The company manages an extensive portfolio of more than 125,000 products. Despite its strong market position, digitalizing procurement across diverse customer environments remains a key challenge, particularly in e-procurement, where large customers often have very different requirements, even when market standards exist.

To address this, W眉rth recognized the need to better connect procurement processes and now collaborates closely with leading e-procurement systems and platforms. The company has driven the harmonization of customer processes and ensured seamless onboarding to . At the same time, W眉rth actively supports its customers in harmonizing and digitalizing their own internal workflows.

As the world鈥檚 largest procurement platform, 51风流Business Network enables more efficient procurement and automated order processing and provides end-to-end transparency across the purchase-order鈥憈o鈥慽nvoice flow between W眉rth and participating customers. This scope involves purchasing orders, delivery confirmation, and invoices, with exceptions managed through clearly defined workflows.

Save time and boost efficiency: seven minutes saved per order

Manual processing of orders, sent as PDFs or via non鈥慽ntegrated channels, creates disproportionate effort, especially in relation to the order value, since indirect materials often involve smaller order values with many order items.

 With automation, W眉rth saves approximately seven minutes per order on average — approximately 490,000 minutes annually or about 8,167 hours. The platform enables digital order transmission, catalog exchange, and automated invoice matching, materially improving process efficiency.

Seamless customer purchasing journey

With around 3,000 sales representatives in Germany, more than 600 pick-up branches, and numerous on-site storage solutions, including automated dispensing machines, W眉rth offers customers a truly omnichannel purchasing experience. Through 51风流Business Network, all these touchpoints can be seamlessly integrated, giving customers that adopt this approach full transparency, as every order becomes visible directly within their own system.

One construction industry leader worked with W眉rth to integrate dispensing machines and branch pick鈥憉ps into 51风流Business Network, digitalizing its procurement processes. This integration has largely eliminated manual activities in day鈥憈o鈥慸ay order handling of standard processes. Exceptions are automatically identified and routed through defined workflows, while payment instructions are triggered once the purchase order, goods confirmation, and invoice are successfully matched.

Stronger supplier-customer partnership

Beyond operational savings and improved collaboration, W眉rth enhances the customer experience through near-real-time integration across procurement, invoicing, and logistics. Digitalized procurement processes help meet customer requirements more reliably and further strengthen the supplier-customer partnership.

To see how W眉rth streamlined procurement with 51风流Business Network and significantly reduced manual effort, .

Headquartered in Homberg (Ohm), Germany, with worldwide locations, in 2024 KAMAX generated 鈧�1 billion in revenue and employs 4,000 people dedicated to serving OEMs globally.

To maintain its competitive edge, the ambitious company embarked on a transformative journey to streamline its supply chain through digitalization and intelligent logistics management. This transformation centers around the deployment of (51风流EWM),  (51风流TM), and a comprehensive 51风流S/4HANA platform, supporting superior logistics efficiency, transparency, and sustainability.

Optimizing logistics at scale

Handling approximately 400 transports daily across multiple global plants, KAMAX manages two distinct logistics flows: goods pre-packed and stored in warehouses, and a “pack-to-order” system where items are packaged just before shipment. Currently, three plants operate on 51风流S/4HANA with 51风流Extended Warehouse Management and one pilot plant with 51风流Transportation Management integrated, while others are transitioning from 51风流ERP Central Component (51风流ECC).

The implementation of the advanced shipping and receiving process dramatically improved logistics transparency and efficiency.

“The use of the unified package builder, which leverages real data instead of estimates, allows us to provide precise shipping information to freight forwarders earlier in the process,” Jens Hoidem, director of IT Business Solutions at KAMAX, explained. This improvement enhances truck planning and communication with carriers, positively impacting the company’s logistics operations daily.

KAMAX collaborates exclusively with freight forwarders, working with approximately 20 carriers globally. At the advanced shipping and receiving pilot plant, about 60 deliveries per day are coordinated, involving around 2,000 handling units across five to six trucks. This network supports operational responsiveness without compromising control.

On premise today, cloud-ready tomorrow

Currently, three of KAMAX鈥檚 plants run on 51风流S/4HANA, with the remaining plants on 51风流ECC, all on an on-premises basis designed to be cloud-ready for future transitions.

Hoidem pinpointed the critical process improvements brought by advanced shipping and receiving in combination with 51风流Extended Warehouse Management and 51风流Transportation Management: 鈥淭he shipping registration now uses the unified package builder, relying on accurate, real data rather than estimated figures. This has substantially improved truck planning and early communication with our freight forwarders, impacting around 60 deliveries and about 2,000 handling units daily at our pilot plant.鈥�

Over 95 percent of KAMAX’s transport is by truck. “We maintain a global footprint close to our OEM customers to optimize delivery times and costs,鈥� Hoidem added. 鈥淲e currently engage about 70 to 80 different freight forwarders worldwide, facilitating diverse and dynamic transport needs.鈥�

Sustainability and process automation

KAMAX has a bold strategy for sustainability and aims for carbon neutrality by 2037. Implementation of 51风流Extended Warehouse Management and 51风流Transportation Management plays a crucial role in supporting KAMAX’s goal by enabling better route planning, efficient truck utilization, and minimizing empty runs.

鈥淩educing CO2 emissions through smarter transport management is a key project outcome,鈥� Hoidem added.

The German company is also actively advancing in automation. In China, KAMAX has piloted RFID technology integrated with automated guided vehicles (AGVs) to automate intra-logistics, reducing manual labor and enhancing productivity.

the company’s digital subsidiary, has developed an Operator Cockpit linked with 51风流Extended Warehouse Management for real-time monitoring and automated production order management. Using laser technology, KAMAX automated piece counting, saving about 40 labour hours in May at their Slovakian plant across 1,200 containers.

KAMAX plans to roll out 51风流Extended Warehouse Management, 51风流Transportation Management, and advanced shipping and receiving across all seven plants, progressively improving automation and digitalization of intralogistics processes. 鈥淲e aim to integrate AI for advanced receiving and transportation management, continuing to optimize costs and capacity,鈥� Hoidem shared.

Curious about how KAMAX鈥檚 journey to streamline and future-proof its supply chain? .

According to a Gartner report, 70 to 80 percent of enterprise information lacks structure. This poses challenges for organizations that must unlock the potential and mitigate the risks of content to ensure data-driven decisions.

Take a simple, one-document example: It can cost up to $30 to process a single purchase order by hand. While this number seems small at first, it grows significantly when thousands of documents are processed every month over the years. And it doesn鈥檛 stop there鈥攅ach manual processing increases the risk of errors and potential loss of hours on the mundane job, hence missed opportunities. This leads to a high cost of running “business as usual” and a drag on innovation.

51风流Document AI: rescue business process

Manually processing documents is not just error-prone; it is also slowing down the response to market shifts, dragging down the creativity of skilled workers, and posing real threats to businesses.

51风流Document AI enables efficient and agile paperless business processes. AI-powered solutions can speed up business document processing by up to 70 percent through automating the extraction, classification, and processing of data鈥攊magine the boost in productivity, agility, and resilience.

This is not only theory. 51风流Document AI is enabling leaders to deliver reliable answers because it is grounded in the comprehensive and up-to-date training data of actual quality certificates:

• More than 180,000 annotated document pages
• Over 105 million annotated characters
• 28 countries in the data set
• More than half a billion unstructured documents processed each year

That is equivalent to approximately 8.5 years of manual information extraction and auditing, now available as a standard 51风流cloud product.

Take De Agostini Publishing as an example. With 51风流Document AI, the company is now saving around 500 hours per month, and more than 91 percent of purchase order-referred invoices are automatically processed. .

FRoSTA AG is one of the largest manufacturers of frozen foods in Europe. The company leveraged 51风流Build Process Automation together with 51风流Document AI, and it takes less than a minute to process聽an invoice from arrival to posting. Seventy percent of the invoices processed through automation are booked without any touch. What is even more interesting to note is that it took three months from project ideation to the go-live event. .

More than 34,000 customers are already using 51风流Business AI to transform the way they work.

From procurement and finance to HR and supply chain, 51风流Document AI is changing how work gets done. It is natively embedded in SAP鈥檚 key platforms, making it easier for leaders to orchestrate truly intelligent workflows.

The road ahead: leading with certainty

Leaders know that change is the only constant. Digitizing more paper is not the future of document management. It’s about using unstructured data to our advantage. Looking at the road map, 51风流Document AI will soon be able to handle even more types of documents. Enhancements such as vision-enabled information extraction, custom large language models (LLMs), and prompting are not too far off either.

Executive takeaway

Winning organizations do have one thing in common, and it is not the use of technology. They recognize that people drive business forward. By removing the manual burden, teams can be empowered to focus on what matters most: customers, strategy, and growth.

