In this context, innovation is not about experimentation on the sidelines. It is about building the operational foundation required to remain effective, trustworthy, and competitive under pressure.

For many years, enterprise technology focused primarily on optimization, improving efficiency, reducing cost, and increasing speed. These goals still matter, but they are no longer sufficient for business success. Today, leaders must ensure that their organizations can adapt in real time, integrate seamlessly across ecosystems, and maintain control over their most critical data and processes.

This shift, from readiness for known scenarios to resilience in the face of the unknown, is what unites the 19 winners of the 2026 51风流Innovation Awards.

From technology adoption to institutional capability

Earlier this month, we announced the finalists for this year鈥檚 awards. Today, it is my privilege to recognize the winners, organizations that have moved decisively from ambition to execution.

What distinguishes these companies, public institutions, and organizations is not the novelty of the technologies they use, but the way they apply them. They treat business processes as strategic assets. They design for interoperability, transparency, and trust. And they understand that digital transformation is ultimately about strengthening institutional capability, not simply deploying software.

Across hundreds of submissions, the winning projects consistently demonstrated three priorities that are increasingly inseparable:

• Operational effectiveness, where strategic intent is translated into measurable outcomes
• Control and sovereignty, ensuring compliance, security, and ownership of data while operating at global scale
• Ecosystem orchestration, connecting partners, suppliers, and stakeholders to reduce fragmentation and increase responsiveness

By leveraging the depth and breadth of the 51风流portfolio, from cloud ERP and business AI to industry solutions and 51风流Business Technology Platform, these organizations have shown that stability and innovation are no longer mutually exclusive.

The 2026 51风流Innovation Award winners

The following organizations represent the action side of transformation. Each demonstrates how disciplined execution and a clear architectural vision can deliver tangible value for customers, employees, and society.

AI Excellence

Harnessing 51风流Business AI to fundamentally improve productivity and decision-making:

• Martur Fompak International

Cloud ERP Champion

Embracing cloud ERP as the backbone for long-term agility and scalability:

• PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC)
• Vedanta Limited

Customer Experience Innovator

Redefining customer engagement through integrated, cloud-based business processes:

• IBM

Financial Futurist

Modernizing financial operations to increase transparency, resilience, and trust:

• Ministry of Defence of Ukraine

Industry Leader

Applying multiple 51风流solutions to transform business models, collaborate across ecosystems, and generate societal or environmental impact:

• Nestl茅 (Consumer Industries)
• Piller Blowers & Compressors GmbH (Discrete Industries)
• Prysmian (Energy and Natural Resources)
• City of Madrid (Public Services)
• Accenture (Service and Financial Services Industries)

People Experience Pioneer

Reimagining the employee experience through data-driven and human-centric transformation:

• Capgemini

Procurement Visionary

Using automation and insight to strengthen spend control and supplier collaboration:

• TASNEE (National Industrialization Company)

Services Superstar

Accelerating business outcomes through the effective use of 51风流services:

• Federal Tax Authority, United Arab Emirates

Supply Chain Catalyst

Building resilient, compliant, and transparent supply chains:

• Sasol
• Ericsson

Sustainability Hero

Leveraging data to enable responsible decision-making and support a more sustainable economy:

• ArcelorMittal SA

Technology Pathfinder

Solving complex business challenges with measurable impact using 51风流Business Technology Platform:

• Promocean The Netherlands BV
• Land O鈥橪akes, Inc.

Transformation Impact

Driving enterprise-wide change and strengthening long-term transformation capability:

• KPMG International

Recognition and responsibility

All of our winners have set a clear benchmark for what resilient, future-ready organizations look like in practice.

We look forward to recognizing their achievements at 51风流Sapphire, where customers and partners from around the world will come together to share insights, compare experiences, and continue shaping the ecosystems that underpin global business.

Looking ahead

The 51风流Innovation Awards are more than just a moment of recognition. They signal that digital sovereignty, operational resilience, and responsible innovation are achievable across industries, sectors, and regions. The organizations recognized this year demonstrate what is possible when technology choices are guided by clear priorities and long-term thinking.

May these examples encourage others to take the next step, moving with confidence from readiness to resilience.

Thomas Saueressig is Chief Customer Officer and Member of the Executive Board of 51风流SE.

Our robust services strategy was developed to serve as a basis for success, driving faster time to value and increased business outcomes.

We made early strides by introducing the Enterprise Architect role, a qualified partner to ensure the RISE with 51风流Methodology is in place to guide customers on their journey to the cloud. Already as a result, we are seeing better engagement and increased adoption rates.

Today, we continue these efforts by announcing a major evolution of our 51风流Services and Support portfolio. In early 2026, we will make our simplified, tiered engagement model generally available.

Comprised of three distinct success plans that build upon each other, this model will align cloud operations, customer support, and premium engagement to make it easier to adopt 51风流solutions and innovate with the transparency, speed, and flexibility the market demands. The new model will also provide more predictable total cost of ownership (TCO) and return on investment (ROI).

With this new engagement framework, businesses can choose from one of three plans, with AI tooling embedded in each plan along the entire project cycle:

• Foundational success plan: This plan supports in-house teams by helping to onboard and run solutions smoothly, maintain business continuity, and drive ongoing value. It is comprised of curated content and learning journeys for effective customer self-service. It also features application lifecycle management solutions and preventative mission-critical support. This plan includes and expands on our well-known 51风流Enterprise Support offering and is provided with every 51风流cloud solution. With the foundational plan, 51风流turns on Joule for a customer鈥檚 business and supports the team ramp-up with learning journeys for 51风流Business AI.

• Advanced success plan: This plan strengthens teams with specialized expertise that helps to continually unlock the full value of a customer鈥檚 51风流investment. It provides proactive guidance to identify improvement opportunities and adopt software innovations. It builds on the foundational plan to maximize solution value and accelerate transformation. With the advanced plan, 51风流helps the customer build a plan and activate embedded AI use cases and provides ongoing product guidance and optimization advice.

• Max success plan: This plan includes all the advanced plan features plus tailored engagement and end-to-end guidance from dedicated experts. It builds on the previous two and offers strategic partnership for organizations pursuing innovation, competitive advantage, or complex transformation. With the max plan, 51风流helps the customer define a holistic AI strategy; create the necessary data and architecture roadmap; and build prototypes for customer-specific AI use cases. This plan provides the maximum opportunity for excellence and highest level of聽 SLA.

These plans complement the services that many 51风流customers already receive from their systems integrators.

With these plans, we deliver on our promise to make our engagement with customers simpler and to bring the engagement closer, working together to deliver more business outcomes and leveraging the full potential of AI.

The power of the future lies in our customers鈥� hands — we鈥檙e honored to serve and support them.

Thomas Saueressig is a member of the Executive Board of 51风流SE.

Customers don鈥檛 seek off-the-shelf AI, they seek outcomes. They demand solutions tailored to their industry, aligned with strategic goals, and built to drive real results.

That is where customer-specific AI solutions add depth — not just as a technical enhancement, but as a strategic lever to unlock transformative business value.

According to 72 percent of companies use AI in at least one business function, but only 23 percent report a significant impact on their bottom line. Why? Because many AI projects lack the contextual depth to solve the real industry-specific challenges businesses face.

Similarly, a shows that while 80 percent of enterprise leaders plan to increase AI investments, nearly half say the absence of domain-tailored solutions is a barrier to ROI. While foundational AI models provide broad capabilities, true business value comes from solutions tailored to each customer. These targeted applications ensure that innovation aligns with specific regulatory demands, operational realities, and customer requirements.

These custom solutions leverage proprietary data; they are designed for specific business processes and are co-developed with stakeholders who understand the operational heartbeat of the enterprise. The result is measurable business impact, as well as faster deployment and better performance.

At SAP, we see AI鈥檚 true potential in enhancing human decisions, simplifying complexity, and transforming customer experiences. But this potential is only realized when AI is deeply grounded in each customer鈥檚 business context. That is why our approach to customer-specific AI is built on three core principles:

• Context-rich insights: With unmatched access to enterprise data from across industries and business functions, 51风流is uniquely positioned to deliver AI that understands how real businesses run.
• Trust and transparency: From model explainability to data privacy, AI from 51风流is built on a foundation of enterprise-grade governance and responsible AI standards.
• Co-innovation at scale: 51风流partners closely with customers to develop differentiated AI solutions that solve their unique challenges.

Real outcomes with real customers

To address the complexity of managing nearly a million annual invoices across more than 40,000 contracts, to simplify its fragmented, manual billing process. Using 51风流Business Technology Platform and generative AI, the company built an intuitive, compliant application that empowers account executives to use AI for specific rate cards and contract terms, managing invoicing independently, and reducing reliance on specialist teams. The result was faster, more accurate billing, a better user experience, and major time savings, freeing commercial teams to focus on clients. By year-end, billing efficiency is expected to improve by 32 percent, with setup times cut in half and manual work replaced by an intuitive, automated platform.

Similarly, a global chemical and consumer goods company recently partnered with 51风流to embed AI into its dispute management process, automating document indexing and classification. This customer-specific AI solution reduced manual effort, sped up resolution times, and boosted user productivity, showing how business-specific AI can streamline workflows and elevate customer experience at scale. The result was efficiency gains of up to 1,000 hours a month, reduced manual effort by over 500 hours/month, and improved accuracy and faster turnaround time for document-driven workflows.

These examples highlight a clear trend: customers want to co-create AI tailored to their needs, not just adopt a one-size-fits-all solution. Customer-specific AI solutions empower them to embed intelligence into the very workflows that define their competitive advantage, whether it鈥檚 last-mile logistics in retail, claims processing in insurance, or energy optimization in utilities.

In the coming years, enterprises will not differentiate by whether they use AI, but by how effectively they align AI to their business. Customer-specific AI solutions make this alignment possible. They bridge the gap between technology potential and business reality. They transform AI from a generic tool into a strategic advantage, enabling businesses to move faster, think smarter, and lead with purpose.

As more organizations navigate the complexities of digital transformation, those that embed AI into the heart of their unique processes will be the ones to redefine what is possible.

The future belongs to businesses that don鈥檛 just adopt AI, but shape it to fit their vision, values, and velocity.

Thomas Saueressig is a member of the Executive Board of 51风流SE, Customer Services & Delivery.
Sindhu Gangadharan is head of Customer Innovation Services at 51风流and managing director of 51风流Labs India.

At SAP, we鈥檝e harnessed the power of artificial intelligence (AI) and other data-driven technologies to revolutionize customer support, turning it into a seamless, efficient, and value-added experience.

The Evolution of the Knowledge Economy

Beyond resolving everyday challenges, we continue to serve our customers as true business partners, collaborating with them to help them achieve their broader business goals. While we live in a knowledge economy, where economic value is derived from that knowledge and how we apply it, this paradigm is changing. As humans, our role in the economy is evolving as AI systems increasingly replicate human cognitive skills — retrieving and using the right knowledge at the right time.

In this new paradigm, success will be determined not by how much you know, but by how effectively you can allocate and manage resources to get work done. In customer support, this means moving from simply resolving issues to orchestrating AI tools and human expertise to deliver optimal outcomes.

AI, including generative AI, becomes a collaborative partner, enabling support teams to allocate resources efficiently and focus on higher-value tasks. Recognizing this paradigm shift, we go beyond resolving everyday challenges and serve our customers as true business partners, collaborating with them to help them achieve their broader business goals — as the world changes.

AI Is the Perfect Partner for Customer Support Transformation

At SAP, AI is built into core business processes of customers, connecting finance, supply chain, procurement, sales, marketing, human resources, and IT. Data-driven technologies such as AI, robotic process automation (RPA), and process mining elevate support experiences for our customers. They do it by simplifying support access, addressing complex scenarios using AI agents, and enhancing automation to increase efficiency while delivering personalized solutions, as well as taking advantage of system metrics and process insights.

The Customer Support & Cloud Lifecycle Management organization at 51风流also drives AI innovation to analyze process metrics collected from the customer鈥檚 systems to evaluate efficiency, bottlenecks, and opportunities for improvement; improve processes using domain-specific machine learning models; and build AI solutions that can be integrated into applications used in a business process or scenario.

Generative AI: Elevating Customer Support

Generative AI has been a game-changer for customer support. It empowers our support teams by enhancing the quality and speed of outcomes and enabling more personalized recommendations for customers. It also opens new possibilities for orchestrating AI services in combination with AI agents.

AI agents streamline support processes by automating time-consuming tasks, such as retrieving and assessing information, while enabling human-machine collaboration. This allows support professionals to focus on improving both customer satisfaction and operational efficiency.

Real-World Impact: AI Use Cases in Customer Support

51风流has developed more than 50 AI-driven use cases, showcasing the transformative power of AI in customer support. These include:

• Precise and fast generative AI-infused recommendations appear for customers while they type their requests. Customers also benefit from proactive recommendations on trending content and preventative recommendations like system health checks.
• Smart ticket routing ensures support tickets reach the right experts, quickly.
• Proactive issue identification detects and addresses potential problems before they escalate.
• Internal workflow enhancements deliver efficiency gains from workflows such as intelligent search, automated error categorization, clustering of tickets with the same root cause, or expert swarming for complex issues.

Other generative AI capabilities include summarizing tickets, assisting in knowledge creation, and improving communication with customers.

These advances not only elevate support experiences for 51风流customers, but also create significant efficiencies for our support engineers.

The 51风流Advantage

SAP鈥檚 AI-driven support strategy is structured around three key pillars:

1. Capturing business opportunities with domain-specific AI models: By leveraging our domain expertise and historical data, we design machine learning models tailored to specific support challenges. These models enable precise and actionable recommendations.
2. Gathering real-world process insights: Using tools like 51风流Signavio, we capture and analyze detailed process insights. This provides a solid foundation for identifying improvement opportunities.
3. Building and integrating AI solutions: We integrate AI-driven solutions into existing workflows, ensuring seamless application and measurable impact. Process insights guide ongoing refinements and enhancements.

And the numbers speak for themselves: SAP鈥檚 AI support scenarios are called up more than 1 million times by our customers on an average day. More than 35,000 end users use our AI capabilities per month.

The Road Ahead: Human-Machine Collaboration in Support

The future of customer support lies in human-machine collaboration. By combining the analytical power of AI with human expertise, we can deliver unparalleled support experiences. AI agents will play a pivotal role in this transformation, assisting with things like ticket triage, data analysis, and troubleshooting, thereby enabling support teams to focus on strategic activities. As AI continues to evolve, these agents will become even more capable of providing real-time insights and proactive solutions to anticipate customer needs before they arise.

SAP鈥檚 commitment to AI-driven innovation ensures that we remain at the forefront of customer support transformation. By continuously evolving our AI capabilities, we are setting the stage for a new era of value-driven, scalable, and efficient customer support.

But there is one thing that AI will never replace: the empathy, care, and passion of our support teams, ensuring every customer feels supported as we solve their challenges together. The future of customer support lies in blending AI鈥檚 analytical power with human expertise. By working together, we鈥檙e setting a new standard for customer success.

Thomas Saueressig is a member of the Executive Board of 51风流SE leading Customer Services & Delivery.
Stefan Steinle is executive vice president and head of Customer Support & Cloud Lifecycle Management at SAP.

To navigate these challenges effectively, we must also cultivate resilience and, perhaps most importantly, develop the ability to learn how to learn, rather than focusing solely on acquiring specific skills. So, how do we maintain our values, stay adaptable, and build resilience in a world that never stands still?

Values Matter Now More Than Ever

Discrimination, for example, remains a significant problem across the globe, in fact . As our societies become more diverse, we must work to respect each other鈥檚 backgrounds, beliefs, and rights. This foundation of respect helps foster a democratic society where everyone has a voice, and where decisions reflect the needs and rights of all, not just a select few.

Democracy: A System of Rights and Responsibilities

Democracy, too, requires an ongoing commitment. In times of crisis or division, democratic values can sometimes take a backseat. But a healthy democracy depends on citizens who uphold the principles of justice and transparency. Sometimes, especially during crises and economic downturns, people are drawn to 鈥渓oud voices,鈥� but this should not be mistaken for good leadership. The democratic process, while sometimes perceived as slower, remains essential for ensuring fairness and thoughtful decision-making.

