SAP SE - Customer Service Training Team of the Year - Internal

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Company: SAP SE, Walldorf, Germany
Company Division/Group: SAP SE
Company Description:SAP is the market leader in enterprise application software, helping companies of all sizes and in all industries run at their best: SAP customers generate 87% of total global commerce. SAP is committed to helping its customers transform into intelligent, sustainable enterprises. Founded in 1972, SAP now has >105,000 employees from 140+ countries.
Nomination Category: Customer Service & Call Center Awards Team Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Customer Service Training Team of the Year - Internal - Technology Industries

Nomination Title: SAP Services Learning creating great learning experiences at scale

a. Briefly describe the nominated team: its history and past performance (up to 200 words).

You wonder why we from SAP Services Learning are the right team to win?

First, we know why we do what we do.

Business success depends on people’s skills, knowledge, and mindset. Impactful enablement programs need experts, experience, and - most important - a clear business-driven purpose. Ours is to create great learning experiences for our target audience, so that they grow at all levels, perform at their best, create value, and embrace the future.

Second, we know how to do it.

The Learning Operating Model is the guiding principle for our team of 24, allowing us to design, develop, and deliver learning programs at scale that are tailored to our learners’ needs. By aligning closely with stakeholders in the SAP Services and SAP Learning organizations, we ensure that our work satisfies the needs of the company and delivers the desired impact.

Third, we know what we do.

Serving our business as a trusted partner since 2015, we have a track record of success we can build on, including a large-scale business skill transformation program named FOCUS, which began in 2017.

b. Outline the team's achievements since July 1, 2019 that you wish to bring to the judges' attention (up to 250 words).

The team’s achievements can be clustered as follows:

Ongoing transformation
By meeting business skills and demand, the FOCUS transformation program exceeded its targets and laid the foundation for the widespread adoption of standardized, end-to-end learning journeys (combining various learning formats over a multi-month period) in 2019.
The team’s evolution towards impact, scale and agility continued in 2020 and 2021, focusing on business alignment (linking learning to project staffing, regular exchanges with business stakeholders), process optimization and automation (demand management, chatbot), innovation, and virtualization by design. This also helped us to run fully virtual to cope with the consequences of Covid-19.

Holistic Governance
Our Learning Operating Model (LOM) - a holistic governance model executed by our Learning Program Owners (LPOs), introduced in 2020 and continuously improved - ensures a unified learner experience while meeting the desired business impact. This is achieved by a consistent program design and portfolio management based on a set of processes and tools in combination with a quarterly steering committee to ensure continuous alignment with changing business requirements.

Passionate individuals
All this is driven by a dynamic and diverse team of professionals (together with LPOs, trainers, and SMEs from the business) who are passionate to learn and strive for excellence. On our route to agile, we have introduced team retrospectives in 2019 and adopted the OKR framework in 2021. We use the latest digital collaborative technologies to overcome physical distance and invest heavily in team bonding through virtual offsites, self-organized fun activities and informal exchange opportunities.

c. Explain why the achievements you have highlighted are unique or significant. If possible, compare the achievements to the performance of other players in your industry and/or to the team's past performance (up to 250 words). Required

Here’s why the achievements are significant:

Ongoing transformation
Collective team intelligence together with automation allowed for fast and impactful virtualization of trainings, resulting in higher scale and lower cost without sacrificing learner experience since 2019:

  • Training consumption in 2021 at all-time high with 60,000 learning activities and 870,000+ learning hours
  • 37% cost reduction per learner
  • 6 pt. NPS increase to 69.

Holistic Governance
With the Learning Operating Model we established standardized, transparent procedures and end-to-end processes (across the Design, Develop, Deliver phases), making us a trusted partner for stakeholders and learners.

Monthly 1:1 meetings with learning representatives from each business unit and quarterly steering committees with our leaders ensure the strategic alignment of our activities.
Continuous impact measurement is built into our processes and triggers targeted quarterly improvements. Our long-term effectiveness survey has proven a significant increase of our learners’ knowledge and capabilities (+82%), leading to measurable business impact such as a 17% increase on new project staffing.

Passionate individuals

  • We embrace change: Quarterly team retrospectives trigger continuous improvements while OKRs allow for agile, bottom-up, and time-boxed strategic priorities.
  • We think out of the box: Agile learning formats such as barcamps, knowledge cafés, and learning circles foster self-organization, knowledge sharing, and lifelong learning.
  • We care for each other: Regular informal networking opportunities such as virtual coffee meetings and self-organized events such as games, quizzes, or a chocolate tasting strengthen team cohesion and result in a phantastic employee engagement index of 96.

d. Reference any attachments of supporting materials throughout this nomination and how they provide evidence of the claims you have made in this nomination (up to 250 words). Optional

The attached references showcase and underline our unique achievements as a team since 2019.
Business success depends on and is driven by:

  • the commitment from learners, management, and the learning organization towards growth and innovation
  • an L&D team with a clear purpose
  • best practices and lessons learned from previous large-scale transformation programs
  • a successful portfolio and high adoption rates

The Learning Operating Model (LOM) enables successful operations based on:

  • a clear definition and assignment of roles and responsibilities as well as a strict governance model
  • a well-defined portfolio management process resulting in a comprehensive portfolio offering
  • best practices and automated processes that support the smooth transition from on-site to virtual delivery
  • strong monitoring and reporting capabilities

Learner Engagement is driven by:

  • a multi-channel communications approach with a consistent branding
  • tailored and consistent information pushed to learners
  • learner support via info sessions and a chatbot
  • innovative thinking and piloting of new ideas, formats, and tools

Finally, our success is only possible because of our diverse team of passionate, committed, and open-minded colleagues.