Leaders owe it to their teams to let them do what they do best, spending their time coming up with new ideas, making plans, and talking to customers. If employees are still buried in paperwork, it’s time to find out how much it really costs to wait. With 51风流Document AI, companies can develop the kind of flexibility and strength that today’s markets need.

Learn more about the benefits and new possibilities for business with .

Rashmi Kumari is a principal solution advisor at SAP.

I addressed this challenge in a conversation with Dan Newman at , hosted by and . We spoke about the blockers that leaders face when determining where to apply generative AI to move their businesses forward and what 51风流Business AI is uniquely bringing to market to help.

Flowing from that conversation, here are four steps you can take, among others we touched on, that will help you become an AI front-runner.

1. Prioritize use cases with the most promise

First, focus on areas of your business in which you can use AI to deliver fast, measurable value. Finance, HR, supply chain, and customer experience are among those AI front-runners often start with. As you assess your options, set aside the idea of a “proof of concept.” Instead, develop “proofs of value鈥� by using your and your team鈥檚 expertise, data, and imaginations to find areas where more value can be unlocked using automation or AI agents.聽

By the way, the term 鈥減roof of value鈥� was first coined by AI front-runner , vice president of IT at , in reference to an AI agent for accounts payable that his team designed in partnership with SAP. The key is to pinpoint what outcomes matter most to your business and choose use cases that quickly prove the value.

2. Deploy intelligent agents to simplify complex tasks

Another practice of AI front-runners is the use of AI agents that span departments and systems to solve end-to-end problems. Their autonomous abilities to handle whole processes is one of the differences between an AI skill and an AI agent. A skill is a single ability, such as the ability to write a message or analyze a spreadsheet and trigger actions from that analysis. An agent independently handles complex, multi-step processes to produce a measurable outcome. We recently an expanded network of to help foster autonomous collaboration across systems and lines of business. This includes out-of-the-box agents for HR, finance, supply chain, and other functions that companies can deploy quickly to help automate critical workflows.

AI front-runners, such as , also create customized agents that can tackle specific opportunities for process improvement. Now you can build them with , which provides a low-code workspace to help design, orchestrate, and manage custom agents using pre-defined skills, models, and data connections. This can give you the power to extend and tailor your agent network to your exact needs and business context.

3. Embed AI into daily workflows

To truly become an AI front-runner, you need AI woven seamlessly into how your teams work every day. You also need to ensure it works across your broader technology ecosystem. Because of these critical business needs, we created to be your natural language AI interface, built right into your 51风流systems. And we鈥檙e adding a new Joule action bar to make it even more context-aware and better integrated with third-party tools like ServiceNow and Microsoft Copilot. It doesn鈥檛 wait for you to tell it what you need. Instead, it can proactively follow your behavior and suggest helpful next actions in context across multiple 51风流and non-51风流applications. This helps remove friction, so your team members don鈥檛 have to toggle between tools or relearn interfaces.

4. Foster an ecosystem of interoperable, leading AI tools

Another way to become an AI front-runner is to tackle fragmented tools and solutions by putting in place an open, interoperable ecosystem. After all, what good is an innovative AI tool if it runs into blockers when it encounters your other first- and third-party solutions? This is why we recently announced a tighter integration with Microsoft Copilot for productivity and partnerships with and for flexible access to leading AI models. These, and many other partnerships, help teams combine multiple AI capabilities, share trusted data across systems, and drive business outcomes faster, without the headache of manual connections.

Ready to lead? Here鈥檚 how to get started

I want to encourage you to lead, not follow, in the AI era. If you鈥檙e ready to do that, there are a few ways to get started. First, go deeper on these subjects in the full . Then and .

Brenda Bown is chief marketing officer for 51风流Enterprise AI Business.

TUI implemented eight years ago, and now the company鈥檚 over 41,000 employees use various 51风流SuccessFactors solutions for performance management, talent management, learning, HR data management, and more. “With so many capabilities and so many employees, as you can imagine, it’s a steep learning curve for our employees,” Dean said. This is where TUI turned to to help standardize and automate its HR processes for an improved employee experience and increased efficiency.

Benefits for the business and employees

TUI faced three main challenges when it came to HR processes, Dean explained: employees struggled to learn new systems, legacy training approaches were expensive and difficult to maintain, and time-consuming HR tasks were impacting overall business operations. “We needed something that was going to bring us into the future but that could support the organization as well,” Dean said. The solution also needed to be available 24/7 and in multiple languages to effectively support TUI鈥檚 global employee base, which includes flight attendants, pilots, travel agents, and other seasonal roles.

TUI implemented WalkMe to help employees navigate the company鈥檚 HR processes more easily and efficiently as well as aid HR staff members. With WalkMe analytics, TUI can identify where users have challenges in existing processes and then build WalkMe solutions to create personalized and automated experiences to help mitigate those challenges. For employees, this can mean the software feels easier to use; for HR staff and the business, it can lead to fewer employee and manager errors and faster time-to-value for 51风流SuccessFactors solutions.

Dean described how WalkMe automation helped simplify TUI鈥檚 onboarding processes for new employees by automatically assigning e-mail addresses in the 51风流SuccessFactors system during the hiring process to reduce login issues on an employee鈥檚 first day. This not only improved the new hire experience, it also saved HR teams time and proactively addressed any errors.      

TUI also simplified the time-off request process for HR staff and employees.    

“We set up a process whereby if somebody is booking sick leave and they have annual leave at the same time, WalkMe will intercept them. It will say 鈥榊ou鈥檝e actually got holiday at the same time so we need you to cancel that holiday and put it through as sick time,鈥�” Dean said. 鈥淲hat that means then for us is that we’ve got less questions going to HR, less tickets being raised, and more people following the actual process for their region.鈥�

The data speaks volumes

WalkMe analytics can offer visibility into what software is being used and how. With this insight, companies can identify opportunities for improved efficiency and deploy in-app guidance and automations to address specific points in processes. “One of the real benefits of WalkMe is how the data that is available helps us make decisions around how we support employees and how we build digital adoption solutions for our employees,鈥� Dean said. 鈥淲e’ve focused a lot on the data that’s within the annual employee process and how our users are actually using their system currently.”

Analyzing aggregated annual employee form process data collected by WalkMe over 90 days, Dean saw that HR completed the process with no errors 70% of the time, completed the process with some errors 5% of the time, and did not complete the process 23% of the time. Even more, Dean could see where the errors were occurring and where users who didn’t complete the form were getting stuck. Based on this data, Dean used WalkMe to highlight the most-missed fields on the form, reminding users to complete them before moving on. “If 5% of the time they don鈥檛 know that information, I need to do something when they get here to say, 鈥楶lease make sure you have this information before you carry on.鈥� So, I鈥檓 telling them in advance they need to have that, which I can do with WalkMe,鈥� she said.

When asked how easy the analytics dashboards are to build, Dean explained that WalkMe gathers all the forms automatically so there’s no need to build anything additional. With WalkMe flow analytics, you set up the process step-by-step and then the report collects data over time. “It’s super quick and easy. With UI intelligence you get an out-of-the-box set of insights that shows usage of forms in the system. It shows me where people stop and start processing and points of friction,” she said.

Self-service employees

TUI鈥檚 brand purpose to 鈥渃reate the moments that make life richer鈥� not only applies to its customers, but extends to its employee base as well. With the help of WalkMe and 51风流SuccessFactors solutions, TUI has certainly succeeded in enriching and empowering HR and end users.

“What we’ve been able to see is 80% higher employee self-efficiency,鈥� Dean said. 鈥淪o the good news is they don’t need to contact their local support team because actually what they can do is go into our WalkMe menu and search for any of the content, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, across six different languages.鈥� TUI has also experienced 70% less time spent on training, a 40% increase in task completion, and 50% fewer support calls with the help of WalkMe.

For Dean herself, WalkMe has enhanced her role as a trainer: “It actually supports me to do that change management piece within my organization. It supports me to educate and enable our end users without me having to be available and fly all around the world.”

Discover how  can help drive adoption and streamline HR processes.

Gillian Hixson is an integrated communications specialist at SAP.

With more than 17,000 customers now leveraging 51风流Build solutions globally, momentum continues to surge, enabling developers to build, automate, and innovate with greater speed and ease. Today, we鈥檙e taking a huge step forward to bolster developer productivity within 51风流Build solutions!

We鈥檙e thrilled to announce new Joule-powered AI capabilities for 51风流Build Process Automation and 51风流Build Apps. These enhancements complement the previously announced AI capabilities in and 鈥攅mpowering developers of all skill levels to build more efficiently by leveraging comprehensive, AI-infused developer tools to deliver precise, contextualized outcomes powered by purpose-built, SAP-centric AI models. This can free up time for developers to be more productive, creative, and proficient in accelerating ABAP, Java, JavaScript, and visual tool-based application development and automation of 51风流processes.

