SuccessConnect is the annual flagship event for SAP SuccessFactors, this year pitching up in Lisbon, Portugal to share the latest updates to the SAP HCM suite. Surprisingly, currently en vogue AI agents weren't under the spotlight. Unsurprisingly, AI still heavily dominated the conversation at SuccessConnect 2024 - but this was part of a more technology-first approach to SuccessFactors than perhaps seen in previous years. The new stratagem can be put down to the year-long and counting leadership of Dan Beck, SAP SuccessFactors president & chief product officer. Speaking with C-suite SuccessFactors execs such as global vice president of product marketing Lara Albert, Beck was described as "a technology guy and enthusiast, and he brings a lot of passion to the product in the engineering organization." This was clear to SAPinsider at SuccessConnect, in which a post-keynote Q&A with Beck, alongside 1:1 interviews with Albert and the C-suite brought up some takeaways which will be of interest to HR leaders keen to understand where SuccessFactors and the SAP HCM offering stands both today and tomorrow:

AI in SAP SuccessFactors HCM Suite

SuccessConnect 2024 introduced and teased new GenAI capabilities that will probably take away a lot of HR headaches for people managers, and, to quote, Maryann Abbajay, chief revenue officer for SAP SuccessFactors, "free them up to do a little bit more strategic thinking":

• Prompts able to spice up employee reviews and bring up just how much an employee can realistically expect in a raise.
• One product demo also saw an artificial change management consultant described as a "like a personal trainer" in aiding people managers on the very human problem of conflict resolution.
• SAP's GenAI copilot Joule meanwhile will soon be able to give you text summaries of training videos - bane of sorts for any new starter in a company - alongside the ability to ask and have answered payslip questions using a SuccessFactors conversation bot.

Presumably in-house videos will be used for the former, with such content easily funneled into Joule; for anything else, you'd probably need to play a video in a separate screen for an AI-aided audio interface to record, transcribe and summarize the content. Talk about a headache... On a broader front, Dan Beck was keen to remind all at SuccessConnect that AI was more than just large language models (LLMs), but also small language models and agentic AI. AI agents have been all the rage in ERP lately, but in the post-keynote session as pictured above, Beck said “you won’t see SAP marketing a host of different AI agents.” This was both a refreshing and logical statement, with the SuccessFactors chief pointing out that AI agents are by nature simply a day-to-day element of what defines an AI copilot. Simply put, they will be working away under the hood of Joule, with no need for a marketing campaign naming and trumpeting a new of batch of agents in one's HCM and ERP system. The experience, as it were, is simply Joule. With his technologist hat on, Beck also stressed that as LLMs become more attuned, SuccessFactors will follow. This ties in with how Beck and SAP think about globalization, a "vast investment" in his words, to avoid generalization, nodding to how countless teams work on tax calculations daily across 104 nations - and acknowledging one Portuguese journalist's funny warning that a European worker not used to overt praise of the sort found in overtly-American-style generated text may instantly assume a promotion is on the way. Also mentioned by Beck was an SAP engineering team in Singapore stripping out biases from AI, responding to a need to remove any prejudice and discrimination from automated procedures in HR. It's hard not to notice SAP's regulatory backbone when it comes to artificial intelligence - an area where shortcomings can perhaps be felt more acutely on the HR front - especially considering the vendor has had a dedicated legal team focused on AI in  Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) since 2018. And, of course, on the product level, SAP AI is more discreet, not pointing at a public OpenAI-type model. Spanish snack company Frit Ravich was cited in the Q&A has benefiting from AI tools in the SAP HCM suite to meet heavy food regulation standards. This insight wasn't highlighted in the brand's presentation as part of the SuccessConnect 2024 keynote, but would have been of great interest to the HR leaders in attendance in Lisbon, especially those trying to find the value of AI amidst all the hype in today's enterprise tech. Another European customer of interest on the regulation front came up in an exclusive 1:1 with SAP SuccessFactors CRO Maryann Abbajay - retail giant Ahold Delhaize. The client runs "wall to wall" SuccessFactors, with a keen interest in becoming "more of a partner" to the flagship SAP HCM brand. In response, Abbajay pointed out AI was a "great opportunity" to make that happen: "We'd like you to turn it on and we'd like you to put it in production." With the client's CIO's power, AI came to Ahold Delhaize and "their legal and security people were very unexpectedly pleased about this, wanting to help and do the right thing" instead of being held back by the fear of risk, which came up when AI was first raised to the brand. There was also the interesting example of BT Group, which went with not having Joule and then going into production with the copilot in just 10 weeks.

