How will AI transform creativity, leadership, and the future of work? SAP’s Gina Vargiu-Breuer and futurist Ian Beacraft share their vision.
At SAP Connect 2025, Gina Vargiu-Breuer, Chief People Officer of SAP, joins Ian Beacraft, CEO of Signal and Cipher, for a dynamic conversation on how artificial intelligence is reshaping the future of work. Together, they explore what it means to lead, create, and collaborate in an age of intelligent technology, where human ingenuity and machine learning intersect.
00:00 – Introduction
00:35 – Gina Vargiu-Breuer on People, Purpose, and Transformation
02:20 – Ian Beacraft on the Human Side of AI
04:05 – How AI Is Redefining Work and Creativity
06:15 – Leadership and Empathy in the Age of Automation
08:30 – Collaboration Between Humans and Machines
09:45 – Closing Thoughts on the Future of Work
Vargiu-Breuer shares how SAP is empowering its people and customers to thrive in this new era, emphasizing trust, purpose, and continuous learning as the foundation of innovation. Beacraft brings an external futurist’s perspective on how generative AI and automation are redefining creativity, productivity, and the human experience at work.
As AI continues to transform industries, SAP’s intelligent technologies—powered by SAP Business AI, SAP Business Technology Platform, and SAP S/4HANA Cloud—enable organizations to embed intelligence into every process. This keynote inspires leaders to reimagine how people and technology can work together to build resilient, adaptive, and human-centered enterprises.
Watch the full Opening Keynote: https://sap.to/6055AqsDd
Watch all SAP Connect replays: https://sap.to/6056AqsDe
Explore SAP Business Suite: https://sap.to/6057AqsD5
Follow us on social:
LinkedIn: https://sap.to/6058AqsDg
Instagram: https://sap.to/6059AqsD9
Facebook: https://sap.to/6050AqsDi
Threads: https://sap.to/6051AqsDc
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/6052AqsDY
The divide between the digital skills young people possess and the needs of employers is a big challenge and contributes to a high youth unemployment rate, particularly in the Global South. The SAP Educate to Employ initiative is set up as a digital pathway through Youth Agency Marketplace (YOMA), a public-private-youth ecosystem from UNICEF’s Generation Unlimited. The program aims to address this challenge and enable young people’s skills for a digital economy.
Nearly 90 percent of the 1.8 billion young people between the ages of 10 and 24 in the world today, are in low-and middle-income countries. An estimated 22 percent do not have jobs and are not in education or training.
Globally, young people are three times more likely to be unemployed than adults. Edmond Shange is one of the many young people who have faced difficulties navigating the employment market right out of high school. “In South Africa there’s not a lot of opportunities when it comes to the employment sector,” the 27-year-old shared.
Making copies of a CV or resume and going to a potential employer to drop them off costs money, something in very short supply among South Africa’s unemployed youth. Despite this, Shange says that as many as 300 young people often queue up to drop off their CVs at a potential employer. “I faced a lot of challenges trying to apply for jobs,” he said. “It’s very tough for young people like me.”
Shange is not alone. “In Africa over 70 percent of the population are young people and another 4 million join the job market every single year competing for less than half a million new jobs,” said Nadi Albino, deputy director at UNICEF’s Generation Unlimited.
WALLDORF — SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) today announced the successful go-live of PwC’s implementation of the SAP Cloud ERP solution, marking a major milestone to modernize and unify PwC’s operations.
Run your core operations with confidence using a ready-to-run cloud ERP from SAP
By taking advantage of the SAP solutions in SAP Business Suite, such as SAP Cloud ERP; SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP); SAP Concur; SAP Analytics Cloud; SAP Datasphere; SAP Advanced Financial Closing; SAP Cloud ERP, group reporting; SAP Risk & Assurance Management; and SAP Enable Now, over 100,000 PwC professionals across 19 countries are now connected on a unified, intelligent ERP platform.
Developed in close collaboration between PwC and SAP, the program replaces highly customized legacy SAP ERP Central Component (SAP ECC) software and a fragmented mix of SAP and third-party software, creating a more agile, scalable and standardized environment for PwC’s operations. PwC will also continue to leverage the Joule copilot and SAP Business AI to unlock new opportunities for efficiency, innovation and business intelligence.
