Think you know SAP? Let’s see. 👀
We’re back to bust 3 more SAP myths in 30 seconds.
Because SAP isn’t just software behind the scenes. It helps people and organizations solve real business challenges, move faster, and make better decisions.
Which myth surprised you most? Tell us in the comments. 👇
Learn more about SAP GROW: https://www.sap.com/products/erp/grow.html
Discover how SAP Learning Hub, student edition helps students build in-demand SAP skills and gives educators ready-to-use resources to enrich their teaching, all at no cost.
Hear firsthand from faculty and students at Central Michigan University as they share how SAP Learning Hub, student edition complements classroom learning with hands-on practice, guided Learning Journeys, and industry-recognized certifications.
In this video, you’ll discover how students can:
• Build practical SAP skills through hands-on learning experiences
• Access real SAP practice systems and expert-created learning content
• Prepare for SAP certifications with included certification attempts
• Gain confidence for internships and future careers with recognized SAP credentials
You’ll also see how educators can:
• Integrate academically relevant learning content into their courses
• Save time with ready-made teaching materials and flexible lesson plans
• Help students connect classroom concepts with real-world business processes
• Prepare graduates for careers in today’s digital enterprise
Whether you’re a student looking to stand out or an educator preparing the next generation of business and technology professionals, SAP Learning Hub, student edition provides the resources to help you succeed.
Empower your potential, for free.
👉 Get started with SAP Learning Hub, student edition:
https://sap.to/6055BEJLDv
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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/6050BEJLD0
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For a company navigating one of the most consequential transformations in its history, financial clarity is not optional—it is essential. Natura &Co, the Brazilian personal care and cosmetics group behind iconic brands such as Natura and Avon, has long been committed to combining purpose-driven business with commercial performance. After a period of strategic portfolio reshaping, including the divestiture of its Aesop and The Body Shop holdings, the company is now sharpening its focus on profitability and operational excellence across Latin America and global markets.
At the center of that effort sits a deceptively complex challenge: understanding, in real time, which revenue and cost factors are driving or eroding gross margin across a highly diversified business. For years, answering that question meant manual reporting, delayed insights, and finance teams spending valuable time on data gathering rather than analysis.
That’s now changing, thanks to a co-innovation initiative developed together with SAP and Numen, a global SAP partner specializing in digital transformation and enterprise software implementation.
The project’s goal was to replace a labor-intensive gross margin analysis process with a generative AI application embedded directly into Natura &Co’s financial workflows. Built on SAP Business AI Platform, SAP’s unified foundation integrating business technology, data, and AI capabilities, the application connects directly to data in SAP S/4HANA to provide finance teams with automated insights and narrative recommendations in real time, without the need for manual data pulls or offline reporting.
The application enables users to explore revenue, cost, and margin drivers interactively, identifying at a glance which elements are protecting or eroding margin performance across markets and product lines. Crucially, human oversight remains central to the design: the AI application generates insights, while finance professionals retain full control over interpretation and decisions.
“The implementation of gross margin analysis using AI in SAP S/4HANA marked an inflection point in the analytical capability of our finance area,” said Rogério Dias Garcia, tech manager, ERP Latam, Natura &Co. “We overcame delays and raised the standard of insights by integrating margin analysis from SAP S/4HANA with a large language model connected via the SAP AI Core layer. This architecture allowed us to provide, in an agile, secure, and completely anonymous manner, a stratified and precise view of gross margin offenders and protectors—discriminating exactly which revenue or cost elements were driving market performance.”
Natura &Co’s application derived from a prototype SAP partner Numen created in early 2024 at SAP’s global Hack2Build on business AI, leveraging the generative AI capabilities of SAP Business AI Platform. The solution was designed and developed through close collaboration between Natura &Co, Numen, and SAP. From the outset, the approach was to align AI adoption with concrete business priorities, ensuring the application would be scalable and production-ready rather than a standalone prototype.
Numen brought deep SAP implementation expertise to the project, combining knowledge of SAP S/4HANA architecture with hands-on experience in building solutions on SAP Business AI Platform. The technology stack—SAP S/4HANA, SAP AI Core, SAP Fiori, and SAP Business Technology Platform—provided the secure, integrated foundation needed to connect financial data with generative AI capabilities in an enterprise context.
“SAP enabled the transformation by providing the technological foundation and expert support,” said Carlos Aravechia, head of Data Design & Intelligence at Numen.
The success of the project has validated a broader conviction at Natura &Co: that generative AI, embedded directly in ERP workflows, can fundamentally reposition finance from a transactional function to a strategic business partner.
The Natura &Co project demonstrates a pattern that other organizations can replicate, particularly those running SAP S/4HANA. The combination of structured ERP data with the contextual reasoning capabilities of large language models creates a foundation for decision intelligence that goes well beyond traditional business intelligence tools.
The project was built within a six-month co-innovation sprint and went live in August 2025. It is currently in use across Natura &Co’s Equador operations.
Looking ahead, Natura &Co is already planning the next phase: integrating Joule Agents to further automate the extraction of standard analytical content and deepen the AI-driven optimization of financial processes.
“The success of this initiative validates the transformative potential of embedded AI within our ERP,” Dias Garcia noted. “We are now ready to move forward—deepening these insights and integrating the capability of Joule Agents to maximize the extraction of standard content and further optimize our business decisions.”