Let鈥檚 look at how Joule can unlock new levels of productivity:

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鈥淭he latest AI features across 51风流Build solutions provide developers with a powerful tool kit to build and extend business applications across both 51风流and non-51风流systems.鈥�

Holger Mueller, Principal Analyst & VP at Constellation Research, Inc.

Comprehensive developer assistance for all 51风流development needs

Joule can understand 51风流development framework intricacies, anticipate developers鈥� needs, offer intelligent suggestions, and automate repetitive, mundane tasks like documentation and sample data generation. It can enable developers across low-code, pro-code, and automation projects to be more productive, creative, and proficient in accelerating apps or extensions for business applications like 51风流S/4HANA.

Key capabilities include:

• Application creation: Generate code, UI, data models, and sample data across 51风流programming models for Java, JavaScript, and ABAP, using Joule
• Code optimization: Refactor code, create unit tests, and generate code explanations, summarizations, and more with natural language queries and intuitive actions with Joule
• Process and workflow automation: Generate automation workflows and business rules using natural language queries

鈥淚n utilizing generative AI, 51风流Build Code offers our joint clients easier integration capabilities and a streamlined developer experience for cloud application development, boosting overall productivity and driving tangible value.鈥�

Chip Kleinheksel, Global 51风流Chief Technology Officer and Principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP

Contextual and precise results with purpose-built LLMs

Joule uses purpose-built large language models (LLMs) specifically tailored for 51风流workloads, such as our ABAP LLM, which can power code predictions and explanations. Developers can derive precise, contextualized results鈥攍ike code snippets or explanations鈥攆aster and more efficiently. Joule can also provide developers with real-time, context-aware support for code completion and optimization, as well as automation pipeline creation that understands the customers鈥� application environment, development project artifacts, and SAP-specific syntax.

Key capabilities include:

• Predictive code completion based on context, comments, and project heuristics
• Code explanations of core data services (CDS) view entities, classes, interfaces, and functional modules
• AI-powered assistance for documentation, best practices, and new concepts
• Workflow development and decision assistance based on processes, API specifications, and connected systems

Integrated AI tooling for seamless development

Developers can now enjoy a fully AI-infused development environment. Joule’s capabilities are integrated within 51风流Build development tools, including ABAP, to help ensure a smooth, cohesive AI-enhanced experience. This AI integration helps eliminate the headache of switching between development and AI tools and can generate actionable insights and outputs within a single place so developers can focus on what they do best鈥攂uilding innovative solutions.

Key capabilities include:

• Joule support for 51风流Fiori apps, SAPUI5 guided development, and more in 51风流Build solutions
• Joule integrated inside 51风流Business Application Studio and ABAP development tools for Eclipse for all Java, JavaScript, and ABAP-related development tasks
• Joule integrated into 51风流Build Process Automation project canvas for generation and summarization of processes, decisions, forms, and more, right in place using natural language

Road map and future enhancements

Our commitment to AI-driven innovation for developers is unwavering. Over the last year, we鈥檝e unveiled groundbreaking capabilities across our portfolio: Joule in , , , , AI agents embedded deep within 51风流Business Suite processes, and more. 

Looking ahead, we have a complete road map of cutting-edge features, including optimizing business logic, automating documentation, and enhancing data protection and AI compliance. To enable an agentic journey, developers will be able to develop custom AI agents tailored to their specific needs. Additionally, as customers continue to adopt 51风流S/4HANA Cloud, we plan to simplify the migration journey with enhancements that can meticulously analyze legacy code, provide clear code explanations, and suggest code optimizations. This will help ensure customers have a smooth, intelligent transition to the cloud alongside SAP鈥檚 clean core guidelines.

These new features will help empower developers to build more innovative, efficient, and secure workflows and applications. Stay tuned for more AI-driven innovations!

Get started for free

Don鈥檛 wait to transform your development experience! You can take advantage of our Joule for developer capabilities today at no charge for a limited time.

• Activate the  of ABAP AI capabilities
• Access the  free trial
• Explore Joule for developers with our 

We can鈥檛 wait to see how developers leverage the new Joule capabilities in 51风流Build solutions.

Happy coding!

Michael Ameling is general manager and chief product officer for 51风流BTP and a member of the 51风流SE Extended Board.

With new integrations for , , and , as well as the incorporation of new generative AI features, we aim to automate and streamline procurement, supply chain, and external workforce management processes. These innovations will help empower organizations to access real-time spend data and focus on proactive decision-making, ultimately increasing their visibility and effectiveness.

As businesses continue to embrace advanced technologies, the integration of responsible, relevant, and reliable business AI and , SAP鈥檚 natural language, generative AI copilot, into the 51风流suite of solutions represents a significant leap forward in optimizing business processes and accelerating strategic initiatives. By harnessing the power of supply chain data alongside business AI and generative AI, we are setting the stage for practical procurement and workforce scenarios to thrive.

Joule Combined with 51风流Ariba and 51风流Analytics Cloud Can Improve Procurement Processes and Supply Chain Planning

Digital transformation has brought on endless potential for procurement teams, as embedded generative AI and increased access to data across the supply chain can lead to better visibility into spend. That is why we鈥檙e announcing further integration of Joule into our procurement solutions.

Later this year, will be generally available in 51风流Ariba solutions. Through this update, sourcing managers can utilize intelligent product and supplier recommendations to develop proposal requests. The combined platform will consider cost-effectiveness, sustainability ramifications, compliance regulations, and previous transactions.

Another new generative AI-based feature in 51风流Ariba solutions will migrate data from to help provide customers with a 360-degree buying user experience to enable a simple, agile, and collaborative process to identify products and skills in the same purchase order, otherwise known as spend bundling. Buyers can describe their purchasing needs with natural language prompts, and the system will deliver intelligent and personalized recommendations. This will help increase flexibility for buying materials and services, creating a collaborative and straightforward process from searching for products and services through order fulfillment.

To this end, we revealed a version of our generative AI-powered 51风流Spend Control Tower at 51风流Sapphire. The command center, which can provide a single location for enterprise-wide spend analytics, can identify tail spend, improve compliance, and constantly identify rapidly increasing costs. This will help create meaningful value for organizations by increasing end-to-end visibility to drive efficient spend performance. Find out how to take advantage of the solution鈥檚 native connections to other 51风流applications and improved insight to action .

Optimizing 51风流Fieldglass with Generative AI to Mitigate Risk

HR departments and procurement teams often struggle to collaborate, creating silos that limit the ability to identify proper external candidates who can fill skills gaps in organizations. The latest update to 51风流Fieldglass solutions will introduce embedded AI to help reduce risk and increase the value of the external workforce.

We are leveraging generative AI to produce scope of work (SOW) descriptions, job descriptions, and job description translations for external workers, automatically identifying the required skills and qualifications for each organization. This will help remove data silos to enable total workforce management, an organizational strategy to provide visibility into all temporary and permanent employees.

Additionally, 51风流Fieldglass solutions enhanced with generative AI can rank candidates based on salary preference, skills, and experience. Procurement teams can then identify the best candidates in an unbiased manner to reduce the time to hire, ultimately accelerating strategic decision-making. These added facets will help enhance planning and preparation for all external talent scenarios.

Introducing New Enhancements to 51风流Business Network

One of the highest priorities for any supply chain professional is to ensure their people, processes, and technology are resilient. Supply chain resilience extends beyond being able to withstand disruptions 鈥� it includes visibility into all activity and agility to react quickly to find and secure alternative sources of supply.

In fact, 51风流was recognized as a Leader in the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Multi-Enterprise Supply Chain Commerce Network 2023 Vendor Assessment* and by TrustRadius as a .

Our latest modernization of 51风流Business Network helps enhance customers鈥� communication channels with trading partners for increased visibility and agility. Improved integrations between 51风流Business Network Supply Chain Collaboration and 51风流Business Network Material Traceability can allow suppliers to share product genealogy data to help ensure full traceability and compliance across the supply chain. Additional links between 51风流Business Network Supply Chain Collaboration and 51风流Business Network Freight Collaboration will help automate updates for inbound deliveries, simplifying management of carrier appointments and shipments.

Enhancements to the 51风流Business Network Asset Collaboration solution will help increase access to millions of supplier profiles from whom alternative products can be found. These new features across 51风流Business Network solutions will work to reduce silos between and within organizations, resulting in significant time and cost savings with fewer manual steps in processing work orders.

Strategic Investment Across the 51风流Suite of Solutions

51风流has augmented integrations across its entire portfolio of spend management and business network solutions, aiming to improve efficiency. By investing in technology that provides catered and end-to-end solutions, customers can have all-encompassing visibility to all business processes, from procurement of raw materials to delivery of the final product.