“Moving to SAP Cloud ERP is enabling greater connectivity across our firm, streamlining operations and equipping our people with tools and insights to better serve our clients,” said Colin Wittmer, PwC US chief financial officer. “Our firm’s collaboration with SAP was critical to supporting this implementation as one of the largest ever completed.”
SAP Cloud ERP supports holistic finance and project operations, including project billing, revenue recognition, cash basis accounting and treasury functions – while reducing operational complexity, improving user self-service capabilities and lowering support and maintenance demands. With a clean core and SAP BTP as its foundation, PwC is able to streamline operations while creating a flexible platform for future innovation.
“Our move to SAP Cloud ERP represents a significant leap forward in driving agility and innovation across PwC,” explained James Shira, PwC’s global and US chief information officer. “By leveraging SAP’s native capabilities, industry-leading practices and a fit-to-standard approach, we have unlocked greater automation and efficiency; reduced complexity; and enabled AI-driven insights, agentic AI innovations and advanced analytics, all while maintaining standardization as a core principle. Successfully completing this transformation within a highly complex ecosystem and operating our business from day one of the SAP Cloud ERP launch underscores the strength of our relationship and execution.”
Building on this modernized foundation, PwC’s SAP Managed Services team plans to support the solution by working with SAP to explore future enhancements in data management and analytics with the SAP Business Data Cloud solution.
“PwC’s successful go-live is a testament to the power of SAP Cloud ERP and SAP Business Suite to drive large-scale transformation powered by SAP Business AI,” said Thomas Saueressig, member of the Executive Board of SAP SE for Customer Services & Delivery. “We’re proud to support PwC in its journey toward becoming an intelligent, data-driven enterprise.”
Generations of PhD students have passed through SAP’s HANA Campus, located at company headquarters in Germany. Arne Schwarz, who runs the campus, has been there every step of the way.
Arne Schwarz
For more than 20 years, the HANA Campus has been home to PhD students applying research to SAP HANA and, more recently, other technologies.
As demands on technologies change — the first customers for SAP HANA went live in 2010, seven years after the HANA Campus welcomed its first PhD student — so has its name.
“What name should I give it?” muses Schwarz, explaining how prevailing technologies and circumstances have forced name changes over the years, including “The Campus,” “The Research Campus,” “The HANA Research Campus,” “The Student Campus,” or even “The HANA Database and Analytics Campus.”
But while its name may change, its mission remains the same: to help satisfy the demand for high-tech research, primarily for SAP HANA but also for SAP Analytics Cloud, SAP Business Data Cloud (SAP BDC), Global Cloud Infrastructure Services, and SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP).
What makes the HANA Campus unique?
To date, the HANA Campus has been home to more than 40 PhD students, mostly matriculated at universities in Germany, who have successfully defended their dissertations grounded in research at SAP. Or, to put it another way, PhD students have collectively contributed decades of applied research focused primarily on SAP HANA.
Bringing academic innovation into the product comes in different flavors at SAP. On the one hand, PhD students can be recruited directly to SAP and tasked with researching a predefined topic. On the other, SAP funds university chairs, such as the recent Hasso Plattner Endowed Chair in Artificial Intelligence, and research projects with academia.
PhD students arrive at the HANA Campus via SAP-funded research projects with academia. The campus is unique, according to Schwarz, due to “the sheer mass of research projects executed over the years and the fact that the dedicated space in Walldorf acts as a safe haven for PhD students.”
Students assigned to the HANA Campus work on-site at SAP, get a feel for life at the company, and have direct access to development teams and test environments. The contract for the research projects with academia also frees PhD students from university teaching obligations. It is also important to note that PhD students do not belong to a specific development team, avoiding the risk of their research being deprioritized in the face of operational pressures. At the HANA Campus, PhD students can focus all their efforts on their research and studies.
It all began with a knowledge gap
Bringing academic expertise in-house for HANA started back in 2003, Schwarz explains, in the era of TREX, a search engine in SAP NetWeaver. TREX was the forerunner of SAP Business Warehouse Accelerator, which ultimately led to the SAP HANA database. Engineering teams were under intense pressure to quickly build and deliver the emerging technology of in-memory database.
However, Schwarz explains, a knowledge gap was threatening to slow everything down: there were only two or three engineers who had the knowledge to drive the technology forward, but they didn’t have the bandwidth to do so. With an ever-increasing number of teams requiring specialist knowledge, the threat of a slowdown in development was becoming more real by the day.