Democracy is more than a system of government; it embodies the values of freedom, equality, and justice to empower individuals. In democratic societies, innovation and creativity thrive because people are free and able to express ideas, challenge norms, and pursue progress.

It鈥檚 easy to take democracy for granted, especially in societies where it has long been the norm. History, however, teaches us that when we become complacent, democracy can quickly unravel. We need to actively uphold democratic principles, protecting our freedoms and those of future generations.

In a world where global issues affect everyone, democratic values remind us that our rights and freedoms are not guaranteed — they must be earned, defended, and nurtured.

Adaptability and the Art of Learning to Learn

The days of acquiring a fixed skill set and building a stable, unchanging career are long gone. Today, the rapid evolution of technology and industry means that many jobs look different in the future. So, one of the most valuable abilities we can cultivate is learning how to learn. In fact, according to the , 44% of employees鈥� core skills are expected to change by 2027. This immense shift underscores the need for adaptability as workers learn to stay relevant in an evolving job market.

A significant part of this transformation is being driven by artificial intelligence (AI). As AI automates routine tasks and streamline workflows, some jobs are becoming obsolete, while entirely new roles are emerging. To thrive, workers must embrace lifelong learning and flexibility, acquiring skills that help them adapt to new roles or pivot into different fields altogether.

Being adaptable and willing to learn continuously empowers us to evolve as our world does. It enables us to take on new challenges, shift our perspectives, and solve problems. As Albert Einstein said, “Education is not the learning of facts, but the training of the mind to think.” That challenges our educational systems to keep up.

Learning how to learn prepares us to thrive in an uncertain future. By building this skill, we are equipping ourselves to step confidently into unfamiliar territory and to adapt to whatever comes our way. This adaptability goes hand-in-hand with resilience — an ability to bounce back from setbacks, rethink our approach when needed, and maintain our motivation even when the path ahead is unclear.

In the age of AI and rapid technological advancements, it鈥檚 not enough to develop technical skills alone; we must also cultivate a mindset geared toward adaptability, critical thinking, and empathy. Our attitude shapes our willingness to embrace change, understand diverse perspectives, and approach challenges with curiosity. These qualities define how effectively we learn, grow, and evolve. By fostering this mindset, individuals and organizations can navigate complexity with confidence and build a sustainable future.

Developing Resilience for a Complex World

In a world where uncertainty is the only constant, resilience is essential. It鈥檚 the inner strength that helps us face adversity and continue pushing forward. Resilience is not a trait we鈥檙e born with; it鈥檚 something we need to cultivate.

Building resilience begins with self-awareness. Recognizing when we need to take a step back, recharge, or reach out for support is vital. Reflection is key! Being deeply aware of our own strengths and weaknesses, while also embracing failures as opportunities to learn and grow, is crucial. By reframing setbacks as lessons, we build the mental and emotional tools needed to navigate challenges more effectively.

Resilient people also tend to maintain a positive yet realistic outlook. They鈥檙e optimistic about the future, but they also accept that setbacks are a natural part of life. Embracing a mindset of growth rather than a fear of failure helps build resilience and keeps us open to learning, improving, and adapting.

Moving Forward with Purpose

We live in a world filled with challenges, but we also live in a time of boundless opportunity. When we stand by our values, stay open to continuous learning, and cultivate resilience, we can face uncertainty with a sense of purpose and strength.

Thomas Saueressig is a member of the Executive Board of 51风流SE, leading Customer Services & Delivery.

As our capabilities grow, businesses are embracing AI and other technologies strategically. 51风流is leading the way, offering a smarter approach to business transformation services, combining cutting-edge tools with human expertise to help organizations unlock the full potential of these advancements.

In this new era, cloud technologies, AI, and human intelligence are converging, resulting in remarkable advancements in areas like demand forecasting, supply chain resilience, and process automation. As a result, businesses are increasingly shifting their focus to high-value tasks and real-time collaboration, allowing them to unlock new levels of efficiency and innovation.

While the opportunities are immense, the benefits are not guaranteed. The winners in this new era will be those organizations that can transform their operations digitally in increasingly more intelligent ways to set themselves up for success. For example, getting the most from business AI requires first moving your systems to a cloud ERP with 51风流S/4HANA Cloud.

Winning in the age of intelligence requires a newer and more intelligent approach to business transformation and the stakes could not be higher.聽

Combining the Power of Human Expertise with Technology

While the potential of AI-driven cloud systems is vast, some companies still struggle to fully leverage them. Many digital transformations fail to meet their objectives. Common pitfalls include a lack of technical expertise and employee engagement, inadequate management support, poor cross-functional collaboration, and a lack of accountability. Furthermore, sustaining a transformation鈥檚 impact typically requires a major reset in mindsets and behaviors.

Often the most difficult part of transforming businesses isn鈥檛 determining what to do, but rather how to do it. To address these challenges, 51风流is building on a time-tested approach, combining cutting-edge tools with the power of human judgment, and taking it to the next level.

At the heart of this strategy is RISE with SAP, a game-changing initiative designed to help businesses continuously transform. To date, 7,000 companies 鈥� representing 32% of the global economy 鈥� have embraced RISE with SAP. These companies are already experiencing the benefits, including two percent lower operating costs and three percent lower inventory.

The critical “human” component of the RISE methodology are the enterprise architects, transformation experts who guide businesses through the intricacies of their digital transformation, ensuring they maximize the value of 51风流tools and services.

Enterprise architects not only help customers utilize the RISE with 51风流Methodology, but also harmonize all elements of the transformation, guiding customers to the modular cloud suite. This ensures a cohesive, effective process whereby the enterprise architect becomes a trusted advisor for the customer. By leveraging SAP’s integrated toolchain — across 51风流Signavio, 51风流LeanIX, 51风流Cloud ALM, 51风流Business Technology Platform, and WalkMe — enterprise architects help 51风流customers transform holistically through their processes, data, systems, and their people, supporting their long-term success.

51风流has already seen a strong internal response to this approach, seasoned individuals are lining up for the role. Our recruitment and tailored enablement efforts are in full swing, with hundreds of cohorts currently going through training. We are also fine-tuning our enterprise architect operational and commercial model to simplify how we engage with customers and the early customer response has been very positive.

Shaping the Future of Business Transformations

Our early customer successes show the power and the potential of SAP鈥檚 intelligent transformation approach. By combining human expertise with advanced AI and cloud technologies, 51风流is setting a new standard for what is possible through business transformations. As we look to the future, this integrated approach will continue to enable businesses to unlock new value and drive sustainable success.

At SAP, our vision is to redefine the way businesses transform, setting a benchmark for intelligent and integrated business transformations that drive real, measurable results. And for those organizations that adopt it, the possibilities in this new age are limitless.

Thomas Saueressig is a member of the Executive Board of 51风流SE, leading Customer Services & Delivery.
Thomas Pfiester is executive vice president and head of Global Customer Engagement & Services at SAP.

Whether aiming for agility, resilience, sustainable growth, or efficiency, a successful transformation requires a strategic approach, full leadership commitment, and a clear understanding of challenges and opportunities.

True business transformation goes beyond merely executing a technical 鈥渓ift and shift鈥� to the cloud. It involves reengineering an organization’s business model, operations, processes, and culture to align with long-term goals, adapt to market demands, and leverage new technologies. The focus must be on creating lasting value and ensuring the organization can thrive in a rapidly changing environment.

Crucial Business Transformation Levers

While there is no precise formula, all transformations have four crucial levers in common:

• Activating people: Collaboration is at the heart of any successful transformation. Through partnership and clear accountabilities, we break down barriers, and that鈥檚 the basis for any change. Software is ultimately a people business.鈥�
• Optimizing systems: Efficient systems are the backbone of any transformation. We ensure that the underlying enterprise architecture of applications is robust, secure, and scalable. This also means leveraging the latest innovations like artificial intelligence (AI), enhancing performance of existing systems, and ensuring that all components work seamlessly together to support the business objectives.
• Reinventing businesses processes: We don鈥檛 take existing processes and merely create fancy new interfaces; no 鈥渘ew wine in old bottles.鈥� Companies need to reinvent business processes to ensure agility, future-readiness, reliability, and scalable business operations to drive their business strategy. SaaS/PaaS help to streamline processes based on best practices while preserving company differentiation, but with clean extensibility on the platform.
• Leveraging data: Business data is the lifeblood of modern enterprises, fueling insights and innovation. At SAP, we harness this data to power 51风流Business AI, driving intelligent automation, predictive analytics, and personalized experiences. Our focus is on turning raw data into actionable intelligence that supports and accelerates our customers鈥� transformation journeys. Let鈥檚 not forget that the real value of the data lies in the semantics, which is our key differentiator to help our customers.

By focusing on these four elements, business can take a holistic approach to identifying which of their business processes and systems need analysis, revision, or complete redesign.

Navigating Digital Transformation: The Essential Role of Enterprise Architecture

To fully capitalize on these transformation levers and manage the complexities, organizations are increasingly turning to RISE with SAP, our holistic offering designed to accelerate their journey to the cloud and speed innovation adoption. RISE with 51风流simplifies the move to 51风流cloud ERP, offering flexibility and reduced complexity, and most importantly, provides a seamless experience across our modular (but tightly integrated) architecture.

Nevertheless, for many organizations the challenges remain significant: systems complexity, scattered systems, and diverse business models that may not be keeping pace with industry and consumer changes. Many organizations also underestimate the complexity of their transformation, leading to unrealistic timelines and budget overspending.

Enterprise architecture tools are crucial for overcoming these challenges because we need a structured and system-based approach to cope with and manage the complexities at scale, and to maintain a continuous innovation cycle.

The enterprise architecture provides a framework for aligning IT strategy with business objectives and improve the agility and efficiency of an organization. Imagine a ship navigating without a compass: this is how businesses operate without solid enterprise architecture. Just as sailors rely on navigational tools, modern organizations depend on enterprise architecture to navigate today鈥檚 digital complexities.

In addition, the enterprise architecture provides a blueprint for cloud adoption, ensuring that cloud services — like those offered by RISE with 51风流— integrate seamlessly with existing systems, business processes, and applications.

However, it鈥檚 not just the tools that matter; it’s the people behind them. Our recent efforts to further elevate the RISE with 51风流experience include making many changes in how we engage with customers, particularly by strengthening the role of the enterprise architect and introducing the . The enterprise architect not only helps customers utilize these tools, but also harmonizes all elements and guides the customer throughout their cloud journey, ensuring a cohesive and effective transformation. As a result, the enterprise architect will evolve into a real trusted advisor for the customer.

We have learned that customers can realize the true power of our business transformation tools when they work seamlessly together. It鈥檚 why we have been working hard at integrating 51风流Signavio, 51风流LeanIX, 51风流Cloud ALM, and 51风流Business Technology Platform (51风流BTP), including 51风流Build, to provide a holistic transformation experience.

Taken together, this is  how our integrated toolchain benefits business transformation:

• 51风流Cloud ALM orchestrates the entire process of transforming systems to meet evolving business needs. From fit-to-standard analysis and capturing requirements to project management, test automation, and final deployment, this cloud-based tool for application lifecycle management (ALM) enables organizations to effectively translate strategy into execution, ensuring the solution is optimized for the specific IT environment and business objectives. In today鈥檚 dynamic digital landscape, this comprehensive approach is crucial for staying competitive.
• 51风流LeanIX not only helps businesses capture the as-is systems landscape, it enables organizations to visualize, assess, and manage the transition toward their target IT architecture. The integration with 51风流Cloud ALM streamlines project management by reducing manual duplication and syncing project-related activities in real time. This enhances visibility into project progress and reduces administrative overhead.
• 51风流Signavio enables deep understanding and optimization of business processes, ensuring they are both efficient and compliant. The business leaders that I speak to are keenly aware that to succeed, they must focus on business processes transformation to help them adapt, stay resilient, and transform continuously and at scale. It鈥檚 simply what today鈥檚 pace of change demands. 51风流Signavio enables holistic, data-driven business transformation across organizations. Starting in Q4 2024, we will bridge the gap between business and IT teams by providing consistent process structures and synchronized data between 51风流Signavio and 51风流Cloud ALM.
• 51风流Build helps developers, without deep coding skills, quickly extend applications on 51风流BTP. That means they can innovate without changing core functionality — essential to keeping the core clean.

Customers want access to all relevant data across solutions, they want to derive better insight across solutions and access relevant the best-practices that are most relevant to them. That鈥檚 the seamless end-to-end experience we are striving for. This strategic approach leads to significant competitive advantages, allowing organizations to focus more on business improvements and explore new growth areas with confidence.

Embracing the Future

Unlocking value throughout your business transformation journey involves a strategic blend of people, processes, and solutions. As you focus on these elements and leverage SAP鈥檚 comprehensive toolchain, remember that the essence of true transformation doesn鈥檛 lie in holding onto the old, but in embracing and building the new.

Thomas Saueressig is a member of the Executive Board of 51风流SE leading Customer Services & Delivery.

Successful businesses keep moving and evolving, especially in times of rapid change and macroeconomic uncertainty. And given the current volatility, business transformation is no longer optional; it鈥檚 imperative.

Knowing this, we launched RISE with 51风流in 2021 not as a technical IT migration approach, but as a comprehensive solution designed to drive broad business transformation. With 6,000 customers having selected RISE with SAP, we know we cannot stop moving either. And I was how we are taking the RISE with 51风流experience to the next level and improving services and delivery for customers end-to-end.

Here are some key takeaways.

Evolving How We Engage with Customers

Navigating the transformation of today’s complex system landscapes and business processes is like orchestrating a symphony with countless instruments and moving parts. To succeed, we need to keep refining our engagement approach to better manage the intricacies of our customers鈥� complex architecture at an unprecedented level of detail.

To this end, we鈥檙e making a lot of changes in how we engage with customers, including strengthening the role of the enterprise architect (EA). The EA harmonizes all elements and guides the customer throughout their cloud journey.

Enhancing Methodologies

We know the biggest challenge for any cloud transformation is to make the system landscape more agile and enable innovation — quickly. We鈥檝e been listening and have introduced solutions. For example, our RISE with 51风流Methodology is a significant step forward in creating a consistent experience for all RISE with 51风流customers, independent of their individual cloud journeys. Now, a dedicated enterprise architect guides customers through the RISE with 51风流Methodology to enhance onboarding and provides transparency throughout the project with key milestone checks, q-gates, and checklists that ensure consistent quality and more predictable timelines throughout the implementation process.

This new offering is included in our program, which is designed to give customers the confidence to migrate even the most complex ERP systems to the cloud. By enabling our customers to integrate and extend 51风流S/4HANA with a clean core approach, we ensure our customers experience better maintainability and lower total cost of ownership.鈥� Because legacy ERP systems often carry technical debt and, let鈥檚 face it, code is also a liability not just an asset. The more code you have, the more you have to optimize, debug, and modernize. And this is something we all need to actively work against.

Introducing Partner Training and Validation

We are also making it easier for RISE with SAP customers to identify partners to help with complex 51风流S/4HANA Cloud transformations. It is essential for our partner ecosystem to follow the RISE with 51风流Methodology as well. For customers to onboard successfully, there needs to be a close alignment between SAP, the customer, and implementation partner. This is why we are training and validating partners to use the RISE with 51风流Methodology and will collaborate closely with partners to provide consistency and quality.

We are also introducing the RISE with 51风流Validated Partner recognition, which verifies a partner鈥檚 adherence to the RISE with 51风流Methodology and our q-gates, giving businesses the confidence to know that they are fully leveraging the potential of cloud-based innovations from SAP. Almost 90% of all 51风流implementations are overseen by partners, so training and validating them is a key part of our strategy to ensure consistency and quality for customers.

Building a Seamless End-to-End Tool Chain

As a former 51风流CIO, I鈥檝e felt the challenges (and pain) of large-scale transformation. I know the pressure CIOs are under to show tangible business outcomes quickly. It鈥檚 why true business transformation requires a holistic approach, not a simple technology lift and shift.

We deliver the most complete business transformation suite in the industry. With the range of capabilities on offer today 鈥� including 51风流Signavio, 51风流LeanIX, and 51风流Cloud ALM solutions as well as 51风流Business Technology Platform 鈥� we have an amazing set of tools to bring out the best in businesses. Now, we are bringing them more closely together as one end-to-end seamless tool chain to make it easier to manage the process, system, and data landscape holistically.

