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At this year’s Hannover Messe trade fair, SAP and its partners showed how they are embedding artificial intelligence (AI) in their products to help companies achieve new levels of excellence in manufacturing and other industries.

The glass bottles on the high-speed filling line made quiet clinking sounds as they sped around the bend of the track. The visitors to the SAP booth at the internationally renowned industrial trade fair were waiting for the moment when an optical sensor, using AI support, spotted the bottle that was only three-quarters full and kicked it out of the line and into a defects bay. “This system has a capacity of 6,400 bottles per hour,” said a grinning Ben Hughes from SAP’s Solution & Innovation Experience team. “In comparison, the original system from our partner Krones can fill 50,000 bottles, but that would be much too loud here at the trade fair booth.”

The showcase demonstrated how the cloud-based SAP Digital Manufacturing solution could serve as the process order management system for SAP customers, whether they typically work with a lot size of one or with continuous manufacturing at higher speeds. The purchase order could have come from an SAP S/4HANA system, for instance, and ended here with execution in production. “We can see the hardware integration with our own eyes,” said Hughes.

AI was also involved: a camera captured the fill level of each bottle. If it was outside the defined tolerance, the bottle was rejected and this information was sent to the SAP system. A manufacturer could use this data to calculate the production costs for the system and the profitability of every work center, all with AI support. The data from all systems would give experts and management insights into how well the production process was working. This, in turn, would help improve planning.

HANNOVER MESSE 2024 – Bring Out New Manufacturing Excellence with SAP!

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Hannover Messe 2024 took place from April 22-26. Muhammad Alam paid a visit for the first time in his role as leader of the SAP Product Engineering Board area. At the SAP booth, which featured the motto “Bring out new manufacturing excellence,” he emphasized the importance of AI as an integral part of SAP solutions: “AI has the opportunity to fundamentally create significant value for our customers, particularly in the industrial space, with an ability to create resiliency from a supply chain perspective that just wouldn’t be possible without the application of AI.”

SAP demonstrated nearly its entire portfolio in an industrial context in Hannover. “SAP uses what we call ‘end-to-end scenarios’ to do this,” said Georg Kube, head of Industry Data Ecosystems. To reflect this, the booth was set up in line with this logic. The “design to operate” graphical element, which maps all steps of the manufacturing process, showed the corresponding step in the value chain at each station of the booth. “We integrate our solutions with the specific process that manufacturers have,” Kube said. “They design a product, then it’s manufactured, then it’s bought by a customer, and in the end it is being used and maintained. We offer integrated solutions for every step in this process.”

Working Together for Success

Darcy MacClaren, global CRO for Digital Supply Chain, acknowledged the challenges faced by SAP, its customers, and its partners: “We are facing environmental and geopolitical disruptions and we want to be sustainable.” She said collaboration is the key to achieving these daunting goals, a message that was echoed in many presentations and podium discussions at the booth.

Deliver individualized, sustainable, and smart equipment, products, and components Discover manufacturing solutions from SAP

For example, experts from BMW, Witte Automotive, and SAP discussed how the automotive industry network Catena-X is creating a standard that enables collaboration, data interchange, and transparency to support decarbonization along the value chain. Catena-X serves as a blueprint for other industrial networks under the Manufacturing-X umbrella, such as Factory-X for factory equipment suppliers and operators.

The showcases at the trade fair booth wouldn’t be possible without partners, which also play a decisive role in SAP’s competitiveness and future viability. “The partner ecosystem is a key success factor for SAP,” said Andreas Markus Thon, head of Digital Supply Chain MEE. “They are enriching our suite with their applications and solutions and are critical for high quality and successful adoption and use of our solutions.”

A Fleet of Robots Delivers Materials

SAP’s “Modular Manufacturing” showcase let visitors witness examples of successful partner collaboration for themselves. It demonstrated a fleet of autonomous transport robots that delivered a variety of parts for a valve from storage to assembly stations. Thanks to the fleet control software with embedded AI from SAP partner Kinexon, the robots from different manufacturers worked together seamlessly, making autonomous, situational decisions as to which station should assemble or disassemble the parts. The scenario demonstrated that SAP systems can also implement modular production, which is typically used in manufacturing scenarios involving many variants and low to medium product volumes. SAP S/4HANA, SAP Extended Warehouse Management, and SAP Digital Manufacturing were deployed here.

The “Industrial Metaverse” showcase was another big draw. It let visitors to the SAP booth put themselves in the shoes of a systems operator, using VR (virtual reality) glasses to inspect a system virtually, even if the manufacturing was taking place on the opposite side of the globe. The “Injection Molding Machine” scenario vividly demonstrated how planning and manufacturing dovetail in integrated, agile, made-to-order production, as the machine produced colorful recycled plastic cups for guests at the end of the process.

Other topics at the trade fair included potential uses of digital twin solutions, such as virtual models and real-time simulations, as well as collaboration between people and machines. A summary description of all the presented scenarios is available here.

The World’s Largest Industrial Trade Fair

The guiding theme of Hannover Messe 2024 was “Energizing a sustainable industry.” Nearly 4,000 exhibitors from 60 countries presented solutions for a high-performance, sustainable industry. As part of an industrial ecosystem, they showed how carbon neutrality can be achieved through electrification, digitalization, and automation.

Companies from Germany, China, Turkey, the U.S., Italy, and France booked the largest exhibition spaces. Around 1,600 speakers appeared on the venue’s 11 conference stages. This year’s partner country was Norway.

Under its motto “Bring out new manufacturing excellence,” SAP demonstrated how it is using AI to advance manufacturing processes, among other solutions, at its more than 1,000-square-meter booth in Hall 15. Visitors to SAP’s booth had the opportunity to see 27 product demonstrations and nine interactive showcases. More than 25 SAP partners showed the collaboration and variety of potential uses of their solutions, and 35 presentations by experts and customers were featured at the booth.

Photo ©nottebrock.

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Last week the UN Plastics Treaty reached its final stages of negotiations at INC-4 in Ottawa, Canada, to develop a legally binding, international agreement to tackle plastic pollution across the entire plastics life cycle. The fifth and final round of negotiations is due to complete by the end of this year, where an agreement is expected to be formally ratified in 2025.

The treaty represents a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to unleash the potential of business to solve the plastic crisis. Its success is crucial. Production of new plastic is forecast to double by 2040 without new and effective action. Only 10% of plastic is currently recycled, and each year 19 to 23 million tons of plastic end up in our rivers, lakes, and seas. In addition, greenhouse gas emissions from plastics production, management, and disposal represent around 3.3% of global emissions. Exposure to plastics also has implications on human health, with plastic traces being found in our blood.

Fortunately, there is global consensus on the pressing need to end this ecological and environmental crisis, which is why 160 countries and hundreds of observer organizations are working together on this unique opportunity to end plastic pollution.

A Treaty Addressing the Entire Plastics Value Chain

The existing plastics ecosystem is heavily fragmented. Under current conditions, financial flows fund the creation of virgin polymers while a linear material flow continues bringing new plastics to market.

Centered on regulating production and consumption, the negotiations take every stage of the plastic value chain into account, from creation of the primary polymers to how plastic waste is managed. It covers product design for plastic reduction and recycling as well as extended producer responsibility to increase accountability among the most polluting entities while ensuring a just transition for affected communities.

Together we can enable a future with zero emissions, zero waste, and zero inequality Learn more

This is an ambitious project. It will involve redesigning products, making circularity possible through repair, reuse, and recycling, and making recycled polymers more economically viable than virgin plastics.

New jobs, markets, and business opportunities will be created by the treaty. Research and development into plastic alternatives will be accelerated to eliminate the health-harming pollutants from plastic that are released at every stage of plastic production. Additionally, it will require the evolution of waste management systems to deal with the legacy of plastic waste.

SAP Endorses the Business Coalition

The Business Coalition for a Global Plastics Treaty, convened by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and WWF, assembles businesses and financial institutions committed to supporting the development of an ambitious, effective, and legally binding UN treaty to end plastic pollution.

“To end plastic pollution, we require both ambitious government policy and accelerated business action. The global plastics treaty offers a once-in-a-generation opportunity to put in place the right legally binding rules, measures, and incentives to tackle this global problem,” says Rob Opsomer, executive lead, Plastics and Finance, Ellen MacArthur Foundation.

With over 200 members, including SAP, the Business Coalition for a Global Plastics Treaty is calling for global business rules underpinned by harmonized regulations to tackle the full life cycle of plastic products. This will level the global playing field, making it easier for businesses and investors to scale both upstream and downstream solutions, mobilize the right investments, and support new innovations. 

“For decades, SAP software has been instrumental in enabling our customers to manage material flows, including plastics,” says Natasha Pergl, global sustainability lead, SAP Consumer Products. “We understand first-hand the challenges our customers face in managing the complex and fragmented web of regulations in place today that make it difficult to understand current material flows and align upstream efforts with downstream solutions.”

SAP Calls for Harmonization

Achieving systemic change will require collaboration and joint innovation, which depends on effective, well-functioning communication. Software and network technology are central to bridging the information gap and operationalizing an inclusive plastics ecosystem. The treaty must lay the foundations for harmonized regulations and simplified information flow as well as accelerate the implementation of global rules.

To achieve this, four essential elements need to be in place:

• Common definitions for plastics and packaging to ensure mutual understanding and interoperability: This applies to the categorization of various plastic polymers, how products are structured and denominated, and how they are packaged and sold.
• Harmonization across the plastics life cycle, covering criteria for product design, extended producer responsibility schemes, and assessment for recyclability: This will support businesses to design for circularity and recyclability, ensure that strategic decisions are guided by the capabilities of existing downstream infrastructure, and highlight where new capital investments are needed.
• Harmonized national disclosure schemes to ensure uniformity, comparability, and information transparency: This is essential for giving investors and regulators a base of information for policy steering and decision-making. It will also allow business to harness the full potential of AI-driven innovation to accelerate solutions at scale.
• Recognition of the role of digital tools for traceability: Improved data and the application of digital tracking will enable true progress.

