their choice. It is an AI-powered cloud service that combines application development, workflow management, task automation, and workspace creation into one comprehensive, cloud-based solution running on SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP).
Strategic Challenges in Modern Software Development
Developers today face several significant challenges.
First, it is difficult for many organizations to leverage the deep insights from non-technical business experts across functions like finance and supply chain. While AI is a powerful new tool, its efficacy hinges on its integration with business-specific data and processes; without this, its broader benefits are diminished. Building or extending business applications is often time-consuming and expensive, prompting a shift toward customizable pre-built solutions for greater agility. Finally, developers grapple with fragmented systems requiring extensive integration, hindering efficient workflows and resource utilization.
These challenges collectively underscore the need for a more robust development platform.
The SAP Build Advantage
SAP is recognized in the 2024 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Low-Code Application Platforms for its Ability to Execute and Completeness of Vision. SAP Build offers unique benefits that streamline the development process and ensure innovative and efficient solutions.
Build together: SAP Build supports a fusion development approach, accommodating different skill levels and project needs across diverse technologies. This environment fosters team collaboration with business experts and increases productivity by allowing developers to select the most appropriate tools, whether they prefer low-code visual tools or programming with Java, JavaScript, or ABAP.
Develop faster with business AI: Generative AI in SAP Build, using the AI copilot Joule, automates coding, workflow, and workspace creation customized to a company’s needs. Joule uses large language models (LLMs) and data specific to the company’s finance, supply chain, and other processes, ensuring relevant and reliable solutions for each customer.
Start ahead with pre-built, industry-specific solutions:SAP Build provides more than 500 industry-specific, pre-built solutions that developers can utilize to jump-start application development. These solutions are complemented by generative AI capabilities that simplify and automate complex workflows across various business domains.
Extend business applications with confidence: SAP Build ensures seamless integration with both SAP and non-SAP applications, facilitating the extension of core business systems. The integration capabilities are bolstered by a new extensibility wizard in SAP S/4HANA Cloud, enabling developers to smoothly incorporate custom fields, customer business logic, and automation, and to create bespoke applications while remaining aligned with fundamental business operations and maintaining robust security and connectivity.
Extend ERP and Other Business Applications with Ease
Typically, most business applications need to be adapted to meet customer specific requirements. SAP Build empowers organizations to accelerate automation, tailor business processes, and extend the functionality of SAP S/4HANA Cloud and other business applications.
SAP Build follows a clean core paradigm, which future-proofs an ERP system, ensuring upgrades become seamless and moving to the cloud is simplified. This translates to lower costs, faster innovation, and the agility to adapt to changing business needs, all while ensuring custom extensions continue to work flawlessly.
Gain a Competitive Edge with SAP Build
Since launching SAP Build, we have seen tremendous growth in customers embracing future-proof extension building in impactful ways. Trumpf, for example, streamlined operations by reducing time spent with administrative tasks by 60% and doubling the efficiency of assembly instruction generation. BMW enhanced data quality and reduced collection time, ensuring reliable reporting of sustainability KPIs for better informed decision-making. And Piller has delivered 80% faster system access, a tailored user experience, and reduced search time for optimized employee efficiency and productivity.
Next Steps
To learn how SAP Build adds value to cloud ERP, explore use cases that address specific challenges in business processes. To unlock the full potential of application development, automation, and AI, take the next step with the following resources:
Bharat Sandhu is senior vice president of Application Development, Automation, Integration, and AI at SAP.
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. This graphic was published by Gartner, Inc. as part of a larger research document and should be evaluated in the context of the entire document. The Gartner document is available upon request from SAP. 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.
The recent SAP Q3 2024 results indicate a robust financial performance, with notable growth in cloud revenue and continued expansion in cloud backlog across the company’s global markets. In the third quarter of 2024, SAP’s cloud-focused strategy has driven impressive financial gains, particularly within its Cloud ERP Suite. The company reported a current cloud backlog […]
LISBON— SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) today announced new innovations and embedded artificial intelligence (AI) across the SAP SuccessFactors HCM suite that provides organizations with greater efficiencies and unparalleled experiences.
