On September 15, 2026, the new sovanta AppHaus Newtown Square opened its doors for American customers.

The grand opening event was scheduled along the local SAP Connect Day events for AI & Data Leaders, so guests from the regional business and technology community were welcomed at the new creative space. Near SAP’s Newtown Square campus, the factory-style sovanta AppHaus now invites SAP customers to hands-on co-innovation work. Experts from sovanta help teams explore and design use cases based on the latest AI-infused technologies provided by the Autonomous Enterprise. As the company puts it, “Others talk about agents. We build them.”

Speakers with three different perspectives

The grand opening event started with a welcoming note given by Claus Heinrich, founder and CEO of sovanta; Christian Heinrich, president of sovanta America; and David Robinson, president, SAP North America and Americas Customer Success Functions. They shared their SAP and partner perspectives and fully agreed that the most important insights came from their joint customers. So, they offered the stage to two long-standing sovanta customers, Elanco Animal Health and Endress+Hauser. Both shared first-hand experiences of their innovation work and journey—and what AI-powered business transformation looks like in their concrete business contexts.

“What we value most about sovanta is how they collaborate with us: honest, well-organized, and always a step ahead in a rapidly evolving landscape,” Sunil Guna, senior director, ERP lead at Elanco Animal Health, said. “Over the past year, they have become a true trusted advisor, and the sovanta AppHaus Newtown Square gives us the place to keep turning ideas into real impact with SAP.”

“The Autonomous Enterprise is not built in a boardroom—it is co-created, use case by use case, in spaces exactly like this one. Having sovanta bring that capability directly to North American customers, right here in Newtown Square, is a genuine milestone for SAP and for the customers we build the future with together,” SAP’s Robinson said.

Looking back – and ahead

Claus Henrich, who is a former board member of SAP AG, looked back on the years of building and growing sovanta as a company: “Since founding sovanta in Germany in 2009, our approach has been to work closely with our customers on real business challenges and turn them into meaningful innovation. That approach has paid off, and bringing it to the U.S. with our sovanta AppHaus Newtown Square is an important next step. I’m proud of what we’ve built and grateful for the trust of SAP and our customers.”

Global innovation support, going broader and deeper

The new location is designed in a creative factory style, reminiscent of the hands-on innovation work that the sovanta team performs with all its customers. Like all other SAP AppHaus Network members, its co-innovation work follows the human-centered approach to innovation.

Thomas Biedermann, global head of SAP AppHaus Network, commended the partner team for opening this new location not far from Philadelphia: ”My heartfelt congratulations to the sovanta team for being the second partner of our global network community to open a second AppHaus location in the U.S. It shows that the innovation approach we share is not only broadly adopted across the globe but also intensified by our partners, going broader and deeper, so to say. We wish you and your customers lots of success!”

Working closer with the American SAP ecosystem

Christian Heinrich explained the advantage as follows: “Establishing the sovanta AppHaus Newtown Square strengthens our presence at the heart of the U.S.-American SAP ecosystem and creates new opportunities to collaborate even more closely with SAP and our customers in the U.S. As part of the SAP AppHaus Network, we can combine proven human-centered innovation approaches with sovanta’s AI and SAP expertise to move from ideas to tangible business outcomes faster. Our SAP AppHaus location is our sovanta Innovation Factory brought to life, where we turn innovation from one-off projects into a scalable, repeatable approach.”

Rolling up our sleeves

“This isn’t just a new location,” Sven Arndt, chief technology officer, sovanta America, said. “It’s a place built around our customers and their challenges. We want to sit down together, understand where AI can create real value, and turn the most promising use cases into solutions that work in practice. I’m excited to welcome our first customers to Newtown Square, roll up our sleeves, and build what’s next together.”

For more information, the new sovanta AppHaus Newtown Square can be found at 3407 West Chester Pike, Newtown Square, PA 19073, United States of America.

Imke Vierjahn is communications lead for SAP AppHaus Network.

See what’s new in the Joule Work mobile app, including AI chat, dynamic Spaces, SSO, expanded languages, and more.

SAP Mobile Start is now the Joule Work mobile app, with a new name, a new icon, and the same workflows users already know. In this walkthrough, see what changed in releases 3.0 and 3.1—and how the app supports work across mobile and desktop.