“The treaty goals are ambitious, but with an agreement that focuses on global rules covering product design and material fate, extended producer responsibility schemes, and chemicals of concern, we can unleash the power of global business to deliver the solutions necessary. Importantly, SAP is ready with the processes and systems to help businesses quickly grasp the opportunity and scale impact to end plastic pollution,” says Stephen Jamieson, global head of Circular Economy Solutions, SAP.

Software solutions, such as SAP Responsible Design and Production and SAP Green Token, already allow companies to monitor, measure, and act to facilitate the design of products for a more sustainable and circular economy. But a more effective information flow for better collaboration and innovation is required to achieve systemic change.

The Role of AI

An obvious benefit of agreed common terminology and harmonization of criteria and disclosure rules is that it can open the door for businesses to leverage AI. Some envisaged applications in the production process include reducing virgin polymers and boosting material and supply chain efficiency. Downstream uses such as waste sorting, material recovery, quality control, identifying waste flow trends, and predictive analytics would also be made possible.

A Bold Approach

Discussions in Ottawa were productive and focused on decreasing and restricting plastic production. During the talks, Rwanda and Peru submitted a motion to reduce the production of primary plastic polymers worldwide by 40% by 2040, from a 2025 baseline. Their vision is for this to be legally binding, much like the Paris Agreement to limit global warming.

Robust data clarity and systems for sharing information are crucial for enabling businesses in the implementation of such a treaty. Only by connecting data points throughout the supply chain and across jurisdictions can material flows and emission sources be fully understood.

Work will continue towards INC-5 in Busan, South Korea, in November, where the final text will be agreed prior to being ratified in 2025.

For more information:

• Visit the SAP Sustainability page
• Watch this GreenBiz webinar recording

Heather Davies is a brand journalist.

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Picking the Right Champions to Win the Game

Gaming is something that keeps inspiring me. I’m amazed by the speed, accuracy, and level of concentration of professional players. It’s impressive how this industry has evolved and grown over just a couple of decades.

Team Liquid commands an imposing presence in the esports world, boasting over 160 professional players across more than 15 different games and a staggering fan base of over 10 million followers on various social media platforms. With more than 75 premier events won, Team Liquid is one of the most successful organizations in competitive gaming.

Team Liquid: Mining rich esports data to help players, managers, and teams compete and win Learn more

The game with the highest viewership and extensive fandom is League of Legends. Team Liquid successfully competes with their League of Legends team, which recently won the League of Legends Championship Series (LCS) 2024 Spring tournament.

In League of Legends, the goal is to create a strong and balanced team consisting of five characters, called “champions,” in order to outplay and outsmart the opponents during the game by being one step ahead of competition.

Teams participate in a pre-game draft process to select champions before a match. This involves banning and picking champions from a pool of 166 choices to create a strong team.

Champions are the in-game figures controlled by each player. Each champion has particular skills and areas in which they excel. Putting the champions together allows the team to play in various strategic directions to win the match.

After choosing five champions (“pick”), each team is also allowed to remove five champions from the pool (“ban”). Those players cannot be picked by either side. This can be utilized to remove specific parts that would otherwise counter a strategy or hinder the other team from playing their favorite style and/or composition.

Esports teams and their analysts need to prepare for the draft process, as it requires knowledge of the opponent’s favorite picks and strategies. Imagine a five-a-side dodgeball match, but before the match begins, the five players from each team draw their champions from a pool of 166 individual champions.

With bi-weekly updates to the game (“patches”), especially affecting the champions as well as indirectly teams practicing and developing new strategies, competitive League of Legends is an ever-changing game. It creates the need to constantly adapt your draft to a new environment, to analyze both your own and the opposing team’s behavior.

Furthermore, the nature of the draft process and the varying strategies of opponents make accurate predictions difficult. Esports teams have only a week to prepare for the game and gather knowledge about the other team’s favorite champion picks, strengths, and weaknesses.

Previously, Team Liquid coaches prepared draft scenarios based on manual analysis of the opponent team’s draft behaviors and champion preferences. However, the challenge was that manual analysis is done before the draft, with the best potential pick or ban changes based on the decisions of the other team. Additionally, the sheer number of potential matches to choose from and the different strategies employed by opponent teams make manual draft prediction very difficult.

Game On: The Future of Esports Drafting with AI

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What if Team Liquid could analyze in seconds the best choice for upcoming drafts, including picks and bans, while considering more than 6,000 professional esports matches from the past year? What if the analysis would also consider the impact of game patches from the publishers by taking an additional 1.6 million amateur matches into account to assess changes in the power attributes and strengths of the champions? With SAP, this is now a reality.

By using SAP AI Core to train a generative AI model that takes data from past matches and puts them into context of the upcoming game, Team Liquid gets suggestions of the best draft picks and bans to maximize the chances to win.

The solution is built on SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP), and the data is stored in SAP HANA Cloud to cope with the 1.6 terabyte game data from past games. The result is an intelligent draft bot training, an application that runs on SAP BTP, visualizes the predictions, and provides Team Liquid with the current winning probability after each pick and ban.

Manual Analysis Is a Thing of the Past

With the AI draft bot, Team Liquid can train for draft situations against any professional team they face in a matter of seconds. This is achieved by incorporating multiple influencing factors based on an unprecedented number of matches. The coaches and players benefit from the opportunity to conduct what-if analyses and derive valuable knowledge from the data to simulate new strategies. This is also reflected in the time saved compared to the previous manual analysis: Team Liquid saves approximately 10,000 hours per year per year with the solutions from SAP.

Relying on SAP BTP and SAP HANA Cloud, SAP Business AI provides Team Liquid with the opportunity to further improve their game by leveraging data to make more informed decisions. Here is where fun and business meet.

This is how the power of business AI is made tangible in a perfect way — not just for gamers.

Philipp Herzig is chief artificial intelligence officer of SAP.

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Employee satisfaction is driven by more than paychecks and perks – it’s also about everyday work experiences. One often-overlooked aspect that can significantly impact how employees feel about their workplace is the benefits enrollment experience.

A confusing benefits enrollment experience is a significant source of frustration for many employees and can leave them feeling uncertain about their benefits elections. The majority of employees struggle to understand their benefits options and navigate through the enrollment process.

As a result, many employees choose to simply roll over their previous year’s elections rather than review and update their choices to ensure they are getting the most out of their benefits. This often leads to missed opportunities to take advantage of lower-cost options or benefits that are a better fit for them and their family and can even lead to increased attrition of top talent.

With the first half 2024 release, updates to the SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Global Benefits solution can enable you to empower your employees to take control of their benefits with an intuitive guided enrollment experience.

Extend your benefits capabilities with SAP SuccessFactors Learn how Making Benefits Enrollment More Seamless, Simple, and Intuitive

The new benefits enrollment experience in SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Global Benefits introduces a process-driven approach to benefits enrollment that helps simplify and streamline the activity. Available for insurance, savings plans, and pension benefit types, this new enrollment experience can enable employees to make better, more informed benefits choices without the unnecessary hurdles.

Here are some key highlights:

Guided Enrollment

A step-by-step progression flow guides employees through the process, working to simplify navigation and helping them complete benefits enrollment. Real-time benefits eligibility updates help employees continually understand the choices and options available by presenting them with all the benefits for which they are eligible to enroll.

Personalized User Experience

Customizable text and instructions enable a tailored enrollment experience aligned with organizational policies.

Benefits enrollment welcome page. Click to enlarge. Flexible Framework

Benefits admins can now have more flexibility in designing the enrollment experience to meet their organization’s needs with a new framework that helps support the capture of life insurance guaranteed issue amounts, customizable terms and conditions, and enhanced localization capabilities.

Anytime, Anywhere Access

Available on both desktop and the SAP SuccessFactors Mobile app, employees can complete benefits enrollment from any location using a mobile-friendly platform that helps ensure a seamless experience across devices.

Benefits enrollment on a mobile device or desktop. Click to enlarge. Employee Educational Resources

Simplified on-screen access to additional resources and information helps employees better understand their benefits and can promote more informed decision-making throughout the enrollment process.

Side-by-side benefit plan comparisons of costs and plan details help employees assess their plan options and select the best-fit plan. Localizable instructional text on each page helps ensure that the benefits and enrollment processes are well understood. Additionally, flexible options for defining contribution amounts within the IRS limits can make it easier for employees to make decisions regarding savings plans and pension elections.

Flexible options for defining HSA contribution amount. Click to enlarge. Consolidated Benefits Enrollment Process

Employees can complete all benefits-related tasks including reviewing and updating dependents, completing health declarations, enrolling in benefits, managing beneficiaries, and more through a single consolidated process, helping to improve employee engagement and satisfaction.

Watch the demo to learn more about the new enrollment experience in SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Global Benefits.

To learn about all the other innovations in the SAP SuccessFactors first half 2024 release, read the release highlights brochure and watch the 1H 2024 release highlights video.

Nicole Ramirez is senior director of Product Marketing at SAP.

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The current era, characterized by geopolitical conflicts, energy crises, and climate challenges, has been termed a “polycrisis” by experts. This environment results in fragile supply chains and volatile markets that often struggle to adapt to changes in demand. To remain operational in such turbulent times, companies must reevaluate their business models and make adjustments. Expense management, the strategic control and optimization of all company expenses, comes into focus in this context. 

Let’s be honest – do you know what your company spends daily across different areas like office management, production, or logistics? Expense management sheds light on this expenditure, allowing companies to analyze, document, and manage their expenses effectively. 

Digital solutions for spend management provide transparency and visibility across all expenses, enabling companies to identify potential risks faster and address them proactively. Additionally, they make CO2 emissions transparent along the value chain, empowering companies to implement decarbonization measures and reduce their carbon footprint. 