Discover the cloud HCM suite that changes the way you work
The announcements were made at SuccessConnect, SAP’s annual human resources customer event, October 28-30 in Lisbon, Portugal.
“Our announcements today represent a major leap toward a future where every organization has a single source of truth for its people data and skills intelligence, enabling data-driven decisions across the entire business,” said Dan Beck, President and Chief Product Officer, SAP SuccessFactors solutions. “We are not embedding AI in a vacuum. These innovations will activate unparalleled insights and reliable results for SAP SuccessFactors customers.”
Building an Open Skills Ecosystem to Fuel AI-Based Career Recommendations
Skills continue to be a top concern for business leaders. According to Gartner®, “Uncertainty about skills needs and assets – only 8% of organizations have reliable data on the skills the workforce currently possesses and those that have the greatest impact on business success.”*
SAP today introduced enhancements to the talent intelligence hub, which provides organizations with a centralized system for skills that drive career development and strategic workforce planning. Customers now can aggregate and harmonize data from third-party solutions in the talent intelligence hub to ensure a single view of skills for each employee and for the organization. The first partners to integrate with the talent intelligence hub will include Beamery, Degreed, IMOCHA INC, Korn Ferry, Lightcast, Phenom, TalenTeam and TechWolf, with more in the coming months.
SAP also has launched the SAP SuccessFactors Career and Talent Development solution, a fully integrated offering, which combines the robust features of the SAP SuccessFactors Succession & Development solution with the SAP SuccessFactors Opportunity Marketplace solution, powered by skills data from the talent intelligence hub. This innovative solution empowers employees to set career growth goals aligned with personal aspirations and organizational needs. Through career path exploration, employees can map their skills to current and target roles and improve their readiness for their next opportunity. Learn more about our learning and talent strategy here.
These updates are complemented with dozens of new generative AI capabilities that improve the employee experience across the entire talent lifecycle. With the help of AI, for example, managers receive support in developing AI-assisted 360-degree reviews, which provide employees with actionable insights and a feedback summary that highlights their strengths and areas for improvement. SAP’s AI copilot Joule can now guide employees through the onboarding process, such as providing recommended meetings and nudging them to complete data review, forms and e-signatures.
AI Boosts SAP’s Core HR and Payroll
SAP leads the market with strong global core HR solutions, providing customers with country-specific compliance, content and support in more places than any other cloud HR vendor – 104 for the SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central solution and 52 for the SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Payroll solution. By embedding AI throughout these products, organizations can deliver a better experience for employees while freeing up time HR professionals now spend addressing service tickets.
In the first half of 2025, employees will be able to ask Joule complex questions about their pay slip and receive contextually relevant information. Additionally, SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Payroll will include enhanced Payroll Control Center capabilities to manage payroll process activities and improve budgeting and control for public sector customers.
Accelerating Time to Value for Customers
In September, SAP successfully acquired WalkMe Ltd., the leading digital adoption platform company. At SuccessConnect, SAP announced its intent to add pre-built WalkMe content into SAP SuccessFactors solutions which will be commercially available in the first half of 2025, allowing customers to improve employee experience and adoption across common workflows.
“HR and people managers must deliver excellent, lasting and personalized employee experiences,” said Zachary Chertok, Senior Research Manager for Employee Experience at IDC. “Both leaders need to continuously align employee growth, goals, and motivators to ever-evolving sets of business OKRs. SAP SuccessFactors is furthering employee experience management while supporting HR and people managers to better partner with employees to mutually value their growth and engagement. From AI modeling and forecasting to dynamic skills and value framing, SAP SuccessFactors newest releases raise the bar for how to optimize and align employee experiences with the goals and needs of the enterprise.”
New SAP survey data released today shows that employees’ understanding of AI varies greatly, which is impacting their attitudes toward the technology and those who use it at work.
