The launch of the initiative aims to accelerate the innovation process to help bring the latest 51风流technologies into the hands of 51风流customers.

An initiative to upskill partners in the latest innovation methods

The 51风流AppHaus Alliances initiative helps ensure method maturity of 51风流partners, upskilling them with the innovation tools and resources they need to conduct workshops on the latest technologies such as 51风流Business AI and agentic AI. Currently, the qualification process is exclusively available to partners enrolled in the NEXTLEVEL 51风流BTP & AI program. Upskilling partners allows more 51风流customers to benefit faster from the latest innovation tools and methodologies made available in the .

鈥淚n close collaboration with Partner Ecosystem Success, we launched the 51风流AppHaus Alliances initiative because we want to bring the power of SAP鈥檚 latest technologies, such as 51风流Business AI, into the hands of more customers鈥攆aster and with real business impact,鈥� Kathrin Tarnai-Sindl, head of 51风流AppHaus, said. 鈥淭o do this, we train global 51风流partners in the 51风流AppHaus business AI methodology and equip them with curated workshop modules from our innovation toolkit. We are proud to support this important initiative with our proven methodologies and customer co-innovation experience.鈥�

Who joined already?

Since its inception in April 2025, the following partners have already gained the qualification in 51风流Business AI methods and tools provided by 51风流AppHaus, with more partners joining regularly:

• Delaware
• Deloitte
• DXC Technology
• EY
• HCL Tech
• IBM
• KPMG
• NTT Data

Looking back and forward

The enablement activities stretch from virtual 51风流Business AI inspiration sessions to onsite trainings, for employees and trainers, in different workshop methodologies. Currently, there have been more than 700 attendees, many of them consultants, and 100 AI-related use cases, of which 37 were identified and selected as part of the NEXTLEVEL program. Also, more than 10 have been released in the site to be found as so-called accelerator packages.

The different enablement formats are:

• 90-minute virtual enablement sessions on the latest workshop formats available in the 51风流AppHaus innovation toolkit
• 60-minute virtual business AI Inspiration sessions to introduce and showcase available 51风流AI technology
• Train-the-trainer sessions on 51风流Business AI explore and design workshops
• Train-the-trainer sessions on 51风流Business AI agent discover and design workshops

What started as a small pilot hosting road shows to partners within the NEXTLEVEL 51风流BTP & AI program has evolved into a global initiative that was joined by 51风流AppHaus in 2024. Enrolled partners can benefit from the proven co-innovation methodology and focus on use cases with high business value. They can learn how business solutions can be taken to the next level through the latest 51风流technologies infused with artificial intelligence.

鈥淭he newly-launched 51风流AppHaus Alliances initiative exemplifies our commitment to advancing skill development and co-innovation within our ecosystem,鈥� Karl Fahrbach, chief partner officer, SAP, said. 鈥淭hrough strategic collaboration and rigorous training, we are enabling our partners to master and apply the latest 51风流methodologies and technologies, such as 51风流Business AI. As a result, 51风流customers can unlock the full potential of our solutions and drive unparalleled business impact.鈥�

Imke Vierjahn is communications lead for 51风流AppHaus.

Manufacturing-X was launched as part of the Industry 4.0 platform, with the aim of promoting digital ecosystems and establishing an international standard for data exchange. It is an industry-wide initiative of the German government with various projects for different industrial sectors.

“The realization that the digitalization of industry is inevitable has become the norm over the past few years,” says Georg Kube, head of Industry Data Ecosystems at 51风流SE. “A variety of use cases for different industries and new business models have been developed. They are successful 鈥� but only as long as companies work with other companies with which they already have a close partnership.”

“The most well-known of the [Manufacturing-X] projects is certainly Catena-X for the automotive sector,” Kube says. “The common aim of all these projects is to establish a new form of data exchange.”

For example, an automaker that wants to digitally integrate its direct suppliers typically requests all the data about the supplied parts from its partners, and the suppliers usually feel comfortable providing this data because of the trust that has grown over the years between the partners.

But it鈥檚 different when data is needed from companies without a direct business relationship. “A typical example is the determination of a vehicle’s CO2 footprint,” Kube says. “Suddenly, information about the CO2 footprint of the smallest plastic parts is needed, which may come from companies in the supply chain with which a company has never had direct contact. It’s not easy to access that data.”

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Trust Is the Catalyst

Companies are often very hesitant to share data freely. And for good reason: potential inferences about their cost structure or the nature of their production can be drawn from the data.

“On the one hand, as companies, we hesitate to give out our data. But on the other hand, we rely on the data of others in order for digitalization scenarios to be successfully implemented,” Kube explains. “We want to address this problem within the framework of Manufacturing-X through a new [approach to] industrial data sharing.”

“The promise,” Kube continues, “is that the digitalization, which we can currently complete up to 70%, can be fully implemented.”

Information Transfer 鈥� But Secure

“What companies lack the most today is knowledge,” Kube says. “We constantly hear from 51风流customers that they would pay to find out what their own customers are doing with the products they have sold to them.”

For example, a manufacturer of robot grippers receives few insights after selling its product about where the grippers are located and what they are used for. If this were not the case, the manufacturer could make much more informed decisions about which generation of products the market needs, or whether a completely new model needs to be developed.

However, customers have concerns that this information could lead to inferences about the nature of their production and the finished product, or that this type of application might be prohibited.

With Manufacturing-X, a scenario has been created in which data sovereignty remains with the owner of the data, but the data can be provided within a narrow framework with a legal and technical structure that prevents abuse. This is the essence of a whole range of use cases in areas such as manufacturing-as-a-service, sustainability, and others.

“These use cases basically exist independently of Manufacturing-X,” Kube explains. “Most of them are neither new nor original. They just could never be fully implemented because trust in data exchange was lacking 鈥� and Manufacturing-X finally creates the conditions for this.”

SAP鈥檚 Role

As an enterprise software company, 51风流has a strong interest in completing the digitization of its customers.

“The digitalization of industry works very well with 51风流products,” says Heiko Flohr, head of Product Management, 51风流for Discrete Industries & Industry Networks, at 51风流SE. “Most of the world鈥檚 leading companies use 51风流in some way to digitize its next-generation processes. Therefore, it is clear from our perspective that we must support and drive this emerging industry standard for data exchange.”

Kube notes that medium-sized companies in particular often suffer from the unavailability of data. “For this customer group, we offer a comprehensive, easily consumable application portfolio with ,鈥� he says. 鈥淭he goal is to establish industrial data sharing according to Manufacturing-X standards as a solid part of this portfolio and enable our customers to collaborate more effectively and trustfully with their supply chains.”

Within Manufacturing-X, new sovereign data exchange formats are to be created for the industry, based on European Union values such as transparency, controllability, portability, and interoperability. “We work very collaboratively and with a focus on implementation in various industry-specific initiatives to make this vision a reality,” says Mirko Paul, head of Industry Cloud Architecture at SAP. “Based on state-of-the-art, cloud-based architectures and the scalable technology standard of 51风流Business Technology Platform, we ensure that these new standards are compatible with 51风流applications from the outset and pre-integrated for relevant business processes.”

At the same time, 51风流opens its own products and applications that are already on the market. Products and solutions such as and products in the areas of supply chain and sustainability are to be equipped with connectors that will allow them to work with this new standard.

The 51风流AppHaus Network consists of 51风流and partner locations spread around the globe. Together, all 24 locations work with a human-centered approach to innovation built with 51风流Business Technology Platform (51风流BTP). They are united in their conviction that sustainable innovation is based on five key enablers: people, process, place, leadership, and technology.

The Newly Designed 51风流AppHaus Palo Alto

adds a distinct opportunity for innovation in Silicon Valley. According to Andreas Hauser, senior vice president and head of 51风流AppHaus Network, 鈥淔or many companies, innovation centers are like a gallery where they display their software. But 51风流AppHaus is different. We collaborate with customers to understand how the latest and greatest technology can help their businesses run better and drive impact. And we keep that engagement going to make sure they succeed.鈥�

The new creative space on the 51风流campus in Palo Alto includes a dedicated design thinking area for customer innovation workshops, a garage breakout space that can be used to expand the workshop space, two meeting rooms, a maker space, a pop-up library, and a coffee lounge for connecting and relaxing. The space is designed to work with customers in a creative space, be it in person, virtually, or in a hybrid setup.

Grand Reopening Celebration

Presented and moderated by Hauser, Uwe Palm, head of 51风流AppHaus Palo Alto, and Sally Lawler Kennedy, senior director of Innovation & Customer Experience at 51风流AppHaus Palo Alto, the evening program offered a diverse mix of innovation and design topics from customer and local ecosystem perspectives:

• Robert Strong, comedian, magician, and author, captivated the audience with his magic act, creating a memorable event opening.
• Kulmeet Bawa, chief revenue officer for 51风流Business Technology Platform, hosted a fireside chat on accelerating innovation with 51风流BTP with Omar Mitchell, vice president of Sustainable Infrastructure and Growth Initiatives, NHL.
• There was a panel discussion called “Driving Human-Centered Design and Innovation, Accelerated Through AI” with Sam Yen, chief innovation officer, JPMorgan Chase & Co; Alissa Sylvestre, VP UX and Design, ConvergentIS, 51风流AppHaus Calgary; Gavin Quinn, founder and CEO, Mindset Consulting, 51风流AppHaus Minneapolis; and Luke Nixon, chief operating officer, 51风流Labs US.
• The 鈥淒esigning Better Tomorrows鈥� keynote was done by Lisa Kay Solomon, author and designer, Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford University.  

Almost all 51风流AppHaus Network members from around the world came to celebrate and commemorate the occasion together with customers, partners, and 51风流attendees. The evening event provided networking prior to the two-day meet-up.

The Partner Meet-Up

On the first day of the global 51风流AppHaus Network meet-up, Bawa and Thorsten Leiduck, global head of 51风流BTP Ecosystem, welcomed 51风流AppHaus Network members. These 21 members, representing more than 20,000 employees globally, share the passion for human-centered innovation powered by 51风流BTP. Both executives underlined the importance of the partner ecosystem for SAP. In a lively dialogue, partners asked questions about SAP鈥檚 strategy, discussed their role in SAP鈥檚 future, and shared ideas and joint opportunities.

Looking back, Leiduck recaps: 鈥淒uring the 51风流AppHaus Network partner meet-up, my open exchanges with many 51风流partners from around the globe were invaluable. The conversations underscored the energy and excitement of our ecosystem and our partners鈥� commitment to deliver value to customers. It was inspiring to hear how network members 鈥� who are all experts in customer co-innovation 鈥� create business impact by building upon 51风流BTP. I鈥檓 looking forward to the next global 51风流AppHaus Network meet-up in 2025!鈥�

From AI Workshops to Learning Sessions and Speed Dating

The two-day partner event allowed for an open and broad exchange on the latest innovation formats, tools, and methodologies all made available in the .

The latest and workshops took center stage. Recurring themes throughout the event were how partners can support customers to take full advantage of 51风流BTP and SAP鈥檚 clean core strategy. They also shared best practices to increase demand generation. In the end, all this knowledge sharing will lead to enhanced opportunities for 51风流customers to benefit from this global network of co-innovation experts, regardless of where they are geographically or in their digital transformation journeys.

Following the 51风流AppHaus motto “work hard, play hard,鈥� there was time scheduled to get to know members from other geographies because nothing can replace personal exchange. To round out the program, the community gathered for evening excursions in the Silicon Valley. One of the highlights was the evening visit to at Stanford University, which included some surprising encounters when meeting the d.school founders at work.

Imke Vierjahn is communications lead of 51风流AppHaus, T&I Integrated Communications.

The manifesto aligns with SAP’s established presence as a key contributor to open source: 51风流currently ranks as one of the top ten commercial contributors globally on GitHub in the .  

Open Innovation and Collaboration 

“Our open source manifesto is more than a declaration of our current contributions; it’s a promise to continue driving open innovation and collaboration at a significant scale,” said Juergen Mueller, chief technology officer and member of the Executive Board of 51风流SE. “By embracing open source, we not only accelerate our own innovation but also empower our customers and partners to build on a foundation of transparency, security, and shared success.” 

SAP’s commitment to open source is evidenced by its leading role and active participation in pivotal projects like and that influence digital innovation, as well as by SAP鈥檚 active participation in leading open source initiatives and foundations like , , , and .  

We believe that open source serves as a driving force for great technology, allowing global minds to work together, share ideas, and further advance our collective development. 

Open Reference Architecture Project 

The manifesto coincides with SAP’s participation in the Open Reference Architecture project under the EU’s initiative, exemplifying SAP’s support for digital sovereignty in cloud infrastructure and services. This project’s development, contributed as open source, showcases SAP’s transparent approach to fostering community-led growth and innovation. 

Martin Georg Fassunge, project lead of Open Reference Architecture project, 51风流BTP, confirms the importance of open source for this project: “Our participation in the IPCEI-CIS initiative signifies our commitment to supporting Europe’s digital transformation by providing open, secure, and scalable solutions. With our open source approach, we aim to foster an environment of collective growth and innovation.” 

SAP鈥檚 Open Source Engagement in Cloud-Native Development 

In accordance with the Open Reference Architecture project, 51风流leads several open source, cloud-native projects, such as , , (ORD), and (OCM), all aimed at encouraging an open community of external contributors and adopters.  

We are committed to empowering our employees with training, guidelines, and tools. We also support our ecosystem by sharing best practices and expertise via , our podcast series , and community events. Come visit us at our booth at North America to learn more about our cloud-native open source projects. 

Looking Ahead 

With the publication of the open source manifesto and the start of our Open Reference Architecture project, we are excited to enter the next phase of our open source journey together with the open source community, our customers, and our partners.  

Learn more:

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Michael Ameling is EVP and head of Intelligent Enterprise and chief product officer for 51风流BTP.

Russell told the crowd that customer stories and conversations is what 51风流Sapphire is all about, saying that what makes the event special is having 鈥渁 collective group that comes together, both here in the room and virtually, and being able to understand how 51风流can bring out your best.鈥�

Russell emphasized that the news from 51风流Sapphire is a “demonstration of our commitment to continually innovate, to continually strive to bring more creative value to your business.鈥�

He noted that a perfect example of this is the announcement that 51风流has entered into an agreement to acquire WalkMe, a leader in digital adoption platforms. Reflecting on the acquisition, Russell said 鈥淲e are obsessed not only about great applications and great platforms to deliver value for your business, we also care passionately about the transformation journey to get there.鈥�

As Chief Revenue Officer, Russell noted that every day 300 million people log on to 51风流cloud applications to run their businesses. 鈥淎nd obviously we can never take that for granted,鈥� he said. 鈥淵ou have choice, you have options. We strive to be at our best to help you be at yours. The way we measure success is in your terms, because ultimately [as a] market leader in business AI, we hold ourselves to the highest standards. Why? Because that鈥檚 what you expect.鈥�

A big part of the transformation journey many customers are taking is moving to the cloud with RISE with SAP. 鈥淲e are super proud of our cloud journey and [that] we are helping you transform your business,鈥� Russell said. 鈥淢ore than 6,000 customers have already moved to RISE with SAP. Of those 6,000 customers in the last 12 months, over 1,000 have already gone live.鈥�

PureTech Scientific: Speed and Scalability is Key

Russell was first joined on stage by Brian Hardee, CIO of , a global leader in the production of glycolic acid used in a variety of industries and applications.听As a recent carve-out by a private equity owner from a much larger global manufacturer, PureTech had to quickly migrate its operations to its own systems. But without an IT team of its own this was initially a daunting challenge. The new company chose 51风流S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition because of its many benefits.