AI as a Booster for Procurement and Purchasing Processes 

Artificial intelligence (AI) has become an integral part of our daily lives, optimizing search engine results, personalizing advertising, and facilitating automatic text translation. On smartphones, we have streaming services, online shopping platforms, and even household appliances. AI is subtly integrated to make cumbersome, everyday tasks easier and more efficient. Since the rise of generative AI, companies and entire industries have been diligently working to incorporate it into their solutions for improved processes and efficiency. 

Procurement is one field where the impact of polycrisis is keenly felt, which has driven important changes. Resilience, transparency, and sustainability are the keywords here – and AI can make the crucial difference. 

AI can digitalize the procurement function, making it more efficient. Stakeholders rightly expect AI implementation to enhance decision-making, automate processes, and expedite insights. AI can also contribute to cost reduction and error rate mitigation. The question is no longer whether companies will adopt AI but when they will do so. And that time has to be now.

AI Strategies: Think Holistically 

To ensure the success of such projects, a holistic approach is needed. AI should become an integral part of the entire procurement process to benefit all areas. This begins with a consistent transformation strategy aligned with the company’s goals and values. It is important to have a strategic, solutions-oriented approach that makes it possible to find answers to real-life business challenges. By effectively integrating AI into data analysis and prediction models, companies can unlock tangible value and drive meaningful outcomes. The quality of the results depends on the quality and availability of corporate data – and this is where the greatest potential for improvement lies. Companies should clean up their data pool so that only valid and meaningful data is included. 

Eliminate the mundane and elevate the strategic with generative AI Discover AI solutions for spend management

For spend management, procurement, and purchasing, generative AI in particular holds enormous potential. As in every area where AI is deployed, SAP has committed to strictly adhering to the principles of relevance, reliability, and responsibility in spend management, thoroughly examining each application accordingly. Employees can be relieved of repetitive, manual, and time-consuming tasks, allowing them to focus better on their core tasks. For example, Joule, SAP’s generative AI copilot, will be embedded across SAP’s portfolio, including procurement solutions.

As an intelligent copilot, it can understand natural language, process data from SAP and third-party systems, and derive new insights from them. Thanks to unified data models, it can provide users with appropriate answers to their questions that fit the specific business context and thus helps to ensure that AI makes a meaningful contribution, enhancing business success. Moreover, it can offer meaningful advice to help them solve their daily tasks more intelligently and quickly, thereby helping to increase their efficiency in a secure and compliant manner. The practical use cases are numerous, ranging from HR or finance to supply chain management, procurement, and customer experience. Following our principle of responsibility, Joule can, for example, assist the HR department in eliminating potential bias from job descriptions and can even formulate suitable interview questions based on these job descriptions.

Category management plays a significant role in procurement, enabling companies to optimize their procurement strategies, strengthen supplier relationships, and reduce costs. Accordingly, 33% of procurement experts consider it a top technology trend to focus on in the next 12 to 18 months. A digitalized and AI-enhanced category management company integrates generative AI to increase efficiency and precision in product categorization and procurement. By applying AI-supported algorithms, relevant data is automatically analyzed, leading to informed insights for optimized inventory management and strategic purchasing decisions. 

With the steadily growing amount of data generated by daily business operations, it is becoming increasingly challenging for companies to find the resources to make the most of their own data, all while ensuring data privacy and security aspects are maintained. This data needs to be made accessible, visualized, and processed in a way that it can be leveraged. Therefore, it is important to rely on strong partners like SAP that bring both technical and strategic expertise to develop goal-oriented solutions with a strong focus on data protection and integrity. Now is the time to advance procurement through intelligent collaboration, smart category management, and an AI mindset. 

Practical Example: Category Management at OMV 

OMV, a global chemical and energy company based in Austria, is transitioning its linear value chain into a circular one with the aim of becoming a leading provider of more sustainable fuels, chemicals, and materials. Procurement plays a key role in this transformation. OMV is automating and streamlining all procurement and supply chain processes. The company is now planning to digitalize category management. 

At the core of this initiative is SAP Ariba Category Management, based on SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) and supported by generative AI. This solution helps procurement teams develop more effective category strategies by helping to accelerate the market analysis process and provide targeted recommendations. This can lead to faster and more efficient category management processes and increased cost savings. 

Complex planning processes that were once done manually can now be easily executed with SAP Ariba Category Management. The solution integrates features and tools to help leverage data for Big Data analytics, and it can provide comprehensive end-to-end visibility throughout the procurement process. 

The adoption of SAP Ariba Category Management offers OMV numerous benefits, including improved efficiency, cost savings, and the promotion of sustainability through the selection of more environmentally friendly suppliers and products. By implementing SAP Ariba Category Management, OMV successfully bridges the digital gap in procurement and takes another significant step towards a circular value chain. 

Curious to Learn More?

Learn more about intelligent category management at SAP Spend Connect Live, taking place October 14-16, 2024, in Las Vegas.

Elena Parker is chief revenue officer for Intelligent Spend and Business Network, MEE, at SAP.

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Preh, a subsidiary of Joyson Electronics in Ningbo, China, is a manufacturer of high-quality automotive electronics systems. With more than 100 years of experience in the electronics industry and over 40 years in the automotive sector, the Germany-based company has the perfect combination of access to growth markets, deep technical know-how, and cost efficiency.

Preh is a global growth company with five sales locations, six production plants, and a strong market position in the automotive market for human-machine interface and e-mobility systems.

With constant company growth and ever-changing market requirements, the product lifecycle costing at Preh had reached its limits. “We are on the way to becoming a €2 billion company and doing product costing without the support of a fully integrated data processing system,” says Harald Bayer, department head of Project Calculation at Preh Group. “For our management, it was time to give the calculation of all our new products a new basis.”

The company knew it needed a single source of truth for all product cost information that would also enable analysis and support reporting. 

Introducing a Future-Proof Standard Solution

“We looked at several software solutions on the market and our choice was SAP Product Lifecycle Costing. As we are trusting on the strength of SAP, this was a decision for the future,” Bayer says. “An SAP standard solution is a better fit with our system landscape.”

According to Bayer, key objectives for the project were:

• Replace former processes with a standardized process across the company
• Improve quality and accuracy for product costing along the product lifecycle
• Increase cost transparency for reporting and analysis to easily identify cost drivers
• Increase speed and flexibility in the product costing process and the efficiency of the entire organization

SAP Product Lifecycle Costing helps companies gain visibility across teams, calculate and proactively manage costs, and support new product innovations and customer-specific engineered products.

Consulting by SAP: Quick-Start Service for SAP Product Lifecycle Costing

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“In the first step, SAP Product Lifecycle Costing was implemented at our headquarters in Germany. Currently, we are doing the global rollout, which includes all business units at all locations and development centers, with the goal to set a common standard with global software,” Bayer says. “We want to make it available for all users involved in the product costing process. Therefore, we will train a large part of the entire PDP organization. There will be only one database.” He added: “The solution is integrated with our SAP ERP system, which is a single global instance.”

SAP Product Lifecycle Costing: Improve profits by managing costs accurately Start your free trial

To support various stakeholders in the most efficient manner, Preh created different apps and layouts within SAP Product Lifecycle Costing, such as a quality checker that helps avoid errors and increase the quality of the costing result as well as a material price app in which the purchasing department can enter material prices that are automatically transferred into the database. In addition, SAP Services and Support supported the company in developing different reports and an interface to provide up-to-date material prices.

Another partner, NTT Data, was involved with creating additional reports and analyses and with data modeling, which helped create more transparency thanks to different views.

Increased Transparency Helps Identify Cost Drivers, Optimize Design

In terms of the value Preh gained, “The main benefit is transparency,” Bayer says. “We can do analyses and reporting by pushing a button. With that, we know everything about cost drivers and can see the entire product costing. We can easily make comparisons between different calculations and see cost bridges, which was a lot of effort in the past.”

Leveraging the new database, the company can get an easier overview of which parts are used in which project; get up-to-date purchasing price information twice a day; examine calculations and prices of specific years; and make more precise product and project calculations.

From a business perspective, this means:

• Increased competitiveness, thanks to cost transparency and insight into cost drivers to make better design decisions
• Quick access to accurate product costing information
• Major time savings as master data is automatically replicated from SAP ERP, allowing employees to focus on cost improvements

“We can easily identify our cost drivers for working closely with development, purchasing, and our suppliers,” Bayer says.

By the end of the year, Preh plans to leverage SAP Product Lifecycle Costing to calculate more than a hundred projects with up to 10 different product variants – and many more later. “The choice of SAP Product Lifecycle Costing was the right decision,” Bayer says. “We were able to increase quality and accuracy in our processes and take an important step in our overall digitalization efforts.”

Karin Fent is senior director of Global Customer Success for Digital Supply Chain at SAP.

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The world is rapidly moving in the direction of clean renewable energy solutions, thanks to their burgeoning potential to help mitigate the worst effects of climate change – and their ability to enable a better future overall for our planet.

Perhaps surprisingly, private equity firms are a huge driver of this trend, whether via investments in solar, wind, biomass, or some other type of renewable energy. These companies recognize not only the social, humanitarian benefit but the economic benefit of renewables: low-cost power, reduced dependence on imported fuel, and more secure, reliable energy supply.

The numbers bear out this trend. According to S&P Global Market Intelligence data, private equity and venture capital transactions in the global renewable energy sector reached nearly US$15 billion in 2023, the highest total in the last five years. More so, funds raised in recent years are approaching 25 times the value of fossil fuel asset fundraising, per The Impact Investor.

However, there are challenges inherent in this tectonic shift. With broader strategic change in how we produce and consume energy comes more narrow change – and difficulties – in areas like engineering, manufacturing, procurement, supply chain management, human resources, and finance. These areas make it hard for private equity investors to easily operate and scale businesses, highlighting the present need and opportunity for scalable, cost-effective solutions that truly support the renewable space’s growth and future success.

