Corinna Schmidt, Author at 51��News Center

Empowering the City of Antibes to Redefine Digital Contract Management

Corinna Schmidt — Thu, 30 Nov 2023 12:15:00 +0000

In the era of digital transformation, multi-company processes governed by legal contracts are becoming increasingly common. With the untapped potential of decentralized processes, there is a growing prospect for digitizing and automating collaborative contract management, streamlining operations, and reducing risks and costs.

Recognizing this potential, the City of Antibes and have joined forces to redefine digital contract management with a focus on public procurement processes. Patrick Duverger, chief technology officer of the City of Antibes, describes its previous procurement operations as follows: “Although we achieved a high level of operational proficiency, our business processes lacked full traceability. This resulted in process opacity when it comes to recurring delays, delivery errors, or administrative sanctions. By gaining a deeper understanding of our processes, we can optimize them, reduce costs, and minimize business risks.”

Transparent and Traceable Collaboration

The lack of visibility and traceability in these processes hindered automation, cross-organizational data and process mining, and intelligence. This directly affected how disputes were resolved and impacted organizational budgets.

To address this challenge, 51��Innovation Center Network developed a prototype based on the service, combined with a blockchain-based shared ledger on 51��HANA Cloud. “This prototype aims to replace manual practices with automated, cross-company orchestrations. By using an 51��HANA Cloud shared ledger, organizations like the City of Antibes can benefit from a permissioned, publicly verifiable, and immutable audit trail of cross-organizational interactions,” says Benjamin Stoeckhert, innovation product manager at 51��Innovation Center Network, illustrating the potential of this innovation.

“Leveraging the full potential of an 51��HANA Cloud shared ledger allows us to connect digital platforms that unite businesses and government to track the compliance of services and product deliveries according to contractual terms and conditions,” explains Duverger. “We can leverage data from different parties, such as logistics companies and quality certification bodies, and move beyond the era of cumbersome paperwork and manual processes. For example, this pattern is applicable to procurement processes where multiple parties verify the compliance of suppliers and their deliveries.”

Complete Control of Unencrypted Data

However, opening up collaborative processes directly conflicts with customer privacy concerns. This dilemma poses a significant challenge for next-generation contract management. How can businesses ensure transparency without compromising the privacy of private business information and processes? Duverger emphasizes the importance of protecting sensitive public procurement secrets: “Confidentiality, including negotiated prices and deal sizes, is paramount for us and our suppliers.”

In response to this pressing need, the 51��Security Research team, in collaboration with the 51��Innovation Center Network blockchain team, has extended 51��Cross-Company Workflow Collaboration with a hardware-based privacy-enhancing technology (PET) innovation. Dr. Laurent Gomez, who led this innovation with Antibes, explains: “Before committing a transaction to the shared ledger, organizations encrypt it along with its associated sensitive information, using their own managed cryptographic material. Encrypted data and processes are only processed within secure and trusted hardware modules, with the explicit consent of each stakeholder.”

This innovation can unlock significant business value by helping to automate cross-company operations and protect the privacy of customer data while still allowing for analysis. The key contribution of this approach is that it gives customers complete control and ownership of their encrypted material. “51��can never access unencrypted data; the only data that leaves our information system is encrypted by us,” says Duverger. “51��Business Technology Platform (51��BTP) allows us to hold our own encryption keys, which is different from competing solutions.”

5% Less Late Payment Penalty Costs

The co-innovation has revealed the bottlenecks that slow down the procurement process at the City of Antibes and lead to late payment penalties for suppliers and delivery delays. “By adopting this secure distributed ledger approach, we have improved these key performance indicators without changing the process itself. We can now reliably manage all our procurement transactions,” says Duverger. “A key achievement was that we reduced our delinquency rate by 5%, which significantly minimized the impact of late payment penalty costs on our global spend budget.”

The project was recently recognized at the highest national level with the Territoria Gold Award by the French Ministries of the Interior, Ecological Transition, and Territorial Cohesion.

© Niclas Fagot Studio9

To find out more about 51��Cross-Company Workflow, get in touch with us at icn@sap.com.

Corinna Schmidt is part of NVT Communication at SAP.