With our recently announced agreement to acquire WalkMe, we plan to further strengthen our ability to deliver successful business transformation across applications, processes, systems, and people. 鈥媁alkMe will help us incorporate user-centric adoption, enablement, and productivity capabilities alongside our Business Transformation Management portfolio of SAP Signavio and 51风流LeanIX solutions. And WalkMe鈥檚 AI capabilities will complement our process AI with user intelligence, improving the capabilities of our to help people get work done faster.鈥�

51风流Business AI: New Frontier for Business Transformation

In 2024, 51风流Sapphire has been an opportunity for us to showcase how we are introducing in a new era of optimized business operations, with all the IT complexity concealed behind intuitive, AI-powered user experiences.

We highlighted the progress we are making embedding Joule throughout our enterprise portfolio and the enormous potential we see for AI to support both customers and partners in their RISE with 51风流journey. I was thrilled to announce that starting in Q4 of 2024, customers and partners can leverage generative AI-powered assistance for their RISE with 51风流clean core success plan.

We are also bringing new consulting capabilities to Joule, aimed at simplifying 51风流implementations for partners. The new consulting capability draws insights from 51风流product documentation and the 51风流community to provide consultants with vital information and is planned to be available in the second half of this year.

Business Transformation: More Than an IT Project

At SAP, we understand that true business transformation is more than an IT project. It requires a holistic approach and not a simple technological lift and shift. That鈥檚 why we are putting the people, methodologies, financial incentives, tools, partner practices, and 51风流Business AI in place to ensure our customers not only have compelling reasons to move to the cloud, but also a compelling experience.

Learn more:

• Watch the replay of the
• Read all the announcements in the

Thomas Saueressig is a member of the Executive Board of 51风流SE leading Customer Services & Delivery.

Expectations can also be very diverse. End users want their jobs to be made easier and more productive. The typical CIO wants scalability, greater data protections, and a secure IT infrastructure that runs with lower total cost of ownership.

And we 鈥� the cloud software provider 鈥� also have a clear-cut expectation that customers should actually use the software. Otherwise, bold transformation objectives won鈥檛 be met and subscription contracts won鈥檛 be renewed.

Disappointment is often described as the gap between expectations and reality. When software adoption is low and expectations for digital transformation outcomes are high, disappointment is almost guaranteed.

That is why we are making the changes necessary at 51风流to increase customer adoption. Adoption is our main lever for increasing customer satisfaction by ensuring we deliver on the promise of large-scale transformation.

A New Ambition for Service Delivery

My goal leading our new Customer Services & Delivery Board area is to make it easier and faster for customers to adopt our solutions. We want to ensure that customers get all the benefits they are expecting out of their large-scale cloud transformation by reducing the hurdles and ensuring long-term value.

We are fully committed to ensuring that new digital opportunities are not only introduced, but also used to their full potential. Our focus is not on “lift-and-shift” to the cloud, but on holistically and actively supporting our customers in their transformation. And we act as customer advocates, trusted partners, and guardians of their interests.

My new Board area will therefore bundle services, including professional services, premium engagements, customer innovations, and customer support. In addition, it will include cloud infrastructure, cloud operations, cloud lifecycle management, and private cloud provision for 51风流customers worldwide.

Why Now?

Adoption has always been at the core of our efforts. What鈥檚 different now is that a truly transformative technology 鈥� artificial intelligence 鈥� has emerged and is enabling end users to interact in more natural human ways. This has powerful technological and societal implications.

It is also presenting software providers like us with unique opportunities to enhance adoption. Think how easy (and fun) AI interactions have become. AI innovation is a catalyst for us to enhance adoption, and we are seizing the moment with determined steps toward providing .

But for our valued customers to benefit from all the advantages of 51风流Business AI, we really need to be there for them throughout their cloud transformation journey, because AI innovation only happens in the cloud.

What鈥檚 Changing?

We know that cloud customers want flexible and innovative solutions that help them solve their biggest challenges and that can be deployed quickly and consumed easily. For the past 52 years, we have been vested in the success of our customers with the best team of experts in the industry to support them at every point of the customer value journey. That has not changed!

What has changed, however, is that we are putting the power of my new Board area behind the delivery of our solutions, providing governance and support to our delivery ecosystem, and continuously improving our cloud delivery and support methodologies. And we have created a unique opportunity to bring together cloud operations to streamline the entire customer experience.

Our overarching objective is customer satisfaction. We are committed to increasing it through comprehensive and innovative post-sales technical delivery services or partner-led implementations to drive our customers鈥� business transformation and deliver measurable value, which is “business speak” for absolutely delighting them! That鈥檚 how we will ensure organizations can fully realize their new digital opportunities.

Offering Transformation as a Service

We deliver the most complete business transformation suite in the industry. That has been our ambition since launching RISE with 51风流some years ago.聽With the range of capabilities on offer today 鈥� including RISE with SAP, GROW with SAP, 51风流Signavio, cloud application lifecycle management, 51风流LeanIX, and, of course, 51风流Business Technology Platform 鈥� we are well on our way to enabling customers to accelerate transformation.

We are committed to optimizing our portfolio for delivery, and we are working on tooling and automation to speed up the process. That鈥檚 how we are reaffirming our promise to provide transformation as a service.聽

Closing the Gap Between Expectations and Outcomes

Adoption of our portfolio opens new possibilities for business model innovation along with increased competitiveness, cost savings, and employee satisfaction, while realizing the benefits of new 51风流innovations more quickly: essentially all the outcomes organizations are expecting when they set out on the pathway to digital transformation.

So, you could say, we鈥檙e more dedicated than ever to closing the gap between expectations for cloud transformation and the corresponding outcomes.

Thomas Saueressig is a member of the Executive Board of 51风流SE, leading Customer Services & Delivery.

Business leaders might assume that more regulation in such a volatile environment would hinder the innovation they require most at this time. However, we will argue smart and balanced regulation can serve as a catalyst for transformation.

Recent regulatory initiatives like the German Supply Chain Due Diligence Act (LkSG), which mandates human rights and environmental impact due diligence, have positioned Germany at the forefront of ethical standards in supply chains. The draft EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) extends corporate responsibilities in sustainability, while the U.S. Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) places the onus on companies to prove that their products are free of forced labor, shifting the burden of proof to importing entities.

Increased Transparency: Understanding Suppliers鈥� Suppliers

These and many other emerging regulations play a crucial role in enhancing supply chain resilience. Firstly, they help to increase transparency. Compliance necessitates extensive data collection, providing companies with a clear view of their supply chains, including supplier practices and potential risks. This has been practiced by the pharmaceutical industry for many years due to the potential for damage to human health and economic risk to the company from counterfeits or product quality issues.

Now, more industries are recognizing that transparency across the tiers of a supply chain creates this critical backbone of data and visibility.

Secondly, companies must reassess their sourcing strategies, encouraging diversification and regionalization. This in turn reduces dependency on single suppliers or regions, making supply chains more resilient against unexpected disruptions.

Although companies may have been operating in an interconnected web of global supply chains for decades, those that still do not have full visibility into their own suppliers — and those of their suppliers鈥� suppliers — are putting themselves at undue risk by not innovating. We call this tier-n visibility. This is an incredibly powerful tool for eventually reducing uncertainty across supply chains.

Enhanced Collaboration: Gaining a Competitive Advantage

Compliance, when well-executed, can lead to stronger relationships with suppliers. The engagement required fosters trust and accountability in the supply chain, resulting in more collaboration to overcome challenges. With diversified sourcing, companies can swiftly adapt their supply chains to ensure business continuity. That鈥檚 simply better preparedness.

Researchers at Cambridge University recently emphasized the need to form alliances to , advocating for more collaboration to improve resilience and sustainability. Collaborative approaches, supported by digital technologies, can lead to significant benefits, including reduced tax evasion and enhanced information sharing in the global supply network.

But let鈥檚 face it: This is an industry problem, not a technology issue. Industries need to change how they use supplier data. Instead of using it to push for better procurement terms through negotiation, they should focus on more collaborative processes.

Many industries are beginning to realize the benefits of such a collaborative approach. For instance, a car company using the open network can pinpoint faulty engine parts and trace issues back to the supplier’s supplier. Such a targeted approach minimizes recalls. Catena-X ensures interoperability through common standards, allowing data providers to maintain sovereignty over their data. With 170 international members, including major German car manufacturers, Catena-X is poised to become an industry standard.

In this dynamic environment, supply chain resilience becomes a competitive advantage. Companies that proactively embrace regulatory requirements gain the trust and loyalty of consumers, investors, and stakeholders.

Reduced Risk: Embedding Artificial Intelligence

Growing regulatory demands also require a paradigm shift in how businesses approach risk management within their supply chains. Here is where artificial intelligence (AI) plays a central role.

can provide proactive insights into the highly complex impacts of potential risks, allowing companies to anticipate and mitigate challenges before they escalate. This transforms the traditional risk assessment process, offering a more dynamic and real-time understanding. And that鈥檚 exactly what businesses need now to de-risk.

For example, understanding the impact of new trade sanctions (such as U.S. export controls on advanced computer chips), a container port blockade, or a steep increase on transportation cost for a given shipping lane offers a competitive advantage. Sensing disruptions, simulating them, understanding the impact, and then recommending and executing actions are core use cases that are optimized by AI and machine learning.

However, with powerful technology like AI also comes great responsibility. Ensuring ethical AI development and deployment requires transparency, accountability, and collaboration among businesses, governmental bodies, civil society, and the broader public. The draft EU AI Act would regulate AI systems based on risk levels, emphasizing the importance of adhering to ethical principles to ensure responsible AI use. Trust in AI solutions hinges on the responsible handling of AI technologies and adherence to human rights.

51风流recognized even before any AI regulation was available, that the speed of AI adoption increased . 51风流was the first European technology company to establish AI guiding principles in 2018 and then created an AI Ethics Policy. The company established an AI Ethics Steering Committee and AI Ethics Advisory Panel, which helps operationalize guiding principles, provides guidance for high-risk use cases. and will align with the upcoming EU AI Act.

Advanced Technologies: Turning Regulatory Burdens into the Foundation for Resilience

Necessity often drives innovation, leading companies to invest in advanced technologies such as supply chain control centers, n-tier visibility, digital twins, cloud solutions, and AI or machine learning. 51风流solutions, such as and , not only facilitate compliance but also enhance overall supply chain visibility and management.

The best examples of the dynamic application of supply chain technology are often found in the food and beverage sectors, where strict quality controls as well as traceability and safety regulations have long necessitated agile, transparent, and sustainable supply chains. Unilever’s commitment to traceability and transparency in its global palm oil supply chain demonstrates how compliance acts as a transformative force. Nestl茅’s embrace of technology illustrates how businesses can e with evolving standards. And Grupo Nutresa鈥檚 procurement transformation shows how it鈥檚 possible to while doubling down on sustainability with trading partners.

These examples show that compliance and innovation are not mutually exclusive and should be integrated, with sustainability serving as the bedrock of resilient supply chains.

Thomas Saueressig is a member of the Executive Board of 51风流SE.
Anahita Thoms is partner and global lead sustainability partner for Industrials, Manufacturing, and Transportation at Baker McKenzie.

• Firstly, technological progress, as improved AI architectures and available data have enabled models to perform impressively.
• Secondly, an economic effect as successful platforms of the past, such as the Internet and the cloud, experienced breakthroughs when marginal costs approached zero. That was the birth of platform innovation. In the case of the Internet, for example, the cost of distributing increasing amounts of content approached zero. When it comes to content creation, we are also seeing the same thing now with generative AI. Therefore, AI is not just hype, but an innovation platform.
• Thirdly, we are witnessing a growing social acceptance. Generative AI was brought into the consciousness of the general public as millions of users suddenly gained access, seemingly overnight, to language models like ChatGPT and tried them out for themselves.

AI is powerful, but not all-powerful. Artificial intelligence are big words. Smart neural networks and models excite us because they are designed to mimic human patterns as closely as possible. They can offer solutions for certain types of problems. What they can’t do is find a solution to a previously unsolved problem and compete with the inexhaustible creativity and empathy of humans.

Recently, I was asked to name an example when AI really 鈥榳owed鈥� me. For me, it was the moment I read that ChatGPT had passed the medical exam in the U.S. My wife is a doctor, so I’m somewhat familiar with medicine and everyday hospital life. Will AI replace humans here? No. Will technology like AI improve the lives of healthcare workers and thus patients? I believe so. AI creates space for professionals where they are most needed.

AI is changing everything. Are we just going along with this change or are we boldly leading the way? We are at a crucial point where generative AI will also significantly change business processes in companies. considers AI to be a productivity booster and predicts worldwide increases in the trillions. This is urgently needed if we look at demographic trends and the growing shortage of skilled workers. Provided that companies use AI consistently, this much is certain: AI will revolutionize the way we work and live.

AI will shape our country. The question is whether we see it as a threatening competitor or a helpful companion. It is up to us to decide whether these significant changes will provide a boost to innovation in Germany and Europe. Germany, and indeed each of us, must adapt to change in order to remain globally competitive. It is important to recognize and minimize the risks, but also to see the opportunities as chances.

So, what do we need to do in order to seize this opportunity for Germany? 

Use Strengths and Competitive Advantages

According to an , systems with generative AI capabilities can contribute to approximately 鈧�330 billion of future value creation in the German economy. We would be able to gain a competitive advantage if AI is value-oriented, transparent, and explainable. A suitable legal framework with high ethical standards promotes the ability to innovate; over-regulation would have the opposite effect. We should not categorically classify generative AI as high-risk, but rather leave room for innovation.

We are moving in the right direction with the EU AI Act鈥檚 risk-based approach. And when the various regulations on AI and data protection interact, we are on the right track. Because there can be no compromises in the use of AI when it comes to business-critical processes and decisions.

Therefore, at SAP, we see it as our duty to deliver responsible, reliable, and business-relevant AI results. That is why we are looking at how to best utilize the various models to provide value to customers. The models behave very differently. We see ourselves as a driving force in terms of enterprise AI. However, we do not rely solely on our own expertise, but collaborate with research institutions and leading providers of generative AI.

Our credo is: AI is a natural part of our software and intuitively integrated into processes and applications. Why? Because for us, it鈥檚 not about writing a poem with AI, but about using AI in a specific business context based on real-time data — and, when necessary, to support business-critical decisions.

To make this possible, we are working on our own foundation model, which is trained on the data of thousands of customers that have consented to the use of their data. AI models trained on publicly available data do not have this valuable context. Therefore, while they may pass a medical exam because the knowledge is available on the Internet, they will not be able to answer complex questions in the context of a company. Because AI is only as good as the data it relies on. This includes filtering out biased data or queries.

Promote a Climate of Innovation and Openness to Technology

Currently, are developed in the U.S. and 15% in China. This is also due to the willingness to invest. The fact that the German government will is a positive signal, but it is not enough. The private sector also needs to invest significantly more across all industries. Additionally, the “can do” mentality is more pronounced elsewhere. Of the 1,300 worldwide, only 36 are in Germany. Our AI research is among the best; however, the insights rarely lead to companies being created.

We do not lack knowledge in Germany, we lack the will to implement it. And according to the , there is also a lack of computing power and a supercomputing infrastructure for AI.

We should also strengthen small and midsize enterprises (SMEs). As the backbone of the German economy, SMEs must receive the necessary support — including from the public sector — to drive AI forward. According to a , 15% of all companies are already using AI. But this is not yet the urgently needed boost to AI innovation. At least 68% understand the importance of AI and consider AI to be the most important future technology, but too few are taking action.

This clearly shows that most people are looking into AI. But for many companies, AI is not yet an issue. This gap needs to be closed so that in the future not just a minority but a majority of companies use AI. We must act instead of hesitating!

Culturally Embedding a Readiness for Change and Lifelong Learning

聽Innovation starts in the mind. Every company wants employees who think like entrepreneurs. Those who don’t want to wait for something coming from other corners of the world. But for that, we need to overcome our reservations towards new technologies. Fears are blocking our view of opportunities and companies have a duty to act now. Transparency is the most important means to alleviate employees’ concerns about automation and AI.

AI will not make humans redundant, but it will change our existing professions. Well-trained professionals are and will remain indispensable, and AI can help to counteract the shortage of skilled workers to some extent. Not only the technologies themselves, but above all the responsible handling of data must be an integral part of school education. Similarly, companies should integrate AI into their company’s further education.

