WALLDORF — SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) today announced that Cirque du Soleil Entertainment Group, the global leader in live entertainment, has implemented an AI-enabled invoice assistant to help streamline its accounts payable operations.

Enabled by SAP Business AI and built on SAP Business Technology Platform, the assistant is already delivering faster response times, enhanced supplier experiences and smooth multilingual automation.

With 38 shows across global cities and a workforce of almost 4,000 artists and staff from 80 countries, Cirque du Soleil’s operations are as dynamic as its performances. Managing more than 70,000 supplier invoices annually—especially from tour-supporting vendors at residency shows—has placed increasing pressure on the accounts payable team. Nearly 40 percent of inquiries are from vendors seeking invoice status updates, and these inquiries were often delayed due to limited visibility and manual processing.

To address this, Cirque du Soleil turned to SAP Business AI. The company’s new AI-enabled invoice assistant automates the triage-and-response process for invoice-related emails. It analyzes incoming messages in all languages, identifies the request type, extracts invoice details, determines the status of each invoice and even captures the sentiment of the email, prioritizing those that need attention more urgently. The assistant then generates a proposed response in English and French, significantly reducing the average handling time from 30 minutes to just two minutes per inquiry.

“The time-consuming research required to identify the payment status of an invoice and its reason was overwhelming,” said Philippe Lalumière, vice president of information technology, Cirque du Soleil Entertainment Group. “We were looking for a more efficient way to handle this, and SAP Business AI provided us with a simply stunning answer.”

The assistant leverages SAP HANA Cloud to store and process structured data derived from incoming emails, along with analysis results and generated responses. SAP AI Core foundation supports intelligent automation, enabling the assistant to detect urgency, sentiment and even root causes of payment delays. This has drastically reduced manual workload and improved supplier satisfaction.

“As we partner with Cirque du Soleil on this transformative journey, it’s inspiring to see how technology is streamlining operations and focusing organizations even more on what they do best—delivering unforgettable experiences,” said Dr. Philipp Herzig, chief technology officer and chief AI officer at SAP SE. “This is a perfect example of how data and AI can unlock both creativity and efficiency.”

Key benefits include:

• Efficiency: Automation frees up employee time and accelerates response rates.
• Accuracy: AI minimizes human error and helps ensure timely, contract-compliant payments.
• Multilingual support: Bilingual capabilities enable inclusivity across Cirque’s global supplier base.
• Scalability: The assistant handles high volumes without additional resources.
• Enhanced experience: Standardized, timely responses foster stronger supplier relationships.

With this innovation, Cirque du Soleil continues to lead not only in the world of live performance but also in operational excellence. SAP remains a trusted partner in this journey, helping the company scale its global footprint while staying agile and responsive.

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Media Contact:
Lesa Plingen, +49 622 776 9000, lesa.plingen@sap.com, CET
SAP Press Room; press@sap.com

Top image courtesy of Cirque du Soleil

This document contains forward-looking statements, which are predictions, projections, or other statements about future events. These statements are based on current expectations, forecasts, and assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results and outcomes to materially differ. Additional information regarding these risks and uncertainties may be found in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including but not limited to the risk factors section of SAP’s 2024 Annual Report on Form 20-F.
© 2025 SAP SE. All rights reserved.
SAP and other SAP products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP SE in Germany and other countries. Please see https://www.sap.com/copyright for additional trademark information and notices.

SAP LeanIX has once again been recognized as a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Architecture Tools, marking its fifth consecutive year of this acknowledgment.

The Gartner Magic Quadrant research methodology says that “Leaders execute well against their current vision and are well positioned for tomorrow.”

In this year’s Magic Quadrant, SAP LeanIX was positioned furthest and highest in both Completeness of Vision and Ability to Execute, which also marks the first time an SAP solution has been positioned in this way.

We believe this result reflects the unique strength of SAP LeanIX solutions in helping enterprises: 

• Make confident, data-driven technology investment decisions 
• Drive transformation initiatives that deliver measurable business impact 
• Accelerate AI innovation while ensuring responsible governance 

“Our goal is to empower our customers to build transformation as an ongoing capability, rather than a one-off project,” Dee Houchen, chief marketing officer at SAP Signavio, said. “As transformation never ends, our solutions help companies secure a full picture of the applications they’re running and, more importantly, the capabilities they offer. This means understanding exactly how those applications can be best deployed to maximize efficiency and productivity. Enterprise architecture planning is at the heart of this approach, and we believe being recognized as a Leader for the fifth consecutive year by Gartner reaffirms our unwavering commitment to value realization for our customers.”