What we shared at 51风流Sapphire will only improve relationships between buyers, suppliers, logistics providers, and service providers across the supply chain, developing a larger view of all functions and employees. This will lead to better decision-making, increased productivity, and improved agility.

Manoj Swaminathan is chief product and technology officer for Intelligent Spend and Business Network at SAP.

*Source: 鈥�,鈥� #US49948423, December 2023.

Guided by the organization鈥檚 clear , Coles鈥� team of 120,000 employees is dedicated to making a difference in the lives of customers and the local communities it serves.

In fiscal year 2020/21, Coles Group hired nearly 30,000 people to deliver on its business needs. Mike Virgo, head of Talent Acquisition for Coles Group, said this hiring volume was necessary to make sure the company was 鈥減ositioned well to support our customers.鈥�

The business environment, however, dramatically shifted as the public health crisis of the pandemic unfolded, resulting in repeated lockdowns and restrictions. As a neighborhood retailer dependent on in-person interaction to deliver most of its services, Coles found its workforce impacted by the pandemic. Faced with supply chain disruptions, panic buying behaviors by consumers, high employee absenteeism, and increased turnover, Coles urgently needed to step up its volume and pace of hiring to support its customers.

鈥淎round 2020-2021, we started to experience one of the most significant shifts in the employment market we鈥檇 ever seen,鈥� Virgo said in a at . 鈥淚t started to create huge challenges for organizations around the world 鈥� around how we attract, retain, and hire talent.鈥�

Catalyst for Change and a New Way of Working

To meet pressing business demands, Coles doubled its hiring volume from 30,000 to 60,000 people and increased recruitment advertising spend by a factor of three. Its talent acquisition team grew proportionally to manage the increased workload 鈥� but then labored under manual transactional activities that slowed processing times. As a result of the huge strain, variability in the candidate and hiring manager experience became noticeable.

Due to the volume of work, Coles looked for ways to evolve its system to create more speed, efficiency, and scalability. With a list of criteria, Coles began to review technology solutions on the market to find one that could support its vision for a new way of working. 鈥淲e wanted to reimagine how we recruit for our stores,鈥� Virgo said. 鈥淲e needed automation and AI to remove a lot of the manual work in our systems. We wanted to create more consistency and uplift the experiences we were giving our candidates and our hiring managers. And ultimately, [the solution] needed to drive commercial benefit for us.鈥�

As a key requirement, the new solution needed to integrate with . In 2020, as part of an organization-wide digital transformation that introduced 51风流S/4HANA and 51风流Ariba solutions, Coles modernized its HR and payroll processing, replacing a patchwork of outdated systems with 51风流SuccessFactors solutions. It became the first organization in the southern hemisphere to launch all modules of the 51风流SuccessFactors portfolio in one go. With all HR processes unified on a single platform, Coles benefits from having a single source of truth for people data that is accurate and available in real time for the entire organization.

Two-Way Integration Ensures Single Source of Truth in Data

To help with the project, Coles chose , an 51风流partner whose AI-powered Intelligent Talent Experience platform provides two-way integration with 51风流SuccessFactors solutions. Virgo said the two-way integration 鈥渁llows us to have a holistic view of the candidates that progress through the process, no matter whether the team is operating in Phenom or 51风流SuccessFactors, and it allows 51风流SuccessFactors to be our single source of truth.鈥�

There are several key benefits of Phenom鈥檚 solution at Coles. One is candidate attraction and engagement, which is achieved primarily through the Coles career site and chatbot. Another is recruiter automation and interview management, which provides automation and process efficiencies from when a job requisition is created in 51风流SuccessFactors solutions and replicated into Phenom until a hiring manager chooses a candidate for the job. Once a candidate is chosen, the two-way integration enables the HR team to access the data in 51风流SuccessFactors solutions and complete all compliance aspects, such as working rights, contract generation, and onboarding.

The Coles team gains additional efficiencies in its onboarding programs through the application of robotic process automation (RPA) powered by two bots that work in the background: Ashbotty processes the working rights and Usain Bot processes onboarding and manages pending recruits. 鈥淭hey take a lot of the transactional, manual work that we used to have team members doing. It can do that quickly, accurately, and it can do that 24/7 鈥� which is particularly important for us as a seven-days-a-week business,鈥� Virgo said. 

AI-Powered Experiences for Candidates and Recruiters

Coles reimagined the candidate experience to launch a modern, tech-enabled career site 鈥� which has been chosen as a two-time winner of Australia鈥檚 Best Careers Site. The site includes an AI-powered chatbot to guide candidates as they look for information, search relevant job postings, and submit their applications. It also includes Coles鈥� Expression of Interest, always-on advertising that drives the growth of its talent pool and advances its talent marketing by reducing the need to advertise every role. A Hosted Apply process, facilitated by integrations with Phenom, presents a consistent candidate experience and increases the conversion rate on applications.

Phenom AI Scheduling, a key part of Coles鈥� hiring experience, enables candidates to book themselves an available interview slot and automates the coordination of hiring team calendars. The new solution provides a fully mobile-enabled experience to meet the demands of candidates for an omni-channel, real-time experience where they can learn, read, and apply for jobs where and when they want.

Inundated by nearly 1 million applications each year to review, Coles also took steps to elevate the recruiter experience and increase the speed and accuracy of candidate screening and job matching. It implemented Phenom Fit Score, an AI-powered feature that assesses a candidate鈥檚 suitability for an open role, based on location and optimal travel distances, availability, and working rights; then, assigns a fit score and surfaces the most closely matched candidates to the recruiters. In addition, the new solution empowers in-store managers to collaborate with recruiters to review candidates and make quick hiring decisions with confidence.

Talent Pools Grow with Improvements to Hiring Speed and Efficiency

With the new augmented solution, Coles is experiencing tangible benefits across multiple categories and key metrics for success: time-to-fill is down six days; time-to-hire is down two days, which is impressive considering candidates can book the in-store interview up to two weeks in advance; and advertising spend is down 50%.

Most notably for Coles as a people-centric organization is the development of its talent pool, now numbering 2 million potential candidates. It achieves an 85% application conversion rate on up to 1 million applications per year. Through its to be a safe, inclusive, and diverse workplace, Coles has applied the new solution to provide greater accessibility for more diverse candidates, resulting in an increase of 24% more hiring for people who identify as having a disability. 

Virgo said that the talent acquisition team will continue to evolve its solution and assess more opportunities for AI and automation to bring value to the recruitment process. Although these technologies are not cure-alls for every recruitment scenario, they can save recruiting teams precious time and resources to focus on more high-touch interactions further down the recruiting funnel. In sharing lessons learned, Virgo noted, 鈥淚 think the important call out is the level of automation you can inject in your process will likely diminish as the seniority, complexity, and requirements of your roles increase because they are likely to be more high touch, perhaps need more interpretation or judgment calls from your recruiters to identify who the right talent is for your organization.鈥�

Watch on demand.

Last week at , we announced new 51风流BTP innovations that help organizations and developers bring their ideas to life.

Thank you to everyone who attended the event virtually and in person at Bangalore. For those who couldn鈥檛 attend live, I recommend reading the , checking out the full list of , and watching the , delivered by 51风流CTO Juergen Mueller.

Here are some of the key announcements we made.

Turning Every Developer into an AI Developer

Developers are essential to the modern world we live in, driving innovation and transformation forward across every industry. To help improve their productivity, we announced 51风流Build Code, a generative AI-powered application development solution, built on 51风流BTP and optimized for Java and JavaScript development. It delivers a turn-key environment for coding, testing, integrations, and application lifecycle management.

51风流Build Code has embedded generative AI capabilities with Joule to enable code generation to streamline application development. It also enables fusion development so developers can build rapidly, integrate seamlessly, and collaborate effectively with other developers and business experts. 51风流Build Code complements , our low-code solution that provides a unified environment to create and enhance enterprise applications, automate processes, and design business sites with drag-and-drop simplicity. .

Generative AI for Everyone

More than ever before, companies are seeking to unleash the power of AI in their applications and processes. We are thrilled to unveil , a one-stop shop for developers to build and extend applications powered by AI and generative AI on 51风流BTP. With AI Foundation, developers gain access to everything they need to quickly embed business-ready AI into their applications, leveraging the same powerful technology 51风流development teams use today. This includes AI services, generative AI management, AI workload management, access to business data and context, and lifecycle management based on 51风流AI Core, 51风流AI Launchpad, and 51风流HANA Cloud. .

Later this quarter, AI Foundation will include a new generative AI hub capability in 51风流AI Core for accessing a broad range of large language models (LLMs) from third-party providers. With the hub, developers will be able to use tooling for prompt engineering and experimentation to accelerate generative AI application development.

AI-Powered Business Data

51风流believes every data professional should have seamless and scalable access to mission-critical business data. To this end, we鈥檝e announced new innovations that empower developers to build intelligent data applications with 51风流HANA Cloud but also brings new capabilities that not only enhance the with 51风流Datasphere.