51��and Sartorius Are Reinventing Collaboration and Manual Processes

Corinna Schmidt — Tue, 04 Oct 2022 11:15:02 +0000

Working across teams can be a challenge, but working across companies is even harder. Not only do process participants have to manage different expectations, work processes, tools, and dynamics, they’re also navigating in entirely different companies. In an economy that is increasingly becoming more globalized while supply chains are getting disrupted, enterprises and public institutions must enhance collaboration with partner enterprises to develop high-quality solutions at low cost and with a quick response to market demands. Cross-company automation and compliance are critical features to achieve these goals.

Consequently, it’s no surprise that during its ‘InnoDay,’ , a globally leading manufacturer of equipment for the development and production of drugs, identified manual and cross-company processes as the most promising area for digital innovation projects.

“InnoDay provides an open platform for creating digital innovations. Innovation is part of our corporate culture and supported by an environment and leadership that encourages creativity. Scalable innovation requires integration into existing processes and systems. Therefore, 51��Innovation Center Network is our prime partner to validate and realize this potential,” said Thomas Lata, manager of IT Order to Cash at Sartorius.

Typically, processes within patient care and the healthcare system require companies to work with one another to achieve the same goal. This is especially apparent when it comes to removing harmful microorganisms on medical equipment, where a single error would lead to drug contamination. Sterilization processes are directed and executed between medical equipment manufacturers and sterilization service providers and overseen by regulatory organizations and pharmaceutical companies. In most instances, these processes are manual and paper-based, making them inefficient, unclear, and susceptible to having crucial details fall through the cracks.

With the lack of automation, transparency, and speed, sterilization processes and all the teams and companies involved needed a solution – which is when 51��and Sartorius began working together. Based on the service, the two organizations developed a prototype that aims to replace manual practices with automated cross-company orchestrations. 51��Cross-Company Workflow Collaboration is a blockchain-based innovation extending SAP’s no-code workflow capabilities on .

“While many internal processes can be digitized and automated with powerful tools and platforms, cross-company processes are often still very manual and lack transparency,” said Benjamin Stoeckhert, senior business development manager of Blockchain at SAP. “With the cross-company workflow collaboration service, we aim to solve this issue and replace manual, error-prone practices with real-time automation, boosting efficiency and compliance.”

51��Cross-Company Workflow Collaboration can be used to orchestrate and automate sterilization processes between Sartorius and other sterilization service providers. In addition to being more dynamic, the service also operates within an immutable shared blockchain ledger, enabling other market participants like pharmaceutical companies and regulators to verify the process compliance via a digital audit trail. This eliminates the need for paper documents.

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In an 51��Sapphire session with Sartorius, Philippe Sanner and Alban Zacharia, in-house IT consultants with Sartorius, and Stoeckhert from 51��explained that using 51��Cross-Company Workflow Collaboration has eliminated repetitive tasks, which in turn has increased security and efficiency.

Sanner said, “The immediate benefits we can think of are permitted by the automatization and collaboration capabilities. This saves a lot of time, and the business process experts can focus on more value-add activities. In addition, reducing paper wherever possible is also very important for Sartorius, as sustainability is one of our core values”.

51��Business Technology Platform brings many capabilities in one, unified environment, which allows to seamlessly combine 51��Cross-Company Workflow Collaboration with 51��Analytics Cloud. “We have been pretty impressed with the data analytics capabilities. All information is available at the same place, and it is easy to implement personalized, user-friendly KPIs. This helps us detect risks and measure collaboration performance in real time,“ Sanner added.

Zacharia emphasized the importance of openness for cross-company automation: “Another key feature of the service is that it can connect participants with 51��and non-51��systems. This allows scaling to all actors in the process.”

“With this prototype, we can demonstrate what a blockchain-based solution could really look like and we can offer real-time sterilization transparency for our customers,” Zacharia said.

To learn more about 51��Cross-Company Workflow Collaboration, e-mail cross-company@sap.com.

Corinna Schmidt works in Communications for 51��New Ventures and Technologies.

