SAP’s recent acquisition of SmartRecruiters has generated considerable interest across the talent acquisition community. The deal brings AI-native recruiting capabilities into a broader HR suite, creating complete visibility into data across the entire employee lifecycle. For recruiters, this means seeing what happens after a hire is made with the potential to connect talent acquisition decisions to performance, retention, and engagement outcomes.
This is where AI agents become significant. When agents can access and act on a complete, harmonized data set spanning the whole employee journey, entirely new possibilities open up for how work gets done across the talent function. Yet despite the rapid pace of innovation, AI adoption is still lagging. Vendors are shipping capabilities faster than most organisations can implement them, held back by regulatory concerns, change management challenges, and uncertainty about where to start.
So how can Talent leaders close this gap and take advantage of what is a huge strategic opportunity?
My guest this week is Lara Albert, Chief Marketing Officer at SAP SuccessFactors. In our conversation, she discusses the SmartRecruiters acquisition, explains how agents working across the employee lifecycle could reshape HR, and shares her advice on how employers can get started.
In the interview, we discuss:
• Why SAP acquired SmartRecruiters and what happens next
• Connecting recruiting data to employee outcomes
• Layering Agentic AI on top of people intelligence
• What’s holding back AI adoption
• Regulation, change management, and mindset
• TA and HR have a once-in-a-career opportunity to lead transformation
• Business cases, buy-in, and getting started
• What will the future look like?
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00:00
Matt Alder
SAP’s recent acquisition of Smart Recruiters signals a major shift in how enterprise HR technology is evolving. But what does this mean for talent acquisition? And how will end to end employee data change recruiting? Keep listening to find out. Support for this podcast comes from Smart Recruiters. Are you looking to supercharge your hiring? Meet Winston Smart Recruiter’s AI powered companion. I’ve had a demo of Winston. The capabilities are extremely powerful and it’s been crafted to elevate hiring to a whole new level. This AI sidekick goes beyond the usual assistant, handling all the time consuming admin work so you can focus on connecting with top talent and making better hiring decisions. From screening candidates to scheduling interviews, Winston manages it all with AI precision, keeping the hiring process fast, smart and effective. Head over to smartrecruiters.com and see how Winston can deliver superhuman results. Hi there.
01:26
Matt Alder
Welcome to episode 750 of Recruiting Future with me, Matt Alder. SAP’s recent acquisition of Smart Recruiters has generated considerable interest across the talent acquisition community. The deal brings AI native recruiting capabilities into a broader HR suite, creating full visibility into data across the entire employee lifecycle. For recruiters, this means seeing what happens after a hire is made, with the potential to connect talent acquisition decisions to performance retention and engagement outcomes. This is where AI agents become significant. When agents can access and act on a complete, harmonized data set that spans the full employee journey, entirely new possibilities open up for how work gets done across the talent function. However, despite the rapid pace of innovation, AI adoption is still lagging.
02:25
Matt Alder
Vendors are shipping capabilities faster than most organizations can implement them, being held back by regulatory concerns, change management challenges, and uncertainties about where to start. So how can talent leaders close this gap and take full advantage of what is a huge strategic opportunity? My guest this week is Lara Albert, Chief marketing officer at SAP SuccessFactors. In our conversation, she discusses the Smart Recruiters acquisition, explains how agents working across the employee lifecycle could reshape hr, and shares her advice on how employers can get started. Hi Lara and welcome to the podcast.
03:08
Lara Albert
Hey Matt, thanks so much for having me.
03:10
Matt Alder
An absolute pleasure to have you on the show. Please could you introduce yourself and tell everyone what you do?
03:17
Lara Albert
Absolutely. So I’m Lara Albert. I’m the Chief Marketing officer at SAP SuccessFactors. And let’s see, what do I do? I lead a team of fantastic marketers and really helping the market at large understand the value of SAP SuccessFactor solutions and the outcomes that customers are realizing or can realize with our portfolio. So again, great to be here. Thanks for having me.
03:43
Matt Alder
It’s obviously a very disruptive time. Well, in technology in general at the moment, because of AI and everything that it’s driving. What impact are you seeing having on the talent HR function, the markets that you work in?
