AKT LABS interview
Denis Tournesac, Senior Vice President and Global Head of General Business at SAP SuccessFactors (an SAP company) is an Advisory Member of AKT LABS. Recently, he took the time to share his thoughts about being part of AKT LABS and the first cohort of HR Tech startups.
SAP and SAP SuccessFactors are by all means great supporters of innovation. Via its own SAP IO, SAP supports innovation and invests in startups, and it is for that reason we supported AKT LABS. But more than this, SAP and SAP SuccessFactors believe in the Power of Us – where customer satisfaction stems from an open and wide ecosystem of business solutions that both enriches SAP Intelligent Enterprise’s core components, like our People Management offering, and leverages the SAP Cloud Platform. AKT LABS is therefore a great fit in our broader ecosystem of Partner Apps.
I have been amazed to see how AKT LABS’ first cohort of HR Tech startups are addressing specific business use cases via point solutions. While many of AKT LABS’ startups are focusing on similar functional areas, such as recruitment or learning for the vast majority, I’m impressed how they remain quite unique from each other. Goes to show that this topic is indeed wide and there are many challenges and opportunities in this space.
Closer to home, SAP and SAP SuccessFactors has put significant focus in our organizational wellbeing and ensuring that our more than 84,000 employees feel that they can flourish in an environment that encourages open, free expression of ideas. So, it has been interesting to observe Cassiopeia, which provides a unique data driven, end-to-end solution to prevent offensive behaviors in the workplace. This is a highly sensitive and current topic, and I look forward to seeing how they are able to take what they’ve learned during AKT LABS’ three months of mentoring and coaching, to validate their business case and be market ready.