SAP SuccessFactors Appoints Jill Popelka as President

Published: 19/March/2020

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By AJ Whalen, Vice President and Publisher, SAPinsider

SAP recently announced that Jill Popelka has been named President of SAP SuccessFactors and will lead the organization’s strategy and solutions for the human experience management (HXM) market.

Popelka replaces Greg Tomb as SAP SuccessFactors President. Tomb, who had served in that capacity since July of 2017, remains with SAP and has assumed the role of President, Global Sales and GTM for SAP Cloud, Platform, and the SAP S/4HANA portfolio. Regarding Popelka, Tomb said, “I have worked with Jill for many years … She’s an expert in the industry, passionate about our customers, and has a strong vision for where we’re headed with HXM.”

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Jill Popelka is no stranger to SAP SuccessFactors, having served most recently as the company’s Chief Operating Officer. Prior to taking the COO role last year, she led SAP SuccessFactors sales in the Asia-Pacific-Japan (APJ) region, based in Singapore. In addition to overseeing the company’s critical HXM strategy, Popelka will be responsible for aligning SAP’s people solutions with the other five solution areas across the solution landscape. “We’re very excited about aligning to these other solution areas to deliver on SAP’s promise of the Intelligent Enterprise,” said Popelka. She added that one of her tasks will be to work closely with other solution areas like intelligent spend and customer experience to ensure consistent integration across products.

What Does This Mean for SAPinsiders?

SAP’s choice to hire someone internally with a background in sales and operations within SAP SuccessFactors will surely help make the transition from Tomb to Popelka a smooth one. Jill Popelka brings with her strong knowledge of human capital management (HCM) and employee experience across global regions, something that will be very valuable as the organization extends its HXM strategy. Customers should expect to see Popelka’s emphasis on employee experience influence the company’s strategy and solution growth in the coming year. As far as the industry’s transition from HCM to HXM, Popelka is very optimistic, saying, “As we move forward into this new employee experience world, I can’t wait to see where we go from here.”