03:59
Lara Albert
I would say significant impact. Obviously organizations are at different phases when it comes to deployment of AI use cases for hr. But wow. I mean, talk about disruptive. I mean, our customers alone taking advantage of AI capabilities that already exist, they’re seeing just massive transformations in how work is getting done. So whether that is on the efficiency side in terms of, I think employees now are on average saving 75 minutes per day or more using AI, but also in terms of freeing up people to do more strategic things and also the quality of work, everyone seems to focus on just time saved. But really, when you think about higher quality recruiting or higher quality goal setting and goals management, things of that nature, we can’t overlook the fact that this isn’t simply a time savings play.
04:53
Lara Albert
It really is an elevation, if you will, of the work itself.
04:58
Matt Alder
Absolutely. And I kind of want to dig into some of the other impacts of that a bit later in the conversation. But before we do, obviously very strong talent acquisition audience listening. And I know that they’ll want me to ask about the recent acquisition that SA made of smart recruiters. So talk us through that. Why smart recruiters? Why now? What does that look like moving forward?
05:23
Lara Albert
What a great question and I’m happy to address it. There’s so much to like here. Taking ourselves back several months, if you will, we knew we wanted to make a play in the talent acquisition space. This was an area of the portfolio where we felt like we lacked some of the capabilities that really our customers were demanding and asking for. And we started out on an evaluation of kind of who would be the right fit, both in terms of solution capability as well as a cultural fit, et cetera. And so a couple of things were looking for on a capability standpoint are things like high volume recruiting, better mobile capabilities, an AI native solution, better automation, for example. And when we looked at smart recruiters, they really fit the bill on all of the solution capability needs that we had.
06:15
Lara Albert
But going beyond that, there were a couple other factors. One is this is a company that prides itself on rapid innovation. And so if you talk to smart recruiters customers, you will hear consistently what they love about this company is the fact that they are on the forefront from a talent acquisition innovation standpoint. And believe me, we don’t want to get in the way of that. We want to help amplify that. So that was another kind of key thing in terms of knowing that were partnering with a company that was organized and committed to rapid innovation. And then I would say the third thing is cultural fit. You know, often that can be downplayed when you’re looking at an M and a scenario, and yet it’s one of the most important factors.
06:59
Lara Albert
And so when I think about the smart recruiters leadership team and how we’ve immediately brought them into the fold and really gotten a sense early on that were going to work well together on behalf of our customers, solving their problems and what have you. And it’s really, you know, it’s still sort of early days, but every indication is that this is a really great cultural fit, which I think is going to pay off dividends for our customers.
07:24
Matt Alder
And talking about customers, what’s the customer reaction been? I suppose both from smart recruiters, existing customers, but also the success factor customers.
07:32
Lara Albert
Well, it’s different and it should be different. And we should expect that smart recruiters has a fantastic customer base. The reality is a percentage of smart recruiters customers are successfactors customers, but the far majority are not. And so smart recruiters customers are expressing, I would say, concern over will we still work with smart recruiters in the same way? Can we still expect the pace of innovation that we’ve grown to love, expect and need? Will I be forced to move into a scenario where I have to adopt SuccessFactors Core HR capabilities and solutions? And of course, I have answers for all of those in the sense that, no, we want smart recruiters absolutely, to service its customers as they’ve had, regardless of whether they are successfactors customers.
08:24
Lara Albert
Now, on the other side of the coin, you’ve got SAP SuccessFactors customers who are clamoring to get their hands on new talent acquisition capabilities that will really round out their solution suite in a much more elevated fashion, tying into things that they’ve already invested in, like talent intelligence hub that really brings kind of the skills end to end story or reality to light. And so I would say there’s excitement kind of all the way around, but it sort of depends on where the customer is sitting and what they have as to what they want to do next. But yeah, lot of market excitement, I would say.
09:03
Matt Alder
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it’s been such an interesting story to following on from that, particularly when you were Talking there about the clients who are using you from an end to end perspective. Obviously AI and data is such an interesting aspect to this. Several years ago I co wrote a book called Exceptional Talent which was all about breaking down the silos in the employee journey. And we sort of talked about data within that. But at the time I think we had no idea exactly what AI was going to make possible. So from the Chro perspective, having a kind of a unity of data across the entire employee journey and AI that can really explore that and manage that, what are the advantages? Where do you think that could go?
