Every executive I talk to is navigating the same fundamental challenge: how to execute faster and make smarter decisions while operating in an unpredictable market. Shifted demand, supply chain constraints, and margin pressure are no longer temporary disruptions—they are standard operating conditions.
To adapt, businesses are increasingly moving toward the vision of an Autonomous Enterprise. Achieving this requires connected, intelligent cloud systems that provide immediate operational clarity and give their teams the confidence to act.
For 13 years, SAP Innovation Awards have celebrated organizations turning transformation into reality
When organizations get this right, the results go far beyond internal efficiency. They set new standards for their entire industry, deliver exceptional value to customers, and solve critical economic, environmental, and social challenges.
That is the driving force behind the 2027 SAP Innovation Awards. Every year, the awards recognize organizations that take on tough business challenges, leverage modern SAP technology, and deliver measurable outcomes that push their organizations—and our global community—forward.
Why participate?
Recognizing your team’s hard work is just the beginning. SAP Innovation Awards are designed to elevate your success story on a global stage and provide tangible benefits for your organization:
Global visibility and marketing: Winners gain high-profile exposure, including a dedicated feature on the SAP News Center, cross-channel promotional campaigns, and potential placement on the SAP.com homepage.
Event access and speaking opportunities: Winners receive a complimentary pass to SAP Sapphire (or a $1,000 charity donation voucher) and an invitation to celebrate at the SAP Sapphire reception. Top innovators may potentially secure coveted speaking slots at the event to share their journey directly with industry peers.
Official recognition: To properly celebrate your team’s achievements, winners receive official, physical trophies and finalists and winners receive kits to showcase their success internally and externally.
A streamlined experience: focus on your story
Operational agility should apply to recognition, too. We have updated the submission process for 2027 to make sharing your story straightforward and fast.
You no longer need to figure out which category fits your project.
Instead of asking you to navigate a complex list of options, we want you to focus entirely on what matters most: telling your story. Simply submit your entry detailing the business problem you set out to solve, the SAP technologies you deployed, and the tangible business results you achieved.
Once submitted, our review committee will evaluate your entry and automatically assign it to the most relevant category. Because transformative work rarely stays in a single silo, your entry will also be considered across multiple applicable categories to maximize your team’s recognition.
Recognizing excellence across the enterprise
The 2027 awards framework recognizes breakthrough achievements across 14 core solution areas:
AI Excellence
Autonomous Enterprise Orchestrator
Business Network Luminary
Cloud ERP Champion
Emerging Growth Leader
Supply Chain Catalyst
Financial Futurist
Procurement Visionary
People Experience Pioneer
Customer Experience Innovator
Technology Pathfinder
Transformation Impact
Services Superstar
Sustainability Hero
Additionally, every entry is automatically evaluated for our Industry Leader awards, recognizing organizations that are building new business models across five key sectors:
Consumer Industries
Discrete Industries
Energy & Natural Resources
Public Services
Financial Services
Showcase your progress
Real innovation rarely happens in one massive leap. It happens when focused, pragmatic teams use technology to solve everyday problems, make better decisions, and build momentum day by day.
If your team is using SAP solutions to drive real value, we want to celebrate your work and share your success with our global ecosystem.
Think you know how fast SAP GROW works? We put real customer numbers to the test — game show style.
âś… 15 weeks to go live
âś… $25B supply chain managed with zero custom code
âś… Fully productive employees in just 3 days
âś… Enterprise ERP run by a team of 28
SAP GROW is AI cloud ERP built for companies of any size. See how it works for our customers: https://sap.to/6055BG5qA1
Three-time W Series Champion and Indy NXT race winner Jamie Chadwick built her career by learning when to block out the noise, when to ask for help, and when to trust herself under pressure.
In the fourth episode of Significant Figures, Jamie sits down with Ariana Bravo and Jason Bell to revisit the moments behind the numbers that have shaped her life so far. There is 1.329, the margin behind her breakthrough W Series win at Hockenheim. The 20 laps she led at Road America to make history in Indy NXT. The 2019 season that changed the course of her career. The 55 that followed her from karting into racing. And then her “Bring It” Number: the number Jamie brings to the table herself, and the one that looks toward the future of women in Formula One.
Jamie opens up about growing up unaware of gender barriers in karting, the pressure of being seen as a trailblazer, the physical and mental demands of stepping up to Indy NXT, and why she wishes she had asked Williams for more support earlier in her career.
Significant Figures is a new series about the people behind the public achievements – the pressure, relationships, turning points and beliefs that shape their lives and careers.
đź”” Subscribe to follow the series as more Significant Figures reveal the stories behind their numbers.
CHAPTERS
00:00 – What’s To Come
01:05 – 1.329 – W Series Debut
08:40 – 20 – History in America
15:45 – 2019 – Trailblazer
28:55 – 55 – Jamie’s Number
37:06 – 60 – The Future
43:25 – The Debrief
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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/6053BG6Fbx
The Danish wholesaler Lemvigh‑Müller has deployed artificial intelligence to automate one of the most time‑consuming tasks in procurement: processing supplier order confirmations. The solution consists of multiple AI agents, each responsible for a clearly defined task, orchestrated into a single automated workflow built on SAP Business AI. The outcomes are faster processing, improved data quality, and more accurate delivery information for customers.
