For audiences, Cirque du Soleil is about wonder: gravity-defying performers, breathtaking costumes, immersive music, and moments that feel almost impossible. But behind every performance is something just as remarkable: a highly complex global business operation.

It reinvented circus arts and became a world leader in live entertainment, performing for more than 365 million spectators in 90 countries. Today, the organization operates 38 shows in cities around the world, supported by over 4,000 touring artists and staff from more than 80 countries.

Each touring show functions like a moving profit center. A production may operate in Mexico City, then move to London, then Paris—bringing with it new companies, employees, assets, tax requirements, local regulations, merchandising operations, and artists from dozens of nationalities.

As Philippe Lalumière, vice president of Information Technology at Cirque du Soleil, explains, “People underestimate the complexity of running a circus.”

Orchestrating an autonomous accounts payable process

This is especially true for the company’s accounts payable (AP) department. Every year, more than 70,000 invoices flow through Cirque du Soleil, non-stop, 24/7. Around 40% of vendor inquiries are standard requests for invoice status. But answering those questions was far from simple. AP specialists had to search across systems, review invoice histories, understand payment status, determine the cause of delays, and manually respond.

The work was repetitive, time-consuming, and emotionally draining. “From a morale point of view, receiving e-mails from suppliers, some of them a bit impolite because they’re asking, ‘When are we going to get paid?’—it’s not a fun job,” Lalumière says.

Finding the right problem to solve—putting AI into action

As an SAP customer for more than 25 years, Cirque du Soleil knows firsthand how to leverage SAP technology not only to run its operations, but also to reinvent them.

Cirque du Soleil, known as an early adopter and leader in digital transformation, was approached by SAP AppHaus with a question: how could SAP generative AI technology be used to improve your business processes?

The answer emerged through collaborative workshops involving SAP, Cirque du Soleil’s IT team, and business users across its departments. Accounts payable quickly rose to the top due to its lean structure, high volume of interactions, and clear automation potential. And the choice aligned with the broader business evolution—AP automation is one of the most widely adopted AI use cases across industries.

With a clear opportunity identified, Cirque du Soleil and SAP moved from ideation to execution, developing an AI-powered solution that automated AP processes and improved responsiveness.

AI enters stage right—from vision to reality

The workshops led to something more than an automation project—they led to Genato, a multilingual AI agent that now works alongside the AP team.

The polyglot agent scans the AP inbox, analyzes sentiment, identifies urgency, extracts invoice numbers from messages and attachments, connects to SAP data to retrieve invoice status, and drafts a response for human review. If it cannot find an invoice or resolve an inquiry, it flags the issue.

“Trust in the quality of the answers coming from the agent was an initial concern,” Lalumière says. “But, the team quickly realized that Genato’s information was spot on.”

Together, Genato and the AP team now serve Cirque du Soleil’s diverse global supplier network more efficiently.

Lalumière, however, is clear about one thing: “Yes, AI is a very powerful tool, but it’s not pixie dust. Sprinkling AI into processes is not going to solve everything. There is work involved.”

That work included designing appropriate connectors and integrating with the company’s SAP and AP systems using SAP Business AI Platform. This enterprise AI foundation can bring together capabilities and technologies (think SAP Business Data Cloud, Business Transformation Management solutions, and SAP Business AI), unifying AI, data, process context, and governance, so customers can build, integrate, scale, and run AI that delivers business impact while working to ensure the solution is sustainable and cost-efficient.

The impact was evident almost immediately. Generative AI began prioritizing urgent supplier requests, retrieving invoice information, drafting responses, and translating communications automatically, delivering measurable improvements across the AP organization:

• 97.92% improvement in handling priority requests
• 25% reduction in AP backlog
• 25% faster response times for non-urgent inquiries
• Improved vendor satisfaction and employee morale

The impact on employees cannot be overstated. By removing repetitive research and emotionally charged supplier follow-up from the team’s workload, Genato has become more than a tool. “We now include Genato as a virtual team member,” Lalumière explains, “It’s a paradigm shift.”