As luck would have it, Wolfgang Lehner, professor at the Technical University (TU) Dresden, was also researching the same technology. A mutually beneficial partnership was born: SAP offered a cutting-edge research opportunity for students, and Professor Lehner’s students could bridge the knowledge gap with academic expertise. The potential obstacle was overcome, and research projects with academia and PhD students continue to augment the technological knowledge and expertise that powers SAP HANA and other SAP technologies to this day.
Since that first research project with TU Dresden, the HANA Campus has collaborated with many more universities. “Collaborations with the universities are always limited to the timeframe set out in the original research contract,” Schwarz says, clarifying that the driver for selecting a university is the fit of current research topics to SAP’s technological requirements and not past collaborations.
Talent pipeline and “a foothold in academia”
The HANA Campus is a “win-win” for both SAP’s talent pipeline and PhD students.
Many students choose to stay at SAP once they have defended their thesis and been awarded their PhD. The teams know the value of their PhD research and the PhD graduates know what life is like at SAP.
Even those PhD graduates who do not stay at SAP remain, for the most part, in data management and analytics development; they either join other companies or take a postdoc position. Their ties to the company “give SAP a foothold in academia as well as advocates and a more direct route to research projects,” Schwarz confirms.
Through Schwarz, the HANA Campus also supports SAP’s participation at academic conferences, another tool to strengthen academic connections, PhD student recruiting, and SAP’s technological reputation. In June of this year, HANA Campus provided a venue for a workshop at the SIGMOD/PODS International Conference on Management of Data. Sponsoring and participating in these conferences, Schwarz says, “is pivotal to getting access to the inner circle of academia, strengthens SAP academic connections and reputation, and allows SAP to share and augment research findings with other experts from academia.”
Find out more
Twenty-two years in and 40 dissertations later, SAP’s HANA Campus continues to be home to the next generation, welcoming two more PhD students later this year to deepen research around SAP HANA as well as SAP BTP and SAP BDC.
A vast collection of publicly available scientific publications about SAP HANA Database and Analytics, dating from 2006 to the present day, is available on GitHub here.
Subscribe to the SAP News Center newsletter and get stories and highlights delivered straight to your inbox each week
Young people entering today’s workforce face a world transformed by technology, automation, and artificial intelligence. Too many still lack the confidence, digital skills, and exposure needed not just to adapt to this future, but to shape it.
That’s why we’re launching the Global Career Discovery Initiative, a new global partnership between SAP and JA Worldwide that will reach tens of thousands of young people aged 17 to 24 in more than 30 countries.
“Young people are entering a world of work that’s being reshaped by technology, automation, and artificial intelligence,” says Asheesh Advani, CEO of JA Worldwide. “This partnership ensures that youth—especially those from underserved communities—don’t just learn about the future of work but learn how to shape it.”
From local impact to global scale
Over the past 20 years, SAP has partnered with JA through dozens of local and regional programs, from workshops in Colombia to mentoring sessions in Vietnam. These efforts have created a meaningful impact, but we recognized the opportunity to amplify our work by aligning globally. This unified partnership enables us to scale what works, streamline volunteer engagement, and ensure more consistent access to high-quality learning experiences for young people everywhere.
SAP is powering equitable access to economic opportunity, education and employment, and the circular economy
JA Worldwide already delivers more than 19 million student learning experiences annually in entrepreneurship, work readiness, and financial health, powered by a network of over 700,000 teachers and business volunteers. This scale and experience make JA an ideal partner to help build a brighter future for the next generation of innovators, entrepreneurs, and leaders.
Together, we’re combining JA’s proven curriculum with SAP’s global network of employee volunteers to create a structured, scalable experience that helps young people build in-demand skills, discover career pathways, and connect directly with mentors and role models. In its first year, the initiative aims to reach more than 85,000 students across six continents, engaging 800 SAP volunteers of all ages as mentors and role models.
Why this matters now
The world of work is evolving faster than many education systems can adapt. We believe the future belongs to young people who combine essential human skills—like creativity, resilience, and collaboration—with digital confidence. JA’s curriculum delivers exactly that, and through this global initiative SAP is proud to help bring these vital skills to youth at scale.