鈥淔or us, it was an easy choice because first, we have no IT team,鈥� Hardee said. 鈥淲e have no internal training team, and we also had a very tight timeline with respect to the exit. So, we needed a solution that would enable us to move forward with speed, efficiency, and scalability. I could be confident that the infrastructure was being managed and secure. And that left us with an awesome choice for growth as well.鈥�

Scalability and rapid implementation were key factors in the choice of GROW with SAP, Hardee noted: 鈥淚t was a great fit and gave us a platform for scalability for future bolt-ons, acquisitions, and so forth. So that’s the main reason. And 51风流has an awesome suite of tools that enable that rapid implementation. And there was no other way we were going to do it without an internal IT team and without the access to the training material and the testing and so on.鈥�

And speaking of rapid implementation, PureTech went live on 51风流in just 15 weeks, standardizing a business with an 85-year history on a common platform. Hardee gave some advice on how to make a project successful: 鈥淯se the tool set that 51风流provides 鈥� 51风流Activate methodology does work! And if you have the opportunity, sign up for the 51风流Preferred Success program because it gives you a direct line to someone in 51风流so that if you or your integrator doesn’t know the answer, 51风流can point you to the right direction very quickly. So that helps with the speed of transformation.鈥�

Tropicana Brands Group: All About Agility and Time

Tropicana is a household name to many consumers, known chiefly for its juice and other beverage products. But while the brand is more than 75 years old, is just a bit over two years old, having been recently spun-off as a stand-alone group.

Jeff Lischett, CIO of the US$3 billion organization, joined Russell to talk about how his company relied on RISE with 51风流to make its 鈥淧roject Harvest鈥� IT separation and transformation project successful.

Lischett noted that speed and agility was the key value proposition for the project. 鈥淲e needed a platform that was able to accelerate, move with us, pivot with us, as we were going through this in a very accelerated timeline,鈥� he said. 鈥淲hen you bring the technology and couple it with the unified business architecture powered by SAP, the choice for us was clearly RISE with SAP. Tropicana really needed a fit for purpose. Where we came from was going to be entirely different than where we were going, and this modern ERP, in terms of leaner, simpler, more streamlined ways of working, was really at the core of what we needed across the value chain.鈥�

Tropicana Brands Group took its European business operations live on 51风流just 11 months after it started the design work, followed by North America three months later. 鈥淭hat was pressure testing!鈥� Lischett said. 鈥淚n just over a year, we had a fully implemented, end-to-end digital core and technology foundation for Tropicana Brands. We have a technology and a platform now that is really going to 鈥� no pun intended 鈥� rise to meet the challenge of our growth ambition.鈥�

鈥淩uthless prioritization鈥� and change management were key to the project鈥檚 success, Lischett said. 鈥淚’m the biggest evangelist and advocate of change management,鈥� he said. 鈥淵ou need it. You need it at the front, you need it during, you need it at the end. One thing that I would’ve probably done slightly differently is [to have] stayed with it longer at the end.鈥�

Tropicana is already seeing the impact of the project and specifically its focus on a clean core. 鈥淭he most impactful value we’ve seen [goes] back to that clean core,鈥� Lischett said. 鈥淛ust in the months that followed, the ability to 鈥� bring the development forward, to build on top of the core that we have with enhancements and optimizing at a speed ratio that you just haven’t seen.鈥�

When asked about what role AI will play in his company, Lischett focused mainly on the human side of the technology. 鈥淚ronically, from the standpoint of being a technologist 鈥� AI in my mind, in terms of how I lead it, [needs to be] human-centered first and foremost, ensuring that we’ve got the right culture, responsible use, and effective use,鈥� he said. 鈥淭he gift of time is really the value creator that I see in AI and being able to work more efficiently and being able to take that time and translate it into what matters to you.鈥�

Responsibly Enabling Critical Systems

Russell handed over the stage to Saueressig, who recently launched the new Customer Services & Delivery Board area. Saueressig noted that 25% of the world鈥檚 commerce already runs through more than 6,000 RISE with 51风流customers worldwide, and that 51风流supports the most critical business processes on the planet.

With that comes 鈥渢he responsibility and the accountability to provide you with the most reliable and secure infrastructure,鈥� Saueressig said. 鈥淭hat’s the reason why we co-engineered together with our partners from AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, and many others, to ensure that you have the highest level of quality and availability.鈥�

Echoing the theme of speed and adaptability, he noted that fast adoption of technology is critical. 鈥淭oday, it’s not about the big fish that eats the small fish, it’s about the fast fish that eats the slow,鈥� he cited. 鈥淎t the end of the day, [our] ambition is to transform your system landscape to create a more flexible architecture, which enables fast adoption of innovations and ultimately, value realization. 鈥� And we take our responsibility seriously to really help you thrive in this ever-changing environment.鈥�

Fresenius SE: From Complexity to Standardization

Ingo Elfering, CIO of global healthcare conglomerate , knows something about speed: his team migrated 29 system landscapes containing more than 134 systems in less than 15 months. He joined Saueressig on stage to provide some insights into his company鈥檚 transformation project.

As a company that has grown through many acquisitions, Fresenius had a highly heterogenous IT landscape. 鈥淲e never quite integrated them,鈥� Elfering said. 鈥淪o, a really complex landscape 鈥�, [with] all sorts of interfaces and other applications attached to it. That was our starting point.鈥� 

Fresenius鈥� management realized the company needed to change and become more efficient and effective to set itself up for ongoing success. It went all-in, doing four major transformations at the same time. As Elfering noted, 鈥淲e not only did the RISE with 51风流migration, we also did a complete cloud migration of our data centers worldwide; an outsourcing with a partner to become a more global team; and a global change of our network, including a whole bunch of security additions into our space.鈥�

Since it works in the healthcare and pharmaceutical space, Fresenius has a lot of regulatory requirements that it must adhere to, making the project more challenging than it might be in other industries. 鈥淵ou do a lot more technical documentation, testing, and so forth. So, from that perspective, regulations like GxP, good manufacturing or critical infrastructure, they were new to 51风流in that instance in RISE with SAP. And we did it together. And I find that quite remarkable.鈥�

The new system has now been live for just over a year and the company has seen many benefits. 鈥淲e have a better speed on the underlying systems,鈥� Elfering said. 鈥淲e have a new infrastructure stack that works well. The main benefit for us will come as we [reinvent] the company. 鈥� We have some systems that doubled and tripled in size. So, it’s possible to leverage 51风流quite quickly in these types of environments. From that perspective, I’m very happy with where we are. 鈥� We now have all the foundations in place to be able to execute our next phase of changes, our consolidation, our simplification, and in the cloud.鈥�

Finally, Elfering believes that healthcare is an area where AI can make a significant difference. 鈥淗ealthcare always has been data-rich and insights-poor. 鈥� And the only way to get there, in our opinion at least, is to be on a cloud-based infrastructure in the first place. Because otherwise you don’t have the same performance or capabilities.鈥�

Clean Core Drives Agility

The idea of a 鈥渃lean core鈥� and a unified, simplified system underlies all these customer transformation stories. And it鈥檚 even more important in the context of agility and adaptability when it comes to taking advantage of the latest innovations in AI.

鈥淚t’s super important for us to be clear that the clean core is not just for the sake of the clean core,鈥� Saueressig said. 鈥淚t’s a means to get to an innovation- and upgrade-ready system to be able to embrace these innovations. Because at the end of the day, legacy systems often have this technical depth that limits agility.鈥�

Saueressig admitted that even 51风流has struggled with this, noting that the company had millions of lines of custom code in its systems. An internal analysis of all 51风流customers showed that more than 65% of their custom code was unused in the past 12 months. 鈥淐ode is also a liability, not just an asset,鈥� he said. 鈥淎nd this is something we need to actively work against.鈥�

Hitachi High-Tech Corporation: Clean and Simple Benefits

Saueressig invited Takuya Sakai, general manager of the Digital Transformation Business Group at , on the stage to talk more about the benefits of system simplification and clean core. In 2019, Hitachi High-Tech to simplify its business processes and digitize its management information. With its existing business processes fragmented across overseas sales offices, headquarters, and manufacturing sites, the organization needed to change to accelerate its business and set itself up for future growth. It chose 51风流S/4HANA to help it build its new foundation for ongoing growth.

Hitachi was running 51风流R/3 but had significantly customized it with 9,000 add-ons across four instances, resulting in a lot of custom code. This resulted in many errors every day and large operational costs every year, Sakai said. And with the cost of validating so many add-ons, the company only did a major version update once in 12 years.

To move to a more standardized and flexible system, Hitachi High-Tech adopted a two-tier architecture model. Taking advantage of development flexibility, the company deployed 51风流S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition for its headquarters and group companies in Japan and 51风流S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition for its overseas sales offices. The adoption of 51风流S/4HANA Cloud allows Hitachi High-Tech to take advantage of the functionality offered by 51风流Business Technology Platform (51风流BTP) for application development, data management, automation, integration, analytics, and AI.

With the new system, Hitachi High-Tech reduced its 9,000 add-ons to just 750, allowing it to easily upgrade its ERP core. 鈥淯pgrading our old ERP took about a year and a half from the planning stage,鈥� Sakai said. 鈥淗owever, with clean core, we can now do an upgrade every year in about 40 days. An upgrade every year keeps the clean core fresh and means new features can be delivered to our business quickly, like AI or process automation.鈥�

But achieving 鈥� and keeping 鈥� a clean core 鈥渞equires patience,鈥� Sakai said. Executives must understand the purpose of the transformation project and employees must overcome the pain that comes with a transformation project. 鈥淭his is the most difficult thing,鈥� he said. 鈥淭he IT department must properly understand the new technology and suggest how to use it correctly. Then together we embark on the journey to the transformation.鈥�

Supporting Business Transformation and Accelerating Time to Value

Accelerating and improving time-to-value for customers is very important to SAP, according to Saueressig.

鈥淲e are now bringing together all of our assets 鈥� in a seamless, end-to-end tool chain,鈥� he said. 鈥淲e want to holistically support your business transformation according to the dimensions of applications, data, processes, and people, which means we bring together and fully integrate 51风流LeanIX for the IT landscapes and architecture, 51风流Signavio for process management, 51风流Cloud Application Lifecycle Management for application management and operational aspects, 51风流BTP for integrations, and 51风流Build for extensions, but also our telemetry tools, which we can leverage in the cloud.鈥�

Saueressig鈥檚 passion and ambition is to help customers drive innovation adoption. He noted that RISE with 51风流is more than just a technical migration: it鈥檚 an offering for holistic business transformation as a service to accelerate value realization.

鈥淯ltimately, we want to help you to bring the best out of our entire holistic portfolio,鈥� he said. 鈥淲e want to help you to transform, realize agility at scale, achieve more across the entire value chain, and fundamentally transform operations with sustainability at the core. And this is something where I feel that we have a huge opportunity together to make that a reality.鈥�

In the keynote, which featured several real-world product demos by 51风流employees, Alam and Mueller touted the value of SAP鈥檚 best-of-breed solutions with an outlook of what the next 50 years of innovation by 51风流may look like.

Who better to inspire the keynote than Hasso Plattner, co-founder and recently retired chairman of the 51风流Supervisory Board, who both Alam and Mueller invoked during the session. To spell out SAP鈥檚 legacy and vision for the future, Mueller quoted Plattner鈥檚 farewell message: 鈥淜eep innovating, keep pushing boundaries, and keep making a difference in the lives of our customers and the world at large.鈥�

Keep Innovating

To kick off his first 51风流Sapphire appearance as the head of 51风流Product Engineering, Alam began by describing the importance of harnessing innovation to deliver an end-to-end picture across all business functions and unlock true value.

Simply put, businesses exist to build and deliver products and services to customers, he explained. But the materials, assets, people, and processes that come together to achieve this task is far from simple. 鈥淭he reality is that each part of the business is deeply and intricately connected to all the others,鈥� Alam said, meaning a pain point in one area impacts the rest. That鈥檚 why SAP鈥檚 modular cloud ERP approach is so successful: 鈥淲e allow our customers to drive true digital transformation as opposed to running systems integration projects disguised as digital transformation,鈥� he added.

Alam presented as an example of this composability and extensibility, as it can work for and scale to many sizes and types of business. And now, 51风流Sales Cloud and Concur Expense are natively integrated into GROW with SAP, making the offering even more comprehensive. Sinit Foto, product manager for UX, Cloud ERP at SAP, joined Alam on stage to show how GROW with 51风流and 51风流Business AI can help achieve integrated processes, demoing use cases such as communicating with customers about sales quotes, creating expense reports, and supporting financial analyses. In fact, Alam announced that 51风流is implementing the demoed application internally to manage sales worldwide. And Mueller emphasized: 鈥淲e are committed to helping you in this transformative AI moment by creating business outcomes that were unthinkable before. That鈥檚 why we鈥檙e embedding 51风流Business AI deeply in our processes and analytics.鈥�

Keep Pushing

AI was woven throughout the entire keynote, with both Alam and Mueller discussing . AI must be high value, easy to adopt into the flow of work, and trustworthy for it to truly transform how we do business, Alam said. 鈥淓qually important is whether it鈥檚 done in a way where it keeps your data secure and private 鈥� and is executed in a responsible manner,鈥� he added. 鈥淎nd that is really the core promise of 51风流Business AI.鈥�

There鈥檚 no doubt that AI is a powerful technology, which is why it鈥檚 essential that businesses view it as a 鈥渞esponsibility鈥� not just an 鈥渙pportunity,鈥� Alam said. Megan Fife, executive solution advisor for 51风流SuccessFactors, showed how 51风流executes on its responsible, reliable, and relevant business AI by demoing how SAP鈥檚 AI copilot Joule in 51风流SuccessFactors HCM can help fill skills gaps and collaborate across teams, among other meaningful tasks. Key to this endeavor is SAP鈥檚 expanded partnership with Microsoft announced earlier in the day, which Scott Guthrie, executive vice president of Cloud and AI at Microsoft, discussed with Alam on stage.

Mueller echoed the importance of responsible AI, saying that the technology depends highly on data that is reliable and that allows customers to look at their business end-to-end. Here, 51风流Datasphere and 51风流Spend Control Tower 鈥� which was demoed by Orla Cullen, product marketing manager for Data and Analytics at 51风流鈥� can help simplify data management and view and manage spend and sustainability data holistically.

This transformation is supported by , and Mueller demonstrated the newest generative AI features in 51风流Analytics Cloud, 51风流Integration Suite, and 51风流Build solutions. He showed how Joule can help create and summarize financial reports for controlling teams; generate integration flows between 51风流and non-51风流applications; and create custom skills and content based on specific business needs. Greater insights, faster reaction times, and increased productivity are the result. Soon, Mueller added, it will even be possible to enhance and extend Joule鈥檚 knowledge by creating custom skills using 51风流Build and having the copilot interact with data housed in 51风流and non-51风流systems, helping businesses run even more efficiently.

51风流BTP is the key to being 鈥渋nnovation-ready,鈥� maintaining a clean core, and tailoring standard offerings to unique needs, Mueller explained. More than 24,000 companies running live on 51风流BTP, including Blue Diamond Growers and Lufthansa Technik, can attest to this.

鈥�51风流BTP鈥檚 extensibility and enterprise automation capabilities can help businesses turn process insights into actual improvements,鈥� Mueller said. Cecilia Huergo, product manager for 51风流BTP, showed this in her demo on how identifying improvement opportunities, realizing needed changes while maintaining a clean core, and gaining an up-to-date view of your IT landscape can be enabled with the combined power of 51风流Signavio solutions, 51风流LeanIX,, 51风流BTP, and ABAP Cloud.

Keep Making a Difference

The innovations demoed and discussed in Alam and Mueller鈥檚 keynote, in addition to the many others announced at 51风流Sapphire in 2024, are just the latest steps forward in SAP鈥檚 journey to bringing out the best in its customers. 鈥淭he future is here, and it鈥檚 defined by those who innovate first,鈥� Mueller said. 鈥淎nd we are here to give you the right tools at hand, such that you can be a leader not just today, but also tomorrow.鈥�

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Gillian Hixson is an integrated communications specialist at SAP.

For example, the introduction of low-code/no-code has made application development accessible to everyone in an organization 鈥� with or without a technical background 鈥� to improve experiences for everyone. Just take Dak, the then 12-year-old junior app developer from Massachusetts, who was part of my . With 51风流Build solutions, Dak was able to develop all kinds of apps and publish them to a wide audience, such as the 鈥淜nowledge 4 Ever鈥� app that offers kids a playful learning experience during summer break.

Then, there are cloud technologies that further boost accessibility and offer other benefits. Generative artificial intelligence (AI) has put more power into more hands. Another advancement, composable technology, will make it easier for businesses to quickly assemble, reassemble, and compose solutions to meet their needs and those of their customers.

