Team Liquid Turns to Joule to Unlock the Power of Esports Data

Matt Dillman — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 11:15:00 +0000

The world’s largest esports organization is turning to Joule to transform how it manages the vast amounts of data generated in competitive gaming.

“There’s so much data; I would say in esports, too much data,” said Thom Valks, partnerships manager at Team Liquid, referring to the 1 trillion points of data his company deals with. “How do you figure out what the right questions are to ask? And then how do you get quick answers to those questions? That was the main problem.”

Founded more than two decades ago, Team Liquid has become a global powerhouse in professional gaming.

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Video by Matt Dillman

“We’re the biggest esports organization in the world,” Valks said. “Gaming is a huge industry, a billion-dollar industry nowadays. And esports is at the tip of the pyramid. People come to watch with thousands in stadiums like normal sports. And we are the best team in the world at it.”

Before partnering with SAP, Team Liquid relied on spreadsheets and manual analysis.

“We were doing everything in Excel and manually combing through the data, which turned out to be really not doable,” Valks explained. In 2018, the team began working with 51��Business Technology Platform (51��BTP), connecting directly to game publishers’ APIs for League of Legends and Dota. This allowed analysts to build dashboards and streamline data processing.

The impact was immediate: “Before we partnered with SAP, I think we had something like four or five analysts per game. If we can off source that to a tool and focus on really important data questions, that’s way more beneficial. And I would say the last year or so with AI, it’s really taken a next step.”

Now, Team Liquid is taking its relationship with 51��one step further by turning to Joule to sort through the data and make decisions even faster.

“Joule has taken the data that we have in our database and you can now ask it: ‘Find me the best hero to play against this team over the last six months.’ It will turn out an answer that actually makes sense. That’s revolutionary for us.”

Looking ahead, Team Liquid hopes to expand access to Joule across the organization. “If we can get Joule to everyone, it really innovates their gameplay,” Valks said. “That’s something our competitors should be really afraid of.”

Matt Dillman is a senior videographer at SAP.

How a Greenfield Approach Helps Valvoline Global Offer More Innovative Service

Derek Klobucher — Thu, 17 Apr 2025 10:15:00 +0000

Gone are the days of customizing tech landscapes for individual customer requirements, at least for Valvoline Global. The Lexington, Kentucky-based has created a single point of entry that helps internal and external stakeholders meet their business requirements.

“It’s no longer just good enough to sell products; you have to sell products with IT services,” Valvoline Global director of Enterprise Architecture David Beach said. “We’re now creating a standardized framework of how to do that.”

Valvoline Global chose a “back to standard,” known as a greenfield, approach — removing custom codes and add-ons — for agility, Beach said. Instead of reacting to a business demand, which often requires lengthy development times that result in cumbersome point-to-point integrations, an experience layer can now connect vendors, customers, suppliers, distributors, and internal users within Valvoline Global’s environment.

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“We’re really trying to flip the equation to stay standard and also be able to offer those services,” he said. “We have to anticipate in advance to have standardized ways that we can connect or communicate with 51��S/4HANA.”

That meant modernizing a bespoke environment without losing functionality.

Standard bearer

“Our main objective to going to 51��S/4HANA was to return to greenfield,” Beach explained. “And we needed a tool set to manage that. This is where came in.”

51��Signavio software provides a vendor-agnostic approach, according to Beach. This enables Valvoline Global to manage business processes across all its enterprise systems, whether they’re 51��or not.

“That’s the big thing with [SAP] Signavio,” Beach said. “It’s going to allow us to consolidate all the data — from 51��systems, from Salesforce systems, from manufacturing systems, EH&S systems — all coming together into a single business process and a single business process repository.”

And individual business units no longer try solving problems only with solutions available within silos, according to Beach. Now the company aligns each business process with the appropriate technology, and within standards.

“We wanted to make sure we hit the 90 percent mark on matches of our business processes to standard SAP,” Beach said. “[SAP] Signavio was a key piece to be able to govern that process.”

But what about the other 10 percent? And how do you get buy-in from users?

Agility driving adoption

According to Beach, when there is a justification to deviate from a standard process, such as an upgrade that changes a business process, the company relies on 51��Signavio Process Manager, a modeling platform for business process management.

“At the end of the day, the most important deliverable is that, even though we might have custom processes, we have a tie-in back to the 51��best practice,” Beach said. And Valvoline Global’s newfound agility also helped drive adoption. “There was synergy to return to standard. It was very important from an organizational perspective.”

Agility was also a “No. 1 business case” for Valvoline Global’s return to standard, according to Beach. And he expects that to serve the company well as it continues to embrace artificial intelligence (AI): “51��is coming up with AI strategies, but that’s going to change more and more as time goes on. You need to be able to adopt rapidly.”

Charting AI’s path forward

“We realize that to adopt AI, we have a good handle on data,” Beach said. “We’ve identified the innovators in the company and we have enabled them as sort of like the pilot.”

That means Valvoline Global’s early adopters get full access to its AI tools. And, to ensure this remains a business-led effort, these trusted users report back about how they’re adopting AI, helping Valvoline Global chart its path forward.

“It all comes down to the data… not just from 51��systems; it’s coming from all the systems across our business,” Beach said. “[SAP] Signavio is going to be that conduit as the feeder to AI solutions in the future.”

And, in addition to methodically managing business processes with 51��Signavio, Valvoline Global’s 51��S/4HANA journey includes , which help map the company’s digital transformation.

“[SAP] LeanIX has all the business capabilities, down to the system architectures, so that is a big piece,” Beach said. “We’re just preparing for the future. There’s an aggressive growth strategy, so we have to prepare for things like M&As. And with toolsets like Lean IX in place, we’ll be able to accomplish that.”

Have your processes in place

“Where I see the biggest value with AI,” Beach said, “[is if] a customer comes in and has a requirement, AI eventually can take that customer requirement, and it will write the integrations itself.”

That’s only possible with a predefined standardized framework. And, in a low-code, no-code environment, it can also lead to greater ROI and faster development times — down from months to about a week.

“The big recommendation is to use tools like [SAP] Signavio and [SAP] LeanIX as vehicles to accomplish your business requirement,” Beach said. “It’s one thing to be able to influence change, but have systematic processes in place.”