Sanlam, a pan-African financial services group headquartered in South Africa with operations in 31 countries, is extending its human capital transformation programme beyond traditional HR digitisation, combining cloud infrastructure, data management and artificial intelligence initiatives to support workforce planning and business operations.
Over the past 18 months, the company has broadened its focus from modernising HR systems to building a human capital strategy centred on cloud platforms, data integration and AI-enabled capabilities. The programme is designed to address both operational requirements and longer-term workforce transformation goals.
Ravika Bandyopadhyay, Group Human Capital Chief Operating Officer at Sanlam, said the organisation is pursuing parallel objectives of improving existing operations while exploring new technologies.
“We have adopted an ambidextrous strategy for our digital and data transformation journey, simultaneously exploiting operational excellence, proficiency and efficiency in our current landscape while exploring incremental innovation that enhances and elevates the user experience and driving our longer-term transformation journey – focused on leveraging intelligent, transformative technology to unlock business value.”
The initiative is supported by a programme structure that includes a technical centre of excellence team, programme management, change management and business analysis functions. According to Bandyopadhyay, organisational change remains as important as technology deployment.
“Transformation required us to approach change from multiple perspectives simultaneously. We always look at transformation through the lens of people, process and technology. One of the realities organisations face is that many people are not ready to embrace the pace of technological change, which makes change adoption and leadership sponsorship critically important.”
A key element of the programme is the redesign of Sanlam’s job architecture as part of a move toward a skills-based operating model. The company expects this work to support future use of SAP technologies. SAP, an enterprise software company that provides business applications for areas including human resources, finance and analytics, is a technology partner in several parts of the transformation programme.
“A key priority being rebuilding our job architecture for relevance to the current and future workforce and more importantly to transition to a skills-based organisation. This will then unlock the opportunity for us to leverage SAP’s AI-enabled Talent Intelligence Hub which is the golden thread that links all talent practices to a skills currency,” said Bandyopadhyay.
Sanlam has also prioritised the deployment of cloud-based data capabilities, master data management and platform scalability. With multiple business entities operating across the group, the organisation is working to establish a more unified workforce data environment and improve consistency across operations.
Desigan Govindsamy, Group Head of HC Tech and Talent Intelligence at Sanlam, said cloud migration remains a central part of the roadmap.
“We are moving aggressively towards a cloud-first strategy, including payroll migration, data platform evolution, and broader business integration initiatives. Our focus is on how we build scalable platforms and data capabilities that position us for the future.”
As part of that effort, the company is piloting capabilities related to SAP Datasphere and advancing plans for broader business data cloud initiatives. Sanlam is also evaluating how SAP Business Data Cloud, SAP agents and Joule can be used to support analytics, orchestration and employee-related workflows across the employee lifecycle.
Alongside platform changes, the company is reviewing employee services, employee relations processes and document management practices. It is also expanding its talent intelligence and people analytics capabilities. According to the company, the Talent Intelligence function has progressed from producing reports and dashboards to delivering trend analysis, insights and predictive analytics. One outcome has been the development of a productivity measurement solution spanning different Sanlam business entities.
Automation projects are also being introduced across service management, payments, compliance activities and administrative HR processes. The company said it has digitised compliance-related scorecards, including those linked to skills development, to improve planning and monitoring. These efforts have enabled Sanlam to support a larger customer base while expanding service offerings at lower cost.
Govindsamy said the programme should be viewed as an ongoing process rather than a finite implementation.
“The next phase of our journey is focused on accelerating cloud propagation, strengthening analytics and data capabilities, and embedding intelligent automation more deeply into the business. Success depends not only on technology, but on sustained leadership sponsorship, adoption, and preparing the workforce for the future.”
Nazia Pillay, Managing Director for Southern Africa at SAP, said organisations are increasingly linking workforce transformation initiatives to broader data and technology programmes.
“As organisations modernise their workforce strategies, there is growing recognition that human capital transformation depends on more than digitising HR processes. It requires an integrated foundation that combines cloud, data, analytics and intelligent technologies to support better decision-making, stronger employee experiences, and greater organisational agility. Sanlam’s ongoing transformation journey reflects how forward-looking organisations are building scalable, future-ready HR environments that can evolve alongside changing business and workforce requirements.”