With Great Power…

A crucial element of today’s state of play in the renewables space is the rapid acceleration in load growth made manifest by today’s technology advancements. Whether it be ChatGPT, Bitcoin, or some other artificial intelligence- or machine learning-related innovation, our tools are requiring more energy production and consumption than ever.

Unlock the potential of the sustainable energy transition with SAP Learn how

That means there is expansive economic benefit to finding cheaper, faster, less energy-consuming ways to run these tools and solutions – not to mention widespread social benefit.

Companies across the industry are already embracing SAP solutions to use less energy, improve business operations, and meet sustainability goals. One global market leader in energy storage solutions and services recently selected SAP to help it scale faster, improve supply chain visibility, and boost overall efficiency. Another business – an established provider and owner of clean energy solutions nationwide for commercial and industrial businesses – chose SAP to help amplify its growth efforts via the acceleration of its ability to both scale and innovate in the energy space.

By iterating and streamlining processes to meet modern needs, companies like these can not only equip themselves for success today but for success tomorrow, as they grow and change alongside the evolving and progressing energy transition.

…Comes Great Capability

In our current industry moment, renewable energy companies demand unparalleled visibility and insights into financing, projects, operations, and more. Whether it be land acquisition, asset construction, or maintenance, a centralized data model that facilitates intelligent business insights is vital. It’s how you empower everyone in the organization to make informed decisions that drive the company forward.

Take supply chain management. Renewable energy companies can’t just order new parts or materials with a short delivery time. Some of the materials necessary for renewable energy products, like graphite, have order lead times spanning years rather than months. Top technology solutions will meet engineering requirements for things like storage, transportation, and integration of natural resources into the production process so that they can ensure supply chain management goals are met. In short, efficient and effective development and implementation of renewable assets requires careful management of the supply chain.

So, yes, these companies and their private equity backers are innovating toward a cleaner future. But they may not always have the time or resources to fully innovate and advance their business processes, sometimes resorting to manual ones that slow things down and add risk. Companies like SAP can offer a seamless platform for managing these enterprises’ various business needs, in an integrated way that can enable them to focus on their core business and not have to worry about IT risks.

No matter where a renewable company is on their journey, SAP and its partners have solutions that can automate and optimize core business processes to help meet their maximum potential. This is due to elements like:

• Centralized ERP data providing a single source of truth and improved decision-making ability
• Fully managed supply chain procurement and logistics, with deep supplier networks
• Faster ROI thanks to repeatable, trustworthy, and accurate processes empowering business users

These seamless integrations and true end-to-end insights will power renewable companies well into the future, so that they can power us as well.

A Brighter Tomorrow

Leading private equity firms are leading for a reason. They see what’s possible in the renewable energy space and recognize the tremendous economic and social benefits that are available. For them, digital transformation is the skeleton key for unlocking a bigger and better future – one where they can easily scale up or down depending on their needs.

Leading ERP solutions can meet these companies where they are, with the speed and flexibility necessary to streamline business processes and build on them in exponential ways.

For the renewables space, it’s about setting the foundation for whatever comes next – not just for individual companies, but for our world and the way we all consume energy.

Mark Hollis is an industry executive advisor for Renewable Energy & Utilities at SAP.

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The SAP Global LoB Partner Excellence Awards are an SAP partner recognition program focusing on valuable contributions towards achieving SAP’s cloud growth ambitions through the following lines of business: SAP SuccessFactors, SAP Customer Experience, and Intelligent Spend and Business Network.

Complementing the SAP Pinnacle Awards, SAP’s premier global partner recognition program, the SAP Global LoB Partner Excellence Awards allow more granular recognition for achievements within the specific lines of business.

The three lines of business reward partners in the following six categories: Sales Success Midmarket, Sales Success Large Enterprise, Delivery Quality, Partner Solution Success, Customer Success Management, and Intelligent Enterprise Value Realization. For each category, partners are selected based on data and key performance indicators, ensuring all eligible partners are considered for this prestigious recognition.

Here are the SAP Global LoB Partner Excellence Awards 2024 winners and finalists:

SAP SuccessFactors

SAP Global SAP SuccessFactors Partner Excellence Award 2024 for Sales Success Midmarket

• Winner: Empleox GmbH
• Finalist: HR Campus AG
• Finalist: EPI-USE

SAP Global SAP SuccessFactors Partner Excellence Award 2024 for Sales Success Large Enterprise

• Winner: Accenture
• Finalist: Deloitte
• Finalist: NTT DATA Business Solutions

SAP Global SAP SuccessFactors Partner Excellence Award 2024 for Customer Success Management

• Winner: NTT DATA Business Solutions
• Finalist: Deloitte
• Finalist: PwC

SAP Global SAP SuccessFactors Partner Excellence Award 2024 for Delivery Quality

• Winner: EPI-USE
• Finalist: Deloitte
• Finalist: Accenture

SAP Global SAP SuccessFactors Partner Excellence Award 2024 for Partner Solution Success

• Winner: OpenText
• Finalist: WorkForce Software
• Finalist: Qualtrics

SAP Global SAP SuccessFactors Partner Excellence Award 2024 for Intelligent Enterprise Value Realization

• Winner: NTT DATA Business Solutions
• Finalist: Seidor
• Finalist: Al-Watania Information Systems

SAP Customer Experience

SAP Global SAP Customer Experience Partner Excellence Award 2024 for Sales Success Midmarket

• Winner: All for One Customer Experience GmbH
• Finalist: Cpro Industry Projects & Solutions GmbH
• Finalist: Derga Consulting S.p.a.

SAP Global SAP Customer Experience Partner Excellence Award 2024 for Sales Success Large Enterprise

• Winner: Deloitte
• Finalist: NTT DATA Business Solutions
• Finalist: Accenture

SAP Global SAP Customer Experience Partner Excellence Award 2024 for Customer Success Management

• Winner: NTT DATA Business Solutions
• Finalist: All for One
• Finalist: Deloitte

SAP Global SAP Customer Experience Partner Excellence Award 2024 for Delivery Quality

• Winner: Accenture
• Finalist: NTT DATA Business Solutions
• Finalist: Reply

SAP Global SAP Customer Experience Partner Excellence Award 2024 for Partner Solution Success

• Winner: Pricefx
• Finalist: Smart Energy Systems
• Finalist: Mediafly

SAP Global SAP Customer Experience Partner Excellence Award 2024 for Intelligent Enterprise Value Realization

• Winner: NTT DATA Business Solutions
• Finalist: All for One Group
• Finalist: Deloitte

Intelligent Spend and Business Network

SAP Global Intelligent Spend and Business Network Partner Excellence Award 2024 for Sales Success Midmarket

• Winner: NTT DATA Business Solutions
• Finalist: Seidor
• Finalist: apsolut

SAP Global Intelligent Spend and Business Network Partner Excellence Award 2024 for Sales Success Large Enterprise

• Winner: Accenture
• Finalist: Deloitte
• Finalist: apsolut

SAP Global Intelligent Spend and Business Network Partner Excellence Award 2024 for Customer Success Management

• Winner: Seidor
• Finalist: NTT DATA Business Solutions
• Finalist: Deloitte

SAP Global Intelligent Spend and Business Network Partner Excellence Award 2024 for Delivery Quality

• Winner: Accenture
• Finalist: Deloitte
• Finalist: PwC

SAP Global Intelligent Spend and Business Network Partner Excellence Award 2024 for Partner Solution Success

• Winner: Docusign
• Finalist: Icertis
• Finalist: Project44

SAP Global Intelligent Spend and Business Network Partner Excellence Award 2024 for Intelligent Enterprise Value Realization

• Winner: Deloitte
• Finalist: Delaware
• Finalist: PwC

SAP for Me is our digital companion for our customers, providing them with a personalized one-stop shop across their SAP product portfolio. And now it’s available to SAP Ariba and SAP Business Network customers and partners.  

SAP for Me provides a central access point to solution support. The portal offers a user-friendly interface with improved functionalities that can enable better and faster interaction with SAP support experts and can provide immediate guidance to solutions for daily business tasks. It aims to make detached information a thing of the past on the customer and partner journey to an intelligent enterprise.  

Since November 6, 2023, an English-language experience has been available for customers and partners to begin their exploration before the migration. And as of today, SAP Ariba and SAP Business Network knowledge-related content on SAP for Me is available in over 20 languages. 

SAP for Me provides an integrated and comprehensive platform to help meet the diverse needs of its users. The Services & Support dashboard features an SAP Ariba card that helps direct users to multiple resources on the legacy SAP Ariba Connect platform, including SAP Ariba and SAP Business Network release readiness information, product documentation, announcements, and specific content related to adoption and deployment.  

Say hello to your digital companion Check out SAP for Me

When getting started with SAP for Me, know that:

• SAP Ariba Connect S-user authorizations are automatically carried over to SAP for Me – no additional access authorization is needed to use SAP for Me. 
• The portal gives access to personalized content in the most used languages – English, German, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, French, Portuguese, and Spanish. 
• SAP for Me offers intuitive cards that categorize and bucket information for your convenience. Support-relevant cards are mainly located in the Services & Support and Systems & Provisioning dashboards.  
• The availability, maintenance, and subscriptions for SAP Ariba solutions and SAP Business Network can be found in the availability section of Systems & Provisioning.
• You can get a holistic view of licenses, orders, and consumption status.
• SAP for Me is also available on mobile devices. The mobile app will be enhanced with additional features and the ability to create and manage a new case.
• The get support application is your primary touchpoint with support.

Get Support, Easier and Faster 

The get support application helps guide customers through technical product issues in real time or reaching SAP experts through an AI-enabled framework. It can provide an integrated and personalized support experience to help simplify and streamline the case creation process. AI can automatically recommend solutions during the interaction, predict the right product categorization, and recommend the most suitable support channel, like Expert Chat, SAP Community, or Ask an Expert Peer, when available for the selected product.  