SAP surveyed over 4,000 managers and employees globally about how AI is reshaping workplace dynamics and HR practices, and the results paint a complicated picture.
The AI Literacy Divide Is Shaping Workforce Perceptions of AI
According to the survey data, the biggest factor influencing the workforce’s opinions of AI is their level of AI literacy, or their ability to detect, understand, and evaluate the technology. Compared to people with high AI literacy, people with low AI literacy were over six times more likely to feel apprehensive, seven times more likely to feel afraid, and over eight times more likely to feel distressed about using AI at work. Additionally, nearly 70% of people with high AI literacy expected to see positive outcomes from the use of AI at work, compared to 29% of people with low AI literacy.
Respondents with high AI literacy were also more likely to have positive or egalitarian perceptions about how AI usage should – or should not – impact people decisions like performance reviews, career advancement, and compensation.
When presented with a hypothetical scenario where two employees have exactly the same level of performance in the same job, with one using AI to complete their work and the other not, research participants expressed divergent views on how AI usage should be considered when making important people decisions:
Should AI usage improve performance reviews? More than half (55%) of people believed that employees who use AI should have better performance reviews than those who don’t use AI. This sentiment was even higher (64%) for workers with high AI literacy.
Should AI usage factor into compensation? Forty-four percent of people with low AI literacy believed that employees who use AI should be paid less than those who don’t use AI. Conversely, 46% of people with high AI literacy reported they believed compensation should be equal, regardless of AI use.
Should AI usage influence promotion? Forty-five percent of people believed that employees should have the same chance of promotion regardless of AI usage. Those with high AI literacy felt similarly, with the majority (57%) believing promotion odds should be equal regardless of AI use.
Drive the success of every employee with a global, AI-enabled HCM software suite
It is a long-standing premise in management that better performance reviews should yield higher compensation and better chances of promotion. These mixed results show that the use of AI has complicated this, and they provide a clear reflection of the complex moment in time organizations and employees are navigating. With any new technology comes a period of adapting our knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors related to it. These results show that even though AI adoption is accelerating, some employees are still grappling with foundational questions about the use of AI at work and forming their own assumptions – not just about the technology, but also about the people who use it.
AI in Hiring Practices
Interestingly, the findings also revealed that the majority of people want to work for companies that use AI in their hiring practices. Between 45% to 57% of people said that they would react positively if a company used AI tools in the hiring process, such as being more likely to apply for and accept a job offer, feeling more confident in their fit with their new job, and believing the hiring process to be more fair. This positivity was even higher for those with high AI literacy, with between 66% and 75% of the most AI-literate employees endorsing these positive reactions.
The previous results about the impact of using AI on work outcomes showed that people have strong mixed opinions about employees using AI to do their jobs. However, these results indicate that employees are much more universally accepting when it comes to organizations using AI to improve practices like hiring. Organizations hoping to improve their practices by increasing efficiency and reducing biases are likely to be more successful at attracting talent, and especially talent with sought-after AI skills.
What This Means and How to Address AI Literacy in Your Organization
From this research, it’s clear that as AI becomes a more widely used tool at work, organizations must focus on and invest in AI literacy to help employees understand this new technology, increasing adoption and ensuring everyone is equipped to benefit from it. Our data shows that the most important aspects of AI education to improve sentiment and adoption are knowing how to use AI to achieve one’s goals and make tasks easier and being able to detect when a technology uses AI.
Organizations can enhance AI literacy – and consequently AI adoption – through a variety of strategies, including:
Hands-on experience: Provide opportunities for employees to work with AI tools in practical settings, encouraging experimentation and familiarity.
Training and resources: Offer structured training sessions and resource libraries that cover AI fundamentals, specific tools, and real-world applications relevant to your organization.
Change communication: Whan adopting a new tool, be clear about how it works and the expected impact it will have on an employee’s experience.
Showcase wins: Share success stories about teams that have benefitted from the use of AI in their work and how it has positively impacted the organization.
Peer learning: Identify employees with high AI literacy and create structured learning sessions designed for early adopters to help upskill their peers through mentorship and knowledge sharing.
