SAP SuccessFactors AI
Embedded AI across the employee journey — helping HR teams work smarter, make better decisions and create more personalised experiences.
SAP SuccessFactors AI brings embedded, generative and agentic AI into everyday HR processes — from hiring and onboarding to performance, learning and career development. Jigsaw Cloud helps UK and Ireland organisations understand, enable and get practical value from these capabilities across the SuccessFactors suite.
Ask SuccessFactors Joule. Get the answers you need.
SAP SuccessFactors AI gives HR teams conversational access to HR data and everyday tasks through Joule. Using natural language, you can ask for information, navigate the system or complete supported actions without having to find the right report, screen or workflow first.
Joule is SAP’s AI copilot embedded across SuccessFactors, using your organisation’s data, context and existing permissions to provide relevant responses and support. For a practical view of how Joule is used day to day, read our guide to SAP Joule, the SuccessFactors AI assistant.
Transactional
Joule’s transactional capabilities help you complete everyday HR tasks quickly and accurately. From creating or updating business data, retrieving the information you need, guiding you through task steps, to directing you to the right screens for actions that can’t be done in-chat, Joule keeps work moving smoothly and reduces manual effort.
Examples include:
Requesting or approving time off
Updating personal or job information
Initiating promotions or organisational changes
Submitting feedback or performance inputs
Navigational
Joule’s navigational capabilities guide you directly to the HR functions, applications, or screens you need. Instead of clicking through multiple menus or links, Joule helps you reach your destination quickly, saving time and reducing frustration.
Examples include:
“Where do I submit expenses?”
“Take me to my pay history.”
“Show learning courses for my role.”
Informational
Joule’s informational capabilities help you quickly find answers to HR questions. Using conversational search, it retrieves relevant information from SAP Help Portal content, uploaded documents, and its own knowledge base. Joule then summarises the results, highlights key points, and provides top references, so you get the insights you need — without sifting through multiple documents.
Examples include:
Explaining changes in pay with breakdowns
Clarifying policy rules based on employee context
Displaying salary, role, or cost centre details
Showing employee information (with permissions)
Analytical Insights
Joule’s analytical insights capabilities let you explore HR data and uncover trends through natural, conversational questions. Ask about your business using familiar terms, and Joule delivers instant answers in clear charts, metrics, and summaries — making it easy to understand and act on your data.
Skill or learning recommendations
Career growth suggestions for target roles
Compensation or job history insights
Performance summaries and talking points
Transforming Talent Workflows with Embedded AI
AI is no longer a futuristic add‑on, it's embedded into everyday HR work to save time, improve decision‑making, and deliver personalised experiences across hiring, performance, development, and career growth. SAP SuccessFactors uses Embedded AI to “meet people where they work,” reducing manual tasks and helping HR teams focus on what matters most.
AI Capabilities Across SAP SuccessFactors
Embedded AI includes AI-assisted features that boost productivity across SAP SuccessFactors HCM. It works with real HR data and familiar HR processes so the output is relevant, practical, and immediately usable, from content creation to insights and recommendations.
AI‑Assisted Writing
Generate or enhance written content directly in system fields, from job descriptions to onboarding messages and performance feedback notes, saving time and improving consistency.
AI‑Assisted Job Skills & Matching
Automatically suggest skills when posting job openings and highlight how candidate skills align with role requirements, helping recruiters make faster, more informed short‑listing decisions.
AI‑Assisted Goals & Reviews
Create meaningful performance and development goals using relevant keywords and context‑driven suggestions, and summarise 360‑degree feedback into clear, actionable insights for managers and employees.
AI‑Powered Career & Skills Insights
Generate personalised career recommendations, skill development pathways, and assignment ideas based on data in SuccessFactors, helping employees and managers make informed career decisions.
AI-assisted Applicant Screening
Accelerate hiring by intelligently identifying candidate skills from resumes and matching them to open roles.
Personalised Learning Recommendations
Enable users to quickly discover relevant courses from their learning libraries in SAP SuccessFactors Learning Management System without manually searching.
AI‑Assisted Person Insights
Summarise employee histories or job trends for discussions, helping leaders understand context before important conversations.
Microsoft Copilot integration
SAP and Microsoft are working on a bi‑directional integration between Joule and Microsoft 365 Copilot, bringing generative AI into both environments so users can access HR and business information wherever they work, whether that's in SuccessFactors or in Microsoft 365 apps like Teams and Outlook.
Joule Agents
Joule agents are designed to support specific HR tasks and business scenarios, using relevant context and data to help people work more efficiently. Depending on the use case, agents can surface insights, answer questions, support decisions or help complete defined tasks within SAP applications.
Key characteristics of Joule agents:
Context-aware: They understand your role, data, and workflow to deliver tailored recommendations.
Proactive: Instead of waiting for you to ask, they can trigger insights, alerts, or actions based on business signals.
Integrated: They work seamlessly inside SAP applications as part of users’ everyday screens.
Task-oriented: Each agent is designed to help with specific business scenarios, making managers, employees, and HR teams more efficient.
Performance Preparation Agent
Supports managers in preparing for performance conversations by bringing together relevant goals, performance data and feedback to generate personalised talking points, meeting agendas and recommended next steps.
People Intelligence Agent *
Helps turn workforce data into actionable insights by identifying meaningful changes and patterns across areas such as headcount, attrition, hiring, skills and workforce costs.
HR Service Agent *
Provides employees with fast answers to common HR questions using relevant HR policies and SuccessFactors data, helping resolve routine requests without creating unnecessary support cases.
Payroll Explanation Agent *
Helps employees understand their pay by bringing together payroll and time information to explain pay statements, changes and discrepancies in clear language.