Access SAP Support on the Go 

With the SAP for Me mobile app, support interaction can be possible anywhere and anytime to complete tasks and access information directly on a smartphone. The mobile app can be downloaded from the Apple Store and Google Play Store. 

In conclusion, SAP for Me puts customer and partner interests into focus. While partners can manage their pipeline and customer success, the portal also serves as the central entry point for all support-related topics and questions for customers. It allows access to relevant information, self-services, and consumption status connected to any purchased product portfolio.  

The SAP for Me migration for SAP Ariba solutions and SAP Business Network is a significant milestone as we tap into the next generation of AI opportunities to create an effective experience for our customers while delivering a seamless consistency in the look, feel, and delivery of critical support services.

SAP for Me is made for you. Follow SAP for Me on LinkedIn and bookmark SAP for Me on SAP Community to stay updated.

Rohan Patel is global head of Support for SAP Procurement.

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As a business leader, basing business decisions on a new technology model like cloud computing or implementing a new technology like generative AI places a premium on trust.

Paul Saunders, head of Product Strategy and chief evangelist of Cloud ERP for SAP S/4HANA put it this way during a recent interview: “Trust is not the engine oil, it’s the essence of business.”

AI in ERP: Issues Around Trust

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In the interview, Saunders explains this and other aspects of the changing relationship between humans. The former Gartner analyst believes that this changed relationship has pushed trust to the top of the corporate agenda and made SAP’s commitment to relevant, reliable, and responsible business AI all the more crucial.

“The relationship between SAP and our customers for the longest time was transactional,” he says. But the shift to the cloud has changed that. From the customer’s perspective, in a cloud environment the SaaS vendor is effectively running the business and that requires a whole new level of trust.

As Saunders notes, “When a data center goes down the customer can’t just say, ‘Hey Bob, get down to the computer room and reboot the box.’ Now, with AI, it’s not just the data we’re providing, but information and recommendations. And some of those recommendations might challenge what the person thinks intuitively.”

For example, when Saunders was CIO of a golf cart maker in Georgia that shipped the carts all over the United States, he put in an early AI-based route planning package designed to optimize the deliveries of the carts to customers across the country.  

But despite the potential efficiency gains promised by the technology, the CEO who had run the company for 40 years and was accustomed to relying on his own judgment overruled the software and insisted that the drivers follow his preferred delivery route.

This resistance to change reflects a broader reluctance to embrace data-driven decision-making, with individuals often interpreting data in a way that reinforces their existing beliefs rather than challenging them.

When faced with the suggestion from a machine to do something different, most people will only follow the advice if they have solid confidence in the accuracy of the underlying data and can retain oversight of the process. 

Build AI directly into your core business processes with SAP Business AI Learn more

That, according to Saunders, plays to SAP’s advantage. He acknowledges that SAP is sometimes considered to be “a little bit old fashioned,” but also thought of as “incredibly reliable and trustworthy.” 

In such a fast-changing and unpredictable environment — one in which many experts, including Saunders, predict that at least one big brand name company will be in the news “for doing something terrible with AI” — SAP’s commitment to delivering dependable solutions infused with relevant, reliable, and responsible business AI is key. 

For Saunders, the importance of fostering trust and confidence in both the technology itself and the organizations deploying it, particularly in industries where risk aversion and conservatism are prevalent, cannot be overstated.  

But he also believes that organizations need to strike a balance between automation and human intervention, recognizing that while AI can streamline processes and improve efficiency, human judgment and oversight remain essential for ensuring the accuracy and reliability of AI-generated insights.  

In the end, what really matters to customers is not the technology itself, but the business value that it creates. “If you go to any CEO or CFO, they will tell you they only care about three things: revenue, cost, and risk. That’s it.”

Ultimately, he says, “Everything we do has to show the business value.” 

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TUMBA, Sweden — SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) today announced that Swedish-based DeLaval, part of the Tetra Laval Group, has chosen SAP S/4HANA Cloud to build out its new cloud-based ERP system as part of its company-wide transformation process.

The global producer of dairy and farming machinery with 18 factories worldwide chose to build its new technology foundation in the cloud to achieve a more standardized system that would harmonize various nomenclature, processes and data required to develop new solutions for its customers. This is part of DeLaval’s strategy to become an even better partner for its customers and to transform itself into a data-driven organization.  

Get a tailored-to-fit cloud ERP that adapts to your organization’s unique transformation Start here

“A completely new ERP system from scratch is more than just a technical upgrade, it’s a change process and a transformation of our entire business,” said Niklas Falkeling, DeLaval IT program manager. “We needed to reboot and take advantage of the standard solutions that SAP currently offers as cloud services. This is necessary for us to be able to continue to develop the business and become more flexible and agile.”

With a goal of making food production as sustainable and efficient as possible, the implementation of SAP S/4HANA Cloud is a global, multi-year and multi-business unit program that will aim to attract more talent, improve processes and leverage innovative technology. The next milestone in helping DeLaval accelerate its growth strategy is to strengthen its team with SAP competency in Tumba, Sweden; Gallin, Germany; and Wroclaw, Poland.

“This is a textbook example of how to run a global transformation program,” said Helle Dochedahl, SAP Nordic and Baltic managing director. “DeLaval has a well-founded strategy to standardize our latest business solutions and unify internal processes by engaging all stakeholders.”

Visit the SAP News Center. Follow SAP at @SAPNews.

Media Contacts:
Ulrika Wass, +46 73 827 1074, ulrika.wass@sap.com, CET
Lesa Plingen, +49 622 776 9000, lesa.plingen@sap.com, CET
SAP Press Room; press@sap.com

Top image courtesy of DeLaval

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This document contains forward-looking statements, which are predictions, projections, or other statements about future events. These statements are based on current expectations, forecasts, and assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results and outcomes to materially differ.  Additional information regarding these risks and uncertainties may be found in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including but not limited to the risk factors section of SAP’s 2023 Annual Report on Form 20-F.
© 2024 SAP SE. All rights reserved.
SAP and other SAP products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP SE in Germany and other countries. Please see https://www.sap.com/copyright for additional trademark information and notices.

As a pioneer of spend management software, SAP has been on the cutting edge of how to best comprehensively manage company spend and supplier relationships.

Like at home, identifying every dollar you spend and getting the most out of it is more critical than ever for your business. And as we continue to roll out SAP Business AI technology, the teams behind SAP solutions are working on ways to help you reduce the time spent on mundane tasks so you can focus on executing your strategy, unlocking spend potential, and unleashing efficiency.

The first quarter of 2024 was among the most productive in my 18 years at SAP. We debuted new AI capabilities in various SAP spend management solutions. Check out some of these highlights:

• SAP Ariba Category Management: We’ve incorporated generative AI-enabled features that can assist category managers by generating recommendations in the solution’s category segmentation, market dynamics, and cost structure tools.
• Scoutbee Discovery: SAP partnered with Scoutbee, a leading AI-powered supplier intelligence and discovery platform, to launch Scoutbee Discovery. This SAP endorsed app can rapidly identify qualified suppliers that meet specific criteria and can help advance strategic business imperatives. Watch the recording of me participating in a recent LinkedIn Live with the Scoutbee team.
• Concur Request: Now, this service uses generative AI to help provide intelligent cost estimates for trip planning.
• ExpenseIt: Users can upload receipt images to the ExpenseIt solution, which taps AI to help automatically create a new expense with several key fields prepopulated. Plus, ExpenseIt can now itemize hotel folios using generative AI.
• Generative AI search: A new capability within Concur Support allows SAP Concur customers to type questions in natural language and get quick answers using generative AI, without submitting a support ticket.

SAP’s market-leading spend and business network solutions are getting even smarter, working to unlock greater value for our customers. We have many resources devoted to spend management and that’s why we continue to deliver innovation in spend management.

And we are only getting started. By the end of 2024, SAP Business Network is planning the following enhancements:

• Generative AI RFI/RFP responses in SAP Business Network Discovery: With generative AI-enabled responses for postings in SAP Business Network Discovery, suppliers will be able to respond to RFIs promptly and more accurately, helping to save time and reduce costs associated with manual labor and resource allocation.  
• Catalog enrichment using ChatGPT recommendations: This feature can enable suppliers to generate and improve product descriptions and overall catalog quality based on prompts and keyword recommendations from ChatGPT. 
• Intelligent error simplification using generative AI: This feature uses machine learning and a large language model to interpret and categorize invoice rejection reasons, allowing suppliers to reduce the number of failing invoices, improve rapid invoice submission and payment, and optimize cash flow.

For more on how AI is transforming business networks, read this recent article from my colleague Joern Keller.

Eliminate the mundane and elevate the strategic in spend management with generative AI Discover SAP solutions But What Are Our Customers Saying?

Each quarter, G2 highlights the top rated solutions in the industry, chosen by the source that matters most: customers. Spring 2024 is no different, and once again our suite of spend and business network solutions scored extremely well.

• SAP Fieldglass is a G2 Spring Leader in Vendor Management.
• SAP Ariba is a G2 Spring Leader in Procure to Pay, Purchasing, Strategic Sourcing, Supplier Relationship Management, and Contract Lifecycle Management.
• SAP Concur is a G2 Spring Leader in Expense, Travel & Expense, and Invoicing.

What’s more, G2 recently announced its 2024 Best Software Award winners, with SAP Fieldglass and SAP Concur receiving high honors:

• SAP Fieldglass came in at No. 26 in G2’s Best Software Awards across all products and No. 12 in G2’s Best Software Awards for best midmarket products.
• SAP Concur came in at No. 4 in G2’s Best Software Awards for the account and software product category.