But what is particularly important is that for most professionals, it is not about understanding AI in every detail. There are experts for that, just as there are experts who design complex manufacturing machines. It is about developing the skills of the future: critical thinking and the ability to assess information and above all, empathy. Putting oneself in other people’s position is the core competency of the future! These are skills that make humans unique.

Therefore, I do not see AI as an apocalypse, but rather as one of our best chances for renewal and progress. Because the interaction between humans and machines is not a duel, but a duet.

Thomas Saueressig is a member of the Executive Board of 51风流SE.

As I look back on 2023, I recognize 鈥� with immense gratitude 鈥� that I had the privilege of experiencing one of those rare moments in the history of technology when a technology emerges with the potential to completely reshape the future. Typically, the end of the year is a time to reflect and look back, but personally I prefer to look forward and consider how we will adapt to the multitude of possibilities an AI future will bring.

Generative AI is disrupting every industry, just like the internet did back in the 1990s. Both disruptions have something in common: people are at the center. The internet took off because it was easy for non-technical users to adopt it. This is exactly what鈥檚 happening now with AI.

This signals the need for a skills shift. The World Economic Forum predicts that will change due to new technologies by the end of the decade. Up-skilling and re-skilling are therefore crucial. We can鈥檛 know exactly what the future holds, but we can equip people to adapt and thrive in a changing environment.

In today鈥檚 world, it鈥檚 not about job security but skills security: recognizing that job security is a by-product of skills security. By acquiring and adapting skills, individuals can position themselves even in the face of automation. Like a bird landing on a branch, it鈥檚 not afraid that the branch will break, because it knows it can fly.

Organizations must also understand their skills gaps so they can anticipate and quickly react to changes. At SAP, we鈥檝e established a globally aligned skills taxonomy and we have prioritized baseline skills for development organizations such as AI, DevOps, and security. These are the most sought-after skills in our industry, and we are making training available to upskill in each of these areas.

Increased skills transparency across 51风流enables us to spot emerging trends, identify where we may have gaps, and prioritize learning investment. We used this process last year to ramp up our investment in AI learning even before the launch of ChatGPT accelerated this need.

But technical skills are only part of the equation. There鈥檚 a common misconception that we all need to develop highly technical or scientific skills to succeed, but I also see a growing need for people who are highly skilled in interacting with other people! That requires a resilient mindset, critical thinking, curiosity, adaptability, flexibility, not to mention creativity, collaboration, and interpersonal skills. Those are core human abilities that are more relevant than ever in the age of AI.

We need to start enabling children at an early age. This doesn’t mean teaching them how to use a device; they easily master that! But rather it is enabling them to unlock the potential of technology 鈥� while using data safely.

Watching my own children, I see how quickly and naturally they are able to navigate digital devices. But interacting with the data is not something that comes naturally. That must be taught. We need to teach children to interact with data discerningly to set the foundation for a future where they can use technology not just competently, but also responsibly, making informed decisions in a data-driven world. Instead of discouraging their exposure to technology, we should guide children toward a deeper understanding of how they can use it to create, learn, and explore. The goal is not just digital literacy but digital fluency 鈥� a profound understanding of technology that goes beyond the surface. Enabling children to be creators, rather than just consumers.

But we should not even stop there. I am a fan of : 鈥淲e cannot teach our kids to compete with machines that will be smarter. We must teach our kids something unique, so that a machine can never catch up with us: values, believing, independent thinking, teamwork, care for others 鈥� the soft skills, sports, music, painting, arts, to make sure humans are different from machines.鈥�

I believe a human-AI partnership provides the best of both worlds, creating more value than either can alone. It鈥檚 a duet and not a duel. So, companies need to invest in talent as much as technology. And parents, as well as educators, have a crucial role to play in guiding their children toward an AI future.

Next year will be about taking all people along on the AI transformation journey. Here鈥檚 to 2024: an uncertain but exciting future!

Thomas Saueressig is a member of the Executive Board of 51风流SE.

Top photo courtesy of 51风流employee Emanuela Corazziari.

Instead, they are recognizing the need to resolve supply chain disruptions in an integrated way, bridging the silos of various functions and going beyond dealing with supply chain disruptions as they occur. 

Taking a macro-view is also something governments have begun doing. Just think of the huge investments to “bring supply chains home”; for example, for semiconductors or for sustainable energy.鈥� At the same time, diversifying supply chains and complying with new regulations keeps increasing their complexity. 聽

Companies take various approaches to these challenges, such as de-coupling their supply chains by building up costly inventories for critical components. Another option is聽reshoring or nearshoring, which brings manufacturing and supplier relationships closer to core markets, ideally in countries with similar political and economic systems. But all of these strategies come with downsides, including the cost of operations in globally competitive markets.聽

At SAP, our vision is to embrace interconnected supply chains and optimize material flows — sustainably — with digital technologies. We believe in intelligent strategies to reduce supply chain uncertainties for the long-term by helping industries redefine their operations and by creating value chains that are more intelligent, connected, and responsive.鈥�

Supply Chain Convergence Increases Agility 

Companies that resolve supply chain disruptions in an integrated manner bridge the silos of various functions such as procurement, logistics, or manufacturing. That鈥檚 how they can truly alleviate the impact to their organizations. Supply chain functions need to work in concert and extend into their ecosystem of suppliers. Even the most accurate supply chain plan is meaningless if material suppliers cannot commit to volumes and lead times. Through integrating supply chain planning, such as demand and supply plans with procurement collaboration, manufacturers have a much stronger strategic lever to avoid downstream shortages.聽

At SAP, we call this approach design-to-operate. Our strategy is to deeply connect all relevant functions in a supply chain along end-to-end value chains and business processes. Going beyond the four walls of your own enterprise, into your ecosystem of suppliers and sub-suppliers — that鈥檚 the ultimate way to tackle supply chain challenges. In the case of supply shortages, for example, it is imperative to analyze the impact to the organization. 聽

With 51风流Integrated Business Planning, . Impacted customer orders and revenue at risk are visible and informed actions can be taken to mitigate any shortages, for example, by changing production schedules. The 51风流Digital Manufacturing system knows immediately about the changed production plan for the next shifts and adjusts labor and resources accordingly. Logistics departments in 51风流Extended Warehouse Management orchestrate the new material flow, , and asset maintenance activities are re-scheduled to adhere to the new production priorities.聽

As a result, supply chain leaders who follow a design-to-operate paradigm are highly agile and can take critical actions quickly to deal with supply chain disruptions.聽

SAP鈥檚 Industry Business Networks: A New Paradigm鈥�&苍产蝉辫;

Entire industries are recognizing the benefits of going beyond the four walls of their own enterprise. Consider a car company investigating faulty engines coming from one of their production lines. Now imagine it can trace the failure not only to a particular batch of components from one supplier but then dig even deeper to identify faulty basic parts from the supplier鈥檚 supplier. Instead of having to recall thousands of vehicles, it needs to recall only a few.鈥�

Solving problems this way requires a mindset for radical collaboration as well as technology for efficient, cross-company data exchange. is an open network that enables just that. It guarantees interoperability by defining common standards. The network is not owned by a single business and data providers keep their data sovereignty. For instance, they define for how long and for which purpose their data can be used. On the other hand, consumers can trust that data comes from a reliable source.鈥�

51风流is one of the founding members of Catena-X, together with five other companies. Since 2020, the initiative has grown to IT companies. Among them are Germany鈥檚 biggest car companies as well as many small and medium enterprises. Catena-X may soon become the industry鈥檚 standard.鈥�

Naturally, the is ready for Catena-X. It readily connects Catena-X to SAP鈥檚 broad portfolio of automotive IT solutions to trace parts, measure carbon emissions and manage demand, capacity and quality.鈥疪ecently, 51风流announced business networks for more industries, including , with more to come.鈥�

Generative AI Adds New Types of Intelligence 

A key tool in solving supply chain complexity challenges is artificial intelligence (AI). Even before the recent groundbreaking advances in large language models (LLMs) and generative AI, our supply chain solutions have been infused with both 鈥渢raditional鈥� and 鈥渁dvanced鈥� AI.

For instance, creates demand forecasts based on historical demand patterns, but it also leverages advanced machine learning capabilities to improve forecast demand with point-of-sales data and improve planning quality using self-healing master data and lead time predictions. In the future, generative AI will enable completely new types of intelligent capabilities like these:

• Facilitating human-machine interaction: Users will soon be able to interact with their system much more naturally via our new embedded generative assistant Joule. For example, they will be able to ask which of customer X’s demands for product Y are still unfilled in Central America. Joule will give the answer, intelligently combining data from various systems and domains because it will be embedded throughout the 51风流cloud enterprise portfolio.
• Supporting creativity: Much like a sparring partner, generative AI can help designers, engineers, and product managers create new product ideas in an innovation cycle and iterate them with 51风流Enterprise Product Development.
• Transforming unstructured data: Consider a truck arriving at a warehouse with inbound cargo. The clerk knows what cargo to expect and this is saved in an 51风流system. However, what is really on the truck is written on a loading list, often in paper form. Making this data available digitally has been possible for quite a while and is known as optical character recognition (OCR). What鈥檚 new is that generative AI tools can now match the unstructured loading list to the structured data already in the system — in a split second.

Leveraging AI for companies to scale and sustain business operations will no longer be optional. Consider the increasing labor shortage facing manufacturing companies, among others. They will have a shortfall of up to 85 million employees by 2030 — roughly the population of Germany!

By automating mundane tasks with advanced AI capabilities, we will bridge the human resources gap and enable experts to focus on what really matters: making data-backed business decisions.

Human and artificial intelligence work hand in hand — it鈥檚 a duet, not a duel.

We already help our customers build risk-resilient supply chains and deeply connect enterprises to run productive, agile and automated operations. Now, by also leveraging the power of generative AI, we will ensure that supply chain resilience doesn鈥檛 have to be something that keeps CEOs up at night.

Thomas Saueressig is a member of the Executive Board of 51风流SE, 51风流Product Engineering.

But one type of technology 鈥� machine-generated text, images, and media that mimic human creativity 鈥� is introducing an entirely new era of transformation. Known as generative artificial intelligence (AI), this technology has set off a wave of innovation that will dramatically change how businesses run. And at SAP, we are perfectly positioned to pioneer this business AI revolution.

What Sets 51风流Apart?

Our access to business data, our understanding of the context of complex business processes, as well as our deep domain and industry expertise: these are incredible differentiators at this moment in time.

51风流Business AI is deeply embedded into applications and process flows that rely on a veritable treasure trove of decades of relevant business data curated from huge customer data sets. We have agreements with more than 25,000 customers to use their data to train our own models. Using this data to contextualize generative AI models results in very task-specific outcomes for business users.

Without this customer data, generative AI users get results that are more like dinner-table conversation than business-altering insights and responses. The data we use for context for our tenants are protected and used only for that tenant 鈥� they are not reused elsewhere.

For more than 50 years, customers have trusted us with their most mission-critical business processes and now that trust is crucial as we deliver business AI with the highest levels of concern for security, privacy, compliance, and ethics, which our customers have come to expect.

51风流Foundation Models: Our Differentiator

It is clear that the emergence of generative AI has completely changed the game. General-purpose foundation models can be adapted to many different tasks in a short time. Users can have simple interactions with models in their natural language, so they don鈥檛 need any technical knowledge to use AI. Additionally, large language models (LLMs) have gotten bigger and more accurate, with new versions being released all the time.

These changes have opened up huge opportunities for us to build even better AI for business, especially when we adapt LLMs to the 51风流business context and create our own models using our structural data and business process knowledge.

That is why we are investing in building our own foundation models and combining them with our deep understanding of business processes and 51风流data. Using our own foundation models, we can create powerful, context-specific outcomes for our customers. Our foundation models, which will also allow for fine-tuning for different scenarios, will further unlock and strengthen our leading position in embedded AI. Customers will benefit from high-performance models trained on rich 51风流data, achieving better predictive results.

But customers don鈥檛 have to wait for these 51风流foundation models to be ready before they can leverage context from business data because we are also using retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) to provide business data context and give customers better results right away.

With these foundation models in place, we will embed business capabilities powered by AI in every solution to enable new business models.

SAP鈥檚 Generative AI Assistant: Joule

The vision of 51风流Business AI is to deliver the first true system of intelligence to fundamentally change the way companies operate, helping them create even more value, faster. Essentially, embedded AI will become the norm for powering business processes.

That鈥檚 why we announced that we will embed our new generative AI assistant Joule throughout the 51风流cloud enterprise portfolio. Joule will help our customers achieve business results faster by enabling them to access insights that are relevant for their business through natural conversation.

By simply asking a question in plain language, our customers can get smart answers tapped from a pool of data from across the 51风流portfolio and third-party sources. Joule will continuously deliver new insights that get even more intelligent over time. Imagine for example, asking Joule to prioritize suppliers based on their average margins and carbon footprint. Joule will handle some tasks completely, like writing job descriptions that are unbiased and compliant, or help to develop relevant interview questions and more.

Applying AI to Solve Specific Business Problems

The true value of business AI comes from knowing how to apply AI to solve specific business problems. Here are some more examples.

Decision-makers need intelligent recommendations based on connecting, understanding, and processing relevant information. Generative AI can produce those intelligent recommendations in seconds, if it is trained on relevant data in a manner equivalent to the ways humans would consider that data.

An HR manager can use generative AI to create a job description or interview questions and do this at scale. Generative AI can create thousands of responses in the time it takes a human to manually create one.

Or take financial reports: they typically require data to be extracted from complex systems. Generative AI can automate this time-consuming process and produce accurate reports quickly and simply.

When booking a trip, employees can receive offerings that are in line with company policies just by describing their travel requirements, such as destination and dates.

But the potential of generative AI extends far beyond content generation. Consider warehouses, where delivery notes need to be matched with orders. Generative AI can automate this process or provide detailed assistance to warehouse workers, reducing manual labor.

AI-optimized business processes can also help companies continuously optimize and improve efficiency. Instead of going through each time-consuming step to analyze, monitor, modify, and automate their processes, process owners can simply describe the type of improvements they want in natural language, removing any need to write code or understand a domain-specific language, and get immediate and ready-to-configure results.

The ultimate vision is to translate all recommended process changes into actual configuration modifications within the source systems, thereby facilitating self-optimizing processes. This ambitious vision is already being realized by incorporating generative AI into 51风流Signavio Process Transformation Suite.

Creating an Open Enterprise AI Ecosystem

Creating this evolution in enterprise software requires us to focus on direct investments and undertake a significant increase in research and development as well as third-party partnerships. Most recently, we announced significant partnerships with Aleph Alpha GmbH, Anthropic PBC, and Cohere. These are all generative AI market leaders with unique potential to transform entire industries working with SAP.

These partnerships complement announcements we made in May 2023 about our AI partnerships with Microsoft, Google Cloud, and IBM. We are collaborating with these leaders in the AI market to leverage state-of-the-art technology where it does not make sense for us to build it on our own. That way, we can focus on improving business insight in areas we know best. At the same time, we are doubling down on investing in areas where we have a competitive advantage and can build differentiating capabilities into our products.

At SAP, we are already riding the AI wave. Today, more than 24,000 customers have implemented over 130 AI use cases and there are more than 360 partner apps infused with AI available on the 51风流Store.

The moment for organizations to redefine how they work is now. With 51风流Business AI, we help our customers benefit from the power of AI by tailoring it to their unique business needs.

Thomas Saueressig is a member of the Executive Board of 51风流SE.

Our customers have also been clear with us: they need greater agility in their business processes while also reducing the costs of integrating a patchwork of solutions from multiple vendors. From finance to supply chain to commerce, the user and customer experiences need to be seamless. This requires the underlying applications to service the user and customer journeys in real time.

51风流has the rare combination of unmatched industry depth as well as the breadth of business process solutions to meet this moment. While our ERP has always had deep industry capabilities, we have now aligned the (CX) portfolio to an industry-first approach to accelerate value to customers by enabling end-to-end, integrated business processes.