For SAP customers evaluating how to move from AI experimentation to AI in production, the Natura &Co project offers a concrete, replicable model: start with a high-value, well-defined business process, embed AI directly into existing workflows, and build in human oversight from the start.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Meet Joule from SAP: a new way to work with AI agents grounded in your business data, processes, and applications.
With Joule, people express what they want to accomplish, and Joule helps turn intent into action. It can surface relevant insights, automate routine work, and coordinate AI agents across SAP and non-SAP systems – all through one dynamic workspace designed to keep people focused on outcomes.
Joule brings together three essential parts of SAP Business AI. Joule Work gives people one place to direct business-wide workflows. Joule Assistants use role and process context to coordinate Joule Agents, helping execute complex workflows across functions like finance, procurement, supply chain, HR, customer experience, and IT. Joule Studio helps teams build and extend custom AI agents, apps, and automations with the governance, security, and business understanding needed to operate at scale.
Built into SAP’s enterprise AI portfolio, Joule helps organizations move beyond individual productivity toward connected, end-to-end business impact. With AI grounded in business context and designed for secure, compliant execution, teams can work faster, collaborate without silos, and focus on the decisions that move the business forward.
Learn more about Joule: https://sap.to/6059BBxcSF
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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/6054BBxcSA
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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.
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.
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.
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
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 12th 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.
There is a fine line between a helpful recommendation and an invasion of privacy. In this episode of SAP Spotlight on ANZ Tech, we explore how to use AI-powered personalization in a way that feels relevant to customers without overstepping.
Jess asks people when personalization crosses the line from helpful to creepy, and why targeted experiences can feel uncomfortable when it seems like brands know too much. Then our customer experience experts, Scott and Scott, break down what separates smart personalization from trust-breaking tactics. The takeaway is simple: relevance is powerful, but informed consent and data security are the foundation of long-term customer trust.
You will also hear why a data breach is the ultimate trust-killer. Once customer data leaks, confidence is hard to regain. If your team is building personalization programs, this episode is a practical reminder to balance value with transparency, and to treat trust as a core metric, not a nice-to-have.
👉 Get our Personalisation Playbook to build a strategy rooted in trust: https://emarsys.com/learn/white-papers/personalization-playbook/?utm_source=emarsys&utm_medium=video&utm_term=sap-cx-spotlight
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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
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Hear reasons why the Fabric of Data & AI is a must-attend.
As organizations adopt AI, the real challenge isn’t just the models. It’s ensuring AI has access to connected business data and context to make the right decisions.
On March 24, industry leaders will share how they’re building the data foundations required for AI to succeed. Take a look — and register to join the conversation.
Find out more: https://sap.to/6047hOkab
See what’s new in SAP Analytics Cloud, from admin and system monitoring to data exploration, integration, planning, and story design, in this quarterly release highlights walkthrough.
Join Orla Cullen (Product Marketing Manager – Data & Analytics) and SAP product experts as they demo key innovations from the Q1 quarterly release cycle. Use the timestamps to jump straight to the areas that matter most to you:
00:00 – Intro
00:26 – Admin & service management
11:04 – My Metrics (KPI monitoring)
17:26 – Data Analyzer enhancements
24:48 – Data integration (Snowflake live)
25:41 – Data modeling updates
28:14 – Enterprise planning (Compass & formulas)
33:19 – AI-assisted & faster data actions
38:45 – Job Monitor improvements
40:25 – Plan entry updates
42:25 – Microsoft Office add-in (Excel)
46:45 – Story design, charts & tables
55:57 – Extensibility & composites
1:10:55 – Custom widgets & collaboration
1:17:26 – Outro
For more on SAP Analytics Cloud, check out our release highlights page ➡️ https://sap.to/6054hZ5V8
Discover harmonized scenario management in SAP IBP 2602: a new approach that unifies scenario planning across key figures (time series) and orders in one seamless workflow.
In this highlight tour, you’ll see a complete end-to-end scenario cycle driven from Planner Workspace: create a scenario (without running a simulation first), plan changes across demand and supply, run planning jobs that consider all scenario changes, compare outcomes, and promote results back to baseline. The result is a simpler way to test options. Move forward with confidence without juggling separate scenario types.
🧩 One scenario for key figures + orders — Work with time series planning data and order changes together to create a truly harmonized scenario.
🗓️ Better scenario lifecycle control — Create scenarios directly (no simulation required) and use a scheduled deletion date to manage scenario cleanup.
⚙️ Plan, simulate, and save, on top of scenarios — Run simulations on existing scenarios and choose to discard changes, save to another scenario, or save back to the current one.
🚀 Promote scenarios back to baseline (now for orders too) — Promote both key figure results and order data to baseline, and choose whether to promote all planning results or only interactive changes.
Chapters:
00:10 – What’s new: harmonized scenario management
00:29 – End-to-end scenario cycle in Planner Workspace
00:54 – Create a scenario (no simulation needed)
01:18 – Add order changes inside the scenario
01:43 – Run simulations on top of scenarios
01:56 – Execute planning run with scenario supply
02:14 – View order details in Planner Workspace
02:45 – Promote scenario to baseline (key figures + orders)
03:10 – Confirm changes promoted
• What’s new (Help Portal): https://sap.to/6051hBRlN
• Learn more about SAP Integrated Business Planning: https://sap.to/6053cGTA3