In today’s dynamic business landscape, enterprise architecture planning and implementation are vital for organizational transparency, smarter decision-making, and business growth, and SAP LeanIX maintains an ongoing dedication to innovation and customer satisfaction in this field, as part of SAP’s integrated business transformation toolchain.

In our opinion, this repeated recognition of SAP LeanIX solutions provides useful context regarding the state of the enterprise architecture market. As a vendor, SAP LeanIX empowers organizations to make informed decisions about technology investments, map and support large-scale business transformation, and implement sound AI governance to ignite AI innovation across the enterprise.

The Gartner Magic Quadrant equips businesses with valuable insights to make informed decisions. Get a complimentary copy of the latest Gartner Magic Quadrant, recognizing SAP LeanIX solutions, here.

Lucas de Boer is Global Marketing program lead for SAP Signavio.

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner and Magic Quadrant is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and are used herein with permission. All rights reserved.

Although the iconic German footwear and fashion brand Birkenstock is synonymous with a laid-back lifestyle, before it took the first step on a journey to transform its North American operations the company carefully planned the project and left nothing to chance.

Birkenstock’s technology transformation included launching a new subsidiary in Canada and replacing an outdated, 16-year-old AS 400 system in the U.S. with cutting-edge technology supported by SAP S/4HANA and the industry-specific features of the SAP S/4HANA for fashion and vertical business solution.

The Birkenstock project team, led by Joshua Milos, senior director of IT for Birkenstock Americas, worked closely with SAP partner Rizing to reinvent its Canadian and U.S. operations and now has a streamlined, modern platform to support the company’s robust growth.

The greenest of greenfields

Birkenstock has long had a presence in the U.S., and in 2019 it decided to open a new subsidiary in Canada to better serve its growing market there. Starting out with no existing infrastructure in the country—no offices, employees, or tech—it was a true “greenfield” project in every sense of the term. From the start, Milos and his team saw the Canadian project as a blueprint for a planned revamp of Birkenstock’s U.S. operations and the perfect opportunity to lay a foundation for future growth.

“This was the greenest of greenfield implementations you could have, which gave us the chance to use it as a template for future expansion,” he explains. “Starting with Canada gave us the opportunity to test our processes and make adjustments before rolling out to other regions.”

The Birkenstock team worked with Rizing to establish a robust foundation for the new subsidiary, relying on the partner’s system architecture expertise to ensure that the infrastructure was scalable, future-proof, and met the company’s specific needs. “Rizing provided us with preconfigured clients and the expertise necessary to get us off the ground quickly,” says Milos, noting that this enabled seamless implementation of advanced functionalities like order management, inventory control, and financial reporting.

Process standardization was crucial: the Canadian project team collaborated closely with U.S. colleagues to identify and embed best practices from the U.S. business. Rizing helped Birkenstock map out its business processes and configure the new SAP system to align with these standards, ensuring that the Canadian operations were consistent with established U.S. practices.

Immediate benefits

The Canadian implementation quickly demonstrated the benefits of a modern ERP system. Within a few months, Birkenstock Canada was operating with a level of efficiency and visibility that was unattainable with the legacy systems in the U.S.

Real-time reporting and analytics capabilities in the new SAP system provided Birkenstock with immediate insights into operations, allowing for faster decision-making and better resource allocation. Automated workflows and integrated systems significantly reduced manual processes, improving operational efficiency and freeing up resources for more strategic tasks. And as Birkenstock Canada grows, its SAP infrastructure is ready to handle increased loads and expanded operations.

Patience… and partnerships

While the Canadian greenfield implementation was straightforward, Birkenstock’s “brownfield” transition from its old system to SAP S/4HANA in the U.S. wasn’t without challenges. The company’s legacy system hadn’t been upgraded in 16 years, resulting in inefficiency and manual processes. A global pandemic, a private equity investment, and an IPO all added additional layers of complexity along the journey. Milos knew that patience and consensus-building with stakeholders were crucial for change management. “We had to identify where the issues and pain points were to establish our ROI,” he says.

Rizing helped navigate these hurdles, providing industry expertise to create a compelling business case for global leadership. And to get buy-in at all levels of the organization, the project team spent ample time with business stakeholders, including visualizing processes in a sandbox environment to make the technology more approachable.

Another key step was to form a super-user group comprising key business stakeholders. This group, empowered by extensive training, was responsible for owning the system post-implementation. “The user group made the decisions, took ownership, and were heavily involved in the process,” Milos notes.

Clean core, clean data

Birkenstock has ensured that its system is future-proof, nimble, and upgradeable by sticking to a “clean core”—using standard functionality and avoiding unnecessary customizations. “We took an MVP [minimum viable product] approach. Only the minimal things needed for go-live were implemented,” Milos explains.