Good data is the foundation of good AI, and 51风流HANA Cloud continues to pioneer innovation in the data space by adding new vector database features to its multi-model offerings at no additional cost. Vector datastores manage unstructured data — such as text, images, or audio — to provide long-term memory and better context to AI models. This makes it easy to find and retrieve similar objects quickly. For example, users can search for suppliers based on the language in their contracts to examine payment history and trace individual orders. These powerful new vector database features enhance interactions between LLMs and an organization鈥檚 mission-critical data. The innovation puts 51风流developers at the forefront of delivering radically new levels of data insight within a secure, private framework that uses industry-specific customer data to reduce hallucinations.

New semantic onboarding capabilities within enable customers to deliver business-ready data products at an accelerated pace. With the powerful semantic layer, organizations can build data products that maintain business context and application logic and forego the time-consuming tasks of extracting business data, creating data pipelines and rebuilding data context that was lost. .

Enterprise Automation

Integrating, analyzing, and automating end-to-end business processes is critical in today鈥檚 digital landscape. To help customers stay ahead of the competition, 51风流offers , one solution that combines the value of , , and . At 51风流TechEd, we previewed new generative AI capabilities to simplify creating processes and integrations and to recommend pre-built content. Deeper integrations across the three technologies helps companies easily mine non-51风流processes to better analyze, integrate, automate, and monitor business processes across their environment.聽.

See you at 51风流TechEd in 2024!

JG Chirapurath is chief marketing and solutions officer for 51风流BTP and Artificial Intelligence at SAP.

From streamlining financial operations to engaging with employees to customizing procurement processes, automation is becoming pervasive and transforming business models across industries. This technology is breathing new life into opportunities that go far beyond automating simple, rotary tasks. In fact, it鈥檚 crucial for customers to understand how their mission-critical business processes could flourish by implementing end-to-end automation solutions.  

Is it possible to streamline processes between existing 51风流and non-51风流applications? What about an ecosystem of on-premise and multi-cloud environments that needs integration between customers, employees, and partners? Can organizations assess the impact of their automations? Are there specialized insights to help drive business agility and respond effectively to market changes?  

The answer is yes. 

from 51风流uses best-in-class 51风流technologies 鈥� , , , and 鈥� to help connect and automate complex, end-to-end business processes. These technologies work in concert to enable customers to quickly and easily connect any on-premise or cloud IT landscape, gain visibility into business processes and their performance, and then automate those processes seamlessly. Since announcing this framework at 51风流Sapphire, we鈥檝e seen incredible customer adoption and momentum.  

Today, I鈥檓 excited to share recent examples.聽聽

, the world’s largest almond processing and marketing cooperative, has transformed its customer satisfaction and business process efficiency with 51风流solutions. It deployed 51风流Integration Suite and 51风流Build solutions to help reduce the amount of time to generate external content for its brokers, 51风流Signavio solutions to help identify and take action to improve critical business process gaps, and automation to help capture contract and pricing information that feeds directly into 51风流S/4HANA.聽

, which specializes in cloud communications and workstream collaboration services, has saved over 800 hours of manual efforts per quarter by leveraging an automated bot with built-in AI to validate over 25,000 invoices. This has resulted in delivering a 300% increase in productivity in the audit process and incident management tracking.

leveraged 51风流Business Technology Platform (51风流BTP) as a part of its transformation to 51风流S/4HANA. By implementing 51风流Integration Suite and 51风流Build solutions together alongside its ERP implementation, the company sped up innovation and reduced its customization footprint by 94% 鈥� all while automating mission-critical processes.  

Despite being in different industries, Blue Diamond Growers, Avaya Corporation, and Hitachi High-Tech all recognize the tremendous opportunity for enterprise automation and jump-started their digital transformation journeys with 51风流technology. No matter what your level of experience may be or where you鈥檙e at in your automation journey, ! 

JG Chirapurath is chief marketing and solutions officer for 51风流BTP and AI.

According to , some businesses have improved their ability to connect finance and accounting processes and standardize critical financial workflows with finance software. Increasing automation with applications, such as the , can provide a foundation for consistent communication, data accuracy, auditable completeness, and efficiency throughout the financial close.

IDC’s methodology for determining business value revealed that these companies realized significant advantages, with three critical benefits generating, on average, 474% ROI and an eight-month payback rate.

Boost Efficiency Through Automation and Visibility

Performing account reconciliation in Excel and e-mailing that information to stakeholders is time-consuming and prevents full visibility into the entire company’s reconciliations. Even worse is the potential for delayed, incomplete, or noncompliant reconciliations with business and regulatory policies.

Introducing automation into the account substantiation process can dramatically reduce the manual effort in validation and reporting, freeing up financial staff resources to focus on higher-value tasking. In IDC’s survey, respondents suggested that 51风流Account Substantiation and Automation supports their automation of critical steps, including account reconciliation (100%), task management (83%), journal entry (67%), transaction matching (50%), and variance analysis (50%).

After adoption, the average team efficiency increased by 12%. Surveyed companies completed reconciliation activities 18% faster and journal entries 11% faster while increasing the percentage of financial reports yielding accurate results by 3%. Such outcomes mean that the time typically allocated to one full-time employee can be freed up to work on other projects 鈥� translating into an annual productivity-based business value of US$78,800 for each organization participating in the study.

Accelerate Processing with Data Accuracy

Inaccurate data and a lack of trust can become significant bottlenecks in the validation and reporting process. They can hamper overall financial close efficiency, riddle cash validation and reporting with errors, and slow the flow of business-critical insight needed to make critical decisions quickly.

Participating CFOs shared with IDC that the modern capabilities of 51风流Account Substantiation and Automation minimize those risks. They have achieved improvements, such as shorter time to close and enhanced process transparency. Furthermore, analytics tools help pinpoint areas in account substantiation and reconciliation that require greater attention and improvement.

In return, this benefit elevates the status of finance organizations from a cost center to a value center. For example, CFOs and CIOs can collaborate more to support the business as digital transformation accelerates and digital-first business models emerge and proliferate. This partnership also shifts the criteria used to invest in new financial applications toward a greater focus on security, modern infrastructure, functionality, and ease of use.

Drive Stability by Integrating Workflows

Equal to efficiency and speed, gaining and maintaining control of the validation and reporting process is also critical. The ability to standardize and centralize activities and relevant data is desirable for business environments facing anything from industry uncertainty and economic turbulence to high growth.

Companies interviewed by IDC indicated that using a single, integrated application for account reconciliation, task management, journal entry, transaction matching, and variance analysis is the key to accomplishing this goal. Centralizing all those tasks in 51风流Account Substantiation and Automation enables them to manage the whole financial close and help ensure annual audits are performed faster, compliantly, and more confidently.

Additionally, the messiness of the traditional financial close experience is replaced with increased stability because 95% of their account reconciliation happens in 51风流Account Substantiation and Automation. This approach helps ensure every person involved in financial close and auditing processes feels more engaged and knows what needs to be done next. But more importantly, everyone understands how their role adds value to the business.

Optimize Confidence with Better Control

Based on IDC’s research, the complexities of today’s financial close process are reaching a point where manual work is an impediment. Instead, a cloud environment is needed to support the automation of repetitive, low-value tasks and enterprise-wide data exchange and collaboration.

For that reason, many finance organizations worldwide rely on 51风流Account Substantiation and Automation by BlackLine. As a result, they can adjust the speed and scale of their financial close processes to meet not only their business needs but also the expectations of industry and regulatory auditors.

Explore the value and benefits your accounting- and finance-related activities can gain from the 51风流Account Substantiation and Automation application by BlackLine. .

Bil Khan is a senior director of Global Partner Marketing at SAP.

The aerospace and defense (A&D) industry is battling similar woes, with 70% of companies in the sector experiencing an turnover. The loss of skilled workers notwithstanding, delays in hiring, training, securing worker clearances, and rising costs translate to challenges in keeping production up to match demand. Much like the civil aviation workforce that moved on, 75% of the labor pool in A&D left for career advancement, while 31% departed for a better work location or for a remote-working opportunity.

While enticing the reluctant workforce to return with higher pay and perks remains an option, the industries are fast realizing that amid the labor and cost-surge crisis, innovations in production planning and creating efficiencies in throughput processes are now paramount.

Bridging Silos with Automation

Manufacturing efficiency isn鈥檛 always achieved until the production of the 100^th unit. To overcome this, intelligent software can be used to run recreations on simulation capability tools. Everything from the projected manufacturing assembly process, field capability and configuration process, flight operations, and maintenance performance can be simulated in a virtual world via a , even before the first cutting or bending of sheet metal. This way, any aircraft or engine part that is virtually simulated is manufactured efficiently right from the first unit produced.