That adoption is the clearest sign of success. Lalumière recalls that after the prototype moved into production, one of the end users made her feelings clear: “No, no, no, you cannot take it away from me! There is no way I’m going to live without it now.” Today, she is one of the solution’s biggest ambassadors.

Collectively, the solution demonstrates how AI can be introduced into a focused business process, quickly earn user trust, and create a blueprint for broader enterprise innovation.

As Lalumière puts it, “You could say we’re an SAP shop.”

The next act of AI innovation

For Cirque du Soleil, accounts payable is only the beginning.

Lalumière believes that “AI is a huge and beautiful tool, but you still need human judgment to prioritize use cases and move forward.” He also sees AI evolving across three layers: personal productivity with solutions such as Joule; AI applied to business processes, such as Genato; and, eventually, AI embedded in the audience experience itself. “I think we’re at the dawn of a new era of circus arts,” he says.

His advice to others beginning their AI journey is simple: start small, involve users early, and be willing to experiment. “Try a small proof of concept and be ready to throw them away,” Lalumière says. “The AI train is moving, and you have to hop on.”

For a company built on reinvention, transforming accounts payable may seem far removed from the spotlight, but for Lalumière, the principle is the same: innovation happens when people are willing to rethink what’s possible. Today, that mindset is improving back-office operations. Tomorrow, it may help redefine the audience’s experience.

Sid Misra is CMO of SAP Business AI Platform Technology Foundation.
Top image courtesy of Cirque du Soleil.

Digital transformation is often associated with cutting-edge technologies like AI. But according to Mirela Siani, real transformation starts somewhere much less glamorous.

“We started by fixing the basics,” said Siani, Transformation and Technology director at Ipiranga, one of Brazil’s largest fuel distributors.

Ipiranga operates almost 6,000 service stations nationwide. Headquartered in Rio de Janeiro, the company has more than 6,200 B2B customers and 1,500 convenience stores. Ipiranga generates $120.7 billion in revenue, yet despite its size and market leadership, the company faced a critical problem: repeated project failures.

Working on the root cause

“Before we could start investing in new technology, we needed to take a good look at why some of our initiatives were not generating the expected value for the business,” Siani said, speaking at the TAC Insights conference for SAP for Energy and Utilities in Toulouse. “We needed a rigorous RCA.”

RCA, or root cause analysis, is a structured approach to problem-solving that focuses on identifying the underlying causes of issues rather than just addressing surface-level symptoms.

“Instead of making new investments, we decided to dig deeper and identify the causes,” she explained. “When we examined the company’s history, RCA confirmed that the high level of customization was limiting our ability to deliver at the required speed. Our inability to adopt the best technologies and functional best practices was directly impacting the company’s ability to evolve and drive business growth.”

Speaking the language

From the outset, the Technology team recognized that the case for the ERP transformation rested on demonstrating how inconsistent processes and the lack of standardized best practices hindered the organization’s ability to respond quickly and remain competitive in the market.

“When we went to the Board to secure the budget for the digital transformation, we didn’t start by talking about technology,” Sian sharedi. “We started by discussing what the business needed to achieve its strategic objectives faster. Then, we listed the obstacles preventing that progress along with the technology capabilities required to remove those barriers.”

By translating technical challenges and opportunities into business language, Siani helped Ipiranga’s leadership understand that innovation without a strong foundation would not take the business to the level of efficiency required.

“By identifying these root causes, we were able to avoid a common trap,” she explained. “Instead of investing in new technology without fixing the foundation, we shifted our strategy. We refocused on  tools to process integration, governance, and operational discipline.”

Getting approval for a big investment

Ipiranga partnered with SAP to assess critical processes across operations, finance, and commercial operations.

