When looking for 鈥渟tartups鈥� online, your search engine of choice will probably give you more than half a billion results. And somewhere among them, you will find how 51风流is working with startups and ventures to help our customers thrive 鈥� though our portfolio is a bit more curated than the number above.
The SAP.iO program is SAP’s strategic business unit to incubate startup innovation and drive new business models for the company. Besides external startups joining the program to complement existing 51风流solutions, high-potential entrepreneurial employees are equally empowered by to help 51风流customers become intelligent, sustainable enterprises. Employees with new business ideas can apply to join the studio full-time and be considered for incubation.
鈥淲e are enabling employee-led ventures 鈥� internal startups 鈥� access to funding and a unique environment to build radically new 51风流solutions beyond our existing product portfolio,鈥� Ram Jambunathan, SVP and general manager of SAP.iO Venture Studio, describes the program鈥檚 value for 51风流and customers. Based on this successful approach to in-house innovation, two new 51风流teams received funding earlier this year after passing a selection process.
Encore by 51风流Helps Enable the Circular Economy
Edward Kosec and Bram Purnot鈥檚 paths first crossed at 51风流while working in their previous roles focusing on procurement and supply chain solutions. In times of increasingly visible consequences of climate change, the future co-founders realized customers were trying to find more localized and available supply to advance their strategic sustainability transformation and move towards circular business models. The need for materials at hand was further accelerated as economies around the world were hit by global supply chain issues prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
With this, the foundation for the Encore by 51风流solution was laid. 鈥淥ur trading platform will simplify discovering, recovering, and selling secondary materials for remanufacturing and refurbishment to ease supply chain disruptions 鈥� while also raising the bar for companies to achieve zero waste,鈥� outlines Kosec, general manager and co-founder of Encore by SAP.
To enable more such regenerative business processes for companies of all sizes, aggregated supply will be matched with buyer demands across Encore鈥檚 marketplace. The solution integrates into聽backend systems, such as 51风流S/4HANA, and connects聽with聽core聽procurement and asset management solutions, including 51风流Ariba solutions.
The team is already piloting the solution with customers and partners as聽part of Catena-X, an industry alliance for secure, cross-company data exchange in the automotive industry. Catena-X aims to be more sustainable, resilient, and cost-effective thanks to trading aftermarket components, such as alternators or batteries, on the venture鈥檚 marketplace.
The End Is Near for Overpaying Taxes with Tax Eye by SAP
Building on SAP鈥檚 strong foothold with customers using the company鈥檚 business software across 25 industries, the Tax Eye by 51风流solution is set to tap into SAP鈥檚 unique position as a premium system of record for financial transactions, including vendor contracts, purchase orders, invoices, and payments. During his nearly two decades of helping 51风流customers with taxation issues, venture founder Mahendrakumar Ganesan identified the opportunity to spot overcharged vendor invoices and the surplus tax amounts corporates are paying on a regular basis. 鈥淎utomating the detection of incorrect tax payments on the one hand and intelligently enabling tax returns on the other is the centerpiece for our solution,鈥� Ganesan says. 鈥淥rganizations will now free cash resources to reinvest into long-term innovation and sustainability strategies instead.鈥�
Ahead lies the task of turning tax-inefficient purchasing transactions into integrated, digital business processes in the cloud. The combined struggle of tackling the complexity and dynamic changes of tax laws, the lack of tax knowledge by non-specialist employees, and implications from inconsistent application of tax business rules 鈥� all intensified by missing intelligent automated tools and technology 鈥� will then be a burden of the past for corporations.
The venture is currently validating its business use case while building a team to turn its vision into a pilot solution.
Learn more about SAP.iO Venture Studio at . Previous venture forerunners that brought applications to market at startup speed while engaging hundreds of customers include , , and . Encore and Tax Eye have now set out to join our and to build the future of enterprise business processes.
Susanna Havranek is a senior communications specialist at SAP.