Promote a growth mindset: Cultivate an organizational culture that values curiosity and learning, helping employees to feel comfortable exploring AI technologies, asking questions, and providing feedback on their experiences.
Every employee’s story is unique. And with the power of AI, organizations can now tailor every individual’s experience, empowering them to lead with a people-first, modern approach. With strong global core HR, embedded AI capabilities, and a unified skills foundation, SAP SuccessFactors HCM helps organizations boost efficiencies, encourage growth and development, and set up for the future.
The SAP SuccessFactors 2H 2024 release introduces over 250 innovative features and enhancements, along with over 30 new purpose-built AI capabilities.
SAP Business AI
SAP continues to be at the forefront of business AI with new generative AI capabilities that span the entire human capital management suite, all aimed at transforming how organizations engage and support their workforce.
Within this release, new AI capabilities can recommend roles to candidates by matching extracted skills from resumes to open jobs. This helps candidates more easily find opportunities that align with their strengths while helping organizations to reduce candidate drop-off, decrease time to hire, and increase the quality of hiring.
AI-assisted job recommendations for candidates
To boost efficiency, a new text analyzer feature can assist employees to create more carefully worded text content for their people profile, goals, comments, and more. A new translation feature is also available, translating text within SAP SuccessFactors solutions to help preserve key messages and tone across languages.
Text analyzer
We are also introducing over 15 new capabilities to Joule, the AI copilot from SAP, designed to bring a more conversational approach to getting work done. For example, new hires, hiring managers, and HR colleagues can now navigate onboarding tasks in a more engaging way, streamlining the onboarding process and boosting productivity.
Talent Intelligence Hub
With the SAP SuccessFactors 2H 2024 release, we’re enhancing our AI-driven skills foundation, guiding organizations toward a skills-focused approach. The new AI-assisted skills architecture creation feature can enable organizations to enrich their job profiles and build a skills library by extracting relevant skills from SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting. Additionally, the growth portfolio inbound API can facilitate the seamless integration of external skills data, helping to ensure that employees’ growth portfolios are closely aligned with their roles. The first partners to integrate with the talent intelligence hub will include Beamery, Degreed, IMOCHA INC, Korn Ferry, Lightcast, Phenom, TalenTeam, and TechWolf, with more in the coming months.
We’re also introducing the AI-assisted skills identification feature, which helps learning administrators maintain skills-based attributes by extracting skills from course descriptions and automatically linking them to the corresponding learning items.
SAP SuccessFactors Career and Talent Development
We are excited to announce SAP SuccessFactors Career and Talent Development, our fully integrated solution aimed at empowering individual career advancement while driving greater organizational agility. Here, we bring together the robust capabilities of SAP SuccessFactors Succession & Development and SAP SuccessFactors Opportunity Marketplace into one solution to help intuitively guide career and development experiences and talent planning. Fueled by the single skills foundation of the talent intelligence hub, employees and managers can shape careers, set career goals, and receive personalized recommendations. These recommendations include skills, jobs, learning courses, mentors, and more – with clear suggestions for areas to improve. The recommendations are based on an individual’s aspirations and skills, along with career paths set by the organization.
AI-assisted career insights
User Experience
Employee experience continues to be a priority for HR leaders. We have continuously improved how employees interact with our technology by reimagining our user interface, embedding SAP SuccessFactors solutions into work tech applications like Microsoft Teams, and improving the mobile experience.
With this release, employees can now:
Submit and approve time-off requests, view upcoming absences, and sync holidays to their calendar in Microsoft Teams.
Delegate performance appraisals to colleagues to help manage responsibilities on each other’s behalf.
Use an improved natural language search to simplify finding tasks and information with just a few spoken commands.
Enjoy new features on our mobile app, including in people profiles and time tracking.