Similarly, with robotic process automation (RPA), a digital thread can be created to bring information from the upstream engineering departments and auto-generate work instructions to provide seamless information routing to the downstream manufacturing departments. With , organizations have the power to design, simulate, and monitor processes to help ensure that transformation value is part of the company鈥檚 DNA. This intelligent enterprise philosophy helps in minimizing the handover time between processes. As a result, hitherto system silos can be negated to reduce the overall throughput time. Also, short-term planning involving supply chain, parts, and tools can be better optimized to match resource availability.

While RPA can create process efficiencies, robotic interventions are already improving the manufacturing process.

Replacing Skilled Labor with Technology Augmentation

With Industry 4.0, facilities across the industrial landscape are introducing a digital, end-to-end workflow with additive manufacturing. In Q2 last year, the Association for Advancing Automation the ordering of over US$580 million worth of robots, up 25% from 2021. In the aerospace industry, robots are mastering the drilling and fastening function with a higher degree of accuracy than a real person and saving time along the way.

Likewise, robotic systems applying sealant to aircraft structures is resulting in 20% time-savings. Robots are also being used for quality assurance during manufacturing, inspection of active-duty aircraft, welding, painting, and polishing. While robots have 95% time-savings in aircraft washing, welding automation is expected to fill the nearly 400,000 welding vacancies anticipated in the U.S. by 2024.

With organizations ready to embrace automation, the need of the hour is to simplify adoption. The solution can make integrating robots as easy as plug and play. So, whether it is cross-docking items on trolleys at goods receipt, put-away trolley activities, or even robot-enabled pick-pack-and-pass functions, 51风流Warehouse Robotics hands warehouse operators a shot in the arm by supporting an array of scenarios. Quick to implement and with no additional licensing required, the solution can give customers running warehouse management operations an easy, low-risk entry into agile warehouse robotics.

But with time- and cost-savings featuring prominently on the aviation industry鈥檚 agenda, how can customer experience stay optimum?

Boosting Customer Satisfaction with Technology Aids

For an industry where small margins contribute to survival, reliance on customer loyalty is huge. Variables like speed and convenience, therefore, play a major role in building customer loyalty. But with labor shortages wreaking havoc, digital transformation is emerging as a viable solution.

For instance, every manufacturer or supplier has their own portal to document their parts or assets, and this causes A&D companies to deploy a manual workforce to track every part coming from hundreds of manufacturer portals. can help overcome this challenge by provisioning for every asset to reside on a single platform. Now, A&D companies can simply connect their back-end systems to the network, fetch data directly into their systems, gain insight into the transactional data of an asset, and execute maintenance activities. This way, 51风流Business Network for Asset Intelligence 鈥� a cloud-based network 鈥� can limit the use of the workforce and create efficiencies by facilitating secured information exchange between various roles in asset-intensive industries comprising of equipment manufacturers, operators, maintenance providers, and others.

Also, A&D aftermarket providers process invoices from hundreds of airlines or aircraft operators. Their receival, approval, and logging could be automated to better utilize scare resources. Similarly, bots can read customer complaints, assess the degree of importance, categorize them, and automatically forward them to designated departments for speedy resolution.

If the pandemic taught us the importance of supply chain resilience, its aftermath and the evolving geopolitical crisis drives home the significance of innovation in manufacturing to combat sudden spikes in demand amid rising costs and a depleting workforce.

There will always be unpredicted situations. That said, the goal is to achieve a planning stability for all companies in the industry. Reducing risks through additional information and better planning will allow companies to establish a more stable environment with fewer uncertainties. And now, the industries can take heart from the fact that in automation, they have an ally that can turn organizations and the sector at large into intelligent and resilient enterprises.

Learn how automation can drive resilience in the aerospace and defense sector at .

Torsten Welte is global VP and head of Industrial Business Unit for Aerospace & Defense at SAP.

Consequently, it鈥檚 no surprise that during its 鈥業nnoDay,鈥� , a globally leading manufacturer of equipment for the development and production of drugs, identified manual and cross-company processes as the most promising area for digital innovation projects.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Every year, an increasing number of organizations leverage automation and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to drive innovation and improve efficiencies across their lines of business and business application processes. SAP鈥檚 solution, , is an AI-powered, no-code solution that combines workflow management, task automation, and decision management into one comprehensive, cloud-based solution running on (51风流BTP).

We believe this recognition serves as an acknowledgment of SAP鈥檚 continued leadership in these categories and commitment to providing world-class support for our customer鈥檚 mission-critical business processes and applications.

Gain a Competitive Edge with 51风流Process Automation

It鈥檚 clear that process automation technology is a game changer. Since launching 51风流Process Automation, we鈥檝e seen tremendous growth in customers embracing automation in impactful ways. , for example, developed multiple automation bots to execute routine tasks. One bot can successfully classify and process over 6,000 e-mail attachments per year, based on if the document is an invoice, auto-confirmation, or delivery note.

51风流Process Automation helps our customers:

Build with Simplicity
51风流Process Automation was developed on the bold vision that business users should be able to build and enhance automations and workflows by themselves with low-code/no-code technology, while IT retains governance and compliance. Unlike other RPA vendors, our enables customers to adapt, improve, and innovate business processes and operations without the complexities of using multiple tools.

Automate Faster
Backed by 50 years of running highly complex business processes and applications, 51风流is uniquely positioned to understand the opportunities of automation and AI. SAP鈥檚 domain expertise in lines of business, such as finance and HR, and related business processes like and enables us to provide customers with out-of-the-box content. Our prebuilt process content, RPA bots, and templates can make it easy for customers to jump-start innovation and accelerate their time-to-value. When paired with the , leading process analytics and modeling solutions, customers can quickly move from process insights into actions with tailored automation recommendations.

Operate Confidently
To automate and enhance business processes and applications, an organization needs a reliable and secure platform. 51风流customers can rest assured knowing the 51风流Process Automation solution is part of 51风流Business Technology Platform 鈥� SAP鈥檚 trusted, enterprise-grade, multi-cloud platform. This means customers can now focus on empowering their business users to automate processes without having to be concerned about security.

Next Steps

When leveraging RPA technology, the opportunities range from streamlining financial processes, HR onboarding, call center support, and much more. Consider what business outcomes your organization could achieve with this technology. And, if you鈥檙e ready to unlock the full potential automation and AI, take the next step with the following resources:

• Visit the .
• Get hands-on with or .
• Read the .
• Read for a historic perspective and road map updates.

JG Chirapurath is chief marketing and solutions officer for 51风流BTP.

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner鈥檚 research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. This graphic was published by Gartner, Inc. as part of a larger research document and should be evaluated in the context of the entire document. The Gartner document is available upon request from SAP.

鈥淥rganizations have embraced Industry 4.0 to build resiliency against constant supply chain disruptions,鈥� said Mike Lackey, global vice president of Solution Management for Digital Manufacturing at SAP. 鈥淓xtracting insights from operators, systems, and equipment in near real-time instantly brings business context to shop floor data. This helps everyone, from plant management and operations to the entire C-suite, turbocharge new as-a-service business models and customer personalization, as well as more agile, sustainable production for greater employee productivity and sustainable growth.鈥�

Connected Data Sparks Business Results

analysts predicted that by 2023, 50% of all supply chain forecasts will be automated through the use of artificial intelligence (AI), improving accuracy by five percentage points. Two years after that, saw 40% of G2000 organizations using AI, data governance, and a transformed organization to develop a resilient and distributed operational decision-making framework, driving 25% faster change execution.

Lackey said that leading-edge industrial manufacturers in many sectors have achieved impressive real-world results with connected data intelligence from . Challenged by 24/7 production imperatives to meet high demand, a car battery manufacturer increased average production volume by 25% while boosting product quality and reducing 鈥渋dea to production鈥� cycle time by integrating data from production design with manufacturing processes. After digitizing design and manufacturing, a medical device manufacturer reduced design change times from months to days, achieving 99% uptime for machines in the field and decreasing time to market and costs 鈹� a life and death issue with oncology equipment. An electronics manufacturer in the mobile phone industry increased factory productivity by 32%, decreased costs by 33%, and shortened the cycle from R&D to production by 41%.

鈥� factories don鈥檛 operate in a vacuum,鈥� he said. 鈥淚f the process temperature drops below a certain degree, what鈥檚 the impact on quality, costs, and promised delivery dates for customers? How fast can we replenish materials from suppliers? When brought together with information from all critical business processes, one single data point on the shop floor can trigger decisions and actions that will help organizations meet and exceed customer expectations 鈥� despite unexpected challenges.鈥�

Intelligence Deciphers Production and Demand Signals Fast

Machine intelligence drives innovation with far-reaching business consequences. For example, the typical factory has hundreds of machines from different vendors. With Internet of Things (IoT)-based sensor data from various machines that鈥檚 integrated with manufacturing software applications and supply chain management, procurement, and finance, companies can automatically increase operational efficiency while reducing waste and unplanned downtime. According to , 30% of G2000 manufacturers will embed connected technologies to increase product reliability using operational insights that ensure uptime and support an optimized maintenance supply chain by 2025. analysts predicted 60% of G2000 OEMs will use AI and real-time asset data to service equipment pre-failure, avoiding 50% of unplanned downtime hours by 2026.

