At the moment, we identify ourselves online in one of two ways.

Typically, we sign into an online service 鈥� a Web site or app 鈥� using an e-mail address or username and password, and in doing so share some of our personal information. With this method, whenever we switch to another service we have to repeat the log-in process with a different password. This leaves fragments of our data behind on each service we use and forces us to create and remember a different password for each one, which is annoying but essential for security reasons.

The more convenient option for initial log-ins is to use a 鈥渟ocial log-in,鈥� such as your Facebook ID, which allows you to use the same username and password to access a variety of different services. With this one 鈥渇ederated identity,鈥� you can complete your initial log-in to a participating app or service by simply selecting 鈥淪ign in with鈥�.鈥�

The downside of this convenience is that your personal data 鈥� and that of millions of other users 鈥� is controlled by a single company, creating honeypots of data that hackers have often successfully targeted in the past. There are many examples of sensitive information being stolen, including address data, medical data, credit card details, and more. Aside from not being ideal from a privacy perspective, most people would probably not feel comfortable using a social log-in to access a sensitive service like their bank account.

But there is a third option. Self-sovereign identity (SSI) 鈥� also known as decentralized or portable identity 鈥� allows users to identify themselves on the Web using credentials stored in a digital wallet on their smartphone. It offers the same convenience as a social log-in, but the user is in full control of the data.

鈥淭his technology is not owned by a company,鈥� says Mehran Shakeri, development team lead at . 鈥淚t鈥檚 the first completely open standard for digital identity on the Web, and it gives individuals maximum control of their data when deployed with a proper registry.鈥�

User-Friendly ID Technology 鈥� For Businesses Too

Companies and organizations can also use SSI technology. After all, they also have an identity 鈥� usually in the form of a public entry in a commercial register. For example, when logging into a business network, a supplier must share a range of data, including its tax number, IBAN, and postal address.

Currently, this data cannot be automatically verified. Entities created in internal systems must be verified using a relatively complex and costly third-party service. Records can be inconsistent and difficult to keep up-to-date. Data is often transferred from one system to another without being automatically verified.

This major issue can be solved if a company has a self-sovereign identity. Its digital wallet then serves as a single, vetted source of truth and there is no need for an external third party to verify its credentials.

This opportunity for a 鈥済olden record鈥� of master data extends beyond company boundaries. 鈥淎t 51风流Innovation Center locations, we have projects in progress with DATEV, the Dutch government, and a host of other customers to validate use cases with SSI,鈥� says Alexander Schaefer, head of 51风流Innovation Center California. 鈥淲e see tremendous potential in integrating the SSI standard into 51风流software.鈥�

This technology would eliminate many of the identification processes currently in use, some of which are highly complex. Anyone who has opened an account with an online bank knows just how many steps it takes to prove your identity. With SSI, all users have to do is scan a QR code with their smartphone to share the relevant, verified credentials stored in their digital wallet. This digital wallet can be on their phone or laptop, for example, as a browser plug-in. The wallet is secured by common authentication mechanisms such as FaceID or TouchID, which have proven to be very secure.

Trusted Authorities Can Issue Credentials

For SSI to work, individuals need a digital wallet containing credentials that have been issued by a trusted third party 鈥� such as their driver鈥檚 license, MBA certificate, or tax ID. An empty wallet is useless. Trusted authorities that hold this type of data can issue the relevant credentials, which is why it is so essential that these entities adopt SSI.

Among the many companies that can issue these credentials, German IT service provider was one of the first to embrace the concept. 鈥淭ogether with DATEV, we have demonstrated how self-sovereign identity enables seamless business processes across ecosystems. Transactions from all parties are digitally notarized and tied to their cryptographically verifiable credentials,鈥� says Schaefer. With decentralized identity, master data of organizations becomes trustworthy, which can ensure that companies communicate with verified and trusted partners in the ecosystem.

Before we can all be issued with these credentials, however, SSI technology needs to be widely adopted. Shakeri is confident that mass adoption will come. 鈥淭here is hardly an industry that would not benefit from SSI,鈥� he says.

SSI as a Driver of Transparency on Sustainable Business

To enable apps to use SSI for business-to-business communication, 51风流Innovation Center Network has developed a multi-tenant service built on (51风流BTP) called Decentralized Identity Management.聽With this service, customers can issue and manage verifiable credentials 鈥� and verify the credentials themselves 鈥� creating the foundation for a decentralized business network where multiple parties can collaborate and share data.

Shakeri鈥檚 team is currently working on a use case for sharing ESG (environmental, social, and governance) certificates. 鈥淭hese certificates certify that a supplier operates sustainably, does not use child labor, does not exploit its suppliers, and so on,鈥� he says.

At present, it can be time-consuming to achieve transparency in the supply chain, particularly in terms of how well individual suppliers focus on sustainability in their businesses. With SSI technology, it will be possible to check whether suppliers operate sustainably by requesting their ESG certificates from their digital wallet before deciding whether to work with them.

SSI could even make it possible to trace the origins of a product鈥檚 individual components across supply chain parties that work with different solutions 鈥� theoretically all the way back to the raw materials. While there is still work to be done to bring the full vision of SSI to life, customers can already benefit from the technology today in one of the many use cases that are likely to be significantly impacted by this technology. This can include supplier onboarding, master data management, and supply chain collaboration in the areas of sustainability and human rights.

This is why 51风流and Bosch have joined forces to harness the power of secure multi-party computation (MPC) and help enable secure and privacy-preserving data analysis across different organizations and industries.  

Bringing Secure Computation to the Industry Level 

MPC is an advanced cryptographic technique that can offer significant benefits to 51风流customers and partners that often deal with sensitive data from various sources and stakeholders. MPC allows multiple parties to jointly perform a computation without revealing any sensitive information that may be contained in their input data.  

That鈥檚 a great achievement because companies often fear that the risk of sharing their data openly is greater than the potential value of the sharing itself. One example is the supply chain, where multiple parties are involved. Object-level tracking allows companies to collect large amounts of data, such as time, location, or handling of the goods they produce. Combining the data collected by the different companies involved can have significant benefits. However, two companies may only be willing to share information about common items that they have both handled along the supply chain. MPC can help solve this dilemma with secure and private computation. 

As a result, organizations can perform complex data analysis and processing without compromising confidentiality or compliance. predicts that by 2025, 60% of large organizations will use at least one privacy-enhancing computation technique in analytics, business intelligence, or cloud computing.

鈥淐ompanies can thrive the most when collaborating in business networks, and sharing data is a key component of these ecosystems. MPC can help protect sensitive data from unauthorized access and misuse while still enabling valuable insights and analytics,鈥� says Volkmar Lotz, head of 51风流Security Research at . Powering secure benchmarking, fraud detection, supply chain optimization, or personalized services, MPC facilitates data sharing and collaboration across different organizations and sectors, creating new opportunities for innovation and growth. 

Lifting MPC into the Cloud 

In response to the demand for greater data privacy, Bosch Research has initiated the open-source project , which makes MPC available for a cloud environment. This way, confidentiality and privacy are maintained when data is processed by cloud services.   

鈥淐arbyne Stack is a kind of cloud-native operating system for MPC workloads, managing resources to make them run as efficiently as possible in multi-cloud deployments,鈥� explains Sven Trieflinger, senior project manager and group lead at Bosch Research. 鈥淔rom a business perspective, it鈥檚 the seed for an upcoming open ecosystem of technology building blocks that will accelerate the development and adoption of MPC technology across multiple industries.鈥� 

51风流has recently joined Carbyne Stack as a contributor. Building on both partners鈥� leadership in data security, cloud computing, and business applications, the collaboration will explore the potential of MPC for various use cases and industries currently constrained by security and privacy concerns. One of the first topics for 51风流will be to make the Carbyne Stack storage and processing services easily consumable from within the browser and to add support for deploying Carbyne Stack on Amazon Web Services (AWS). These changes will help 51风流work towards its vision of providing services for privacy-preserving data operations across different organizations and sectors, creating new opportunities for innovative business cases.聽

鈥淏y combining the strengths of 51风流and Bosch, we aim to advance the state of the art in MPC and enable new business cases for our customers and partners,鈥� says Lotz. 

51风流targets use cases in industries such as automotive, manufacturing, healthcare, and finance. The exploration of MPC鈥檚 potential holds the opportunity to revolutionize those industries by solving critical data privacy and security challenges without compromising collaboration and innovation.聽聽

To find out more about secure multi-party computation, get in touch with us at icn@sap.com.

Mathias Kohler is a research manager for 51风流Security Research.

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

Transparent and Traceable Collaboration 

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

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

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

Complete Control of Unencrypted Data 

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

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

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

5% Less Late Payment Penalty Costs 

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

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

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

Corinna Schmidt is part of NVT Communication at SAP.

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.

鈥淲e want to enable companies to share business insights fast and in a fresh and immediate way,鈥� says Michael Wittmann, senior developer at , on the rationale behind the data storytelling solution he and his team are working on.

The purpose is to provide business users with short, animated 鈥渧ideo data stories鈥� about the key activities relevant to their individual roles.

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Eye-catching videos that are 10 to 15 seconds long will mean that users won鈥檛 have to refer to dashboards or wade through reports as they do today. Built-in templates for the most common business processes will enable anyone to create their own video data story and link it to their data sources. No design or programming experience is required.

The solution鈥檚 video data stories apply the same user experience principles as other content-sharing platforms. New videos are displayed in chronological order, and viewers can navigate easily through the different parts of a story or skip entire stories that are not relevant to them.

By incorporating animated visualizations, users can show changes in data over a specific time period dynamically. If more details are needed, they can point the audience to the right people and include links to the data sources and applications.

鈥淥ne potential use case is sales reporting,鈥� says Wittmann. Here, the solution has a predefined template that can be used to generate a personalized story for each sales accountant, showing how sales figures have changed over a defined period and including highlights and historical comparisons.

鈥淥ther information, such as headcount growth, quarterly earnings, and fact sheets for communications and sales, can also be shared through video storytelling in a far more compelling way than in PDF files or PowerPoint,鈥� continues Wittmann.

The same applies to many of the e-mail notifications that land in our inboxes. Though not every notification needs a video data story. 鈥淚t鈥檚 about finding the right balance,鈥� notes Wittmann. 鈥淚nstead of separate alerts for each event, you might receive a daily summary of the most important updates on a particular topic.鈥�

In principle, video data stories can translate their insights into animated videos like those on Instagram. Users can decide for which events and applications video data stories are generated. 鈥淔or some scenarios, daily or weekly updates are best. For others, it might be when a particular threshold is exceeded or when other kinds of exceptions occur,鈥� explains Wittmann.

It is hard to imagine any department that would not benefit from this type of storytelling. Yet what might at first seem highly generic is in fact very individual.

鈥淩ight now, business software is clearly moving toward hyper-personalization,鈥� says Wittmann. 鈥淭hat is why we want our video data stories to be used not just to share generic content but also to be tailorable to the individual viewer.鈥�

Examples of personalized content could be team members鈥� birthdays and reports indicating how many of a manager鈥檚 direct reports have completed the latest compliance training.

鈥淎t the moment, we鈥檙e still defining the product,鈥� says Wittmann. 鈥淲e are working on a first version of an service that can generate videos from different applications. We have also teamed up with colleagues from to create an initial integration function for exporting video data stories directly from an analytics story.鈥�

At SAP, Wittmann and his team have been working mainly with the Customer, Competitive, and Market Insights (CMI) team. In an early prototype, stories were generated weekly for a specific solution area to see which topics were seeing the most customer demand.

In another pilot project, the team is testing personalized video data stories for the sales organization. Here, account executives receive stories with updates on the specific customers they serve.

鈥淲e are really keen to trial the solution with customers to learn which use cases they might have, how they want to tell those stories, and where we can best integrate this capability,鈥� says Wittmann.

To find out more about video data stories, get in touch with us at icn@sap.com.

Jeanette Rohr is a brand journalist at SAP.