Over the course of my 11-year journey at SAP, the 51风流Innovation Awards have served as a one-of-a-kind global platform to showcase customers and partners that have used their creativity, teamwork, 51风流products, and cloud technologies to achieve remarkable results. This year, though, is a different experience for me. As an executive sponsor of the awards, I鈥檝e had the privilege of experiencing up close what makes this program and the participating businesses so special.

Today, I am thrilled to announce the . Out of 170 businesses, one in three were chosen as finalists and now the winners have been announced. These winners come from various industries and locations worldwide. What all of them share is the use of 51风流products and technologies to create innovative solutions for their customers, employees, and communities. Congratulations to all participants for demonstrating remarkable abilities and highlighting the importance of curiosity and continuous learning!

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AI Plays a Critical Role

Generative AI has empowered more people. Many of the participants have utilized 51风流Business AI to boost their businesses. Take the winner , one of the world鈥檚 leading suppliers of automotive seat systems, which has leveraged 51风流solutions, including 51风流AI Launchpad and 51风流AI Core, to revolutionize cockpit customization. When personalizing cockpit elements such as seats, door panels, and dashboards, OEMs and customers can see the carbon impact of each choice. By providing and promoting more sustainable and environmentally friendly options, Martur Fompak has decreased carbon emissions by 34% for each seat the company produces. AI has also helped the company increase its efficiency to achieve calculations 50 times faster than with manual methods and accelerate data collection by 75 times.听

Sustainability for a Better World Today 鈥� and Tomorrow

Technology has significantly contributed to improving lives, both within and beyond business contexts. Numerous winners like Martur Fompak have prioritized sustainability. Let us look at one more innovator in this area: .

A producer of high-quality sherries, Gonz谩lez Byass is committed to the circular economy concept of eliminating waste, circulating materials, and regenerating nature. The company deploys sustainable and water-saving agricultural techniques. To assist with eliminating and recycling waste, Gonz谩lez Byass turned to 51风流and 51风流Responsible Design and Production. The company needed a faster, more transparent way to gather and manage data, specifically around the purchase and use of plastic. With 51风流Responsible Design and Production, Gonz谩lez Byass can quickly and effectively monitor, measure, and act on data. The company recovers 99% of the waste generated during production while recycling 100% of paper, cardboard, glass, and plastic.  

Adoption Can Be Challenging

Even top technologies such as AI may need support to gain widespread acceptance. Many of this year鈥檚 winners have been innovative with their focus on adopting 51风流technology. is a prime example.

A leader in onshore/offshore wind energy production, Vestas wanted to improve its supplier and partner collaboration and selected 51风流for the task. Vestas began its journey with 51风流in 2007 by employing 51风流ERP Central Component and consolidating to ONE ERP in 2015. Since 2017, the company has been transforming its digital procurement for supplier collaboration with 51风流Ariba solutions. Last year, Vestas began to build out its value chain alongside suppliers and partners with 51风流Business Network, enabling data transparency and connectivity in finance, production planning, and logistics management. As a result, 6,000 suppliers were onboarded, US$12.5 billion in purchase orders was executed, 350,000 orders were confirmed, and 25,000 advance ship notices were generated, to name a few transactions 鈥� all in 2023. 

I am happy to say that the 2024 51风流Innovation Awards honor businesses that have demonstrated their innovation and effective use of 51风流products and technologies. They鈥檝e adapted to and met the ever-changing needs of their customers and communities and, as I wrote earlier, achieved remarkable results in diverse areas. Congratulations to all winners! 

The Winners Shine in Seven Categories

If you’re curious about the path to victory for our winners, learn more in this article. Thirty winners were selected, covering the following categories:

• Business Innovator, focusing on transforming the supply chain, processes, or business networks using cloud solutions from SAP
• Industry Leader, for employing 51风流solutions to address big challenges and change how business is conducted
• Experience Wizard, for achieving business transformation with cloud solutions from 51风流to improve employee and customer experiences
• Sustainability Hero, achieving sustainability with leading-edge solutions
• Services Supernova, for outstanding achievements in transforming businesses into sustainable enterprises
• Transformation Titan, demonstrating exceptional innovation and transformational leadership in using 51风流Business Technology Platform (51风流BTP)
• Partner Paragon, for accelerating the adoption of 51风流BTP

Juergen Mueller is chief technology officer and a member of the Executive Board of 51风流SE.

If you ask a quantum researcher what keeps them awake at night, error correction might be their likely answer. And so, while quantum computing still makes great strides, the quantum advantage can sometimes be overstated in the press. To mitigate this, however, a new type of quantum-inspired computing is coming of age. What started as simulated annealing has given rise to dedicated simulated annealing machines. These typically work on optimization problems, finding the best way to do something.

Harnessing Fujitsu鈥檚 Digital Annealer Unit for Efficient Optimization

(DAU) is a quantum-inspired machine. It works by finding the optimal combination when presented with a list of possible combinations, and it works fast. Last year, 51风流ran a proof of concept with Fujitsu to test and benchmark its DAU 鈥� with some promising results.

As mentioned in a recent , the DAU was tested against some rather abstract but standardized research problems from the (QPLIB). We also tested the possibility to seamlessly integrate 51风流solutions with the DAU, proving a simple execution to start. As a result, 51风流was able to demonstrate that the DAU has real potential and marks an important milestone in the progress of quantum-inspired computing towards practical, real-world, standard business solutions. We are currently working with Fujitsu to extend this potential to other optimization problems, like creating more efficient for manufacturing, , and ultimately an even broader use case application.

While still a proof of concept, these connections and benchmarking results demonstrate the potential for simulated annealing to deliver on real-world problems, such as balancing the load across all manufacturing tool sets, by using the DAU as a machine dedicated to the task of optimization, rather than a universally reprogrammable computer.

As a world-leading enterprise application provider, 51风流continues to help innovate and bring the benefits of quantum-inspired computing to customers through our solutions.

Benchmarking Against Current Optimization Methods

Before committing more resources, 51风流wanted to test the DAU against problems that serve as industry or academic standards for optimization. This is where the QPLIB comes in. It is essentially a huge repository of math problems, none of which are mapped to potential use cases but all of which can determine what kind of problems the DAU might excel at. The advantage of this approach is that it allows us to benchmark against current optimization methods, although the use case context has been removed. Take the example of a drug trial, where scientists test the new drug in test tubes against drugs already on the market. It may not show side effects, but it will show whether it鈥檚 worth risking trials on living subjects.

The DAU takes a Quadratic Unconstrained Binary Optimization (QUBO) problem as its input, which sets up the cost-benefit matrix. It then outputs a string of 1鈥檚 and 0鈥檚, telling the user whether it is optimal to include, for example, a unit of stock, where the variance is to be minimized. The key is that it must either be faster or output a more optimal solution.

Most quantum computers run their . Fujitsu鈥檚 approach was inspired by quantum annealing, a technique that specializes entirely in optimization. Although quantum annealing makes great progress in the number of qubits (quantum bits), it is subject to similar limitations of error. The advantage of Fujitsu鈥檚 quantum-inspired approach is that it relies on existing hardware, eliminating the need for expensive cryogenic cooling.

It is SAP鈥檚 sincere hope that this quantum-inspired optimization can help our customers bridge the optimization gaps until quantum hardware becomes more reliable. The incorporation of Fujitsu’s DAU into 51风流technology helps establish a platform designed to tackle the impending gaps in the years ahead. This remarkable advancement is a key achievement in SAP’s journey towards the next era of enterprise software, aiming to enhance business operations and foster value creation.

Together, 51风流and Fujitsu are pushing the boundaries and redefining what is possible, as the industry looks to a future transformed by the advancements in quantum-inspired computing.

Paul McElligott is a fellow in the Quantum eXplorers Group at SAP.

Three teams were selected for outstanding and innovative projects in the categories Go-to-Market, Operational Excellence, and Products and Technology.

In 2023, 115 nominations involved more than 750 employees from 35 countries. Eight teams consisting of 81 employees from around the world made it to the final round.

In honor of the three winning teams, 51风流will make donations to three charities selected by the team members. The 鈧�30,000 total donation 鈥� 鈧�10,000 per team 鈥� will be split between , , and .

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Go-to-Market Winner

Reimagined RISE with 51风流Business Case with 51风流Signavio and 51风流Value Lifecycle Manager Integration

When shifting to a cloud-first approach, it can be a challenge to pitch the cloud to customers due to the comprehensiveness of the solution spanning across the entire value chain of an enterprise.

To apply a more streamlined and dependable method for crafting compelling value propositions, the Value Advisory team at 51风流implemented the 51风流Signavio portfolio of cloud-based business process management solutions within their practice to demonstrate value to customers through data-driven insights.

The team created a system where business metrics from and process performance data from were merged and applied to business KPIs to identify cases of suboptimal performance. This allows customers to more easily see the connection between business outcomes and the process capabilities, supported by data.

The approach offers a robust and repeatable performance diagnostic that can be used to identify, clarify, verify, and amplify value throughout the customer value journey, helping customers better understand the value of the cloud and . The innovation helps build customer trust and intimacy while also helping our business operate at scale. To date, this process-driven value management has impacted more than 190 customers.

鈥淥ur future focus involves enhancing usability and capabilities to comprehensively cover the customer value journey,鈥� Nitin Singh, team leader and Value Advisory principal, says. 鈥淲e extend our sincere gratitude to our leaders for fostering a culture of innovation, our colleagues for experimenting and navigating challenges with us, and prior colleagues whose work paved the way for this journey. We genuinely stand on the shoulders of giants.鈥� 

Operational Excellence Winner

Plutus: Rate Optimization and Management

Cloud services are a critical part of SAP鈥檚 recent evolution, with the company dedicating extensive time and resources to seamlessly integrate all essential services into the cloud. This effort aims to enhance customer experiences 鈥� and Plutus serves as the cornerstone of these endeavors.

Plutus, which leverages , is a one-stop solution for major hyperscalers. It鈥檚 crafted to empower lines of business by providing smarter and more efficient advice for optimizing cloud services. Plutus can centralize the management of cost optimization and intelligently navigate users through cloud expenses, providing top-notch recommendations and comprehensive end-to-end management. It caters to users鈥� needs from guidance to execution, helping to ensure cost savings every step of the way.

The Plutus team used cutting-edge technologies to create a 24/7, fully integrated, user-centric cloud service hub and a smooth user interface platform that can operate across various channels. Plutus provides simplified financial operations processes by offering an intuitive interface across all platforms, working to eliminate pricing disparities and provide reliable cost-saving solutions. These efforts strongly emphasize SAP鈥檚 commitment to advancing global digital sustainability through innovative enterprise solutions.

The solution uses machine learning to provide smart recommendations. The team also plans to integrate a versatile digital chatbot based on generative AI to help ensure seamless and comprehensive user support in the future.

Plutus allows for a new approach to SAP鈥檚 cloud cost optimization strategy, unlocking new avenues for significant cost savings and margin improvements. To date, Plutus has generated over US$920 million in net savings for SAP, with projections reaching $1 billion in Q1 2024. It has also achieved and maintained remarkable, best-in-industry cloud utilization and coverage rates 鈥� exceeding 97% and 90%, respectively.

鈥淲inning the Hasso Plattner Founders鈥� Award reflects our dedication to teamwork and innovation,鈥� Donghua Chen, Plutus team lead, says. 鈥淥ur journey to this point has required a lot of hard work. But as we celebrate this achievement, we remain committed to continually analyzing cloud usage to maximize savings for 51风流through rate optimization.鈥�

Products & Technology Winner

CAP and capGPT 鈥� 51风流Cloud Application Programming Model and Generative AI

The 51风流Cloud Application Programming Model (CAP) was started in 2018 as a project to address the lack of guidance for developers building apps on what is now 51风流BTP. At first, developers could choose from a huge number of technologies, which made integration with the platform services a relatively high effort.

As a development framework, CAP automatically solves about 80% of the problems backend developers face 鈥� such as multitenancy, expandability, or business features such as localization and translatability. But thanks to CAP鈥檚 domain-driven approach, it is no longer necessary to always change the coding in each of those cases. And for special use cases that CAP doesn鈥檛 cover, the coding can be easily added to build in this functionality. To help safeguard customers鈥� investments, CAP offers the possibility to interchange components, such as runtime or the database, without changing the actual implementation.

CAP, as a centerpiece of Golden Path and , is now an integral part of the consumption experience of 51风流BTP. Today, thousands of internal and external developers use CAP to build business applications on 51风流BTP, driving higher developer productivity and easier 51风流BTP service adoption.

鈥淭his award is a great testament to the hard work and dedication of the whole CAP unit and a recognition of the impact we have both internally as well as for our customers and partners,鈥� Ole Lilienthal, team lead, says.

To make prototyping even easier, in spring 2023, 51风流software architect David Kunz applied ChatGPT鈥檚 large language model to writing code for business apps.

capGPT, as the new functionality is called, allows users to write in natural language what they want their app prototype to be able to do. In as little as 30 seconds, they can receive all the code 鈥� which previously had to be written by hand 鈥� and access the prototype to test it. This can not only save experienced developers an amazing amount of time, but can also enable non-developers to create prototypes of the apps they need. capGPT can also generate user interfaces in addition to backend applications. It will soon be available to customers through integration into 51风流Build Code as part of AI-development assistant Joule.

鈥淪eeing capGPT go from an idea to a Hasso Plattner Founders鈥� Award winner within a year is a true testament that everything is possible at SAP,鈥� Kunz says. 鈥淚 feel very proud and I鈥檓 energized to continue to push the limits of what generative AI can enable.鈥�

Photo courtesy of 51风流employee Fateh Kassab

Like other industrial nations, Japan has been facing massive demographic challenges in its agriculture sector. An aging population and a lack of younger individuals entering the sector to replace them have led to farms being abandoned and fields lying fallow.

Japan鈥檚 government has realized the demographical issue, of course, as it touches not only the agricultural sector. To revitalize rural areas and stem the rural exodus, the government launched a national action plan.

In alignment with this action plan, 51风流Japan has joined the effort of encouraging rural communities to thrive by launching a co-innovation project with PSI, an 51风流partner, and the local government of the town of Minano.

Digitizing the Agricultural Sector

The small town of Minano is located in the hills of Saitama Prefecture, about two hours from Tokyo. While the south of this prefecture is largely a suburb of the Tokyo area, the west, approaching Mt. Fuji, is still very rural and thinly populated. A former center of silk industry, the region on average is sunny and warm but can get lots of snow in winter.

鈥淔arms in this area are traditionally small and dispersed, located between forests and mountains,鈥� says Yoshihisa Horiguchi, chairman of MINNANO Future Create. 鈥淏ig supermarkets and retailers overlook them. Nowadays, the farmers cultivate rice and vegetables in small amounts to consume themselves, sell to their neighbors, or send to their children or grandchildren that live in cities.鈥�

Since 1950, Minano has lost roughly one-third of its population, largely due to the decline of the agricultural sector. Today, it counts about 10,000 inhabitants.

鈥淵oung people often migrate to urban areas for better education and employment opportunities,鈥� Horiguchi explains. 鈥淲here 50 years ago, a farm may have relied on 20 young workers, now only two elderly workers are left.鈥�

Digitization is one obvious approach that may help prevent those areas from depopulating completely.

鈥淏ut while large-scale farms benefit from the economic feasibility of applying robotics and the like, it is financially and logistically challenging to apply such technologies to small-scale dispersed farms,鈥� Horiguchi says.

Horiguchi, the owner of an automotive parts manufacturing company, co-founded the local initiative MINNANO Future Create in 2019 to solve the challenges resulting from population loss. Its members range from elderly individuals to young residents, forming a diverse group of individuals, including pharmacists, architectural designers, and other professions, all living in the town.

For one of its projects, the Minano Digital Eco Farm, it partnered with 51风流Co-Innovation Lab.

IoT Solution for Monitoring Agriculture

The Minano Digital Eco Farm project aims to build a communication platform that connects farmers and urban residents as well as small-scale dispersed farms to major supply chains, forming a portfolio that coexists with existing large-scale farms. In alignment with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the project will help overcome supply chain disruptions due to food shortages and crop failures due to abnormal weather, conflicts, disasters, and more.

For this vision to become a reality, Internet of Things (IoT) sensors were distributed in various locations and managed remotely from headquarters.