My colleagues are also getting their flowers. Etosha Thurman, chief marketing and solutions officer of Intelligent Spend and Business Network, and Steve Seide, global head of Adoption for Intelligent Spend and Business Network, were named Top Procurement Pros in the Supply & Demand Chain Executive 2024 Pros to Know awards. A big congratulations also goes out to Darcy MacClaren, CRO for SAP Digital Supply Chain, who received a Pros to Know Lifetime Achievement award.

Driving Success for Our Customers

Hearing me spotlight our direct and indirect procurement, external workforce, and travel and expense management solutions is one thing. Seeing them in action is something way more powerful. Here are a few recent customer success stories to take in:

• American Eagle Outfitters (AEO), a leading global specialty retailer offering high-quality on-trend clothing, accessories, and personal care products through its portfolio of brands, needed to evaluate indirect purchasing processes and vendor relationships to maximize efficiency. See how SAP Business Network for Procurement and SAP Ariba solutions helped simplify processes and deliver compliant purchasing protocols across the company.
• Power provider to over 900,000 electric customers, Oklahoma Gas & Electric Company (OG&E) faced challenges with the complexity of third-party and cross-department management of contingent workers. After transitioning SAP Fieldglass solutions to internal management, OG&E gained the visibility to make more informed financial decisions, like supplier negotiations.
• 2024 SAP Innovation Award winner Vestas Wind Systems, the world’s largest manufacturer of wind turbines, launched a large-scale quality initiative powered by SAP Business Network to help mitigate product defects in a highly complex supply chain. Now, using SAP Business Network, suppliers complete predefined quality tests and document them before confirming or sending an order. This enables Vestas employees to be warned in advance of any quality issues further up the supply chain, so they can take corrective action.
• Most KUKA employees are based in Germany, where tax regulation is complex and submitting hotel and entertainment expenses is anything but simple. The KUKA team worked together to develop a simple process using SAP Concur solutions, connected to SAP ERP, that allows employees to create hotel and entertainment expenses seven times faster with fewer errors and fewer rejected expense reports.

Join Us at SAP Sapphire!

SAP Sapphire & ASUG Annual Conference is June 3-5 in Orlando, Florida, this year and I can’t wait to meet with customers, partners, and my fellow colleagues. This is the best event in the industry in my opinion and you don’t want to miss out. Join us by registering on the SAP Sapphire event website, where you can also save your spot at the SAP Sapphire Virtual and SAP Sapphire Barcelona events. See you there!

Jeff Collier is chief revenue officer for SAP Intelligent Spend and Business Network.

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As businesses adapt to digitalization, they encounter various trends reshaping tax compliance. From emerging business models to governments’ digital initiatives, the tax landscape is undergoing significant transformation.

Authorities are starting to involve themselves in business transactions, disrupting well-established business processes and taking control of the invoicing flow between suppliers and buyers. As a result, they have the data needed to prevent tax evasion and start auditing taxpayers automatically or even auto-populating tax returns moving toward tax bills. Additionally, sustainability efforts and climate change regulations further impact tax regulations.

Amid these shifts, SAP can provide peace of mind to navigate complexities efficiently. By understanding the evolving tax landscape, businesses can leverage SAP solutions to help streamline compliance processes and drive automation to capitalize on emerging opportunities.

SAP solutions for global tax management are tailored to help address modern tax challenges. SAP S/4HANA Cloud can provide transparency and compliance on a global scale, enabling businesses to embed tax requirements in processes.

Pave the way to strategic tax management and automated compliance with SAP Learn more

Through localized solutions that offer standardized but flexible business processes, a complete suite of solutions facilitates efficient tax management, from e-invoicing to statutory reporting and overall tax compliance. With SAP technology and expertise, businesses can achieve greater accuracy and agility in tax compliance, paving the way for sustainable growth and competitive advantage.

To help tax professionals prepare for and become valuable members of tax transformation projects, SAP is introducing a new course: Unlocking Tax Transformation with SAP.

The course is designed to equip professionals with the knowledge needed to navigate today’s tax landscape and learn new capabilities that can be leveraged as part of SAP S/4HANA-enabled transformations to simplify tax compliance.

The course offers practical strategies to learn about the different tax types, global developments and their business relevance, and the importance of technology with a focus on SAP S/4HANA and SAP solutions for global tax management. It begins on April 30 and enrollment is now open. By enrolling in this course, tax professionals can gain valuable insights into industry best practices and leverage the latest SAP innovations to help optimize their tax processes.

In a time of rapid change, SAP supports businesses on their journey to tax compliance and growth. Through collaboration with SAP and a commitment to continuous learning, businesses can navigate the complexities of taxation with confidence and achieve their long-term objectives.

Erika Buson is part of Product Marketing for Global Tax Management and Entity Close at SAP.

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Publication of SAP SE, Walldorf,
pursuant to Sec. 62 para. 3 sent. 2 half sent. 1 UmwG

– Information about upcoming merger –

1. It is intended to merge Hybris Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung (local court of München, HRB 124384) as transferring company in the course of a simplified group merger into SAP SE as acquiring company. Therefore, the assets of Hybris Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung in its entirety together with all rights and obligations are transferred to SAP SE with effectiveness as of 1 January 2024, 0:00 a.m. (“effective merger date”). From the effective merger date to the date of the expiry of Hybris Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung pursuant to Sec. 20 para. 1 No.2 UmwG
   all acts and businesses undertaken by Hybris Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung shall be deemed to have been undertaken for the account of SAP SE.

   SAP SE is the sole shareholder of Hybris Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung. A merger resolution of the acquiring company SAP SE is not necessary pursuant to Sec. 62 para. 1 sent. 1 UmwG. A resolution of the general meeting of Shareholders of SAP SE on the approval of the merger agreement is also not required because SAP SE as the acquiring company holds the share capital of Hybris Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung in full. Since SAP SE holds all shares in Hybris Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung, the preparation of a merger report, a merger audit and an audit report is not required pursuant to Secs. 8 para. 3 sent. 3 no. 1 a), 9 para. 2, 12 para. 3, 60 UmwG.

2. The stakeholders of SAP SE with a combined holding of one-twentieth of the share capital of the company are herewith advised of their right to request the convention of a general meeting to decide on the approval of the merger (Sec. 62 para. 2 sent. 1, para. 3 sent. 3 UmwG).
3. A resolution of the shareholder’s meeting of Hybris Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung on the approval of the merger agreement is not required pursuant to section 62 para. 4 sent. 1 UmwG because SAP SE is the sole shareholder of Hybris Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung.
4. As of the date of this announcement, the following documents can be assessed by the links below:
   1. The draft merger agreement between SAP SE and Hybris Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung.
   2. The annual financial statements and, where required, the annual reports of the companies who are parties to the merger for the fiscal years 2021, 2022, 2023:

      2021 SAP SE Statutory Financial Statements and Review of Operations (HGB)
      2022 SAP SE Statutory Financial Statements and Review of Operations (HGB)
      2023 SAP SE Statutory Financial Statements and Review of Operations (HGB)
      2021 Hybris Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung Financial Statements
      2022 Hybris Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung Financial Statements
      2023 Hybris Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung Financial Statements

 

SAP SE, April 26, 2024

The Board of Directors

Today we’re introducing a new customer onboarding experience and quality check enhancements in RISE with SAP Methodology. After April 1, 2024, all customers subscribing to RISE with SAP for the first time will go through this improved experience at no additional cost.

RISE with SAP is a managed cloud offering that can enable customers to unlock continued innovation and transformation by modernizing their business-critical systems and processes in a highly collaborative and measurable way. This offering includes the newly announced RISE with SAP Migration and Modernization program that helps bring renewed focus on the cloud transformation journey by enabling smooth, secure migration of on-premise SAP ERP Central Component (SAP ECC) and SAP S/4HANA customers to the cloud. The key pillars of the program are the RISE with SAP Methodology, transformation incentives, and the innovation road map. The program features offerings tailored to each customer’s unique starting point. Its components are differentiated for SAP ECC and SAP S/4HANA customers and can run with a clean core approach, taking advantage of the latest innovations in RISE with SAP.  

Cloud solutions, infrastructure, and services combined to deliver a clear cloud migration path Explore RISE with SAP

The cornerstone of the program is the RISE with SAP Methodology. The methodology captures the best practices of successful implementations from thousands of RISE with SAP customers over three years and is designed to provide a consistent approach – from planning to go-live to ongoing operations and evolution – that can meet customers’ business transformation goals. Whether through SAP or partner-led engagements, customers can get a clear path with specific implementation stages and success KPIs to be able to take advantage of speed, agility, and all the benefits of the cloud.

Today we’re adding enhancements to the RISE with SAP Methodology, including a new onboarding experience and quality checks throughout the project implementation phases. All new RISE with SAP customers will go through this onboarding experience at no additional cost. The new experience provides guided enablement by SAP-assigned onboarding advisors and related tools and services to help customers implement their cloud ERP solutions with clarity and confidence. The onboarding advisors can guide customers through the overall process aligned with the RISE with SAP Methodology and prepare them to get started with their implementation. The new experience also helps simplify best practice implementation of the clean core, helping to make it a more central, actionable, and measurable standard of all implementations. This helps ensure all RISE with SAP customers can benefit from business agility, faster innovation cycles, and improved value realization. 

The new improvements to the RISE with SAP Methodology include:

• Expert onboarding guidance through embedded launch activities: A dedicated SAP advisor can deliver 1:1 enablement sessions to help educate customers on the RISE with SAP Methodology, clean core strategy, and related tools for implementation. Also, there are role-based, recorded enablement sessions covering business process best practices, solution architectures, and other strategic topics leading up to the go-live milestone. Check out this blog on embedded launch activities to get a full view on what enablement resources are delivered through this new onboarding experience with RISE with SAP. 
• Clean core-focused success plan, runbook, and quality checks: We’ve developed a clean core success plan with clear milestones and KPIs. The clean core success plan is now added to the SAP Activate road map viewer, where customers – with the support of SAP advisors and partners – can review the recommended actions in uniquely created road maps, aligning their needs with best practices to help continually unlock business value faster. We’re also adding new quality gate checks to validate that the actual implementation is in line with recommended clean core best practices before customers proceed to the next project phase. The outcome of the quality gate is the SAP clean core report with feedback and recommendations on how to implement the clean core strategy. These recommendations are recorded and tracked via the updated runbook in the SAP Cloud ALM solution. To learn more, read a blog post on this topic. 