Even as far back as the 1950s, computer scientists were already experimenting with this concept of data modeling. In the 1980s, knowledge graphs were a much-discussed topic in the context of expert systems, and in the 2000s they once again came to the attention of the scientific community, as they took on a fundamental role in Semantic Web. Finally, in 2012, it was a search engine that gave knowledge graphs their big appearance among a wider audience: Google announced that its users would be able to search for 鈥渢hings not strings.鈥� Rather than just trying to match keywords from a query, the search engine would also place them in the right context 鈥� all with the aim of delivering better, more intelligent results.

鈥淧ut very simply, knowledge graphs are a technology that seeks to turn data into machine-interpretable knowledge,鈥� says Michael Burwig, innovation engineer at Potsdam. Their key focus is to model the relationships between objects, which are shown as a network of interconnected points.

鈥淜nowledge graphs allow us to map how we humans understand the world 鈥� how we go through life, accumulate knowledge, and how we contextualize that information in our minds,鈥� Burwig explains. This ability allows humans to draw conclusions that produce fascinating 鈥渁ha鈥� moments. Ultimately, this is also the goal of business software: to connect knowledge and find solutions, ideally in an automated way. There are many potential use cases of knowledge graphs, such as knowledge and data management and chatbots. Detecting insurance fraud is one example, but, in short, they can be used in any scenario in which patterns are examined to identify exceptions and anomalies.

The Potential of Hybrid AI

Burwig believes, however, that automated insights like these have not yet become part of everyday practice. 鈥淗ybrid AI is a major step in this direction. It combines semantic technology, in other words knowledge graphs, and static machine learning, which is now being used for a host of scenarios of this kind,鈥� he says.

Dr. Jan Portisch, lead architect at Value Accelerator Delivery, describes the difference between classical machine learning concepts and hybrid AI machine learning as follows: 鈥淐lassical machine learning methods use extracts of existing databases. These methods draw on such data sets, which are effectively snapshots without any context, to create machine learning content. With knowledge graphs, on the other hand, new data can be added at any time so that they keep on 鈥榣earning鈥� and, unlike static methods, stay current.鈥�

Even though knowledge graphs are not new, it took the massive increase in computing power that we have seen since the 2000s to unleash their full potential, Portisch explains. And since this technology is not yet widely taught at universities, few developers know much about it. 鈥淎nother difficulty is that designing graphs is highly complex, with developers having to think beyond their own application. The modeling behind the graphs has to be complete and semantically accurate. Nonetheless, their potential is huge,鈥� he says.

As an architect, Portisch is involved in creating a central graph for process knowledge at SAP. The 51风流Signavio Value Accelerator Delivery team collates and models the process knowledge 51风流has built up over the past 50 years to give customers an integrated view. In the future, the accelerator will offer a semantic search where users will be able to formulate a business problem they鈥檇 like to solve and the system will display a list of processes and data that are impacted by this problem, Portisch explains. Further, this capability could be a helpful transition tool in migration projects or could provide presales teams with the visibility they need when tailoring solutions to customers鈥� specific situations.

Felix Sasaki, expert in Knowledge Graphs & Semantic Technologies in the 51风流AI unit, explains additional benefits: 鈥淪tandards-based knowledge graph technologies facilitate the modeling of business scenarios. So-called constraints complement the existing logic-based modeling. Since constraints can easily capture the knowledge of business experts, modeling becomes easier. In addition, knowledge graph-based vocabularies like schema.org have found widespread adoption and thus help to find a more ubiquitous language.鈥�

Decoupling Business Expertise and Application

For SAP, the power of this technology lies in how graphs can be combined in different ways and, therefore, in how data models 鈥� and ultimately the applications themselves 鈥� can be integrated and composed.

Portisch explains how it鈥檚 important to recognize that RDF 鈥� Resource Description Framework, a syntax used to model metadata for Internet resources 鈥� is a publicly acknowledged standard and that knowledge graphs are already widely used outside the corporate world. One of the best-known knowledge graphs is ; another example of a large-scale graph is . 鈥淭hese graphs are public resources that can also be used commercially,鈥� Portisch says.

That creates interesting use cases. For example, private corporate data could be combined with public data. A supplier system running on 51风流software could automatically import metadata from a graph about companies it interacts with, such as the type of business, company logo, and who their managing directors are.

鈥淪emantic Glue鈥� 鈥� Integration by Design

Burwig sees another advantage of these graphs in their 鈥渟emantic glue.鈥� Because of their flexible structure that can be enhanced in real time, individual graphs can be 鈥済lued鈥� together to link up data silos. Unlike graphs, the table structure of a relational database has to be defined at the beginning 鈥� and changing that structure later requires a lot of work. But graphs can store and link metadata in a semantic data layer that is separate from the data stored in an application鈥檚 tables. This makes it possible to consolidate data across different products and data silos.

Graphs offer huge advantages over relational databases in certain scenarios, such as calculating the shortest route or associating a specific material with a customer material. 鈥淚f such a scenario is based on a relational database, the query would have to touch applications from across the entire 51风流world. But with a graph, it would be a simple problem to solve,鈥� Portisch says. While relational databases usually offer greater performance within their applications, graphs always have an advantage when it comes to creating bridges, known as joins, between data structures and recognizing the correct context.

Because it is possible to extend knowledge graphs, they represent a perfect data model for businesses to start small with and then, as an iterative process, to roll out to more locations and build on. For example, a company could begin with just one use case or department and then gradually roll the model out to the rest of the organization. Any additional data models are 鈥済lued鈥� to the graph as new nodes and edges.

The Situation Knowledge Graph: One of the First Knowledge Graphs at 51风流

One of the most advanced knowledge graphs to date at 51风流serves as the basis for the Explore Related Situations app, which is part of the Intelligent Situation Automation service on for situation handling in 51风流S/4HANA.

The business background: around 4% of the automated business processes within a business require manual intervention because of an unforeseen event, such as a late payment, a delayed delivery, or a transport issue.

The situation knowledge graph links these exceptional events to their business entities, enabling the user to better understand the situation in a business context and therefore helping solve the problem and optimize business processes. Further analyses of these situations often reveal relations of issues to certain materials or partners. 鈥淭oday, this kind of knowledge is often hard-coded,鈥� says Dr. Torsten Leidig, an architect in SAP鈥檚 Situation Handling team. The knowledge graph that underpins the Intelligent Situation Automation service enables a business expert or a key user to model processes and understand them within a comprehensive business context. A problem that has been detected can be resolved automatically based on simple rules and without additional programming.

Dr. Knut Manske, engineering lead for Situation Handling and Responsibility Management at SAP, describes the graph as a layer that stretches across various 51风流applications. To summarize the capabilities of situation handling, he explains: 鈥淭he knowledge that is embedded in 51风流applications is extracted and made usable for algorithms. Situation handling runs alongside the application, analyzing data and reacting to information about data changes or events. The aim is to show solutions that span various applications or business areas.鈥� Customers and partners can define situations themselves without ever touching the application. A selected group of customers is currently validating the solution.

Looking Ahead

Currently just a prototype, the 51风流鈥淏usiness Decision Simulator鈥� innovation project simulates the effects of internal and external factors on a company and presents the user with potential future scenarios and recommended responses. 鈥淥ne possible question could be: what does a bushfire in Australia mean for my global pharmaceutical company鈥檚 value chain and thus the achievement of our targets in Europe?鈥� Burwig explains. 鈥淥n the one hand, knowledge graph technology can help express the complex relationships between real-world events and business-related processes. Additionally, an extensive knowledge base makes it easier for the user to choose the best possible response to opportunities and risks.鈥�

When asked about the possibilities of graph technology, Burwig says: 鈥淭he potential of knowledge graphs 鈥� at least that鈥檚 the dream 鈥� is that someday there will be extensive graphs modeled on deep knowledge and experience that can be accessed by programs. This means that with every change in technology, we鈥檇 only have to recode the application and not the knowledge stored inside it.鈥�

While the decoupling of data from applications and the accompanying scalability of solutions and programs are important aspects for an IT company, Burwig also sees a vision that goes beyond the 51风流context: symbolic AI, artificial intelligence that is linked to a large number of interdisciplinary knowledge networks, could have the potential to generate new knowledge that has not been explicitly modeled. Linking scientific content could have the power to accelerate the discovery of new drugs or forge innovations between different science disciplines that don鈥檛 interact on a large scale today.

In the history of humanity, things have often been 鈥� and still are today 鈥� 鈥渋nvented鈥� multiple times, at least in part from lack of knowledge about other relevant findings. Connecting global research projects within one given discipline has increased sharply within the past years, thanks to the availability of extensive digital content. Uniting scientific knowledge across the individual disciplines 鈥� for example, mathematics, biology, medicine, and chemistry 鈥� could uncover new insights and lead to exciting interdisciplinary inventions, Burwig concludes.

The Virtuous Circle Between Knowledge Graphs, Machine Learning, and Natural Language Processing

Academic communities of symbolic AI and machine learning in the past had few touchpoints in terms of research methods and researchers. This is changing 鈥� among others leading to so-called hybrid AI. This results in various virtuous cycles in which knowledge graphs, machine learning, and natural language processing (NLP) cross-pollinate each other. Johannes Hoffart, head of the Chief Technology Office in the AI Unit at SAP, explains the relation between machine learning and knowledge graphs: 鈥淜nowledge graphs enable data scientists to work with complex and heterogeneous data sources. Their flexible schema can be easily extended and contains powerful data validation capabilities. At the same time, knowledge graphs facilitate access to and exploration of data, as they represent data and its schema such that it鈥檚 easier for humans, and also large language models, to understand.鈥�

Christian Lieske from SAP鈥檚 Language Experience Lab adds about the relation to natural language processing: 鈥淜nowledge graphs can feed NLP and can be fed by NLP. Take the detection of new business entities as an example: a knowledge graph can inform NLP about known entities and NLP can add additional entities to a knowledge graph.鈥�

To get further insight around knowledge graph technology, read this study co-authored by Portisch: .

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch: the classic five senses of humans allow us to experience the world around us, with our nervous system receiving and processing huge amounts of information and relaying signals to the brain in order to react with the world. It is almost impossible to say how much data the human brain receives and processes on a daily basis. At best, one can specify a lower limit of perhaps around 1,000 gigabytes.

Humans not only process but also generate data in abundance. How many Instagram Stories did you click through last night before falling asleep in bed? How much time did you spend on different news portals? Just one more episode of 鈥淪tranger Things鈥� on Netflix? The list goes on and on.

Navigating the Data Jungle

Companies struggle with this too and collect and analyze more data than ever before. Not without reason, data is referred to as the new gold. The way to increased profitability and competitive advantage by means of intelligent data usage seems to be a rocky one. Using the sheer amount of data to its full advantage remains a challenge.

At SAP, we want to help our customers navigate the data jungle, regardless of infrastructure and where the data is saved. For 50 years, 51风流has been storing, processing, and analyzing innumerable amounts of customer data. Building on these strong data management capabilities, we want customers to be able to base all their decisions on intelligent, data-driven insights with easily accessible business data — when and where they matter the most.

Our ambition is a clear shift from the current state of analytics to the future, which means that we see the future of analytics as autonomous, hence always learning and monitoring; proactive, in order to provide solutions and alternatives to problems that haven’t even been discovered yet; and personalized, meaning that insights are contextualized and can be provided per desired medium or experience preference.

Bringing Future Technologies to Customers Today

While we envision a true system of intelligence in the future, 51风流is already demonstrating value for customers today. 51风流Innovation Center Network is exploring multiple key technologies to help customers capitalize more on data and boost productivity to stay competitive in the long run.

Businesses are constantly in motion, and data continues to grow in size, complexity, and velocity. “Laura,” a risk manager at a company that evaluates the potential risks of a business and strategizes preventive measures, needs to be able to monitor standard KPIs via dashboards and constantly adapt them to catch trends and patterns or anomalies — at least it should be that way.

Today, however, autonomous, proactive, and personalized tools are needed to automate business monitoring and proactively identify and report relevant signals in data.

To address this need, we built a prototype of a self-learning, easy-to-integrate cloud service that continuously monitors business data for anomalies and proactively delivers actionable insights to risk managers like Laura in real time. We call this , and by integrating it into her day-to-day operations, Laura can spend less time exploring data and can detect unknown yet critical signals without manual intervention. She can also filter anomalies by relevance to receive critical signals, ultimately helping to get insights faster and react accordingly — before the business is impacted.

