SAP SuccessFactors H2 Release Aims at ‘Future-Ready Workforce’

SAP SuccessFactors unveiled its second half 2022 release, introducing features designed to help organizations “create an agile and future-ready workforce.” At the start, select customers will have access to three new features: skills ontology, growth portfolio and dynamic teams.

The skills ontology uses machine learning and AI to recommend relevant and trending skills to employees so they can manage their development. The growth portfolio allows workers to uncover their skills, capabilities, education, language proficiencies and certifications. Dynamic Teams provides organizations with visibility into their unofficial teams, and offers tools to help manage them.

In a blog post, SuccessFactors Senior Vice President, Product & Design Amy Wilson said the new modules provide “significant updates” to SAP SuccessFactors Human Experience Management Suite, without requiring customers to implement an entirely new solution. 

In addition, the release features an end-to-end redesign, name and personal pronouns selection, a new onboarding experience and cross-system workflow capabilities.

Knowledge from Business Users

Separately, launched SAP Build, a new product designed to support transformation by leveraging the expertise of business users. Built on SAP’s Business Technology Platform, SAP Build is a low-code product that puts SAP’s enterprise technology directly into the hands of business users, SAP said.

SAP Build allows business users with minimal technical expertise to create and extend enterprise applications, automate processes and design business sites with drag-and-drop tools. SAP CTO Juergen Mueller said the platform was designed to “rapidly unleash business users’ expertise.”

Over the next 10 years, research firm IDC expects more than 100 million business professionals to become involved in the production of digital solutions, Arnal Dayaratna, IDC’s research vice president, software development. Products like SAP Build will allow “business users to harness their domain expertise to rapidly build and iterate” digital solutions, he said.

Already, Dayaratna noted, the demand for developers who can build digital solutions exceeds their supply. So, he said, “IDC envisions that business professionals will become increasingly involved in initiatives to create digital solutions to solve pressing business problems.”  

To that end, SAP aims to upskill 2 million developers worldwide by 2025. Among other things, the company plans to triple the number of free learning courses on SAP Learning. It’s partnering with the learning platform Coursera to help businesspeople launch careers within the SAP ecosystem, it said.

As part of that effort, SAP launched an entry-level professional certification on Coursera, designed for learners of all backgrounds, and with no college degree or industry experience.

Image: SAP