H&M and SAP are using Business AI to connect digital, physical, and operational retail experiences in real time.
In this SAP Sapphire Orlando 2026 conversation, Sebastian Steinhaeuser, Chief Operating Officer, Strategy & Operations, and member of the SAP Executive Board, welcomes Ellen Svanström, Chief Digital & Information Officer of H&M, to discuss how H&M is building a digital and AI foundation to strengthen its position as a fashion brand. Ellen explains how SAP supports H&M’s transformation through RISE with SAP, SAP Business Data Cloud, SAP Commerce Cloud, and SAP SuccessFactors.
The discussion highlights how H&M is layering AI on top of that foundation to improve operations, reimagine stores and supply chains, and empower store colleagues with more precise decision-making. One example is the Store Intelligence app, which tracks store performance in real time and uses a Store Intelligence Agent to prepare store readiness and suggest next best actions for store managers.
Ellen also shares how H&M and SAP are exploring a customer-facing Store Concierge Agent that connects online and in-store experiences with personalized recommendations, real-time availability, and contextual advice. Together, these examples show how SAP Business AI can help retailers create more relevant, helpful, and human customer experiences at scale.
Chapters:
00:00 – H&M’s digital and AI journey
00:43 – Building a digital foundation
01:23 – SAP at the core of H&M processes
01:33 – Layering AI into operations
02:15 – H&M and SAP collaboration
02:35 – Store Intelligence app
03:04 – Store Intelligence Agent
03:19 – Agents across the value chain
03:44 – Real-time demand and store recommendations
04:06 – Store Concierge Agent
04:36 – Connecting online and in-store experiences
05:00 – Personalized recommendations and availability
05:31 – AI styling for SAP Sapphire
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About SAP:
As a global leader in enterprise applications and business AI, 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: https://www.sap.com/index.html
SAP is helping enterprises turn the promise of Business AI into real outcomes across data, processes, and governance.
In this closing segment from SAP Sapphire Orlando 2026, Christian Klein, SAP’s Chief Executive Officer, returns to the question he asked at the start of the keynote: Will SAP be a software company in the future? With help from Joule, the answer is clear: SAP is becoming a Business AI company.
The video recaps the major keynote announcements, including SAP Business AI Platform, SAP Autonomous Suite, and the role of RISE with SAP in supporting change management and AI adoption. Together, these innovations help organizations bring the Autonomous Enterprise to life with accurate, secure, and scalable AI outcomes.
The segment closes with a clear message: SAP is working with customers and partners to help companies move from AI promise to enterprise-wide impact.
Watch the full Global Keynote: https://youtu.be/9aa-etRsaLU?si=j0rDQJCtoxUai0fX
Watch all SAP Sapphire replays on demand: https://www.sap.com/events/sapphire.html
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About SAP:
As a global leader in enterprise applications and business AI, 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: https://www.sap.com/index.html
SAP Business AI Platform is opening new ways for enterprises to build, extend, and adopt AI agents at scale.
In this SAP Sapphire Orlando 2026 keynote segment, Christian Klein, SAP’s Chief Executive Officer, announces three updates to help customers and partners accelerate AI adoption: open data exchange between SAP AI agents and third-party agents, free AI development with Joule Studio 2.0, and more than €100 million in ecosystem investment to build agents and drive adoption.
The video also introduces SAP Autonomous Suite, a major evolution of SAP’s application business. Spanning Autonomous Finance, Spend, Supply Chain, HCM, and CX, the suite is designed to help businesses move from systems of execution to systems that can listen, understand, steer, and manage work with people in the loop.
With role-centric Joule Assistants, outcome-based agents, audit-ready traceability, extensibility by design, and open orchestration across SAP and non-SAP agents, SAP is reimagining how enterprises run in the age of AI.
Watch the full Global Keynote: https://sap.to/6053BBLz7t
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About SAP:
As a global leader in enterprise applications and business AI, 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: https://sap.to/6051BBLz7F
SAP Business AI Platform brings together business data, process context, and governance to help enterprises scale AI with confidence.
In this SAP Sapphire Orlando 2026 keynote segment, Christian Klein, SAP’s Chief Executive Officer, explains why enterprise AI needs more than generic models. While AI can generate text, images, and code with increasing speed, mission-critical business processes require accurate, reliable, and compliant outcomes.
The video introduces SAP Business AI Platform, which brings together SAP’s AI foundation, SAP Business Data Cloud, and SAP Business Technology Platform to support SAP’s vision for the Autonomous Enterprise. Christian explains how SAP infuses deep ERP process knowledge, SAP Knowledge Graph, SAP Domain Models, and a semantic data layer across SAP and non-SAP systems into AI agents.
He also introduces Joule Studio 2.0 as an open, agnostic build layer for developing agents with direct access to business logic, along with a governance layer designed to manage SAP and non-SAP agents through SAP AI Agent Hub in LeanIX.