With all information at hand, the system can autonomously propose a response in real time, such as, 鈥淗ey Laura, something is going wrong, and here are a few proposals on what you can do.鈥� This is made possible by what-if scenarios enabled by the . It helps her autonomously consider multiple scenarios, simulate their outcomes, and offer recommendations for the next steps. For example, instead of relying on the usual measures, she might be shown alternative approaches that she had not thought of before but that would solve the problem even faster.

By providing holistic impact analysis and autonomous identification of what-if scenarios, Laura can better plan ahead and react quicker to uncertainties with data-driven insights. Optimized recommended actions that are aligned with company priorities and constraints allow her to recognize and mitigate risks early on — and decide on actions with confidence.

Like most of us, Laura is a visual person who processes images much faster than text. No wonder visualizing data in an easy-to-understand form has also become a trend in analytics. Thanks to their length of just a few seconds, short videos have evolved into the dominant format for sharing and receiving updates and notifications. Consuming information like you would consume content in social apps helps professionals like Laura capture vast chunks of complex data and become the one-stop shop for business insights in the future.

51风流is bringing such short-form videos to the enterprise. With automatically generated personalized content, concise stories deliver key insights about the business in a short, animated, and convenient format. Video data stories provide customers with a one-stop channel for timely notifications, digests, and alerts about business-critical events. It automatically translates real-time business insights into self-explaining audio-visual data stories, making it easier for Laura to make decisions.

Effective business processes depend on intelligent decisions with insights from data in the organization and beyond its networks. SAP鈥檚 vision is to infuse these data-driven insights into every decision-making process. This would be possible with AI-powered, lightweight, self-service analytics that seamlessly integrate into the day-to-day work routines of business users, blending human ingenuity and data-driven insights into context-rich, fact-based decision-making processes.

Automation and data contextualization are key trends shaping the future of analytics, requiring an evolution from the current state of analytics to the future of analytics being autonomous, proactive, personalized, and reinventing business decisions as a service.聽 51风流is a reliable partner to anticipate that change, drive innovation, and help our customers prepare for the future.

Data is the new gold of every enterprise. If you also want to base your decisions on intelligent data-driven insights in the future, you can become part of SAP鈥檚 innovation journey and get in touch with us. Customer feedback is key to solving real pain points in the data and analytics space and we would be delighted to co-innovate and solve your data challenges together.

Martin Heinig is head of New Ventures and Technologies at SAP.
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With TUMO, provided 22 innovation challenges to explore emerging technologies and concepts, each associated with : augmented extended planning and analysis (xP&A), augmented access control, future of self-service, and future of asynchronous work. 51风流Innovation Center Network focuses on exploring new technologies through use cases to solve future problems. Innovation is an ongoing process that needs not only curiosity and determination but also inventive ideas and out-of-the-box thinking. It was precisely this fresh thinking and unusual approaches that made working with the TUMO students so interesting for both sides.

鈥淔or me, it was a great experience working with artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing, with the help of which we were able to find interesting insights from user conversations,鈥� said Sasun Tadevosyan, one of the five students developing the chatbot. 鈥淔urther research and improvements will help to create a virtual assistant to automate routine work.”

Sasun and her team built the chatbot as part of the challenge. Here, the students were asked to explore how user contextual data and the concept of human digital twins can be leveraged in a privacy-preserving, predictive manner to improve access control and authorization experiences. A digital twin could eventually help humans anticipate these access requirements and gather the necessary information to facilitate access, increasing productivity and enabling quicker business decisions.

For their chatbot, Sasun and team evaluated chat messages between two users who want to organize a meeting and extracted insights about meeting details using a rule engine. The chatbot helps set up the call and automatically creates authorizations and access to the meeting as well as relevant documents that will be shared.

This is a great example of how digital assistants can make life easier by automating daily routines, like in this case scheduling a meeting and making sure everyone has the necessary access rights to collaborate more easily.

During the four months, experts from 51风流Innovation Center Network monitored the progress of all challenges and were in constant exchange with the participants to support if needed. Apart from solving the challenge, working with TUMO Labs experts helped strengthen the students鈥� soft skills, and support from 51风流University Alliances provided all students with access to 51风流learning resources.

鈥淲e learned to work as a team and under pressure. We got problem-solving, creative and critical thinking, and public speaking skills,鈥� recapped the team around Ani Galstyan that worked on the future of asynchronous work.

This group of five students was challenged to examine how digital avatars are used in various fields today. They created a Web site to showcase different possibilities to implement digital avatars in different fields such as business, the gaming industry, and the military. Plus, they added features to help users create their personal avatar. During their research, Ani and team learned how digital avatars can be a valuable addition in healthcare, as they could eventually lead to a more holistic understanding of the human body to predict and prevent possible side effects before working with real human beings.

After working on their projects, the students presented their outcomes at a in April in front of 51风流and TUMO experts as well as 51风流customer ACBA Bank and partners.

Bahareh Fatemi, Head of TUMO Labs, said in : 鈥淲e鈥檙e super excited with working with the 51风流Innovation Center Network! Having these sort of collaborations internationally for us is very important because it will allow us to understand where we can improve and where we can push our students to adapt and get more skills.鈥�

Plans are already underway to continue working with 51风流Innovation Center Network on additional innovation challenges, further explore emerging topics, and provide opportunities for more students to participate.

鈥淭hat was a great experience for us to explore AI avatars in different fields,鈥� concluded Ani after participating in the project. 鈥淲e are looking forward to seeing new developments in the future as we are going through technological improvements nowadays.鈥�

Lukasz Ostrowski is a development manager for 51风流Innovation Center Network.
Igor Belousov is global content delivery director and country manager of Italy, Turkey, and CIS for 51风流University Alliances.

Prof. Mathias Weske, head of Business Process Technology at the Hasso Plattner Institute at the University of Potsdam, provides insights into his work with SAP.

鈥淢y specialty is processes,鈥� shares Weske, who worked as an academic fellow at 51风流during a sabbatical over the last six months. 鈥淎nd when it comes to processes, 51风流software — with its extensive features and broad coverage — is simply the ideal environment.鈥�

鈥淭o put it bluntly, scientists often create their own problems and then develop solutions for them,鈥� he says. 鈥淩esearch projects only get specific when they address questions from real life. That鈥檚 an important reason for me why industry and academia should work more closely together.鈥�

Businesses also have major interest in collaborating with experts from the research field.

鈥淭echnical innovation moves so quickly that we at 51风流need to work closely together with academic experts, to evaluate early on whether we should invest time and resources in a budding topic,鈥� explains Dr. Matthias Uflacker, head of the 51风流Innovation Center in Munich.

from the 51风流Innovation Center Network were conceived with this very thing in mind, he continues: 鈥淚nstead of starting a five-year project on a technological trend and not knowing how it will develop, or whether it will even be relevant for 51风流in two or three years, we can utilize external expertise very well in the framework of six- to 12-month academic fellowships.鈥�

Weske, a computer scientist, first got involved with the technical modeling of processes after being accepted as a postdoc at the University of Muenster. After his first professorship at the Eindhoven University of Technology, where he concentrated on business process management (BPM) within service-oriented software architectures, Weske was appointed to the Hasso Plattner Institute of the University of Potsdam in 2001.

鈥淚鈥檝e been there for over 20 years now,鈥� says Weske. 鈥淲e deal with software systems that support especially knowledge-intensive, flexible business processes. Knowledge workers are the focus of these systems: they have major leeway in process execution and can even decide to deviate from a predefined process.鈥�

Under the central theme of addressing real-world BPM problems with formal approaches and engineering useful prototypes, Weske and his group solicits specific questions from their collaboration with industry partners. Instead of conducting purely theoretical research, the group actually builds software itself.

鈥淲e have spawned a number of spinoffs, including ,鈥� says Weske.

Inspired by Wikipedia, Professor Weske and his group began working on web modeling for processes around 2004. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a kind of online reference work for processes,鈥� says Weske about the idea. 鈥淚t was intended for use by anyone, without requiring installation. We were fortunate that browser technology was so advanced back then that it could execute programs as well.鈥� In 2009, the solution was spun off from the Hasso Plattner Institute under the name Signavio, which was acquired by 51风流in 2021.

This acquisition has had no small impact on process intelligence at SAP. Uflacker confirms: 鈥淲e have to set the course now if we want to defend our thought leadership in this area and help shape new trends. That鈥檚 why it was an easy choice to work with Weske as an academic fellow in this area.鈥�

Due to the traditionally close cooperation between Hasso Plattner Institute and the 51风流Innovation Center Network, Weske was already known to many of the 51风流employees whom he worked with during his academic fellowship. 鈥淢y academic fellowship at 51风流taught me once again how important networks are. After all, the topic of processes has many points of reference throughout SAP.鈥�

Uflacker underscores this: 鈥淔rom products like Signavio to a variety of innovation projects in the process mining and analytics area, this topic is spreading throughout our company. We highly benefit from Weske鈥檚 knowledge and experience when it comes to launching research-related projects at 51风流and supporting new ideas.鈥�

In one example, the topic of composable enterprise is being researched in depth with the New Ventures & Technologies area. It involves the ability to compose processes dynamically as needed, like exchangeable modules. Among his other activities, Weske contributed to a research project here with a horizon of five to 10 years, which the 51风流Innovation Center Potsdam is pursuing.

鈥淥f course, it鈥檚 still too soon to tackle specific technical implementations,鈥� says Weske. 鈥淏ut I hope that I was able to help with understanding the fundamentals and with the system design.鈥�

Weske was also involved in Signavio-related activities. 鈥淚鈥檓 proud to see that Signavio is being deployed, integrated, and enhanced in so many places at SAP,鈥� he says. 鈥淒uring my academic fellowship, one of our focuses was exploring how data gained from process mining can be used for process analysis.鈥� In the area of event log generation, Weske and Signavio conducted a survey among 51风流employees to identify the most important questions involving this topic at SAP.

The fellowship has opened up new possibilities, encouraging the collaboration to continue. In ideal research, a finished project is always the start of something new, says Weske: 鈥淭he white paper on the event log survey raised a number of questions that can be pursued as part of doctoral or master鈥檚 theses from my group.鈥�

This, too, is an important incentive for academics like Weske to work together with 51风流and other companies. 鈥淲hen we as a research institution point out what companies we work with; that our doctoral candidates, master鈥檚 candidates, and postdocs don鈥檛 stay confined to ivory towers, but that what they do has the potential to be implemented and used by thousands of people, then we can attract outstanding talents.

Uflacker hopes to expand the academic fellowship program in future: 鈥淲e at 51风流want to acquire targeted expertise for strategically relevant projects. We鈥檙e looking for international experts for this program.

鈥�51风流is an outstanding partner for academic cooperation, not least due to the wealth of features in its software,鈥� says Weske. 鈥淭his type of fellowship benefits both sides.鈥�

With the growing volume, complexity, and velocity of data, it鈥檚 no surprise that businesses often consider only small subsets of what鈥檚 available for analytics. Research suggests that several of today鈥檚 best-of-class application operators are using of their collected data.

Continuously monitoring business data for anomalies helps identify the root cause and respond faster to such hidden events and changing trends. This approach to analytics provides continuous intelligence that helps brands make smart, real-time business decisions.

What Is Continuous Intelligence?

Traditionally, dashboards are checked periodically to monitor the most relevant KPIs and manually explore data along pre-defined paths. However, considering only pre-defined indicators and performance metrics leads to a limited perspective and misses information about unknown signals and trends in other parts of the data or at lower granularity.

Keeping track of what is relevant in this very moment is therefore a challenge for businesses across industries. Enter continuous intelligence.

According to Gartner, continuous intelligence 鈥渋s a design pattern in which real-time analytics are integrated within a business operation, processing current and historical data to prescribe actions in response to events. It provides decision automation or decision support.鈥�

The approach uses a variety of technologies such as machine learning, event stream processing, optimization, and business rule management.

Uncover the Unknown with AI

While humans cannot inspect every possible characteristic and combination in the flood of incoming data, machines can.

