Understanding the Potential of SAP SuccessFactors Opportunity Marketplace

Employees today want opportunities to grow and learn new skills. Likewise, organisations are better off when staffed by people who are optimistic about their careers and forward-thinking. 

The SAP SuccessFactors Opportunity Marketplace is designed to solve these challenges. This solution builds a bridge between employees and the opportunities that can help them thrive, helping managers, HR, and the organisation as a whole develop a more resilient culture. 

But how does the SAP Opportunity Marketplace evolve talent management and empower employees to take control of their career growth? Let’s take a look at what it offers and why it’s a vital tool for enhancing agility. 

What Is the SAP SuccessFactors Opportunity Marketplace?

The Opportunity Marketplace is a cloud-based solution that helps organisations cultivate a forward-thinking workforce. It’s a key part of the SAP SuccessFactors Human Experience Management (HXM) Suite. 

The reality is that employees today value growth, and they’re willing to change jobs if they aren’t in a role that supports their future. A 2022 survey found that 68 per cent of workers would stay with their employers throughout their careers if the employer worked to upskill them, but about one-third don’t feel optimistic about the opportunities available to them for growth. 

Offering upskilling and learning pathways is emerging as one of the most important ways to attract and retain talent — 64 per cent of Australian businesses are using learning opportunities to increase employee retention.

It’s also key to preparing for the future. A 2023 LinkedIn report revealed that 89 per cent of learning and development pros agree that proactively building employee skills now will help organisations navigate the evolving future of work. 

The SAP SuccessFactors Opportunity Marketplace aligns with these talent management trends by providing:

• A capability-based framework that uses machine learning to better match talent to tasks and assignments
• Individualised recommendations that reflect employee preferences, personal goals, and skills
• A team-centred approach that helps to break down departmental siloes and increase organisational agility

Empowering Employees with Career Growth

SAP’s employee-focused talent management solution doesn’t just offer development pathways. It generates a tailored list of relevant learning, networking, and growth opportunities that support each individual’s career path as it evolves. That means people have constant access to the best next steps in their careers. 

Employees can choose from a list of recommendations tailored to them, including:

• Mentoring programs
• Exciting assignments
• Roles that can hone their skills or expand their skillset
• Dynamic team projects

The Opportunity Marketplace uses AI to offer meaningful recommendations that will inspire employees to take charge of their development. It also ensures equal access to growth by removing human bias when offering skills training, growth roles, and other assignments. 

This isn’t just good for employees. It helps the organisation as a whole because employees’ aspirations become better aligned with company goals. The results can be profound. Research shows that companies that make strategic investments in employee development are 11 per cent more profitable.

Benefits for Employers

SAP’s Opportunity Marketplace helps employers by fostering employee retention and engagement. Workers feel valued for who they are, so they’re more likely to stay and feel motivated to work hard to achieve organisational goals.

This solution also supports managers and HR professionals in their roles, helping them become better leaders.

Managers can view team members’ capabilities and proficiency levels to help understand who will be the best fit for certain roles, and quickly create assignments that allow motivated employees to take on work that best suits their needs. HR professionals can better understand employees’ skills, work styles, interests, strengths, and preferences, helping them tailor work experiences to the individual and ensure every employee is thriving. 

Let’s take a look at the potential impact of these benefits:

• Better retention can lead to reduced costs for hiring new employees — it costs about AU$23,000 to hire a new worker in Australia.
• In Australia, the cost of disengaged employees is AU$211 billion annually. On the other hand, higher engagement can boost productivity, keeping your organisation humming along. 
• Organisations with managers that excel in talent management and are able to both inspire and challenge their team members tend to be top-performing companies. 

Seamless Integration with SAP SuccessFactors

One of the main advantages of the Opportunity Marketplace for SAP users is that it’s built into the SuccessFactors HXM system. This gives managers and HR access to a unified source of data to power smarter talent management without having to implement a separate tool or spend time transferring data. 

The goal here is to enable organisations to cultivate high-performing dynamic teams, and the Opportunity Marketplace makes this possible by going beyond your typical matching software and combining talent management, employee engagement, and career development effortlessly. 

It reflects each individual’s whole self, capturing, analysing, and understanding insights on who an employee is today — as well as their growth potential. By integrating with the rest of the SAP SuccessFactors Human Experience Management Suite, it’s easier to bring the right people together to form dynamic teams, which 70 per cent of managers say has a positive impact on career development and growth.

With a united people management and employee development platform, managers can also:

• Assess the diversity of teams using real-time data on backgrounds, strengths, and motivations
• Better manage resources by tracking where innovation happens
• Accelerate transformation initiatives by creating cross-functional teams that encourage new skill acquisition and strengthen personal networks

Personalisation and AI-Driven Recommendations

The Opportunity Marketplace stands out thanks to AI. This solution leverages machine learning to continually advance its understanding of each individual employee, which means the software offers increasingly relevant pathways for growth. 

For example, a user experience designer might see opportunities to join a team working on a development project that lets them flex their creativity. An employee interested in diversity and inclusion might see opportunities for joining company-wide diversity initiatives. And a senior employee would have the opportunity to mentor new employees so they can pass on their knowledge and practise their leadership skills.

Having AI-driven recommendations enhances the user experience because employees only see tasks and opportunities that resonate with them — their career growth goals, what skills they need and want to develop, and what interests them.

As a result, employees are more likely to use the marketplace to find new ways to learn and grow. And because the opportunities presented are meaningful to them, they’re more likely to feel optimistic about their future. 

Measuring Success and ROI

The Opportunity Marketplace also lets you dive into success metrics to find out how effective your talent management and career development systems are. You can track key performance indicators (KPIs) like employee turnover, productivity metrics, revenue per employee, and training effectiveness. 

Because your data is integrated with other SAP SuccessFactors systems, you’ll be able to see important metrics such as:

• Employee satisfaction
• Task completion rates
• Training completion rates
• Diversity rates
• Mobility rates

These insights can help managers and HR make smarter planning decisions and ensure your organisation always has a high-performing, well-supported workforce. 

Discover How SAP’s Opportunity Marketplace Is Pushing the Boundaries of Talent Management

The Opportunity Marketplace solves some of the biggest challenges facing employers today. It helps to engage employees, reduce retention, and build a more resilient workforce. It’s also an essential tool for empowering your HR and management teams. 

If you want to support your employees’ growth and create a future-ready culture, find out more about how this solution can help your organisation. Contact Discovery Consulting today.