With fans and employees around the world, going digital with SAP was a no-brainer for FC Bayern – one of the “beautiful game’s” biggest and most successful football clubs.
“We are a local club in Bavaria, but have fans around the globe,” says Stefan Meri, the club’s director for digital media and communications. In addition to its 1,200 employees in Munich, New York, Shanghai, and Bangkok, the club has around 175 million followers on its social media and its own media platforms.
Meri says the club’s digital and media platforms are very important because fans expect to be able to interact with their club wherever they are. “They want to send us their feedback and they want to receive feedback.”
Designed to make environmental, social, and governance (ESG) reporting for multinational corporations easier, SAP Sustainability Control Tower is at the heart of a new partnership with Thomson Reuters. Together, SAP and Thomson Reuters are tackling the difficulties that multinational corporations encounter when handling ESG reporting. Their partnership centers on integrating SAP Sustainability Control Tower with […]
UK supermarket chain J Sainsbury plc (Sainsbury’s) aims to further its Next Level Sainsbury’s plans and improve its commercial systems through a recently announced SAP collaboration. A new path for the retailer is established by the strategic partnership between SAP and Sainsbury’s, which focuses on modernizing commercial operations and boosting business flexibility. Sainsbury’s current systems […]
SAP’s digital customer support experience is ahead of the competition. For the second time since 2018, SAP received external confirmation of this, with SAP for Me winning the Best Support Websites Award from the Association of Support Professionals (ASP). With many innovations and AI-driven services, it is a great proof point for SAP’s consistent path towards assisting customers to get the maximum business value from their SAP solutions.
ASP is an international membership organization for customer support managers and professionals and has held this title for over 20 years. SAP’s Customer Support & Cloud Lifecycle Management team and Corporate Processes & Information Technology (CPIT) teams are proud to get this honor for the second time, building on the 2018 ASP award win for the SAP Support Portal.
This year’s evaluation criteria covered site user experience, content offering, content engagement and interaction, site improvement process, and site measurement process. Created to become a unified meeting point for information about administrative, commercial, and technical SAP solutions, SAP for Me implemented new features that focus on self-service and AI-enhanced search. The ASP award demonstrates the team effort to deliver these improvements for functional dashboards, user-friendly navigation, and an integrated portal for post-sale customer communication.
Four Questions to the Experts
Dr. Benjamin Blau, chief process & information officer and head of Corporate Processes & Information Technology, and Stefan Steinle, EVP and head of Customer Support, answered some questions related to the ASP award.
Q: What role did Corporate Processes & Information Technology play in achieving this award?
Explore services and support offerings on SAP for Me
Blau: Let me start by giving a shout-out to our Corporate Processes & Information Technology teams for all their hard work in developing the amazing platform, SAP for Me. By leveraging SAP’s own technology stack, we were able to enable seamless integration, high performance, and scalability. Through the fantastic collaborative effort between our IT and process teams and support functions, we were able to create a personalized and user-friendly experience that the judges recognized as industry leading. I am proud of what we were able to achieve together.
Q: The award is a great proof point in delighting customers. What do customers find most useful when seeking support from SAP and what role does AI play in it?
Steinle: This award reconfirms the direction SAP support is heading and our customers’ needs are the driving force behind. Customers value how predictive support, efficient self-service, and real-time channels can reduce the effort of resolving software issues. AI plays an important role in this. With the SAP for Me site’s AI-powered self-service capabilities and search tools, we can provide efficient and personalized support. Customers can get targeted and relevant results that consider the user and product context. Moreover, AI also helps categorize issues, identify and recommend the best suited solutions through Incident Solution Matching, and find the most appropriate interaction channel.
Q: How do you see the future of SAP for Me evolving, and what role will SAP’s technology play in its continued success?
Blau: The future of SAP for Me is incredibly bright! We’re thrilled about our plans to enhance key areas like contracts and billing, system management, reporting, and support. We’re also going to dive into emerging SAP technologies such as AI-driven insights, machine learning, and predictive analytics to personalize and optimize the customer experience. Our goal is to help customers anticipate their needs, automate routine tasks, and gain greater insight into their SAP landscape. By staying ahead in technology, we’re not just maintaining our leadership in customer support but also setting new industry benchmarks. We’re excited to continue improving and evolving to better serve our customers.