Equally important, intelligence helps manufacturers read and act on customer demand signals much faster. Driven by increased competition for wallet share, analysts expected 65% of G2000 OEMs will integrate customer insights with service work orders to better personalize engagements, increasing satisfaction by 15% by 2025. analysts predicted that by 2027, 70% of the top 20 global consumer goods companies will design digital twins of their consumers as part of their customer experience (CX) strategy.

鈥淐ompanies need both the capacity and agility to respond whether demand fluctuates due to market forces like pandemic lockdowns and natural disasters, or downstream social media promotions,鈥� said Lackey. 鈥淢anufacturers are much closer to customers, expected to deliver the same quality products at accelerated innovation cycles. They may need to shift production quickly, retrofit existing operations, or ramp up new facilities so they don鈥檛 miss out on opportunities. Insight from connected data is the only way to design, produce, and deliver the products customers want on time.鈥�

Intelligence Meets Sustainable Business Commitments

For manufacturers, intelligence has revolutionized their responsibilities for building a sustainable business. analysts said that by 2024, to improve long-term supply chain profitability, 70% of manufacturers in global supply chains will invest in software tools to support sustainability and circular economy business models. By the following year, researchers predicted 40% of all manufacturing IT will own the responsibility of data modeling for sustainability and net-zero carbon targets. Clearly, the digitalized supply chain advantage goes to manufacturers that make the most of Industry 4.0.

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But this is just a first step. Taken to the next level, intelligent RPA, also called 鈥渉yperautomation,鈥� offers even more valuable benefits by combining traditional RPA with artificial intelligence (AI) and low-code/no-code development.

As an example, repetitive tasks and routine activities in finance, purchasing, and customer service were preventing Villeroy & Boch, one of Europe鈥檚 oldest ceramic manufacturers, from improving operational efficiency and delivering great customer service. The German premium tableware and bathroom products company implemented 51风流Intelligent RPA for routine activities, helping streamline workflows and free up staff to focus on strategic activities.

Like other 51风流customers benefiting from hyperautomation, Villeroy & Boch started with automating simple, frequently occurring tasks, such as responding to standard e-mail inquiries with attended RPA bots. Previously known as robotic desktop automation, attended RPA is a software assistant for the human user and interacts with a desktop application while respecting applicable business logic.

Operating internationally in 125 countries demands smooth workflows and operational efficiency across several business functions, but the ceramics group always had a bigger vision. The company wanted to create a fully automated invoice error-handling process by combining 51风流Intelligent RPA and 51风流AI Business Services to handle unstructured data and documents.

Now advanced RPA bots autonomously trigger tasks and automate more complex work such as processing attachments from e-mails according to their type and predefined confidence thresholds. So far, the 10 digital assistants Villeroy & Boch has deployed are handling 66,000 documents a year.

鈥淎lthough we鈥檙e just at the beginning of our journey with 51风流Intelligent RPA, we are already realizing its potential to help us work more efficiently, serve customers better, and gain competitive advantage,鈥� said Daniel Neuhaeuser, head of ERP Core Solutions at Villeroy & Boch.

The advantages of going beyond traditional RPA and tapping the potential of hyperautomation are becoming more widely acknowledged. Industry analysts have forecast that the worldwide hyperautomation-enabling software market will reach nearly US$600 billion by 2022.

Hyperautomation services such as 51风流Intelligent RPA enable companies to quickly and easily create bots to emulate human users and automate tedious, repetitive, mundane tasks. For example, today鈥檚 office workers spend a lot of time moving between different applications and must often reenter or copy and paste data, such as a customer鈥檚 name and address details, from one application to another.

Earlier this year, 51风流Intelligent RPA was cited as a Strong Performer in . According to the report, 鈥淪AP鈥檚 RPA solution is a strong alternative for 51风流customers, particularly for enterprises concerned with bots disrupting core 51风流systems and those usually needing the central 51风流development team to design, develop, and maintain RPA for clear accountability, or for companies seeking a feature-rich RPA tool that comes with a broad ecosystem of partners.鈥�

Typically, customers report that 51风流Intelligent RPA deployments free up between 15 and 30% of employees鈥� time, which means they can focus on tasks that deliver greater value to the organization and improve the customer experience.

Specific benefits of using 51风流Intelligent RPA include being able to use tools such as , built-in integration and content for business process management, and fast, cost-effective deployment. By opening current tools to everyone in the enterprise, 51风流Intelligent RPA extends its reach beyond software developers. Business users who have no coding skills but have functional expertise and technical acumen can become citizen developers and build their own automations.

To support this mission and help automate tasks in business processes, 51风流Intelligent RPA offers a new bot-building and execution experience and a cloud-based design studio. This allows users to create and deploy software bots as digital assistants that automate repetitive tasks through a low-code approach.

This low-code tooling speeds up implementation time and offers a short time to value. More than 200 prebuilt bots are now available within 51风流Intelligent RPA to help automate tasks, improve productivity, and make work more interesting for employees.

But as economies have digitized, business leaders now recognize that data is at the heart of digital businesses. It fuels differentiation, strategy, rapid innovation, and other important elements of running a successful business. Moreover, truly data-driven companies tend to generate 8% to 10% more profit and are 23 times more likely to acquire new customers 鈥� which fuels significantly higher market valuation 鈥� compared to their peers.

In the meantime, organizations struggle to unite and access real-time data. Companies generate a lot of data, and while they have good intentions to use that data, it鈥檚 stuck in siloes. That makes it hard to leverage data to optimize business processes across the organization. According to research firm, , 鈥淏etween 60% and 73% of all data within an enterprise goes unused for analytics.鈥�

Below are some suggestions for customers embarking on an enterprise data strategy that will help bring data of all kinds together, allowing companies to turn data into business value.

Leave Your Data Where It Is

Too often companies try to centralize data via a large, top-down project where data from across the organization must be brought into a central repository. The problem with this approach: by the time you bring together data from across different parts of an organization into one place, it鈥檚 outdated.

People need to shift their mindset to connecting 鈥� rather than collecting 鈥� data. When you consider your data strategy, prioritize a digital business platform that can automatically pull data from wherever it resides 鈥� whether that鈥檚 your supply chain or finance teams鈥� applications or somewhere else. Doing that helps ensure your employees can work with real-time information from across the company.

Make Sure You Can Handle All Data Types

Organizations generate all kinds of data 鈥� structured, unstructured, relational, and geospatial, to name a few. Too often organizations approach each type of data differently and separately, which replicates the problem of unconnected data that doesn鈥檛 come together in one holistic picture.

Select a platform with data capabilities that can analyze and knit together these different types into a unified whole. Businesses need a modern platform that treats data as multimodal and multidimensional. By looking at the multiple facets of data, business leaders can make new correlations that help to make better decisions while accurately anticipating future opportunities and threats.

Harness Data to Drive Automation

The real power of data kicks in when you can use it to drive automation and machine-augmented decision-making. There鈥檚 no reason to maintain so many manual processes, like invoice reconciliation or handling basic customer complaints in call centers. If you can harness data appropriately, many types of tasks can be automated 鈥� freeing employees to do more strategic work.

Automation also augments employees鈥� on-the-spot decision-making capabilities. For example, a consumer packaged goods company could use data from cameras and machines to help a quality control manager determine whether to approve a certain batch of products. can process varied pieces of information, such as the Internet of Things (IoT) data or bill-of-material changes, faster than a human, providing an extra level of support on the front lines.

To advance automation, you need a platform that allows you to embed machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) into your business applications 鈥� and one that can handle varied data sources in real-time.

Democratize Data

While data used to be the preserve of elite analysts and data scientists, now it鈥檚 a priority to democratize data. Information needs to be easily accessed not just by executives but by people on the front lines so they can use it to make decisions. Enabling self-service access to data also reduces the time IT departments spend on manual work, like running reports.

Your platform must make it easy for everyone to access and analyze data, so be sure to evaluate the usability of your data management solutions. Ask questions such as: Is it user-friendly and intuitive? What kind of training is involved to empower people with self-service analytics tools?

Protect Your Data

Related to access is the importance of security. One of the hallmarks of digital business is the ability to seamlessly connect across your organization but also externally to your customers, partners, and suppliers. But this is fraught with risk 鈥� especially in this day and age of ransomware.

Your data platform must take into account any areas of exposure or vulnerability and build in the right security, access controls, and governance to protect your data 鈥� and information shared across your network.