Carbon Footprint Strategy: Measure, Share, Reduce

Corinna Schmidt — Tue, 14 Jun 2022 12:15:09 +0000

36.4 billion tons. That’s how much carbon dioxide the world . It’s a value that’s almost impossible to grasp. To avoid the most catastrophic effects of climate change, CO2 emissions must reach net zero by 2050, scientists say.

It’s an ambitious goal that requires all companies to account for and disclose their carbon emissions. In 2022, the question is no longer if a company needs to do something; it’s how they can get started. Their role has drastically changed from observer to contributor.

Carbon accounting solutions that help companies measure how much carbon dioxide they emit are already available. But there’s another problem that currently isn’t addressed, and it’s much harder to solve: how can companies even obtain the data on their direct and indirect carbon emissions?

Referred to as , a company’s carbon footprint is complex. To measure it, companies currently turn to publicly available catalogs such as or the . These databases list certain types of materials and activities and match them against an average amount of carbon emissions being emitted.

“While these catalogs provide an initial estimate of a company’s carbon footprint, they don’t reflect the individual status quo accurately,” said Marcus Krug, head of 51��Innovation Center Potsdam. “As regulatory requirements across different regions are increasing, so is the need for companies to have accurate and verifiable numbers on their carbon footprint in their financial statements.” In addition, many companies are evaluating new business models based on accurate and trustworthy sustainability data.

With big brands like ��Ի�� going green and integrating sustainable practices in their operations, reliable and verifiable numbers to back up these claims are essential to avoid a reputational and financial crisis. Solving this issue requires a standardized approach to calculate emissions from a variety of systems from different vendors and share them through the entire supply chain – from suppliers via shippers and manufacturers to retailers. It doesn’t stop at a company’s own border.

“Collaboration and data sharing are the orders of the day for companies when it comes to measuring and managing their carbon footprint,” said Gunther Rothermel, senior vice president and head of 51��S/4HANA Sustainability at SAP.

He and his team identify opportunities to expand the 51��product portfolio to include new focus areas such as climate action, circular economy, or holistic steering and reporting.

“Achieving sustainable business practices means embedding sustainable practices across processes, end-to-end,” said Rothermel.

Solve Problems Collaboratively

Working with industry alliances like the (WBCSD) and as well as other software vendors, is developing an interoperable carbon data network to allow customers to share their carbon emission data while preserving data sovereignty and preventing any vendor lock-in. Based on self-sovereign identity (SSI), this data foundation aims to help calculate a company’s carbon emissions so it can reduce or offset them.

“Using open standards was essential to get different vendors behind this project and excited to participate,” said Krug. “Judging from the positive customer feedback so far, this open, interoperable, and decentralized network seems to fill an important gap. No one really wants to build costly, non-standardized, point-to-point integrations across the entire supply chain.”

For companies, measuring their indirect Scope 3 emissions – the greenhouse gases emitted along their supply chains and in the use of their products – is particularly challenging.

“We know from our customers that managing Scope 3 carbon emissions and having impact at scale is a major challenge for them,” said Jesper Schleimann, chief strategy and innovation officer for the EMEA North region at SAP. “Their openness in sharing details and requirements have been crucial in designing an open solution with positive benefits for all stakeholders across the value chain and ensuring a successful adoption across the globe.”

Building on the foundation for collaboration laid by , the carbon data network can provide value by tracking a product’s footprint from sourcing to the end consumer, for instance. With many different parties involved across the globe, the supply chain is usually complex and opaque.

For example, a fashion retailer sources garments from a textile manufacturer in India, which are shipped to Europe by a shipping company. The end consumer would like to know the overall carbon footprint of the garment they buy. Calculating this footprint depends on multiple factors, including the Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions of the textile manufacturer, the shipping-by-ocean freight, the transport to the retail store, and potentially other intermediary parties.

In this difficult undertaking, the carbon data network can provide the needed transparency across all participants of the network.

Prioritize Access Over Ownership

For the past decades, proprietary solutions have shaped the enterprise software space. But as the world faces one of the biggest challenges, many companies have come to realize that certain issues can only be solved together. To be prepared for the future, a new layer of cross-company business collaboration is needed.