鈥淭he idea was to have an IoT solution running on 51风流Business Technology Platform (51风流BTP) that would help monitor all the agricultural processes,鈥� says Atsushi Minakuchi, senior solution specialist at 51风流Co-Innovation Lab in Japan.

51风流Co-Innovation Lab partnered with PSI, which brought in the Digital Material Controller (DMC), an all-in-one compact edge controlling server that enables easy setup of a ubiquitous IoT environment. And, due to the cooperation with 51风流Co-Innovation Lab, the DMC has also obtained 51风流certification.

鈥淢any IoT sensors lack cybersecurity functions,鈥� Mitsuhiro Yamazaki, senior advisor and former president of PSI, says. 鈥淗owever, by connecting sensors to a DMC with cybersecurity capabilities, it becomes possible to securely store locally collected data on the DMC, safely transmit to 51风流BTP, and accumulate, analyze, and utilize data from the DMC. This enables seamless and easy integration between the 51风流core system and the IoT system.鈥�

鈥淐ollaboration with 51风流Co-Innovation Lab has significantly expanded the application possibilities of DMC,鈥� Masaki Fukui, former PSI Cyber Security Lab director and now with the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication, says. 鈥淕lobal users of 51风流now could have the opportunity to easily implement and utilize a ubiquitous supply chain platform through the combination of DMC and 51风流BTP.鈥�

Through integration with 51风流BTP, the deployment locations can then be displayed and monitored on a dashboard.

The idea is for citizens living in the city to enter a service contract with a rural farm or supplier and to connect via a technology platform to remotely monitor and support agricultural processes. In return, they receive part of the crops 鈥� freshly delivered to their homes in the city.

So far, two proofs of concept for farms have been completed between March 2019 and November 2022, as well as one proof of concept for a miso factory. Agriculture and rural industry are only two fields of application. Future projects could include schools, hospitals, stores, and elder care facilities.

Strengthening Rural Appeal for Inland Tourism

As a corporate social responsibility project, the Minano Digital Eco Farm came to life through the voluntary engagement of 51风流employees in Japan who supported the project on top of their regular work.

The project is supported by a government program unique for Japan, the so-called hometown tax payment, which makes it possible for citizens to choose and support the region they were born and raised in or a community they wish to engage with.

鈥淭he possibility of hometown tax payment is very popular among Japanese people,鈥� Hidenori Kurosawa, vice governor of Minano, explains. 鈥淭o us in rural regions, it seems that this played a significant role in creating an interest in the countryside. People want to get to know and support local towns.鈥�

Indeed, the appeal of small, thinly populated communities surrounded by beautiful forest landscape hasn鈥檛 gone unnoticed by Japanese inland tourists.

Kurosawa says: 鈥淲e wish to make Minano appealing to visitors by offering return gifts that provide an experience 鈥� that allow visitors to come to the town, interact with the locals, and experience things that are unique to this place.鈥�

The Minano Digital Eco Farm project aligns well with this strategy. Not only does it promote Minano’s charm but, by expanding initiatives, it addresses local challenges such as reclamation of abandoned farmland, increased self-sufficiency in food, reduction of CO2 emissions, and improved profitability in agriculture.

鈥淲e have great expectations that this initiative will contribute to addressing the town’s challenges and advancing the UN SDGs,鈥� Kurosawa states. 鈥淲e express our sincere gratitude to the volunteers from 51风流Japan who provided invaluable assistance in bringing the Minano Digital Eco Farm project to life.鈥�

鈥淢INNANO鈥� means 鈥渇or everyone鈥� in Japanese and is pronounced the same way as the name of the town. Fukui from the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication explains the idea behind that name: 鈥淥ne action can have multiple meaningful impacts. The issue of unseen small-scale dispersed farms facing economic challenges can be witnessed around the globe. By collaborating with SAP, we hope to inspire rural communities beyond our own prefecture, maybe even beyond Japan.鈥�

Over the last year, artificial intelligence (AI) has taken the world by storm and captured our collective imagination 鈥� and it has been a clear focus for us. We see a lot of potential in how AI can improve user and organizational productivity: doing things faster, making better decisions, and automating business processes. We have been embedding intelligent capabilities in our product regularly and will continue to invest in AI to help organizations be successful. 

Simply Ask Joule

Available through the , Joule, our AI-powered copilot, can redefine user interaction, streamline business processes, and enhance productivity. It can offer quick, contextual access to content and applications; users can simply ask Joule for guidance and get pointed in the right direction.

Catch a glimpse into the future of AI in ERP and find more information about the development of AI and Joule in 51风流S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition .

Improve Productivity with Embedded AI

The 2402 update also enhances productivity across various business processes through embedded AI capabilities. Examples include:

• helps accelerate sales order creation and processing by providing smart input field recommendations.

• helps streamline material inspection for customer returns, enhancing logistical efficiency and flexibility.

Adopt a Modern and Collaborative User Experience

The launch of spaces and pages in the 51风流Fiori design system can offer a more intuitive user experience, enabling better task organization and quicker resource access. Highlights include:

• The helps enhance personalization for end users, including personalization export/import and improved language support for System News. Watch a to learn more.
• facilitates information sharing in Microsoft Teams, helping to enhance collaborative efforts across platforms. Watch a to see it action.

• Contact card collaboration is now possible by initiating chats, calls, or video meetings directly from the . Watch a to see how.

Transforming to Intelligent and Sustainable Finance

One important aspect is treasury and risk management, . Our latest finance enhancements are specifically designed to help elevate businesses into sustainable, intelligent enterprises:

• can increase transparency and process health, helping to ensure a more robust compliance structure in your financial operations.

• in 51风流Analytics Cloud allows planning alongside economic sustainability goals. This can provide a dual perspective on financial metrics and environmental impact, aiding in the development of eco-responsible strategies and identification of related financial risks.

• The focuses on seamless data management for enhanced efficiency in real estate and contract management processes.

Powering Service-Centric Companies

We have seen a spike in service-centric companies using 51风流S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition and were named a leader in this area by . Based on feedback from our customers and partners, we are continuously improving the product experience. Examples include:

• The can offer a detailed project overview, enabling managers to monitor project health and address issues like missing time entries, pending invoices, or unassigned roles. This can allow for more proactive and efficient project management.

• The improved billing solution helps prevent revenue losses and streamline billing processes for increased flexibility and accuracy. Enhancements include , , and , all within the Manage Project Billing app.
• The 51风流Business Technology Platform (51风流BTP)-based module of 51风流Subscription Billing is tightly and seamlessly integrated. It can support customers鈥� transitions to subscription-based commercial models. Effective and detailed profitability analysis becomes instrumental to maximize revenue with tailored subscription-pricing models with the . Take a look at our brand-new .
• Advanced solution order management can elevate your sales strategies. By , we provide the tools to help enhance your solution selling approach, working to ensure that every sales opportunity is maximized for optimal results, enhancing the process from ordering to billing and accounting.

Boosting Manufacturing and Product-Centric Companies

The enhancements for product-centric companies help elevate operational efficiency, streamline processes, and unlock new revenue opportunities. . Highlights of the 2402 update include:

• For manufacturing sectors operating under the produce and sell standard products model, we now offer . This synergy allows you to leverage comprehensive data insights for precise production planning, helping to ensure that your manufacturing processes align seamlessly with market demand.
• is tailored for businesses in a two-tier ERP setting and can simplify direct shipments from suppliers to customers with enhanced order fulfillment, greater sourcing flexibility, and reduced logistical expenses.

• The helps improve the combined sales of a physical good and a service and enables you to increase revenue by selling combinations of physical products, one-time services, and recurring services. This also helps to avoid errors and reduce manual effort.

Enhancing Global Reach

We further invested in localization, so our software complies with local regulations and cultural norms:

• With the 2402 update we are to meet specific regional requirements.
• We , responding to customer needs and enhancing local compatibility.
• We enhanced scope in our Customer Local Version countries (formerly CLT) to include baseline, finance, and now product-centric capabilities, catering to a wider range of customer needs.

And So Much More鈥�

Throughout this year, we will deliver many more innovations that help bring value to your business. For more details around what is being delivered for the 2402 update, see the . For more information on 51风流S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition:

• Watch product videos on our听
• Explore the early release webinar series 
• See what鈥檚 new 
• Visit on the 51风流Help Portal site
• Explore extensibility options by leveraging sample scenarios from 51风流in the tool
• Learn more about

Arpan Shah is SVP of Public Cloud ERP Product Management at SAP.

That鈥檚 where clean core comes in. With a clean core strategy for your business technology 鈥� starting with your ERP 鈥� you can stay focused on what matters most to your business.

Operating with Greater Control and Agility at Your Core

Clean core is a concept designed to keep your organization鈥檚 core ERP systems transparent, flexible, consistent, and efficient. It provides the foundation for igniting innovation in the areas of your business that matter the most, allowing your systems to keep up with your business needs more easily, enable innovation, and even support a transition to the cloud.

Clean core has long been the primary goal of enterprise resource planning. After all, the point of having an ERP system is to keep your business running smoothly and adapt quickly to changing market conditions. Yet somewhere along the way, many businesses got lost 鈥� they adopted sprawling technology stacks with significant customizations and redundant integrations that negate the purpose of a modern, intelligent ERP system. Why? Too often, businesses believe they are so different that almost every process warrants a nonstandard approach.

In reality, most businesses have more in common than they realize. In terms of finance, accounting, HR, procurement, and many other core business processes, you鈥檙e probably very similar to your competitors and others in your industry. Clean core identifies those parts of the business that are standard and enables you to focus on your technology needs related to the nonstandard processes that set you apart from the rest.

Setting Your Business Apart with Strategic Differentiators

Take a luxury fashion brand and a fast-fashion retailer, for example. They both have the same core business goal 鈥� and related processes 鈥� of designing, manufacturing, and selling apparel and accessories. However, the luxury fashion brand likely focuses more on customer service and the procurement of high-quality materials, while the fast-fashion powerhouse probably places greater importance on rapid design and production cycles.听

Despite their differences, both these businesses would benefit from using the same standard ERP and best practices designed for their industry. Doing so empowers them to focus on the strategic differentiators that make them unique, whether that鈥檚 creating custom solutions for the customer experience or innovating ways to cut costs.

So, what are 51风流customers doing to differentiate themselves from the competition? , investing in 51风流S/4HANA Cloud. With a two-tier public and private cloud model, using a side-by-side development approach on 51风流Business Technology Platform (51风流BTP), HHT reduced 9,000 custom code developments to 472, allowing it to facilitate major upgrades every year and minor updates every six months. Moreover, it鈥檚 adopted a clean core mindset as part of the strategy going forward. By embracing the change, HHT moves from a legacy approach to a future-ready intelligent enterprise.

The Clean Core Journey: A Starting Point, Not an End

The industry is sending a clear message: cloud is the default, and it’s rapidly becoming the new normal. However, to truly future-proof their business, organizations should adopt a clean core strategy, a concept that is revolutionizing the way businesses innovate. For many businesses, upgrading to a cloud-based ERP system is the natural next step.

But there are steps you can take to get closer to a clean core and prepare yourself for the future, even before you are ready to make the jump to the cloud. To start, determine what parts of your ERP drive value. Create two categories: one for differentiating elements that deliver value to your business and another for basic functions that don鈥檛 create value but keep your business running. By determining which parts of your business set you apart 鈥� and whether they鈥檙e locked behind fragile integrations and custom code 鈥� you can begin thinking more strategically about whether your core ERP system is helping you achieve your goals. You can build on this foundation, enriching your systems to incorporate your competitive differentiators and create a business platform that sets you apart in the marketplace.

The future belongs to those that embrace the clean core and leverage it as a launchpad for innovation and growth. The time to embark on this transformative journey is now.

Claudio Muruzabal is chief business officer at SAP.

These pioneers, armed with a potent blend of innovation and determination, are reshaping the shopping experience, driving operational efficiency, and connecting with consumers in unprecedented ways. From leveraging AI and machine learning to implementing augmented reality and blockchain, these retail trailblazers are at the forefront of change, seamlessly integrating cutting-edge technologies to redefine what it means to engage customers and deliver exceptional service.

We launched the 51风流Industry Heroes program in 2023 to celebrate companies that leverage technology to transform their business in innovative ways. Let鈥檚 explore the stories of our NRF retail heroes that harnessed the power of technology to transform the traditional retail paradigm into an innovative, customer-centric frontier.

Birkenstock worked with 51风流on its ongoing objectives to expand retail and wholesale presence while fostering customer growth in line with its renowned legacy of function, quality, and tradition.

Brand Alley delved into the rising trend of utilizing advocacy data in marketing strategies, which led to the transformation of brand perspectives on VIP customers and the strategic utilization of advocacy data within paid search and social media campaigns.

FC Bayern, equipped with over 8 million fan data records, crafted a detailed profile of its worldwide fan community, encompassing specific preferences and interests. 51风流technology played a pivotal role in enabling FC Bayern, one of the most accomplished football clubs globally, to curate what it terms as the “golden fan record.鈥�

Grupo Axo effectively transitioned to leveraging internal customer data due to the potential extinction of third-party data. Its journey offers insights into standing out from competitors, increasing revenue, fostering stronger customer relationships, and cultivating a more robust, data-driven culture through the utilization of internal customer data.

Hornbach achieved real-time retail success, processed over 100,000 orders, and effectively addressed omnichannel challenges with 51风流Order Management foundation. Working together with SAP, Hornbach built a composable enterprise.

Neiman Marcus harnessed innovative methods and valuable insights to optimize its compensation management. These strategies are reshaping the retail landscape and revolutionizing team incentives within the industry.

PetSmart, a prominent pet retailer, encountered obstacles in omnichannel order fulfillment, leading to challenges in financial reconciliation and inventory transparency. By adopting 51风流Customer Activity Repository, PetSmart established a robust foundation for omnichannel retail. This implementation significantly enhanced the omnichannel process and elevated overall customer satisfaction levels.

PVH, a global apparel company with a brand portfolio that includes Tommy Hilfiger, Calvin Klein, Warner鈥檚, Olga, and True&Co, is working with 51风流to build an IT platform foundation for innovation, modernization, digitalization, and scalability.

Qurate Retail Group, known for its innovative strides in the retail sector, leveraged technology to elevate customer experiences, optimize operations, and propel growth together with SAP.

RD, Brazil’s top drugstore chain boasting nearly 3,000 stores across the nation, achieved a transformative implementation of 51风流technology, which led to streamlined processes and customer-centric advancements, marking a new era of operational excellence.

Wella Company, a pioneering force in the beauty industry with 15 distinctive brands, utilizes technology to inspire both consumers and beauty professionals to embrace their authentic selves. Wella Company’s approach of leveraging actionable data to craft tailored solutions strengthens its lifelong relationships across B2C (business-to-consumer), B2B (business-to-business), and D2C (direct-to-consumer) realms.

51风流celebrates these retailers for their outstanding efforts, collaboration, and dedication in driving successful business outcomes with technology. Join us at NRF 2024 to celebrate these 51风流Industry Heroes that will be sharing their stories and learnings at the 51风流booth. .听

Read more about our retail and CPG customer stories and wins from 2023.

Matt Laukaitis is EVP and Global GM for 51风流Consumer Industries.

The reality is that most business processes these days require extensive correspondence with stakeholders 鈥� whether it is for customer support, hiring processes, sending and chasing invoices, or scheduling deliveries and meetings via e-mail, service tickets, or phone calls.

As of today, understanding, contextualizing, and prioritizing this correspondence is still a highly manual task that is repetitive and time-consuming. This also makes the chances of error or delay notably higher, leading to increased costs or even incompliance. A new exploration from offers help.

The Bridge Between LLMs and Line of Business Applications

Communication intelligence is a service on (51风流BTP) that can analyze, categorize, and correspond to written communication by leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) and pre-trained models like large language models (LLM). It scans information found in e-mails or Microsoft Teams, including their attachments, before categorizing key elements such as their sentiment 鈥� positive or negative 鈥� degree of urgency, and mentioned stakeholders into a quick and easy-to-read summary.

With generative AI capabilities, the service can proactively suggest responses, schedule meetings, or correct invoices. It allows adjustments in tone, length, and style for an immediate and personalized response with just a few clicks, even during the busiest parts of the day.