We’ll continue to deliver more tools, templates, training, and oversight to help make it easier for customers to execute an optimal migration or transition to the cloud and achieve their business objectives. Coming later this year is the RISE with SAP system transition workbench. This tool will help the technical implementation of migrating to cloud ERP by providing digital access to SAP-approved best practices and guidance for migrations, automation of tasks, health, and system checks. Stay tuned as we get ready to share more on this in the coming weeks.   

To learn more, join us for our upcoming webinar on May 23, where we will go deeper into this new onboarding experience in the RISE with SAP Methodology. Register here.

Panda Priyadarsana is SVP and GM of Customer Services & Delivery and head of Cloud ERP at SAP.

Photo courtesy of SAP employee Juelma Guerreiro.

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In the rapidly evolving landscape of life sciences and healthcare, a new breed of heroes has emerged – visionaries that are revolutionizing the industries through innovative SAP technology. From the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) for drug discovery to building an intuitive mobile app to help Parkinson’s disease patients track symptoms, technology plays a pivotal role in creating a healthier world.

Bring life-saving medications to market faster and improve patient outcomes with SAP technology Learn more

With the integration of cutting-edge technologies, organizations can leverage data-driven insights to make informed decisions, accelerate time-to-market for new treatments, and ultimately improve patient care. Life sciences and healthcare companies are at the forefront of innovation and competitive advantage by embracing changing industry trends and harnessing technology’s power.

The SAP Industry Heroes program was launched in 2023 to celebrate companies that leverage technology to transform their business in innovative ways. Healthcare and life sciences heroes have harnessed the power of technology to transform the traditional patient paradigm into an adaptive, customer-centric frontier.

Astellas

Astellas Pharma Inc. is a leading pharmaceutical company dedicated to advancing healthcare through innovative therapies and cutting-edge research. Focusing on addressing unmet medical needs, Astellas develops and markets a wide range of healthcare solutions across various therapeutic areas, striving to improve the health and well-being of patients globally. With RISE with SAP and SAP SuccessFactors solutions, Astellas is building an internal environment that will leverage globally integrated data to unlock the organization’s full potential.

DXC Technology

DXC Technology is a global IT services and solutions company known for its expertise in digital transformation, enterprise applications, cloud computing, and cybersecurity. With a focus on enabling clients to thrive in the digital era, DXC offers a wide range of technology and advisory services tailored to meet the diverse needs of businesses across industries. A mobile app built on the SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) and SAP Business AI is enabling individuals with Parkinson’s disease to keep clinicians informed about their symptoms, accompanied by a clinician dashboard – and generative AI query extensions are also in development. The innovative solution aims to improve the quality of life for these patients and their caregivers and marks a huge step forward in using AI to support clinical decisions.

Gilead Sciences

Gilead Sciences, Inc. is a biopharmaceutical company that has pursued and achieved breakthroughs in medicine for more than three decades, with the goal of creating a healthier world for all people. The company is committed to advancing innovative medicines to prevent and treat life-threatening diseases, including HIV, viral hepatitis, COVID-19, and cancer. Gilead operates in more than 35 countries worldwide, with headquarters in Foster City, California.

Gilead’s digital transformation journey includes a bold migration to SAP S/4HANA with segmentation and SAP Ariba and continues to expand its reach with SAP BTP and cutting-edge solutions such as SAP Intelligent Clinical Supply Management, SAP Cell and Gene Therapy Orchestration, and SAP Batch Release Hub for Life Sciences.

Most notably, Gilead and SAP are co-innovating on SAP Batch Release Hub for Life Sciences. This groundbreaking add-on will support continued compliance with regulatory standards across regions and jurisdictions with emphasis on highest quality and safety standards for Gilead’s products, further safeguarding patient wellbeing across the globe. Integrating SAP Ariba solutions, including SAP Business Network, Gilead aims to create a globally interconnected platform, enhancing collaboration between suppliers and buyers while optimizing its global procurement operations.

Additionally, SAP and Gilead are collaborating on co-innovating jurisdiction control checks using SAP Batch Release Hub for Life Sciences. The add-on will perform control checks on manufactured batches of pharmaceutical products, helping life science organizations to maintain compliance with regulatory standards across multiple regions and jurisdictions. This safeguard checklist will further support the quality and safety of products.

SAP celebrates these organizations’ outstanding efforts, collaboration, and dedication to driving successful business outcomes with technology. The innovations streamline research processes, enhance efficiency, and improve patient care, ultimately revolutionizing how healthcare and life sciences companies operate.

SAP Innovation Days for Life Sciences & Healthcare are taking place in Palo Alto, California, from April 24- 25, 2024, and Newton Square, Pennsylvania, from April 29-30, 2024, celebrating industry heroes and bringing attendees together to discuss leveraging technology to drive business outcomes. Get more information on the events here.

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One of the perks of my job is that I get to spend a considerable amount of time with our industry partners. Whether I’m talking with a startup software company or an established global service partner, two words — two letters actually — are the hot topic of almost every engagement lately: artificial intelligence, specifically business AI.

SAP at Hannover Messe: Bring out new manufacturing excellence Learn how

As we navigate this brave new world of business AI, SAP partners are playing an essential role as equal parts technology disrupters, trusted advisors, and innovation multipliers. They work and live at the edge, breaking technology rules with every new solution and innovation they bring to the table. These companies are passionate about their AI-driven solutions, which will provide what SAP manufacturing customers want most for their businesses nowadays: more efficiency, accuracy, and agility in their production operations and supply chains. Their energy and passion are positioning them to redefine the rules of engagement regarding how partner ecosystems work.

It doesn’t matter what kind of partner you are — you could be on the build, implement/service, or sell sides of the SAP partner ecosystem, the opportunities to innovate, and co-innovate with SAP and other partners, solutions that bring value to customers in discrete manufacturing industries are as limitless as our imaginations. It’s an exciting time to be an SAP industry partner.

Innovative Solutions from SAP and Partners Give Our Manufacturing Customers a Competitive Edge

Giving our manufacturing customers the business AI solutions they need to thrive in highly competitive and often volatile markets is an absolute must. Whether those solutions are developed by an SAP partner, SAP itself, or collaboratively is secondary.

This new drive to co-innovate on our customers’ behalf is creating opportunities for partners to develop and deliver industry innovations in three areas of discrete manufacturing:

1. Solutions that enable efficient, accurate, and agile manufacturing and supply chains by integrating processes, removing data silos, and seamlessly connecting manufacturing and supply chain applications with the whole of the business.
2. Solutions that improve decision-making by using AI to analyze data from internal and external sources in context and produce insights that increase manufacturing operations’ resilience and help customers strike the right balance among cost, sustainability, and customer satisfaction.
3. Solutions that promote collaboration within a business ecosystem. Many of the company executives I’ve spoken with recently wanted to talk about Manufacturing-X, the growing cross-industry initiative in which companies across various manufacturing value chains come together within a global business ecosystem to define a standard that enables them to share production and supply chain data across platforms and technology to further increase resilience, sustainability, and competitiveness.

We are bringing this customer-focused, partner-driven approach to life this week at Hannover Messe, bringing center stage the latest, most compelling innovations to emerge from SAP and our partner ecosystem, across both discrete and process manufacturing — many embedded with business AI.

Some of the showcases that have been developed collaboratively in action include:

• Modular manufacturing that orchestrates production cells with a hard independent fleet manager
• High-speed bottling that captures traceability data and in-line quality assurance
• A centralized operations control center that manages an offsite process production line
• AI-enhanced visual inspection and guided instructions during component assembly
• A quick guided journey through an Industrial Metaverse, showing how assets inside a power plant can be intelligently and remotely managed

SAP partners are playing an integral part in our presence at Hannover Messe, just as they are in our overarching industry vision. Partners including Accenture, Camelot ITLab, Cideon Software & Services, FORCAM, Kinexon, Systema, and TeamViewer are all exhibiting their solutions alongside their SAP counterparts, demonstrating the true power of partnership and innovation at every turn.

By leveraging resources like the new SAP AI Launchpad and generative AI hub, our partners will introduce industry innovations that will add immediate value for customers in the discrete and process manufacturing space. Hence, they have the intelligent digital tools they need to be future-ready.

Kinexon’s OS extension to the SAP Digital Manufacturing solution is one example. Kinexon OS orchestrates the shop floor and automates previously manual processes, improving production speed, quality, and asset utilization. It is providing customers with an essential pathway to modular production and autonomous manufacturing.

For those of you at the event, stop by the SAP space and experience innovation and partnership in perfect harmony firsthand. An electric injection molding machine developed by Fanuc with support from partner Syntax will be cranking out made-to-order drinking vessels.

Come enjoy a cup of inspiration on us. It’s a small but meaningful taste of what’s possible for partners in our collaborative, customer-focused, and business AI-driven cloud ecosystem.

Sven Denecken is senior vice president and chief marketing and solutions officer for Industries & CX at SAP.

The power of partnership: drive customer success with solutions from SAP, delivering trusted advice and deep product knowledge Learn more

WALLDORF — SAP SE today announced its financial results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2024.

