Bare minimum Mondays. Loud quitting. Quiet hiring. Coffee badging.
If HR had a dollar for every new workplace trend, we’d all be retiring early.
While the internet memifies these movements, real HR teams are left managing the consequences: disengagement, turnover spikes, hiring freezes, budget shifts. Workforce planning has never been harder.
Headcount reports and turnover summaries help to some extent. But in today’s volatile labor market, looking backward isn’t enough. You need to anticipate. Forecast. Simulate. You need to know what’s coming next, not just what already happened.
And you already have the data to do it. It’s sitting inside SAP SuccessFactors, locked inside modules like Core HR, Recruiting, Learning, Compensation. The question is: are you using that data to plan strategically, or just report historically?
This blog is your roadmap to building a future-ready workforce using SAP data – without needing more licenses, IT intervention, or endless customization cycles. Let’s get into it.
What SAP Data Can Tell You If You Use It Right
SAP SuccessFactors brings rich workforce data, from Core HR to Recruiting, Learning, Compensation, and more. Every module captures critical moments in your employee lifecycle. But here’s the catch: most of those insights stay siloed.
Recruiting knows time-to-hire. Learning tracks certifications. Core HR logs terminations. Compensation handles pay structures. But ask a strategic question like “Which new hires are most likely to churn in their first 6 months?” and suddenly you’re stuck stitching together exports from four different teams. That’s precisely what needs to change in the modern workforce environment.
When SAP modules don’t talk to each other, your visibility gets chopped into pieces. You’re left reacting to problems after they show up instead of spotting them in advance.
Without cross-module context, HR is flying blind. You know what is happening, but not why. And certainly not what to do next.
But that changes when you connect the dots. And we’ll show you how.
Three Essentials for Strategic Workforce Planning
To move from reactive to predictive HR, you don’t need a dozen new systems or an army of data scientists. You need three things: unified data, clear trends, and the ability to ask, “what if?” before problems become people metrics.
Here’s the formula.
Cross-Module Joins
If your HR data lives in silos, your insights do too. The moment you bring together recruiting, performance, compensation, and attrition data into one unified view, patterns start to emerge that you’d never see in isolation.
If your HR data lives in silos, your insights do too. The moment you bring together recruiting, performance, compensation, and attrition data into one unified view, patterns start to emerge that you’d never see in isolation.
Take this for example. One organization linked their recruiting timelines with onboarding data and early attrition rates. The insight was that new hires from a particular region who were rushed through onboarding were 2.5x more likely to quit within 90 days. By simply adjusting onboarding cadence for that cohort, they cut early exits by over 30%.
That’s the power of joining the dots.
Trend Visibility Over Time
If you’re not looking at historical data and projecting it forward when doing workforce planning, you’re missing the big picture.
Smart HR teams are tracking multi-year trends across diversity, mobility, performance ratings, and exit data. One retail company, for example, looked at three years of diversity metrics alongside promotion data and uncovered a consistent drop-off for women at mid-management levels. That single insight reshaped their leadership development priorities.
When you know your patterns, you can predict your risks – and your opportunities.
Scenario Planning
This is where HR gets truly strategic: modeling the future. What if we freeze hiring for Q4? What if we promote internally vs hire externally? What if we offer retention bonuses only for high-skill roles?
With the right tools, you can simulate these scenarios without code, consultants, or complex setups. One company ran a model to test the impact of a hiring freeze on their customer support function. The result was a data-backed business case to prioritize internal upskilling instead of recruiting under pressure.
When HR can run “what ifs” like Finance does, you stop reacting and start steering.
What Predictive HR Looks Like in Action
Predictive HR is fundamentally changing how HR shows up at the strategy table.
When you apply predictive capabilities on your SAP SuccessFactors data, you stop reporting on what happened last quarter and start guiding what happens next.
Imagine being able to:
- Predict attrition risk before the resignation letter hits your desk.
- Forecast internal mobility, so you’re promoting with purpose instead of hiring in panic.
- Model workforce costs across different hiring, retention, or hybrid work policy scenarios.
This is what future-ready HR looks like: agile, data-literate, and impossible to ignore.
Then vs Now – Reactive vs Predictive HR Reporting
Is Predictive Reporting on SAP SuccessFactors Data Possible Without Extra Licenses or IT Bottlenecks?
Short answer: yes.
Long answer: yes, and HR should be doing it already.
Many teams assume that predictive workforce planning could mean buying new SAP modules, commissioning custom builds, or waiting in line for IT. But that’s a myth.
With the right reporting layer on top of SAP SuccessFactors, you can:
- Tap into near real-time HR data for real-world decisions
- Skip the dev queue and avoid heavy IT dependencies
- Build once, use everywhere, across HR, Finance, Operations, and beyond
- Democratize insights, so CHROs, HRBPs, and business leaders are all speaking the same data language
This is precisely what SplashBI enables.
No new licenses. No code. No workarounds. Just smarter decisions, faster. With SplashBI for HR.
Real-World Results: How Avanos Unlocked Fast and Effective SAP Reporting with SplashBI
Avanos, a leading healthcare company, was stuck in manual mode. Their HR team spent 3-4 days every month compiling reports from SAP SuccessFactors – time that could have been spent spotting trends or guiding retention strategy.
With over 60 termination codes and disconnected systems, reporting was inconsistent. Worse, HR’s reliance on HRIS for basic changes slowed their ability to respond to leadership questions in real time.
When Avanos layered SplashBI on top of SAP SuccessFactors, that changed fast.
They reduced reporting time from days to minutes.
Gained real-time insights across the workforce.
Freed HR from HRIS dependency with self-service dashboards.
And enabled their CHRO to sit confidently at the table with the CEO and CFO, armed with answers, not follow-ups.
Want the full story? Download the Avanos case study to see how they transformed HR analytics and unlocked predictive HR analytics on SAP with SplashBI.
Ready to Make Your SuccessFactors Data Work Harder?
Dashboards still matter. But the real advantage today lies in what you do next.
Workforce planning in 2025 is no longer just about tracking metrics. It’s about forecasting change, testing scenarios, and making confident, data-driven decisions before problems arise.
SAP SuccessFactors gives you the data. What you need is the ability to connect it, interpret it, and act on it. All of it without waiting for custom builds, new licenses, or IT capacity.
That’s where SplashBI comes in.
With SplashBI for SAP SuccessFactors, HR teams unlock predictive workforce planning, scenario modeling, and cross-module insights – on demand. No new modules. No red tape. Just smarter, faster decisions that keep you ahead.