For many of us at SAP, this work is deeply personal. Like countless colleagues, we know from experience how early exposure to mentors and practical skills can change a life.
“I joined JA as a student 25 years ago. Those early experiences shaped my journey. They equipped me with the tools and skills I needed to grow in the business world and helped me believe, at a very young age, that with knowledge, grit, and humility, anything was possible,” says Sam Masri, global chief sales officer, SAP. “I’m incredibly proud that SAP will now bring that same opportunity to thousands of youth around the world!”
Building future skills, together
Our collaboration goes beyond volunteering; it’s a long-term alignment focused on skills development, equity, and innovation. We’re committed to creating a more inclusive, opportunity-rich future for all young people, regardless of geography or background. We’re proud to be part of this effort and excited about the impact ahead.
The Global Career Discovery Initiative is one way we’re putting SAP’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategy into action. Around the world, millions of young people are not in education, employment, or training, while employers struggle to find skilled talent. We believe building future skills is essential to empower the next generation and ensure a fair, sustainable transition from education to employment or entrepreneurship.
To do this, we focus on three areas:
Ecosystem development: Building partnerships to align skills with job market needs and open career pathways
Education: Supporting innovative programs that equip youth with relevant skills for the digital and green economies and spark youth entrepreneurship
Employee engagement: Empowering our people to share their knowledge and time through mentoring, coaching, and pro bono consulting
CSR can’t be a tick-box exercise. It must be a strategic approach that tackles social and environmental challenges and creates shared value for businesses and communities alike. Our purpose at SAP—to help the world run better and improve people’s lives—is brought to life every day through our products, services, and the dedication of our people.
This partnership with JA builds on two decades of collaboration, from workshops in Colombia to classrooms in Vietnam. Now, we’re aligning and scaling that local impact globally, so that more young people, especially those from underserved communities, can see what’s possible and have the support they need to shape the future of work.
Hemang Desai is interim global head of Corporate Social Responsibility at SAP.
In a world where the pace of change is accelerating, today’s transformation is crucial for tomorrow’s resilience. The SAP Sapphire Customer Keynote highlights how SAP, alongside leading global brands, is enabling businesses to achieve faster time-to-value, continuous innovation, and cost control through strategic partnerships and evolving solutions.
👉 BASF: Tackled a monolithic global system with over 300,000 custom codes by adopting a greenfield SAP S/4HANA approach with RISE with SAP and Clean Core principles, achieving successful go-lives without business interruption and now focusing on AI capabilities.
👉 CAF: As a global transportation solutions provider, CAF adopted SAP Business Data Cloud with Databricks to connect IT and OT worlds, optimizing costs, improving maintenance with predictive algorithms, and using GenAI for tender processing.
👉 dsm-firmenich: Following a major merger, DSM Firmenich is using the SAP Business Suite, GROW with SAP, and RISE with SAP in a tiered approach to simplify a complex, fragmented landscape, foster a unified way of working, and leverage BTP for flexibility.
👉 Pandora: The world’s largest jewelry manufacturer embarked on its SAP journey with SAP S/4HANA via RISE, achieving 98% standard adherence. They leverage RISE for scalability and are implementing Joule for Developers to accelerate their global transformation.
👉 Siemens Healthineers: This global medtech company is finalizing its RISE with SAP journey and views the integrated toolchain (LeanIX, WalkMe, Signavio, Tricentis) as the future digital backbone for operational excellence and continuous landscape transformation.
Volatility is the new norm, and productivity is paramount. SAP is delivering the full promise of Business AI and the SAP Business Suite to drive real productivity gains at scale, helping your business create momentum and resilience.
Hear from industry leaders and discover innovations designed to make your business ready for anything.
• Thomas Pfiester, Head of Global Customer Engagement, SAP
• Manos Raptopoulos, Chief Revenue Officer APAC/EMEA/MEE, SAP
• Petra Scheithe, SVP Digitalization of Services and ERP Platforms, BASF Digital Solutions
• Stefan Henkel, CIO, Siemens Healthineers
• Mariane Heidingsfelder, SVP Business Transformation, Pandora
• Ipek Ozsuer, Chief Digital and Information Officer, dsm-firmenich
• Iosu Ibarbia, Technology Director. Member of ExCom, CAF
Watch all SAP Sapphire replays on demand: https://sap.to/6056N2PaA