Core HR and Payroll
SAP provides industry-leading core solutions spanning core HR, payroll, and time that are globally scalable with sophisticated country-specific support and compliance. In this release, we have several new innovations and enhancements. Within SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central, the people profile has a new modern design across both desktop and mobile. It features an intuitive card-style layout for quick and easy access to information as well as comprehensive summaries of key sections, such as compensation. A new position budgeting control workbench is also available for public service organizations, offering a streamlined view of employee financing activities. This user-friendly tool helps simplify error handling and can ensure efficient and accurate execution of financial commitments. Additionally, the refreshed benefits overview page gives employees a single place to view their benefits details and take necessary action, such as reporting a life event, managing family members, or enrolling in benefits.
Within SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Payroll, we now provide country-level support for Croatia, bringing the total number of natively supported locales to 52.
For more information, read the SAP SuccessFactors 2H 2024 release brochure or watch the video.
Bianka Woelke is group vice president and head of Application Product Management at SAP SuccessFactors.
As the rise of AI reshapes industries and transforms roles, the importance of cultivating a strong, skills-based workforce has never been more critical.
A recent report from the World Economic Forum highlights that 44% of employees’ core skills are expected to change in the next five years. To stay ahead in a constantly changing workplace, organizations must not only understand this shift but actively adopt new technology to drive reskilling and upskilling, data-driven decision-making, and continuous learning at scale.
Creating a Unified Skills Foundation for Learning and Talent
SAP provides the tools and intelligence needed for organizations to adopt a robust learning and talent strategy and meet this challenge head-on. The SAP SuccessFactors HCM suite leverages embedded AI across the entire talent lifecycle, from recruiting and onboarding through ongoing learning and development. At the heart of this capability is the talent intelligence hub, a single source of truth for skills intelligence across the entire organization.
We recently announced that the talent intelligence hub can now integrate skills from external partners – a unique differentiator that truly empowers organizations to have one single view of the skills across their business while giving employees access to a constantly evolving skills profile. Partners like Beamery, Degreed, IMOCHA INC, Korn Ferry, Lightcast, Phenom, TalenTeam, and TechWolf will integrate their skills data into the talent intelligence hub – with more partners to come in the future. These partnerships can empower organizations to integrate existing skills frameworks and create a more unified, future-ready workforce.
“SAP has invested heavily into its skills capabilities over the last several years and it is paying off,” said Josh Bersin, industry analyst. “The promise of a skills-led workforce only works if companies have their skills in one integrated place. With these new integrations, SAP’s talent intelligence hub does just that.”
Driving Continuous Growth That Evolves Over Time
Building a skills foundation has been a top priority for HR leaders for several years. A Gartner survey found that one-third of HR leaders plan to increase learning and development spending to develop evolving skills at speed and scale.
With an established skills foundation, organizations have the data to drive ongoing growth and development for their employees. SAP has several solutions that work together to help provide an integrated employee experience that can adapt throughout their career: SAP SuccessFactors Learning and the newly announced SAP SuccessFactors Career and Talent Development.
Unlock the potential of your people and your organization
Career paths are not linear. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Baby Boomer generation held an average of 12 jobs by age 56, and Millennials are estimated to hold up to 16 jobs in their career. Rather, it’s normal for employees to switch job functions that require upskilling, mentorships, fellowships, a lateral move, or a combination. SAP SuccessFactors Career and Talent Development helps guide employees and managers to shape careers based on personal aspirations and organizational priorities. Using AI, it can recommend skills and experiences as well as clearly defined steps that an employee would need to meet their career goals. Recommendations can be enhanced and adjusted based on how that employee progresses – whether it’s by learning new skills or participating in a new opportunity.
A critical part of any career progression and upskilling is learning. SAP SuccessFactors Learning can complement the personalized approach in SAP SuccessFactors Career and Talent Development with AI-recommended content that helps foster curiosity and discovery. It can go beyond mandatory learning for safety and compliance to include content for topics and skills they are interested in. In addition, skills tagged to learning items help employees to discover the next learning steps reflecting their interests, needs, and for further growth. Data from SAP SuccessFactors Learning can filter back to the talent intelligence hub, helping to ensure employees’ skills profiles are constantly up-to-date.