Release 3.0 introduces two experiences. The Joule Work experience, available for SAP Early Adopter Care customers, brings users into a dynamic workspace where they can express what they want to accomplish and let Joule surface insights, automate routine work, and coordinate AI agents across systems. You’ll see Conversations, an AI chat experience with voice support for quick answers and actions, and Spaces, AI-generated workspaces composed in real time around a specific goal.

The video also covers updates to the SAP Build Work Zone experience, including full-screen Joule conversations, Single Sign-On for trusted web applications, and in-app support configuration. Release 3.1 adds more admin control over support settings, six additional languages, pinned Spaces that sync with the web, language switching for external content, and direct access to favorite and recently used workspaces in SAP Build Work Zone, advanced edition, and SAP SuccessFactors Work Zone.

Chapters
00:00 – Intro: Joule Work mobile app 3.0 and 3.1
00:11 – Release 3.0: New name, same experience
00:33 – Two experiences at a glance
01:00 – Joule Work experience
01:45 – Conversations: AI chat and voice
02:00 – Spaces: AI-generated workspaces
02:25 – SAP Build Work Zone experience
03:16 – Single Sign-On for web applications
03:50 – In-app support configuration
04:05 – Release 3.1 updates
04:17 – New languages
04:31 – Pin your Spaces
04:52 – Work Zone language and workspace updates
05:23 – Learn more

Explore the Joule Work mobile app and SAP mobile apps:
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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/6054BGuyHg

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Building a resilient, future-ready supply chain is one of the most complex challenges organizations face today. For more than 50 years, SAP has helped organizations navigate supply chain volatility by connecting planning, execution, and business processes across the enterprise. We are proud to share that SAP has been positioned as a Leader in the inaugural Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Supply Chain Management Suites*, a recognition that, in our view, reflects not just where we are today, but the direction we are heading.

Supply chain leaders today operate in an environment where disruptions are constantly changing, customer expectations shift quickly, and the window for effective response keeps shrinking. Organizations need more than digitalization. They need platforms that connect people, processes, data, and business networks—and that turn that connectivity into faster, better decisions.

Our vision: Autonomous Supply Chain Management

The next frontier in supply chain is not just connectivity, it is decision intelligence. At SAP, the Autonomous Enterprise represents our vision for how organizations will run their businesses in the future, with data, business context, policy, and AI reasoning working together so that the right decisions happen faster, more consistently, and at scale, while human judgment remains central.

Autonomous Supply Chain Management is a practical step toward that vision, where people define goals and priorities, AI assistants orchestrate activity across domains, and agents execute the work within governed, end-to-end processes. Enterprises rely on fully autonomous agents to run supply chain processes and decisions within guardrails defined by the organization. Reaction times to disruptions compress from days to minutes. Data collection across organizational silos happens in near real time. Rather than manually collecting and interpreting data, planners receive auto-generated scenarios that are pre-validated and ready for a decision. That speed advantage is transformative.

But the value goes beyond speed. Organizations learn from past decisions and harmonize decision-making across the enterprise, leading to consistently better outcomes over time. AI delivers the greatest value when it is embedded where work actually happens, grounded in deeply integrated processes and trusted data.

Our approach

A truly integrated supply chain platform does more than connect data—it connects decisions. That is the principle that guides how we have built the SAP supply chain management suite, and it is what we believe sets SAP apart.

Our breadth across execution, transactions, business networks, finance, and AI is unique. No other vendor brings together operational systems, trusted business data, and intelligence and orchestration in a single, deeply integrated suite. That breadth matters because supply chain decisions do not happen in isolation—a sourcing decision affects manufacturing capacity, which affects logistics, which affects financial commitments. When those systems are connected, decisions improve across the board.

We organize our platform around three layers. The first is operational systems, including applications such as SAP Ariba, SAP Integrated Business Planning, SAP Digital Manufacturing, SAP Asset Performance Management, SAP Transportation Management, SAP Extended Warehouse Management, and SAP Business Network. These are where supply chain work happens. The second is trusted business data, anchored by SAP Business Data Cloud, which aggregates data from SAP and third-party sources to help give organizations a unified, real-time view across the enterprise. The third is intelligence and orchestration, delivered through SAP Business AI and Joule, our AI engagement layer, which brings together agentic AI, embedded analytics, and network-enabled execution to help organizations move from reactive problem-solving to proactive decision-making.

