In the heart of SoHo, every storefront competes for attention. During New York Fashion Week (NYFW), SAP is helping bring a fashion retail store to life.

At first glance, the space looks like a curated boutique. Clothing racks, soft lighting, and attentive staff set the scene. Pick up an item, and nearby displays can respond. Teams can also follow fitting-room activity and the sales floor in real time.

At the center is the Retail Innovation Lab by NYFW Collections and SAP, featuring fashion label RE/DONE. SAP and N4XT Experiences, which operates NYFW Collections, built the lab as part of our multi-season partnership. The store is open from September 11-30. For three weeks, visitors can experience connected retail in SoHo.

The new store is a progression of a three-day pop-up developed with fashion brand Public School New York in February. This season we are expanding the Retail Innovation Lab format to a full-fledged RE/DONE store, open to the public for three weeks. At the heart of it is a private “Command Center,” connecting the sales floor with the operations behind it. The Retail Innovation Lab doubles as an expansion of our SAP Experience Centers, offering SAP customers and prospects the chance to explore SAP software and partner solutions in a real-life setting.

This approach reflects our co-innovation model, which aims to turn collaborative ideas into customer-facing experiences faster so visitors can experience the technology in action and understand its value firsthand. SAP, N4XT Experiences, and participating fashion brands contribute with their respective expertise. Together, we are developing a store concept that serves as a test bed for retail brands of various sizes.

From display to decision

Start your visit with a scan and opt in to a digital profile. As you browse, nearby displays can update with product details. A styling surface suggests complete looks and complementary pieces. Together, these features connect product discovery and styling in one experience.

In the fitting room, connected technology recognizes each item and size. An associate can respond quickly with another size or suggestion. When you’re ready, choose how to buy. Use your phone, ask an associate, or visit a traditional point of sale. Afterward, a personal digital wardrobe saves looks and keeps the experience going.

Behind the sales floor, the Command Center gathers movement, fitting-room, size, and sales signals. Teams gain a real-time view of customer activity and store performance.

Consider unexpected interest in one size: combined with inventory, merchandising, and replenishment information, that signal can reveal demand earlier. Teams can respond with greater precision. The store becomes a richer source of insight for assortment, inventory, and demand planning.

Co-innovation at the heart of industry

The lab also shows how our approach to co-innovation works. Customers and industry experts contribute their knowledge of operations, markets, and opportunities. SAP brings more than 50 years of experience in business processes. It also brings the data, applications, and technology that connect them. Together, they ground innovation in the realities of retail and fashion.

In retail, that collaboration points toward autonomous commerce. Connected customer journeys and intelligent operations can work together within human-defined guardrails. The lab makes this direction tangible on the sales floor.

The same principle guides SAP’s approach to Industry AI, co-innovated with customers and industry experts. Their real-world knowledge gives AI context for industry processes and business decisions. AI can then understand what a signal means inside a business. It can also connect that signal to the surrounding processes.

That context differs by industry. In fashion retail, customer interactions can guide merchandising and demand. On a factory floor, production data can help teams improve operations. In consumer products, changing demand can inform planning and supply decisions. Each industry helps shape the AI built for it.

That’s the power of Industry AI. It brings an industry’s own knowledge into AI.

From industry expertise to intelligent action

Industry knowledge becomes more valuable when it moves businesses from insight to action. Companies can decide faster and orchestrate more processes across their operations.

That creates a path toward the Autonomous Enterprise. People define ambitions and guardrails; intelligent systems support them and execute more processes with speed, context, and precision. Human expertise stays central. It shapes the decisions and boundaries that move industries forward.

NYFW gives this collaboration a compelling stage. The lab shows how customer experiences and operations can connect in real time. Autonomous commerce brings that connection into focus for retail. Industry AI carries the same principle across industries.

Together, business knowledge, data, and AI create new ways for customers to act on insight.

Andre Bechtold is president of SAP Industries & Experiences and chief revenue officer of Industry AI at SAP.

Earlier this year, we emphasized that business transformation is a continuous journey, not a static destination. It consistently translates innovation into tangible daily results. Today, we’re thrilled to highlight significant progress in the SAP Services and Support portfolio.

To better drive success, our unified service release model will continue to deliver expanded capabilities seamlessly. This update demonstrates the real-world impact of our strategy, especially as businesses increasingly embed AI into their core operations.