Customer Success with SAP SuccessFactors
SAP is helping businesses like Norsk Hydro and Grundfos Holding stay ahead by combining cutting-edge AI capabilities with a comprehensive learning and talent strategy.
By leveraging the talent intelligence hub, Norsk Hydro has adopted a unified skills model that spans recruiting, onboarding, learning, development, performance, and succession. Each employee maintains a growth portfolio, empowering them to take ownership of their career development by adding role-specific skills and focusing on their priorities. Norsk Hydro has also embraced the new integrated learning experience, using AI to recommend relevant skills-based learning opportunities. By tagging courses with the right skills and connecting learning directly to business goals, Norsk Hydro ensures that employees can easily access the training they need to grow and succeed.
Grundfos Holding is harnessing the talent intelligence hub to foster a more agile, project-based work environment, empowering employees to take on diverse roles based on their skills rather than job titles. This strategic shift not only promotes internal mobility but also enhances employee retention and satisfaction by establishing clear pathways for professional growth and development. Additionally, people leaders now have a comprehensive overview of team members’ skills, facilitating immediate skill assessments and streamlining competency management across the organization. This approach enhances the ability to align talent with business needs effectively, driving both individual and organizational success.
With today’s rapid pace of innovation, having the skills data to fuel data-driven insights for workforce planning and employee growth will be a differentiator for organizations. SAP SuccessFactors solutions are designed to scale and evolve as business and the workforce change.
Tune into SuccessConnect Virtual to learn more about the latest innovations in SAP SuccessFactors solutions, including SAP SuccessFactors Career and Talent Development.
Dan Beck is president and chief product officer at SAP SuccessFactors.
Discover innovations that empower the individuals who make your business thrive
On September 24, the SAP AppHaus Palo Alto team celebrated the reopening of its creative co-innovation space, welcoming customers, partners, scholars, alumni, and executives. In the two days following the reopening, almost all members of the SAP AppHaus Network came together for a global meet-up, joining from Asia, Latin America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand.
The SAP AppHaus Network consists of SAP and partner locations spread around the globe. Together, all 24 locations work with a human-centered approach to innovation built with SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP). They are united in their conviction that sustainable innovation is based on five key enablers: people, process, place, leadership, and technology.
The Newly Designed SAP AppHaus Palo Alto
SAP AppHaus Palo Alto adds a distinct opportunity for innovation in Silicon Valley. According to Andreas Hauser, senior vice president and head of SAP AppHaus Network, “For many companies, innovation centers are like a gallery where they display their software. But SAP AppHaus is different. We collaborate with customers to understand how the latest and greatest technology can help their businesses run better and drive impact. And we keep that engagement going to make sure they succeed.”
The new creative space on the SAP campus in Palo Alto includes a dedicated design thinking area for customer innovation workshops, a garage breakout space that can be used to expand the workshop space, two meeting rooms, a maker space, a pop-up library, and a coffee lounge for connecting and relaxing. The space is designed to work with customers in a creative space, be it in person, virtually, or in a hybrid setup.
Grand Reopening Celebration
Presented and moderated by Hauser, Uwe Palm, head of SAP AppHaus Palo Alto, and Sally Lawler Kennedy, senior director of Innovation & Customer Experience at SAP AppHaus Palo Alto, the evening program offered a diverse mix of innovation and design topics from customer and local ecosystem perspectives:
Robert Strong, comedian, magician, and author, captivated the audience with his magic act, creating a memorable event opening.
Kulmeet Bawa, chief revenue officer for SAP Business Technology Platform, hosted a fireside chat on accelerating innovation with SAP BTP with Omar Mitchell, vice president of Sustainable Infrastructure and Growth Initiatives, NHL.
There was a panel discussion called “Driving Human-Centered Design and Innovation, Accelerated Through AI” with Sam Yen, chief innovation officer, JPMorgan Chase & Co; Alissa Sylvestre, VP UX and Design, ConvergentIS, SAP AppHaus Calgary; Gavin Quinn, founder and CEO, Mindset Consulting, SAP AppHaus Minneapolis; andLuke Nixon, chief operating officer, SAP Labs US.