鈥淐ommunication Intelligence serves as the bridging layer between line of business applications, such as account receivables management or HR, and LLMs,鈥� explains Greg Harrelson, product manager for Communication Intelligence at 51风流Innovation Center Network. 鈥淭his allows developers to focus on domain-specific use cases without having to fully understand the complexities of LLMs.鈥�

For instance, for account receivables, the text analysis enabled by communication intelligence can be used to prioritize time-sensitive or critical requests, trigger system activities like creating dispute cases, and leverage suggested responses. In HR, the service can help gauge employee sentiment and engagement through feedback surveys, communications, and social media. Communication intelligence is suitable for a wide range of use cases by helping to reduce errors and improve response times for business correspondence.

Ensuring Flexibility

Communication intelligence allows customers to choose and configure interactions from a wide range of LLM providers without being locked into a specific vendor. 鈥淲e understand the need for flexibility and adaptability in today鈥檚 rapidly evolving technology landscape,鈥� says Harrelson. 鈥淭his flexibility not only helps ensure the ability to combine solutions but also future proof the applications against potential changes in the LLM offering.鈥�

Communication intelligence incorporates advanced, built-in anonymization and re-animation techniques, working to ensure that personal data remains secure throughout the analysis process. The team is currently exploring opportunities to plug the solution into 51风流Build Process Automation to deliver the same benefits as part of SAP鈥檚 low-code/no-code tooling in the future.

To find out more about communication intelligence, get in touch with us at icn@sap.com.

Thomas Kongats is part of NVT Communications at SAP.

This was a key message conveyed during the 10th anniversary virtual celebration for the 2023 51风流Innovation Award winners in June. The event highlighted how these technological advancements have revolutionized collaboration with customers and partners worldwide, leading to sustainable and impactful innovation. However, amidst this digital revolution, it is important to recognize that the human touch remains irreplaceable.

While digital interactions have become commonplace, relying solely on the cloud for customer satisfaction is a misconception. It is the dedicated workers armed with a multitude of software solutions who continue to be the driving force behind transformative change. From manufacturing to supply chain, finance to procurement, it is the ingenuity and expertise of individuals that propel industries and society forward. These real-life transformers are the catalysts for progress, harnessing the power of technology to shape a better future.

When the first 51风流Innovation Awards were launched in 2014, the judges received 27 submissions. This year, the number exceeded 220 across 10 categories, including Sustainability Hero, Industry Leader, Partner Paragon, and Cutting-Edge Genius.

Check out this听,听which has everything you need to know about the 2023 51风流Innovation Award winners, finalists, honorable mentions, and more.

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Changing the World

At the celebration, as the winners accepted the accolades for their achievements and addressed each other online, all agreed that, in this post-pandemic period, the goal of technological innovation must transcend simply improving one鈥檚 business.

By their actions, the 2023 51风流Innovation Award winners embody that philosophy.

For instance, after the war in Ukraine forced more than 8 million people to flee their homeland, professional services corporation EY (Ernst & Young) developed its Emergency Response Application (ERA). The free mobile solution was built using 51风流Business Technology Platform (51风流BTP) and enables access to critical and time-sensitive information and directs refugees to resources in 53 cities. The humanitarian undertaking was accomplished in an astonishing six weeks.

In its mission to develop novel and multifunctional therapeutics for rare cancers and other serious diseases, global biotechnology company Zymeworks found that its previous manual system was inefficient and labor-intensive. To remedy that, the company created a single, integrated platform using SAP鈥檚 enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions to support its product commercialization, growth, and expansion strategy 鈥� allowing the organization insight into real-time information to make important, data-driven decisions while continuing to save lives.

In Australia, where the country鈥檚 growing aging population has increased the demand for in-home and community-delivered care, HomeMade designed a self-service portal leveraging 51风流BTP, enabling the elderly to choose providers for services like cleaning and cooking and lead a fulfilling life while reducing administrative overhead.

And on the Japanese island of Kyushu, where natural disasters are all too frequent, Oita University developed an information platform called the Earth Disaster Intelligent System Operational Network (EDiSON), providing accurate and timely data to assist emergency response organizations. The solution uses robust data management, advanced analytics, AI, and machine learning capabilities offered by 51风流HANA Cloud, the 51风流Analytics Cloud solution, and 51风流Business Technology Platform.

A Sustainable Planet

From the time the 2023 51风流Innovation Awards were announced, judges were 鈥渓ooking for tangible examples of sustainability that are delivering impact, using 51风流technologies for good,鈥� said Dorit Shackleton, senior vice president, head of Customer Advocacy and Global Events Marketing at SAP.

In addition to supplying people in Switzerland鈥檚 Basel region with electricity, heat, and drinking water, along with telecom and mobility solutions, Industrielle Werke Basel (IWB) produces and sells renewable and CO2-netural energy to achieve climate goals. Using machine learning algorithms, a new adaptable application leveraging 51风流Business Technology Platform can predict solar power production with unprecedented accuracy, supporting IWB鈥檚 ongoing sustainability drive.

As host Timo Elliot pointed out, 鈥淚f you can help with just a small percentage [of reducing the carbon footprint], you can make a big difference to the planet.鈥�

In trying to reach its environmental, social, and governance (ESG) objectives, Indonesian mining, infrastructure, and oil and gas services company Petrosea was frustrated that its old, largely paper-based system complicated the process. By creating a unified platform and utilizing 51风流Analytics Cloud, the company now has one source of truth to monitor carbon emissions, waste, and water usage to make informed choices and realize what it calls its 3D strategy 鈥� diversification, digitalization, and decarbonization.

As the 2023 51风流Innovation Award winners continue to bask in the glow of their success, planning for the 2024 festivities is underway. And even organizations that don鈥檛 plan to enter will be watching to find inspiration for new ways to improve.

Join us in celebrating innovation and transformation by sharing your success stories in the 2024 51风流Innovation Awards! We invite you to submit your transformation stories.

Together, let’s shape the future of innovation. Participate in the 2024 51风流Innovation Awards and share your remarkable journey with us. Visit our to get started!

Julia Ponzini is a customer marketing senior specialist at SAP.

One example is Technologies, Canada鈥檚 leading life sciences research company that sees itself as a company of scientists helping scientists. Based in Vancouver, STEMCELL has a 30-year history of growth in developing and manufacturing products and services that help other industrial and academic scientists innovate in the areas of stem cell, immunology, cancer, regenerative medicine, and cellular therapy research. STEMCELL has staff in 20 countries and sells a constantly expanding portfolio of over 2,500 products, including cell culture media, cell separation technologies, instruments, and accessories, as well as education and services. Reducing the time to market for new products is crucial to the company鈥檚 mission of pursuing life sciences discoveries leading to the next generation of healthcare treatments.

鈥淲e鈥檙e always looking for ways to accelerate time to market for new products and adapt our technology environment to meet the evolving needs of our internal stakeholders and external customers,鈥� said John Lilleyman, CIO at STEMCELL. 鈥淎dvanced discoveries in areas like precision medicine are bringing new hope to patients and their families. At the same time, we have to comply with increasingly stringent global mandates for sustainable packaging and product safety.鈥�

Faster Innovation with 51风流S/4HANA

Since STEMCELL went live with , the biotech leader has been intent on using the latest innovations from 51风流to help speed up product testing. Speaking during a session held at this year鈥檚 , Lilleyman shared the company鈥檚 strategy for effective and fully automated software with SAP.

鈥淲e鈥檙e particularly excited about the cloud-first innovations from , which will help us deliver a more sustainable solution, continuously meet security and compliance requirements, and set us up for success with future upgrades,鈥� he said. 鈥淲ith a new test-automation strategy, we can make sure that testing is an accelerator and not a bottleneck to change.鈥�

Automation Expedites Rigorous Product Testing

STEMCELL doesn鈥檛 create end-user patient therapies. Rather, the company develops the products and solutions that help other life sciences researchers innovate for new therapeutic discoveries. To develop these solutions for other scientists, STEMCELL performs rigorous product quality testing to comply with the and other global regulatory frameworks and guidelines.

Replacing manual testing with a highly automated process has generated significant results for the company. To date, STEMCELL has reduced the time required to complete 51风流system validation for GxP 鈥済ood practice鈥� guidelines and regulations by 86%, test quote-to-cash scenarios by 97%, and execute a full regression cycle by 98%.

鈥淚nstead of taking the better part of a month or more, most of the testing is now completed in a handful of days or less,鈥� said Lilleyman. 鈥淭his is a tremendous accelerator for our business and our teams. We鈥檒l be able to take advantage of enhancements in 51风流solutions faster. It will continue to pay dividends every day, week, month, and year as we move forward, expanding our footprint in new product markets and locations.鈥�

Digital Helps Fast-Track Global Expansion

Averaging 20% annual growth, STEMCELL has made digitalization central to its strategy for bringing products to market faster and more sustainably. Lilleyman said that speeding up testing in compliance with global mandates will help the company as it expands worldwide.

鈥淐loud-based automation at all stages of testing helps move us towards continuous compliance in a continuously changing market,鈥� he said. 鈥淎s we continue to expand our inventory for testing, we鈥檒l be able to accelerate upcoming projects as we open up in different environments. We can have a library with a simple checklist to set up a new entity where we can test end-to-end. We can shift the testing burden away from business users to release innovations faster with completed testing.鈥�

He looked ahead to greater benefits from further automation, including on-demand validation reports for updated system testing and quality controls. Speedier testing from STEMCELL is making the lives of researchers easier by accelerating the release of the tools they need to in turn deliver advanced, patient-centric therapeutic discoveries for a healthier world.

Susan Galer is a communications director. Follow me @smgaler.

The immediate outcomes of cloud-based services are obvious. Manufacturers gain continuous monetization from a steady stream of revenue, while their customers have new payment flexibilities to better control cash flow. However, as-a-service business models are not just a different way of doing business. They are also a relationship-building lever between manufacturers and customers 鈥� whether consumers or businesses. Two market leaders in the manufacturing industry shared their service-based strategies during a session held at this year鈥檚 that was hosted by Heidi Zhao, director of Global Billing and Revenue Solution Management at SAP.

Service-Based Innovation at Align Technology Is Reason to Smile

Global medical device company manufactures Invisalign clear aligners and 3D digital scanners that improve the smiles of millions of people each year. A longtime pioneer in advanced orthodontics, Align is constantly innovating to serve doctors in over 120 markets worldwide. The company is on a digitalization journey with 51风流that will support monetization from as-a-service offerings for orthodontics care professionals and their patients.

鈥淲e selected to help evolve our monetization models providing outcome-based services to our customers,鈥� said Mary Kumar, senior vice president of Enterprise Engineering at Align Technology. 鈥淐ustomers will gain the ease of subscription-based options on a consumption or on-demand service model. In addition, having the ability to meet the country-specific needs of orthodontists and dentists in our global markets is super important.鈥�

Align is undergoing the same business transformation as every traditional high technology company, exploring as-a-service choices such as leasing scanners to orthodontists and subscription-based packages that combine aligners and treatment planning.

鈥淐ustomers don鈥檛 always want to pay larger amounts up front to purchase our scanners or diagnostic orthodontic software. They want to modernize their practice using our advanced technology, but with manageable monthly payments,鈥� said Kumar. 鈥淭hese market demands are driving pay-as-you-go and subscription-based models with our customers who prefer to pay as they scan instead of paying for the scanner itself. Similarly, we produce four million aligners each day with automatic treatment planning. They may want to purchase a set number of aligners and mix and match treatment.鈥�

51风流Is Central to 尝别苍辞惫辞鈥檚 As-a-Service Transformation

Services are an important part of vision to provide smarter technology for all through personal computers, smartphones, televisions, and wearable devices. As the world鈥檚 top PC manufacturer, providing the building blocks of modern IT, the US$70 billion company transformed itself two years ago to bring service-based solutions to meet customers where they are.

鈥淐onsumers and businesses want more flexibility in how they consume our products,鈥� said Arthur Hu, senior vice president and CIO at Lenovo. 鈥淚n the process of taking our portfolio and offering it as a service, 51风流Billing and Revenue Innovation Management helped us evolve to a pay-as-you-go service model, providing the technology capabilities that underpin our business model transformation.鈥�

Historically, Lenovo has sold hardware devices like laptops, phones, and tablets on a one-time basis. Now customers want to reduce the overhead surrounding the purchase and maintenance of 尝别苍辞惫辞鈥檚 computing and edge devices and networking and storage solutions.

鈥淗aving an understanding of what your customers and their customers are doing drives innovation. Building a new business model is about exploring ideas, using technology to iterate quickly with insights from integrated data,鈥� said Hu. 鈥淐ustomers are interested in a more managed service model for our devices across hundreds of countries and tens of thousands of seats. They want a secure computer experience for end users. Infrastructure-as-a-service is also on the rise. We can support everything-as-a-service, providing customers with different ways to consume our solutions, helping them be more nimble by reducing capital expenditures.鈥�

Getting closer to customers may well be among the most positive unintended consequences of as-a-service business models. Manufacturers know precisely how customers are using their products and can continuously innovate services to better serve them, opening up greater revenue streams and delivering stronger experiences.

Follow @smgaler

Three teams were selected for outstanding and innovative projects in the categories Go-To-Market, Operational Excellence, and Products and Technology.

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In 2022, 132 nominations involved almost 1,000 employees from 42 countries. Nine teams consisting of 83 employees from around the world made it to the final round. The three winning teams chose the charity organizations and听, to which 51风流will donate 鈧�10,000 on behalf of each team 鈥� 鈧�30,000 total.

Go-to-Market Winner

听Midmarket Business Always-On Platform of EMEA North

To simplify and humanize how 51风流connects with its prospects and customers, the Midmarket Business Always-On Platform of EMEA North puts 51风流customers in the driving seat when it comes to discovering the right solutions for their business requirements.

The platform creates an immersive and interactive way to tell the 51风流story by simulating a conference center with floors, elevators, and meeting rooms. Users can play demos, watch videos, partake in visit summits and exhibitions, ask questions, book meetings, and receive relevant follow-up, all thanks to the platform鈥檚 built-in analytics. The team used SAP-owned technology as well as their own developments.

Launched in 2020, the platform has generated over 鈧�80 million in pipeline, achieved 60% net-new named customers, and led to the signing of more than 150 deals.

鈥淚鈥檓 really proud of the job the team members around the globe have done and how this award recognizes the impact of our digital platform,鈥� said Sandrine Pons, RVP Solution Sales & Innovation EMEA North, on winning the Hasso Plattner Founders鈥� Award.

Amaury Martin, region solution sales leader, added: 鈥淭o come up with an idea and to watch it come true and have such an impact on our customers鈥� value journey 鈥� that was really impressive.鈥�

To bring the platform to the next level, the team plans to integrate it with other solutions. As Olivier Demeusy, regional CoE BTP senior director, described: 鈥淚t started out as a regional platform, but we know this can cater to a wider audience within the company and with our customers and partners.鈥�

Innovation is also a matter of humanity. As Sophie Brun, chief executive assistant, said: 鈥淭he platform reflects in many ways the amazing diversity among our team, our partners, and our customers.鈥�

Operational Excellence Winner

Harmonized Adoption and Usage Management with 51风流Usage Analyzer

How many customers have adopted an 51风流solution? How many of them are using each functionality? Answers to these and many other questions around adoption, consumption, and usage can be found easily in 51风流Usage Analyzer.

With the Harmonized Adoption and Usage Management (HAUM) project, a core team of 25 and many contributors from Product Engineering and Customer Success established a standardized framework for scalable and sustainable functional usage measurement, creating a holistic view of customers鈥� usage behaviors. 51风流Usage Analyzer helps provide transparency on adoption and usage insights on SAP鈥檚 cloud customer base, across all public cloud products and aligned with business practices. Harmonized usage insights can be leveraged to positively impact renewals, product investments, and reduce manual efforts.

鈥淧ersistence and teamwork are the key elements. You need to stick to your goal, and you cannot afford to work in a silo,鈥� Martin G眉nther, HAUM project co-lead, summed up as his most important learning. Natascha Pl眉cken, HAUM project co-lead, added, 鈥淵ou need people who believe in something where others don鈥檛 and really go through it without giving up. Kudos to all teams who contributed across different functions and business units at SAP.鈥�

As of today, 51风流Usage Analyzer has been successfully rolled out to customer-facing roles, solutions, and product and portfolio management teams. More than 75% of the enabled group is regularly working with it.