Chapters:
00:00 – Welcome to SAP Sapphire 2026
00:52 – The beginning of something better
01:23 – How AI is changing work and life
02:19 – Why 80% accuracy is not enough in business
02:51 – Why many companies see limited AI value
04:09 – How SAP solves the enterprise AI challenge
04:21 – ERP as the brain of every company
05:10 – Connecting Joule to ERP business context
06:02 – Launching SAP Business AI Platform
06:52 – Vision for the Autonomous Enterprise
07:04 – Context layer, Knowledge Graph, and SAP Domain Models
07:43 – Connecting SAP and non-SAP data
08:12 – Joule Studio 2.0 and the build layer
08:49 – Governance layer and SAP AI Agent Hub
Watch the full Global Keynote: https://sap.to/6053BBLz4U
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About SAP:
As a global leader in enterprise applications and business AI, 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: https://sap.to/6051BBLz4x
SAP is helping customers start their AI journey faster, wherever they are today.
In this SAP Sapphire Orlando 2026 keynote segment, Christian Klein, SAP’s Chief Executive Officer, announces a new partnership with Palantir and Accenture to offer AI migration tools for the most complex transformation scenarios. The announcement highlights the role of SAP’s ecosystem in helping customers modernize with confidence and move toward the Autonomous Enterprise.
The video also explains how SAP GROW gives new SAP customers a clear path to the Autonomous Enterprise. With more than 20 AI assistants activated out of the box at no additional cost, SAP GROW is designed to help organizations begin using AI quickly while building a foundation for future business transformation.
Together with its ecosystem, SAP is making it easier for customers to modernize, adopt AI, and unlock value from SAP Business AI.
Watch the full Global Keynote: https://sap.to/6053BBLzAR
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About SAP:
As a global leader in enterprise applications and business AI, 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: https://sap.to/6050BBLzAk
Most people wake up expecting the world to run. Lights turn on. Planes land. Hospitals run. Supply chains deliver. What feels seamless on the surface is powered by a vast network of systems, data, and business processes working in sync behind the scenes.
SAP Sapphire in 2026: Advancing the Autonomous Enterprise
That idea framed a keynote at SAP Sapphire in Orlando, where Thomas Saueressig, chief customer officer and member of the Executive Board of SAP SE, and Jan Gilg, global president of Customer Success & Americas and member of the Extended Board of SAP SE, set out the company’s case for the Autonomous Enterprise.
Their message was clear: As AI moves from promise to practice, customers are no longer asking whether it matters; they are asking how to make it deliver measurable results across the business.
“Every day, billions of people wake up trusting that the world simply runs,” Saueressig said.
But making that happen is anything but simple. Saueressig pointed to the hidden complexity behind everyday routines — from power grids balancing supply and demand in real time to global supply chains moving goods across countries and continents. Enterprise operations, he argued, are the invisible backbone of modern life, even if most people never see them.
Gilg picked up that thread by focusing on the pressure customers now face as they try to translate AI ambition into business value. Excitement is high, he said, but so is urgency.
Customers want to scale AI across the enterprise and connect it to core processes where it can have tangible impact. But according to Gilg, the real obstacle is not the AI itself. It is the enterprise landscape around it.
“The elephant in the room: AI in the enterprise is complex,” he said, pointing to the disconnected applications and fragmented data many organizations still contend with.
That challenge led directly to SAP’s vision for the Autonomous Enterprise — one in which AI is embedded into business processes, connected through trusted data, and governed in a way that makes it reliable at scale.
Thomas SaueressigJan Gilg
The Autonomous Enterprise vision
“It’s this need for trusted, seamless integration that led us to our vision for the Autonomous Enterprise,” Gilg said.
He presented it not as a future concept, but as a practical operating model in which AI drives end-to-end execution within a trusted governance framework, with people remaining in control.
Saueressig cast SAP’s role as helping customers get there: “Our goal is to help you become an Autonomous Enterprise step-by-step. … We are making AI value real today.”
He linked that approach to RISE with SAP, SAP’s AI offerings, and the SAP Services and Support Portfolio with its Ssuccess plans, which are designed to help customers put innovation to productive use. The emphasis, he said, is on creating value throughout the transformation journey
“When you are fully committed to RISE with SAP, we are committed to support you at every step,” Saueressig said. That commitment spans even the most complex and hybrid landscapes, he said, stressing that no customer will be left behind.
Lockheed Martin: Readiness over transformation in a high-stakes environment
That customer-first approach set up the next part of the keynote, where customers took the stage to share firsthand how they are transforming their businesses in the real world — no theory, no abstraction, just practical experience.
Opening the customer round, Lockheed Martin positioned transformation not as an end goal, but to ensure constant readiness in one of the world’s most demanding environments.
“Transformation is not the goal. Readiness is for us,” said Maria Demaree, SVP and CIO of Lockheed Martin Corporation, stressing that the stakes are “human” when systems support national defense and allied missions. Readiness, she explained, means the ability to move “with speed, clarity, and confidence across the enterprise.”
Through its largest transformation investment in the company’s history, Lockheed Martin is redesigning processes end-to-end, connecting fragmented systems, and embedding AI into a model-based enterprise built on SAP.