The “Designing Better Tomorrows” keynote was done by Lisa Kay Solomon, author and designer, Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford University.
Almost all SAP AppHaus Network members from around the world came to celebrate and commemorate the occasion together with customers, partners, and SAP attendees. The evening event provided networking prior to the two-day meet-up.
The Partner Meet-Up
On the first day of the global SAP AppHaus Network meet-up, Bawa and Thorsten Leiduck, global head of SAP BTP Ecosystem, welcomed SAP AppHaus Network members. These 21 members, representing more than 20,000 employees globally, share the passion for human-centered innovation powered by SAP BTP. Both executives underlined the importance of the partner ecosystem for SAP. In a lively dialogue, partners asked questions about SAP’s strategy, discussed their role in SAP’s future, and shared ideas and joint opportunities.
Looking back, Leiduck recaps: “During the SAP AppHaus Network partner meet-up, my open exchanges with many SAP partners from around the globe were invaluable. The conversations underscored the energy and excitement of our ecosystem and our partners’ commitment to deliver value to customers. It was inspiring to hear how network members – who are all experts in customer co-innovation – create business impact by building upon SAP BTP. I’m looking forward to the next global SAP AppHaus Network meet-up in 2025!”
From AI Workshops to Learning Sessions and Speed Dating
The two-day partner event allowed for an open and broad exchange on the latest innovation formats, tools, and methodologies all made available in the innovation toolkit.
Democratizing Innovation Methods
The innovation toolkit offers free resources to help organizations practice innovation on a daily basis. Whether companies are just starting an innovation project or want to install a culture of innovation, the methods and learning material can guide them through their innovation journey. Latest innovation formats, tools, and methodologies are made available as learning material, templates, and other guidance in the innovation toolkit.
The latest SAP Business AI Explore and Discover & Design workshops took center stage. Recurring themes throughout the event were how partners can support customers to take full advantage of SAP BTP and SAP’s clean core strategy. They also shared best practices to increase demand generation. In the end, all this knowledge sharing will lead to enhanced opportunities for SAP customers to benefit from this global network of co-innovation experts, regardless of where they are geographically or in their digital transformation journeys.
Following the SAP AppHaus motto “work hard, play hard,” there was time scheduled to get to know members from other geographies because nothing can replace personal exchange. To round out the program, the community gathered for evening excursions in the Silicon Valley. One of the highlights was the evening visit to d.school at Stanford University, which included some surprising encounters when meeting the d.school founders at work.
Over the last few years, organizations have been increasingly interested in adopting SAP S/4HANA Cloud as the backbone for their transformation initiatives. However, transitioning from a legacy on-premise ERP to our cloud ERP is not a matter of delivering imagined expectations but providing what the business needs today while leaving room to evolve in the future.
Every business comes with its own challenges and goals – that’s why SAP S/4HANA Cloud is not implemented with a one-size-fits-all approach.
However, with the design authority service, companies can ensure the implemented solution is scalable, flexible, and aligned with the unique business strategy of each customer. The strategic service from SAP can support critical design decisions that can result in a smooth implementation and maximize the value of the cloud ERP.
Understanding the Value of Design Authority
The design authority service can provide a structured framework for decision-making, risk management, and quality assurance throughout the transition process.
One of the key advantages is establishing a design review board – a space where design decisions are rigorously evaluated and challenged. Every decision is aligned with clearly defined goals so the business can identify risks early in the process, avoid performance bottlenecks, and integrate all systems – from SAP to third-party solutions – reliably.
In return, organizations can confidently transition and optimize the value of the cloud ERP over the long term with:
Commitment, where SAP experts immerse themselves in the organization’s challenges and situations
Ownership that leads to accountability for decisions and outcomes
Responsibility for delivering consistent reliability and dependability when completing tasks and fulfilling commitments
The service spans across their entire transition effort, providing:
Design oversight: The implementation of SAP S/4HANA Cloud is aligned with the organization’s strategic goals and business requirements based on a thorough review and approval of design proposals, architecture diagrams, and technical specifications.