• Cloud revenue up 24% and up 25% at constant currencies, supported by 32% Cloud ERP Suite revenue growth at constant currencies
• Current cloud backlog of €14.2 billion, up 27% and up 28% at constant currencies
• IFRS cloud gross profit up 27%, non-IFRS cloud gross profit up 27% and up 28% at constant currencies
• IFRS operating loss of –€0.8 billion due to a €2.2 billion restructuring provision
• Non-IFRS operating profit up 16% and up 19% at constant currencies even including higher share-based compensation resulting from strong share price increase
• Outlook 2024 reaffirmed

“We’re off to a great start in 2024 and we’re confident we’ll achieve our goals for the year. Looking ahead, we have powerful growth drivers in place – Business AI, cross-selling across our cloud portfolio, and winning new customers particularly in the midmarket. The strength of our current cloud backlog reaching a record growth rate is a testament to that momentum. Our transformation program is also well on track and will help us to capture this growth and increase efficiency.”

Christian Klein, CEO

 

“In the first quarter we successfully kicked off the implementation of our transformation program thereby allowing us to focus our investments on the Business AI opportunity while decoupling expense from revenue growth. We are also very pleased by the unabated growth momentum of the Cloud ERP Suite, reflecting the market’s secular shift towards integrated cloud solutions.”

Dominik Asam, CFO

Read the Quarterly Statement

Press Contacts:
Joellen Perry, +1 (650) 445-6780, joellen.perry@sap.com, PT
Daniel Reinhardt, +49 (6227) 7-40201, daniel.reinhardt@sap.com, CET

Success can take many forms. It’s achieving AI-driven results faster and smarter. It’s unlocking more meaningful and aspirational career development experiences. It’s empowering employees and managers through simple HR-related tasks in the flow of work, freeing up more productive time across the organization.

And for you and your business, you can tell all those success stories – and more – with the SAP SuccessFactors HCM suite and our first half 2024 release.

As your organization and employees begin to embrace AI, HR has the opportunity to drive new levels of employee productivity, engagement, and growth. SAP SuccessFactors HCM can give you everything you need – the global foundation, skills framework, people-first experiences, and purpose-built AI capabilities – to help take HR to the next level. With the SAP SuccessFactors first half 2024 release, we are delivering more than 250 innovative features and enhancements.

SAP Business AI

In 1H 2024, we are thrilled to introduce more than 25 new AI capabilities to enable better employee experiences and new levels of productivity.

Among these capabilities include the ability for applicants to provide skills during the application process. This can enable recruiters to see a skills compatibility for each applicant based on matching the applicant’s skills and the job requisition, helping improve applicant screening and time to hire. Furthermore, personalization in SAP SuccessFactors Opportunity Marketplace is enhanced with new AI-driven recommendation categories, “Ignite Your Role” and “Reach Your Aspirations.” These guided experiences can enable employees to proactively take steps to reach their development goals.

Assisted screening and skills match available in 1H 2024 release. Click to enlarge.

Generative AI continues to be embedded across the SAP SuccessFactors HCM suite, including new capabilities to help employees create ready-made performance and development goals and AI-assisted writing to help improve the quality, clarity, and conciseness of writing across a variety of areas within SAP SuccessFactors solutions.

Further, with this release, insights based on an employee’s compensation and job history are available to help support managers in having effective and well-informed compensation discussions. 

The AI copilot that truly understands your business Meet Joule

We have also added more than 15 new Joule capabilities in this release to help both managers and employees get work done in a conversational way, such as creating or changing a position, creating spot awards, clocking in and out, and viewing pay statements as well as time capabilities like requesting time off, checking leave balances, and syncing holidays to Outlook calendars while managers can review and approve time off. Further, employees can now clock in and out using Joule, Microsoft Teams, or the SAP SuccessFactors Mobile app.

SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central

We are excited to unveil two new people profile experiences – the profile preview and the spotlight view. The profile preview can provide a snapshot of key areas of the employee profile, including job, manager, location, and contact details, to quickly view and connect with others. Additionally, the spotlight view can showcase employee skills and competencies, mentoring and target roles, and other relevant personal and organizational information.

We are also introducing a new org chart experience with a refreshed look and feel. Available on desktop and mobile, users can explore their organizational structure with improved expand and collapse capabilities, which helps provide full accessibility to an employee’s profile preview, with an option to open the new spotlight view.

The new org chart experience. Click to enlarge.

Customers can now automatically process new hires from SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting and SAP SuccessFactors Onboarding into SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central. This capability helps further reduce the time to hire, which is especially important with mass, seasonal, and high-volume hiring.

SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central Global Benefits

With this release, we are pleased to introduce a new benefits enrollment experience for insurance, savings, and pension benefit types. Available on both desktop and mobile, the guided experience for benefits elections can give employees increased convenience with improved navigation and increased confidence with side-by-side plan comparisons and embedded instructional text. Additionally, employees can update dependent information and manage beneficiaries directly from the benefits enrollment process, which helps further streamline the enrollment experience.  

SAP SuccessFactors Time Tracking

We are thrilled to share the launch of a new time sheet experience that integrates the latest version of My Timesheet in SAP S/4HANA with SAP SuccessFactors. Employees can now record time for payroll, as well as against activities and cost objects, from a single time sheet across applications. This helps organizations leverage real-time connectivity between HR and finance operations to keep track of employee activity and labor costs and to pay employees accurately and on time.

Additionally, a new monthly calendar view for time sheets can give employees and managers a complete picture of recorded time over a month. Users can drill down into specific days and submit or approve time for pay periods beyond a week, such as biweekly or monthly.

For managers, a new time approval center helps simplify approvals with a centralized dashboard highlighting anomalies for swift resolution. Managers can monitor team working hours effectively, helping to ensure accurate and timely payroll processing.

SAP SuccessFactors Onboarding

With enhancements to the onboarding journey experience, new hires can now use the new Your Onboarding Checklist page to reference and complete all tasks – onboarding data collection, compliance tasks, additional onboarding tasks, and exploring the onboarding guide – from one place with a single view. Available for new hires, rehires, internal hires, and employees with global assignments, this improved experience can save time for onboarding participants while helping to ensure productivity from the start.

The new onboarding journey experience. Click to enlarge.

And that’s only a fraction of all the innovations we’re bringing to customers in 1H 2024. There’s much more in the release, including new and exciting updates in:

• Generative AI and Joule capabilities
• SAP SuccessFactors Opportunity Marketplace
• SAP SuccessFactors Compensation
• SAP SuccessFactors Succession & Development
• SAP SuccessFactors Incentive Management
• SAP SuccessFactors Work Zone

Read the SAP SuccessFactors first half 2024 release highlights brochure and watch the 1H 2024 release highlights video to find out more.

Bianka Woelke is group vice president of Application Product Management at SAP.

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HANNOVER — SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) today announced AI advancements in its supply chain solutions that will unleash a transformative wave of productivity, efficiency and precision in manufacturing. AI-driven insights from real-time data will help companies use their own data to make better decisions across supply chains, streamline product development and improve manufacturing efficiency.

SAP at Hannover Messe: Bring out new manufacturing excellence Learn how

“Businesses today are confronted with challenges ranging from supply chain disruptions and labor shortages to geopolitical uncertainties,” said Muhammad Alam, member of the Executive Board of SAP SE, SAP Product Engineering. “SAP recognizes the imperative for agility and intelligence, driving innovation with AI-powered solutions to streamline supply chain and manufacturing processes. Companies can enhance operational efficiency and improve supply chain resiliency while delighting customers with superior service, paving the way for sustained growth and market competitiveness.”

Accurate and relevant real-time information helps mitigate the impact that supply-chain disruptions have on suppliers, manufacturers and distributors worldwide. SMA Solar Technology AG and other customers have already witnessed the benefits of SAP’s solutions, including an approximately 15% increase in supply chain workforce productivity, a 10% decrease in overall supply chain planning costs and a 10% reduction in inventory carrying costs and stock turnover rate.

“SMA Solar modernizes its manufacturing execution systems to support sustainable, risk-resilient manufacturing operations with the power of AI-enabled visual inspection in the SAP Digital Manufacturing solution,” said Heiko Kehm, SMA Solar head of IT Order to Cash.

Sixty-three percent of supply chain executives and 52% of operations executives have an AI strategy linked to business objectives, according to “The Importance of AI in Supply Chain and Operations,” a global 2024 IDC InfoBrief sponsored by SAP*. Fifty-one percent of the 2,000 survey respondents are embedding AI into supply chain planning business processes and key applications for real-time decision-making. Another 58% are using AI to increase operational efficiency and employee productivity.

Key improvements to SAP’s supply chain solutions to support customers’ AI-centric strategy include:

• Optimizing decisions across the supply chain with AI-driven insights: Companies can now leverage higher volumes of machine data and integrate AI-driven visual inspection by computer into their production processes, enabling a remarkable increase in quality through automation.
• Streamlining product development: Product developers can now use SAP’s AI copilot Joule to gather and enhance new product ideas quickly and effectively using natural language queries. Joule also helps tag product designs with business data, so they visually contextualize business-critical information.
• Detecting equipment anomalies: Using AI, asset operators can proactively address potential breakdowns based on sensor data collected from smart devices and edge gateways. This new capacity utilizes the cutting-edge Cumulocity IoT platform from Software AG, which is planned to be embedded in the SAP Asset Performance Management application in Q3.
• Improving field response: Customers can optimize driving routes and allocate job assignments efficiently with integrated real-time traffic data and machine-learning-trained models, which enable the right field service technicians to reach their destinations on time.

Find more details about the innovations SAP will show at Hannover Messe here.

Visit the SAP News Center. Follow SAP at @SAPNews.

*IDC InfoBrief, sponsored by SAP, The Importance of AI in Supply Chain and Operations, document #US52042224, April 2024.

About SAP

As a global leader in enterprise applications and business AI, SAP (NYSE: SAP) stands at the nexus of business and technology. For over 50 years, organizations have trusted SAP to bring out their best by uniting business-critical operations spanning finance, procurement, HR, supply chain, and customer experience. For more information, visit www.sap.com.

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