“SAP brought in business experts to pinpoint how a heavily customized ERP system was slowing decision-making and limiting visibility and innovation,” Siani said. Rather than focusing on SAP functionalities, they asked fundamental business questions: What does your financial process look like? How does your order-to-cash process work?”

Armed with these insights and a clear understanding of what was slowing decision-making, Siani returned to the board with a clear message: “Fix the foundation, or transformation will fail.”

As a result, she got approval to implement a new ERP system, driven by business value and ROI. What ensued was a massive integration effort, with a targeted go-live scheduled for December 31, 2026.

With support from Accenture and SAP, Ipiranga adopted a clean core strategy, ensuring minimal customization and long-term scalability. Overall, 104 legacy systems were analyzed, 64 systems will be integrated and 40 decommissioned, and over 750 interfaces are being built. Of course, all developments had to pass strict governance gates to guarantee the clean core.

People driving change

Technology may enable transformation, but people make it successful. Over 350 professionals from a variety of business and technical teams are involved in the ongoing project. Crucially, leadership played a direct role. With executive sponsorship and transparent communication, resistance to change has been minimal.

“We were careful not to impose change, but to explain the impacts clearly and discuss them with a multidisciplinary team,” said the IT expert, who is also a rowing champion. “We made sure to prepare teams early and embed change management at every phase.”

The team prioritized initiatives with the highest return on investment (ROI) and paused non-essential projects. They also selected world-class partners—including Accenture as the implementation partner and Amazon Web Services (AWS) as the hyperscaler—to help ensure a high-quality, successful transformation.

The company’s transformation is now in the middle of a critical milestone (SIT1). The expected ROI is over $40 million, but more importantly, the company has built something far more valuable than a new system.

“We will have a solid operational foundation, integrated, scalable ,and efficient processes, and a culture that understands how transformation goes beyond technology. Technology is simply the path,” Siani said.

Ipiranga’s journey offers a powerful reminder that digital transformation is not about tools; it’s about assertive fundamentals. RCA can reveal issues technology alone cannot fix. It demonstrates that preparation is as important as execution, and that clean core strategies reduce long-term complexity.

“In effect, the path to successful transformation doesn’t start with innovation. It starts with clarity, discipline, clear goals that together determine the correct technology,” Siani concluded.

Earlier this year, SAP welcomed senior procurement leaders from automotive, industrial manufacturing, aerospace, and defense organizations to our annual Direct Procurement Customer Roundtable in Walldorf. These companies manage some of the most complex product portfolios and supply networks in the world. Direct materials represent their largest spend category—and their largest risk surface. They understand deeply where value is created, where it erodes, and where operational risk accumulates.

What made the event distinctive was its candor. Customers did not come to present polished success stories. They came to compare realities. And those realities were refreshingly honest.

Why direct procurement is hitting a breaking point

The pressure on direct procurement is not coming from one direction. Geopolitical instability and accelerating technological change are forcing sourcing decisions earlier in the product lifecycle, at precisely the moment when many organizations are least equipped to act. Meanwhile, institutional knowledge is leaving faster than systems are modernizing. The experienced individuals who once held fragile processes together are retiring or moving on, and the systems meant to replace that knowledge are not yet ready.

The result is an operating model that prevents procurement leaders from influencing value at the moments that matter most. Several customers described a tension they are actively dealing with. Sourcing is being pulled upstream into design and development, while the tools and processes that support it are still anchored downstream.

What customers shared about their reality

While all participants operate with a strong SAP footprint, spanning SAP ERP and SAP S/4HANA, many acknowledged that direct materials sourcing remains fragmented and disconnected from the digital core. The picture they described was familiar but worth stating plainly: engineers, buyers, and suppliers still collaborating through e-mail, local tools, and disconnected applications; there’s an overreliance on a small number of experienced individuals to make things work; and multiple ERP landscapes run in parallel, with direct sourcing living largely outside all of them.

One observation stood out clearly. The real friction is not the sourcing events themselves. It is the handoffs, the gaps between systems and teams where decisions get made too late, data is reconciled manually, and no single digital thread connects product intent to sourcing execution.