Standards and best practices: Consistency, reliability, and maintainability of the system design and development are prioritized across different projects and teams.
Risk management: SAP solution architects assess and mitigate risks associated with SAP design decisions, considering scalability, security, performance, and compliance with industry regulations.
Collaboration: Close collaboration of various stakeholders – including business users, project managers, architects, developers, and IT operations teams – helps ensure SAP S/4HANA Cloud meets business needs and technical requirements.
Quality assurance: Appropriate testing, validation, and documentation are carried out throughout the development lifecycle.
Continuous improvement: Monitoring and evaluating the effectiveness of SAP design approaches and practices enables the identification of improvement areas and implementation of changes as necessary to help optimize performance, efficiency, and innovation.
Tailoring the Journey – Greenfield, Brownfield, and Everything in Between
SAP S/4HANA Cloud is ERP for every business need – from mission-critical operations to business model innovation
A well-planned implementation and careful management are critical to the success of an optimized investment in SAP S/4HANA Cloud. For that reason, one of the first decisions organizations must make when transitioning to SAP S/4HANA Cloud is choosing the right implementation strategy.
During this early phase, organizations need the flexibility to choose between a more technical conversion (brownfield) or a fully cloud transition (greenfield) that allows them to rethink their process landscape completely. But more importantly, they should also be able to explore a broad range of options between those two extremes. They include shell conversions with a larger volume of reused processes and a mix-and-match strategy with a high level of process redesign.
The design authority service can be pivotal in guiding customers toward the best path for their unique circumstances. Tailoring the journey to a company’s specific conditions and needs helps ensure the adoption of the right technologies and the fast creation of business processes for the future.
Take, for example, a large multinational enterprise that recently transitioned to SAP S/4HANA Cloud. Faced with an aging legacy system and complex business processes across multiple regions, the company relied on SAP’s design authority service to choose a hybrid strategy. By combining elements of both greenfield and brownfield approaches, the company could streamline operations while maintaining critical legacy functions.
Creating a Best-in-Class Design
Once the journey is chosen, the design authority service helps organizations consider several critical factors early in the transition initiative to help ensure the cloud ERP is scalable and flexible enough to grow alongside the business.
One crucial consideration is adherence to SAP standards and best practices. When organizations deviate too much from standard functionalities, they expose themselves to increased costs and complexity. By closely following SAP guidelines, companies can enjoy smoother upgrades and integration with other SAP and third-party systems while enhancing overall efficiency and reducing operational risks with a clean core.
By seeking this guidance from the service’s experts well before the transition, organizations can proactively address – and remove – design-related performance bottlenecks.
For instance, SAP and third-party systems can be integrated to deliver a continuous flow of data and processes, which is critical for long-term performance. Systems can be arranged to work together harmoniously and provide accurate, timely data across the enterprise.
Even after going live, the SAP team monitors and evaluates the solution’s effectiveness, making necessary adjustments to optimize performance. This can lead to an implementation of SAP S/4HANA Cloud that remains relevant and efficient as business needs evolve.
Additionally, organizations are also kept informed about future standard functionalities. By staying current on SAP’s future developments, they can make better strategic decisions and plan their IT investments wisely. Moreover, future capabilities are better aligned, keeping SAP solutions relevant and effective as new features and updates are released.
Catalyzing Meaningful Transformation
SAP S/4HANA Cloud is designed to be a living system that evolves and scales as business needs change and new technologies become available. With the technology, businesses, and industry expertise that the design authority service offers, organizations can be sure that their cloud ERP solution will continue to deliver the capabilities they need to stay competitive in an ever-changing landscape.
Dirk Dreisbach is chief business enterprise consultant for BTS Consumer Products and Retail Industries for SAP Germany. Alexander Klammrodt is premium engagements lead for SAP Switzerland.
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