With the help of SAP AppHaus Network partner Flexso, Belgian steel wire producer Bekaert created a new AI Master Data Assistant with SAP AI Core in SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP), and SAP SuccessFactors solutions.
Bekaert aspires to become a people- and data-driven company. This requires a thorough strategic and cultural transformation, in which artificial intelligence plays a crucial role. To get started, the company set priorities, leveraging the embedded AI capabilities already available in its existing HR solutions such as SAP SuccessFactors solutions. By focusing on a few embedded AI use cases and creating a stand-alone AI tool on top of that, it started exploring and seeing the AI benefits.
“AI is a means to achieve our goals, a logical extension of our HR strategy,” says Jorn Waterschoot, global head of HR Technology at Bekaert. “AI’s growing capabilities, cost-effectiveness, and versatility are transforming businesses by enhancing user experiences, enabling experimentation, and encouraging adoption. At Bekaert, these strengths are leveraged in HR while carefully managing hidden costs and focusing on end-to-end implementation to maximize AI’s potential. At Bekaert, the goal is to make AI feel like a candy store: once employees experience its versatility, they are encouraged to explore it further.”
First use case: the AI Master Data Assistant
Together with its long-standing partner and SAP AppHaus Network member Flexso, Bekaert worked along a human-centered approach to innovation to identify opportunities and use cases. One of these identified use cases was a stand-alone AI tool that Bekaert used for HR data improvement. This tool was not integrated in the existing software landscape and required of users to extract and import data.
To improve this laborious process, Flexso helped design and build a custom AI solution, called AI Master Data Assistant, with the help of SAP AI Core in SAP Business Technology Platform. This new solution has been fully integrated with SAP SuccessFactors solutions, using SAP Integration Suite. Currently, the solution uses a specific AI model from generative AI hub in SAP AI Core. However, the flexibility with various models offered through the generative AI hub capability would allow the partner to use another AI model for this solution in the future.
Who benefits from AI in HR at Bekaert?
The AI Master Data Assistant allows the Bekaert HR teams to enhance data quality by automatically identifying, correcting, and preventing errors in employee records. The assistant can detect inconsistencies, duplicates, and missing information, ensuring that all data is accurate, complete, and up-to-date. In practice, it means that users can enter natural language prompts to get proposals for improvement. Via chat-like conversations, they can standardize formats, correct errors, and validate entries in real time.
For innovation projects, Bekaert usually rolls out new solutions gradually first through a number of role-specific use cases, then deploy them indiscriminately across the organization. For the new AI Master Data Assistant, the HR business partners and HR admin roles benefitted first.
Flexibility for the future
As part of the global SAP AppHaus Network, Flexso always strives for a human-centered and sustainable co-innovation approach with its customers. It is about bringing innovation into the hands of people. David Pierre, AI practice lead at Flexso explains: “The AI world is developing so fast. So, the principle in our solution is that we are AI model agnostic. Today, we are using model GPT to support our use case. But if we have a better model in the future, then we can also switch to other models as they are all supported by SAP BTP.”
Imke Vierjahn is SAP AppHaus communications lead.
