SAP runs SAP: Shaping a skills-led future with talent intelligence in each step of the employee journey
A path to define roles based on people’s true potential
Job titles don’t tell the whole story of a person’s true potential. That’s why SAP SE is rethinking how work and growth happen—starting with skills. Using the talent intelligence hub included as part of SAP SuccessFactors HCM and embedded across the portfolio’s learning and talent management solutions, the world’s largest provider of enterprise application software is unlocking a smarter way to grow and develop.
| Industry | Region | Company Size |
| High tech | Walldorf, Germany | >109,000 employees |
skills reduced to 2,000 to align talent with business needs.
common skills framework harmonizing skill catalogs businesswide.
Senior Vice President and Global Head, Organizational Growth and Health, SAP SE
Shifting from static roles to dynamic, skills-infused workforce planning
For decades, traditional job structures served as the foundation of workforce planning. Job titles, degrees, and rigid hierarchies defined how people were hired, developed, and promoted. But for SAP SE, that framework reached its limit.
Markets were moving faster. Technologies were evolving at breakneck speed. And employees were increasingly solving problems, creating value, and developing their careers in ways their job descriptions didn’t capture. That disconnect presented a challenge with real stakes: how could SAP keep pace with innovation if it couldn’t fully see or leverage the potential of its workforce?
In any large organization, job titles often serve as shorthand for performance expectations, skill requirements, and even personal identity. Yet these titles can be misleading when a person’s actual capabilities extend far beyond what their role suggests. At the same time, critical skill gaps can remain hidden when organizations rely solely on surface-level data.
It was time for a change that went beyond implementing the latest technology. SAP needed to reimagine how talent is understood, developed, and mobilized across the business.
“We knew we were leaving value on the table,” states Caroline Hanke, senior vice president and global head of the organizational growth and health team at SAP. “If we can’t see the full picture of our people’s skills, we can’t align talent to where it’s needed most or help employees grow in ways that truly matter.”
For SAP, agility is essential to maintaining its industry leadership. New organizational teams must be designed quickly, adapted in real time, and aligned precisely with evolving business priorities. Yet, traditional job-based planning often hinders efficient talent deployment and visibility into hidden strengths and urgent gaps. Even learning and development efforts were too generalized to meet individual needs, limiting their impact.
Head of Skills Management, Organizational Growth and Health, SAP SE
Creating a skills-led future with an intelligent HR experience
To shift from job titles to real, dynamic skills, SAP needed more than visibility—it needed a connected experience that would activate skills data across the employee journey. That’s where the talent intelligence hub, included as part of SAP SuccessFactors HCM, comes in.
The talent intelligence hub helps ensure a connected, skills-led experience by embedding a unified skills framework across the SAP SuccessFactors HCM portfolio, including SAP SuccessFactors Career and Talent Development, SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting, and SAP SuccessFactors Learning solutions.
With the talent intelligence hub, SAP centralized role and skills data into a single source of truth. This enabled the company to modernize job architectures and move toward uncovering hidden strengths to make smarter, faster workforce decisions with confidence. AI-driven insights will continue to further enhance these capabilities by surfacing patterns, predicting gaps, and driving smarter workforce planning.
Near-future plans for this skills transformation journey include the continuous global rollout of the growth portfolio, which is part of the talent intelligence hub, giving employees a personal gateway to career growth. The growth portfolio and SAP SuccessFactors Career and Talent Development allow individuals to view and update their skills, explore personalized learning recommendations, and receive clear guidance on what’s expected for current or future roles—in one intuitive interface. AI is leveraged to tailor recommendations based on skill profiles, career aspirations, and organizational priorities to create a more engaging, relevant development experience.
“The talent intelligence hub and our rollout of the growth portfolio will put development in employees’ hands,” remarks Joshua Meadon, head of skills management for organizational growth and health at SAP. “Easy navigation will give people a clear sense of where they are and where they can go.”
That intuitive design is a key part of SAP’s transformation into a skills-oriented company. A simplified user experience allows employees to interact with their data, track progress, and act on recommendations. More important, it helps talent feel more empowered, gives managers sharper insights, and allows HR teams to operate more strategically.
Senior Vice President and Global Head, Organizational Growth and Health, SAP SE
Bringing a skills-first strategy to life for business agility and growth
SAP’s evolution into a skills-led company has already begun to pay off—with early results showing stronger alignment between talent and strategy. The once-fragmented skills landscape has been consolidated into one unified framework. More than 6,000 skills have been streamlined to 2,000, creating better talent alignment with business needs, a common language, and a scalable foundation for human capital management (HCM) decision-making across the globe.
This simplification is also lowering operational costs by decreasing complexity in HR systems, assessments, and documentation. With fewer job profiles and clearer skill requirements, SAP is reducing administrative overhead, improving tool integration, and enhancing overall efficiency in HR operations.
For example, managers and leaders are on track for gaining real-time visibility into team skills to guide development more effectively, identify readiness for new roles, and build agile teams around changing business needs. Doing so makes strategic workforce planning more data driven, helping ensure learning, hiring, and internal mobility investments are prioritized based on actual skill gaps.
Recruiting teams will realize significant benefits as the new framework is adopted more broadly. Standardized roles and clear skill expectations enable faster time to hire and smoother onboarding, helping reduce vacancy costs and increase productivity early in the employee lifecycle.
For employees, the benefits are becoming more tangible, especially as the growth portfolio and SAP SuccessFactors Career and Talent Development are gradually rolled out. This will give them a clear view into how their skills align with current and future roles, so they can explore relevant development opportunities and take ownership of their career growth.
“The growth portfolio is helping us drive strong employee engagement,” Meadon adds. “It’s important to us that employees feel they are seen for more than their titles.”
By embedding skills and talent intelligence directly into SAP’s digital backbone, the company is well into its journey of building a scalable foundation for workforce agility, internal mobility, and people-first growth anchored by a user experience that turns ambition into action. This foundation positions SAP to adapt to emerging technologies, respond to changing markets, and remain an employer of choice in a highly competitive landscape.
“We’re laying the foundation for something much bigger,” explains Hanke. “With talent intelligence woven into how we hire, develop, and plan, we’re enabling SAP to run at its best—so we can help our customers do the same.”
Head of Skills Management, Organizational Growth and Health, SAP SE
Laying the groundwork for a future-ready workforce
Looking ahead, SAP is focused on unlocking even greater value from its skills data. The journey includes the rollout of the People Intelligence package in the SAP Business Data Cloud solution to deliver visibility into workforce competencies, proficiency levels, and skill and development gaps.
Access to these insights enables SAP to model future workforce scenarios, track skills evolution, and prioritize learning, hiring, and development with sharper precision. This addition goes beyond turning workforce reporting into workforce intelligence where data actively drives strategic decisions. It also brings people, skills, and business data together in one place, translating talent strategy into measurable business outcomes.
“HR is no longer just managing talent—we are unlocking it in real time,” Hanke shares. “This is how we’ll keep our people and our business ready for whatever comes next.”
Want to know more about SAP?
Establishing a Mission and Vision for a Skills-Led Organization (SAP News Center)