Q: The customer support experience is constantly being innovated. What can customers look forward to from SAP support?
Steinle: To start, it would be evolving and growing personalization. We’re dedicated to strengthening predictive and preventative support, proactively identifying and anticipating potential issues. Customers can also expect our continued focus on bi-directional support, including real-time assistance. We’ll continue to optimize our real-time support channels to help further reduce our customers’ effort to resolve software issues. We’ll significantly increase the use of AI, particularly generative AI, to analyze and classify reported issues, enhance search results, and improve recommendations. We actively listen to customer feedback and continuously improve usability, supportability, and product quality. This helps ensure a smooth and effortless experience.
More Information
The constant innovations and leveraging AI for a further improved customer support experience and this recognition reconfirm SAP’s continued focus to bring out the best in every business. SAP for Me is one of the three key access points for customers, together with SAP.com and SAP Community. Read more about SAP for Me and support from SAP.
Starting in 2024, SAP is doubling down on its net-zero strategy by expanding its commitment to nature conservation and making financial contributions to climate projects.
The financial contribution will support carbon removal and carbon reduction projects:
Carbon removal projects: These projects remove carbon emissions from the atmosphere and store them for decades – in an ideal scenario, the storage is permanent. Examples include nature-based and technical solutions such as reforestation, where trees store carbon emissions in their biomass as well as direct air capture and storage technologies.
Carbon reduction projects: Also known as carbon avoidance projects, these projects prevent additional carbon emissions from entering the atmosphere, reducing the overall amount of carbon emitted. Examples include avoided deforestation or energy efficiency projects.
This doubling down on its net-zero strategy follows SAP’s successful delivery on its pledge to become carbon neutral in its own operations in 2023 by balancing out unavoidable emissions with carefully selected carbon credits. While the company’s use of the statement “carbon-neutrality” will be discontinued, the dedication to reduce its carbon footprint and finance climate action beyond its own value chain remains strong.
Net zero is a state where the greenhouse gases going into the atmosphere are balanced by removal out of the atmosphere. There are a number of definitions of net zero and how companies can achieve it. SAP follows the Science Based Targets initiative’s (SBTi) Net-Zero Standard. Achieving net-zero emissions across our entire value chain means that all our emissions across all emission sources need to be either eliminated or, up to certain limits, compensated for. These emission areas, known as scopes, include those from our own operations, those generated by the energy we purchase to run operations, and finally, the largest area, external emissions such as those incurred by employee travel, items procured, and customer data center use.
SAP Is On Track to Plant 21 Million Trees and Plans More
SAP is on track to meet its 2025 goal of planting 21 million trees and has now raised its reforestation commitment.
By 2030, SAP will support trusted partners and communities to plant and protect a total of 25 million trees helping to conserve diverse forests. Furthermore, SAP will fund the conservation and rewetting of coastal and inland wetlands such as bogs and mangrove swamps. With these conservation initiatives and the increased reforestation pledge, SAP’s goal is to conserve more land than its offices and owned data centers occupy worldwide.
To ensure that selected projects deliver a positive outcome, SAP will continue to apply the rigorous and robust due diligence that has previously informed the selection of successful climate investments such as SAP’s long partnership with Livelihood Carbon Funds (LCF), where SAP has funded the planting of trees in Senegal, Rwanda, India, Indonesia, Guatemala, and Mexico.
SAP’s Climate Finance Contribution on the Path to Net Zero
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Bridging the Gap
SAP firmly believes that financing climate projects beyond a company’s value chain should be an item on every corporate sustainability agenda. As long as it does not undermine current corporate decarbonization programs, the financial muscle of corporations can bridge the gap in parts of the world where fiscal finances are not robust enough to restore ecosystems and build resilient low carbon economies and livelihoods.
This financial contribution will provide quantifiable benefits to mitigate the effects of climate change beyond SAP’s own value chain with investments in projects that deliver a positive impact for the climate, for local and global populations, and for biodiversity.