Having clean, accurate data before go-live was also vital. “Get your master data right before you start transacting in the system. It drives a lot of what goes on daily,” Milos advises. Focusing on data integrity enabled a smooth data migration and allowed the company to get immediate value from its new system.

Birkenstock leaned heavily on Rizing’s expertise with SAP best practices as it implemented the clean-core strategy. The SAP partner helped Birkenstock identify where standard functionality could be leveraged, reducing the need for custom development.

Integration and real-time insights

Implementing SAP S/4HANA has allowed Birkenstock to achieve a unified system for its wholesale, retail, and digital channels that offers real-time insights and streamlined business processes. “We have more sales reporting and can see data in a holistic view, not in silos,” Milos notes.

The transition has also improved supply chain visibility, crucial for navigating global uncertainties like tariffs. “Being able to support our consumers better and adapt to changes nimbly has been a game-changer,” Milos says. In addition, Rizing’s industry-specific solutions and deep understanding of the fashion retail sector ensured that Birkenstock could maximize the benefits of SAP S/4HANA.

The fashion-forward power of SAP S/4HANA

Birkenstock opted for the SAP S/4HANA for fashion and vertical business solution because of its industry-specific features like allocations, ATP scheduling, and the retail article master. “For fashion companies, using SAP S/4HANA for fashion and vertical business is crucial for its advanced capabilities and better product management,” Milos emphasizes.

Rizing’s preconfigured Fashion Suite accelerator for SAP S/4HANA for fashion and vertical business also sped up the implementation process. With order types, pricing procedures, and other processes ready to go “out of the box,” Birkenstock could focus on business-specific customizations.

A resounding success

Despite initial skepticism from Birkenstock executives that had experienced past project challenges, the company’s North American SAP S/4HANA implementation went live on schedule and was a resounding success. From the beginning, the team knew it needed to do the U.S. implementation as a “big bang,” with the wholesale, retail, and digital channels all going live at the same time. To ensure a smooth transition, the team added an additional six months to the initial timeline for rigorous testing.

The project was also a success from the SAP partner’s perspective, says Rizing’s Javier Zayas Cela, business development senior director, fashion: “Partnering with Birkenstock on this transformation journey has been incredibly rewarding. Their openness to change and strategic vision in transitioning from legacy systems to the advanced capabilities of SAP S/4HANA have positioned the brand well to embrace new technologies and accelerate its growth.”

The transformation has not only modernized Birkenstock’s operations but also equipped the company with the tools to adapt and thrive in the constantly-changing fashion business landscape. As the company moves forward, it’s focused on continuous improvement and optimization and is committed to using its SAP system to drive innovation and growth. “This is just the beginning,” Milos says. “We’re excited about the possibilities that lie ahead.”

The business intelligence (BI) and analytics market is undergoing a significant transformation, driven by rapid advancements in generative AI and the demand for more intuitive, integrated data experiences.

A trusted data foundation is critical in the age of AI. But in a global survey of 1,200 business and technology leaders, 55 percent cited poor data quality as their biggest challenge. And nearly half struggle to harmonize data across multiple ecosystems.

SAP Business Data Cloud offers organizations a fully managed SaaS solution that unifies and governs SAP data while seamlessly connects with third-party data. This data platform gives organizations the tools they need to make even more impactful decisions and insights across all lines of business.

After only eight months in the market, leading analyst firms have given SAP Business Data Cloud high marks for its analytics and BI solutions, primarily SAP Analytics Cloud.

SAP recognized as a Leader in the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Business Intelligence and Analytics Platforms 2025 Vendor Assessment

IDC MarketScape provides in-depth quantitative and qualitative technology market assessments. The evaluation highlights the most influential factors for technology buyers that want to introduce, modernize, or replace business intelligence and analytics tools within their organization.

“Organizations are constantly striving to engage in data-driven decisions,” said Megha Kumar, research vice president, Analytics and AI, IDC. “This need for insights across the board puts pressure on data and analytics teams. This will result in organizations seeking capabilities around automation, GenAI, and agentic AI features within their business intelligence and analytics platform. It is also important that these insights are available in the flow of work to allow for improved collaboration and decision velocity.”

IDC MarketScape recognizes SAP as a Leader for the following strengths:

• Focused on integrating data from SAP and non-SAP sources and enabling customers to engage in analytics, planning, and AI in a single environment
• Solution designed to support both technical and nontechnical users, with self-service analytics, ad hoc data exploration, and embedded analytics experiences within business applications
• Features such as zero-copy data integration and focused on expanding the ecosystem beyond traditional SAP data sources

Read an excerpt from IDC’s report with additional details here.

