Exploring the latest SAP SuccessFactors Innovations for 2024

In the realm of Human Resources management, SAP continues to push boundaries with its latest offerings for SAP SuccessFactors. As leading partners in Human Capital Management, we’re witnessing a wave of enhancements and new features aimed at revolutionizing HR practices.

In this era dominated by Artificial Intelligence (AI), SAP’s strategic focus on AI applications, exemplified by SAP Business IA, is noteworthy. Moreover, the integration of SAP systems with the Microsoft Office Suite opens doors to seamless transitions between office and business tools, promising enhanced usability.

Without delay, let’s delve into the key updates for SAP SuccessFactors in 2024:

• Integration with Teams. Aligned with strengthening the integration between Microsoft and SAP SuccessFactors, we are particularly enthusiastic about this update. It enables us, for example, to manage candidate communication for positions (Selection module) directly from Teams, fulfilling an old request from many of our clients. Additionally, we gain the ability to utilize several Employee Central “Quick Actions” from the Microsoft Suite, with the potential to develop and access custom “Quick Actions” in the future.

The notable updates we anticipate this year include:

• Notifications homepage: New homepage notifications in MS Teams:
  • compensation sheet,
  • Break time,
  • Position application.
• Additional ESS/MSS Scenarios:
  • View and change phone, emails and addresses,
  • View and change work relationships,
  • View and change emergency contacts.
• Time management:
  • Absenteeism Request and approval
• Publishing the app to the Teams App Store:
  • Allows administrators to search for our App in the Teams app store and enable downloading for end-users.
• Fixed bot commands:
  • Default bot commands that launch actions directly on the app’s chat.
• Continuous Performance Management:
  • Direct creation of activities from MS Teams
• Rewards and Recognition: .

Creation and direct approval of recognitions/awards from MS Teams.

• Advances in the SAP SuccessFactors transportation system: For all of us who miss the old SAP STMS in SuccessFactors, we have two good news: SAP has released two products that will help us transport information between SAP SuccessFactors systems in a simple and efficient way:
  • Configuration Transport Center: Its objective is to allow us to transport configuration between environments (development, testing and production). This tool will be of great help both for implementation projects of new modules and for corrective and evolutionary maintenance of existing ones. The weak point is that it does not yet allow us to work with all SAP SuccessFactors objects, the strong point is that the tool is evolving and is expected to cover 100% of them.
  • Package Configuration Manager: Similar to the previous tool, but in this case what we are talking about is passing complete functionality packages between SAP SuccessFactors systems. Very useful for working with pre-packaged solutions like our NUBO product .
• Central Employee: We will have specific “quick actions” to make the delegations of workflow processes and the management of personal data more flexible.
• Many new things for this year and very interesting:
  • Ability to clock in and out from Microsoft Teams,
  • Mass approval and automatic submission of timesheets before payroll runs,
  • Valuate time over multiple periods, quarters, or an entire year to support period-based calculations and limit alerts,
  • Define role-based authorizations for timesheet alerts.
• Skilling and re-skilling . The system will now allow us the possibility of evaluating the skills of our human team, in addition the system will give us access to libraries of predefined skills, something that the talent departments of many of our main clients have been demanding for a long time.

The current Job Profile Builder (JPB) evolves a new model called Talent Intelligence Hub , which is the advanced version of the JPB. The new platform will give us much more power in the search for hidden talents.

The skills part not only affects the Performance & Goals module, skills will be a key piece that would also be present in the selection module, employee profile, etc.

• Opportunity Marketplace. A new tool that will enabling employees to see the growth options they have within their own company.
• The image and usability of the user interface has been completely changed, we have seen it and we like it. Great news for everyone, especially module users, and great news for partners as well. The administration part will not change until 2025, but at least it greatly improves an element that was one of the weak points of the SAP SuccessFactors talent package. Applying this change does not mean having to migrate the tool. The mobile application has also been greatly improved, although it still does not have all the functionality.
• We have a new candidate management Pipeline, we have a way to streamline and facilitate communication with candidates thanks to all the advances in integration with the Microsoft Suite and we have news in the application of AI to the world of selection. Let’s see it in the next point.
• Artificial Intelligence (AI). As a good lead artist, we left the AI part for last. At this point we have two very different lines of work: we are going to talk about a “virtual friend” that will help us interact efficiently with SAP SuccessFactors, which we are going to call “ Joule ” and we are going to see what SAP offers us when it comes to generative AI.
  • Our friend Joule. Joule is a virtual companion with whom we can interact anytime and from anywhere. Unlike a standard chatbot found on Websites, Joule allows the user to communicate using conversational language, Joule contextualizes the request based on the user profile and acts as an assistant in their interaction with the SAP SuccessFactors system. Joule is a co-pilot, or an assistant, that will save users a lot of time in their searches and procedures, complementing and enhancing the user’s skills in using the platform. For now, Joule doesn’t encompass the entirety of SAP SuccessFactors functionality, but we do already have an important battery of use cases that is increasing rapidly. The idea is that it allows us to cover 100% of the system’s functionality. Joule speaks English via a text interface, with plans to support Spanish and French by the third quarter of this year. As if this were not enough, Joule has a free version that allows us a certain number of messages depending on the number of employees registered in the SAP SuccessFactors Employee Profile. To deploy the Joule service, we need to have BTP, the service does not require a functional consulting project but a small technical integration project.
  • Generative Artificial Intelligence. This functionality enables the generation of job descriptions and interview questionnaire based on provided guidelines. The great advantage of SAP AI is that it works in a contextualized environment and accesses all the information in SAP SuccessFactors to generate content.

The list of functionalities per module is as follows:

• Selection module (available from 2H 2023):
  • Creation of job description (DPT),
  • Creation of interview questions.
• Text generation to optimize employee work (1H 2024):
  • Generation of objectives,
  • People Management,
  • AI assisted writing.
• Cases under review for text generation:
  • Q&A with Joule,
  • Growth Insights (with 1:1 meetings),
  • Text analysis,
  • Learning questionnaire and evaluation generation.
• Performance & Goals Module (planned for 2024):
  • Content Generation for Performance Goals: Create meaningful performance goals using AI.
  • Content Generation for Development Goals: Create meaningful development goals using AI.
• Editorial Assistant (planned for 2024):
  • Helps employees write more effectively.
  • Reduces time spent ideating and writing content.
  • Available in the entire HXM suite.
• Text analysis. “Security Scanner” (planned for 2024):
  • Analyzes both hand-created and generated content,
  • Aware of the context of where it is used,
  • Available in the entire HXM suite.
• Succession plan and talent review (planned for 2024+):
  • Profile comparison with AI ü Real-time skills information,
  • Decisions based on skills, experiences, strengths, aspirations, etc. mitigating possible biases

AI consumption is measured in “SAP AI Units” / artificial intelligence units. Let’s take into account the following data:

• 7 AI Units allow us to manage 10,000 messages, and each message is equivalent to a question/answer binomial with Joule AI,
• On the other hand, each page of AI-generated content consumes 0.007 AI Units.

Let us remember at this point that depending on the number of employees registered in the Employee Profile we will have a free number of messages per year and that we can additionally purchase additional AI Units that we can use to generate new messages with Joule or new pages.

These updates herald a transformative period in HR technology, and we at HR Path are poised to detail each functionality through a series of webinar events. Join us to explore how these innovations can elevate your company’s HR practices in 2024 and beyond.