In other words, the process functions, but it functions in silos.

Participants also noted that traditional indirect source-to-pay approaches simply do not support direct materials adequately. They lack native support for procurement embedded in new product development, sourcing scenarios that evolve with engineering change, demand aggregation across programs, and contracts treated as executable objects rather than static documents. That last point came up repeatedly, particularly the need to treat contracts as executable objects. This is also where the SAP Ariba direct materials sourcing add-on in SAP S/4HANA is starting to resonate more strongly in ongoing customer discussions.

Where customers are focusing next

What emerged from the discussions wasn’t a long list of priorities, but a firm shift in where companies are focusing their efforts.

Moving sourcing upstream into product development—rather than reacting after design decisions are already locked—was a consistent theme. So was reducing dependency on hero buyers: individuals whose personal expertise and relationships are currently holding critical processes together.

Commodity volatility and renegotiations also came up as structural challenges, not one-time events. Organizations want to handle these systematically rather than heroically. And several participants raised the reality of managing multi-year SAP S/4HANA journeys without stalling progress in the meantime—a genuine tension that demands honest road map planning.

While the direction is widely understood, most organizations do not yet have the setup to execute against it at scale.

These priorities help explain why customers are increasingly adopting the SAP Ariba direct materials sourcing add-on alongside SAP Ariba Procurement Planning, SAP Integrated Product Development, and SAP Business Network—capabilities that together can support the connected execution model direct procurement actually requires.

How AI fits into direct procurement

AI generated significant interest, but expectations were measured and, I would say, appropriately so.

The consistent message was this: AI only matters once the fundamentals are addressed. Agent-based capabilities depend on clean processes and consistent data. Without a unified digital thread across product design, sourcing, contracting, and execution, AI does not generate insight—it amplifies noise.

Leaders also expressed clear skepticism toward black-box automation. They want AI that is explainable and embedded directly into sourcing, negotiation, and execution workflows, not layered on top of broken processes and presented as a fix.

This thinking aligns closely with SAP’s vision for the Autonomous Enterprise, introduced at SAP Sapphire just weeks after our Walldorf discussions. The vision anchors AI agents directly in transactional business processes, data, and governance—exactly what customers said they needed before they could trust AI in direct procurement environments. Hearing them articulate that requirement so clearly, before the announcement, felt like meaningful validation.

Where this is all heading

The Walldorf roundtable confirmed a clear trajectory. Direct procurement organizations are moving away from heroics and spreadsheets and toward system-led execution. They are aligning sourcing transformation with their SAP S/4HANA road maps and preparing their organizations—not just their systems—for a future where AI supports decision-making across the full procurement lifecycle.

Direct procurement, seen through this lens, is not a standalone transformation. It is a foundational building block. Connecting product, sourcing, contracts, and execution through a single digital thread is what enables AI to operate accurately, compliantly, and at scale. That connection has to exist before any of the more ambitious automation goals become realistic.

For SAP, conversations like the one in Walldorf directly inform our product direction and investment priorities. There is no substitute for sitting in a room with people navigating these challenges every day, without a script.

What was clear in Walldorf is that the direction is no longer in question for participating organizations. The challenge now lies in execution and in how quickly organization can move from fragmented, person-dependent processes to cohesive models that reflect how direct procurement operates today.

Karolina Bombardelli is global go-to-market lead for Direct Procurement at SAP.

I’m proud to share that SAP has once again been recognized as a Leader in the 2026 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Warehouse Management Systems (WMS)*. In our opinion, this recognition underscores SAP’s continued commitment to innovation in warehouse execution and reflects the confidence our customers place in SAP to run some of the world’s most complex, high-performance, and mission‑critical warehouse operations.

In today’s environment of ongoing disruption, rising customer expectations, and persistent labor and cost pressures, warehouse operations are more strategic than ever. We believe long-term recognition in this market requires more than point solutions; it demands scale, depth, and an orchestrated approach that connects warehousing with other supply chain functions.