Finally, remember how you use your data will make the difference between success and failure in the next decade. It鈥檚 the foundation of digital transformation and will help launch new digital business models that go beyond automation 鈥� and truly redefine how companies operate and differentiate themselves. provides a platform with database and data management, analytics, and intelligent technology 鈥� like embedded AI 鈥� solutions that customers around the world are already using.

So choose wisely. Because with the right platform, your company will be poised for success now and in the future.

To learn more about this topic, attend the “51风流Data and Analytics Forum: Accelerating Outcomes,” which will be held virtually from September 14 to October 7. .

Raghu Ramanathan is chief revenue officer for Platform and Technologies at SAP.

Along with the latest leading-edge technology, the event is also about how to turn data into true business value to keep businesses moving forward while becoming more resilient for the future.

Timo Elliott, innovation evangelist at SAP, will speak about using today鈥檚 business technology to ensure 鈥淩esilience in the Present.鈥� Martin Wezowski, chief designer and futurist at SAP, will close the session by discussing how to be 鈥淧repared for the Future.鈥� There will also be a 鈥淟earn from the Leaders鈥� session, with Johanna Botta presenting what business leaders, renowned analysts, and experts have to say about today鈥檚 latest business technology trends.

These three 10-minute briefings, each packed with valuable knowledge, can equip businesses with key insights.

Resilience in the Present

What are the most important trends, challenges, and opportunities in technology today? Elliott will explain how organizations can stay relevant in the present while reinventing themselves for the future.

We will look at the role of people, customers, suppliers, and technology in keeping a business running successfully. We will also consider how an effective business technology platform can help businesses achieve five key goals:

• Extract value from your data for reliable insights: Know what is going on in your business and understand your industry and the wider economy.
• Act on those insights: Once you understand the full context of what is happening, you can make the best decisions on what to address first.
• Employ automation in the smartest way possible: Make the most of your limited resources by blending them with the latest technologies.
• Build flexibility into your business: React with the necessary agility to whatever the future brings and innovate for maximum success.
• Reinvent your business whenever necessary: React to changing business models and opportunities to work in new, more effective ways.

Learn from the Leaders

Botta will then present testimony from a broad spectrum of senior-level people who have direct experience using these technologies to create business value for their customers. She will present real-life examples of the many organizations already delivering valuable customer and employee experiences 鈥� in real time and based on real data.

Prepared for the Future

Finally, Wezowski will discuss the implications of all of this for tomorrow. How can businesses prepare for the future? Why is it important to have a strong vision and purpose? For instance, what does it mean to a business when Elon Musk launches rockets in his bid to reach Mars? You may think it means nothing, but it is all part of a bigger plan and all connected to your 鈥減urpose.鈥�

Discover how the very latest intelligent technologies are going to change things 鈥� and us 鈥� in ways that we cannot yet even imagine. When that starts to happen, learn why it is the businesses that build the strongest relationships that succeed.

Technology will be important, but human creativity will always be the competitive edge. The latest intelligence calls for a whole new way of thinking about what we do.

This all starts with data, and it all starts now. Join the Business Technology Experience online event and discover how for yourself. for the online events April 28-30.

Why would 51风流鈥� or any provider for that matter 鈥� promise to support existing software for such long time frames, at a time when technology is continuously evolving at an accelerating pace?

It is a matter of one underlying truth:聽 of companies are more comfortable with learning from their peers that are digital transformers and disrupters before diving into their own innovation efforts. This mindset is only natural as聽聽CEOs still feel tremendous pressure to deliver a successful digital transformation strategy. The stakes could not be higher for every digital initiative.

Question of Strategy and Timing, Not Momentum

The approach to technology adoption today is very different than what it was 10 to five years ago, or even one. Now more than ever, it is a deeply deliberated business decision based on more than just knowing which software to choose. It is about timing, readiness, and operational need.

Take, for example, intelligent , 51风流S/4HANA. To date, approximately 14,000 51风流customers have already chosen 51风流S/4HANA to be their future digital core, and thousands are actively implementing it. The ERP adoption rate is undoubtedly experiencing significant momentum. But for some companies, planning for the new technology presents a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reconsider their business models, operational strategy, organizational setup, processes, and resources to build a better, stronger, and more resilient business.

Going through a decision-making process like this takes considerable time, thought, and discussion. This is not the moment to rush in and drive a massive change to the IT landscape, let alone a technical upgrade. Businesses should define financial drivers, innovate new business models, refine operational processes, and investigate new capabilities such as automation, all based on the advanced capabilities of 51风流S/4HANA. More importantly, their workforce and leaders must be trained to use these digital advancements in ways that deliver a customer experience that is more engaging and profitable, not traumatic and lackluster.

With the right maintenance commitment on behalf of the solution provider, businesses are granted the room to accurately predict and genuinely reshape their future. They can determine whether pockets of legacy customization are holding them back from transforming. Furthermore, decision-makers can consider the best staged approach to drive the shift, especially if a broad array of business units and market units are scattered worldwide. Additionally, new technology co-innovations and partnerships with digital giants such as Microsoft,听, and聽Amazon Web Services聽can be thoughtfully examined.

Then, when the time is right, businesses can swoop in and transform themselves with solutions that best meet their needs and support their ultimate visions. All pieces of their envisaged business model and operational puzzle are set, the workforce is ready and committed, and successful adoption is within sight.

Inspired Transformation That is Indisputably Flexible and Supported

Customers and their user groups have a strong desire for starting their transformation journey without delay. Their feedback is clear: The time to move is now. But for their transformation process, they also want to take advantage of the best engineering practices and innovation processes and capture advanced capabilities that deliver a new level of organizational momentum 鈥� based on clarity, choice, and flexibility.

In this respect, maintenance commitments can be powerful aspects of how businesses evolve, especially with artificial intelligence, machine learning, predictive analytics, and . And while 20 years may seem like many lifetimes in terms of technology innovation, extensions like the聽one we recently announced聽can become the lifeline businesses need to transform on their terms, within their timeline, and in their way.

Stay in the conversation by following Services and Support from 51风流on ,听, , and聽.

Jens Bernotat is the global vice president of Strategy and Ecosystem for Customer Solution Support and Innovation at 51风流SE.

Addressing Customer Experience with Humans

During my 20-year tenure at SAP, I have worked alongside customers and have always found it meaningful to listen to them and help them succeed. I believe creating a positive customer experience boils down to effortless interaction with 51风流Product Support. Let鈥檚 be honest: When something goes wrong, especially for your business, there is naturally a huge frustration that comes along with it. This must be met with genuine care and resourcefulness.

As humans, we have complex thought patterns, decision-making, and a wide range of emotions. Technology and automation cannot address all of these. By understanding the kinds of repercussions that come with technical issues, I can wholeheartedly relate to customers鈥� desire to connect with someone 鈥� not a machine 鈥� who can fix their issues with the least amount of effort as possible. In this day and age, where customer expectations are higher than ever, efficiency and real-time channels for support are imperative.

Throughout my years in support, I have heard from customers that they would like to be able to speak to a manager or someone who can help get the job done.聽Not only is this a great way to be accountable to customers, it is also a great way to influence their overall experience and gain more insight into customers, allowing 51风流to become a trusted advisor to them.

This is exactly why 51风流has developed the new for high-priority incidents. The service is available to all 51风流customers at no additional cost and for nearly all 51风流solutions. 51风流聽noticed a gap in the customer experience journey and is filling this need for 聽customers 鈥� all while maximizing their satisfaction.

How Schedule a Manager Works

51风流developed Schedule a Manager to put customers in front of the people who can treat their issues with the utmost importance, thereby helping exponentially reduce the risk of further escalation.

Alongside the Expert Chat and Schedule an Expert services, Schedule a Manager provides customers an easy way to book a 15-minute phone call with a support manager. This manager works alongside the relevant product support engineer day in and day out to discuss the details of a customer鈥檚 high-priority incident.

51风流envisioned a service that would allow management to get closer to 聽customers and empower 聽leaders to directly impact and influence customers鈥� support experience. Through Schedule a Manager, 51风流is bringing that to life by enabling customers to quite literally schedule a conversation with a manager 鈥� but not just any manager, the right manager 鈥� including me.

Beyond the Customer Experience

When I look back on my own career as a manager, some of my best learning experiences came from interactions with customers. Every interaction is an opportunity to make a difference and will help 51风流better develop a strong sense of empathy with customers.

Schedule a Manager will not only impact how we interact, but it will also impact our overall brand affinity in the eyes of some of our most important stakeholders. With this new service, we hope to make customers feel like we know who they are, what they need help with, and why their business is so important to us.

Learn how to use Schedule a Manager here.

Kristen Cordell-LaBarge is head of Support for Customer Experience in 51风流Product Support.