This architecture helps organizations standardize processes across domains, reduce dependence on fragmented point solutions, and improve coordination from sourcing through final delivery—linking operational, financial, and network outcomes in real time.

Putting innovation into practice

We see demand for capabilities that bring together operational data, business context, and AI-powered insights, and we are actively investing to meet that need. New Joule Assistants are being embedded across planning, manufacturing, logistics, asset management, and supplier collaboration, helping teams act on changes faster and reduce time spent on manual coordination.

Alongside these assistants, we are delivering purpose-built AI agents across supply chain processes, designed to take guided action within defined business guardrails while keeping people firmly in control. These capabilities are becoming available in phases through 2026, aligning with customers’ existing SAP landscapes.

Delivering real results for customers

Ultimately, in our opinion, recognition like this is only meaningful when it reflects real impact for the organizations we serve. Takeda Pharmaceuticals International AG, a global leader in R&D-based biopharmaceuticals, offers a concrete example of what this looks like in practice. Using SAP’s supply chain planning assistant, Takeda has moved from manual root-cause analysis to AI-detected diagnostics and AI-suggested remediation, with automated performance tracking that enables a self-healing supply chain capability.

“AI represents the key enabler for Takeda’s transformation for the future,” said Rebecca Kaufmann, senior vice president and head of Enterprise Platforms at Takeda Pharmaceuticals. “We are combining the SAP industry and technology knowledge with our organizational real-life experience. The supply chain planning assistant will provide us with AI-detected root causes and AI-suggested remediation and also automated performance tracking resulting in a self-healing capability.”

Looking ahead

Supply chains don’t become autonomous overnight. This evolution happens workflow by workflow, expanding automation where it delivers real value, while keeping people firmly in control. Supply chain teams are increasingly looking to spend less time monitoring and firefighting and more time shaping decisions, managing trade-offs, and building resilience.

We are grateful to the many customers, partners, analysts, and SAP teams whose collaboration and insights help shape our products and strategy. While we are honored by this recognition, we view it as an important milestone for us rather than a destination. We remain committed to ongoing innovation that helps organizations transform their supply chains into strategic sources of competitive advantage—and we thank our customers for their trust in that journey.

Devesh Mishra is GM and chief product officer for SAP Supply Chain Management.

*Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Supply Chain Management Suites, Jan Snoeckx, Balaji Abbabatulla, Christian Titze, August 11, 2026.

GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally, and MAGIC QUADRANT is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates and are used herein with permission. All rights reserved.
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.

Not all business data fits neatly into flat tables. Product catalogs, org charts, and account structures often rely on parent-child relationships that standard data models can’t represent well.

The biggest problem in financial services is not AI readiness, it’s structural complexity.

That was the takeaway from a recent conversation between SAP CFO Dominik Asam and SAP Fioneer CEO Matthias Tomann. Their conversation touched on topics like the future of financial services, the role of AI, and the growing importance of integrated enterprise platforms.

For decades, banks and insurers have built operating models around regulatory fragmentation, country-specific requirements, layered systems, and continuous workaround solutions. As a result, the industry is running on patchwork architecture that is expensive to maintain, slow to change, and fundamentally misaligned with how AI works.

Partnership built for financial services innovation

Since joining forces in 2021, SAP and SAP Fioneer have significantly expanded their joint capabilities for the financial services sector. As Tomann highlighted in the conversation, the partnership has already delivered substantial momentum for SAP Fioneer:

• R&D investment increased by 120%
• Annual software sales more than doubled
• Major customers successfully transitioned to SAP Cloud ERP
• The platform evolved into a richer, more scalable, and highly capable ecosystem

Together, the companies are combining SAP’s trusted cloud and data infrastructure with SAP Fioneer’s deep financial services expertise to help institutions simplify operations, modernize core systems, and prepare for the AI-driven future. 

Executives from both companies will be exploring these critical topics further at their annual SAP & SAP Fioneer Financial Services Forum 2026, which is now open for registration.

AI is not the starting point, data integration is

Everyone wants AI, but AI can only create value from integrated data, real-time access, and standardized processes. But most financial institutions still operate on the opposite: fragmented foundations. That reality will define the winners over the next five years.

The organizations that succeed will not be the ones experimenting with the most models. They will be the ones that establish unified, trusted, real-time enterprise data with strong governance. That is the real competitive advantage.

But even that is only part of the story. The next phase is not just about using AI to analyze better; it is about AI executing work.