The level of the financial contribution is determined by SAP’s own emissions in a given year and is disclosed in terms of carbon emissions, since costs for carbon projects can be subject to change.
Financing climate projects at the same time as pursuing its corporate net-zero agenda allows SAP to take responsibility for emissions that cannot be avoided and actively mitigate climate change on a global level. Furthermore, the financial contribution will enable positive climate action on a far greater scale than SAP could achieve alone.
Shifting Perceptions
In the last 15 years, corporate sustainability at SAP has shifted perceptions on how corporations manage their own carbon emissions and how corporate sustainability agendas must be as actionable as they are accountable.
Since 2012, the SAP Integrated Report has shared information on SAP’s annual environmental performance and progress on corporate sustainability targets. SAP has led the way in showing that corporate sustainability is an integral part of business – not just an add-on to strategy or operations.
SAP’s carbon impact is one of the sustainability KPIs that are indicators of future performance and form the basis of compensation elements for members of the Executive Board of SAP SE. Today, sustainability is deeply embedded in SAP’s vision to bring out the best in every business. With its extensive portfolio of sustainability solutions, sustainability is anchored in SAP’s purpose to make the world run better and improve people’s lives.
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With the help of the RISE with SAP program, the City of London Corporation is modernizing its operations through a digital transformation initiative. SAP’s all-inclusive offering for businesses and public sector organizations looking to migrate to the cloud is called RISE with SAP. Organizations can support long-term objectives like sustainability, improve data insights, and increase […]
Through their recently announced partnership, Vonage and SAP aim to transform enterprise intelligence and provide better digital experiences by utilizing SAP Business AI in conjunction with Vonage’s communication APIs. The goal of the partnership between SAP SE and Vonage, a multinational provider of cloud communications, is to combine Vonage’s network APIs with SAP Business AI. By […]
Skills have become the cornerstone of many human resources practices—and one of the top HR trends in 2024. SAP’s HR researchers explored why both employees and organizations value a skills-based approach to people practices such as hiring.
According to findings from over five years of global research conducted by SAP SuccessFactors HR research scientists, 88% of employees would feel positively about skills-based people decisions in their organization. Along with employee satisfaction, HR and talent acquisition leaders see many potential benefits of the skills-based approach. For example, a focus on skills can support internal mobility, help realize employee potential, and make recruitment faster, easier, and more transparent.
So, what does “skills-based” mean? With a skills-based approach to human resource management, work is organized entirely around skills, from hiring and compensation to workforce planning, reskilling, and upskilling. Decisions are made based on skills and capabilities rather than traditional criteria like education or job experience.
Of course, there’s no universal blueprint that works for every scenario: there are multiple approaches to prioritizing skills in an organization. How skills-based practices are implemented depends on organizational culture, industry, labor regulations, and many other factors, but a great place to start is with skills-based hiring.
What Is Skills-Based Hiring?
Skills-based hiring is an approach to recruiting new employees based on their skills and ability to perform a job instead of the formal qualifications listed on their resume or curriculum vitae (CV), such as education or previous job titles.
Benefits of Skills-Based Hiring for Talent Acquisition
To understand why skills-based hiring works well for talent acquisition, we must consider the question what is talent acquisition? At its core, talent acquisition aims to address not just the current talent needs but also the long-term, strategic workforce plans. It can do so by predicting what skills the organization will require in the future to stay competitive, grow, and scale to future needs. Skills-based hiring can support a future-oriented talent acquisition strategy, thanks to:
Productivity: People with the right skills for the job can be more effective in their roles.
Diverse talent pools: A skills-based approach helps find qualified talent that wouldn’t be found otherwise, expands talent pools, and increases workforce diversity.
Transparency: Skills-based talent decisions can be more equitable, fair, and legally defensible while also helping candidates get clarity and more agency over their careers.
Efficiency: Skills-based practices enable faster talent decisions, which, in turn, accelerate the entire recruitment process, reducing time to hire and productivity.
Strategic hiring: A skills-based approach helps organizations understand the skills they will need in the future and hire talent to fill those gaps.
