Today we announced the asset acquisition of SwoopTalent, a leader in talent data intelligence. The company’s powerful machine learning algorithms can combine, analyze, and train an organization’s workforce data from disparate systems and workflows for faster decision-making – not just for human resources (HR), but for the entire business.
We’re excited for what’s ahead as we embed SwoopTalent’s IP across the SAP SuccessFactors Human Experience Management (HXM) Suite and welcome co-founders Stacy Chapman and Satish Sallakonda and the incredible SwoopTalent engineering team to help us do it. Chapman and Sallakonda are thought leaders in the HR tech industry who collectively bring decades of experience building solutions and leveraging the power of data and ML for learning, talent, recruiting and workforce analytics and planning.
By bringing SwoopTalent into the SAP SuccessFactors organization we are accelerating our HXM vision with a powerful trained artificial intelligence (AI) model that will allow our customers to access reliable data to transform the employee experience and empower a future-ready workforce.
Allow me to explain why this is so important for us, and why it should matter to you, too.
The Rise of HXM
When we introduced HXM almost two years ago, our vision was to put people at the center of business by creating meaningful and memorable workplace experiences. Because when people’s needs and motivations are addressed, better business results follow.
Since then, we’ve delivered new solutions like SAP SuccessFactors Work Zone that allow employees to access multiple tools, apps, and systems from one digital workplace. We’ve also reimagined the user experience across the SAP SuccessFactors HXM Suite to deliver greater individualization and engagement, with new and consumer-grade experiences. We’ve rolled out these new user interfaces (UIs) for SAP SuccessFactors homepage, SAP SuccessFactors Learning, and SAP SuccessFactors Performance & Goals, among others, with more coming in future releases.
Our vision for HXM never stopped there. Employee experience is not just defined by how we complete our daily tasks or interact with technology. It’s an opportunity for employees to invest in themselves, express what they bring to the world, and reflect their individuality in their work. Guided by what we call the “whole self” model, we are exploring how we can tap into the mindsets, work styles, and aspirations that drive people to do what only they can uniquely do to help us transform the human experience at work.
The Organizational Agility Imperative
If we can help employees identify and explore their interests, hone their capabilities, and learn new skills, we are empowering them to grow their careers in alignment with their values and sense of purpose, leading to increased job satisfaction, well-being, and job performance. Business leaders can also gain powerful insights about their people to enable greater organizational agility to upskill, reskill, or redeploy talent to the greatest business need.
This has become increasingly important for organizations that have had to quickly pivot to new business models due to the pandemic – and we don’t see the pace of change or disruption slowing down.
So how do we access the insights needed for organizational agility? How do we analyze and use what we learn to match capability with opportunity, and skills with a burning business challenge? It requires intelligent, adaptable, and dynamic data. That’s where SwoopTalent comes in.
Tapping into the Whole Self Model
With SwoopTalent’s talent and machine learning algorithms, we will strengthen our adaptable, dynamic talent profile to gather information from different sources—keeping in mind local regulations and the employee’s consent and preferences about the information they’d like to share—to continuously shape and refine a digital picture of an employee’s whole self: who they are today and who they are becoming. This talent profile powers a new solution, planned to be released this year, that will serve up data-driven opportunities like recommendations for learning content, roles, assignments, dynamic teams, mentors, and more; all of which will fuel an employee’s ongoing development and growth.
This is a game-changing use of data that, until now, only recruiting solutions could do. Recruiters have used intelligent software for years to connect their job descriptions with the talent market in order to intelligently and automatically find candidates.
Our solution will be equally as powerful, but for internal employees. As a person’s talent profile develops and becomes much more colorful and descriptive, surfaced opportunities will become more individualized—whether it’s a job possibility that matches a person’s skillsets, a learning experience that fits an interest, or a mentor who can guide the development of their core competencies.
A data-rich opportunity marketplace will empower people to grow their careers and give organizations the agility required to transform their business. Truly intelligent enterprises are powered by people, enabled by technology, and backed by a strong data foundation. When we bring the three together, the possibilities for the individual and the business are endless.
We are energized by the progress we’ve made and thrilled to have the SwoopTalent team join us to continue bringing our HXM vision to life.
To learn more about HXM and our upcoming product launch, save the date for SuccessConnect on October 13, 2021.
Amy Wilson is senior vice president of Products and Design for SAP SuccessFactors.