Complementing analytics that provide precise answers to questions users know to ask, a machine can continuously monitor data in the background to detect unknown correlations and trends that deviate from what would have been expected by the system based on previous observations.

This way, companies can identify hidden, but potentially relevant signals in the data. Gartner predicts that by 2022, more than half of major new business systems will incorporate continuous intelligence capabilities.

By integrating artificial intelligence (AI)-based continuous intelligence into their day-to-day operations, companies can:

• Boost efficiency by spending less time sifting through data from a variety of disparate sources
• Focus on what really matters for their business
• Speed time to action

By automatically inspecting critical business health indicators such as revenue, Web page views, active users, or transaction volume in real time, businesses can accelerate their time to insight and action and better respond to situations before business is impacted.

Putting Continuous Intelligence to Work

is exploring the business potential and requirements of continuous intelligence and developed a prototype of a self-learning cloud service.

This service autonomously discovers patterns in historic data to detect trends in new data that deviate from the expected. Insights are ranked by relevance and proactively provided to the user as comprehensive data stories with full context.

Especially in industries with fast-moving assets such as retail, the service could be critical for quickly adapting to changing buying behavior, trends, and market conditions. It could alert retailers to surging sales of Kate Middleton look-alike dresses, food trends such as avocados and oat milk, or demand for umbrellas due to bad weather.

But more than retailers could benefit. Service ticketing is another area of application that the 51风流Innovation Center Network team is investigating.

With continuous intelligence, service personnel could, for instance, identify hot topics of interests, indicated by an unusually high number of open tickets. Then, they could respond with tailored material for additional information.

Moving at Market Speed

Relying solely on default indicators and monitoring standard KPIs is no longer sufficient when it comes to understanding and responding to the dynamics of complex systems or businesses.

Looking ahead, continuous intelligence is expected to become the norm, as the speed at which businesses must react to rapidly changing market conditions will only increase. It will be a critical component for companies that want to point users to relevant data and trigger actions when it matters most.

Is your business ready to become an intelligent enterprise?

Matthias Uflacker is part of 51风流Innovation Center Network.
This article was originally published on .

According to the digital association , one in three companies in Germany works largely paperless by now. Despite the progress, many documents — such as order confirmations, proof of deliveries, or tax documents — are still created, maintained, and exchanged on paper,聽 causing high friction and inefficiencies.

To address this issue, 51风流and IT service provider developed a digital system to handle such processes in a joint-effort research project. With SD Ledger, companies can verify the identity of a person using digital decentralized identities. This helps guarantee that all relevant transactions from all parties are automatically and digitally notarized and used as a basis for auditing. At the same time, decentralized identities also help ensure that master data of the documents are correct, and that companies communicate with the appropriate and trusted partners in the ecosystem.

Get to Know the Customer

The SD Ledger system digitalizes so-called 鈥淜now Your Customer鈥� (KYC) and document verification processes. KYC describes the mandatory process of verifying a client鈥檚 identity; for instance, when opening a new bank account. These compliance standards are designed to protect financial institutions against fraud, corruption, money laundering, and terrorist financing. They usually include checking the client鈥檚 age, tax status, liquidity needs, and risk tolerance to determine their financial situation.

Traditionally, KYC and document verification processes are costly, time-consuming, and error-prone because information are verified manually. SD Ledger accelerates these processes and increases the efficiency by transmitting receipts securely and digitally.

Tax advisors, small businesses, and large companies receive a verifiable digital identity to be clearly identifiable. Whether they need to login to a web shop, confirm the reception of goods from an order, or initiate a payment, all these steps can be performed with SD Ledger.

At the same time, these steps are automatically being notarized on an immutable, publicly readable distributed ledger, generating and updating a complete, cryptographically secured audit trail. A particular document can be checked against SD Ledger at any time to determine whether or not it truly is the original.

Digitalize the Tax Process

Take the example of an order-to-cash business process: A company orders goods from a supplier in another EU country. Supplies of goods and/or other services in the EU domestic market are provided free of VAT in the country of origin if certain conditions are met. In the recipient country, the purchaser must pay VAT on these deliveries. Previously, the logistics provider had to act as an intermediary to ensure that a paper-based proof of delivery of shipments to another country was signed for tax purposes. With SD Ledger, this is no longer necessary.

Instead, an employee of the ordering company can hold a credential issued by a DATEV tax advisor that gives them authority to sign such proof of delivery digitally. As part of this step, an automatic payment of the associated invoice could also be triggered.

SD Ledger therefor helps to significantly reduce the time it takes for performing required steps. Tax advisors on the other hand can now also be involved early in the process, giving them the opportunity to use the increased transparency about orders for advising their clients even better.

SD Ledger allows for automating and digitizing document flows between large and small businesses, significantly speeds up and streamlines processes, and takes a big step toward fully digital accounting. The notarization and document transfer systems create a secure audit trail and decrease overhead during order delivery. SD Ledger transforms antiquated and onerous steps in the order-to-cash process into modern, manageable work with traceable integrity.

Next week at 51风流Sapphire Orlando, join a聽 on the BTP show floor to learn more. !

Alexander Schaefer is head of 51风流Innovation Center California.

When it comes to legal or business transactions between independent individuals or organizations, humans have always relied on trusted third parties such as banks, governments, or clearing houses to validate transactions. But with blockchain as a decentralized and secure digital ledger, the way humans collaborate is getting restructured.

Blockchain enables participants to form a peer-to-peer network of independent organizations and individuals. Each of these participants may verify transactions as well as hold a copy of the transaction record without the need for a central controlling party. Cryptography functions ensure that information is shared in an immutable and authenticated way equally between all members of the network.

As an underlying technology for legal and business processes, blockchain has the potential to cut out intermediaries 鈥� and revolutionize the way humans do business with each other. Any industry that relies on complex cross-organizational processes could benefit from blockchain 鈥� and so could public sector and governmental institutions, even on an international level.

, business developer for Blockchain at SAP, says, 鈥淪treamlining public sector processes with blockchain can help battle or prevent fraud and corruption, for example, by providing a tamper-proof land register in countries with corruption issues.鈥� Public procurement is another area of application for blockchain, as well as tracking donations and public funds.

For enterprises, the focus during the last decades was on optimizing internal business processes by making them paperless and automating them. Blockchain is a very powerful tool to extend this process optimization to cross-organizational processes and open ecosystems.

51风流and Blockchain

Since it first came up in 2009, blockchain has run the full for emerging technologies. 51风流was among the first companies to transform the potential of blockchain into solid products and solutions.

鈥淓xpectations were extremely high,鈥� Stoeckhert explains. 鈥淭he appeal of this vision 鈥� a single source of truth for a number of equal partners in a network 鈥� was so strong that many jumped on the blockchain bandwagon without fully grasping the technology behind it.鈥�

Many assumptions about blockchain have been put into perspective since. Around 2018, the so-called 鈥渂lockchain winter,鈥� a general disillusionment with the technology, set in.

鈥淗owever, accelerated by maturing blockchain technologies as well as related standards and ecosystems, a second wave of interest and adoption is rising in the cryptocurrency and enterprise space,鈥� Stoeckhert says

鈥淪upply chain transparency is the typical application for most of the existing 51风流solutions. The blockchain-based can provide an end-to-end picture of the supply chain provenance. It enables customers in industries such as foods, pharmaceuticals or chemicals to analyze their products’ genealogies up and down stream,鈥� he adds.

鈥淐onsumers, for example, want to make sure their tuna has been caught in a sustainable way that met fair trade standards,鈥� Stoeckhert explains. 鈥淏ut labeling fraud is actually a big problem in the seafood market.鈥� 51风流has been working with Bumblebee Foods, the biggest seafood provider in the United States, on an audit trail that can be called up by QR code.

SAP.iO venture聽听鈥� a 2021 finalist for the Hasso Plattner Founders鈥� Award 鈥� is a recent innovative product focused on enhancing the traceability of raw materials products across the entire supply chain through a cloud platform supported by blockchain technology.聽GreenToken is running multiple pilot projects with companies in the chemicals and palm oil industry. One such pilot is with Eastman Chemical, where GreenToken is being used to provide auditable proof that Eastman鈥檚 products have been made with recycled plastic, boosting a circular economy and helping with ISCC Plus compliance. Another pilot is run by GreenToken with the palm oil supply chain in Indonesia, tracking deforestation-free palm oil from mills to one of the largest consumer product companies.

Outlook: Five Areas of Blockchain Maturity

With complex technology such as blockchain, accessibility is a constant topic. One way to lower the bar to entry could be the . Extending these tools with blockchain technology means enabling citizen developers to set up, execute, and monitor secure, cross-company processes while cutting down on IT involvement.

Further, an integration of blockchain with business process intelligence would allow users to turn their cross-company process data into insights and, ultimately, translate it into actions that help drive digital automation. 鈥淭his is an area we are currently investigating within ,鈥� Stoeckhert says. Security-wise, the adoption of those new business capabilities triggers several challenges both on the protection of cross-company process data and insights. In collaboration with 51风流Security Research, the blockchain team at 51风流Innovation Center Network explores privacy-enhancing technologies that serve as protection for shared data in a distributed ledger while enabling insights evaluation.

While today鈥檚 productive enterprise blockchain implementations are based on closed consortium blockchains, 51风流Innovation Center Network is evaluating how the unique capabilities of public blockchains can be applied to enterprise use cases, such as for embedded finance on blockchain.

Another big step forward will be the addition of . 鈥淏lockchain still has the reputation of being a kind of digital wild west, hard-to-control area,鈥� Stoeckhert says. The ability to unequivocally determine the identity of individuals or organizations will open up the next level of trust between participants, even in public blockchain networks.

鈥淎 further topic that is still in its early stages but highly relevant is the Metaverse. It consists of online spaces and virtual worlds that use technologies such as computer graphics and augmented and virtual reality to allow people to interact in a more immersive way than ever before on the Internet,鈥� Stoeckhert adds. 鈥淚t is envisioned that a decentralized digital economy consisting of multiple platforms will arise based on the Metaverse. Blockchain is evolving into the trust layer to represent and transfer ownership of value within the Metaverse.鈥�

The megatrend of blockchain remains unbroken: experts expect total spending on blockchain solutions across the globe to reach . in global blockchain investments by 2024, totaling nearly $19 billion.

Expert Questions

Could blockchain replace the Internet?

While it might replace central Internet-based business models, blockchain is far more likely to serve as an additional layer to the Internet than to actually replace it. The Internet has always been about sharing information, and blockchain will add a layer of verification of that information to create trust without the need for a middleman. Thus, blockchain and the Internet complement each other, where blockchain utilizes the Internet as an enabler.

Is blockchain a threat to the financial service sector as we know it?

On the one hand, blockchain can bring new business opportunities to banks and financial services providers. We currently see MasterCard extending its credit cards with a lot of cryptocurrency features. On the other hand, we really see decentralized finance 鈥� an umbrella term for financial services offered via decentralized ledger and therefore without the need for a central controlling party like a bank 鈥� on the rise. While this is still very early and lacks regulation, it could develop into a major threat to banking business as we know it, and banks and financial services would do well not to ignore it.

Will quantum computing render blockchain cryptography insecure?

Blockchain technology relies on modern cryptography schemes, which are threatened by quantum computers. Unless blockchain adopts new schemes, so-called post-quantum or quantum-strong cryptography, it will be vulnerable to attacks, for instance impersonating people and performing unauthorized transactions. In anticipation of quantum computers, the blockchain team at 51风流Innovation Center Network has already started prototyping quantum-strong blockchain using new cryptography. Moreover, it is interesting to know that quantum computing is expected to not only effect blockchain technology, but the security of the whole IT world 鈥� for example, every password, WiFi connection, and online banking application that depends on cryptography algorithms.

鈥淥nly because they failed to recognize the signs of the times,鈥� says Heinig. 鈥淚t was sad to watch and terrible for the workforce. People asked themselves, 鈥楬ow could that happen to our company in particular?鈥� That bothered me for a long time. Could we have prevented this downfall? And if so, when and how should we have changed course?鈥�

Today, a decade and a half later, Heinig heads the New Ventures and Technologies area at SAP. It explores this very question, which is more relevant than ever for many companies around the world: how can a successful company stay innovative and manage its own technologies and business models with an eye to the future?