When suppliers send order confirmations as PDF files, even minor discrepancies in price, quantity, or delivery dates can trigger significant manual effort within procurement. For Lemvigh‑Müller, one of Denmark’s largest wholesalers within steel, plumbing, heating and electrical products, this has long been a familiar challenge, consuming substantial time and resources.
The company has now tackled the very point where earlier automation initiatives often stalled. With a new solution based on several specialized AI agents, developed on SAP technology and implemented in close collaboration with NTT DATA Business Solutions, supplier PDF order confirmations can now be read, interpreted, compared, and processed automatically—directly against SAP systems.
Capture business-wide AI value with speed and confidence
“We have previously tried both RPA and traditional automation approaches without really achieving the desired effect. The key difference this time is that we broke the task down into multiple independent AI agents, each responsible for a specific part of the process. Together, they now handle what previously required manual review,” says Frederik Aakerlund, IT director at Lemvigh‑Müller.
10 weeks from idea to AI agents in production
The project originated with an e-mail from Jess Frederiksen, an AI‑savvy project manager in Lemvigh‑Müller’s Market and Procurement organization. After successfully matching an order confirmation with a purchase order using ChatGPT as an experiment, he approached the IT director to explore whether this could be turned into a fully integrated system solution.
From the initial tests to production deployment, the entire project took just 10 weeks. According to Lemvigh‑Müller, this short implementation timeline was critical in allowing the solution to demonstrate tangible business value quickly and build internal support.
“This was not a long-running project. In 10 weeks, we moved from idea to AI agents in production, already delivering measurable value to our procurement officers,” Aakerlund says.
Over time, Lemvigh‑Müller expects the solution to free up resources equivalent to three to four full-time employees. These resources will instead be redeployed to higher-value activities, including handling the most complex and exception‑driven orders.
“The objective is not to reduce headcount, but to use our expertise more effectively. The AI agents take care of routine tasks, enabling procurement officers to focus on cases where their experience genuinely matters,” Aakerlund adds.
More than 100,000 order confirmations automated
Each year, Lemvigh‑Müller sends approximately 175,000 purchase orders to more than 2,000 suppliers. While part of this volume is handled in a structured manner via EDI, around 60% of supplier order confirmations are still received as unstructured documents.
With the coordinated AI agents in place, the company can now automatically identify delays, quantity changes, and price discrepancies—and respond significantly faster.
“Previously, when order confirmations were handled manually, it could take hours or even days before changes were reflected across the organization. Today, the AI agents update the data almost immediately, allowing customers to receive a much more accurate picture of deliveries far sooner,” says Klaus Heinemann, head of SAP ERP at Lemvigh‑Müller, who led the development together with the project team. “In addition, we now identify price discrepancies before the final invoice is issued, saving time both for us and for our suppliers.”
Multiple AI agents orchestrated in a single workflow
The solution is built around three cooperating AI agents, each with a clearly defined role in the process. One agent handles incoming e-mails and attachments, a second extracts and structures data from PDF documents, and a third compares the extracted information against purchase orders in SAP to determine whether there is a match or a deviation.
As a result, complex and unstructured supplier data can be processed in a unified, automated workflow without requiring procurement officers to open and manually review lengthy PDF files.
“What makes this solution robust is the interaction between the agents. Each agent is highly specialized, but they are orchestrated in a way that ensures the process flows seamlessly from start to finish,” Heinemann explains.
Three AI agents working together at Lemvigh‑Müller
Lemvigh‑Müller’s solution is built around three specialized AI agents, each responsible for a clearly defined task within the procurement process. Together, they form a single, end‑to‑end, automated workflow:
1. The e-mail agent receives and sorts incoming e-mails from suppliers. The agent identifies relevant order confirmations and attached documents and routes them to the next step in the process.
2. The data extraction agent extracts key information such as prices, quantities, and delivery dates from PDF documents and structures the data so it can be compared directly with purchase orders in SAP.
3. The matching agent compares the extracted data with existing purchase orders in SAP and determines whether there is a match or a deviation. In case of a match, the process continues automatically, while deviations are flagged for further handling.
During the project, the importance of master data quality also became increasingly clear.
“In areas such as Incoterms and other master data, we identified improvements that need to be addressed. This has been an important learning not just for this initiative, but for our broader work with AI,” he says.
While it is still too early to measure the full impact on customer experience, error rates, or claims, expectations are that faster and more precise handling of supplier confirmations will, over time, lead to fewer surprises and significantly improved delivery transparency. Internally, the solution has been met with strong interest and curiosity among employees.
