AI-powered HR request intake & routing

Context

Bausparkasse Schwäbisch Hall is one of Germany's leading savings banks (Bausparkassen), operating within a strictly regulated financial environment. The HR department supports employees and managers across the organization and has identified end-to-end data processing as a strategic focus area.

As part of this initiative, the HR request intake channel has been identified as a key pain point: there is currently no central channel and no unified ticketing system for HR-related inquiries.

Requests from employees and managers currently reach HR via decentralized channels — email (including shared Outlook mailboxes), Microsoft Teams, and phone. HR Business Partners act as the first point of contact, manually triaging and forwarding requests to specialized HR teams (e.g. payroll, talent management, organizational development). A small share of requests is already handled via SAP-based self-service workflows (e.g. parental leave submission by managers), but this covers only a fraction of total volume.

Problem Definition

The core problem is the absence of a unified, transparent, and trackable intake channel for HR requests that cannot be resolved through the existing Personal Online Service (PoS/Fiori) portal or the Form Portal. While many standardized HR transactions are already available via these self-service channels, employees and managers continue to submit non-standard, complex, or unclear requests through multiple communication channels.

The specific pain points are:

• Media breaks: Requests arrive via email, Teams, phone calls, and other channels when no suitable PoS/Fiori or Form Portal process exists, resulting in no central capture or categorization.
• No volume or category transparency: HR cannot reliably estimate request volumes or identify recurring request types, making process planning and optimization difficult.
• No status visibility: Employees and managers have no way to track the status of their request after submission.
• Manual forwarding and duplicated effort: Business Partners and HR teams forward requests manually via email or shared Teams chats, creating inefficiencies and increasing the risk of delays or errors.

The objective is not to build a full-scale HR platform or replace existing PoS/Fiori and Form Portal capabilities. Instead, the goal is to introduce a targeted, AI-assisted intake and routing solution for requests that are currently handled outside of established self-service processes. The solution should start with low-risk use cases, provide transparency and automation where gaps exist today, and be incrementally expanded over time.