Leading with Experience: An HXM Design Manifesto

How SAP SuccessFactors is redefining the vision and approach for a breakthrough employee experience

Written by Scott Lietzke, Global Vice President of Product Design, SAP SuccessFactors

A transformation is underway for human experience management (HXM) at SAP SuccessFactors. Our goal is to bring a massive shift in the ability to engage employee learning and development while supporting insight-driven agility across the organization. This change is grounded in product and user experience that supports our customers’ shifting challenges, their need to adapt rapidly, and their desire to engage their employee’s career experience through exceptional data-driven experiences that they love and trust.

Redefining our vision and design approach

With a global customer base north of 9,000 organizations with a collective 320 million employees, SAP SuccessFactors is the largest provider of HR technology, operating in 200 countries and in 40+ languages. We serve the heart of our customers’ organizations by supporting the human experience at work. By changing the way we approach product design and development, and focusing on value-driven solutions, we’re solving for the contemporary needs of employees and their organization.

For our customers: We’re working on an entirely new dataset that will generate deep insights into their workforce enabling them to embrace transformation and perform at their best. Through our research and innovation practices, we’re able to focus on helping our customers thrive in a constantly shifting landscape

For their employees: By providing greater insights into who employees are, we can help to unlock their greatest potential. We want to bring visibility into the myriad of opportunities available to them and how they can align with their organization’s trajectory.

We’ve been laying the groundwork for this transformation over the last few years by starting from within. To achieve this modernized vision, we’ve incorporated the strategies that support exceptional experiences. By leveraging behavioral science and engaging inclusive methodologies, we’re redefining the employee experience.

We are also making a critical shift in how we bring ideas to market. Through Jobs to Be Done, we look to the future and imagine outcomes that will embrace individual needs while helping our customers to realize new agility and ingenuity. We embrace social and emotional jobs for both; they are fundamental to designing relatable, useful, and purposeful experiences. We embrace every employee for the individual they are. In short, we’ve reset our foundation so that we can support our customers’ ability to build on theirs.

It’s not enough to listen to our customers. We must believe their stories and act on their behalf.

Everyone needs to be a designer

Exceptional experiences aren’t created in a Figma vacuum and they don’t rest solely on the shoulders of those exploring flows and visualizing success. For SAP SuccessFactors to deliver rich, inclusive experiences, design is embraced as an “all in” sport — one that relies on everyone’s point of view and contribution. For the perspectives of our customers, and that of their employees, to be realized, we must first listen deeply to their stories, embracing their individuality and the feedback data trail they leave. It’s not enough to listen. We must believe their stories and act on their behalf.

When one steps back to examine the delivery of a software solution, the most important pattern to recognize is that designing isn’t just about the user experience, it’s about the entire experience and every touchpoint that a customer goes through. If you peel back the onion on a user experience, the layers should mirror that of the creating organization to include aspects such as:

• A philosophical and practical approach to UX
• The execution and quality of the user interface layer
• The business value, functionality, and outcomes
• Functional requirements such as performance, security, availability
• Durable, scalable, contemporary technology
• Customer services and relationship management

In other words: Everyone, all in.

Design as the great facilitator

With a newly defined foundation and “everyone all in”, the design craft facilitates the experience. The design team partners across the organization to facilitate strategy, organize, and test ideas, study our audience and the market, and find opportunities where the highest value resides, while crafting end-to-end experiences that exceed the expectations of our customers and their employees.

With a large and varied platform, the anchors of our craft must remain in focus: logic, purpose, familiarity, consistency, and beauty. It is these anchors that, together, will define exceptional. It is the continuous cycle of try, test, and learn that help hone the experience to success. It is through the exhaustive hunt for experience truth that we arrive at innovation. It is the team’s relentless pursuit that delivers a magical smile and sense of satisfaction on the faces of employees around the world.

At SAP, we’re lucky to have design layered throughout the organization. SAP Design serves as an outstanding partner, delivering organization-wide needs: a design system, a standard-bearer, a research partner, and a joyous high-fiver. Our experiments, shared understanding, comradery, and inclusive approach to partnership make our collective organization special, dynamic, and unstoppable.

Focus on the outcomes

When we look to the future, to the outcome of our efforts, we focus on two things: thriving employees and leading organizations that are winning wherever people are at the center of their business. This circular relationship strengthens itself with every moment of individual development and objective met, every supportive one-on-one and transformation realized. Our customers’ success is the reason we carry that magical smile, too.

Design sits at the center of everything we do. With everyone on board, contributing their keystrokes and analysis, we weave rich skills-centric data throughout the suite to drive our customers’ talent ambitions and upskilling goals. Our success is measured by the success of our customers, and we’re proud to empower them with the tools they need to create a future-ready workforce. When ideas blossom, value is realized, and customer employees are motivated, we know we’ve got each pixel just right.

Scott Lietzke is Global Vice President of Product Design at SAP SuccessFactors. He operates at the intersection of brand, technology and experience.

Experience matters. Follow our journey as we transform the way we build products for enterprise on www.sap.com/design.