Pho­to Cred­it: SAP

First impres­sions count, they say. And per­haps no more so than in human resources (HR) with its focus on recruit­ing the best peo­ple, man­ag­ing their per­for­mance, help­ing them devel­op, and mak­ing sure they’re com­pen­sat­ed appropriately. 

Walk­ing and Talk­ing in Las Vegas

Why do we men­tion this well-worn tru­ism? Because atten­dees at Suc­cess­Con­nect 2018 Las Vegas, the annu­al gath­er­ing for HR pro­fes­sion­als and SAP Suc­cess­Fac­tors cus­tomers, were told they need­ed to walk to a dif­fer­ent hotel for the open­ing morn­ing keynote. (And that’s often a very long walk in Las Vegas.) 

Was SAP skimp­ing on hotel costs? Had SAP secured a cheap deal on morn­ing keynote times? (British rock band Queen had booked a slot at the MGM Park The­ater lat­er that night.) Or was this some elab­o­rate HR-cen­tric scheme to get atten­dees walk­ing and talk­ing to each oth­er before the main event? 

It turns out the answer was no, no, and no. 

4,000 Strong in HR (and Counting)

In fact, SAP had used all of the Las Vegas Aria Casino’s exhi­bi­tion hall space for SAP Suc­cess­Fac­tors and part­ner booths. It need­ed the addi­tion­al book­ing because there was no space left at the Aria to host the 4,000 Suc­cess­Con­nect attendees. 

Who knew HR soft­ware was so big? Clear­ly SAP did. The com­pa­ny has brought togeth­er an increas­ing num­ber of part­ners and affil­i­ate orga­ni­za­tions this year, some of whom are now becom­ing part of SAP’s new open com­mu­ni­ty tasked with cre­at­ing pur­pose-built and easy-to-con­sume HR applications. 

A Grow­ing, Col­lab­o­ra­tive Community

This new com­mu­ni­ty is in many ways like the SAP App Cen­ter and its col­lec­tion of enter­prise appli­ca­tions and microapps. With peo­ple issues at its core, the new HR and human cap­i­tal man­age­ment (HCM) com­mu­ni­ty is orga­nized around soft­ware appli­ca­tions clas­si­fied in six dis­tinct groups: 

• Well-being
• Pay equi­ty
• Real-time feed­back
• Unbi­ased recruiting 
• Pre­dic­tive performance 
• Inter­nal mobility 

Much like the indus­try inno­va­tion kits in SAP Leonar­do, SAP promis­es to col­lab­o­rate with part­ners and inter­nal work­ing groups to devel­op more clas­si­fi­ca­tions to add to this list.

The Dig­i­tal Path to the Human Revolution

So, it seems it’s pos­si­ble to make a very human pro­fes­sion dig­i­tal. Where we can pro­vide appli­ca­tions specif­i­cal­ly designed for core HR ser­vices, then we can do exact­ly that. As in oth­er pro­fes­sions, it’s about address­ing mun­dane work with automa­tion, expand­ing the reach of employ­ee sup­port, and clear­ing time for the high­est-val­ue activities. 

“We believe this wave of inno­va­tion will result in a ​‘human rev­o­lu­tion’ that will allow busi­ness­es to focus time, tal­ent, and ener­gy on the thing that real­ly mat­ters: the peo­ple that lead to busi­ness out­comes. With this com­mu­ni­ty, we can help assem­ble a com­ple­men­tary set of solu­tions for our cus­tomers’ diverse needs. And, if they don’t exist yet, we can co-cre­ate them togeth­er,” said SAP Suc­cess­Fac­tors pres­i­dent Greg Tomb. 

Meet the New Dig­i­tal HR Assistant

SAP is intro­duc­ing a new dig­i­tal assis­tant to the HR world. It uses the SAP CoPi­lot chat­bot frame­work and employs SAP Leonar­do machine learn­ing to cre­ate a con­ver­sa­tion­al expe­ri­ence. It is also inte­grat­ed with the most fre­quent­ly used col­lab­o­ra­tion plat­forms such as Slack and Microsoft Teams. 

