Latest news with #DanBeck
Forbes
4 days ago
- Business
- Forbes
SAP SuccessFactors Brings More AI To HCM And HR At Sapphire 2025 Event
Dan Beck, president and chief product officer of SAP SuccessFactors, delivers an HCM breakout ... More session at Sapphire 2025. At the SAP Sapphire 2025 conference, the company announced a series of updates to its SuccessFactors suite, SAP's flagship HCM and HR platform. These updates reflect both incremental progress for specific products as well as more ambitious strategic changes in the company's approach to incorporating artificial intelligence. (Note that SAP is an advisory client of my firm, Moor Insights & Strategy.) It's important to set the stage for how some of the broader announcements at Sapphire could impact HCM. One of the more prominent ones was the launch of SAP AI Foundation, which consolidates Joule Studio, AI Hub and the SAP Knowledge Graph into a unified platform. SAP presented this move as a way to simplify AI deployment and management across its ecosystem, aiming to reduce complexity for business users and IT while accelerating the adoption of AI-driven automation in HCM/HR and other business functions. That said, a potential challenge for SAP will be effectively integrating these diverse AI components to ensure they function cohesively and avoid creating new complexities. Building on this AI strategy, SAP also introduced expanded capabilities for AI agents for HR, which are now managed through the new AI Agent Hub. This Hub is designed to allow organizations to centrally govern and monitor AI agents as they take on more sophisticated tasks, such as performance management and recruiting. Besides improving functionality, SAP intends this approach to increase transparency and accountability as automation becomes more deeply embedded in HR operations. I believe that this transparency is crucial, especially considering that recent research shows that LLMs exhibit gender bias, particularly in hiring processes. SAP also introduced People Intelligence, a new analytics offering built on SAP's Business Data Cloud. This successor to Workforce Analytics is launching for early adopters on July 23, with the aim of helping organizations gain insights in important areas such as labor mix analysis, skills cost assessment and talent supply chain evaluation. It connects various data points from multiple sources, including finance and HR, to provide contextual insights that should foster data-driven decision making. The new Performance and Goals Agent is designed to help managers and employees monitor performance and goals more effectively. Specifically, it will provide proactive notifications to managers about incomplete goals and assist employees in creating and finalizing their objectives. This could be a nice boost for these important workflows, and it's clear that fluid communication between employees and managers throughout the performance cycle is essential for driving higher engagement and productivity. Recent research from Betterworks shows that employees who perceive their performance reviews as fair and equitable are significantly more engaged (82% versus 60%) and productive (71% versus 57%) compared to those who view reviews as unfair. At Sapphire, SAP also discussed the ongoing integration of WalkMe, which it announced at last year's Sapphire conference, into its product suite. SAP intends to use WalkMe's digital adoption platform to improve both user guidance and workflow automation across SAP applications, particularly through deeper integration with the Joule AI assistant. At a more granular level, SAP announced the addition of more than 200 new features to SuccessFactors HCM, along with enhancements to cloud migration and payroll support. These updates should improve automation, accuracy and user experience, and in the bigger picture they align with the broader industry trend of incremental AI and cloud adoption in HR technology. AI is being used more widely in HR all the time, and it's certainly not going away. In this context, ensuring robust data governance and maintaining user trust will be paramount — for SAP and every other vendor in the industry — as AI handles increasing amounts of sensitive employee data and a broader range of HR tasks. Addressing potential bias in AI algorithms, along with the ethical implications of AI use in HR, will also be critical to support widespread adoption. Furthermore, SAP operates within a competitive HR technology landscape where continuous innovation and differentiation are necessary to maintain its market leadership. As SAP expands its AI agent ecosystem, it will be important for the company to clearly define and strengthen its governance posture around AI security, compliance and data oversight. Technology leaders will need this clarity so they can validate the maturity of agent interoperability protocols and ensure robust compliance, auditability and risk management as AI agents become more embedded in business operations. AI governance extends well beyond HR, and a well-defined approach from SAP will be essential for organizations to coordinate efforts across IT, security, legal and compliance teams. Empowering its extensive customer base with tailored AI solutions could be a key differentiator for SAP. The company's HR and HCM announcements at Sapphire 2025 highlight a strategy that balances the ambition of AI-driven transformation — possibly helping shape the future of HR technology — with the pragmatism of providing continuous value to existing customers by delivering steady, incremental feature enhancements. In such a rapidly evolving AI landscape, it may be time for SAP to reevaluate its semi-annual release schedule for SuccessFactors and HCM. While this cadence has traditionally provided stability and ample testing time for customers, I believe that the accelerating pace of AI innovation suggests that more frequent updates, maybe something like Oracle's quarterly release cycle, could help organizations stay current and competitive. Increasing the frequency of releases could allow SAP customers to take advantage of new AI-driven capabilities more quickly and remain aligned with industry advancements. Regardless of its cadence of software updates, I'll be watching closely to see how SAP's strategy and delivery model evolve and how effectively it enables organizations to integrate AI into their HR practices in an adaptive and minimally disruptive way.
