At SAP’s virtual SAPPHIRE NOW Reimagined 2020 last week, SAP CEO Christian Klein discussed three topics for SAP customers: Resiliency, sustainability, and profitability. All three of those topics have been under the microscope during the COVID-19 pandemic, and HR has been playing an important role.

To recap SAPPHIRE NOW Reimagined 2020, we brought together five leaders from our various lines of business for a live discussion on the messaging from the event.  Rizing HCM North America President Matthew Davies discussed the importance of people, and HR, in maintaining resilient, sustainable, and ultimately profitable businesses.

Here are the panel’s five takeaways from SAPPHIRE NOW 2020:

Companies are rallying to protect their people

HR has been at the forefront during the pandemic. Managing staff in a way that keeps them healthy and safe has been of utmost importance for many companies.

HCM software like SAP SuccessFactors has played an important role—the employee data within the system helps drive sound decision-making, as well as providing a framework for collecting any more data an organization might need.

In Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) industries, for example, there is still a need for employees to interact with assets. It’s not only important to find employees with the right certifications, but also to track their health and ability to get the work done. SAP SuccessFactors can be configured to track this critical data—here’s a guide on how to do it.

Remote HR work, enabled by cloud software

Working remotely may have been entirely foreign to HR staff in the past, but it’s now a necessity. Cloud software allows companies to be more agile, and in turn, more resilient to workplace changes. If employees can access their work from home or wherever they have an internet connection, then there’s much less chance for disruption.

The self-service aspect of SAP SuccessFactors also takes the burden off of HR workers during times when they are stretched to the limit. Employees can update their emergency contact information, for example.

On the topic of sustainability, they can also use SAP SuccessFactors to remotely provide HR with a complete picture of their skillsets or willingness to learn new skills. In times when certain positions are in high demand and others are not needed, this can help staffers utilize current talent in new roles, rather than searching for new employees.

Time to value is more important than ever

SAP CTO Jurgen Muller noted during his SAPPHIRE NOW 2020 keynote that time to value has become vital to SAP customers. Companies are looking for shorter deployments and going with more pre-packaged solutions—out-of-the-box offerings similar to Synchrony People for recruiting. Getting live as soon as possible to give employees the tools they need to succeed in a new reality, has been emphasized.

Expanded integration of Digital Assistant

SAP SuccessFactors products lead Amy Wilson and Meg Bear, SVP of product, engineering, and operations, discussed expanded integration of SAP Digital Assistant within the SAP SuccessFactors suite. The Digital Assistant incorporates embedded machine learning utilized to automate more and more HR transactions. Once again, this creates a resilient and sustainable business by freeing up HR staff from repeatable tasks to work more on improving the overall success and well-being of the employee base.

Employee Experience and HXM will be the new normal

Last year at SAPPHIRE NOW and SuccessConnect, Employee Experience and the introduction of Qualtrics were highlights. Now, Qualtrics and experiential data are becoming the standard—baked into product offerings, delivering insights without having even to open a separate application.

Much like with the embedded edition of SAP SuccessFactors People Analytics, SAP is integrating Qualtrics into its products in such a way that an end-user would not notice the difference. For the HCM suite, it will be the Employee Experience data that will be captured and integrated into the decision-making process for HR professionals. Rizing, for example, has created a solution to help turn Employee Experience data into actionable insights.

For more on SAPPHIRE NOW 2020, be sure to check out our complete video recap: