Without a doubt, the world of work has dramatically transformed over the past several years, with generative AI initiating the latest wave of change for organizations around the world. In a more complex and less homogenous business landscape, top-down HR processes of the past no longer meet the rising demands of employees for flexible career paths, intuitive work processes, and two-way communication – not to mention the growing skills gaps and talent shortages that keep leaders up at night.

Leaders need to embrace generative AI as a way to address these challenges with talent intelligence and advanced analytics. According to Gartner, 26% of CEOs rank the talent shortage as the top damaging factor to business outlook, and 76% of HR leaders agree they will be lagging in organizational success if they don’t adopt and implement generative AI in the next 12 to 24 months.

At SAP, we have a proven track record of providing HCM solutions in the cloud for leading organizations around the globe. Our customers trust us to not only manage their sensitive employee data and payroll, but to help them understand their workforces as they prepare for the skills they need in the future.

The SAP SuccessFactors HCM suite provides truly global HR cloud software with powerful AI capabilities to help organizations meet the challenges of today and innovate for tomorrow. Our more than 10,000 customers – from startups and midmarket companies to large enterprises – use our solutions to help bring out the best in their people by harnessing the power of AI to elevate every experience, guide every people decision, and connect HR across every aspect of the business. We do this with:

• Core HR and payroll: A single source of truth is key for any organization to enable insight into the entirety of its workforce: employees, contingent workers, and dynamic teams. The SAP SuccessFactors HCM suite can provide localized support for over 100 countries and territories and cloud payroll for 50 countries and territories, plus additional modular solutions for time, benefits, and HR service delivery.

• Talent and learning: Skills gaps and talent shortages have been persistent challenges that continue to exist across all industries. Addressing them starts with an understanding of skills that currently exist, followed by pathways for employees to find new opportunities, learn new skills, and access mentors and feedback. The talent intelligence hub across SAP SuccessFactors solutions uses AI to continuously help organizations and employees understand their skills and match people with personalized career pathways.

• A modern user experience: Every person has unique needs and preferences – in how they work, how they communicate, and what’s required for their role. Along with a refreshed, modern user experience, we’ve built in generative AI capabilities throughout our solutions to help people work smarter. And with Joule, SAP’s copilot, they can quickly complete HR tasks and get conversational responses to their questions.

• HR connected to ERP, finance, and more: Having access to people data connected across the business is critical to building agility, speed, and resilience within an organization. With the power of the broader SAP portfolio, organizations can improve end-to-end business processes across the entire business. This is also complemented with our partner ecosystem, which includes over 350 apps for HR.

We firmly believe that when organizations invest in their people – in their passions and potential – they return the investment over and over. And with the rapid acceleration of AI, it’s more important than ever to build pathways to employee growth, including new ways to upskill, reskill, and discover opportunities that align with a person’s skills, interests, and aspirations.