SAP has announced new innovations and embedded generative AI across the SAP SuccessFactors HCM suite, with the first-ever glimpse within an SAP platform of SAP’s newly-acquired WalkMe tool.
With the SAP acquisition of digital adoption platform (DAP) leader WalkMe finalized in September, SAP’s annual HR customer event SuccessConnect was chosen to highlight its future for the SAP ecosystem. Digital adoption was described as “the missing link” to improve employee experience and adoption across common workflows, with pre-built WalkMe content coming to SAP SuccessFactors solutions in the first half of 2025.
The WalkMe unveiling came as new updates were introduced to SuccessFactors – examples such as:
- Customers now can aggregate and harmonize data from third-party solutions in the talent intelligence hub to ensure a single view of skills for each employee and for the organization.
- New generative AI (GenAI) capabilities that improve the employee experience across the entire talent lifecycle. In the new update, SAP’s AI copilot Joule can guide employees through the onboarding process, nudging them to complete data review, forms and e-signatures.
- A new and much requested integration for LinkedIn came teased for 2025, described as bidirectional and real-time.
Keep reading to understand how Joule will coexist alongside WalkMe’s own AI copilot not just in SuccessFactors but across the SAP portfolio.
SAP WalkMe explained
In a post-keynote Q&A, Dan Beck, SAP SuccessFactors president & chief product officer, said a substantial amount of customers were already trialing SAP WalkMe in SuccessFactors, including Nestle, with “compelling” results.
Bringing out WalkMe in SuccessFactors first makes sense to Beck; while it will work with SAP Ariba and other parts of the SAP Spend Management portfolio, it’s SuccessFactors which is the overarching HCM tool, hence it not coming up in SAP’s recent Spend Connect live event.
But the real answers Beck wants to underline is that SuccessFactors is more innovative than other SAP products, and has the most cloud-native applications; the platform was the first to debut Joule, for example.
WalkMe remains in the engineering side with Beck’s product team, as explorations continue into how data from WalkMe makes its way into examples such as SAP Datasphere and SAP Analytics Cloud.
SAP SuccessFactors chief revenue officer Maryann Abbajay also reveals that on the commercial front, WalkMe models are being created for HCM, spend management in Ariba and more.
“So we are enabled to sell an HCM WalkMe model that has content pre-delivered in it […] I mentioned that to a customer and they’re excited about what could be a real productivity boost for them rather than having to recreate the wheel every time.
“But the real value beyond pre-delivered content is the fact customers can customize content for their own use cases for their own company, for their people.”
A brief demo in Dan Beck’s keynote showed a potential user journey regarding WalkMe when it comes to SuccessFactors: the latter’s homepage with a custom card leading to a custom BTP app created in a low-code environment using Walkme, which “takes over” from SuccessFactors.
ERP Today asked Beck whether there’ll be customer confusion regarding AI copilots: WalkMe has its WalkMeX copilot, while SAP has Joule. How many copilots can feasibly exist in one system for a seamless experience and equally seamless branding?
For now, engineering is rationalizing the product set with WalkMe, Beck explains, before rationalizing having two co-existing copilots within SAP.
“We absolutely need to rationalize that [status] including the language we use” he says as a consideration for customers, as part of the overall commercial messaging.
And after that? “Joule will be the entry point for WalkMe and other products down the road – that’s part of the fun,” Beck concludes.
Read here for more coverage of SuccessConnect 2024.