Operating in a highly regulated environment with strict security and data requirements, the company is focused on reducing cycle times and improving responsiveness. Demaree emphasized that “transformation doesn’t start with technology. You must rethink your processes.” SAP’s role, she said, has evolved from vendor to trusted partner understanding Lockheed Martin’s business and the environment it works in.
Aeropuertos Argentina: From reactive winter operations to proactive AI-driven control
Aeropuertos Argentina made history by becoming the first Latin American customer to take the SAP Sapphire keynote stage. The company used the spotlight to share a hands-on example rooted in operational urgency and showed how a clean core and focused innovation can quickly deliver results.
Managing 90% of Argentina’s commercial flights, they need to keep airport operations running during severe winter weather. This has historically relied on manual, fragmented processes — driving up costs, safety risks, and environmental impacts. To address this, the company developed an AI agent called Smart Network for Operative Winter (SNOW) to orchestrate weather data, runway sensors, maintenance processes, and operational procedures.
“We passed from a reactive to a proactive model,” said Gustavo Sabato, Chief Information Officer of Aeropuertos Argentina, highlighting expected benefits, including a 16% cost reduction and lower CO₂ emissions. Time to value was fast: from idea to operation in 12 weeks, with rollout starting at two airports and expanding to six more this upcoming winter.
A key enabler was upgrading from SAP R/3 to SAP S/4HANA in 2023 and building the solution on SAP Business Technology Platform. While integrating multiple non-standardized data sources was challenging, the result is now that the company operates with “only one version of the truth,” said Sabato, and requires minimal manual intervention. The company plans to scale the approach beyond Argentina and into processes at other airports they manage elsewhere, reinforcing that strong technical fundamentals are essential to turn AI into real operational outcomes.
Exxon Mobil: Clean core and solid data foundation
ExxonMobil is rethinking how its operations will remain agile and nimble amid the rapid changes driven by the global shift toward new energy sources.
Bill Keillor, Vice President of ExxonMobil Global Services Company, said the energy giant launched a business-led transformation to simplify processes and unlock data that had become fragmented after decades of customization. “Our goal is not short-term optimization but long-term agility: standardizing on industry best practices, establishing a clean core, and becoming upgrade stable,” he said.
He emphasized that both the transformation and the company’s AI ambitions depend on a strong foundation. “If you can’t get this foundation right, you will continue to pay the price for it,” he said.
Keillor closed with three pieces of advice for any transformation: be crystal clear on strategy and align leadership behind it; put strong governance in place to enable fast, consistent decisions; and choose partners who challenge you and are in for the long run.
Levi Strauss: AI at scale
As Levi Strauss accelerated its shift toward a direct-to-consumer business, it recognized that greater speed and scale would require a lean technology landscape. Jason Gowans, Chief Digital and Technology Officer, said the company started by consolidating nine ERP systems into a single global foundation with RISE with SAP, standardizing processes and establishing a clean core.
That unified backbone now supports Levi’s ambitious AI strategy, with already more than 1,000 AI agents in production across the business. The impact is already visible; one example is wholesale order processing. While 80% of orders already flow through automatically, the remaining 20% — often submitted by smaller customers through handwritten notes, emails, or unstructured documents — previously took two to five days to process manually.
“Now, with the agents that we’ve built on top of SAP, that process takes 20 to 30 minutes,” Gowans said. For Levi Strauss, the lesson is clear: standardization does not limit agility; it makes it possible.
Migration powered by AI
These customer examples illustrated that transformation usually follows a shared path: modernizing the core, moving to the cloud, and unlocking innovation along the way.
SAP then showed how AI-powered agents can help customers accelerate that journey through a more integrated, AI-driven approach to transformation at scale. Migration and modernization assistants, which were announced in the global keynote, are designed to analyze systems, data, custom code, configuration, testing, and rollout as part of one connected process. By replacing fragmented manual work with coordinated automation, activities that once took weeks — from landscape analysis to custom-code assessment — can now be completed in a single weekend.
The world doesn’t break because of change
Gilg then widened the lens, arguing that every major technology wave brings uncertainty. But every one of these waves has in fact made the world better off by creating more jobs, new business models, and new revenue streams that people couldn’t imagine before. In the same way, he argued, enterprise software will become even more essential because of AI.
That is because the core needs of business remain the same: systems that work, people who care, and teams that collaborate. In Gilg’s framing, AI will not replace enterprise software. It will live inside it, embedded in the processes that keep companies running.
Saueressig brought the keynote back to its opening image: a world people trust to function. In a time of rapid change and unprecedented disruption, he asserted, resilience matters more than ever.
“The world doesn’t break because of change,” he said. “It breaks when change moves faster than resilience. And that’s where SAP comes in.” Underscoring the importance of people in times of change, he emphasized that beyond technology and AI, transformation remains deeply human, shaped by the people who build and use it. “The future isn’t written by AI. It is written by us,” he said.
SAP Sapphire in 2026: Discover our bold new vision for how businesses will run from now on