09:49
Lara Albert
Oh, they’re tremendous. I mean we all know that AI is really only as good as the data set that it’s working off of or layered upon. And so we what we’re particularly excited about, and if you ask the Smart Recruiters team, for example, they have sort of the front end piece from a recruiting standpoint, but oftentimes they’ve lacked the visibility of what happens to that hire as the hire proceeds across the employee life cycle. And so when you think about the power of an end to end suite and the full visibility into the data set that would be all the way from candidates throughout tenured employees, you have that in one place completely harmonized with AI layered on top. All of a sudden you can answer questions that simply weren’t possible before.
10:35
Lara Albert
Not even a matter of it being it taking too long or it just being inefficient, but that simply weren’t possible on both sides of the equation. If you look at from a success factor standpoint or a smart recruiter standpoint, you can see why we’re so excited about bringing that full data set into People Intelligence, which is our new analytics solution. Having the ability to layer AI on top of that and then be able to answer all kinds of questions, whether it’s about high performers or the correlation between hiring and performance to help not only improve your talent acquisition outcomes, but to influence things like productivity, tenure, satisfaction, engagement, things of that nature.
11:18
Matt Alder
And do you have clients who are already doing sort of some of that already taking advantage of the data that’s kind of already there?
11:24
Lara Albert
It’s still a bit early I would say. So we just introduced People Intelligence, which again is our new analytics solution. We’ve had other analytics solutions in the past, but this solution really again allows an organization to bring together across all the different data sources, HR and beyond, so finance, supply chain, et cetera, into one place, that full data set, and completely harmonize it, the Other interesting thing with people intelligence is that it allows an organization to very easily bring in third party data sets. And so that’s important from a benchmarking standpoint, for example, and a lot of organizations want an open environment that allows for that.
12:08
Lara Albert
And so check back with me in a couple of months because we’ve got an early adopter program where customers are already using people intelligence and are seeing very valuable insights come out of that again, they can make decisions off of. And I’m sure that will continue to grow across the 10,000 customer base in the coming months.
12:30
Matt Alder
And we’ve talked about the data side of it, but obviously one of the big stories over this year, and there was a question about how much of it is hype and how much is reality. But one of the big stories has been about agentic AI and agents doing tasks, making decisions, working with other agents, all of those kind of things. And it’s obvious a big part of the future. Have you got sort of any thoughts around that and how it might work and what we might see?
12:55
Lara Albert
Well, it’s an exciting time. I’ll just say this. Agents are definitely here. When you think about things like Juul, for example, which is for SAP SuccessFactors, our copilot or digital assistant that assists really anyone to be able to complete a whole number of different tasks. Or you think of Winston, which can be branded anything but this is the smart recruiters AI companion. You think about how those can then interact with agents to help people get work done in entirely new ways. For example, we just introduced three new agents, HR service delivery people, intelligence agent, as well as a performance and goals agent.
13:37
Lara Albert
So you can imagine prompting managers for employees that haven’t completed their goal plans or haven’t even entered goals into their goal plans, or perhaps they’re not measurable or what have you, or an HR service delivery agent, which helps employees essentially get answers to questions, which can deflect the need to even have to open up an HR service ticket, or can help agents provide answers in a much more fast or efficient manner to employees. So I think the opportunity is vast. And what’s super exciting also is when you think about the interoperability right between these companions, or a digital assistant with Juul and then being able to work with Juul agents, for example, really speaks to the fact that we are in a new era and we have capabilities to help people get work done in entirely new, more efficient, but higher quality ways.
14:34
Matt Alder
One of the other big conversations this year is around adoption. So very much has been the Case that sometimes the technology is running faster than the clients are adopting it. What are kind of hearing back from the HR community in terms of AI? What they want to see, how quickly they’re sort of prepared to implement these types of tools.
14:55
Lara Albert
You know, it’s a good question. The reality is that vendors in many cases are ahead in the sense that there’s more capability available than customers have been ready or able to rapidly adopt. We will start to see that narrow though, I am sure. And early adopters are working through how to implement AI. It’s not a matter of whether they want to in most cases, it’s a matter to how to get over those hurdles, whether they’re regulatory, legal, internal, change management related, mindset related, you name it. We’ve had a number of early adopters that in most cases are deploying two to five use cases even though we have over 175 available. That tells you right there that most customers are starting small.