Realizing value: documented progress and strong customer adoption

Our core mission remains to provide guidance that is simple, predictable, and directly connected to measurable business outcomes. We are delighted to see this approach gain substantial momentum. Hundreds of organizations have adopted our Advanced Success Plan and Max Success Plan, validating that deeper engagement leads to stronger, long-term results. Our customers’ success is our priority. We bring our entire portfolio together to help create a seamless experience, custom-fit to customer needs.

Empowering businesses with next-generation capabilities

To help organizations navigate in today’s dynamic market, we’ve focused our services on three strategic growth drivers:

• Powering the Autonomous Enterprise: We help streamline processes and boost efficiency by pairing intelligent tools with expert guidance. This includes AI-powered capabilities like Joule for SAP for Me for proactive insights and agentic case resolution to help deliver faster, more intelligent support.
• Enabling targeted business transitions: We deliver clear, structured pathways that help businesses confidently unlock SAP’s newest AI capabilities and innovations across specific lines of business. These tailored migration paths can simplify transition and integration processes.
• Driving front-office impact with productivity AI: Our focus can deliver measurable productivity gains for front-office teams through deeply embedded AI capabilities, enhanced release guidance, and strategic engagement planning aligned with business outcomes.

Expanding and integrating support for every stage of the SAP journey

Our SAP Services and Support portfolio is streamlined into three success plans (Foundational, Advanced, and Max) with three supplemental offerings (development services, application management, and professional services), all designed to complement each other to support continuous adoption, innovation, and transformation at every stage of the journey. The focus is on clearly defining what each offering provides, when to use it, and the specific outcomes it can deliver.

Success plans: evolving as the primary engagement model

Our success plans continue to strengthen their position as they offer expanded solution area coverage and AI-powered capabilities. The Foundational Success Plan has full SAP solution area coverage, providing clearer pathways to Advanced Success Plan and Max Success Plan engagements. New expert-led AI services are now available, with enhanced SAP Build coverage to support AI maturity journeys. Furthermore, upgraded release guidance tooling helps improve planning consistency, and automated provisioning for Max Success Plan customers can streamline the engagement process.

The tangible impact of these integrated AI capabilities is already evident, with Joule for SAP for Me seeing strong adoption with nearly 200,000 users year-to-date, while agentic case resolution uses AI agents to help automatically handle and resolve support cases, working to reduce resolution times and minimize the need for manual escalation.

Development services: unlocking the full potential of SAP BTP

In the current release, our development services have been expanded to help unlock the full potential of SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP).

New extensibility packages offer structured guidance and best practice frameworks for custom applications and integrations to enable faster delivery and consistent quality. Furthermore, all managed development engagements formally embed clean core principles, which help make custom solutions upgrade-safe and future-proof. In addition, AI-assisted tooling is now standard in eligible engagements, working to further reduce timelines and improve code quality.

Application management: sustaining continuity and performance

Application management, which handles the day-to-day operations and ongoing optimization of a customer’s live SAP environment, continues to evolve as a critical pillar to help ensure continuity and performance across SAP environments.

SAP enables customers to operate the Autonomous Enterprise with confidence by continuously governing, securing, and optimizing autonomous applications and platform services. AI-assisted monitoring and intelligent incident remediation help proactively identify risks, reduce resolution times, and improve operational resilience. Through an integrated adopt-to-operate approach, SAP can connect adoption, success planning, and application management into a seamless lifecycle experience, helping customers accelerate value realization, maximize business outcomes, and sustain transformation success.

Professional services: structured implementation and transformation

Our professional services can deliver targeted, one-time project expertise, including end-to-end implementations, complex migrations, upgrades, and system optimizations.

With the new release, SAP is simplifying its professional services portfolio to support transformation journeys by aligning with success plans and integrating proven expertise into scalable engagement models. Refreshed outcome-based services help expand coverage across SAP solutions and are designed to align with the Advanced Success Plan and Max Success Plan. Furthermore, formalized handoff protocols between success plans and professional services help foster seamless continuity of project context.

A partnership for continuous success

This unified portfolio release underscores SAP’s collective strength and shared commitment to help transform customers’ SAP experience with a streamlined support portfolio built for impact:

• Modular choice: Easily scale services to match exact goals.
• Ongoing optimization: Continuously unlock software potential with proactive guidance.
• One connected system: Enjoy a frictionless, cohesive experience across the full suite.

Transforming your business shouldn’t be complicated. At SAP, we partner with you to turn complex transformation into measurable, lasting business results. Explore our newly evolved SAP Services and Support portfolio to see how it can help maximize value and drive your strategic goals forward.

Dr. Uwe Grigoleit is senior vice president of Customer Evolution & Portfolio at SAP.