鈥淲hen you have a vision and you work on that vision for years, then to realize that this vision gets honored by the company and all the people who have been involved in this 鈥� it鈥檚 a super good feeling,鈥� Thorsten Broszies, former project co-lead, commented on winning the Hasso Plattner Founders鈥� Award.

And this vision is not accomplished yet, Iva Stoj膷i膰, transformation lead, 51风流Corporate Transformation Organization, concluded: 鈥淲e will take adoption to the next level by providing proactive recommendations, KPI benchmarking, and mapping usage with end-to-end business processes. Additionally, we will provide usage insights to our customers and partners.鈥�

Products and Technology Winner

51风流Intelligent Agriculture

In the agribusiness and along the food value chain, there are increasing concerns about sustainability, how to make regenerative agriculture profitable, and how to remain competitive.

51风流Intelligent Agriculture helps make next-generation, data-driven farming processes and services a reality. For the first time, 51风流customers can now rely on an enterprise-grade, native cloud solution to help capture and manage farm data at a granular level and optimize farm planning and operations based on their valuable experience. Combined with artificial intelligence (AI) and data science models, agribusinesses now have the potential to produce more while reducing water, fertilizer, and pesticides. 51风流Intelligent Agriculture is also a front-runner in multiple areas, such as feature-driven development supported by deploy with confidence, which helps release new features instantly, and the new Industry Cloud Enterprise Agreement.

鈥淚t’s overwhelming to win this award against such tough competition,鈥� Cedrik Kern, solution owner, 51风流Intelligent Agriculture, commented. 鈥淭he innovative spirit around the Hasso Plattner Founders鈥� Award is incredible and to be chosen is just pure joy.鈥�

鈥淭his is a testament to us that we are doing the right thing,鈥� Florian Waidner, product manager, 51风流Intelligent Agriculture, added. 鈥�51风流Intelligent Agriculture is a young product, just a year in the market and in its early adopter phase. As a next step, we want to further scale with customers and a vast partner ecosystem that we are building up.鈥�

Also, a showcase for 51风流Sapphire Orlando is in the making. 鈥淲ith vegan ice cream as the example, we will show the end-to-end food value chain starting on the farm gate over to sourcing from farmers, manufacturing, and delivering to the consumer,鈥� Anja Strothk盲mper, global vice president, Industry Business Unit Agribusiness & Commodity Management, explained.

Together with our customers and partners, we are happy to celebrate the 10^th anniversary of the . The awards extend the cofounders鈥� vision to create positive economic, environmental, and social impact, help the world run better, and improve people鈥檚 lives.

From the very beginning, the awards have recognized the achievements of future-minded organizations and individuals with fresh perspectives that have harnessed the power of the latest 51风流products and technologies to achieve:

• Sustainability and purpose by creating opportunities to accelerate climate action, regenerative economies, and prosperous communities
• Optimization by reinventing how resources are managed, including people, products, raw materials, and capital
• Data-driven decision-making by enabling effective business processes and real-time information flows across business networks, supply chains, and value chains

The 51风流Innovation Awards celebrate customers and partners that are exploring new ideas and business models to deliver real-world innovation:

• Empowering women-owned businesses 鈥� helps women-owned organizations gain access to over US$3 billion in global purchasing power.
• Digital transformation scales equitable opportunities 鈥� automates and enables its new hire processes to efficiently onboard 1,000 new hires each month.
• Scientific predictions to increase sustainability 鈥� is committed to forecasting the hourly customer demand of products and rolling it out to hundreds of stores.

This year, we received and published over 220 submissions that were filled with inspiring and innovative use cases. And now, the judges selected across 10 categories from among the that were announced last month.

With immense pleasure and pride, I鈥檓 excited to announce the 30 winners of our 10^th Anniversary 51风流Innovation Awards for 2023!

We thank all the individuals and teams who participated in the 2023 51风流Innovation Awards, along with our judges. Innovation, digital transformation, and agility continue to play a big role to help manage successful outcomes for our customers. I personally look forward to the road ahead with our 51风流ecosystem of customers and partners to positively impact this ever-changing and often unpredictable market.

Visit the to read more about the winners, honorable mentions, finalists, and participants and to learn more about the 51风流Innovation Awards.

Claudio Muruzabal is president of Cloud Success Services at SAP.

This is the perfect opportunity to share an inside look at the judging process, announce our esteemed finalists, and provide a preview for what is next.

Judging Process

This year鈥檚 awards represent our greatest yet, as we are celebrating our 10^th anniversary with ten categories:

• 10^th Anniversary Superstar
• Sustainability Hero
• Industry Leader
• Partner Paragon
• Transformation Titan
• Cutting-Edge Genius
• Business Innovator
• Experience Wizard
• Adoption Champion
• Services Supernova

Being selected as an 51风流Innovation Award finalist is an incredible accomplishment on its own 鈥� it takes a wealth of ingenuity and perseverance. Entries are evaluated based on three main criteria:

• Use Case Creativity: how compelling or disruptive the use case is
• Tangible Outcomes: the magnitude of the outcome, impact on individuals and society, and how significant the quantified results are
• Intelligent Enterprise: how well the entry demonstrates the company鈥檚 journey to becoming an intelligent enterprise

What makes being selected as a finalist even more remarkable is how competitive it is. In total, we published over 220 submissions, now visible on the , and of those only 70 are selected as finalists.

Celebrating the Finalists

On that note, I would like to give a very well-deserved 鈥淐ongratulations!鈥� to all the finalists. I encourage everyone to check out their submissions . I must say, these are truly among the most impressive entries we have received over the years. As I鈥檝e said before, their stories have inspired us. And I know you will draw inspiration from them, too.

The Winners Announcement Is Rapidly Approaching

The winners will be announced on April 12, 2023. Out of the 70 finalists, will narrow it down to 30 entries to be crowned as 2023 51风流Innovation Award winners.

The winners will be globally recognized as innovators, earn bragging rights, and be featured in numerous promotional opportunities such as podcasts, media interviews, CIO.com blogs, speaking opportunities, and more. They will receive all of that on top of a prestigious trophy, an exclusive celebration event, and an 51风流Sapphire Orlando 2023 pass or a US$1,000 for a charitable donation.

You can always check out for more information.

Once again, a big thank you to all the 51风流Innovation Award participants and we wish all of our finalists the best of luck. Stay tuned for the big announcement coming in April!

Stephanie Nashawaty is global head of Customer Advisory at SAP.

Technology has become such an integral part of our lives that we are often lost without it. When was the last time you looked for the best route on a map and didn鈥檛 turn on your navigation device?

But sometimes technology can also drive us nuts. Especially when it doesn鈥檛 understand what we want from it.

鈥淲hat is needed is not a new way for people to look at technology, but no less than a paradigm shift towards a mutual understanding. Human ingenuity and machine intelligence in empathic symbiosis,鈥� says Wezowski.

Our Disenchantment with Technology

Although technology has come a long way 鈥� from the discovery of fire and the invention of the wheel, to reading glasses and medicines 鈥� we鈥檝e also learned that it鈥檚 a double-edged sword.

While technology is more present than ever in our work and daily lives, a certain disenchantment with technological progress has set in. Our generally hopeful attitude towards benign technological progress has been challenged by the knowledge that technology can sometimes create new problems, like privacy issues, the spread of misinformation, and cybercrime.

In fact, the speed at which technology is evolving is sometimes perceived as a development that might eventually leave humans behind. People worry whether they might lose their jobs to automation or if insurance companies will deny them as customers due to certain information included among all the data that is being collected about us. And there is the looming fear that machines will become smarter than the people who build and use them.

鈥淭here are, in fact, many years ahead of us during which the most relevant intelligence in the room will be the human ingenuity and creativity brain,鈥� Wezowski reassures. 鈥淏ut what does it mean for us, if many people actually don鈥檛 like the way things function today? Systems that are supposed to make my life easier still ask me to fill out forms and type in my login credentials by hand.鈥�

Let鈥檚 Focus on (Digital) Me

鈥淏y and large, we are still hunters and gatherers in the workplace,鈥� Wezowski says. 鈥淭here are so many things we need to actively look for every day! Phone numbers, files, customer numbers.鈥�

Augmenting humans with machine knowledge enables them to remember all these mundane details at the speed of light. Machines are simply better at handling large amounts of data. But there are also things that machines cannot grasp that are self-explanatory to humans.

鈥淢aking the machine understand why you get up every morning and go to work is not easy,鈥� Wezowski says. 鈥淗ow can I explain my ambition and my purpose to a machine? How can the corporate vision of my company and our heartfelt purpose be translated into machine understanding?鈥�

Therefore, it is not enough to optimize technology 鈥� to make machines run faster and more reliably, to feed them with more and more data and develop better algorithms. Technology must optimize people鈥檚 lives: their daily work, habits, and interests. The things that truly matter to us humans. Getting to know the human that the software is being built for is only the first step.

鈥淲ork is already very hard today. All sorts of help is required for us to function throughout the day and reflect where we are at,鈥� Wezowski says. 鈥淲ith the amount of information that we produce and need to internalize and understand to make decisions, we reach our cognitive limits even with eight hours of sleep and daily meditation.鈥�

When , we can focus on strategic and visionary thinking instead and let the system take care of those mundane details like providing the necessary files for the next meeting or customer numbers.

Composed Applications Depending on Your Needs and Wishes

Applications will have to understand more context to avoid becoming just another layer of complication.

鈥淲e are the ones who can make applications more context-aware by sharing knowledge about ourselves 鈥� safely, securely, privately,鈥� Wezowski stresses. 鈥淭his is what the DigitalMe project is about: the contextual understanding of the individual, not the generalization of individual problems using personas.鈥�

A human-centric approach means creating technology that can differ from situation to situation, responding to our needs and desires. It can learn from our behavior and compose itself accordingly. Each individual encompasses many roles: scientist, coach, mother, lacrosse player, and so on. For one composed software to support you with picking up your daughter from school in the afternoon and with budget negotiations for your next project later that day, applications need to be anchored in the individual.

Depending on the role you find yourself in a certain situation, the software you need at that precise moment must compose itself differently each time. By allowing the software to get to know the individual and thus helping to shape the software, it will eventually be a reflection of him or her, Wezowski believes. 鈥淲e鈥檒l understand each other without having to make an effort. The better the application knows us, the more respectful it can be towards our pains, needs, and preferences. It can even point out your own habits and preferences to you 鈥� at your request.鈥�

鈥淪o, augmentation will go both ways. It will be more than a mere division of labor into machine-fit and human-fit tasks,鈥� Wezowski says. For people to appreciate this additional help it must be offered in a reflective, unobtrusive, and nudging way.

鈥淚magine it more like a flow of thoughts or a discussion that you are a part of,鈥� he says.

The Desktop of the Future

鈥淥nly what you need, only when you need it,鈥� Wezowski sums things up. 鈥淜nowledge assembled in front of you and revealed in your situational context.鈥�

Instead of the human asking, 鈥淗ow does this software run, where do I have to insert my user ID and click?鈥� the software will act on the question, 鈥淗ow does this human behave?鈥� Not people in general, not a generic persona, but Kate, Ling, Samira, or Jo茫o 鈥� the individual in a given context in real time.

鈥淲e expect no less than a cultural shift from this compassionate software,鈥� Wezowski says.

Each day, news outlets serve up headlines screaming about new issues that affect the global supply chain, the climate crisis, the workforce, and the world economy. Yet somehow, resilient, brilliant, dedicated people in organizations across every industry and region are undaunted. These leaders step up to improve, invent, and innovate their way to a better place. I, for one, find this inspiring, motivating, and just plain awesome.

In the vast 51风流ecosystem, we see real-life examples of this every day: people who prove that when the going gets tough, the tough keep going 鈥� and innovating 鈥� to help the world run better and improve people鈥檚 lives.

I want to recognize these 鈥渟uperheroes鈥� 鈥� made up of our customers, partners, and their respective teams from every corner of the world. They are remarkable, forward-thinking pioneers who are able to capitalize on current 51风流technology to create solutions for today and tomorrow. We are excited to honor these pioneers at the 10^th anniversary 51风流Innovation Awards for their innovative use of 51风流software, services, and solutions within their organizations.

My fellow executive sponsors Scott Russell, Claudio Muruzabal, Stephanie Nashawaty, and I are very excited to be a part of the 51风流Innovation Awards once again. Though we don鈥檛 yet know who the winners are at this point, we are looking forward to hearing all their inspirational stories using 51风流technology. Celebrating the award winners is truly one of the highlights of our year.

Worth the Wait

In just three weeks, the 51风流Innovation Award finalists will be announced. You will be able to see for yourself how these companies are building a sustainable future, creating better supply chains, and transforming their enterprises using leading-edge solutions like . In the meantime, here are a few examples from our current submissions that showcase just how innovative organizations can be:

Empowering Women-Owned Businesses
was founded to help women-owned businesses gain access to over US$3 billion in global purchasing power. The organization’s mission requires making it easy to identify, certify, and train women-owned businesses around the world as well as for member organizations to select qualified suppliers for procurement opportunities. WEConnect International worked with 51风流to build a next-generation 51风流Ariba Supplier Lifecycle and Performance platform that can scale to meet the requirements of buyers and suppliers globally.

Rise with Employees, Customers, and Consumers
initiative focuses on building a better tomorrow for its employees, customers, and consumers. A key objective is to improve employee engagement and empower them to make data-driven decisions. RISE with 51风流S/4HANA Cloud establishes a foundation towards this vision of becoming a customer-centric enterprise. It enables Philips Domestic Appliances to develop a holistic view of its consumers, understand their needs, respond to their feedback, innovate, and create products that positively impact their daily lives.

Actionable Performance Indicators
Brazilian electric utilities company deployed 51风流Digital Boardroom and 51风流Analytics Cloud for its board members and leaders to track performance indicators via a single source of truth. Fast, accurate, reliable tracking of data is required to generate the company’s key performance indicators (KPIs) for decision-makers to eliminate the manual work of spreadsheets and slides. Given the virtual environment, it was critical to provide a secure, collaborative platform to access and integrate analytics from over 10 disparate data repositories. Electronorte can now quickly identify trends and gain actionable insights anytime, anywhere.

Major Announcement Coming

The entry submission period closed on February 1. Now, the 51风流Innovation Awards team is working to select the finalists that will be revealed on March 14. A panel of 29 distinguished judges will spend four weeks determining the winners, announced on April 12.

Finally, in celebration of all our participants, 51风流will donate $100 per entry, up to $20,000, to the and .

Be a Part of the Celebration

Maybe you鈥檝e worked with one of this year鈥檚 entrants? Or you know of a customer who would be a perfect fit for next year鈥檚 51风流Innovation Awards? If so, check out the 51风流Innovation Awards听 for more information.

And stay tuned for the announcement of the winners on April 12. It鈥檚 a feel-good moment that we can all celebrate!

Dorit Shackleton is senior vice president and head of Global Customer Advocacy and Events Marketing at SAP.

One of the first steps an organization can take is reassessing whether its digital backbone contains core components of business resiliency. They include cloud, security, collaboration support for remote and hybrid workers, and the scalability to pivot capabilities as needed.

While there is no single, straightforward path to digital transformation, companies would benefit greatly by adopting technology that supports four characteristics common among business-resilient organizations:

• Adapt and respond quickly with data-driven decision-making
• Drive high-impact outcomes with real-time enterprise insights
• Scale capabilities fast with machine learning and artificial intelligence
• Extend insights, processes, and communication across a global network of vendors, contingent labor, and supply chains

Acquiring these traits may appear to be a tall order at first. However, a modern, cloud-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) system as the digital backbone can quickly, cost-effectively, and flexibly unify all functions 鈥� from HR and finance to manufacturing and supply chain. By providing real-time access to the same data, insights, and processes, the technology enables organizations to manage and prioritize business changes in unison to keep up with market dynamics, workplace expectations, and customer demands.