15:50
Lara Albert
There’s some recent research that we did that indicated that organizations, 90% of executives or CEOs feel as though the head of HR should be instrumental in driving AI adoption for their organization. So HR leaders are stepping up. It’s not necessarily a follow approach. In many cases, it’s a lead approach. And the results really speak for themselves. We’ve had a number of customers, Standard Charter bank, for example, based in the uk, operating across apac, that have really realized significant impact from the AI capabilities that they’ve deployed. And I like to say if an organization in a highly regulatory or regulated industry such as that can be successful, then any organization can. But it really just takes a hands on, roll the sleeves up approach to tackling the hurdles that exist that in many cases, you know, aren’t super easy to solve.
16:50
Matt Alder
And I think that’s really interesting what you said there because I was going to ask that next because this is such a big opportunity for hr, isn’t it? It’s like, you know, HR can very much be in the driving seat for all kinds of reasons. So it’s almost like a once in a generation, once in a career kind of opportunity for people to step up, isn’t it?
17:07
Lara Albert
100%. And especially when you look at what the options are. I mean, we’re not talking about a single capability that we’re looking at tens of thousands of customers. Okay, this is the place I need to start or I’m going to start. I mean, what we have is organizations that are looking at where are the biggest needs, where are the areas where there’s the highest amount of manual work or where we need most desperately to free up resources. And so that can be on the talent acquisition side in terms of being able to parse through resumes and do matching much more efficiently and of higher quality. It can be on goals management in terms of making sure that everyone in the organization has aligned goals that are smart in nature.
17:49
Lara Albert
It can be on the writing assistant side in terms of helping managers provide meaningful feedback that’s not only going to help someone’s employee development growth, but also drive higher productivity compensation insights. There’s a lot of focus on organizations wanting to equip their people with the kinds of insights that will drive equitable conversations, equitable pay scenarios, and yet it’s so hard to get the information to be able to arm a manager to do that. There’s really so many different starting places. Sometimes that in and of itself is what causes organizations to pause because they’re so excited, but yet they’re like, where exactly do I get going to have the biggest impact? Prove out the business case and then get the buy in to go from there?
18:37
Matt Alder
Yeah, absolutely. I think the really interesting thing is like everything that we’ve talked about is something that’s available now, that’s possible now, the technology’s there, all that sort of stuff. So as a kind of final question, looking to the future a bit, where do you think this is taking us? What do you think things might look like in two or three years, two or three years time, what do you hope they would look like?
18:58
Lara Albert
I think agents are going to be mainstream. I really do. I mean, if you look at vendors in most cases aren’t developing and delivering innovation for the sake of it. It’s rooted in customer need and deep exploration of where customers need help and are interested and willing to invest. If you look at what we are doing at SAP and other players in the HCM space, you see very robust roadmaps as it relates to AI and specifically as a subset of that, as it relates to agents. I know we’ve announced 12 agents in 12 months. We’ve got to get. That’s not an easy feat. But you can imagine a scenario where we have a payroll agent, a career and development agent, a manager agent, a compliance agent.
19:49
Lara Albert
Essentially for every core responsibility that lies within the HR realm, you can imagine an agent really complementing the scenario. There’s a lot of talk, of course, about are agents going to replace humans. We focus a lot on how agents are complementary and how there’s always the need for judgment and intuition, oversight, guidance, course correction. Those things are all done by humans. And so to answer your question, I think there’s an exciting future ahead as it relates to AI, specifically agents in concert with the value that we know people bring to work each and every day.
20:29
Matt Alder
Absolutely. Lara, thank you so much for talking to me.
20:32
Lara Albert
Oh, Matt, it was a pleasure. I’d love to do it anytime. Thanks so much for having me.
20:37
Matt Alder
My thanks to Lara. You can follow this podcast on Apple Podcasts on Spotify or wherever you listen to your podcasts. You can search all the past episodes at recruitingfuture.com on that site. You can also subscribe to our weekly newsletter Recruiting Future Feast and get the inside track on everything that’s coming up on the show. Thanks very much for listening. I’ll be back next time and I hope you’ll join me.