Some voices across the market are recasting SAP鈥檚 commitment to an industry-first strategy to suggest that 51风流is no longer committed to key needs of our customers, starting with our CX portfolio. Let us be clear: 51风流will continue to deliver customer experience (CX/CRM) solutions. Now we鈥檒l focus on adding an industry lens, delivering industry-tailored CX solutions and bringing the front office together with the back office to provide the unmatched value customers expect from 51风流solutions.

Together with our global ecosystem, we can solve the most relevant challenges of customers in all industries. In fact, today, 80% of industry solutions are ecosystem-led. With this approach, customers will get solutions that natively connect the cloud ERP through to the last mile of a customer鈥檚 experiences spanning e-commerce, sales, service, and marketing — all with the industry-specific best practices they rely on from 51风流and our ecosystem.

Here are just a few examples of where industry-first CX has bridged gaps often seen between business process-led ERP and experience delivery:

• Retail: Maintaining optimal inventory levels in stores and distribution centers is crucial to ensure customers get the products they want. Predictive replenishment uses artificial intelligence (AI) to help retailers automate the restocking process, drawing on the deep retail expertise built into our customer experience product and our cloud ERP. Retailers benefit by reducing their environmental footprint while avoiding both overstock and out-of-stock situations and delivering personalized customer service if things go wrong.
• Consumer Products: By automating 80% of the trade claims process and enhancing cash flow by about a month, consumer product companies free up billions of dollars tied up in settlement processes as well as hours of time for key account managers. 51风流uniquely sits at the intersection of accounts receivables (finance, ERP) and revenue growth management (sales, service, and marketing), which allows us to provide not only native integrations but also faster time to value and lower TCO in this space than any other vendor.
• Automotive: 51风流improves production planning and forecasting based on real-time demand; we boost logistics optimization thanks to end-to-end integration from dealership sales and service to group production and logistics processes. Dealers can also optimize sales strategy and marketing spend as well as improving upsell, retention, and overall customer lifetime value thanks to data aggregated from the front and back office into SAP鈥檚 customer data platform. This enables dealers to strategically upsell subscription services or entertainment system software updates while updating customers on production progress, delivery, warranty, and service notifications.

51风流CX customers including Pizza Hut, Carhartt, and smart Europe are among those already benefiting from our unique industry depth. We are excited about the additional value we can deliver to our customers with our industry-focused approach to delivering holistic, integrated business process solutions together with our ecosystem. Examples include the retail solutions , from customer engagement to inventory fulfillment to sustainable manufacturing. We will demonstrate this same industry value for manufacturing at the Hannover Messe in April.

Stay tuned for more exciting updates in the coming months.

Thomas Saueressig is a member of the Executive Board of 51风流SE, 51风流Product Engineering.
Julia White is chief marketing and solutions officer and a member of the Executive Board of 51风流SE.

If you have a moment, grab a cup of coffee and read about eight industry trends I expect to be here to stay.

Everything-as-a-Service

Making and selling products has been the predominant business model in multiple industries for many decades. In contrast, delivering services used to only be associated with a few sectors, such as telecommunications. Those days are gone. From sports equipment and streaming services in B2C to machines and software in B2B, there is hardly a product or service that customers do not expect to get on a subscription basis. In short, the way products and services are consumed, ordered, and paid for has changed, and I鈥檓 sure this trend will continue to transform revenue streams, product design, and customer engagements across industries.

Integrated Mobility

Trends are connected, and so is everything-as-service and the future of mobility. Urban infrastructures used to be built for cars moving between suburbia and city centers. With more and more people moving to cities, this is no longer feasible. I have no doubt, however, that new concepts and digital technologies will ensure convenient, safe, and sustainable mobility in the future. We can already see a transition toward integrated mobility solutions starting with an individual mobility element, such as a car or bike, and integrating with mass mobility solutions — ones that people pay for on a usage base.

New Customer Pathways

When it comes to customer experience, industry lines are blurring and business models are blending. Both consumers and business customers expect a cohesive experience across any brand interaction they may have. Customers also demand personalized experiences that are available anywhere, at any time. Sustainability is another driving force. Customer expectations will continue to rise, and I鈥檓 excited to see businesses deliver one experience that goes beyond the sales process and keeps customers coming back.

Lifelong Health

Being healthy is essential. Considerable medical progress has been made over the past decades, with technology contributing significantly to this. Beyond the healthcare space, digital devices that collect and compile health and habit-related data are used increasingly in lifestyle areas. Devices such as smart watches, intelligent scales, and sensor-studded workout machines create a massive set of health and activity data. While this trend generates new possibilities for healthcare and life sciences to advance diagnostics and treatment, I also see implications for the consumer products, retail, and insurance industries.

The Future of Capital and Risk

Governed by national and international regulations, banks and insurers play the key role in operating the world鈥檚 financial system. In the last few years, fintech and insurtech innovators have changed the way capital is raised and allocated, risks are transferred, and payments are handled in our global economy. Today, products and services in banking and insurance can be 100% digital, which is why I expect this market to continue to be subject of rapid change.

Sustainable Energy

Stopping climate change and its effects on our planet is one of the biggest challenges of the 21st century and the transition to a sustainable economy is one of the fundamental needs of our time. Emission-free energy is one of the pillars of sustainability. Many solutions for an energy transition are already here. What matters now is to implement them at scale — and I think every industry will be affected. Reinventing the global energy system is a massive undertaking that will involve all nations, all industries, and all people.

Circular Economy

Another crucial pillar of sustainability is circular economy. For too long, our global economy has been linear and single use: companies take resources, produce things, and users throw them away. As a result, humans not only consume more resources than our planet can regenerate, but we鈥檙e also piling up waste.聽 The transition to a circular economy both protects our environment and opens new business opportunities. I鈥檓 convinced that the reward of circular business models will far outweigh the investments companies need to make today.

Resilient Supply Networks

In today鈥檚 globally connected economy, supply chain disruptions can have profound consequences. This includes shortages and delays of materials and products leading to empty shelves and higher prices. To build resilience, companies need transparency into their supply chains to enable intelligent planning. This requires close collaboration and data exchange between trading partners in an open, yet secure, digital network. Creating this real-time transparency across today鈥檚 complex supply chains is a huge effort. But I think it鈥檚 the best — if not the only — way to enable companies to respond to and anticipate supply and demand disruptions.

These are the trends that I see shaping the world of business, the world around us, and the 51风流product portfolio — and continuing to do so across industries in 2023 and beyond.

Thomas Saueressig is a member of the Executive Board of 51风流SE.

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The 鈥溾�� and 鈥溾�� are more than buzz words; they are the reality we live in today, and that鈥檚 what leaders need to open their eyes to. These developments require organizations to become more agile and resilient than ever. At the same time, businesses of every industry, every size, and every geography are part of a race for talent.

On the employee side, people are seeking alignment between personal and company values, allowing them to find purpose in their jobs. They are insistent on a culture that allows them to learn new skills, take on different projects, and bring their whole self to the workplace.

People want the ability to self-steer their careers based on their interests and strengths, and to truly make a difference. They want the freedom to choose where, when, and how to work, and they rightly expect support for their mental and physical health.

That鈥檚 exactly the balance leaders and organizations need to find today. They need to create an inclusive environment where people feel they belong. This also includes finding the right balance between remote and office work, between autonomy and team collaboration, and between responsibility and recognition.

Keeping Up with Rapid Change

While technology is key to overcoming today鈥檚 most pressing challenges, new skills are needed as well.

, by 2025 technological developments will displace 85 million existing jobs while creating 97 million new roles. Companies are increasingly competing for data scientists, cybersecurity experts, system specialists, and the like. Digital skills alone, however, are not enough. Problem-solving, self-management, and interpersonal skills . We need to go beyond upskilling and reskilling, and look at humans as a whole, combining IQ and EQ. It鈥檚 with creativity that we can solve complex problems, it鈥檚 active learning that allows us to adapt to changing environments, and it鈥檚 collaboration that brings complementary skills together.

The more complex the world鈥檚 problems are, the more complementary skill sets are needed to solve them. And that鈥檚 why it鈥檚 so important to strengthen the diversity of teams and drive innovation together.

Putting People at the Center

How can businesses handle changing employee expectations on the one hand, and employers鈥� need for highly skilled people on the other hand?

Both developments have one thing in common: they require a kind of organization that puts people — with their unique and changing work styles, capabilities, and interests — in the center. They require companies to move from human capital management to human experience management (HXM).

When companies stop viewing their people as resources, assets, or capital and start to embrace them for their unique experiences, interests, and abilities, they will not only be able to retain but to grow the best talent.

That鈥檚 exactly what our HXM solutions from 51风流SuccessFactors do for our customers. Our innovative cloud solutions provide organizations with the tools they need to unlock the full potential of their people and to create a resilient and sustainable workforce. These solutions make the talent system for a future-ready workforce, covering the entire talent lifecycle. It鈥檚 no longer about hire-to-retire but hire-to-grow.

Changing Work for Good: SuccessConnect

This week at , our annual conference for 51风流SuccessFactors customers, we introduced an exciting new way for organizations to rethink their talent development strategies. These advancements to our products bring together data, machine learning, and artificial intelligence (AI), providing organizations with a better understanding of their people鈥檚 skills and preferences. Here are the key highlights:

• Skills ontology uses machine learning and automation to continuously identify an employee鈥檚 skills based on their role, responsibilities, experiences, and accomplishments.
• Growth portfolio is a dynamic library of employee attributes, including skills, strengths, works tyles, passions, and aspirations — bringing the whole self model to life.
• Dynamic teams is a new capability that enables organizations to create, track, measure, and optimize the outcomes of teams that exist beyond traditional hierarchies.
• Employee users of 51风流SuccessFactors solutions can now select their chosen name and personal pronouns so they can be identified and recognized as their true self.

Work is changing, jobs are changing, and people are changing. Altogether, these innovations support a future of work that is focused on skills and people rather than organizations, hierarchies, and roles.

People Sustainability: Driving Sustainability Inside and Out

We won鈥檛 stop with technology and solutions. For us at SAP, people sustainability is a key part of our overall sustainability approach. People sustainability expands beyond a company鈥檚 own workforce. It means that businesses also treat the people within their supply chains and the communities they operate in an ethical and fair manner. That鈥檚 why we offer solutions to identify and prevent any negative impact on human rights connected to their business.

We enable businesses not only to achieve zero emissions and zero waste, but also zero inequalities across their value chains. This is SAP鈥檚 holistic sustainability approach 鈥� and this is what motivates us at 51风流every day.

Thomas Saueressig is a member of the Executive Board of 51风流SE.

This collective action must take many forms. While the UN Security Council is discussing lifting export restrictions, financing, bolstering agricultural production, and investing in resilient food systems, business also has a role to play. The private sector鈥檚 role may be less immediate than that of governments and global councils, but it still has the potential for important long-term sustainability impacts. That role lies in reducing food waste and enabling circularity.

Currently, . If we transform our global economy to one where waste and pollution are mostly eliminated and products and materials are reused, we can . Reducing the consumption of animal products and cutting food waste are key drivers here. And a number of 51风流customers are leading the way.

is an international cooperative headquartered in Denmark that is owned by almost 13,000 farmers in seven countries. The company set its sights on reducing waste with a solution to optimize its supply chain planning by better sensing and reacting to changes in demand. Arla implemented the 51风流Integrated Business Planning for Supply Chain solution and its demand sensing component. That helped improve short-term planning based on daily forecasts that are aligned with real demand patterns.

, a large Norwegian company distributing bakery, ice cream ingredients, and plant-based products, needed a cross-company planning platform to scale operations and meet future needs. That鈥檚 why the company chose 51风流Integrated Business Planning for Supply Chain and 51风流Supply Chain Control Tower. By combining supply chain solutions in the cross-company planning platform, Orkla was able to increase automation across business functions. The company achieved 14% greater forecasting accuracy and 27% less waste related to expired products on shelves. That adds up to a lot less food waste!

, one of the world鈥檚 leading crop protection companies, helps farmers feed a growing global population. The company needed a solution to better predict how things like weather, conflict, and other variables will impact millions of growers worldwide. 51风流Integrated Business Planning helps Syngenta ensure that the right amount of product — for example, seeds and fertilizer — gets to where farmers need it. With 51风流solutions, the company was able to improve demand planning, forecast future demand, and manufacture the right amount of product.

LIVEKINDLY was founded in 2020 as a collective with the mission to make plant-based living the new norm. The collective includes various brands that each needed to implement collective-wide business processes, get real-time data, and enable continued growth. That鈥檚 why it recently decided to migrate all of LIVEKINDLY鈥檚 brands to 51风流S/4HANA Cloud. It was a key step in the vision to transform the entire food supply chain — from seeding to feeding — and lead the way in a new global food economy.

Finally, one of the world鈥檚 largest food and beverage companies is working with us to make 100% of its packaging recyclable or reusable by 2025. Using our latest circularity solution, 51风流Responsible Design and Production, this business is able to intelligently manage its packaging obligations. 51风流Responsible Design and Production helps the business accurately calculate its extended producer responsibility (EPR) fees and plastic taxes worldwide in real time to enable smart environmental and economic decisions. This is significant, given the fact that . So, while this doesn鈥檛 have a direct impact on food insecurity, it does have the potential to significantly reduce the greenhouse gas emissions associated with food packaging.

51风流and its vast network of customers in the food and beverage industry may not have the most immediate role to play in today鈥檚 dramatic food insecurity challenges. But let鈥檚 not underestimate the impacts businesses can have.

I am proud to be part of an engineering team that is building products to help the world鈥檚 innovators accelerate solutions to less food waste and greater circularity.

Thomas Saueressig is a member of the Executive Board of 51风流SE, 51风流Product Engineering.

What has become clear over the past two years is that exceptions are no longer the exception, they have become the norm. One crisis followed by yet another has forced business leaders to give up the wish to 鈥渞eturn to normal鈥� and instead design business processes with resilience at the core to deal with the next inevitable crisis.

Intelligent, Networked, Sustainable Enterprises Are More Resilient

Reacting and rebounding in the midst of a crisis requires resilience. To help our customers thrive despite uncertainty, 51风流enables them to transform into intelligent, networked, and sustainable enterprises. Intelligence enables businesses to explore multiple scenarios, contingency plans, new business opportunities, models, and strategies based on data 鈥� not merely assumptions. Tapping into of partners and strategic alliances in a rich ecosystem provides agility and the opportunity to experiment with new collaboration models, source new suppliers, discover new resources, and ultimately build more resilient supply chains. And more than ever, businesses are driven by an irreversible evolution toward more and the will to integrate environmental, social, and governance (ESG) impacts.

Our Five Engineering Priorities

Achieving our ambitious vision to transform businesses into intelligent, networked, and sustainable enterprises means we cannot lose sight of the operational steps we ourselves must take to ensure we are adapting to the new normal of constant crisis management. That鈥檚 why, in continuous exchange with our customers to understand their needs, we are investing in five priorities for SAP鈥檚 engineering teams.

Autonomous and Intelligent Business: The Future of ERP Is Autonomous

in everyday technologies like Spotify, Netflix, and Google Maps. They are improving our leisure and personal time, so it鈥檚 easy to see the great potential of AI and machine learning to automate business processes and thereby help end users concentrate more on high-value tasks. We are committed to continuing the strong progress we have made on embedding AI across our solutions. Because the true power of AI to analyze large amounts of data and combine it in meaningful ways for decision-makers is unleashed when it is used across our integrated portfolio. Better data insights translate into better business choices.

Overall, we released more than 120 AI scenarios across our products, and this is just the beginning. With such a powerful technology, however, also comes great responsibility. At SAP, we first defined guidelines for using AI in 2018 and the聽51风流Global AI Ethics Policy, which applies to all employees, came into effect in January 2022.

Integration: The Whole Is Greater Than the Sum of Its Parts

Integration is a key strategic priority for customers that are aiming for digital experiences across omnichannel engagements 鈥� connecting people, businesses, and devices in their business networks and ecosystems. . We know this and it is why we have worked hard here and will continue to do so. In 2021 alone, we delivered approximately 450 new integration innovations and our is loaded. Our modular cloud ERP works together across front-end and back-end systems, and we cover crucial business processes end to end: from recruit-to-retire, lead-to-cash, source-to-pay, and design-to-operate. Organizations have options to turn away from executing siloed, one-off application and data integrations by exploring comprehensive integration options like ours.