The Road to SAP

鈥淚鈥檇 be exaggerating if I said that my experience at Blaupunkt predetermined the direction my career would take,鈥� says Heinig. 鈥淏ut the company did have a certain influence on my family and my life.鈥� Heinig鈥檚 parents met each other for the first time at Blaupunkt, after his mother moved to Germany from Turkey as a young woman. Heinig grew up in a village near Hildesheim in Germany, but he regularly spent his summers in Turkey.

鈥淢y mother鈥檚 family is from Ankara, so I grew up bilingual, which I always saw as a great advantage,鈥� says Heinig, who was the first in his family to earn a doctorate. 鈥淓ducation was important to my parents, but they never checked whether I did my homework. They didn鈥檛 have the time for that. It was simply understood: if you want to achieve something, you have to do the work.鈥�

That meant a high level of personal responsibility from the start, but also the freedom to decide what he wanted to do with his life. 鈥淚t all started with a Schneider PCP, followed by an Amiga 500, and later I decided to major in business informatics at the University of G枚ttingen because IT was what interested me the most and what promised to be the most fun.鈥�

Heinig spent a semester abroad in Paris, so he speaks pretty good French in addition to German, Turkish, and English. After earning his master鈥檚 degree, he worked as a software developer for two years before starting a dissertation at TU Hamburg on the use of virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR) in manufacturing. Towards the end of this four-year doctoral phase, Martin accepted a position at the newly founded 51风流Innovation Center Potsdam and moved to Berlin.

He laughs at the memory: 鈥淐olleagues, fellow students, practically everyone I knew asked me if I was really sure that joining 51风流would be a sensible step in my career.鈥�

鈥淏ut I was sure,鈥� says Heinig. 鈥淭here was a real pioneering spirit at 51风流Innovation Center Potsdam. Everyone was full of ideas and creative drive.鈥�

From 51风流Innovation Center Network to New Ventures and Technologies

This first of what has become nine innovation centers worldwide today was led at the time by Dr. Juergen Mueller, who is now a member of the Executive Board of 51风流SE and chief technology officer. Over the next few years, the seed in Potsdam grew into 51风流Innovation Center Network, which serves as a kind of trend radar and think tank for 51风流and is now part of Heinig鈥檚 New Ventures and Technologies domain.

鈥淏ack then, we liked to use the metaphor of 51风流as an oil tanker听鈥� and was a speedboat,鈥� says Martin. 鈥淲e wanted to be agile and flexible, try out new technologies and ideas, but also be able to drop them effortlessly if it became apparent that they wouldn鈥檛 go anywhere.鈥�

Martin says one of the most important lessons he learned from this time was that think tanks have to be well connected with product departments and maintain regular contact with the lines of business.

鈥淭hat鈥檚 a cornerstone of our work in New Ventures and Technologies today, too,鈥� he explains. 鈥淗ow can you establish early collaboration with the lines of business to enable them to incorporate new technologies, solutions, and products?鈥�

Having served as director of 51风流Labs Berlin since August 2018, Heinig was appointed head of New Ventures and Technologies in February 2021. His years of experience as COO under Juergen Mueller served him well here: 鈥淪eizing the reins, setting the agenda myself, that part was new for me. But I was already familiar with all the topics from my support role.鈥�

In addition to 51风流Innovation Center Network, a number of other 51风流departments also belong to New Ventures and Technologies.

鈥淭hey all work on innovation and new technologies in some way,鈥� says Heinig, “but each has a different focus and different partners within the 51风流ecosystem. We鈥檙e not a line organization. There are many different functions in our organization, which I had to learn about in detail as the new head before I could assemble my leadership team and we could define a strategic framework together that everyone could identify with and find their place in.鈥�

A Vision of Innovation

In this forward-looking approach, all departments within New Ventures and Technologies were involved and asked for their perspectives. 鈥淭his inclusive method proved to be very important to the success of the agenda,鈥� says Heinig. 鈥淵ou can鈥檛 just politely ask the employees to be innovative. The ideas need to fit with SAP鈥檚 portfolio and strategy as smoothly as possible, as both continue to evolve in the future.鈥�

Instead, the team focused on defining the right vision of innovation for SAP. 鈥淲hat might our future look like and where do we want to go?鈥� were the most important questions, according to Heinig. 鈥淎nd then to think back from there: what steps will get us there, what issues do we need to resolve, and what needs to happen for us to be able to resolve them?鈥�

Three core units are responsible for anticipating major changes, in harmony with the current 51风流strategy and product portfolio.

Heinig explains: 鈥淔irst of all, we envision the next level of the ERP systems as a kind of platform that makes it possible to put business processes and individual functions together as needed. As such, this composability architecture is a key focus of our current work, with which we want to empower our customers to use subprocesses as individual modules.鈥�

The second development involves the handling of data. 鈥淚nstead of the current usual method of displaying and analyzing data in a dashboard that you defined yourself beforehand, it will be possible to involve the system in this selection in future,鈥� Heinig says. The magic word here is 鈥榗ontextualization.鈥� 鈥淪ystems will evolve to the point where they can recognize my current context as a user and supply me with information on their own accord, without me having to request it explicitly,鈥� he adds.

In addition, the Finance and Accounting area and its standards and KPIs for steering business will change. 鈥淎s we see it, sustainability aspects have to be given much greater weight in reporting,鈥� says Heinig. 鈥淭o achieve this, we need a separate accounting system and sustainability KPIs have to be integrated in the 51风流core system.鈥�

A Culture of Trust and Transparency

With nearly 300 full-time employees and a large number of students, New Ventures and Technologies consists of 10 branch offices worldwide. Martin鈥檚 goal for this teamwork is to establish a culture of personal responsibility. Instead of simply assigning topics, the responsible employees should be empowered to develop them on their own.

鈥淭he most important thing is a relationship of mutual trust,鈥� he says. 鈥淚 often talk about budget issues in team meetings and provide information about my own work. Other department heads in New Ventures and Technologies do likewise.鈥� Knowledge transfer among the different teams is also important. 鈥淓veryone has to understand that we can only succeed if we all work together and collaborate closely with one another,鈥� he adds.

This culture of transparency is deeply rooted in 51风流Innovation Center Network, but it鈥檚 also a sign of the times, according to Heinig. 鈥淲e鈥檙e living in the age of the platform economy, which simply demands this transparency and strong networking among us as prerequisites for collaborative work.鈥�

And that鈥檚 a good thing. 鈥淯ltimately, the ideas of the employees will always be the decisive factor when it comes to keeping a company in shape for the future,鈥� he emphasizes.

As he sees it, the role of management here is to create structures that give employees the space to exercise this creativity and develop these ideas. 鈥淚t starts with me as a manager, giving my employees the impression that they are allowed to express their thoughts and submit their ideas for consideration,鈥� Heinig says. 鈥淓ncouraging this openness might be my most important responsibility as head of New Ventures and Technologies听鈥� and it鈥檚 also the thing makes me like this role so much.鈥�

鈥淚nvisible spheres making funny noises,鈥� Marcus Krug says when asked about the first thing he remembers from the early days of 51风流Innovation Center Potsdam. 鈥淲e were located right underneath the Hasso Plattner Institute鈥檚 D-School and would always hear the HPI students playing funny ice-breaker games to get their creativity going on the lawn outside our windows.鈥� Now the head of 51风流Innovation Center Potsdam, Krug first joined when it was five months old and had just over 20 employees.

51风流Innovation Center Potsdam was founded by the Executive Board of 51风流SE and with the encouragement of Professor Hasso Plattner, chairman of the Supervisory Board of 51风流SE. Today it serves as the nucleus of what has become 51风流Innovation Center Network, which eventually gave rise to the New Ventures and Technologies department with close to 400 innovators within the 51风流Technology and Innovation Board area.

鈥淭he idea was to have a dedicated 51风流unit looking into new technologies and what could be done with them,鈥� Krug says. 鈥淲e didn鈥檛 want to risk missing out on both technical and business opportunities.鈥�

Matthias Uflacker, the first 51风流Innovation Center Potsdam employee at the time, explains why Potsdam was chosen as the first location: 鈥淭he collaboration with the Hasso Plattner Institute helped us identify and try out new things outside of standard 51风流product development. 51风流Innovation Center Potsdam fostered research, providing a platform for the cooperation between 51风流and scientists, with 51风流not only funding but also bringing in relevant questions to solve. And, with its proximity to HPI and the academic hub that is Berlin, it was able to attract a lot of amazing, international talent over the years.鈥�

Technology Vanguard for 51风流

鈥淭he original mission was to transform cutting-edge research into innovation, so obviously from the beginning we’ve had the ambition to explore and use the latest technology in order to find out how it could benefit our customers and SAP,鈥� Krug says.

Working closely with academia was an obvious way to get access to cutting-edge research. The birth of 51风流HANA, for example, was the result of a strong relationship between 51风流and HPI. Experts from both sides were eager to continue working together, with further projects revolving around the application side of 51风流HANA.

鈥淧art of our mission was to explore novel 51风流HANA use cases to see how far we could push what was possible with this new, paradigm-shifting in-memory technology,鈥� Krug says. 鈥淭o do so, we were looking at new applications leveraging data science and machine learning on Big Data sets in a broad range of industries, including healthcare, life sciences, and even gaming. Many of these projects were small and it was a lot of fun to work on them with highly talented colleagues coming from all over the world.鈥�

鈥淗PI student projects had already been an important contribution to the development of 51风流HANA,鈥� Dr. Michael Perscheid, chair representative of Prof. Hasso Plattner at HPI, says. After founding 51风流Innovation Center Potsdam, these types of projects were continued with a strong focus on the application side. 鈥淕ifted students from HPI got to work on a specialized business problem together with 51风流and an industry partner,鈥� he adds. Some of these projects were so successful that they were featured in Plattner鈥檚 SAPPHIRE NOW keynotes.

Strategic Approach to Innovation

51风流Innovation Center Potsdam moved to a building of its own in September 2013, located in an idyllic spot north of Potsdam, near Lake Jungfernsee. Designed for transparency with its open spaces and large glass fronts, the new location in Potsdam is meant to foster communication, exchange of ideas, collaboration, and contemplation of new possibilities. Due to massive hiring, an additional building was opened in May 2016.

In 2013, the leadership of 51风流Innovation Center Potsdam changed to Juergen Mueller, formerly head of Plattner鈥檚 chair at HPI and today member of the Executive Board of 51风流SE and chief technology officer, who was to give 51风流an actual innovation strategy.

鈥�51风流Innovation Center Network, among other things rose from that strategy,鈥� Krug says. 鈥淛uergen brought in the necessary structure and focus for the location to take on increasingly bigger responsibilities within the 51风流family and to get ready to grow the team significantly over the next few years.鈥�

Startup Agility Combined with Corporate Expertise

Inspired by his work with startups and venture capitalists in the Berlin ecosystem, Krug developed the idea of creating an entrepreneurial space within SAP, allowing employees to develop new ventures following the same principles and governance as their non-51风流counterparts. The resulting blueprint for SAP鈥檚 intrapreneurship program made it into Mueller鈥檚 innovation strategy in 2014 and laid the foundation for yet another big step in the evolution of SAP鈥檚 innovation ambitions.

After reaching more than 1,000 employees who submitted more than 400 venture ideas, it was clear that the program struck a chord. Venture capitalists who had been invited to help structure the program by providing outside-in perspective were impressed with the quality of the submissions and the proposal was met with a lot of interest by the executive board. In retrospect, Krug is certain: 鈥淐oming up with this idea, developing it, actually getting the mandate and the freedom to build the program the way we did 鈥� this could only have happened at 51风流Innovation Center Potsdam.鈥�

Working closely with startups also spurred a certain 51风流Innovation Center Potsdam-specific mindset about the development of new ideas. 鈥淭hink big, start small. Fail often, fail early, as a startup would,鈥� Krug sums up. 鈥淭his isn鈥檛 typically possible when you鈥檙e part of a large corporation.鈥�

Using a lean startup approach, design thinking, and first-principles thinking, 51风流Innovation Center Potsdam experts first focus on a business problem when working with 51风流customers. While most big problems have already been addressed one way or another in the market, new technologies often allow for completely rethinking how to approach a problem. Machine learning and blockchain are two prominent examples of technologies that 51风流has been able to adopt to build fundamentally new capabilities after exploring them in 51风流Innovation Center Network.