SAP HCM and Integration at SuccessConnect 2024

SuccessConnect 2024 wasn't all about AI, of course; for example, there have been improvement updates to 88% of every screen in SAP SuccessFactors. The big news away from GenAI concerned new integration capabilities for SAP SuccessFactors, including a first look at SAP’s newly-acquired WalkMe tool as operating within an SAP platform (similar interface pictured above by SAPinsider). With the SAP acquisition of digital adoption platform (DAP) leader WalkMe finalized in September, Dan Beck highlighted the tool in a brief demo in his keynote, describing digital adoption as “the missing link” to improve employee experience and adoption across common workflows. Pre-built WalkMe content will be coming to SAP SuccessFactors solutions in the first half of 2025 - read the lowdown over here on SAPinsider. Lara Albert, global VP, product marketing, SAP SuccessFactors highlighted the future of WalkMe in an exclusive 1:1 in regards to business transformation suite SAP Signavio: "We think there's a unique opportunity as we position WalkMe with Signavio [...] As you're rolling out or pre-imagining the entire business process that's related to HCM, Signavio can help you do that. And then from a WalkMe standpoint of actually then prompting people along the way to give them the insights to then know where were the follow up points, or where there were things that were absolutely seamless versus where there was friction." And for those wondering about SAP's own DAP Enable Now: remember that platform works on SAP software, while WalkMe opens up the SuccessFactors ecosystem to pretty much everything else.

Degreed, WeChat and beyond

SuccessConnect also revealed updates to the SuccessFactors talent intelligence hub, with users now able to aggregate and harmonize data from third-party solutions in the 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, IMOCHA INC, Korn Ferry, Lightcast, Phenom, TalenTeam and TechWolf. Together they help form an open skills ecosystem made up of skills architecture, inferred skills and validated skills. Notable edtech platform Degreed is also on the partner list - a decision partly driven by BT Group, who wished to buy its services alongside SAP's, as revealed by Maryann Abbajay. Meanwhile, a roadmap session held for press and analysts by Josh Goslinger, SuccessFactors vice president of product strategy, touched on the stronger ability to build regional specific apps, such as the chat app WeChat which has been requested to be on the front end of SuccessFactors by Chinese customers. Goslinger also spoke of stronger Microsoft Teams integration in SuccessFactors, with an "industry-first" bidirectional integration planned for Joule and Microsoft's Copilot. It seems copilots can co-exist in the ecosystem (and as a reminder, WalkMe has a copilot of its own). How they work bidirectionally in a seamless manner is currently being worked on by engineers; for example, somebody currently using Microsoft Copilot to work on data from Joule has to include an "Add Joule" prompt in the interface. As Dan Beck told SAPinsider:  “Joule will be the entry point for WalkMe [and its copilot] and other products down the road – that’s part of the fun.” And SuccessFactors itself is arguably the entry point for GenAI in SAP, being the first platform to debut Joule. As Autumn Krauss, chief scientist, Growth & Insights for SuccessFactors, tells SAPinsider: "If you think about how much - specifically for HR - our technology touches so many employees, we have such an opportunity," Krauss continues. It's not just users of more niche technologies but all employees who [...] engage with SuccessFactors. There's a bigger footprint there with which we really get to have an impact."