51风流Business Technology Platform (51风流BTP) is a key part of our integration strategy and brings together data and analytics, AI, application development, and automation in one, unified environment. It is an open platform for the entire 51风流ecosystem, integrating and extending SAP鈥檚 intelligent suite, and it is central to the industry cloud as well as partner applications. With the help of 51风流HANA Cloud, 51风流BTP customers benefit from reduced TCO across integration landscapes, increased project speed, and reduced implementation costs. We continue to keep our eye on the ball here.

Operational Excellence: Customer Trust Is Our Foundation

Our customers trust us with their most mission-critical business processes and data. So it goes without saying that our software availability, security, quality, and compliance remain top priorities. Cloud operational excellence underpins everything we do.

User Experience: The Best Experience Wins

While today鈥檚 business challenges may be complex, the user experience (UX) must be quite the opposite. We continue to prioritize UX to make using our applications effortless and intuitive. To that end, we introduced Horizon, our visual design theme based on five design principles drawn from SAP’s own research into how people want to work in the intelligent enterprise. Creating the best UX is not just about aesthetics; it鈥檚 about great usability, accessibility, performance, and aesthetics across the entire portfolio.

With Horizon, . Customers were asked to provide feedback to a preview, directly in the system through a built-in Qualtrics survey. We continue to iterate on our design, in cooperation with our users, proving that we stand by our mission 鈥� to test, learn, and continuously improve our design. Granted, we have a long road ahead of us, but we are putting one foot in front of the other on the path to setting new standards for enterprise software.

Localization: Empowering Every Customer to Succeed Locally and Globally

More than ever, customers face challenges responding to evolving local, regional, and global regulatory requirements. is a key factor in achieving resilience and a key differentiator for us at SAP. Our enterprise leadership is recognized for enabling digital business scenarios across countries because we have a proven track record in enabling companies to grow globally and succeed locally. We have more than 560 local versions in total across our entire portfolio. For 51风流SuccessFactors Employee Central alone, we offer 102 local versions. In 2021, we delivered more than 1,200 legal changes across 51风流solutions helping to ensure customers comply with the laws of each country in which they operate. Using localized 51风流solutions, customers can rapidly enter new markets, harvest first-mover advantages, and achieve a competitive edge.

Our five priorities ensure that while we stay focused on our vision, we execute on our mission 鈥� in deeply destabilizing times.

Despite the challenges that crises present, they can be an opportunity to take a step back, reflect, and look at the way we design our business processes. They can be invitations to surpass the challenges we face today and will undoubtedly face tomorrow. The digital transformation we offer for our customers is a secure approach for setting up business to respond with resilience when the next inevitable crisis hits.

Thomas Saueressig is a member of the Executive Board of 51风流SE, leading 51风流Product Engineering.

How can businesses take climate action? How can they turn linear processes into circular resources and product flows? How can they ensure socially responsible value chains? And ultimately, how can they integrate economic, environmental, and social performance into strategic decision-making?

These questions are top of mind for executives. In 2021, sustainability .

At SAP, we deliver answers to these questions through our products. Our customers can benefit from solutions that help them achieve zero emissions, zero waste, zero inequality, as well as holistic steering and reporting of their sustainability efforts.

Last year, we launched three new solutions: , , and . All are embedded 51风流S/4HANA cloud-native applications that are delivered in a modular way and built on top of 51风流Business Technology Platform.

What is more, we are embedding sustainability across SAP’s entire solution portfolio. A recent example is the inclusion of product footprints in 51风流Integrated Business Planning, so customers can monitor the greenhouse gas emissions from their production plants. Another example is the integration of 51风流Sustainability Control Tower with 51风流SuccessFactors solutions, enabling customers to obtain insights into how their organization is faring on crucial aspects such as diversity and inclusion.

Sustainable Business Strategies, Sustainable Enterprises

For the last 50 years, our innovative solutions have helped our customers transform their business processes and stay ahead in rapidly changing business environments. And we will continue to take and enable organizations of any size and in any industry to take a transformative approach to sustainability as well.

Quick fixes that do not get to the root cause of problems won鈥檛 make businesses more sustainable in the long run. Fragmented sustainability strategies won鈥檛 help. Sustainable business strategies will. That is why we support companies in integrating sustainability into the heart of their business processes.

Our approach pays off. Today, the most sustainable companies run our software. According to our analysis of S&P Trucost Limited data and , 51风流customers with high digital maturity — those adopting SAP鈥檚 latest technologies — on average have 75% better environmental, social, and governance (ESG) scores compared to their industry peers. They also produce 24% less CO2 emissions than the market average.

To further facilitate the sustainability transformation for our customers, we recently launched a new offering. 51风流Cloud for Sustainable Enterprises is a flexible bundle of sustainability-specific applications. It allows businesses to adopt our solutions based on the current stage of their sustainability transformation. Depending on where they stand, they can implement holistic management or start with specific areas of sustainability performance.

Chasing Zero, Together

The past year has been all about delivering the tools that help businesses transition into sustainable enterprises. So, what鈥檚 next? 2022 will be the year to implement these tools globally in close collaboration with our customers and partners.

Ultimately, the transition to a more sustainable global economy is not something one company can achieve on its own. In today鈥檚 interconnected world, we must rely on our ecosystem to ensure sustainability across the entire value chain. Let鈥檚 make 2022 the year we transition toward a more sustainable world, together.

Thomas Saueressig is a member of the Executive Board of 51风流SE leading 51风流Product Engineering.

Stakeholders are coming to the same conclusions that we have long been convinced of. Even before announcing our Climate 21 initiative two years ago, we have been seen as front-runners in providing environmental transparency. We have long understood the importance of measuring sustainability progress holistically and connecting financial and pre-financial data. We鈥檝e been doing that since 2012. That鈥檚 when we merged our sustainability and annual reports into an integrated report.

We know that the days of fragmented reporting must end. And now, many more businesses are seeing how fundamental the issues of transparency on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) impacts are. But many businesses still struggle with a multitude of reporting frameworks and lack of appropriate data. This is what stands in the way of consistent investor-focused disclosures. Our planet cannot afford this. Increasingly, consumers want to know the provenance of their products. They want to be assured that they are making choices based on data they can trust.

The sustainability issues we face today are different from all other previous threats and opportunities — in scope, scale, and ultimately in the consequences. Measuring, reporting, and achieving the sustainable business goals we set is imperative to a .

Businesses Want to Make Sustainable Decisions; They Need the Right Intelligence to Do It

The vast majority of business leaders I connect with want to lead their businesses sustainably. They care about planetary and societal impacts; in fact, their customers, investors, and employees demand it. At SAP, our aspiration goes far beyond enabling businesses to achieve efficiency. We work with customers to reinvent their business processes to achieve sustainable growth. That means enabling businesses to use data in agile ways, across all sustainability dimensions. We provide early alerts that allow companies to be responsive and we give customers the full picture they need to move proactively on their ESG issues.

Sustainability data is “pre-financial,” not “non-financial.” That means the search for sustainability levers must go beyond the financials to bring together all sustainability data dimensions, including emissions, material flows, and social impacts. We know this and it is why we have made this possible today. For example, with , companies get visibility into their carbon footprint data throughout a product鈥檚 value chain, including for material sourcing and production. And that鈥檚 the insight businesses need to make proactive, sustainable supply chain decisions.

Scale Data Across Business Networks to Mitigate Planetary Impacts

Individual businesses can only do so much. Emissions do not recognize company boundaries and therefore we must help companies reach beyond their own four walls. We know we must connect our customers into a network of intelligent, sustainable enterprises.

Intelligent cross-enterprise scenarios that enable data sharing across value chains will create impact at scale. Business networks enable companies to continuously re-evaluate and re-engage with each other, creating additional value for their customers and our planet.

From Voluntary to Mandatory, ESG Standards Are Evolving

ESG reporting is maturing; there is no doubt about that. Climate-related disclosures are evolving from voluntary to mandatory. Around 100 countries have explicitly expressed support for starting negotiations for a global agreement on plastics in 2022. The European Union is already developing a social taxonomy based on global social and human rights norms. 51风流also recently released an asking the European Union to act on ESG disclosure standards. We want to encourage a global baseline set of standards. We fully support corporate transparency that meets the needs of all stakeholders and improves connectivity between sustainability and financial reporting.

And, once again, we at 51风流have stepped up to provide the solutions that companies need to execute on these evolving standards and connect their environmental, social, and financial values, holistically. Today, I鈥檓 proud to say that we just released , a solution that enables customers to go further on their ESG integration and data transparency journey. Our solution enables non-financial — or, as I prefer to call them, “pre-financial” — disclosures focused on four aspects: people, planet, prosperity, and principles of governance. This includes measurements around greenhouse gas emissions, pay equality, and board diversity. It enables comparisons between companies, regardless of industry or region.

Our two previously released sustainability products, and , feed precisely those new data dimensions, which businesses have so far been lacking, into 51风流Sustainability Control Tower.

Our new solution has the World Economic Forum鈥檚 Stakeholder Capitalism Metrics as its foundation. These metrics are based on existing standards to make ESG disclosures more comparable and consistent. They were developed within the International Business Council, a community of over 120 global CEOs who seek to improve the ways companies measure and demonstrate their contributions toward creating a more sustainable relationship with our planet.

And of course, our partners are integral here. Deloitte, EY, and PwC are a few examples of the partners that bring immense knowledge, not only about the framework, but also about the ESG transformations of our customers. Strategic partners like BCG enable our customers to take a holistic perspective toward establishing ESG and climate compliance.

Time Is of the Essence

Businesses that set out a 10-year agenda for dealing with their sustainability challenges are moving much too slowly. We all need to move quickly to enable the shift to new business models. Time is of the essence.

At SAP, we know how important it is that corporate sustainability efforts be measured, reported, steered, and communicated effectively. And I am personally very proud of the leadership we continue to demonstrate here.

Thomas Saueressig is a member of the Executive Board of 51风流SE leading 51风流Product Engineering.

鈥淭he world is on fire,鈥� according to and a recent with astronauts from the International Space Station. While many parts of the world deal with extreme heat, others struggle with extreme flooding. The says nations are 鈥渘owhere close鈥� to the level of action needed to fight global warming and the effects of extreme weather caused by climate change. The need for climate action is undeniable and opportunities for green house gas (GHG) reductions are within our grasp. Action to date has been slow, but it’s accelerating.

I see a surge in companies seeking to reduce GHG emissions coming. November鈥檚 upcoming , the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties, is set to ensure that action around science-based target setting will accelerate. And I鈥檓 hearing from industry and government leaders that we will see unprecedented corporate climate action, driven by regulation and good business, that aligns with the .

Pressure from governments and consumers is mounting as climate change is unfolding before our eyes — faster even than scientists predicted. I鈥檓 watching the upcoming COP26 where the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) Foundation鈥檚 International Sustainability Standard Board (ISSB) will be launched in November. This robust, will adopt a climate-first approach and have a big impact on our customers.

Our customers are asking us to help them make the necessary change at scale. And we are ready to help them meet the requirements. But many businesses have moved forward without reassessing their business models or focusing on the underlying process, data, and governance changes that they must make to accurately measure, manage, and reduce their carbon emissions. Why? Because it鈥檚 complex!

Calculating environmental and social impacts across a company鈥檚 products and services and across the entirety of their life cycles is simply complicated. Yet supply chain emissions are on average . So merely focusing on individual operational emissions is no longer enough. Actually, it was always just a first step.

Understanding complex business challenges and optimizing existing business processes has always been SAP鈥檚 strength. The breadth and depth of our industry expertise, spanning 50 years, enables us to help businesses today to not just optimize, but reinvent their business processes, like no other company can. That鈥檚 what today鈥檚 challenges call for.

As we near our 50-year company anniversary, we build on that legacy today by enabling business to meet new challenges. We know that dashboarding is not enough. When we embed emissions data into underlying business processes, leaders can drive real change by making conscious decisions across the entire value chain. That鈥檚 what scales the transition to low carbon pathways, and 51风流is uniquely positioned to drive this change across collaborative, intelligent, and sustainable business networks.

These activities are interconnected and must be done together to achieve maximum impact. Our business software applications bring together materials, energy, and financial flows to steer businesses in a holistic way. These are not add-ons. We have found significant value from the interconnectedness of these factors over our decade of integrated reporting and steering, and are working closely with our customers through organizations such as the to accelerate this approach for all sectors.

We not only enable individual intelligent enterprises, we connect them to each other. We support the move from intelligent sustainable enterprises to a network of intelligent sustainable enterprises. This is the key to achieving real change for the planet. Just as GHG emissions go beyond the four walls of a company, efforts to reduce those emissions must also extend beyond individual companies, into the network of companies.

While every company can start by focusing on their own individual supply chains, those further down the path to sustainability can use the network as a pathway to scale. *, 鈥淐onsolidating data into a unified network means better access, streamlined analysis and the opportunity to more effectively turn insights into action.鈥� Systemic industry change needs the network effect, and it needs a spark.

The customer base that we currently serve covers 94% of the world鈥檚 500 largest companies which represents an immense capacity for real change at scale. Partnerships also help accelerate our product innovation. 51风流is , dedicated to enhancing transparency in corporate carbon emissions with the objective to ultimately decarbonize supply chains.

We emphasize the role of technology for the green transition and EU taxonomy as a founding member of . In addition to working with these established partners and others, 51风流is supporting sustainability innovation from startups around the world. For example, through our program, startups play a pivotal role in catalyzing innovations on sustainability across the globe.

We facilitated systemic industry change 50 years ago with our enterprise software based on our founders鈥� vision. Now we are doing it again in order to tackle the climate crisis. The business model innovation we drive helps improve energy efficiency across both conventional and renewable energy value chains, it supports decarbonizing through electricity generation and transmission such as green hydrogen, and it helps our customers to decarbonize their products and services, for example, by adopting circularity.

We have not slowed down on our promise to innovate in this product space throughout the pandemic. Just recently, we made our 51风流Product Footprint Management solution generally available to our customers to support them in monitoring, analyzing, and reducing emissions to deliver on their climate commitments.

We are building for the future. And I believe that future is coming faster than anyone even thought.

Thomas Saueressig is a member of the Executive Board of 51风流SE.

*IDC InfoBrief, Sponsored by SAP, Global B2B Collaboration Networks: Critical Enablers of Business Resiliency, IDC Doc. #US47857121, August 2021.

This trend challenges traditional ways of doing business as it focuses on keeping customers for life by establishing longer term recurring revenue streams. Business models like these allow products and services to be offered in a completely new way instead of adapting or optimizing existing business processes.

How can your company or line of business achieve this? To remain successful, businesses across industries continuously re-evaluate how to create additional value for their customers. At SAP, we are working with our customers to reimagine business processes that increase productivity and unveil growth opportunities. This includes, among other things, how new offerings are sold to customers in order to increase customer loyalty at the end of the day.

From Selling Products and Services to Providing Bundled Solutions

While traditional business models are about selling physical goods and services, solution business models are built around the customers鈥� needs. Companies embracing these modern business models offer a combination of physical goods, services, and subscriptions to serve their customers鈥� needs holistically. And customers benefit from a one-stop-shop solution.

Whether offering products or services, these new models expand the responsibility of companies beyond the initial sale to include all elements of a solution along the entire life cycle; for example, the delivery of a machine, its installation, and corresponding maintenance services. The technical and the business processes must support the customer on this journey and minimize the business risk for the solution provider. Delivering this kind of solution-based value maximizes customer satisfaction and drives margin growth by selling higher value services.

This requires an that recognizes all the components of the order and has the ability to administer each step in the process — from capture to fulfillment, service, billing, and managing the profitability of the bundled solution.

The enables businesses to sell bundled solutions, including subscriptions, and leverage innovative capabilities for intelligent quote-to-cash. Let me highlight three impressive key capabilities.

Combining Products, Services, Projects, and Subscriptions in a Single Order

As a first step, 51风流S/4HANA Cloud makes it possible to quickly design and sell holistic offerings, integrated into the order-to-cash process.聽 Take, for example, our customer AAF Lufttechnik GmbH, a company that manufactures air filter systems, which have been in increased demand over the last couple of months. With 51风流S/4HANA Cloud and solution order management, AAF Lufttechnik GmbH plans to combine the sales of the air filter systems together with the corresponding installation and maintenance services as a one-stop-shop solution.