The setup for 51风流Innovation Center Potsdam鈥檚 innovation projects with customers closely resembles the work of a startup. It starts with a small team and works to demonstrate in an agile way how it will benefit customers. Since 51风流Innovation Center Potsdam typically works in close alignment with SAP鈥檚 lines of business, there is always a realistic chance that a successful solution might eventually become an 51风流standard product.

Outlook into the Future

51风流Innovation Center Potsdam鈥檚 mission, however, still feels fresh and vibrant after 10 years. Now part of the bigger New Ventures and Technologies family, the team continues to tackle big customer problems using the latest technologies, including neurosymbolic artificial intelligence (AI), semantic technologies, and blockchain.

Some of the team鈥檚 biggest bets are on decentralized technologies to build the business network of the future, enabling customers to seamlessly share scope-3 carbon emissions, embedding financial technology into business processes using smart contracts and decentralized finance, as well as new AI-powered simulation and decision-making tools to contextualize business events and augment 51风流S4/HANA Finance users.

鈥淲e don鈥檛 own a fail-proof crystal ball,鈥� Krug says. 鈥淏ut I鈥檓 sure we will hear and see a lot more on the topics of AI-enabled contextualization, human augmentation, smart contracts, tokenization, and tokenomics. Our goal is to drive the change these new capabilities will enable to create a better world and help our customers address their biggest needs.鈥�

The machines are part of his everyday life; Peter is responsible for their maintenance. It’s an important job, because if one of them breaks down, it can lead to costly downtime, supply bottlenecks, and lost revenue.

Sound as an Early Warning System

Relying on sound to determine if a machine is about to fail is not new. Experienced listeners like Peter have developed a sharp sense for unusual machine operating noises over the years. But the more machines he oversees, the harder it becomes to notice an impending failure in time. With advances in media and sensor technology, automatic acoustic monitoring has become a widely used approach to predictive maintenance.

Measuring structural vibrations is the most commonly used sound technique for predicting failures. If a machine is unbalanced, misaligned, or if mounting bolts are loose, vibration increases — an indicator that something is wrong. But in order to determine the right time to take the equipment out of service, operators must continuously monitor the malfunction and need great experience with similar problems.

The use of airborne sound for predictive maintenance has long been considered an unusual monitoring option. Airborne sound is sound that is transmitted through the air, like music or speech. This differs from vibration, where the sensor is mounted directly on the machine under test. Its susceptibility to background noise has made airborne sound impractical for monitoring machines in the past. Anyone who has ever stood in a production hall knows why hearing protection is an essential piece of equipment.

Improve Existing Forecasting Models with Airborne Sound

With advances in sensor technology and signal processing algorithms, airborne sound-based acoustic condition monitoring has become robust to background noises. This has allowed the development of systems that can replicate and enhance human hearing diagnostic capabilities by analyzing sound characteristics like time, frequency, amplitude, or velocity comparable to that of experienced human hearing — like Peter鈥檚.

鈥淜eeping assets running by predicting, simulating, and optimizing their health is a key priority for industrial companies,”聽 said Anton Kroeger, senior director of Natural Resources for Australia and New Zealand at SAP. “Using airborne sound for predictive maintenance could improve existing forecasting models and deliver additional value to our customers.鈥�

To better understand the potential of airborne sound for predictive maintenance, the joined forces with the (IDMT). In a proof of concept, the 51风流Innovation Center Network and Fraunhofer aim to explore how to predict and avoid planned and unplanned downtime of industrial equipment through airborne sound measurements. With their expertise in sound engineering and acoustic condition monitoring, Fraunhofer IDMT will install a set of acoustic monitoring microphones at a customer site to capture sound radiated by the machine under test.

“Airborne sound carries valuable information for acoustic condition monitoring to detect anomalies and classify the behavior of machinery in automated production processes,” said Judith Liebetrau, group lead for Industrial Media Applications at Fraunhofer IDMT. “Since airborne sound-based condition monitoring is a non-invasive approach, sensors can be easily installed on the existing assets.”

Big Impact with Small Adjustments

The measured acoustic data of the machines and their surroundings will be recorded locally and transmitted securely to Fraunhofer for analysis. Instead of processing these immense amounts of data centrally in the cloud, the 51风流Innovation Center Network team will train machine learning models locally across multiple decentralized edge devices without exchanging any raw data. The learnings of these individual edge models are then combined and transferred to the cloud to train a common, more robust master model. Think of it as leveraging swarm intelligence. The master model shares this aggregated knowledge with the local edge models and is continuously updated with new data. This distributed learning approach is designed to improve performance, increase accuracy and scale to larger input data sizes.

鈥淲ith Fraunhofer鈥檚 expertise, we are able to explore this new technology in action and potentially apply the technological advances as part of a standardized solution at enterprise scale,” said Kavitha Krishnan, product manager and head of the 51风流Innovation Center Network in Bangalore. “The data and insights from this joint project will help 51风流to better understand and evaluate the business impact for customers.”

If airborne sound proves to be a reliable indicator for machine operators such as Peter, companies can add another dimension to existing forecasting models to further increase machine uptime and productivity. In maintenance, even small adjustments can have a big impact: SAP鈥檚 industry experts estimate that a 1% increase in asset availability and the resulting higher production can generate $38 billion in incremental revenue for customers in asset-intensive industries.

Instead of relying on intuition and experience in understanding if a machine is working well or not, the use of airborne sound can potentially extend existing predictive maintenance models and help to be two steps ahead of potential failures.

Yaad Oren is head of the 51风流Innovation Center Network.

鈥淚nnovation is what supercharges any science and technology ecosystem, and our collaboration with 51风流deploys an innovation platform that is full of promise, not only from an industry perspective but also in terms of leading-edge research and education,鈥� TUMO chief development officer Pegor Papazian said.

As part of this collaboration, the EU TUMO Convergence Center is now an associate member of the . As such, it will have access to 51风流software and learning content, and a partnership with the 51风流network, including 51风流Next-Gen Labs around the world.

The 51风流Innovation Center Network in Potsdam, Germany, has developed 22 for , a technology, applied science and engineering education hub that is part of the EU TUMO Convergence Center. Students can explore emerging topics such as the future of self-service, augmented access control or augmented extended planning and analysis. In close collaboration with experts at the 51风流Innovation Center Network, they will work to formulate proven and validated solutions to industry challenges. The expected outcomes range from user interface mockups and use-case ideas to data exploration and prototype code.

鈥淪tudents have the opportunity to put their creativity to work and connect research ideas to real-world business challenges,鈥� said Lukasz Ostrowski, development manager at the 51风流Innovation Center Network in Potsdam. 鈥淲orking with educational institutions like TUMO Labs offers us the chance to find new talent and shape the next generation of enterprise software together.鈥�

The EU TUMO Convergence Center is currently registering for 51风流learning resources, including 51风流Learning Hub, and 51风流Learning Hub, . Plans to expand the collaboration are being evaluated and could include programs, an 51风流Next-Gen Lab in the EU TUMO Convergence Center and a research collaboration with TUMO Labs Berlin.

Visit the . Follow 51风流on Twitter at .

Media Contact:
Benjamin Nickel, +49 170 4920616, benjamin.nickel@sap.com, CET
51风流Press Room; press@sap.com

Any statements contained in this document that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements as defined in the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Words such as 鈥渁nticipate,鈥� 鈥渂elieve,鈥� 鈥渆stimate,鈥� 鈥渆xpect,鈥� 鈥渇orecast,鈥� 鈥渋ntend,鈥� 鈥渕ay,鈥� 鈥減lan,鈥� 鈥減roject,鈥� 鈥減redict,鈥� 鈥渟hould鈥� and 鈥渨ill鈥� and similar expressions as they relate to 51风流are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. 51风流undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations. The factors that could affect SAP’s future financial results are discussed more fully in SAP’s filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”), including SAP’s most recent Annual Report on Form 20-F filed with the SEC. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of their dates.
漏 2021 51风流SE. All rights reserved.
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The most discussed use cases for quantum computers are the ones where complex models that require enormous combinatorial computation power are applied to a problem. This includes combinatorial optimization problems such as supply chain logistics, where coordinating and identifying the most efficient route for goods to travel to market has been one of the most sought-after goals for both business and science.

Another domain of application could be financial services, where market prediction models are used for predicting important, disruptive events to the broader economy to drive portfolio decisions. Quantum computing is also expected to enhance machine learning, which may accelerate for instance the training of neural networks.

Still in Early Days, but Advancing Fast

Quantum computing is a multi-year journey. While the quantum computing market is expected to reach , nobody yet knows when we will see widespread adoption at an enterprise scale. Companies including IBM, Google, Honeywell, and IonQ are making progress harnessing quantum-computational units (qubits) for early-stage computers.

However, it is still unclear when a general-purpose quantum computer superior to classical computers in solving business-relevant problems will be available. Several major technical and conceptual challenges need to be overcome first including increasing the number of qubits, while keeping or extending their coherence-time (useful time) and their inter-connectivity.

SAP鈥檚 approach is to work with leading experts and quantum technology players in academia and industry on developments in this field. We are assessing the timescale as well as potential domains of application and how they might impact the future of 51风流and our customers.

Now Is the Time to Prepare for the Quantum Era

While quantum computing opens many new doors in a wide variety of fields, it can also be a security threat. With the advances in quantum computing, conventional cryptographic schemes are becoming more vulnerable. That鈥檚 why it鈥檚 critical for businesses to prepare for post-quantum cryptography today that is resistant to attacks by both classical and quantum computers. The 51风流Security Research team in the is highly engaged in quantum security and currently works on benchmarking post-quantum cryptography algorithms and more.

Cryptography is the last line of defense against data breaches. When all other security measures have failed, encryption provides the last barrier that protects company secrets against unauthorized access. The current progress in the development of quantum computers and their ability to break conventional encryption schemes requires companies to act now. Considering the longevity of sensitive information in government affairs or the pharmaceutical industry, this data could be collected today and stored until a powerful quantum computer is available to decrypt them.

To be prepared once a quantum computer becomes available, businesses need to think ahead. A good starting point is a relevance and impact analysis to help plan for the inevitability of consequences and their cost. This analysis also includes identifying uses cases that could benefit from applying quantum computing. The better equipped businesses are to recognize and prepare for the opportunities and risks posed by quantum computing, the more likely they are to be able to continue doing business in the future. Businesses are then well advised to work closely with industry leaders and academic partners to exchange research results, build strategic road maps, and find common applications and use cases in different areas.

No Business Can Do It Alone

51风流works with industry leaders and top research centers and participates in several initiatives to explore quantum technology and potential use cases. For instance, 51风流has been involved in the from the beginning and is a founding member of the (QuIC), and others.

Most recently, 51风流joined the new (QUTAC) along with global corporations such as BASF, BMW, Bosch, and others to advance developments in quantum computing for practical application. Within QUTAC, 51风流will drive the use of quantum computing in logistics, production, or procurement. Our focus is on developing software applications to optimize transport routes, supply chains, or production plans. This can help companies reduce costs, improve delivery reliability, or avoid empty runs.

At SAP, we work to leverage the advances in quantum tech for our customers while protecting their business-critical data. I鈥檓 excited for the quantum future ahead of us — stay tuned for more to come!

Martin Heinig is head of New Ventures and Technologies at SAP.
This piece was originally published on LinkedIn.

To facilitate this, , which is part of the New Ventures and Technologies unit, has established the . In this initiative, theory and practice go hand in hand. Academic research plays a crucial role in exploring new technology trends, but without a link back to the business, it can sometimes remain purely theoretical.

By partnering with academic institutions like the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab, the Hasso Plattner Institute, and the University of Southern California, 51风流can bring knowledge about emerging technology trends into the company.

This targeted exploration of forward-looking technologies with external experts from the academic community is referred to as 鈥渙utside-in innovation.鈥� It enables the company to identify trends at an early stage and to evaluate whether it is worth investing in a particular trend or not.