“Procurement officers clearly recognize the value of being relieved from the most tedious routine work. This has sparked a constructive dialogue about how technology can best support their day‑to‑day responsibilities,” Heinemann says.
The interaction between the three AI agents makes it possible to automate a task that previously required manual review of unstructured documents.
Business AI with a clear business outcome
According to Lemvigh‑Müller, the investment is expected to deliver a return within a relatively short timeframe.
“We are talking about quarters rather than years when it comes to ROI. That is why it was essential for us to get the solution into production quickly and focus on processes with a clear and measurable impact,” Aakerlund says.
For SAP, the project serves as a concrete example of how artificial intelligence can be embedded directly into core business processes rather than remaining a disconnected experiment.
“Many companies talk about AI agents primarily in terms of automation. Lemvigh‑Müller demonstrates that the real challenge—and the real opportunity—lies in coordination,” says David Pontoppidan, head of AI at SAP for the Nordics and Baltics. “It is the orchestration of three specialized agents directly within the core process that makes this solution robust. This is also where many multi‑agent initiatives fail, not due to limitations of individual agents but because of insufficient coordination. Lemvigh‑Müller has succeeded by anchoring the solution in its SAP landscape, where data, business rules, and governance frameworks are already firmly established.”
He continues: “Innovation is not about company size. Lemvigh‑Müller shows that a Danish organization with short decision paths and a pragmatic approach to technology can move faster than many large global enterprises that are still in the planning stage. Ten weeks from idea to production is far from the norm, but perhaps it should be.”
Designed for operations and scalability
The solution was implemented in close collaboration with NTT DATA Business Solutions, which was responsible for making the solution production‑ready and fully integrated into Lemvigh‑Müller’s SAP landscape.
“By distributing responsibilities across multiple AI agents, Lemvigh‑Müller has been able to automate a complex process without losing transparency or control. This has enabled a fast and secure transition from pilot to production and ensures a more robust solution that can easily be expanded as new requirements emerge,” says Kristian Dahl, SAP UX manager at NTT DATA Business Solutions.
According to Dahl, the modular, agent‑based architecture was a key enabler in moving efficiently from proof of concept to live operation.
First step in a broader AI agent strategy
Initially, the AI agents have been deployed for selected supplier inboxes and business areas. However, Lemvigh‑Müller already sees significant potential in applying the same agent‑based approach across additional administrative processes.
“This is the first AI agent solution we have put into production. The experience has given us the confidence to consider similar approaches across other areas, including invoice processing and order management,” Aakerlund concludes.
Ellen Vig Nelausen is a Nordic Integrated Communications Expert at SAP.
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See how SAP Business AI Platform connects data, rules, processes, and models to help enterprises unlock agentic value.
The race is on to unlock the value of agentic AI across the business. But building an autonomous enterprise is not just about adding tools. It starts with connection—bringing together your data, rules, processes, and best-in-class models so AI can work with the context of how your business actually runs.
In this overview, learn how SAP Business AI Platform helps connect the enterprise from end to end. By combining AI, business data, process context, and governance, the platform helps organizations build solutions that deliver real outcomes across the business from day one.
With SAP Business AI Platform, governance can help accelerate innovation, agents can act with purpose, and AI guidance can be grounded in your business data. Powered by 50 years of SAP business expertise, the platform provides a trusted foundation for organizations ready to scale AI with confidence.
Chapters:
00:00 – The race to unlock agentic value
00:08 – Building an autonomous enterprise starts with connection
00:21 – Bringing the enterprise together
00:33 – Governance, agents, and grounded guidance
00:44 – Connect to your AI potential
Learn more about SAP Business AI Platform: https://sap.to/6055BBAb8L
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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/6053BBAb87
Forecast, plan, and close with more confidence using Autonomous Finance from SAP, powered by Joule and trusted business data.
Economic uncertainty, shifting numbers, and growing compliance requirements put finance teams under pressure to act quickly and accurately. But when information is scattered across systems, teams spend too much time piecing data together and too little time focusing on the decisions that drive the business forward.
In this video, see how Autonomous Finance helps finance teams move faster with the right insights in the moment. With Joule, teams can ask for what they need, surface the right context, and coordinate finance assistants and AI agents across financial management processes. Behind the scenes, AI helps predict and model scenarios, monitor performance, analyze risks and opportunities, and keep operations aligned with governance and compliance.
Autonomous Finance brings applications, contextualized data, and industry-specific AI together in a complete financial management suite, helping organizations forecast from a single source of truth, align teams around the same view, and lead through uncertainty toward sustainable growth.
Welcome to Autonomous Finance. Welcome to the beginning of better.
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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/6050BBAb04
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
Watch all SAP Sapphire replays on demand: https://sap.to/6055BBLzAT
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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
WALLDORF — SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) today announced it has completed the acquisition of Reltio, a leading master data management (MDM) software provider.
The acquisition helps customers make their SAP and non-SAP enterprise data AI-ready and will provide customers with the tools they need to unify, cleanse and harmonize data across sources for superior enterprise-wide agentic AI.