Monetizing Services With 鈥淧ay-As-You Go鈥� Subscription Models

With 51风流S/4HANA Cloud, customers can facilitate new business models by offering a variety of different pricing models. These include subscriptions for one-time, recurring, and pay-per-use offerings. 51风流Subscription Billing enables the design of flexible price plans, rating, and charging of metered usage data from technical systems, such as sensors from the Internet of Things (IoT). Subscriptions are now part of the end-to-end quote-to-cash process, built into 51风流S/4HANA Cloud. All subscriptions can be managed end-to-end.

Rethinking Flexible Billing, Measuring Solution Profitability, and Automating Revenue Recognition

With the help of 51风流S/4HANA Cloud, billing data from different sources can be flexibly integrated — from one-time orders, long-running contracts, deliveries, and external data — into a single invoice, which is consistent with the order. Because companies also need to carefully guard the profitability of solutions, 51风流S/4HANA Cloud provides margin analysis for orders, including all elements of the bundle. It also automates revenue recognition for sales products, service contracts, recurring subscriptions, and projects, and supports a simplified period-end closing.

Today, solution and subscription models are top of mind for businesses across industries. Solution order management illustrates that significant added value comes from business process innovation. By integrating order-to-cash processes using the latest technology innovations, customers can unlock new opportunities for growth. That is why to enable end-to-end processes and deliver business value to our customers.

Thomas Saueressig is a member of the Executive Board of 51风流SE.
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While the complexity involved certainly differs, both these businesses are after the same goal: flexibility to deal with unrelenting change.

But it鈥檚 not just flexibility! Today鈥檚 businesses must demonstrate high ethical and environmental standards. And they must verify that their suppliers鈥� operations — and even those of their suppliers鈥� suppliers — apply the same high standards. Flexibility must now also be sustainable, all along the value chain.

SAP鈥檚 intelligent enterprise strategy is the foundation for that. However, our aspiration goes beyond achieving efficiency for the Intelligent Enterprise. We鈥檇 like to take enterprise software to the next level and move toward a sustainable future for individuals and businesses. And that leads us to business networks. Because what鈥檚 a sales order for one company is a purchase order for another — business today is global and hyperconnected. Achieving sustainable business practices means embedding sustainable practices across processes, end-to-end, and touching on all dimensions of the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) criteria.

Unprecedented demands from shareholders, employees, consumers, and investors are driving this push toward sustainable business practices and growing green economy jobs. According to the , the green economy is among the fastest-growing sectors, as measured by job growth, with a projected increase of 35% yearly worldwide.

So what is going to enable businesses that urgently need sustainable flexibility? Business networks offer the visibility, collaboration, and intelligence across the supply chain that are essential to attain green growth. Siloed, one-to-one connections between individual trading partners limit interaction and reduce collaboration between companies and processes. Cooperation across companies and various dimensions of the value chain is precisely what is required for designing, manufacturing, delivering, and maintaining products in ways that minimize carbon footprints, decrease waste, and help ensure social equity. Value chains then become value networks that together can achieve sustainability goals much better than any company on its own.

聽is the world鈥檚 largest network of its kind, combining ,听, 补苍诲听. By enabling customers to connect with their business partners and manage multi-enterprise commerce flow, we bring value to our 5.5 million trading partners in the network and move them closer to their sustainability goals.

Supplier Collaboration for Responsible Sourcing and Purchasing

Today鈥檚 sustainable enterprises want deeper insights into their supply chains, including the sustainability values of their trading partners. They want to align those of their own and their consumers. 51风流Business Network, along with our ecosystem of partner applications, creates the transparency needed to make decisions based on a range of criteria. And when the performance of existing trading partners doesn鈥檛 align with a business鈥� sustainability goals, shifting to new trading partners has never been easier. With 51风流Business Network, businesses can聽聽across industries and geographies.

Take, for example, a business that wants to increase the amount of sustainable packaging it uses. Our network helps it to search and discover packaging trading partners that aligned to commodity types, delivery locations, and quality certifications, as well as diversity and sustainability objectives and much more. Imagine accessing the sustainability profile聽of suppliers. Newly planned capabilities will make this part of the purchase requisition process, so procurement managers have supplier sustainability profiles at their fingertips.

Logistics Coordination for Accountability

The provenance of products and the circular journey of their component parts is something consumers care about deeply. The provides that transparency for more accountability. Where does the product come from? What does it contain? When was it packaged and where? How long was it on the road or in a shipping container? The material traceability option reinforces sustainability throughout the supply chain to create a trust network across material flows.

Asset Intelligence for Energy Waste Reduction

Reducing energy-intensive activity has long been the go-to approach for sustainable business operations. But 51风流Business Network enables next-level asset intelligence where savings are measurable. Suppose a community operates electrical vehicle charging stations across multiple cities, spanning hundreds of kilometers. These assets require maintenance periodically. They may even break down unexpectedly. Businesses can connect these assets with sensors, thus reducing the need and frequency for technicians to travel to remote locations. Digital twins make maintenance more predictable, adding up to real savings when assets are geographically spread out.

What鈥檚 Good for One Is Good for All

But even beyond our own digital commercial network examples, industries are embracing the network economy as a means for finding solutions to some of the most complex challenges of our time.

罢丑别听Catena-X Automotive Network, of which 51风流is a founding member, is creating a uniform standard for information and data-sharing throughout the network, which reflects the entire automotive value chain. Catena-X is an open, scalable ecosystem in which automotive manufacturers, suppliers, dealer associations, equipment suppliers, and application providers can all participate. The companies involved aim to increase the automotive industry鈥檚 competitiveness and sustainability, improve efficiency, and accelerate company processes through standardization and access to data.

A unified business network enables all trading partners to access combined intelligence in near-real time and apply it to complex problems together. When a network reaches across functions, across industries, across the world, companies have the power and flexibility to solve some of today鈥檚 toughest social, economic, and environmental issues.

Thomas Saueressig is a member of the Executive Board of 51风流SE leading 51风流Product Engineering.
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By continuously evolving our enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions, we are helping our customers modernize business processes and helping them adjust to a new IT reality at the same time. As I鈥檝e said before, this reality combines flexibility, agility, and choice for our customers: Flexibility through a modular yet integrated approach to enterprise software, agility through business processes that can be adapted as needed, and choice for customers to operate their systems on the infrastructure of their choice. And we can certainly add the need for collaborative, networked, and sustainable solutions here.

One of my favorite examples of how 51风流is helping customers adapt and modernize their business processes comes from the retail sector and relates to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. E-commerce has surged during the pandemic as consumers faced lockdowns and sought the relative safety of online shopping. This surge in e-commerce has had dramatic implications for traditional retailers that have had to pivot quickly from primarily in-store sales to online platforms but have also had to deal with much higher levels of returns.

Consumers are more likely to return something when bought online compared to offline purchases. This is particularly true in fashion retail because there is a much higher probability that a particular size doesn鈥檛 fit or the color is not quite what the consumer was expecting. Online customers also often bracket-purchase — ordering several similar items or sizes to ensure that one is the right fit and return the others.

This represents a significant problem for traditional retailers that were not used to dealing with such high levels of returns and that, in the past, often outsourced the handling of returns. Returns — or reverse logistics, as the process is sometimes called — is a costly and time-consuming part of the daily life of the supply chain.

Companies need to make decisions on where to return the stock, how to handle the stock when returned, and whether the customer will receive a refund or a replacement. Typically, these operations were optimized for time in order to keep customers happy, even if this meant destroying returned goods.

Retailers know that the return experience can break or build customer loyalty and trust, and that鈥檚 why they aim to process returns and provide refunds to customers as quickly as possible. But destroying — and even storing — returned items is potentially bad for the environment and represents a monetary loss. According to UK鈥檚 online retail association, .

Recognizing these problems, 51风流has developed an innovative solution that we call 51风流Intelligent Returns Management, a returns optimization solution that guides products from customers鈥� hands to the final dispositioning steps, maximizing both the customer experience and company margins. It uses routing and dispositioning decisions driven by artificial intelligence (AI) to maximize our customers鈥� sales and profits.

51风流Intelligent Returns Management benefits consumers, retailers, and other stakeholders — and it helps customers operate more sustainably. Consumers benefit because we help our customers make the returns process easy, and that delivers the intended consumer experience. Our retail customers know that brand loyalty is fragile and can be lost quickly if a returns process is anything but straightforward and smooth. They need to optimize their return process to be efficient and ensure a great customer experience. When goods arrive at their return centers, retailers want to be able to make fast decisions about what to do with them: Should they dispose of the goods? Should they do a quality check and re-certify them for sale, or send them to an agent such as outlet or reseller?

Our solution intelligently recommends return options for consumers optimizing for both the customer experience and the retailer and recommends disposition decisions for warehouse teams to limit value leakage. But it also provides business leaders with newfound visibility into the end-to-end returns process, enabling them to make data-based decisions.

Particularly, retailers can use the embedded analytics to understand what is selling and what is not. Does a particular item always come back聽because it does not meet expectations in terms of size or look?聽Is a particular color not selling or is a style out of fashion? Whatever the reason, they can聽inform the design聽team and stem a problem at the source by not offering聽products that do not meet expectations, 补苍诲听thereby be more聽sustainable.

51风流has offered a returns solution in the past, but it was a back-end, logistics solution. Now, with 51风流Intelligent Returns Management sitting at the intersection of cloud ERP and SAP鈥檚 industry cloud, we have closed the gap between front office and back office. That鈥檚 the biggest advantage our solutions bring to fashion retailers and the like.

Thomas Saueressig is a member of the Executive Board of 51风流SE for 51风流Product Engineering.
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Like many business leaders today, I鈥檓 seeing supply chain pressures moving from being behind-the-scenes issues to becoming front and center — discussed in board rooms and living rooms.

Resilient and sustainable digital supply chains have become the crucial differentiator for business. And with that, businesses are realizing they need to optimize end-to-end business processes along their entire value chain. They are recognizing that the customer experience doesn鈥檛 stop with the purchasing experience; in fact, the supply chain has become a significant driver of the customer experience. Companies can 聽when they run highly resilient supply chains.

So, today鈥檚 businesses are striving for four key capabilities when it comes to their digital supply chains.

Agility Through Synchronized Planning

Now more than ever, businesses need visibility into events as they are happening to be able to sense, predict, and respond to inevitable disruptions. This is all about anticipating and mitigating events before they impact operations. That鈥檚 agility!

Synchronized planning is the key ingredient for agility. At SAP, we envision planning as a continuum across the supply and demand network — from production to logistics planning. Getting a complete view of their supply chains and evaluating the impact of one stage on another is what our customers are after. It鈥檚 what they need to mitigate risks.

Synchronized planning leads to synchronized execution. That鈥檚 the ability to execute smoothly from order to final delivery that every business is after. Our solutions combine scenario-based planning with synchronized execution, because without synchronized planning, agility remains elusive for businesses. And that鈥檚 what 51风流is uniquely positioned to cover end to end.

Productivity Through Intelligent and Predictive Technologies

Businesses also achieve more when their plant and factory processes become smarter, more connected, and more autonomous, and when their people are empowered to employ those processes intelligently. The core of our mandate is enabling factory and plant transformation聽at enterprise scale.

Reinventing production, intra-logistics, quality, maintenance, and service processes is key here. We employ 51风流HANA natively to deliver new scenarios, which were previously difficult to achieve, while also simplifying the application and data model. Intelligent and predictive technologies combined with edge computing and cloud capabilities can boost productivity.

We are helping thousands of companies reinvent production. And we are doing it by creating a single digital thread for products and assets — from the design in an engineering department to production on the shop floor and finally maintenance and service operations — and all along the way until an asset is sunset.

Partnership across our ecosystem is key to making that happen. We are proud to be partnering with leaders like Microsoft and Siemens. With聽 to make 51风流solutions available on Microsoft Azure Stack Edge, starting with 51风流Digital Manufacturing Cloud. That鈥檚 how we combine edge computing on the shop floor with intelligent factory and plant processes in the cloud. That enables businesses to run even their mission-critical processes with high availability. That鈥檚 an innovation leap for all manufacturing industries.

Also, by teaming up with Siemens, we鈥檙e putting our customer on a faster path to creating an end-to-end digital thread. Last year, we聽added Siemens鈥� Teamcenter to our product lifecycle management (PLM) portfolio. Now, we鈥檙e taking the next step and complementing the Siemens solution portfolio with 51风流Asset Intelligence Network, 51风流Asset Strategy and Performance Management, and 51风流Enterprise Portfolio and Project Management.

Networked Collaboration Through the World鈥檚 Most Intelligent B2B Network

Creating smarter inter-company visibility and collaboration is just a start. Extending that beyond a single enterprise is where the real magic happens. But many companies are hindered by enterprise-centric systems that are not designed for cross-company transparency and collaboration. That blunts their ability to drive change fast. That鈥檚 why we see the need to move beyond organization-centric and toward network-based approaches. Our solutions transform fragmented supply chains into agile, collaborative networks for supply, logistics, asset management, and service. They provide visibility and intelligence across networks for digital threads of assets, materials, and finished goods.

On our path to delivering 51风流Business Network,听we recently聽.聽Buyers and suppliers can collaborate using shared data and workflows and leverage network-wide intelligence to make decisions. Because when all networks become one network, collaboration becomes synchronous.

Sustainability Through Circularity and Climate Action

End-to-end processes extend beyond a company’s own four walls, and so do the CO2 emissions they generate. Businesses face demands from all stakeholders to minimize waste, emissions, and energy consumption, and to reduce their carbon footprint by running sustainable business operations. With our new product, , we鈥檙e enabling customers to evaluate and assess their carbon footprints across their end-to-end business processes and even across companies and industries.

However, the link between resource reuse and CO2 emissions is only becoming clearer:聽聽by transforming the way goods are made and used. So, the path to a low-carbon future is circular,听as I recently wrote. To achieve circularity, we must connect linear, fragmented supply chains into unified, collaborative, and intelligent business networks. One company鈥檚 waste can be a valuable resource for another. With our profound knowledge of business process software, and second new sustainability product,听, we can identify those opportunities.

Collaborating with business partners has never been more important 鈥� and perhaps more fraught. So, in this time of intense disruption, I鈥檓 proud to be able to talk to business leaders concretely about how our solutions help build resilient supply chains and how our scale enables sustainable transformation in a networked economy.

These are just some of the聽key innovations we have introduced at SAPPHIRE NOW in 2021聽and we have many more to come. Check out the聽聽for more.

Thomas Saueressig is a member of the Executive Board of 51风流SE, Product Engineering.
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At the same time, the聽聽is compounding our planet鈥檚 resource crisis, with 2020 being one of the聽聽on record. But 2020 was also the year we saw a聽聽in humanity鈥檚 resource consumption. The year brought us the COVID-19 pandemic, and that changed consumer behavior almost overnight. In so doing, it also offered a unique opportunity to rethink the role businesses play in the environment, society, and economics.

Now is the time to turn strategies for climate action and circular economy principles into action. Companies must anticipate the carbon footprint of any business decision they make, as well as its impact on society. Merely measuring the carbon footprint as a function of production doesn鈥檛 go nearly far enough, given that emissions created by supply chains can be more than five-times greater than those created by enterprises directly. Measuring, monitoring, and reducing carbon emissions聽across the entire value chain means inventing entirely new value chains. And these will no longer be linear.

At SAP, we have started down this聽, pioneering approaches that support responsible design, sourcing, production, consumption, recovery, and reuse. These are the “responsible” actions that challenge linear value chains. And consumers want them; they want to know that the metals in the batteries they throw out are being recovered and reused, that the shampoo packaging they buy has been designed and produced using pollution-reducing methods and sourced from residual plastic waste, and that the clothes they wear have not been manufactured using child labor.

That goes well beyond just checking labels for ingredients.聽, 73% of consumers said traceability of products is important to them. Of those, 71% would even pay a premium for it. Consumers want details about sourcing, how products are made or processed, how they are delivered, as well as assurances that brands take actions demonstrating social responsibility.

But can today鈥檚 supply chains deliver? In many cases, supply chains are not only linear, they are also fragmented. Businesses that insist on maintaining enterprise-centric systems are restricting their own network visibility and collaboration. Companies that still rely on one-to-one connections and paper-based processes to connect with customers, suppliers, manufacturers, and distributors are losing any advantages their products might offer.

