SAP : Learning Hub Turns Five!

It's been five years since the launch of SAP Learning Hub. From SAP Knowledge and Education, Jan Meyer, senior vice president and global head of Portfolio Management, and Sabine Benz, global head of Solution Marketing, discuss the program's success over the last five years and what they envision for the site and the future of learning over the next five years.

Q: SAP Learning Hub has come a long way in the five years since launch. To what do you attribute this success?

JM: There has been a general trend in continuous and digital learning, that less and less people are interested in going into a physical classroom to learn about software and products. Five years ago, when we launched SAP Learning Hub, we saw the growing need to offer flexibility and convenience to our customers and partners. We knew that we needed to provide them with learning content and tools that were readily accessible but, beyond that, a platform that would allow them to tailor their own individual learning journeys. Our simple offer was carefree learning, right at your fingertips. And this has been proven to resonate very well with our customers.

SB: Classroom training also takes a big level of commitment in time. These courses are usually scheduled events, and are designed to take anywhere between three to five days. This amount of time really doesn't fit into the reality of the learning needs of most of our customers, who are now looking to access enablement and ongoing education anytime and anywhere. SAP Learning Hub has allowed our customers to learn exactly what they need at any given time, from the comfort of any location and geography. Now, with one single subscription, SAP Learning Hub can be accessed by anyone in the company.

JM: Keeping up with the current pace of innovation is also very important to our customers and partners. With the ongoing move to the cloud, professionals must really stay on top of software and solution updates that are happening more frequently than ever. SAP Learning Hub has been able to provide that foundation and has been an effective way to stay current.

The numbers prove it all. What do you think has been the biggest achievement since launch?

JM: Other than the number of active learners on the hub - which is approximately half a million - something the whole team is proud of is the high renewal rate. The fact that we are seeing our customers continuing to renew their subscriptions validates that we are offering something that has proven to be useful and beneficial. But it doesn't just rest on the social and collaborate as well as self-paced learning that we are offering. It really comes down to the fact that we are offering each individual a great learning experience, which has encouraged them to come back.

How do you ensure you are producing the best learning experience for learners? How has the overall digital learning experience evolved since launch?

SB: The success of SAP Learning Hub is also determined by the experience we provide. With the help of Qualtrics, the digital learning experience significantly improved and increased over the years. But as we know, it is not only about reacting to problems as they occur, we also try to adapt the learning experience by providing tailored learning offerings that our learners truly love and we aim to mitigate unhappiness before it happens. Now with SAP's acquisition of Qualtrics, we'll definitely be leveraging more of its capabilities and looking for insights to continue to advance and improve our offerings. Since its launch, SAP Learning Hub has changed the way people build SAP skills and transition to the Intelligent Enterprise. It also changed the way we deliver enablement!

JM: We look for hotspots and identify trends to try to understand what our learners are thinking. Not only does this help us improve the learning experience, but it allows us to think about what their next steps may be and how we can meet them there. We want to build a system that continues to intelligently improve itself, and in turn helps to improve the experience while the learner is using the platform. We want to ensure that this customer experience management that we refer to is not just putting a bunch of tools in place, but in fact a business discipline that we approach appropriately.

What do you envision for the next five years for SAP Learning Hub?

SB: While SAP Learning Hub has been extremely successful in the last five years, there is still a lot of growth potential and opportunity to continue to build something that is accessible to all. We live in a very dynamic environment, so it's important that we stay ahead of the transformation, and this applies to our learning as well. In order to help the SAP ecosystem to stay ahead of their transformation, we'll need to introduce intelligence into SAP Learning Hub.

JM: And we're already doing some of this. We have artificial intelligence-based chatbots that help answer simple questions, and we'll continue to integrate artificial intelligence to make the platform more user friendly and conversational. We'll leverage these technologies to make the learner experience even more personal, providing the learner with personalized recommendations, acting in real time to help provide guidance and influence their personal learning journeys. We're really excited about this, and are looking forward to what's to come!