Optimizing the Potential of Every Innovation Investment

When considering an ERP system, organizations often weigh their options between a private or public cloud environment, which each have their own distinct differences. Private cloud allows companies with complex on-premise landscapes containing legacy systems to gradually move from an on-premise landscape to a cloud tailored to meet their needs while maintaining control over their processes. On the other hand, public cloud gives businesses with smaller, up-to-date IT architecture the opportunity to migrate their data and applications quickly and innovate continuously, securely, and with rapid time to value.

Ultimately, most larger customers prefer to fully transition their ERP data, processes, and user experiences to the cloud while maintaining existing industry functionality. But they also expect to accomplish these goals with optimized performance, lower costs, and intelligent capabilities such as predictive analytics, artificial intelligence, and process automation.

With launched through the offering, 51风流customers can gain the best of both worlds, especially if they run large and complex system landscapes. They can fuel fast-paced, continuous innovation and digital advancement by combining a subscription pricing model for 51风流S/4HANA and cloud services with a standard architecture and a set of extension capabilities. Plus, intelligent capabilities can be chosen and deployed at their pace, on their terms, and within the scale of their immediate and future needs.

One key benefit that draws most companies to 51风流S/4HANA Cloud and RISE with 51风流is the confidence that they can implement capabilities that complement their core competencies and resolve their challenges well. They can access the personalized support, expert-led services, proven methodologies, and intuitive tools of the .

This level of support is available to 51风流customers, whether they run a 24/7 global operation or a local plant of 1,000 employees, and can be delivered by the Customer Success organization at SAP. The premium engagements portfolio can be scaled to meet the customer鈥檚 unique needs and value with customized and predefined configurations, from the front to the back office.

Creating an Innovation Foundation Based on Expert Guidance

Premium engagements can provide the guidance organizations need to fulfill critical business expectations, such as cost reduction, higher efficiency, optimized productivity, and operational continuity. But more importantly, the portfolio allows businesses to map their challenges and opportunities to modern ERP capabilities 鈥� identifying impacts on existing operations and technologies, considering use cases for future innovation, and choosing suitable extension solutions.

Throughout the engagement experience, our customers can quickly realize an intelligent enterprise designed to pave the way for continuous and productive innovation. The reality of a cost-effective and on-schedule implementation with minimal risks and predictive costs fuels enterprise-wide confidence, compelling users to readily adopt the technology and resulting changes.

Most Fortune 500 companies choose the premium engagements portfolio to gain an integrated, transparent, and centralized digital landscape with a smooth implementation of 51风流S/4HANA Cloud with RISE with SAP. The combination of our expertise, guidance, methodologies, services, and tools enables organizations to optimize their business processes, standardize data management, and enhance production traceability. Best of all, they can minimize the overall deployment effort and costs 鈥� even with remote service delivery.

Take , for example. Transitioning 11 software landscapes to the cloud is a daunting step to overcome when embracing a next-generation ERP system. But Hilti chose to trust its long-term relationship with experts from 51风流to coordinate a variety of moving parts 鈥� from architecture planning to project management to infrastructure services. In the end, the company鈥檚 successful migration of its software landscapes to the cloud set the stage for adopting future-ready technologies and a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) model.

Steering Innovation in the Right Direction

Hilti鈥檚 experience represents the remarkable advantage that our customers gain from our premium engagements delivery: providing the right tools and insights to reset the course of business innovation. And for everyone from executives to organizational managers and users, this can be the reset they need to contribute to a future of ongoing business growth.

With a committed team of 51风流experts, our customers can address their business needs and IT demands with confidence. Outcomes include maximized benefits of existing and new solutions, agile cloud migrations, and innovation driven by next-generation technology.

Whether choosing a conversion or clean-slate approach to implement the public edition or private edition of 51风流S/4HANA Cloud, companies can benefit from a portfolio of premium engagements from 51风流that support outcome-based business scenarios. These business scenarios focus on specific customer needs and help to solve challenges from end to end with a predefined set of services, including:

• The most-frequent transformation topics, challenges, and pain points companies face in the digital age
• Unified customer experiences 鈥� from sales to delivery 鈥� while addressing business challenges
• Customization of an individual service plan based on the requirements of the transformation journey

Let us shape together your premium engagements with business scenarios that mirror your strategy today and for the future. Check out these resources for more details on existing premium engagements business scenarios that can support and enable your transformation journey:

51风流S/4HANA Cloud, public edition:

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51风流S/4HANA Cloud, private edition:

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Christian Zitron is global vice president of Customer Success at SAP.

Here are just a few of our year-end acknowledgments and recognition:

• For the seventh consecutive time, 51风流has been recognized as a Leader in the . 51风流was also the only vendor to score among the听 highest three vendors for every Use Case in the *
• 51风流Ariba was designated by TrustRadius
• 51风流Ariba was named the No. 1 leading procurement software provider by

It is great to receive external recognition, accolades, and awards. We believe this is confirmation that our strategy is on target. But our true mission is to develop innovative procurement solutions that help our customers to run better and deliver the business outcomes they expect.

The SaaS procurement product family at 51风流consists of 51风流Ariba solutions, 51风流S/4HANA for Procurement, and 51风流Business Network. It has a proven track record of providing innovative solutions to solve unique challenges at every step in the procure-to-pay process.

In 2023, we intend to lead the market with our procurement innovation. Here, learn about the first wave of these innovations.

The Next Evolution of Guided Buying

A 360-Degree View of the Person, Purchase, and Organization

Today, professional and casual buyers are thinking about more than just pricing and policy compliance. They want a buying experience that is personalized for them and their role: something predictive, something that offers suggestions for their specific work; an evolution of guided buying with intelligent recommendations to help them make the right decisions, navigate through the process, and weigh the sustainability and environmental impact of their decisions.

The guided buying capability in 51风流Ariba solutions remains the gold standard for purchases of goods and services. At , we demonstrated this next evolution in guided buying. These new capabilities improve the buying experience and leverage artificial intelligence (AI), intelligent recommendations, and machine learning. This creates a holistic view of what the buyer is purchasing and how the purchase stacks up against their organization鈥檚 environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals.

Many of the capabilities will be included within the guided buying capability starting in 2023, as well as in future releases.

51风流Central Procurement

Delivering Transformation Without the Complexities of Change

Procurement professionals are feeling pressure to bring speed, scale, and savings to the business — all while minimizing risk as they navigate complex systems. And as companies demand more from procurement, procurement requires more from its technology.

Unfortunately, much of the technology deployed today is disconnected and outdated. This results in problems such as separate and inconsistent source-to-order processes, policies and controls that are not applied consistently company-wide, and disjointed data that constrains spend visibility.

In response, procurement leaders are looking for new approaches to digital transformation — and solutions that provide holistic visibility and control across the entire purchasing process. For many, centralizing procurement is at the heart of their transformation strategy.

The latest release of 51风流Central Procurement addresses the challenges associated with centralizing procurement. This solution makes it possible to centralize control of requisitioning, purchasing, sourcing, contracting, and analytics in a multi-ERP environment. It delivers the benefits of a uniform, centralized procurement system across all direct and indirect categories — without reworking individual solutions spread across the organization.

51风流Central Procurement gives your lead buyers complete visibility, enabling them to see what is happening across the business from a single, centralized command center. At the same time, individual units can still make purchases in their back-end systems, minimizing risk of teams losing local control as you maintain centralized visibility into everything they do.

The outcome is that it is easier to bring clarity and consistency to procurement operations, which is essential as companies work to meet escalating demands and plan for supply chain disruption before it happens.

Category Management

Empowering Category Managers to Work More Strategically

Category management is top of mind for our customers, and it has become increasingly relevant as global supply markets and commodities remain in flux. A by Economist Impact, sponsored by SAP, highlights category management as one of the most important drivers of digital transformation in procurement.

That is because today, category management consists of highly manual processes to collect data, do analysis, and produce reports. This leaves almost no time for category managers to develop effective strategies, let alone execute them.

This is the challenge the new category management solution from 51风流solves. 51风流Category Management, which we plan to roll out this year, will provide actionable market intelligence and category insights. It will empower category managers and procurement professionals to make strategic category decisions for direct and indirect spending that drive business outcomes.

The solution will offer intuitive scenario analysis to visualize opportunities, enabling sourcing and category managers to prioritize initiatives based on corporate spend data with system-assigned recommendations and confidence levels for opportunities.

Additionally, our new category management solution will make it possible to generate a comprehensive view of the purchasing categories to establish category goals, develop plans, and execute and monitor progress. Embedded analytics tools will provide drill-down capability into categories across multiple dimensions.

51风流Category Management will integrate into the guided sourcing capability for 51风流Ariba Sourcing, making it possible to create initiatives from within 51风流Category Management and report back for monitoring and tracking.

We plan to make the solution available to select customers in 2023.

Supplier Management

A Consolidated View of Supplier Data for Strategic Buyers

Today, it is difficult to find a comprehensive view of supplier data. Information about contracts, sourcing events, and supplier evaluation scores are spread across various procurement systems and technologies. Making things worse, supplier master data is not always harmonized across disparate back-end systems, and data from legacy systems sometimes cannot be reached at all.

Our vision is to equip buyers with a single view of their supplier. This view includes:

• Harmonized supplier master data from enterprise resource planning (ERP) using master data native integration
• Procurement suite data, including sourcing, contracts, and spend
• Ecosystem data from 51风流Business Network and third-party sources

Data will be delivered via a simple, experience that makes all decision-relevant information available at a glance.

Additionally, supplier data will become more available to end users at the point of their procurement action. For example, risk scores will be present in guided buying requisitioning; risk scores and supplier status information will be available for sourcing invitation, bid analysis, and awarding; and contract authors will have access to risk scores when they develop contracts. Having this information will enable end users to make smarter, more informed decisions.

51风流previewed many of these concepts at , and plans to provide them as a general release in the second half of 2023.

Looking Ahead

As we move forward, we will not rest on past successes. We will continue bring our family of procurement solutions closer together to deliver actionable insights to all procurement personas at the point of process, when they need them. Additionally, our solution road map will focus on implementing AI, machine learning and automation, and unified key mapping, which enables integration with third parties not using 51风流ERP.

Salvatore Lombardo is senior vice president, chief product officer, and head of Engineering for 51风流Procurement.

*Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Procure-to-Pay Suites, 28 November 2022.
This report was previously named as Magic Quadrant for Procure-to-Pay Suites for Indirect Procurement until 2015.
Gartner, Critical Capabilities for Procure-to-Pay Suites, 28 November 2022.
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.
GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally, and MAGIC QUADRANT is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates and are used herein with permission. All rights reserved.

Modern business resilience and growth depend heavily on technology, so it stands to reason that having the right technology foundation is critical.听According to , firms that have a flexible technology foundation and a business operating model that can change quickly grow nearly three times faster than their industry average.

For 51风流partners and their customers, the journey toward achieving that level of confidence begins with choosing听 (51风流BTP). The business-centric platform provides building blocks 鈥� including prebuilt content, integration accelerators, business semantics, data models, industry and line-of-business best practices, and intelligent technologies and services 鈥� that can accelerate innovation outcomes that help positively impact business performance. And those that innovate faster score higher on customer satisfaction, brand perception, and talent management, according to 51风流research.

Expanding the Capacity for Ingenuity

Digital technology has steadily moved from on-premise landscapes to a dynamic cloud environment 鈥� changing the fundamental nature of innovation. Initially, pure software-as-a-service (SaaS) technologies launched. Then came platform-as-a-service (PaaS), a growing market that includes hyperscalers such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, and Alibaba.

This growing mix of SaaS and PaaS has created a hybrid scenario of stand-alone microservices, point solutions, and processes that lack centralized control. estimates that enterprises use more than 175 unique SaaS applications and deploy 15% more year over year. As a result, 83% of global IT professionals will prioritize enterprise integration over the next one to two years, based on research conducted by .

51风流partners can demystify this decentralization of the cloud with 51风流BTP. This approach provides application development, process automation, integration, data and analytics, and artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities on a single, integrated platform. Organizations can then optimize their innovations’ business value, compliance, and customer satisfaction with trusted data, best-practice processes, and reliable infrastructure.

Pushing New Ideas on a Synchronized Platform

At the core of the integration philosophy of 51风流BTP are seven suite qualities that contribute to a more simplified and synchronized innovation process:

• An integrated user experience that includes a harmonized look, feel, and navigation pattern
• A single workflow inbox to centralize task management
• End-to-end business blueprints supporting reference architectures suitable for implementation
• Aligned domain models with business objects across applications
• Consistent security and identity management for centralized provisioning and authentication
• Coordinated lifecycle management for harmonizing provisioning setup and operations
• Embedded intelligence and analytics that provide a holistic view of the business and customers

These suite qualities serve as a technical building plan for all integration needs, including processes, data, user experiences (UX), and analyses. 51风流partners can then apply their unique expertise and services to help our joint customers accelerate innovation and become more agile 鈥� uniting their systems, processes, and data. Users can create personalized UXs that instantly work with 51风流applications, build solutions faster with business context, and deploy them in a cloud environment that’s trusted, secure, and connected.

By using 51风流BTP as the backbone for simplified and scalable integration, our customers are benefiting from a holistic approach that yields measurable outcomes. Take, for example, . The sustainable closed-loop manufacturer engaged 51风流partner avato consulting AG to pull information from disparate data sources and harmonize it into a single integrated and unified vision 鈥� minimizing manual processes while providing real-time KPIs.

More importantly, 51风流partners can help their customers open the door to more diverse, multifaceted business innovations to improve competitiveness. For example, revenue sources can be adapted or invented by transforming existing business models and sales channels with solutions and services in 51风流BTP.

Delivering Innovation with Simplicity and Trust

Innovation is a critical part of growing a business. But resulting outcomes mean little to a company if they are misaligned with established needs, impractical for existing processes, or not a tangible improvement compared to previous experiences.

With 51风流BTP and its integration tools and services, users can leverage decades of experience in mission-critical innovations in application development, industry problem-solving, and line-of-business excellence to deliver connected solutions efficiently. For example, the platform provides more than 2,000 predefined integrations between 51风流solutions and third-party software that are readily configured and deployed, fully managed, and supported by SAP.

That kind of support gives 51风流partners and our customers the confidence they need to combine their knowledge of unique business requirements with an open platform of trusted data, synchronized processes, and integrated technologies and services. And together, they鈥檙e overcoming their latest challenges with highly impactful innovations.

To learn more about how 51风流partners help businesses transition to the cloud with a unified technology platform, explore these articles. If you’re interested in software partnership opportunities with SAP, check out . And if you’re already a partner, check out these exciting initiatives:听听and听.

Tom Le is global vice president of Partner Solution Advisory at SAP.

鈥淭oday, bathrooms are where we go to rejuvenate ourselves. It鈥檚 also where our customers can make significant contributions to preserving water, our most vital natural resource,鈥� said Alp Gu虉ldu虉r, IT director and digital leader at Eczaciba艧i Building Products. Speaking at the , he added that the group鈥檚 products are designed to be both stylish and sustainable.

Market Leadership

Turkey鈥檚 first and largest producer of ceramic sanitary ware, Eczaciba艧i Building Products, began producing VitrA-branded ware in 1958, adding faucets, bathroom furniture, bathtubs, shower trays, and a range of accessories along the way. The company designs many products in-house and also collaborates with renowned international designers and studios. Eczaciba艧i Building Products鈥� plant in Boz眉y眉k, Turkey, one of the world鈥檚 largest under one roof, is the first in its industry to receive TS EN 16001 Energy Management System Certification. VitrA is also the first and only brand in Europe to receive a Type-III Environmental Product Declaration for ceramic sanitary ware.

In faucets, Eczaciba艧i Building Products places among the top 10 producers in Europe. Its Artema brand is the only one from Turkey to achieve an A rating of the European Water Label, and it鈥檚 also the first from any industry to receive the Turkish Standards Institute鈥檚 Double Star rating, meaning products greatly exceed the benchmark.

鈥淎s Turkey’s first and largest manufacturer and exporter of ceramic tiles and sanitary ware, we play an important role in society,鈥� said G眉ld眉r.

According to the , the market trend is positive, thanks to factors such as the growth of the construction industry and a rise in infrastructure projects. Increased preference for ceramic sanitary ware is another factor fueling the industry growth.