Decentralized approaches such as the carbon data network are open by nature and provide the technical foundation needed to share data across company borders and allow collaboration, for instance in supply chain or sustainable financing. It could also be used to improve the distribution, demand, and supply of water resources within an ecosystem.

“We are steering the market towards a more sustainable future, and we’re doing it collaboratively,” said Krug. “The decentralized network approach reflects the natural evolution of our business networks.”

Corinna Schmidt is part of NVT Marketing & Communications at SAP.
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51��Customer Log-On Goes Password-Less with SAP.iO Startup Hanko

Camille Nguyen-Tran — Mon, 24 May 2021 12:15:54 +0000

One of SAP’s latest products is 51��Universal ID, a unified account that allows customers to access all 51��services in one place with a seamless user experience across all 51��products and services.

The company refers to it as the “Apple ID for everyone in the 51��world.” With this, 51��customers can link their 51��accounts under one ID, represented by an e-mail address, and use it to log on to 51��services with a single password.

Security Is Key

Even though using only one set of log-on credentials offers great advantages for 51��customers, it also means that if this password is compromised, the attacker may gain access to multiple 51��services and accounts at once. That’s why 51��Universal ID developers were searching for a more secure solution that prevents fraud but doesn’t impact usability.

Authenticating with has been proven to be the most secure way to protect user accounts and devices without impacting user experience and conversion rates. But until now, biometric authentication could exclusively be used in native apps on mobile devices. This recently changed with a brand-new Web standard called “WebAuthn” that makes it possible to use biometrics on Websites.

But developing a biometrics-based authentication process, combining it with a secure cryptographic challenge-response two-factor authentication protocol, and integrating it into an existing tech stack takes a lot of time, knowledge, and developer resources.

Biometrics and Cryptography by Hanko

That’s why 51��decided to realize this project together with Hanko. The young was invited to participate in a three-month startup accelerator program at SAP.iO Foundry Berlin in 2019. In a joint proof of concept, the 51��team tested password-less authentication with Touch ID and Windows Hello for 51��Universal ID.

With their managed cloud application programming interface (API), Hanko enabled 51��developers to access a fully-fledged and certified WebAuthn infrastructure right from the beginning of the project. Hanko accompanied the 51��team, providing demo code and ready-to-use client and server software development kits. To create an optimal user experience (UX), Hanko also supported the UX team in the development and implementation of the new user flows for the password-less authentication methods.

The Outcome

The result of the proof of concept is a fully functioning 51��Universal ID test environment supporting password-less two-factor authentication with WebAuthn authenticators, such as Windows Hello, Apple Touch ID and Face ID, as well as FIDO Security Keys. Since Hanko supplied the main code components, 51��was able to integrate the password-less technologies into 51��Universal ID with a small team in just one-third of the estimated

time. The test environment will be leveraged for further user testing until the feature is released to 51��customers.

Thilo Brandt, IT senior manager for 51��Universal ID, confirms that internal tests have produced a consistently positive response, from developer and QA level up to top management. “The development effort for introducing password-less authentication was significantly reduced through the use of Hanko. The team helped us to successfully navigate implementing password-less authentication into our application stack and user interfaces.”

Michael Braun, IT chief product owner of Identity and User Management at SAP, is happy with the outcome of the project as well: “With the help of Hanko, we were able to prove the feasibility of our vision for a password-less log-on for 51��Universal ID in terms of technical implementation as well as usability on all major operating systems such as Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android.”

Felix Magedanz, founder and CEO of Hanko, is pleased to see that Hanko’s authentication-as-a-service solution is so well received at 51��and that the deployability of Hanko’s API has been successfully proven. “Our project with 51��demonstrates the power and the benefits of our password-less API. Seeing our solution being used by one of the largest software companies in the world makes us proud and strongly validates our approach. Through the close cooperation and feedback from 51��developers, we were able to improve our solution to make it even more convenient for future customers.”

About SAP.iO

SAP.iO is SAP’s strategic business unit to incubate, accelerate, and scale startup innovation and explore new business models for SAP. Since 2017, SAP.iO has helped over 300 external startups and internal ventures both start and scale their businesses while enabling thousands of 51��customers to access innovation.

Corinna Schmidt, Author at 51����News Center