SAP named a Market Leader in BARC Score Enterprise BI & Analytics Platforms, 2025

The BARC Score report assesses solutions that fulfill a broad set of BI and analytics needs. BARC named SAP a Market Leader, citing the following benefits:

• Integrated business-user-oriented solution for planning and analytics — with embedded functionality for augmented analytics and application design
• Smart features and natural language generation functions help users to dig deep into data sets quickly by surfacing trends and outliers automatically
• Exclusive connectivity, live access, embedded analytics, and prebuilt content available for SAP sources and applications speed up implementation and help to gain insights from these systems
• Capabilities to govern master data and align KPIs across an organization
• Flexible options for product usage with multi-tenant or private tenant options for deployments in the public cloud on AWS, Azure, Alibaba, and GCP

Read BARC’s full report here.

This recognition from both the IDC MarketScape and BARC reinforces the pivotal role of SAP Business Data Cloud in empowering organizations to become truly data-driven.

By providing a unified, intelligent, and scalable platform that fuels business AI, SAP continues to set the standard for modern data and analytics, ensuring customers can derive trusted insights and drive decisive actions in an increasingly complex business landscape.

Dan Yu is chief marketing officer for SAP Business Data Cloud at SAP.

MADRID — SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) today announced that it has entered into a strategic partnership with Alibaba Group (NYSE: BABA and HKEX: 9988) to accelerate cloud transformation.

As part of the collaboration, Alibaba Group will leverage SAP Cloud ERP Private for its enterprise infrastructure, as well as a joint go-to-market strategy aimed at delivering accelerated value for customers worldwide.

Alibaba, the Chinese multinational technology company focused on e-commerce and cloud computing, will leverage SAP Business Suite for faster maintenance, smooth upgrades and easier integration of artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities into core business processes. Alibaba Group also plans to deploy SAP Business AI, SAP Business Technology Platform, and SAP Ariba, SAP Integrated Business Planning, SAP SuccessFactors, SAP Concur, and SAP Emarsys solutions to further optimize its technological backbone, enabling greater agility and resilience in serving its vast ecosystem of businesses and consumers.

“Our collaboration with SAP reinforces our commitment to empowering global businesses with world-class technologies,” Alibaba Group Chairman Joe Tsai said. “By combining SAP’s enterprise software with Alibaba Cloud’s robust infrastructure and AI capabilities, we can help customers build smarter, more agile operations.”

The collaboration marks the next chapter in Alibaba’s and SAP’s longstanding partnership focused on enhancing operational efficiency and accelerating innovation for joint customers. A core component of this strategic alliance is a joint go-to-market initiative.

Under the collaboration initially focused on the China market, enterprises will be able to implement SAP Integrated Business Planning and embark on the RISE with SAP and GROW with SAP journeys. It is also planned to be rolled out in Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Africa. With Alibaba Group as a certified hyperscaler for SAP software workloads, Chinese enterprises will also be able to deploy SAP Cloud ERP and SAP Cloud ERP Private solutions, empowering them with scalable, more secure and intelligent solutions tailored to local business needs. Marking a significant step in enterprise AI integration, SAP is also exploring the integration of Alibaba’s large language model, Qwen, to the generative AI hub in SAP AI Core in China to enable enterprise users to access localized generative AI capabilities within SAP software applications and Custom AI applications. In parallel, SAP is exploring the deployment of its AI Foundation on Alibaba Cloud to bring powerful, scalable AI tools to customers operating in China. Alibaba also will be part of the latest infrastructure-as-a-service certification program to support customers running SAP’s enterprise solutions.

“Our collaboration with Alibaba Group is a testament to the power and flexibility of SAP’s cloud solutions,” SAP CEO Christian Klein said. “Our joint go-to-market strategy can unlock new opportunities for enterprises by providing them with access to a comprehensive suite of tools and services. Together, we can help our joint customers drive innovation, improve operational performance and create new competitive advantages. We look forward to working with Alibaba to shape the future of cloud-powered digital transformation.”

Visit the SAP News Center. Get SAP news via LinkedIn and Bluesky.

Media Contact:
Lesa Plingen, +49 622 776 9000, lesa.plingen@sap.com, CET
SAP Press Room; press@sap.com

This document contains forward-looking statements, which are predictions, projections, or other statements about future events. These statements are based on current expectations, forecasts, and assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results and outcomes to materially differ. Additional information regarding these risks and uncertainties may be found in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including but not limited to the risk factors section of SAP’s 2024 Annual Report on Form 20-F.
© 2025 SAP SE. All rights reserved.
SAP and other SAP products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP SE in Germany and other countries. Please see https://www.sap.com/copyright for additional trademark information and notices.