Generative AI tools could help companies solve labor and talent shortages, SAP says

With companies in every corner of the supply chain sector facing struggles with labor and talent shortages, enterprise software vendor SAP today said it has partnered with Microsoft Corp. to provide artificial intelligence (AI) tools to ease the stress.

The two companies will integrate SAP’s SuccessFactors human resources (HR) software platform with Microsoft 365 Copilot and Copilot in Viva Learning, as well as Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI Service to access language models that can both analyze and generate natural language. Microsoft 365 Copilot is an “AI assistant” feature for Microsoft’s office suite applications and services.

Compared to traditional AI, generative AI is a new iteration of the technology that can create original content ranging from text to images or videos. A recent example was the popular chatbot called ChatGPT, which some users have already applied to draft both glossaries and poetry about the logistics industry.

Applied to HR tasks, SAP says its new AI technology can improve how organizations attract, retain, and skill their people. It will do that by streamlining the recruiting and employee development processes. 

For example, SAP will leverage the Azure OpenAI Service API and data from SAP SuccessFactors solutions to create compelling and highly targeted job descriptions. Through an integration between the SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting solution and Microsoft 365, recruiters will be able to fine-tune those job descriptions using Copilot in Microsoft Word with additional content and checks to detect bias.

That approach will help tackle the challenge that recruiting and hiring new talent in today’s competitive market currently demands a lot of manual, repetitive work since companies are constantly reinventing the wheel each time they create a new position, updating requirements based on the rapidly changing skills landscape, and developing interview questions to unearth the potential in every candidate. 

In a second example, SAP said that an integration between SAP SuccessFactors solutions and Microsoft Viva Learning will let employees use the Copilot AI tool with the Viva Learning platform to conduct natural language queries to create personalized learning recommendations that align with their career and development goals.

That capability could help close the gap between each employee’s unique career aspirations and the cross-skilling and upskilling opportunities offered by the organization, SAP said. With today’s announcement, Microsoft and SAP will collaborate to enable SAP customers to benefit from the power of generative AI to attract the most qualified candidates for key roles and generate personalized insights to keep them engaged once on board.