Approach validation: Skills-based hiring is a great way to demonstrate the value of prioritizing skills—before implementing the approach across other HR practices.
Considerations for Adopting Skills-Based Hiring: Exceptions, Misconceptions, and Challenges
Of course, there are still barriers to adopting the skills-based approach to hiring and recruitment. Sometimes, traditional criteria are necessary, such as when hiring for roles that require a specific degree or certification, like lawyers, doctors, and pilots. Candidates’ backgrounds and experience can also be crucial. Senior leaders may be chosen in part due to their industry or market experience; public relations leaders may be hired for their network and media contacts.
There are also many misconceptions about skills-based hiring. For instance, some believe that resumes are unsuitable for skills-based hiring because they’re structured around traditional criteria, such as education and past job titles. In reality, candidates can focus their CVs more on skills, and organizations can use applicant tracking systems and other recruitment software to analyze resumes and screen for the best applicants. In fact, thanks to the use of AI-enabled recruiting tools, skills can even be inferred from experience listed on resumes.
Talent intelligence solutions help source the right skills needed for the future
Finally, a widespread concern among talent acquisition leaders is how to make skills-based decisions equitably and efficiently. To do it fairly and thoroughly, they may need to research which skills are relevant for each role, devise custom skill assessments, and prepare job-specific interview questions rooted in the relevant skills. However, the recruitment process also needs to move along quickly, yield good results, and create a smooth candidate experience. So, although mindsets about skills-based hiring are changing, many talent acquisition leaders are still concerned about the efficiency of this approach. Thankfully, this is where technology can make a crucial difference.
Removing Barriers to Skills-Based Hiring
Skills-enabling technologies have long been used in HR practices: online learning systems to help employees develop new skills and complete required training, job architectures that help define roles and the skills needed for them, and skill assessments to help understand the capabilities and skill proficiencies that people have. While some potential barriers to adopting a fully skills-based approach may exist for certain roles, AI can help empower organizations to hire the best talent with the skills needed to succeed. Using SAP Business AI for HR and SAP SuccessFactors solutions can provide organizations with multiple approaches to adopting skills that may fit their unique workforce and hiring needs.
Using AI to Fuel Your Skills-Based Hiring Approach
The widespread adoption of AI in HR has opened up new capabilities in talent acquisition software while also optimizing existing functions. For example, with the SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting solution, talent acquisition teams can leverage AI to help them adopt skills-based hiring practices:
Skills Framework: The SAP SuccessFactors talent intelligence hub offers an AI-enabled skills framework that can allow organizations to consolidate skills data from multiple sources for a comprehensive view of their workforce. AI-driven capabilities within the skills framework can allow organizations to align skills to job roles to better understand and address skills gaps.
Job descriptions: AI-assisted content generation allows recruiters to quickly create and enhance compelling skills-based job descriptions to attract diverse candidates with the right skill sets.
Improved candidate experience: When candidates upload their resumes during the application process, AI-driven skills extraction allows them to view, validate, and manage skills on their profiles.
Job recommendations: Upcoming innovations include the ability for candidates to use AI to help them find the best opportunity for them based on skills extracted from their resume.
Resume analysis: Using AI-driven skill inference, recruiters can quickly analyze applicants’ resumes and compare best-matched candidates based on skills.
Interview questions: With insights from skills data, AI can recommend relevant skills-based interview questions to ensure interviewers are prepared to fully engage with top candidates.
Skills evaluations: Using AI-recommended interview questions, interviewers can effectively assess candidates and provide evaluations based on the skills needed for a role.
Equitable decision-making: AI-assisted applicant screening helps recruiters make bias-free, skills-based hiring decisions quickly and confidently.
AI can be a true catalyst to an organization’s hiring potential, and many of our customers are already leveraging AI-enabled capabilities. If you’re curious how works, check out this FC Bayern customer story.
Skills-based hiring is an excellent way to recruit the talent your organization needs to thrive and stay competitive—today and into the future. The right recruitment software can make skills-based hiring intuitive, equitable, and efficient.
