Case study: Skills transformation through data-driven personalized learning

An emphasis on skills transformation has taken center stage for organizations seeking continued momentum through their post-pandemic recovery. And, while there’s open debate about the specific skills your organization may need to drive success moving forward, there are, thankfully, proven methods to help identify and address existing gaps among your learning audience while also uncovering the skills that have the greatest correlation to their success.

At SAP, we’ve helped pioneer strategies designed to boost employee skill proficiency since well before the pandemic using self-assessments and personalized learning plans. Our methods continue to evolve, but our story sheds important light onto the topic of proactively building employee skills — a mission that at least 89 percent of learning and development professionals agree will help navigate the future of work. 

Seeking new ways to engage learners:

By 2016, SAP’s global sales enablement team had built a world-class, increasingly digitized training portfolio — one designed to meet the learning needs of thousands of sales executives located in 160+ countries around the world.

However, an internal review of our approach (held late that same year), which included interviews and surveys of our learning audience, revealed that sales executives and their managers wanted to learn, but, due to their hectic schedules, only had time for training tailored to their individual learning needs. 

These findings forced us to confront an age-old truth of enablement: that even the best training in the world cannot effect change if no one takes it. We immediately set out to find new ways that would help us identify and close skill gaps at the individual level — a new approach that would maximize our sales executives’ time spent learning through targeted, easy-to-access enablement. 

Our efforts led to the development of SAP’s Skills Assessment program—a yearly self and manager assessment that provides data we use to create highly personalized learning plans and (at a macro     /executive level) make informed decisions regarding overall learning strategy and resource planning.     

Personalized learning in action:

While the skills measured on our assessments evolve slightly year-to-year (based on a variety of factors including, previous year data, executive guidance and feedback from our learning audience — to name a few), our overall approach remains the same:

Participants (in our case, employees in sales and sales-related roles) rate their own skill level, per each skill (e.g., “Demand Generation” or “Business Acumen”) using SAP technology. All skills fall under their respective skill “category” (e.g., selling skills, sales behaviors, role-specific skills, etc.). Our rating system uses a scale of zero to four, with a rating of zero representing “new” to a skill, up to a level four, or “expert” level.

During this time (either simultaneously or following the collection of self-assessment data), our first-     line sales managers assess their sales executive team members across the same skills, using the same proficiency scale. Manager ratings are then compared against a pre-defined “target rating,” set by global sales enablement leadership.

Wherever a manager rating (e.g., a two on the scale) falls below the designated target rating for a particular skill (a three, for example), a gap is identified.

Then, we provide each participating sales executive with a personalized learning plan which clearly outlines their skill gaps, along with direct links to the latest recommended learning to help close each gap.

It’s also important to note that our learning recommendations are, for the most part, delivered virtually — a feature that has been in-place since well before the pandemic to meet the needs of our already highly distributed and remote workforce.

By removing the guesswork and delivering training in easy-to-consume virtual formats, we’re able to maximize time spent learning for sales executives. Personalized learning plans are then used by both participants and their managers as a living document (regularly updated with new learning), to be used throughout the year during one-on-ones and developmental discussions.

Broader benefits: Putting personalized L&D data to work:

After meeting our initial goal of providing personalized learning plans to our target audience, we turned our attention to the vast amount of assessment data we collected and the tremendous insight it could provide going forward.

For example, by comparing assessment data (i.e., skill proficiency levels) against internal CRM data, we discovered positive correlations between high skill proficiency and performance. In other words, high-performing sales executives tend to share comparatively higher proficiency in certain, key skills — insight we then use to refine our skill list and allocate resources to help others close gaps in these identified “key skill” areas.

This insight provides us with a tremendous advantage in resource and development planning as we can focus our efforts on the skills that matter most to our employees’ success in their roles. And, because large segments of our target audience take the assessment each year, we’re able to track and uncover direct links between year-over-year proficiency growth and the completion of recommended learning delivered from our personalized learning plans.

Surely, a significant, upfront effort is needed for an organization to begin an effective skills transformation journey; but once begun, the benefits to employees, the organization and, ultimately customers, leave no room for turning back.