“Users can chat with SAP CoPi­lot, ask ques­tions, and give com­mands just as they would a reg­u­lar per­son. Their infor­mal and unstruc­tured speech would then be con­tex­tu­alised, analysed, and used to exe­cute actions and present the user with busi­ness objects, options, and oth­er rel­e­vant data in a sim­ple and con­ver­sa­tion­al way,” notes Andrea Wais­gluss, user expe­ri­ence con­tent strate­gist for SAP SE. 

Today It’s About Human Capital

So how is the new dig­i­tal notion of human cap­i­tal man­age­ment so much more strate­gic than the plain-old HR that we used to know? 

SAP Suc­cess­Fac­tors glob­al head of mar­ket­ing Kirsten Alle­gri Williams told ASUG that for a long time in the past, HR tech­nol­o­gy was designed sim­ply to facil­i­tate trans­ac­tions. More specif­i­cal­ly, it was designed to effi­cient­ly process back-office trans­ac­tions relat­ed to the peo­ple who were con­sid­ered the work­force for an organization.

“Today, every­thing has changed. The work­force is no longer a nar­row­ly defined group of peo­ple. For most orga­ni­za­tions they are a diverse, glob­al­ly dis­persed, mobile col­lec­tion of indi­vid­u­als who are often dis­en­gaged from the orga­ni­za­tions they work for,” said Alle­gri Williams. 

A Diverse and Con­nect­ed Work­force

Alle­gri Williams says that, in response to this new diver­si­ty, the role of HR has trans­formed. The depart­ment is no longer a back-office func­tion. HR is now on the front lines and in the front office — work­ing to align, moti­vate, and engage the work­force to deliv­er on the organization’s mis­sion and purpose. 

“Are back-office process­es still impor­tant? Yes. But they can now be intel­li­gent­ly auto­mat­ed, so the rou­tine items are eas­i­ly done direct­ly by the work­force with ease. SAP Suc­cess­Fac­tors solu­tions are designed and built to be holis­tic and con­nect­ed, with mul­ti­ple chan­nels of access, embed­ded ana­lyt­ics, and emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies like machine learn­ing, and a com­pre­hen­sive ecosys­tem of busi­ness solu­tions and exten­sions, ensur­ing align­ment with and vis­i­bil­i­ty to the busi­ness,” said Alle­gri Williams, speak­ing to ASUG. 

The Employ­ee Engage­ment Factor

Tak­ing stock then, Alle­gri Williams talked about mak­ing sure the work­force is aligned, moti­vat­ed, and engaged. And it’s that engage­ment fac­tor that is crit­i­cal here. 

In this faster-mov­ing world, employ­ee engage­ment has become a real con­cern for many busi­ness­es and work­force ana­lysts. Poor employ­ee engage­ment means less-pro­duc­tive work­ers, increased indi­vid­ual work­er stress, and ulti­mate­ly a high­er rate of staff attrition. 

With much of its Suc­cess­Fac­tors tech­nol­o­gy, SAP is focus­ing on mak­ing everyone’s work expe­ri­ence bet­ter through automa­tion, dig­i­tal assis­tants, microapps, and a new com­mu­ni­ty to co-cre­ate engage­ment technology. 

First impres­sions still count, and they do mean a lot. But HR is mov­ing beyond the first impres­sion it’s left behind as a back-office func­tion. Long-term dig­i­tal intel­li­gence and cul­ti­vat­ing all of us who make up a com­pa­ny’s human cap­i­tal is the way of HR’s for­ward-think­ing future. 

Inter­est­ed in human cap­i­tal man­age­ment? Read our arti­cle about whether to move human cap­i­tal man­age­ment sys­tems to the cloud. Or join us Octo­ber in Toron­to for the ASUG Expe­ri­ence in Human Resources & Pay­roll to learn from oth­er prac­ti­tion­ers and innovators.