Career Development Agent *
Helps employees identify skill gaps, explore potential career moves and build personalised development plans aligned to their target roles.
Workforce Knowledge Network
SAP is also introducing the Workforce Knowledge Network, which enables agent-to-agent communication. They're collaborating with Josh Bersin (Galileo agent) and Globalization Partners (G-P) (Gia agent). Starting with Joule, users will be able to invoke Galileo directly (using the @Galileo reference) to get insights into an employee's development, drawing from Josh Bersin's extensive knowledge base.
Galileo is a domain-specialised AI assistant for HR and talent. It's intended to serve HR professionals by giving them fast access to best practices, frameworks, vendor info, benchmarks, implementation plans, and more. Galileo is curated to rely on a controlled corpus (the Bersin research library) rather than indiscriminately drawing from the web.
Galileo can answer questions across many HR domains: hiring, onboarding, performance, training, and multi-disciplinary topics like building a skills taxonomy, implementing pay equity, workforce planning, or designing a capability academy.
What adoption involves
Bringing SAP SuccessFactors AI into your HR environment starts with understanding which capabilities are relevant to your organisation and what is required to enable them.
AI capabilities across SAP SuccessFactors are not necessarily activated in the same way. Depending on the feature, there may be technical prerequisites, configuration requirements and role-based permissions to consider. Some capabilities also have specific commercial requirements, while availability continues to evolve as SAP introduces and expands AI functionality.
Access is governed by existing SuccessFactors configurations and permissions. For Joule, for example, users require appropriate role-based access, while the information and actions available to them follow the permissions already configured within SuccessFactors. This helps ensure that conversational access to HR information does not simply bypass the organisation's existing access controls.
Because SAP's AI portfolio is developing quickly, organisations should assess which capabilities are currently available and applicable to their SuccessFactors environment rather than assuming every announced feature can be enabled immediately.
Jigsaw Cloud can help customers assess their existing SuccessFactors environment, understand the capabilities relevant to their HR priorities and plan the practical steps towards adoption. Where additional configuration, permissions or commercial considerations apply, these can be identified as part of that assessment.
Let's build the future of HR together
Contact us today to discover how we can help your organisation thrive. Together, we'll create an HR experience that works for you – and your people.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is AI?
Artificial intelligence (AI) is when computers or machines are able to mimic human thinking and decision-making. In simple words, AI is when we enable computers to think and act intelligently.
What is Embedded AI?
Embedded AI refers to artificial intelligence that is built directly into standard software applications, providing intelligent features without requiring users to develop their own models or custom AI code. Customers simply configure and use the AI capabilities as part of the normal product experience.
What is Generative AI?
Generative AI is a type of artificial intelligence that can create new content; such as artwork, music, text, or realistic images without being explicitly told what to produce. It learns patterns from existing data and uses them to generate original, creative outputs rather than copying what it has seen.
What is AI Copilot?
Think of an AI copilot like a smart helper, just as a copilot supports a pilot, an AI copilot supports you with tasks by understanding what you need and offering useful suggestions. Microsoft Copilot is a good example, as it can chat and assist in a human-like way.
What is Joule?
Joule is SAP's generative AI copilot, an intelligent companion that helps people work smarter using natural language. It's embedded across SAP's entire cloud portfolio and connects with third-party sources to deliver proactive, contextual insights. With Joule, users can ask questions, automate tasks, and surface insights instantly, helping teams move faster and achieve better business outcomes in a secure and compliant way.
What are AI agents?
Joule agents are intelligent, AI-driven assistants within SAP's Joule ecosystem that proactively help users complete tasks, surface insights, and automate actions across SAP applications and data. They act like specialised copilots that understand business context and deliver relevant support where and when it’s needed. Over time, these agents learn and improve, becoming even more effective at understanding needs and delivering meaningful support.
What is needed to enable AI capabilities in SAP SuccessFactors?
Requirements vary depending on the AI capability you want to use. Some features require specific configuration, permissions or technical prerequisites, while others may have additional commercial requirements. The best starting point is to assess your existing SuccessFactors environment and confirm which capabilities are currently available and relevant to your organisation.
Which AI capabilities are available now rather than planned?
SAP SuccessFactors AI capabilities are being introduced and expanded over time, so availability varies by feature. Some embedded AI capabilities and Joule use cases are already available, while others — including some AI agents — may be planned, in restricted availability or dependent on specific prerequisites. Current availability should always be confirmed against SAP's latest product documentation before enablement.
Which SuccessFactors modules include AI features?
AI capabilities are embedded across a growing range of SAP SuccessFactors solutions, including Recruiting, Onboarding, Performance & Goals, Learning and talent and career development. The capabilities available differ by module and continue to evolve as SAP expands its AI portfolio.
What data do the AI features use, and what can the assistant see?
SAP SuccessFactors AI uses information available within the relevant SuccessFactors processes and is governed by existing access controls and permissions. What an individual user can access through Joule depends on the permissions assigned to them, helping ensure AI-assisted access follows the organisation's established security and data-access rules.
How do HR teams get information out of SuccessFactors by asking for it?
Joule provides conversational access to information in SAP SuccessFactors. HR teams and employees can use natural-language questions to find relevant information, navigate the system and, where supported, complete tasks. What users can access depends on their existing SuccessFactors permissions.
Does SAP SuccessFactors have an HR chatbot?
SAP SuccessFactors includes Joule, SAP's AI copilot, which provides conversational access to HR information and supported tasks. Rather than operating as a standalone chatbot, Joule is embedded within SAP applications and works within the context and permissions of the user.