A recognition we believe is built on scale, reach, and execution

We believe scale matters when it comes to warehouse management. Warehouse operations are increasingly complex and diverse, and organizations often operate networks that span regions, industries, and levels of automation. Warehouse management is not a one‑size‑fits‑all challenge, and global organizations need solutions that can support regional requirements while remaining consistent and integrated across complex networks.

SAP Extended Warehouse Management (SAP EWM) is designed to support organizations running SAP ERP or SAP S/4HANA as well as non-SAP environments. With customers across 24 industries, SAP EWM supports a broad range of warehouse complexity—from regional distribution centers to highly automated, high‑throughput operations. It enables organizations to standardize execution, improve visibility, and integrate warehouse processes with transportation, manufacturing, and broader supply chain operations.

SAP EWM continues to expand its innovation footprint with APIs for seamless robotics integration, as well as AI-assisted capabilities such as predictive labor demand planning and slotting. SAP’s Joule AI solution—embedded across applications—can further enhance SAP EWM by enabling natural-language interactions and supporting AI capabilities that operate both within workflows and in the background, helping organizations improve workforce efficiency and execution agility.

A portfolio approach to meet different warehouse needs

SAP’s warehouse strategy is built around choice and flexibility. In February 2026, SAP announced the general availability of SAP Logistics Management, an AI‑enabled, cloud‑native, microservices-architecture-based solution designed to complement SAP’s established logistics portfolio by supporting local, satellite, and mid‑scale logistics operations.

SAP Logistics Management helps unite warehouse execution and transportation planning in a single solution, supporting pick‑pack‑ship processes while enabling integrated freight coordination and carrier collaboration through SAP Business Network. Designed to work seamlessly with SAP Cloud ERP Private, the solution helps organizations connect localized operations with broader enterprise landscapes, improving coordination and real‑time visibility across logistics networks. Embedded AI capabilities, including support for Joule, can assist users with faster decision‑making and more intuitive interactions across logistics workflows.

Together, SAP EWM and SAP Logistics Management enable organizations to align technology investments with operational complexity, supporting mixed warehouse networks that include both highly automated facilities and smaller, distributed sites.

Platform strategy and supply chain convergence

Warehouse execution does not operate in isolation. SAP’s platform strategy connects warehousing with transportation, manufacturing, quality, maintenance, global trade, sustainability, and partner collaboration across the supply chain.

SAP EWM can be used with SAP Signavio solutions to support process analysis and continuous improvement. It can leverage standardized APIs across SAP ERP and SAP S/4HANA to connect with adjacent execution systems such as transportation management, global trade, environmental health and safety, and SAP Digital Manufacturing. This platform-based approach helps organizations move beyond siloed execution toward coordinated, end‑to‑end supply chain

Looking ahead

SAP remains focused on helping customers modernize warehouse operations while navigating broader ERP and cloud transformations. While organizations must carefully evaluate deployment models, cloud strategies, and long‑term road maps, SAP continues to invest in warehouse management solutions that scale globally, integrate deeply, and support evolving business requirements.

We believe that being recognized by Gartner as a Leader for the 12^th consecutive time reflects continued execution across SAP’s warehouse management portfolio and the trust customers place in SAP to manage critical logistics operations worldwide.

Read the full Magic Quadrant report from Gartner to learn more about why SAP is a Leader. Learn more about the capabilities of SAP Extended Warehouse Management.

Till Dengel is global head of Product Marketing for Logistics and Asset & Service Management at SAP.

*Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Warehouse Management Systems, by Simon Tunstall, Rishabh Narang, Federica Stufano, 29 April 2026.

Gartner does not endorse any company, vendor, product or service depicted in its publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s business and technology insights organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this publication, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
Gartner and Magic Quadrant are trademarks of Gartner, Inc., and/or its affiliates.