Artificial intelligence writes reference letter
Artificial intelligence has steadily gained in importance in recent years and has now become part of our everyday lives. Well-known voice assistants such as “Siri” or “Alexa” and chatbots such as “ChatGPT” or “Gemini” are all based on AI.
Despite the controversial use of AI, the advantage of the enormous increase in efficiency through the automation of recurring tasks outweighs the disadvantages. Both privately and professionally, there are always tasks that can be easily replaced by a chatbot. This also applies to HR activities. One obvious example is the creation of job references, or more precisely: the preparation of the job description, which forms part of a job reference.
Using the scdsoft reference letter creator as an example, we have addressed this topic and will first explain the most important terms in this article and then go into detail about the new functionality in our software solution.
What is “artificial intelligence” (AI)?
AI refers to digital systems on electronic devices that are designed to act intelligently and solve problems. They imitate human cognitive abilities. Chatbots are often based on a large language model (LLM). LLMs are very powerful language models that have been trained with text documents.
What is SAP SuccessFactors and the SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP)?
SAP is currently focusing on a fully cloud-based solution suite, particularly in the area of Human Resources (HR). To this end, they are promoting the “SAP SuccessFactors” product, which aims to move all HR processes completely to the cloud.
Another element of SAP’s cloud strategy is the SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP). This serves as the technical basis for the SuccessFactors suite and its extensions. Today’s IT system landscapes are very heterogeneous and often consist of a large number of independent software solutions. In some cases, SAP components are not the only ones in use. SAP BTP makes it possible to create a common foundation for the IT infrastructure in order to be able to act flexibly and independently.
Advantage: Companies, third-party providers or SAP partners are able to configure their SAP applications on the cloud-based environment of SAP BTP and/or extend them with add-on solutions – this can also be done with non-SAP components, such as solutions for AI.
What is the scdsoft reference letter creator?
The scdsoft reference letter creator offers companies the opportunity to generate legally compliant employment certificates and to speed up the creation process by integrating them into the SAP master data.
Three versions of the scdsoft reference letter creator are currently available:
- As an add-on solution for the SAP HCM or H4S4 system (on-premise)
- As a cloud-based add-on solution for SAP SuccessFactors – Employee Central
- As a cloud-based standalone solution (with master data import).
The cloud version of the scdsoft reference letter creator is operated and made available via SAP BTP as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) by scdsoft AG. We have compared the cloud-based solution with the on-premise solution. In our blog article, we compare the cloud-based and on-premise scdsoft reference letter creator.
What options does SAP offer for using AI?
With its AI portfolio “SAP Business AI”, SAP offers a suite of different AI functions that can be seamlessly integrated into SAP applications. These AI functions cover various business areas, including finance, supply chain management, human resources, procurement, sales and customer service.
SAP BTP offers a wide range of options for integrating artificial intelligence into existing business processes and thus increasing efficiency. By combining data management, analytics, AI and application development, SAP BTP makes it possible to develop customized AI solutions and expand existing applications.
Important AI functions in SAP BTP
- Generative AI Hub: A hub within SAP AI Core and SAP AI Launchpad that enables seamless, trustworthy and scalable management of AI artifacts such as models, workloads and prompts. The hub supports the AI-based extension of applications and the development of customized AI solutions on SAP BTP.
- SAP HANA Cloud Vector Engine: This engine facilitates the storage and analysis of complex and unstructured vector data and embeddings. It ensures that embeddings can be smoothly processed, compared and used to create intelligent data applications and add more business context to generative AI scenarios.
- SAP HANA Cloud Knowledge Graph Engine: This engine empowers generative AI models to create more coherent and contextually relevant content, resulting in more accurate and interpretable AI solutions. It provides a solid foundation to enrich content creation and responses in chatbots and AI copilots.
Here is another 30-second explanation of what SAP Business AI is.
Using AI in HR management with SAP
In HR management with SAP, there are many opportunities to significantly increase the efficiency of existing standard processes with the help of AI. Possible processes include talent acquisition, personnel retention and personnel administration. For example, SAP launched the AI co-pilot “Joule” on the market. This co-pilot supports the completion of routine tasks within SAP SuccessFactors by communicating using natural language.
How does the AI work in the scdsoft reference letter creator?
The AI works exclusively for the cloud-based scdsoft reference letter creator in SAP BTP. It is based on the SAP AI Core module, which is accessible via SAP BTP. SAP AI Core forms the technical basis for the provision and use of AI models. This provides the option of connecting AI models such as “gpt-4o” or “gemini-1.5-pro”. It is also possible to develop your own AI model that focuses on a specific task, for example.
The AI function of the scdsoft reference letter creator works with the ChatGPT model, which can be replaced by your own AI model at any time. Contact between the AI model and the scdsoft reference letter creator takes place via an interface within SAP BTP. Based on an employee’s current position, a job description for the reference letter can be generated automatically with the help of the connected AI. The AI accesses the history of the position and generates suitable activities based on this. No personal data is used for the AI query, which complies with the GDPR regulations on the use of AI.
In principle, the function can be made available to all persons involved in the reference letter creation process, i.e. employees (via ESS), managers (via MSS) and the HR team. The function is located in the “Activities” tab, which represents a processing step in the process.
Our recommendation: Allow everyone involved to benefit from the feature.
Demonstration AI-Feature in the scdsoft reference letter creator
What are the benefits of using AI for job descriptions?
- Easier work when collecting and formulating tasks
- Enormous time savings in the automatic generation of standardized job descriptions
- Support in complying with legal and company-specific formulation requirements
Generate your own AI or use an existing AI model?
Whether you should connect your own AI or use an existing AI model depends on various aspects.
Advantages of your own AI model
- Model can be tailored to specific business requirements and data
- Specially trained models can provide unique insights and optimized processes
- Perfect alignment with existing IT systems and internal workflows
Advantages of using an existing AI model
- Can be used immediately, without long development times
- No in-house training required, often usable via API or as a SaaS model
- Models are maintained, which means they are always up to date and contain few errors
- Model training is based on large, high-quality data sets, which guarantees high quality
Our recommendation for you
An in-house AI model should be used if a high level of customization, data control and competitive advantage is to be guaranteed. However, if the solution is to be cost-effective, technically uncomplicated and generate a fast output, an existing AI model is recommended.
Availability of the feature
As part of the regular updates of the scdsoft reference letter creator as SaaS, the function is delivered promptly to all existing customers.
If you have any questions or are interested in a live demo, please contact us!