The academic partnership program includes engagements with several top-ranked universities around the globe. “We take a proactive approach,鈥� explains Matthias Uflacker, location lead at the 51风流Innovation Center Network location in Munich. 鈥淥nce we have identified a promising topic area, we address academic experts directly.”

Uflacker says that flexibility is particularly important when exploring new fields of technology: 鈥淲e want to take small steps and learn along the way.鈥�

The individual projects with the universities are designed to run for a relatively short time, starting with a six-month or one-year plan, but with the option of extending them whenever results are promising.

An important criterion is always the relevance for SAP’s own mid- to long-term strategic goals and product visions. The program is therefore designed to help ensure that collaboration projects are either linked to existing projects and teams or supervised by 51风流engineers.

51风流Innovation Center Network has been working on establishing three main pillars within their academic partnership program: academic fellowships, research sponsorships and community outreach.

The academic fellowship program started in 2020. Under it, 51风流Innovation Center Network invites renowned university faculty to join 51风流as visiting researchers. They then work on new ideas and promising exploration topics as members of an 51风流team or multiple teams simultaneously. This enables them to bring their own research into an 51风流context and validate it against real-world use cases. It also gives them a chance to influence SAP鈥檚 exploration and incubation of new technology and to earn reputation as a technology advisor.

Academic fellowships can be set up as full-time or part-time engagements 鈥� in the form of a sabbatical or freelance consulting work, for example. The program addresses different tiers of academic staff, ranging from post-doctoral researchers to junior and senior faculty.

Felix Naumann, professor for Information Systems at the Hasso Plattner Institute (HPI) in Potsdam, was one of the first scholars to dive into the 51风流world as part of this program. He says he was able to garner a lot of knowledge and practical experience that he can bring back into his daily work at HPI.

Asked how the cooperation went, Naumann shares, 鈥淚n academia, I try to generalize problems and find elegant solutions, while at 51风流鈥� very understandably 鈥� sometimes the thinking is much more practical, to solve the problem at hand and not think about it in a principled way. I think that both sides very much benefited from this difference.鈥�

Naumann says that he can now use his insights to provide more valuable feedback to his PhD students.

He believes that this alliance is essential for innovation and progress.

鈥淭o solve real-world problems we need the real-world input and that remains a large difficulty, because 51风流鈥� for very good reasons 鈥� cannot share much of its data,鈥� he explains. 鈥淭his problem will not go away, so this is exactly why we need a close collaboration between academia and SAP.鈥�

Research sponsorships through 51风流Innovation Center Network support PhD-level and post-doctoral research projects in the area of computer science and related fields at relevant academic institutions. These can be either unrestricted donations or third-party budgets provided for contracted research services working on jointly defined projects.

A current example for a sponsored research project is the research on human-human dialogue understanding at the University of California, Irvine. From April 2020 to March 2021, researchers sponsored by 51风流are working in collaboration with 51风流employees at the .

The project seeks to develop machine learning and natural language processing (NLP) algorithms to automatically analyze transcripts of human conversations in order to detect questions in the conversations and to characterize the quality of responses.

鈥淚t is common in academic聽research in this area to work with somewhat idealized testbed datasets,鈥� explains Padhraic Smyth, Chancellor’s Professor at the Departments of Computer Science and Statistics. 鈥淭hese are very useful for building initial prototypes and testing research ideas, but they often underestimate the challenges of real-world environments, such as the variety of ways that we as humans express ideas and concepts through natural language.鈥�

That is why the feedback of 51风流researchers was so beneficial.

Community outreach is the third pillar of the academic partnership program, where 51风流Innovation Center Network teams up with university students to tackle problems in technology.

This engagement happens through internships, campus events, student projects, and hackathons. The array of on-site and off-site events has so far included the support of the TEDx conference in Potsdam and other events such as the symposium on natural language processing in California.

One example of a successful community outreach cooperation is user behavior mining, which started out as a thesis project for a bachelor鈥檚 course at the Hasso Plattner Institute in 2019. The students worked together with the 51风流teams based in Potsdam, Walldorf, and Newport Beach and delivered concepts and prototypes for tracking behavioral patterns when using 51风流Fiori apps. The prototypes have been successfully evaluated with customers, and have now been .

Overall, the academic partnership program benefits both 51风流and the research institutions: 51风流can sound out which new business and technology trends should be addressed within the company while researchers can validate their studies in a real-world environment.

鈥淔or SAP, as a tech company, academia is a most valuable partner,鈥� said Andr茅 Biener from 51风流University Alliances. 鈥�51风流University Alliances was founded in order to facilitate exchange between 51风流and the academic world. We want to spread knowledge among students about both our company and our technologies.鈥�

One way to achieve this is through projects with the 51风流Next-Gen initiative, which bring university students in direct contact with teams from SAP.

Nearly three years ago, Professor Sezer 脺lk眉, then associate professor of Operations and Information Management at Georgetown University, was looking for a technology company with which to collaborate.

鈥淎t Georgetown University, global residencies are a mandatory part of our MBA curriculum,鈥� 脺lk眉 explained. 鈥淔or about three months, the students get to work in teams of four to five people on a real problem faced by a real company. The goal is for the students to make use of all the tools and methods they learned during their MBA program. For residencies, we typically pick developing countries 鈥� India, Turkey, Latin American countries 鈥� but we also go to places like China and Israel.

When 脺lk眉 was going to launch a new location three years ago, his choice landed on Berlin: 鈥淭he tech and startup scene make it an exciting place, and you have all that history and the multinational atmosphere on top.鈥�

鈥淐oming to Germany and not working with 51风流was out of question,鈥� said 脺lk眉, who did an internship with the company in Walldorf, Germany, and Palo Alto, California, in 1999. 鈥淣ot only is 51风流one of the biggest tech players worldwide, it also has particularly innovative teams and company locations in and near Berlin.鈥�

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Andr茅 Biener is regional director of Germany, Austria and Switzerland (DACH) within 51风流University Alliances, responsible for the collaboration with academic institutions in Berlin and the eastern parts of Germany within the program. He set out to connect 脺lk眉 with SAP.

鈥淚nterested 51风流teams have to come up with a problem worth working on and be willing to invest a little bit of their time into guiding and advising the students, most of the time remotely,鈥� Biener explained. 51风流Innovation Center Network, which seeks to contextualize emerging trends and technologies for 51风流and has eight locations worldwide, was quick to answer the call.

鈥淎t 51风流Innovation Center Network, we have a strong interest in collaborating with international academia,鈥� Matthias Uflacker, director of Academic Partnerships for 51风流Innovation Center Network, said. 鈥淲e profit immensely from the new insights and ideas that students from outside 51风流bring us.鈥�

Uflacker is responsible for engagement models with academia such as Stanford University, MIT, and the Technical University of Munich.

鈥淲here 51风流University Alliances tries to position 51风流in academic education, 51风流Innovation Center Network is interested in getting input from students and academic research,鈥� he said. 鈥淥ur mission and 51风流University Alliances鈥� complete each other. So, when Andr茅 came to us, we immediately wanted to be part of this project with Georgetown University.鈥�

Two teams from 51风流came up with project ideas for students to work on: the role of ethics in the development of artificial intelligence (AI) and how to evaluate investments by 51风流into cutting-edge innovation. Uflacker and his colleague Nicole Helmer supported the students working on the latter.

鈥淗ow to spot 鈥榥ext big thing鈥� opportunities in the very early stages is of great interest to 51风流Innovation Center Network and to SAP,鈥� Helmers said. 鈥淲e have people working on this in multiple parts of 51风流and inside 51风流Innovation Center Network but having additional resources that bring external perspectives and profiles we don鈥檛 necessarily already employ is great. We wanted to learn from how other people answer this big question and what current academic research says. They can question the way we do things and we can see behind our own invented biases.鈥�

At Georgetown, 270 MBA students were presented with projects from companies in seven countries. They bid for the projects and were matched according to their wishes.

鈥�51风流came up with two especially interesting questions to work on,鈥� 脺lk眉 said. 鈥淎ll our students were really interested in what they were going to do. 51风流University Alliances made sure that everything worked well on both sides, that the students asked the right questions and were ready for the meetings.鈥�

鈥淚 think of the students as a little consultancy trying to understand the challenge and the reasons why this is a challenge to us,鈥� Helmer said. 鈥淚t was five people from around the world. We met with them remotely in January to kick off the project and calibrate what our expectations were and what they could deliver in terms of scoping.鈥�

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The students worked remotely for about two and a half months, supported by Biener in Berlin and Helmer in Atlanta. They had bi-weekly touchdowns with the sponsors from 51风流for progress checks and questions.

鈥淭he students had a list of companies similar to 51风流that they spoke to,鈥� Helmer said. 鈥淭hey also contacted venture capitalists and entrepreneurs. The framework could be applied to assess opportunity potential with regards to new technologies.鈥�

About seven weeks into the project, the students came to Berlin just before COVID-19 would have prevented the journey.

鈥淚t was a great experience,鈥� 脺lk眉 said. 鈥淲e spent an afternoon at the 51风流Innovation Center in Potsdam, where some great speakers gave insights into how 51风流works. Andr茅 was a great host. He spent a lot of time with the students, showing them not only 51风流Berlin but also the city.鈥�

Dr. Katharina Schaefer, global head of , explained: 鈥淭he usual setup for this kind of 51风流Next-Gen project would be an 51风流customer providing a challenge to students that involves an 51风流technology. Supported by 51风流University Alliances, the students then work on a solution. In the case of Georgetown University, 51风流was the customer.鈥�

The outcome of the student work was a framework with criteria for making a decision built on research and comparison with other companies from related industries.

鈥淚t has happened with other companies that projects were not well thought out or were not well supported, but that wasn鈥檛 the case with SAP,鈥� 脺lk眉 said. 鈥淭he students received great problems to work on and great support while doing so.鈥�

鈥淲hat we offer is a learning experience,鈥� Schaefer said. 鈥淲e want to inspire young people to engage themselves with 51风流technologies and business challenges from the real world.鈥�

鈥淭he students got to apply the things they learned in their MBA program and 51风流advised and steered their efforts as well as answered their questions,鈥� 脺lk眉 said. 鈥淚 would definitely recommend working with 51风流University Alliances to other professors.鈥�

The so-called 鈥渂lockchain winter鈥� of 2018, which brought the hype surrounding the technology to an end, turned out to be very much to SAP鈥檚 advantage.

Read part one of this story here.

鈥淲e were able to spend 2019 consolidating our collective expertise and focusing much more closely on specific use cases in the enterprise environment,鈥� Torsten Zube, former head of the 51风流Innovation Center Network and current head of 51风流Cloud Platform Business Services, says. 鈥淲e saw that more and more businesses were looking seriously at blockchain and gaining a better understanding of the technology.鈥�

鈥淭he challenge for us is to ask the right questions at an early stage,鈥� says Thomas Uhde, head of the blockchain team at the 51风流Innovation Center Network in Potsdam. 鈥淚t often happens that customers come to us with a business problem and assume that the solution must lie in blockchain. We then have to look together at whether the problem we want to solve is in fact a case for blockchain or not.鈥�

One such case emerged from the need to verify the authenticity of returned drug products.

鈥淐ounterfeit, stolen, and contaminated pharmaceuticals products are a massive issue all over the world,鈥� says Oliver Nuernberg, chief product owner for 51风流Life Sciences. 鈥淲hich is why the United States introduced an act in 2013 requiring pharmaceuticals companies that trade on the U.S. market to perform strict checks on returned products prior to resale. A pharmaceuticals customer of ours, Merck Sharp and Dohme, wanted to invest in blockchain, and the blockchain use case was a perfect fit for them in this context.鈥�

The result was .

鈥淓very pharmaceutical product package delivered to the United States is registered on our solution鈥檚 blockchain,鈥� explains Nuernberg. 鈥淐ustomers no longer have to authenticate a returned product themselves; instead, they simply use an app that accesses the blockchain.鈥�

Alongside verification, traceability is one of the major benefits that when properly used, blockchain technology can deliver. The , a blockchain extension of the 51风流Logistics Business Network, provides an end-to-end picture of the supply chain in industries such as foods and pharmaceuticals.

