| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Goal Management | SAP SuccessFactors Goal Management enables employees and managers to align individual goals with the company's business objectives. SAP SuccessFactors Goal Management helps organizations ensure that all employees are aligned and working on the things that matter most, so that the organizations can bridge the strategy and execution gap and stay on the path to success. |
| Templates | Templates define the type of information to be collected about each goal (e.g., goal name, milestones, and weight) and features of the plan available to end users (e.g., adding a goal from a predefined library of existing goals). |
| Goal Plans | Goal plans are online worksheets used to record and track information on performance goals, such as the employee’s progress in accomplishing a task associated with a goal. There are no workflows associated with goal plans. |
| Goals/Objectives | Goals and objectives are interchangeable terms indicating a desired result that an employee commits to achieving. Goals must be achievable and measured over a set period to develop skills that will benefit an employee in their role and support the organizational mission. |
| SuccessStore | SuccessStore is a library of pre-built templates that can be added to the instance as many times as needed (as long as each has a different name). |
| Categories | Categories are groups for similar goals defined in the plan template. |
| Fields | Fields are small information units about each goal defined in the plan template (e.g., goal name and category). |
| Team Goals | Team goals are goals created, updated, and assigned by managers to their team members without including them in their plans. It effectively allows the manager to simply manage and monitor the goals they set for their team without having to achieve the goals directly. Team goals can be shared with other managers and assigned to their respective teams. |
| Cascading | Cascading allows users to push a goal to a direct report’s plan or pull a goal from a manager’s plan to create a new goal and link the two goals. |
| Linking | Linking allows users to link their performance goals with another user's goals; linking creates an alignment relationship and displays it on the goal alignment chart. |
| Goal Import | Goal import is a method that can be used to create, edit, or delete several goals at once. |
Exploring Goal Management
Objective
Goal Management Terminology
Goal Management
SAP SuccessFactors Goal Management enables employees and managers to align individual goals with company business objectives. This product also helps organizations ensure that all employees are aligned and working on the things that matter most to bridge the strategy and execution gap and stay on the path to success.
Goal management gets everyone working on the right things at the right time. Set your strategic objectives and align individual goals with the flexibility to shift and move with business changes.
Currently, there are two UI versions of Goal Management: GMv12 (Legacy Goals) and Latest Goal Management. This course is now entirely based on the Latest version of Goal Management.
Note

Latest Version of Goal Management

Goal Alignment
With goal alignment, your organization works as a cohesive team to cover more ground faster.
- Cascade goals through the entire organization: Set strategic goals and roll them out to teams and individuals for better company performance.
- Link goals with another user: Link goals to increase goal visibility, foster collaboration, and easily track and manage aligned goals across users.
- Gain visibility into goal status: Stay on top of performance by viewing goal status and results through intuitive dashboards and spotlights.
- Improve accountability: Visibility reinforces performance and engagement, and helps you proactively address issues.
- Develop goals instantly: Goal Library supports your managers with more than 500 SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely) goals.
- Assess goals continuously: Make frequent updates, gauge the probability of success, and provide detailed comments on goals.
Hint
Through this course, you will find references to Action Search to navigate to the different tools in the instance. The Action Search is the easiest way to type and search for actions or people. Alternatively, you would locate the options from the Admin Center, on the tools tile, and search for the action (like Manage Templates or Manage Permission Roles) to navigate there.
Overview of Latest Goal Management
The latest version of Goal Management, consisting of performance and development goals, provides a new experience for setting up, tracking, distributing, and managing goals in your organization.
- Upgraded user interfaces allow employees to more effectively set up and manage their goals and view their activities.
- A unified entrance to Performance Goal and Development Goal enables seamless navigation.
- Uncluttered goal list views make it easy to spot critical information, glean insights, and apply quick changes.
- The integration with Continuous Performance Management helps managers and employees explore relationships between activities and goals from a broader perspective.
- Support for Generative AI capabilities to assist with goal creation.
- Support for AI-Assisted Writing capabilities to enhance grammar, spelling, tone, or shorten/expand an explanation in fields like Goal Name, Metric, or Description.
Supported Capabilities
The Latest Version of Goal Management supports many of the features already offered in the Legacy version. Additionally, customers can avail of the SAP Business AI* technology for goal creation and editing.
Note
Hint
For reference, the implementation guide includes a summary of the differences between Legacy and Latest Goal Management, what each version supports, and any alternatives to deprecated features:
Features
The following example summarizes what the goal plan looks like as an end user in the Latest Goal Management:

- Users can toggle between Performance Goal and Development Goal, if a Development Plan is available for them. That way, employees and managers can review Performance and Development Goals more easily from the same menu.
- Option to expand a drop-down list and access all the available Goal Plans. Those Goal Plans that are still not converted to the latest version but accessible to the employee will be read-only, and a Legacy View option is available to see goals from previous goal plans.
- In this section, we can display the total goal count and the goal count by status. Each status can be selected to filter and see only those goals in the Goal Plan. Additionally, an i icon will display if there are any warnings regarding minimum and maximum goals and weights if these were configured in the back end by an SAP SuccessFactors consultant.
- The introduction text is available here; when selecting the i icon, it will be expanded. This section is always collapsed by default.
- Goal Categories.
- Goal Cards, organized by category.
- Actions. The Create Goal button will navigate to a Goal Creation Options page to create personal goals in the Goal Plan. Depending on the permissions, users can complete the following actions from this page:
- Create a Goal using the AI-Assisted Goal Creation feature.
- Create a Goal from scratch.
- Copy Goals from another Goal Plan.
- Create Goals from a Goal Library available in the organization.

Additional actions are:
- Cascade Goals: Typically, managers can align their goals to their direct reports using cascading.
- Manage Team Goals: A goal that all the members are accountable for achieving, managed by an owner who will be responsible for the details of the goal.
- Print to PDF: An option to print the list of goals, including comments, activities, and milestones (if needed).
- User Search: Used to search for users and navigate to their Goal Plan. Access to the goal plan might be restricted if the user is not in our target population.
- It is possible to add the option to include Inactive Users in search results.
- Enable the option to include inactive users here: Manage Permission Roles→Administrator Permissions→Manage Hires→Include Inactive Employees in the search.
- People Selector: It displays self, manager, direct reports, and matrix reports (if any).
Summary
- SAP SuccessFactors Goal Management enables employees and managers to align individual goals with company business objectives.
- The latest version of Goal Management, consisting of performance and development goals, provides a new experience for setting up, tracking, distributing, and managing goals in your organization.
- Customers using Goal Management can avail of the SAP Business AI* technology for goal creation and editing.