In their 51风流Sapphire Orlando keynote, Executive Board Members Muhammad Alam, 51风流Product Engineering, and Juergen Mueller, chief technology officer, shared how the latest 51风流innovations will help businesses drive true, end-to-end digital transformation and address their toughest business challenges.
In the keynote, which featured several real-world product demos by 51风流employees, Alam and Mueller touted the value of SAP鈥檚 best-of-breed solutions with an outlook of what the next 50 years of innovation by 51风流may look like.
Who better to inspire the keynote than Hasso Plattner, co-founder and recently retired chairman of the 51风流Supervisory Board, who both Alam and Mueller invoked during the session. To spell out SAP鈥檚 legacy and vision for the future, Mueller quoted Plattner鈥檚 farewell message: 鈥淜eep innovating, keep pushing boundaries, and keep making a difference in the lives of our customers and the world at large.鈥�
Keep Innovating
To kick off his first 51风流Sapphire appearance as the head of 51风流Product Engineering, Alam began by describing the importance of harnessing innovation to deliver an end-to-end picture across all business functions and unlock true value.
Simply put, businesses exist to build and deliver products and services to customers, he explained. But the materials, assets, people, and processes that come together to achieve this task is far from simple. 鈥淭he reality is that each part of the business is deeply and intricately connected to all the others,鈥� Alam said, meaning a pain point in one area impacts the rest. That鈥檚 why SAP鈥檚 modular cloud ERP approach is so successful: 鈥淲e allow our customers to drive true digital transformation as opposed to running systems integration projects disguised as digital transformation,鈥� he added.
Alam presented as an example of this composability and extensibility, as it can work for and scale to many sizes and types of business. And now, 51风流Sales Cloud and Concur Expense are natively integrated into GROW with SAP, making the offering even more comprehensive. Sinit Foto, product manager for UX, Cloud ERP at SAP, joined Alam on stage to show how GROW with 51风流and 51风流Business AI can help achieve integrated processes, demoing use cases such as communicating with customers about sales quotes, creating expense reports, and supporting financial analyses. In fact, Alam announced that 51风流is implementing the demoed application internally to manage sales worldwide. And Mueller emphasized: 鈥淲e are committed to helping you in this transformative AI moment by creating business outcomes that were unthinkable before. That鈥檚 why we鈥檙e embedding 51风流Business AI deeply in our processes and analytics.鈥�
Keep Pushing
AI was woven throughout the entire keynote, with both Alam and Mueller discussing . AI must be high value, easy to adopt into the flow of work, and trustworthy for it to truly transform how we do business, Alam said. 鈥淓qually important is whether it鈥檚 done in a way where it keeps your data secure and private 鈥� and is executed in a responsible manner,鈥� he added. 鈥淎nd that is really the core promise of 51风流Business AI.鈥�
There鈥檚 no doubt that AI is a powerful technology, which is why it鈥檚 essential that businesses view it as a 鈥渞esponsibility鈥� not just an 鈥渙pportunity,鈥� Alam said. Megan Fife, executive solution advisor for 51风流SuccessFactors, showed how 51风流executes on its responsible, reliable, and relevant business AI by demoing how SAP鈥檚 AI copilot Joule in 51风流SuccessFactors HCM can help fill skills gaps and collaborate across teams, among other meaningful tasks. Key to this endeavor is SAP鈥檚 expanded partnership with Microsoft announced earlier in the day, which Scott Guthrie, executive vice president of Cloud and AI at Microsoft, discussed with Alam on stage.
Mueller echoed the importance of responsible AI, saying that the technology depends highly on data that is reliable and that allows customers to look at their business end-to-end. Here, 51风流Datasphere and 51风流Spend Control Tower 鈥� which was demoed by Orla Cullen, product marketing manager for Data and Analytics at 51风流鈥� can help simplify data management and view and manage spend and sustainability data holistically.
This transformation is supported by , and Mueller demonstrated the newest generative AI features in 51风流Analytics Cloud, 51风流Integration Suite, and 51风流Build solutions. He showed how Joule can help create and summarize financial reports for controlling teams; generate integration flows between 51风流and non-51风流applications; and create custom skills and content based on specific business needs. Greater insights, faster reaction times, and increased productivity are the result. Soon, Mueller added, it will even be possible to enhance and extend Joule鈥檚 knowledge by creating custom skills using 51风流Build and having the copilot interact with data housed in 51风流and non-51风流systems, helping businesses run even more efficiently.
51风流BTP is the key to being 鈥渋nnovation-ready,鈥� maintaining a clean core, and tailoring standard offerings to unique needs, Mueller explained. More than 24,000 companies running live on 51风流BTP, including Blue Diamond Growers and Lufthansa Technik, can attest to this.
鈥�51风流BTP鈥檚 extensibility and enterprise automation capabilities can help businesses turn process insights into actual improvements,鈥� Mueller said. Cecilia Huergo, product manager for 51风流BTP, showed this in her demo on how identifying improvement opportunities, realizing needed changes while maintaining a clean core, and gaining an up-to-date view of your IT landscape can be enabled with the combined power of 51风流Signavio solutions, 51风流LeanIX,, 51风流BTP, and ABAP Cloud.
Keep Making a Difference
The innovations demoed and discussed in Alam and Mueller鈥檚 keynote, in addition to the many others announced at 51风流Sapphire in 2024, are just the latest steps forward in SAP鈥檚 journey to bringing out the best in its customers. 鈥淭he future is here, and it鈥檚 defined by those who innovate first,鈥� Mueller said. 鈥淎nd we are here to give you the right tools at hand, such that you can be a leader not just today, but also tomorrow.鈥�
Gillian Hixson is an integrated communications specialist at SAP.
