With more than 248 million users across the globe, SAP SuccessFactors is on a mission to meet the accelerating demands of the digital workplace.

As a part of this ongoing mission, we embarked on a journey to reimagine the user experience of the SAP SuccessFactors solutions starting with the home page, the integrated entry point to SAP SuccessFactors and SAP apps on mobile and desktop devices. While home pages for Human Resources systems are typically quite generalized and HR-process-oriented, we’ve listened to our users and are designing the experience to feel more human. The future of HR is designed to bring clarity of purpose and a sense of achievement to every end user, as well as tangible value to the organization at large.

To fulfill these goals for both the individual and the organization, we started with a strong foundation of research to help us understand our users and inform our design decisions. Through this research we uncovered three key findings: the tools need to be individualized, efficient, and help to identify opportunities for employees. With these guiding principles in mind, we were able to leverage the SAP design system and begin building an experience approach that would deliver intentional and exceptional product outcomes.

Transforming research into a durable product vision and strategy

At SAP SuccessFactors, user research frames our product development process from start to finish. To redesign the home page experience, we began by conducting dozens of usability studies of our existing home page to understand what was working, and where there were gaps to improve upon.

SAP SuccessFactors solutions serve over 9,600 customers, across more than 200 countries and territories. Our software is localized into 45 languages to serve a user base of about 248 million users. With such a large customer base, it was critical to get a deep understanding of how the experience could support operational excellence and keep data flowing. We ran qualitative studies to understand the perception and motivations across multiple user archetypes. Through facilitated workshop exercises we were able to identify the problems to be solved and the opportunities for innovation. These activities led us to strategic conclusions that were validated with our customers, and which served to inspire the team during the conceptualization and design phases, and beyond. From here we were able to define an experience strategy to serve the initial design and concept maturation of all our new and reimagined experiences going forward, starting with the home page.

Outcome-focused product experiences

When it comes to workforce software, one major learning we found is that it’s not always about keeping users engaged for as long as possible. Rather, we’re attempting to maximize on employees’ tight attention in the most efficient ways to keep them focused on their jobs to be done. Through our research, we arrived at three key principles to inform a better user experience for the SAP SuccessFactors home page:

#1 Individuality: Use data to inform more personalized experiences for each employee

Our overarching mission is for employees to feel accomplished, confident, supported, and inspired. Our research shows that when we craft unique experiences for each employee, we’re able to fast-track onboarding and learning, increase engagement, and identify opportunities to deeply connect employees to their organizations. However, achieving this depends on the individual, and individualization across such a large user base is an ambitious goal. By leveraging past, present, and future data from across SAP SuccessFactors, we’re able to create an experience unique to each employee and design a thoughtful and expedient experience with the tool. To do this we consider how these data sources can be used to provide insight, context, or even inspiration to engage.

#2 Efficiency: Prioritize actions and keep users focused on what’s important to their role

As the global workforce continues to change and shift rapidly, efficiency is more important than ever. Our user research showed that users sometimes struggled with navigating to their destination, often needing a couple of clicks to reach where they needed to go. They were also left feeling somewhat overwhelmed when confronted with unfamiliar apps that did not serve their purpose, and that they deemed redundant or irrelevant. With the new SAP SuccessFactors home page, we’re able to target exactly what’s needed by the organization to operate and engage users task by task. By surfacing specific and targeted tasks to the home page as they require attention, we reduce the need to navigate into individual apps, expediting time to completion and reducing friction.

#3 Opportunity: Ensure everyone is connected and engaged with the organization, and able to build on their future

SAP SuccessFactors’ long-term vision is focused on employee-driven development, engagement, and strategic organizational alignment. The home page serves to facilitate employees towards better engagement with their organization, teams, and career path. As customers engage with a new suite of tools like Opportunity Marketplace and Growth Portfolio, recommendations powered by machine learning bring clarity of purpose that is aligned to the strategic needs of the organization as well as the employee’s career goals. This in turn fosters a beneficial cycle of mutually-assured success.

Building better UX together

The SAP SuccessFactors home page is just one way in which we’re supporting the SAP Start initiative to align all customers on a deeply integrated central entry point for SAP cloud solutions. And we know that in order to reach that goal, we need to work together.

Through our Design Advisors programs, we’re able to leverage the collective wisdom and ideas from across our customer base. We’re also working closely in collaboration with our partners at SAP Design to implement SAP Fiori with the Horizon theme on all new releases. And, perhaps most importantly, we’re continuing to listen to you—our customers and end users.

Our goal is to deliver more tightly woven, deeply integrated data stories, a higher return on investment for every employee, and a tool suite that supports your ability to deliver on strategic goals and transformational opportunities for years to come.