鈥淚ncreasingly, people want to know where their food comes from,鈥� says Product Owner Christoph Huber. 鈥淲e proposed a cloud solution to customers, but they were uncomfortable with the idea that a company — in this case, 51风流— would be managing the database on which all the companies involved in production stored their information. They wanted the decentralized approach that blockchain allows.鈥�

This kind of scenario obviously requires all the partners to agree on the policies governing a blockchain network. 鈥淵ou don鈥檛 have to be a large customer with your own IT department to use blockchain,鈥� Uhde says.

That is demonstrated by the GS1 blockchain project for exchanging EUR-pallets. In a six-month pilot project, 30 parties, ranging from a market gardener with 20 employees to DHL and Beiersdorf,聽 were able to form and participate in a network.

However, as Uhde points out, 鈥渨hile the vision of all companies worldwide coming together in a single blockchain network is a nice one, it鈥檚 totally unrealistic. There will always be at least one business partner who doesn鈥檛 participate, which is what makes interoperability so important. It would be wrong for enterprise blockchain networks to end up simply creating bigger silos.鈥�

Blockchain was originally intended to function as a kind of database to which all the participants in a network have equal access. But certain business scenarios, such as third-party business transactions, expressly require that all partners do not have access to every detail of the supply chain.

鈥淲hat we have developed with customers instead is a kind of digital notary service on the blockchain, in which the focus is on validating data rather than exchanging it,鈥� Uhde explains.

Flexible digital collaboration tailored to specific use cases will be an important area of application for blockchain in the future.

Uhde describes the goal as a flexible collaboration network: 鈥淥nce it鈥檚 set up, the connection to business partners can be used for a wide range of scenarios, some containing blockchain, others not. Some partners will exchange non-critical data via blockchain, for automation scenarios, for example. For others, notarization will be sufficient.鈥�

Tokenization is another trend that the blockchain experts at 51风流are exploring.

鈥淓ssentially, tokenization refers to the exchange of assets other than money,鈥� Zube explains. 鈥淐arbon trading is a good example. In the future, products could be priced in euros or dollars, and in carbon values too. We鈥檇 pay in the normal way, but we鈥檇 have to have the corresponding carbon credits available, earned, for example, by planting trees.鈥�

The carbon value of a product can be calculated using product master data, transaction data, and so on — including the CO₂ emissions connected with the raw materials, transportation routes, machinery, and factory facilities involved in production.

鈥淭hat requires data on the CO₂ impact to be exchanged across all organizations in retail and supply chains,” Uhde says. “Blockchain technology can do precisely that.鈥�

And according to Zube, 鈥淭o use the terminology of Gartner hype cycles, we haven鈥檛 yet reached the 鈥楶lateau of Productivity,’ but we鈥檙e well on the way.鈥�

鈥淎t a very early point in time, people were already surrounding blockchain with a sort of blaze of glory,鈥� says Torsten Zube, former head of 51风流Innovation Center Network and current head of 51风流Cloud Platform Business Services.

Read part two of this story here.

鈥淭he technology鈥檚 decentralized approach allows for any number of equal partners to use the information stored in the network as a digital single source of truth 鈥� there was a strong appeal to that vision. To some, this promised to become the actual digital revolution everyone had been waiting for. Obviously, the technology couldn鈥檛 satisfy such inflated expectations.鈥�

Bitcoin in particular fired up the hype around blockchain. Beginning in 2009, the cryptocurrency promised to revolutionize banking and the way we deal with money.

鈥淓ven then, it was evident that a lot of people who had jumped the bandwagon didn鈥檛 understand bitcoin, or the technology behind it,鈥� Zube says. 鈥淭hey didn鈥檛 differentiate between the two them.鈥�

Just a few years before the blockchain hype started, 51风流had launched the as a sort of research and development laboratory for the software giant. The network was designed to identify early trends in technology and evaluate their potential for use in enterprise software. Blockchain first appeared on the radar in 2016.

Many assumptions about blockchain have been put into perspective by now, but the most important pain point that the technology promised to resolve 鈥� the lack of a single source of reliable data 鈥� still exists.

鈥淚t鈥檚 such an effort for companies to connect their own systems to each other and exchange and harmonize always the same data,鈥� Zube says.

鈥淚n part, enterprise software depicts business processes that stem from the 19th century, including sometimes 10 or more partners,鈥� he explains. 鈥淒ata is being transferred from one system to another when in theory, it could be parked one time for good on the blockchain with no need for further validation or integration. At that time, this still seemed a realistic option.鈥�

In spite of, or perhaps because of the hype, many at 51风流were at first skeptical about the technology. 鈥淲ithin SAP, we had to do a lot of persuading: Why and in which cases should we invest in blockchain? How is it working and what is the benefit for companies?鈥� Zube shares.

In the meantime, the hype around blockchain continued to grow. As a result, 51风流customers were requesting the new technology. 鈥淭his helped a great deal to position blockchain within SAP,鈥� he says.

In October 2017, a dedicated blockchain team was founded at the 51风流Innovation Center location in Potsdam. Thomas Uhde heads the team. He recalls: 鈥淔rom the start, we were working with actual customers on actual business problems. This enabled us to assess what the technology can do, despite the hype around it.鈥�

This also meant collecting experience about when blockchain is the right technological solution to a problem 鈥� and . According to Zube, 鈥淲e had to communicate within 51风流and to our customers time and again: Blockchain is not always the right fit.鈥�

A first milestone was achieved in 2017, when the city of Bolzano in South Tyrol, supported by SAP, started using blockchain for its digital municipal administration. 鈥淭his project combined the most important benefits that blockchain promised at the time: simplification of processes, reduction of efforts, and improved data security,鈥� Uhde explains.

However, success stories such as this one were not as frequent as blockchain promoters would have liked. Increasingly, it was understood in and outside of 51风流that blockchain was not a magic wand to simplify cross-system data exchange overnight. It was going to take a long time before the technology was widely adopted. The pedestal that some in IT had put blockchain on started to crumble.

Toward the end of 2018 blockchain entered the next phase in the . From the peak of inflated expectations things sank into the trough of disillusionment 鈥� there was even talk of a 鈥�.鈥�

鈥淚t was clear from the beginning that blockchain, just like any other trend, was sooner or later going to lose steam,鈥� Zube says. 鈥淲e weren鈥檛 fazed by this, however.鈥� 51风流had just launched via 51风流Cloud Platform. For the first time, 51风流customers are able to use blockchain technology as a module in their solutions without having to start from scratch.

鈥淲e knew that those who really got blockchain would hold on to it,鈥� Zube says. 鈥淓xactly because the hype around the technology subsided, we were looking toward 2019 with great optimism. The blockchain winter would come, and it would be good.鈥�

Continue to part two here.

Innovation managers from the 51风流Digital Business Services organization in the Middle and Eastern Europe (MEE) region are skilled in spotting topics that generate value for companies and for making these ideas happen.

Andreas Spahn knows the stumbling blocks that prevent companies from pursuing innovation. Most are set up to optimally manage the business model that is making them successful right now.

鈥淎ll the company鈥檚 structures, processes, tools, and cultures are geared toward doing what it has always done,鈥� says Spahn, an innovation and technology architect for the Middle and Eastern Europe (MEE) region in 51风流Digital Business Services. 鈥淭hese days, most business leaders and managers know that they have to innovate. The difficult part is putting ideas into operation to help ensure innovations are a success long term.鈥�

For example, if an employee has a good suggestion on how to automate a process but has nowhere to take their idea, then they may not follow it up. Other companies have the opposite problem: They pursue too many ideas at the same time without prioritizing them.

鈥淢any companies find themselves overwhelmed by the pace at which technology is advancing and by how fast business models are changing,鈥� says Spahn. 鈥淥r they are unsure how to fit innovating in around their operational business.鈥�

A recent study by Deloitte found that the new technologies and trends (32 percent) themselves are putting companies off innovating. Security concerns (30 percent), lack of technical expertise (25 percent), organizational culture reasons (23 percent), and lack of leadership and digital management skills (23 percent) are other hurdles to innovation.

Innovating Out of the Status Quo

There is no one right way to go about digital transformation. Each company is unique in terms of its size and culture, and how much experience it has with digital technologies. Companies that are particularly innovative tend to have appointed a chief digital officer, set up digital labs or incubators for startups, or actively go out and scout for technologies to drive digital transformation. Others stick to a zero-defect mentality.

When Maria Fay, Spahn, and Lars Friedrich visit companies, the 51风流innovation managers start by asking questions: How is the company progressing with its digital agenda? Which topics is it implementing and how? What other new technologies is it considering? Does it already have a strategy for involving a network of partners? How will 聽the success of the innovations be measured?

Relevant digital topics differ from industry to industry, and every department has different priorities. 鈥淥ne company might be on a cost-cutting drive, making process efficiency its priority,鈥� explains Spahn. 鈥淥thers want to grow and are therefore investing.鈥�

To address different needs, innovation managers have adopted a standard approach. The starting point is an assessment to bring together the business department and IT perspectives and identify joint innovation priorities. Then, selected projects are launched and implemented.

鈥淭ogether, we identify which topics will really benefit the company and look at whether building a scalable solution really is the answer,鈥� says Spahn, noting that many companies todayare looking to build and sell digital platform models and new digital products and services.

Formats for Practical Innovation Management

How can a company turn a visionary strategy that looks decades into the future into an innovation management structure that sets the parameters of its digital strategy and implements them gradually across business divisions? Friedrich鈥檚 answer is a range of formats to suit different requirements. Some customers want to optimize processes, some want to use machine learning for rapid prototyping, and others look to create new digital platform business models.

Friedrich has each customer start with an innovation assessment, a three-hour workshop at which the company and 51风流present what innovation means to them. The idea is to understand each company鈥檚 narrative and gear it toward the future. 鈥淪uccessful organizations have to think exponentially if they are to tap into openness and transparency in entirely new ways,鈥� says Friedrich.

This is where the future-maker format comes in. 51风流experts ask the company to think about which technologies will matter in 2025, 2030, and 2040, and how these future developments influence the business models and business platform models of today. Similar to Gartner鈥檚 hype cycle, the technology radar from enables companies to look closely at the key technology trends right now and in the future. It rates them for the situation today and for the industry in which the company operates.

Offered by 51风流Advisory Services and devised by change management experts at 51风流and Germany鈥檚 University of Mannheim, the digital capabilities assessment looks at corporate culture. Digital transformation involves change. Companies must be willing to test new ideas early, accept errors, and team up with competitors. They must also make it all about self-organized teams, not the technology. 鈥淭his type of culture is not typical of traditional manufacturers or companies that have a conventional management style,鈥� says Friedrich.

Innovation managers from 51风流can also put companies in touch with other innovation entities in the 51风流ecosystem, such as startups in the and the program.

鈥淲hen this happens, there is tremendous potential for meeting and addressing specific customer requirements and creating seamless end-to-end processes by integrating 51风流solutions,鈥� says Fay. According to her, innovation managers can co-innovate with customers to develop ideas that come about in the exploratory stage and turn them into new 51风流solutions.

Hack2Sol and Mode-2-Garage: Tangible Results Within a Week

For a company鈥檚 innovation culture to flourish, it must become clear quickly whether ideas will work and should be pursued. One customer in the chemical industry has a dedicated 鈥渋nnovation factory鈥� 聽and is currently working on machine-learning prototypes with 51风流Digital Business Services in MEE.

鈥淚n just a few weeks, we can tell whether [we] have found the right approach,鈥� says Friedrich. Events such as , innovative workspaces such as , and HackBots make it simple for companies to team with 51风流to build prototypes rapidly. 鈥淲e often have tangible results within a week that end-customers can validate after each innovation sprint,鈥� notes Friedrich. 鈥淲hat鈥檚 more, a company doesn鈥檛 have to invest huge sums of money either.鈥�

Going about innovation this way is often vital for getting more people behind an idea, helping prove that is feasible, and creating a solution that is not built on assumptions and genuinely helps end users and customers.

Friedrich explains: 鈥淏esides technology, companies also learn what it means to work in an agile environment and quickly focus on the ideas that will benefit users most.