We are now seeing a fundamental shift: from systems that store and report information to systems that act on that information in real time, orchestrating end-to-end processes across the business. This marks the transition to the Autonomous Enterprise, SAP’s vision for the future of business where AI does not just support decisions but increasingly drives execution, within clearly defined guardrails.

Financial services can no longer afford “patchwork architecture”

This shift makes one thing clear: The traditional approach to building IT landscapes is no longer viable.

For years, many financial institutions solved problems incrementally—another point solution, another integration layer, another workaround. But eventually every workaround becomes technical debt and integration is the single largest IT cost category.

Tomann made clear during the conversation that the emphasis must be on simplification rather than adding more complexity.

What SAP and SAP Fioneer are driving is not another modernization cycle. It is a structural shift toward comprehensive, integrated platforms and AI driven processes that replace fragmentation, not sit on top of it.

The result is a scalable financial services platform where core banking, lending, reporting, insurance, and analytics operate within an integrated architecture instead of disconnected silos.

Real-time finance is becoming a strategic requirement

Real-time capability is becoming foundational to competitiveness—whether it’s risk management, regulatory reporting, customer experience, fraud prevention, treasury operations, or AI-driven decision making.

Institutions that can act on integrated data instantly will have a major advantage over those still moving information between disconnected systems overnight. With integrated data and AI embedded in core processes, finance is moving toward continuous financial intelligence:

• Forecasting becomes dynamic and always up to date
• Risk is detected and assessed in real time
• Closing processes become increasingly automated
• Decisions are guided by AI based on live business context

Increasingly, AI assistants and agents take over execution of finance processes, from planning and risk management to invoicing and financial close, under strict governance. The role of finance shifts from reporting on the business to steering the business in real time.

AI will reward those who simplify

One of the most striking statements from Asam during the discussion is that SAP is already seeing 10x performance improvements from AI-driven process improvements. But it also highlights something many organizations still underestimate: just how much AI rewards those who standardize.

The more fragmented the processes and data structures are, the harder it becomes to operationalize AI at scale. In contrast, organizations with standardized platforms, harmonized data, and integrated workflows will accelerate much faster.

That is why modernization conversations today are no longer simply “IT projects.” They are business strategy discussions.

Future of financial services will be built on trust, scale, and intelligence

Financial services organizations are operating in an increasingly complex geopolitical and regulatory environment. Infrastructure decisions are no longer just about performance and cost, they are about compliance, security, operational resilience, and national requirements.

This is why scalable, enterprise-grade cloud platforms are becoming so critical.

The institutions that thrive in the next era of financial services will be the ones that can combine trusted data, integrated operations, AI-enabled processes, scalable infrastructure, and regulatory resilience into a single operating model.

The future of financial services will not be defined by isolated AI experiments. It will be defined by who can build the most intelligent, connected, and adaptable enterprise foundation for what comes next.

Learn more about SAP solutions for financial services here.

Kris Kowal, Banking Industry Leader at SAP.
Falk Rieker, Financial Services Industry Leader at SAP.

Really interesting takeaway from Ricard Rovira Marti from Vodafone.

Instead of replacing governance, SAP Business Data Cloud is helping enable it: by building a knowledge layer that keeps data connected and meaningful across systems.

A great example of how to balance innovation with control.

https://sap.to/6050BEJFpK

#SAPBusinessDataCloud #BDC #DataFabric #AI

Turn structured business data into accurate predictive insights faster with SAP-RPT-1.5.

SAP-RPT-1.5 is a relational pretrained transformer model built for structured and relational business data. Unlike large language models designed for text or images, SAP-RPT models are purpose-built to understand how business data is connected, helping teams generate reliable predictions from tables, records, and relationships.

With in-context learning, users can provide a few example records directly in API calls to guide predictions without costly or complex model training. SAP-RPT-1.5 is designed to handle evolving schemas and missing values more robustly, helping teams move faster from data to insight.

Choose SAP-RPT-1.5 small for high-throughput, low-latency use cases, or SAP-RPT-1.5 large for high-accuracy predictions in more complex scenarios. Both are available in SAP’s generative AI hub.

👉 Learn more about SAP-RPT-1.5: https://www.sap.com/products/artificial-intelligence/sap-rpt.html

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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

#SAPBusinessAI #GenerativeAI #EnterpriseAI

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