Yahoo
13-04-2025
- Yahoo
Suspect on loose after Community Park ‘Picnic Day' shooting injures 3: Davis PD
Editor's Note: There were earlier reports that someone had been trampled during the shooting melee which has now been confirmed as false. We have updated this story to reflect latest police information. (KRON) — The Davis Police Department is investigating a shooting at Community Park on Saturday afternoon that took place during a large gathering at 'Picnic Day.' Three people were shot, said police. The suspect remains on the loose and no weapons were recovered at the crime scene. 'Could have ended very differently': Drunk man in traffic stop arrest had fully loaded gun, body armor, say Vallejo police by: Tor Smith Davis police said the incident happened at 2:58 p.m. when several officers patrolling the area heard 'what sounded like several gunshots coming from within the park.' Upon arrival, police located three victims suffering from gunshot wounds. Two of those victims are juveniles and are residents from Davis and Sacramento. A third victim is a 24-year-old individual. All three individuals were treated on scene and taken to a nearby hospital. The injuries appear to be non-life threatening, said police. Police said event goers were fleeing in opposite directions when the shooting broke out. The park has since been cleared by police. Davis police said there was a huge law enforcement presence in the area due to its normal procedures for 'Picnic Day.' Investigators remain at the scene. 'This is really an uncommon event for us, this particular situation' said Lieutenant Dan Beck of Davis Police Department. 'In my 18 years, we've never had anything like this. We do our best to keep this community safe during this event. It's supposed to be a fun event for families, and I think it still is. This is the one-off. Our officers were there quickly. In fact, we had officers on the scene when the incident occurred. We were able to stabilize that scene relatively quickly given the scale.' UC Davis had issued a statement earlier on its website, saying 'The city of Davis Police Department is currently on scene at Community Park, 201 East 14th St., investigating a reported shooting. Please avoid the area due to a heavy police presence until further notice. The park is about a mile north of the UC Davis campus. There is no credible threat to campus.' Police said the circumstances and the motive surrounding the shooting are not clear. There may be additional victims and police said they will be monitoring local hospitals for patients tied to the incident. There is no suspect description confirmed at this time. 'We call it the firehose of information,' added Lt. Beck. 'You have a lot of people out there who are scared and calling the police and we're getting a lot of conflicting information that all came in at once. This is very preliminary and what our detectives and our officers are out there doing is really trying to find a congruent indication of what actually happened and who was involved.' Anyone with information on the incident is asked to call police. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Associated Press
04-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Associated Press
The Recording Industry's Music Performance Trust Fund Projects Grants of More than $1 Million to Communities Celebrating Jazz Appreciation Month in April 2025
Month-long investment throughout North America intends to benefit individuals and communities sharing this treasured American art form NEW YORK, NY / ACCESS Newswire / March 4, 2025 / The recording industry's Music Performance Trust Fund (MPTF), a leading non-profit organization enriching lives and uniting communities through the power of music, is on track to distribute over $1,000,000 in grants for admission-free live concerts this April for Jazz Appreciation Month (JAM). This is the second consecutive year that the dollar value of the grants, which pay professional jazz musicians to perform, will achieve that level. Last year, the funds supported 750 performances throughout the U.S. and Canada in April alone, including 75 that were live streamed through the MPTF's Facebook page. MPTF Trustee Dan Beck stated, 'Regional pockets of live jazz are alive and well across North America, and it is fundamental to the genre. The local offices of the American Federation of Musicians do a tremendous job of organizing these performances for their communities and for their musicians.' The MPTF plays a vital role in support of the music industry's gig economy. Primarily funded by four major record companies, including Sony Music, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, and Walt Disney Records, the independently run organization has distributed millions of dollars in financial resources and grants, engaging professional musicians who are members of the American Federation of Musicians (AFM) to perform live in admission-free events across North America. Since its founding in 1948, the MPTF has distributed more than $630 million (USD) in sponsorship money. The annual campaign, themed by the MPTF as 'Jazz Across America,' features the support of website partners and where performer and event location information for most of the performances are being listed. These websites boast the world's largest jazz events calendars and reach a combined 240,000 viewers per month. All live stream events will be featured on the MPTF Facebook page at Beck added, 'Tuning in to live stream performance events as they happen is a unique way the public can experience jazz musicians from various locales throughout the U.S. and Canada.' Jazz performances have been supported by the MPTF since it began more than 75 years ago, and over 1,600 regional jazz concerts have been funded since the end of the pandemic. With this year's projections, the fund will have distributed more than $3.1 million in Jazz Across America grants to compensate these fine musicians. Events will be organized by American Federation of Musicians locals to ensure fair compensation for all performers. ### About the MPTF: The recording industry's Music Performance Trust Fund is a 501(c) (3) nonprofit public service organization whose mission is to support admission-free, live events performed by professional musicians throughout the United States and Canada. We seek to enrich the lives of the public, young and old, through music, and to contribute to the public's knowledge and appreciation of music. We also seek to make music and music education an exciting experience, and to expand it to every child's life experience. The MPTF was established 75 years ago by recording companies including Sony Music, Universal Music Group, and Warner Music Group. Interested parties may contact Samantha Ramos, Director of Grant Management, at [email protected] or visit About All About Jazz: All About Jazz (AAJ) has been a pillar of the jazz community since 1995, championing the music as an art form and, more importantly, supporting the musicians who create it. Their enduring commitment has made AAJ one of the most culturally important websites of its kind, read by hundreds of thousands of enthusiasts, musicians and industry figures every month. For more information, contact Michael Ricci at [email protected].
