SAP NOW AI Tour: AI+Data+Platform: Data in Motion – AI's Role in Delivering Always-On Talent Intelligence

In this session, Daniel Zrno (SAP SuccessFactors Practice Lead NSW, Discovery Consulting) and Chris Youness (Chief People and Culture Officer, City of Sydney) explored how AI and SAP SuccessFactors are transforming workforce intelligence. Chris described the challenge of managing a highly diverse organisation that functions like “70 small businesses,” where traditional skills projects had failed due to being static, complex, and slow. By using SAP Business AI and its Skills Ontology, the City of Sydney built a validated library of skills by analysing 275 standardised position descriptions, then fine-tuned them with human oversight. The Skills Ontology, with 30,000+ validated skills, enables context-grounded insights by mapping relationships such as prerequisites and subsets. This created a single source of truth for workforce intelligence, shifting skills from disconnected initiatives to an integrated, always-on capability.Key takeaways included AI’s role in augmenting data into a “whole self model” that delivers hyper-personalised recommendations for learning, development, and career growth.In L&D, employees receive tailored learning paths; in recruiting, resumes are scanned more effectively to highlight nuanced skills and match overlooked opportunities; and in career progression, AI uncovers non-linear pathways that expand options. The session showed that AI-driven talent intelligence allows organisations to build custom frameworks, streamline recruitment, and provide personalised employee experiences at scale, delivering results that were previously impossible.