But there are some challenges associated with production, including the volatility in the price of raw materials and stringent regulations. At the same time, systems and processes must be updated to meet the needs of digitized customers.

Customer Experience

To help address these challenges, Eczaciba艧i embarked on a massive digital transformation program called Vitramax. 鈥淥ur goal was to provide unique and seamless experiences for our customers and other stakeholders by being a technology and data-driven organization,鈥� said G眉ld眉r. 鈥淲e wanted to establish ourselves on social media and digital sales channels, and we鈥檝e done it. In the past, reacting to social media took about 48 hours; now, we can react in less than two.鈥�

After an intense greenfield implementation using agile methodology, Eczaciba艧i now runs as the background for its core 51风流business solutions, and is the backbone of its customer experience solutions. Thanks to its digital strategy, the company is now present on marketplaces in many different countries. Customer feedback is used by the innovation department to improve products and services, leading to higher quality.

The transformation project enabled Eczaciba艧i to completely revamp processes resulting in greater agility and efficiency and a reduction in costs. Most importantly, the system provides full visibility on all aspects of the business.

鈥�51风流S/4HANA provides us with the platform to run our business,鈥� said G眉ld眉r. 鈥淏est of all, we don鈥檛 need to double check data accuracy, an activity that took up a lot of our time in the past.鈥�

Sustainability

Improving operational efficiency allows the company to focus on other important areas such as protecting the environment and using resources carefully. Eczaciba艧i signed the United Nations Global Compact, a voluntary initiative based on CEO commitments to implement universal sustainability principles and support UN goals, back in 2006.

As a member of the compact, Eczaciba艧i is continuously investing in innovation in all production, design, and management stages to ensure sustainable practices. It is also committed to uphold the 10 principles of the compact, which involve the protection of human rights and the environment, fair labor practices, and the prevention of corruption.

When companies like Eczaciba艧i take steps to become more efficient and sustainable, it can only result in a better world for all.

鈥淲e want to make life better day in and day out. We create products with characteristics that make the final consumer product really special,鈥� said Thomas Meinel, senior vice president and head of Indirect Procurement at Evonik Industries. 鈥淲e鈥檙e farming salmons with a more sustainable feeding alternative for the climate and our environment. We supported the development and production of the first mRNA vaccines against COVID-19 by supplying the lipid nanoparticles that transport these gene-based vaccines to the right target site in the human body.鈥�

Digital Is Foundation of Business Resilience

After hearing Meinel speak at the recent in Madrid, Spain, I reached out to Dr. Marko Lange, product manager for 51风流Chemicals, for his thoughts on industry modernization.

In a disrupted world rocked by geopolitical conflicts and resultant soaring prices and shortages, he said that Evonik Industries stands out for its foresight in business modernization, bringing in and other 51风流solutions.

鈥淓RP is a hot topic again in the chemical industry because an ERP platform supports business resiliency across supply chains and operations in turbulent times like these,鈥� said Dr. Lange. 鈥淎 next-generation ERP system provides insights, simulations, and decision support to help you understand disruptive impacts on your business and effectively respond. It is a real companion to operating your business, detailing granular, real-time information about what鈥檚 happening and the consequences.鈥�

Procurement Is Strategic Business Partner

Digitalization has transformed how every department at Evonik Industries operates. At the conference, Meinel shared how procurement was the next step in his company鈥檚 digital journey.

鈥�In a rapidly changing world with new business models, procurement is increasingly part of make or buy decisions to take advantage of greater opportunities,鈥� said Meinel. 鈥淪ourcing managers still need classic procurement skills because they are responsible for a company鈥檚 global strategy. But they also need to work from anywhere, interacting effectively with teams on collaborative platforms with internal colleagues and external suppliers. Cloud-based platforms provide many more scouting possibilities to discover future suppliers.鈥�

Managing the procurement experience in a digitalized word requires different capabilities from people as they assume new responsibilities. Meinel said that sourcing managers at Evonik Industries were strategic relationship managers who continually innovated, not just on elements like pricing, but working as part of a team to negotiate and strengthen supplier relationships.

鈥淒igitalization will change what procurement does and how we do it,鈥� said Meinel. 鈥淲e are buying more digital products along with products that have been digitally enhanced. For example, the pumps we purchase use significantly more digital data, which changes how people work, what skill sets they need, their capabilities, and managerial expectations.鈥�

Connected Procurement Data Boosts Efficiencies

Similar to organizations in many industries that are deeply impacted by mergers and acquisitions, Evonik Industries needed real-time data visibility into contract management for daily activities, as well as accurate auditing.

鈥淓verything we do has to be connected, which is the objective of going digital, to make process efficiencies end-to-end,鈥� said Meinel. 鈥淲ith and , we can transform procurement, integrating data across systems as we create, sign, store, and manage contracts that often travel between departments and locations around the world.鈥�

People Are as Strong as Their Network

Meinel said that digitalization is profoundly changing how the company鈥檚 procurement professionals function on a daily basis. Robotics speed up purchase order creation and artificial intelligence (AI)-fueled algorithms produce forecasts, while people apply human judgment to handle exceptions and contribute to other higher value tasks. Instead of working in isolation, procurement teams are analyzing and using data to build a stronger global network of decision-making. After implementing 51风流Ariba solutions, Meinel said that Evonik Industries gained significant employee productivity efficiencies and met objectives for cash flow savings. Automating tedious, repetitive tasks frees up procurement to stay on top of fast-changing market conditions, including finding new suppliers in case of unexpected disruptions.

鈥淚鈥檓 convinced the future of procurement will be one of constant change,鈥� said Meinel. 鈥淟ifelong learning needs to be part of the culture beyond designated trainings. People don鈥檛 care what system they use. They want efficient processes and to be seamlessly connected. What matters is the user experience. Our digital business core is 51风流S/4HANA, helping us become an agile, intelligent network able to manage constant change.鈥�

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Media representatives, customers, and 51风流employees came together in person when the center opened its doors again in October. Created in 2019, the center had undergone several months of redesign and refurbishment to reflect enhancements to SAP鈥檚 customer experience (CX) strategy for 鈥� a strategy that will now be rolled out incrementally to all of them.

Speaking at the ribbon-cutting ceremony in Walldorf, 51风流CEO Christian Klein talked about SAP鈥檚 place in the world of today: helping customers across the globe find solutions for highly complex business processes. He shared his conviction that 51风流solutions were making a key contribution to tackling the immense challenges humanity currently faced 鈥� not least climate change, high inflation, and energy security issues. Nevertheless, for many, its contribution was intangible and hard to visualize. What 51风流needed, said Klein, was to find ways of showing its software in action.

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Bringing the Benefits of 51风流Solutions to Life

That task falls to Andre Bechtold, who, as head of Value Experience at SAP, is responsible for the 51风流Experience Center Walldorf. In the search for ways to showcase 51风流software, he and his team refined the 51风流Experience Center strategy. 鈥淭he benefits of 51风流solutions are not always obvious to customers,鈥� Bechtold said. The aim of the refined strategy was, quite simply, to bring innovations closer to visitors and to tailor their experience to their specific industry and business needs.

The idea behind the center is to bring the benefits of 51风流solutions to life 鈥� whatever industry or sector a customer operates in. The team at the center prepares personalized presentations to suit each client. What鈥檚 more, instead of using generic storylines to demo certain showcases, content teams now create a tailored storyline for each customer, even paying close attention to details such as the company logo, lighting levels, and the floor layout. Virtual sessions are also available to help customers reduce their carbon footprint.

Customers who visit the center can opt to see an overview of all 51风流solutions 鈥� and even test them live. This is possible because many customers are already connected to 51风流through the partner network. As Bechtold pointed out, 鈥淭his allows them to experience the potential for innovation and the benefits 51风流solutions offer 鈥� in their own value chain.鈥�

The experience lab at the 51风流Experience Center in Walldorf focuses on the retail industry, offering an interactive look at the innovations 51风流is currently working on with its customers and partners to make supply chains more transparent, resilient, and sustainable.

鈥淎lmost no one knows their CO2 footprint today,鈥� said Klein at the reopening, which also attracted a lot of media interest. One of SAP鈥檚 aims, he added, was therefore to work with customers and partners to create the largest global business network of intelligent and sustainable enterprises. This network already comprises several million trading partners and enables transparency along the entire supply chain. It also provides an environment for co-innovation between customers and partners. The 鈥淪.MART鈥� store at the experience lab is just one example of this collaboration.

Experience the Future of Shopping 鈥� Today!

S.MART, the intelligent supermarket of the future, is designed to present a real-life example of an intelligent enterprise 鈥� and to give customers a personalized, end-to-end experience. As they walk along the supermarket aisles, they can watch the latest 51风流and partner solutions in action and see the possible benefits with their own eyes.

The S.MART supermarket is fitted with sensors and cameras that are connected to the 51风流system and 51风流ecosystem. A dashboard records all the data these sensors and cameras capture, analyzes it, and displays it as actionable insight for store managers. They in turn can see at a glance how many customers are currently in the store, which products are running low, and how many items of each product are left on the shelves. They can also see whether products have been placed on the wrong shelf. Armed with that knowledge, the managers can send push messages to store personnel and avoid costly shelf gaps.

Also showcased in S.MART are electronic shelf labels, which enable store managers to update product prices remotely with a single click of the mouse in the back-end system and sensors that monitor the temperature in refrigeration equipment and send alerts when issues arise, which saves energy and money and is also vital for ensuring food safety.

QR codes are used at S.MART to provide customers with more product information. People with allergies and special dietary needs, for example, can enter criteria in a dietary app of their choice. When they scan the QR code for a product, they immediately receive information on whether that item fits their dietary preferences or not. QR codes can also be used to provide details about a product鈥檚 origin or carbon footprint. The aim of services like these is to offer added value and transparency, and thus strengthen customer loyalty.

Cameras allow retailers to (anonymously) analyze customer behavior and even compile age and gender profiles of a store’s clientele. This makes it possible to address specific customer groups, helps with pricing, and provides insight into the best place to position promotional material and products.

In the future, cameras will also help eliminate the need for customers to stand in line at checkout. 51风流is working on the corresponding technology with various partners, including Israel-based tech company Trigo. With retailers now also struggling to recruit staff, smart systems like this could provide a welcome solution. On the issue of whether they can be tricked and will make shoplifting easier, Bechtold seemed unconcerned: 鈥淪hoplifting is a fact of life. The question is, will it increase or decrease in the future? The smart camera systems are really good. We tried everything we could think of to catch them 鈥� and failed. I even tried putting my shopping in someone else鈥檚 bag. But it was still correctly charged to me.鈥�

Photos by Konrad Berger

At the same time, moving to the cloud has become more accessible. Companies can find the based on their existing IT infrastructure as well as data residency requirements. Our customers, for example, can use our 51风流data centers, hyperscalers, or their own data centers to host a cloud enterprise resource planning (ERP) environment.

Operating in a cloud ERP environment is a critical step in an organization’s digital business transformation to become an intelligent, sustainable enterprise. This step is also the springboard to continuous innovation. And this continuous innovation is enabled by the cloud, more specifically by cloud application services.

In a nutshell, cloud application services can be defined as value-added services that simplify the end-to-end management of cloud systems by delivering application operations and innovation adoption.

We designed to support all types of 51风流cloud deployment models with 51风流application management services, 51风流managed data services, 51风流managed security services, and 51风流managed testing services. Each of听these four services help drive continuous improvement and quality assurance for cloud solutions with a focus on business outcomes.

Let鈥檚 take a look at managed testing services as an example.

Innovating without Compromising Business Continuity

Most global businesses have highly complex and integrated landscapes. They want access to the latest technologies to improve operations and engagements with customers. This could include using AI-based chatbots for customer service, adding mobile payment methods, or having the ability to track their carbon footprint across the entire supply chain. But they also have concerns that introducing these new innovations may cause disruption of existing business operations. Thus, maintaining business continuity at a high quality is paramount when introducing innovations.

That鈥檚 where 51风流managed testing services come in. The beauty of the services is that they can improve IT systems and operations in the cloud without compromising business continuity with repeatable and seamless processes for solution adoption, testing, and quality control.

can prevent disruption and help stabilize critical business processes across releases and other test events. Software quality is tested consistently, accurately, and efficiently with automated testing tools and services that use industry-specific test cases. Higher value services, such as data management, release management, advanced monitoring, and innovation adoption, help stabilize application operations. We offer support for all cloud deployment models with a central focus on flexible and simplified service consumption, which is central to the innovation mindset of our organization.

In brief, the services can provide the quality assurance and stable foundation that companies need to confidently drive innovation with integration and upgrades to the latest technologies. Having that peace of mind is critical to developing a cloud-first mindset across the entire organization for continuous innovation.

Peter Pluim is president of 51风流Enterprise Cloud Services and 51风流Sovereign Cloud Delivery & Operations at SAP.

鈥淭his new generation of workers, whose entire lives are on their mobile devices, have completely different expectations from the employees who are walking out the door with 35 years of experience,鈥� said Mike Lackey, global vice president of Solution Management for Digital Manufacturing at SAP. 鈥淢anufacturers must attract new workers by bringing data to the point of work with intelligent mobile experiences and intuitive machine interfaces. This improves workplace safety and the worker experience, as it creates greater business efficiencies.鈥�

Connected Data Helps Meet Production Schedules

Unlike historical shop floor responsibilities, workers in Industry 4.0 factories won鈥檛 be limited to rote tasks on a single machine. They鈥檒l be cross trained to manage multiple machines, using instantaneous and integrated information from their mobile device. They鈥檒l collaborate much more across teams and departments.

鈥淚ndustry 4.0 delivers what鈥檚 called 鈥榳orker guidance,鈥� bringing information directly to the individual on the shop floor for faster and more efficient decisions,鈥� said Lackey. 鈥淢anufacturing is all about throughput, quality, and managing costs. With the right information, the operator can make sure that the equipment and the processes are running optimally, reducing machine downtime, rework, and scrap. This is the purpose of , which brings business and operational data together for informed company-wide decisions while delivering process enforcement, complete traceability, and a record of the product genealogy.鈥�

analysts predicted that in response to the reality of digital disruption, 60% of businesses will embrace a decision-making model that combines the power of artificial intelligence (AI) and human judgment for more informed decision-making by next year. Connected data between the shop floor and other parts of the business, including sales, supply chain, and finance, also has company-wide implications in meeting customer commitments.

鈥淵ou can鈥檛 promise an order if you don鈥檛 have the parts to make or finish the product,鈥� said Lackey. 鈥淪imilarly, in an automated line, you might have 200 pieces of equipment from 24 different vendors. If there鈥檚 a quality issue with a material or machine malfunction, integrated data with embedded machine learning can alert shop floor workers to correctly adjust equipment to the specified parameters, minimizing production slowdowns and keeping quality high. Connected data helps workers understand the impact of their decisions on the business while increasing their ability to make a valuable contribution in a more motivated and engaged way.鈥�

Digital Improves Workplace Safety

Technology can make the workplace safer for employees, which is equally important for the worker experience and company compliance. While automation can increase the number of potential hazards, it can also keep people safe. Sensors can alert people when they鈥檙e entering a potentially dangerous area or in the moment if they get too close to a piece of equipment, preventing accidents.

Upskilled Workers Lead to Greater Employer Loyalty

Lackey expected manufacturers to invest more in training and development to reskill and upskill workers as Industry 4.0 transformation continues. A recent survey reflected that trend: researchers found that 84% of manufacturing professionals were upgrading their learning and development programs. It鈥檚 an ideal way to expand the pool of qualified employees who can make a valuable contribution to company growth. It鈥檚 also an opportunity for workers to gain skills in some of the coolest innovations.

鈥淔actories are a hotbed of innovation, offering workers a potentially faster, more cost-effective route to a satisfying career, one that might not otherwise be in reach, given the rising costs of higher education,鈥� said Lackey.

Done right, Industry 4.0 is poised to rejuvenate the manufacturing sector with a refreshing blast of innovation. Trained workers can point the camera on their digital device at a piece of equipment with embedded machine learning and make immediate adjustments using virtual 3D visualizations right in front of them on the shop floor. They can instantly connect with design engineers to quickly diagnose and fix problems or reach an external supplier to locate the correct replacement part. Manufacturers are hoping this next generation of workers come for the cool factor and stay for the career-building innovations.

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