Now, more than ever, to achieve circularity, we must connect these linear, fragmented supply chains into聽.

Jump-starting these efforts requires that 51风流engage in alliances and partnerships that accelerate marketplaces for waste materials, enable more responsible production methods and ensure better consumer experiences. To name one of a number of such alliances,听51风流is a member of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation,听helping companies enhance their resource productivity and realize a circular economy.

We aspire to lead by example. 罢丑别听recent announcement of our intention to become carbon-neutral in our own operations by the end of 2023 — two years earlier than previously planned — is a strong statement of our commitment to sustainable business operations. The impact of technology and digital solutions extends beyond the boundaries of companies and industries. They can be multipliers for change. For example, by 2030, new digital technologies could reduce global carbon emissions by 20%.

51风流is uniquely positioned to help build a low-carbon future and create the foundation for a聽. But such a fundamental shift cannot be accomplished by one single entity.聽It is the responsibility of businesses, governments, and regulators to scale up efforts. With nearly 50 years of聽听补苍诲听聽expertise, we at 51风流are ready to support, enabling a rich ecosystem of聽sustainability startups 补苍诲听.

I couldn鈥檛 be more committed to SAP鈥檚 contribution, and I look forward to inspiring our customers to scale with us!

To learn more about sustainability innovations across disciplines and sectors from 51风流and our ecosystem, please register for the virtual .

Thomas Saueressig is a member of the Executive Board of 51风流SE, 51风流Product Engineering.
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Additionally, the pandemic has hit companies, forcing them to respond to, cope with, and look beyond the crisis. Together with our customers and partners, we can shape the next normal.

At SAP, we understand that in these extraordinarily difficult times, we have an opportunity and duty to demonstrate the power of our corporate purpose to help the world run better and improve people鈥檚 lives.

The Pandemic Runs in Waves, So Does Business

The COVID-19 pandemic has gone through phases, each of which is characterized by a different set of needs and requirements that have impacted our employees, partners, and customers. While we can put 2020 under the theme 鈥渘ew normal,鈥� we are now in a transition phase toward the 鈥渘ext normal.鈥� We learn as we go and can build on this experience to be prepared for future disruptions.

Wave 1: Responding to the Crisis and Human Impact

The first phase, corresponding to the new challenges, involved reacting to the most urgent needs. Last year in June, I how we set 51风流up to help our customers grapple with the immediate impact of the pandemic and meet the changing demands of their employees and customers — for example, with 80 top priority legal changes within less than 50 days. Uncertain times require agility and flexibility. 51风流CEO Christian Klein just explained that resilience starts with people.

Among 51风流customers, the first to be affected by the pandemic were businesses whose supply chains depended on components manufactured in COVID-19 hotspots, and those that experienced sudden swings in demand or supply. Examples include providers of personal protective equipment (PPE), certain consumer product makers, and manufacturers of office equipment. Additionally, , such as facial masks, to cover the聽increased聽demand.

That is why last year, 51风流opened access to software, including 补苍诲听, for 90 days and free to anyone. These products help to make procurement processes more transparent, predict demand shifts, and deal with the dynamics caused through supply chain disruptions and the domino effects they have. Customers with agile supply chains, including those facilitated by , were able to switch suppliers quickly and keep critical production lines running. Here are some examples:

• , which recycles and repurposes fibers for packaging and tissue products, used to better predict shifts in demand, increase flexibility by moving from weekly to daily planning, and improve response times by prioritizing essential packaging products during the pandemic.
• Similarly, one of the examples where 51风流helped and that makes me most proud is how 51风流Ariba Discovery for a temporary hospital when the COVID-19 infections reached a high point in New York City last year.

Wave 2: Coping with the Impact on Businesses and Enabling Solutions

The focus then extended to help customers manage the pandemic鈥檚 impact on their businesses. 51风流applications and services helped our customers — existing and new — manage their way through the pandemic. With many companies seeking to maintain lean operations in order to protect revenue and preserve cash flow, we worked with them to accelerate the adoption of cloud-based technology.

Our product portfolio is geared to enable our over 400,000 customers operating in more than 180 countries across the globe to act quickly and pivot operations and processes in response to changing market conditions and demand shifts. The 51风流Globalization Services organization, for example, implemented 290 COVID-19 emergency changes across 47 countries. 51风流is proud to call every medical equipment and supply provider in the Forbes Global 2000 and 18 of the world鈥檚 20 largest pharmaceutical companies a customer.

• Among them, German biotech company CureVac聽has focused on developing and producing vaccines, while relying on聽 for its business 补苍诲听operations. The company鈥檚 COVID-19 vaccine is currently in the testing phase. Similarly, U.S. pharma company Moderna runs enterprise resource planning (ERP) and digital supply chain solutions from SAP. Additionally, Moderna uses to comply with legislation and prevent consumers from counterfeit medication and relies on to collaborate with partners along the value chain.
• Our new packaged offering, a vaccination collaboration hub, helps make collaboration among component suppliers, pharmaceutical manufacturers, distributors, government, and life science organizations easy. The offering which is based on 51风流Information Collaboration Hub for Life Sciences, brings together critical capabilities from vaccine manufacturing to distribution 鈥� allowing supply chain planning and providing supply chain visibility and post-vaccination monitoring.

Wave 3: Looking Beyond and Coming out of the Crisis Stronger, More Resilient, and Transformed

Business models have been reshaped literally overnight and we have had to get used to a new way of working. Now we find ourselves facing the next normal. Online commerce has been accelerated, collaborative working is required more than ever before, and leaders recognize that companies are more resilient and business operations can be more sustainable when operating in networks.

As a revealed, companies have accelerated the digitalization of their customer and supply chain interactions and their internal operations by three or four years. Once 鈥渘ice to have,鈥� digital capabilities are now a 鈥渕ust have鈥� in order to build resilience for a sustainable future ahead.

We deliver innovation to give customers the ability to reassess their processes and reallocate resources as needed. That鈥檚 the post-pandemic opportunity for enterprises; those that are able to adapt to the changed environment and shape the next normal will be the most successful.

I see three major trends for our work, life, and the planet:

• We already see a shift in how we work, collaborate, and learn 鈥� from a mix of remote and in-person work to collaborative working using technology, and to learning supported by bite-sized offerings, continuous engagement, and lifelong curiosity. The work environment will be more agile, flexible, and inclusive, also for the contingent workforce, helping companies be resilient to changing demands.
• The way we consume goods is changing too. During the pandemic, online commerce has increased significantly, . Consumers require an end-to-end experience that is founded on deeply integrated processes, including one consistent view on the customer, personalized experience, commerce via various channels, and excellent service. There is also a need to rethink existing processes, such as making the returns management more intelligent, sustainable, and circular. Using 51风流Commerce Cloud, INDEX-Werke, a supplier in the automotive industry, . This helped INDEX-Werke keep its customers’ production running throughout the pandemic.
• This is leading right away to sustainable and fair value chains 鈥� from production to delivery to return and recycling. Beyond that, let鈥檚 explore more efficient and profitable ways of procuring, manufacturing, supplying, and serving end consumers. I strongly believe business networks will scale the positive effects.

Even when this pandemic is over, we will not return to the way things were before. We know that we must learn to live with the virus and its impact on people, business, and society. And we want to do our part by helping companies bring employees back to their workplaces, provide travel recommendations, and identify potential risks for employees. Let me give two examples: First, as part of our new back to work offering, and where legislation and local data protection rules permit, companies will be able to add new health and vaccination status fields to the People Profile in the 51风流SuccessFactors Employee Central solution, allowing employees to enter employee vaccine information. Second, 51风流offers the 51风流Fiori app “” for . Customers can predefine local capacity thresholds and allow employees to simply book their workspace and return to work safely.

Perhaps most important is long-term adaptability and resilience. We will undoubtedly face new challenges caused by geopolitical events, climate change, health crises, and the like. Companies must be able to actively manage continuous change and adapt to new circumstances 鈥� here 51风流can and will always help our customers to cope with the next normal.

Stay safe!

Thomas Saueressig is a member of the Executive Board of 51风流SE, 51风流Product Engineering.
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In the industrial sector, IIoT has emerged as a significant value driver in the manufacturing industry. It has changed the way goods are produced and delivered by connecting all phases of the design-to-operate product life cycle, including ideation and conceptualizing, manufacturing, delivery, and operations.

A Need That Is Here to Stay: Building Resilience Beyond the Crisis

The strong uptake of IIoT reflects an increasing need for business resilience. Even before the pandemic, manufacturing companies operated in an increasingly volatile environment, requiring them to adapt quickly to shifting priorities. COVID-19 accelerated this trend. As consumer demands changed dramatically and manufacturing capacities were constrained, supply chains broke, forcing businesses to cope with the disruption of their daily operations.

While the world will hopefully overcome COVID-19 at some point, new health, societal, geopolitical, or economic crises are likely to occur. That is why an increased need for business and supply chain resilience is here to stay — and IIoT and will help take us there.

When we look at which companies were able to overcome these challenges, it is clear that it was highly digitalized businesses capable of taking informed decisions based on real-time data. IIoT technologies played a major role in helping them to repurpose production, provide help where needed, and find alternative routes to maintain .

Take INDEX-Werke as an example: the traditional supplier for the automotive industry kept its own business and that of its customers running throughout the crisis. Based on 51风流Commerce Cloud, .

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The opportunities are enormous, but many companies that I speak with are wondering where and when to start. Given the disruption we see among our customers in almost every industry, I believe that companies can start small, but should start now.

Introducing New Business Models: From Product to Outcome

IIoT enables new business models and the shift from selling products to delivering services and solutions. The underlying idea of outcome-based models is that customers pay for what they get out of a product rather than for the product itself. In addition, IIoT opens the door to a fully personalized customer experience. Data exchange between a customer and a smart factory makes it possible to produce a highly customized product within just a few days — from receiving an order to shipping the goods.

For example, when , a leading manufacturer of electronic motors, was looking for a way to differentiate its products, the company identified a growing demand for remote monitoring. Together with SAP, the company created a custom app with monitoring and alerting capabilities. VEM鈥檚 sensor-equipped motors not only reduced operational downtime and extended product lifetime, they also helped achieve a 25% revenue increase. Most importantly, the company was able to reinvent its business model completely.

Operating in Industry Networks: If the Ecosystem Wins, Everyone Wins

Just recently, I , CEO Digital Industries at Siemens, about the importance of partnerships to accelerate the industrial transformation. We spoke about moving from enterprise resource planning (ERP) to network resource planning, and from 鈥渆go-systems鈥� to ecosystems where the players strive for added value together.

At SAP, we envision that enterprises will exchange data via an industry network of suppliers, machine manufacturers, and customers. We are addressing this with and thereby enabling a shift from a seller/buyer paradigm to collaborative models. When, for example, data from production quality records is shared between suppliers and manufacturers, they can collaboratively resolve warranty claims and recalls.

51风流actively uses and contributes to various industry standards that build the foundation for industry networks. 51风流helped incubate the in 2019, with the goal of creating guidelines for compatible and interoperable IIoT solutions and services. Joint standards between the systems of different players in our ecosystem help drive digitalization in factories, plants, and warehouses in a collaborative manner.

Sharing data beyond a company鈥檚 borders adds even more value for all the players, from original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to suppliers and consumers. Strong networks rely on cooperation among companies within and across industries. 51风流is a founding partner of the Automotive Alliance, , which aims to create a unified business network for the automotive industry. The alliance鈥檚 goal is to create a consistent information exchange through the entire automotive value chain.

From Concept to Execution

Today, we have all the technology and applications at hand to connect devices, people, and processes. Making use of data across the entire product and service life cycle is the foundation of managing business processes end to end.

To sustain long-term success, it is imperative for companies to move from concept to execution. This also requires a shift in our mindset. We need to rethink how data is used and set common standards. We need to rethink how businesses run and be open to new business models. And we need to rethink how markets work and move from the buyer/supplier relational paradigm to a collaborative model.

If we see IIoT and Industry 4.0 as both an urgent need and an opportunity, we will not only achieve continuous optimization but we will also generate added value — both for the ecosystem we operate in and for our customers.

Thomas Saueressig is a member of the Executive Board of 51风流SE, 51风流Product Engineering.
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Customers often look to us for insights since we have been privileged to help run the world鈥檚 most critical business processes for almost 50 years 鈥� seamlessly and end-to-end. This is no different in today鈥檚 cloud world. To remain competitive, customers require access to live data to make informed decisions in real time. They benefit most when functions and processes are fully aligned.

According to a recent , 88% of integration leaders were able to increase transparency into their operations and 94% improved their profit margins.

Last year, we embarked on the mission to reimagine integrated end-to-end business processes and experiences along the entire value chain 鈥� including SAP, partner, and third-party solutions. We laid out our cloud integration strategy and road map with delivery timelines covering 2020 and 2021.

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Integration 鈥� along with the value it brings for our customers 鈥� will continue to be one of our key priorities in 2021. In our , we share more details of the business benefits our scenarios will bring.

Integrated Business Processes, Unmatched Customer Value

In 2020, we made great strides in integrating our four core end-to-end processes that touch every business across all industries: Lead to Cash, Design to Operate, Source to Pay, and Recruit to Retire.

Customers like Orica have undergone a significant transformation over the past few years to redefine their business processes. With its 4S program, Orica consolidated its systems on 51风流S/4HANA complemented by other 51风流cloud solutions and extensions. A prerequisite when rethinking the company鈥檚 business processes was to avoid customization of the solutions. This way Orica could benefit from faster innovation delivery and a new level of transparency and efficiency across the enterprise.

In 2020, we delivered close to 350 integrations, representing more than 160% growth year-over-year. This year, we already have over 200 additional integrated business scenarios planned 鈥� and this number is growing as we speak.

But it鈥檚 not only about the number of integrations. We are particularly proud of the specific value these integrations deliver to our customers. Let鈥檚 look at some concrete examples of business outcomes. Already, customers today can:

• Handle multiple product types from physical products to services to subscription through the integration of and .
• Reduce time-to-hire by proactively collaborating on talent decisions thanks to the integration of , 51风流S/4HANA Cloud, and .
• Embed experience management at every step of the design phase to create products that customers love by integrating and Qualtrics.
• Conduct strategic sourcing by using contract management capabilities in and centralized contracts in 51风流S/4HANA to identify opportunities and improve the efficiency of negotiating their contracts.

We are also making great progress with delivering on the underlying suite qualities that serve as a strong foundation for all our integration efforts. They include elements such as:

• End-to-end process blueprints to reduce the planning effort for implementation projects and support architecture decisions
• Harmonization of domain models via to simplify the exchange of business objects and improve data consistency across applications
• Embedded analytics with 51风流Analytics Cloud, as well as customer-managed cross-product analytics using to make quick and confident decisions by relying on comprehensive analytical insights

With (51风流BTP) as the foundation for our intelligent suite applications and industry cloud, SAP has the unique ability to integrate core processes end to end. At the same time, customers can choose the integration strategy that best fits their landscape, including cloud-to-cloud and hybrid integration options. The 51风流Integration Suite offers more than to third-party cloud applications.

Intelligent Enterprise: It鈥檚 Integration and Innovation

We will continue our journey to seamlessly integrate all our solutions based on 51风流BTP; to deliver on our promise of making the Intelligent Enterprise a reality. We want to meet our customers where they are. Our customers set the pace for their own transformation.

We have heard the requests for more hybrid scenarios from customers and user groups loud and clear. We will therefore extend our efforts to hybrid integration scenarios, including existing and new developments. Quite a big portion has been delivered already — for example in — and there is much more to come in 2021.

Not only do we focus on integration as such, but also on delivering highly integrated and innovative best-in-class cloud solutions to our customers. Based on the innovation delivered over the past years, we plan to even accelerate our innovation efforts in helping customers analyze and redesign business processes and make those more intelligent. This will include process innovations around artificial intelligence (AI) using machine learning and robotic process automation to improve data-to-value.

Customers no longer need to decide between integration and innovation. With SAP, it鈥檚 not one or the other. It鈥檚 both.

Juergen Mueller is chief technology officer and member of the Executive Board of 51风流SE.
Thomas Saueressig is a member of the Executive Board of 51风流SE, Product Engineering.