WALLDORF — SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) announced today that HARTING Technology Group, a leading provider of industrial connectivity, has signed a long-term contract for RISE with SAP, marking a decisive milestone in its global IT and digital strategy.

Moving to SAP Cloud ERP Private as part of the RISE with SAP journey, the company will consolidate its enterprise resource planning (ERP), business process intelligence, and service capabilities in a unified cloud-based subscription model. This creates the foundation to support further growth, optimize processes and integrate new technologies.

“Moving to SAP Cloud ERP Private is a strategic decision that goes well beyond IT infrastructure. With RISE with SAP, we are creating the foundation to run HARTING as a more agile, data-driven business—standardizing our global operations, accelerating the integration of new technologies and unlocking the potential of AI across our processes. This contract marks a pivotal step in how we intend to grow and compete over the next decade,” said Philip Harting, CEO, HARTING Technology Group.

SAP Cloud ERP Private will enable HARTING to transition to a future-proof, scalable and innovation-driven ERP environment. Cloud transformation will allow HARTING to consistently automate and standardize operations and infrastructure, direct IT resources toward value-adding topics and innovation, and continuously benefit from updates and new functionalities. At the same time, RISE with SAP opens additional potential in the area of artificial intelligence and data-driven business models, with integrated AI functionalities and new automation options enabling faster, more substantiated data-based decisions. As a long-standing consulting partner, NTT DATA Business Solutions AG will accompany HARTING on its transformation path.

“Industrial companies are under real pressure to move faster, operate leaner and integrate AI into their core processes as a present-day advantage. HARTING’s move to SAP Cloud ERP Private with RISE with SAP reflects exactly the kind of decisive, long-term thinking that separates technology leaders from those who wait, and positions them to scale efficiently and respond to market change with confidence,” said Dirk Haeussermann, Managing Director, SAP Germany.

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

Media Contact:
Mariana Guerrero, +1 786 255 6334, mariana.guerrero@sap.com, ET
SAP Press Room; press@sap.com

Top image courtesy HARTING Technology Group

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 2025 Annual Report on Form 20-F.
© 2026 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.

Brazilian food producer São Salvador Alimentos S.A. improves its personal protective equipment (PPE) processes with SAP Build and Cloud Foundry tools, saving 150 manual signatures per day and improving warehouse management.

Headquartered in Itaberaí, Goiás, São Salvador Alimentos S.A. (SSA) is one of Brazil’s leading food companies. Its brands such as SuperFrango and Boua offer a wide portfolio of fresh and processed poultry as well as other meat, egg, and dairy products, fish, and frozen foods. The company’s products are exported to dozens of countries worldwide.

While SSA has built a reputation for quality and innovation in the food industry, one of its internal processes, the management of PPE delivery, still relied on manual paperwork. After successfully implementing SAP S/4HANA in 2024, the company continued its journey with SAP. The company started to collaborate with the SAP AppHaus team to explore opportunities with SAP Build and Cloud Foundry.

The point of departure was that every day around 150 physical signatures had to be collected to confirm that PPE had been delivered to employees. These signed documents were then handed over to the archive team for manual scanning and storage. There was no digital record of which equipment was delivered, to whom, or when. As a result, it was impossible to track usage or send timely reminders for mandatory PPE replacements every six months.

Innovation along the human-centered approach

In dedicated workshops, SSA stakeholders and users analyzed the situation along SAP’s human-centered approach to innovation. They explored new ways to improve and redesign this process with SAP Build and Cloud Foundry. After some iterations and testing, the new solution was implemented in January 2026.

SSA employees can now use digital signature capture linked to an automatic tracking of what was delivered and when. Via automated WhatsApp reminders, they learn when it’s time to replace their equipment, thus ensuring compliance, efficiency, and more visibility to the warehouse.

This new process has already shown the following benefits:

• From 150 manual signatures to electronic signatures using digital authentication
• 100% elimination of paper in the process
• Simplified service and an easy-to-understand and intuitive app
• Higher visibility to the warehouse
• Reporting capabilities available
• Better cost management
• Regulated issuance and compliant PPE distribution

Implementation

Although the implementation also had to integrate external applications via specific application programming interfaces (APIs), the new solution went live in January 2026. Based on previous innovation projects and its experience with SAP, the customer team was able to act mostly independently. Typical questions mostly referred to best practices for integration.

Innovation journey and outlook

“What truly stood out was the SSA team’s remarkable maturity, fast learning mindset, and determination,” Mirela Viersa, customer innovation principal at SAP AppHaus, said. “Following our exploration workshop, where we identified the key challenge, we partnered closely to design their future journey—turning vision into a structured and actionable path forward.”

After this latest successful implementation project with SAP, SSA plans to use SAP Build for future developments as their single source for development, especially now with SAP Build Code. And based on this confidence and proven enablement, the SSA team plans to look into opportunities that SAP Business AI and other intelligent solutions might hold in stock for them.

Top image via São Salvador Alimentos

This year, leading experts from the energy industry once again gathered at the SAP for Energy & Utilities Conference—this time in Toulouse in the south of France. Throughout the three conference days featuring keynotes and case studies, AI was an omnipresent topic. 

AI works when the foundation is right 

The energy and utilities sector is investing heavily in AI. Business leaders worldwide are embracing artificial intelligence to increase efficiency, unlock new business models, and prepare for the energy transition. A successful proof of concept is often the first milestone—but it marks only the beginning. The real challenge lies in scaling pilot projects across the entire organization. 

In this context, the time and effort required for a full implementation is frequently underestimated. Around six months are needed to build a robust data foundation. A further 12 months pass before initial results manifest in the form of a measurable return on investment. Large-scale rollout can take another three years. The reasons for this are manifold: 

• Unrealistic expectations: Many people use AI in their daily lives for simple tasks and expect similarly seamless effects in complex enterprise environments. 
• Legacy infrastructure: Historically grown system landscapes cannot be transformed overnight. 
• Regulatory complexity: In regulated industries such as electricity, gas, and water supply, compliance requirements are particularly high. They must be factored into every architectural decision from the very beginning. 
• Lack of AI-specific talent: What is needed are people who genuinely understand both the business and AI. This bridge between IT and the business side will become increasingly important in the future. 
• Organizational change management: Technology alone is not enough. Organizational transformation is and remains the decisive success factor. 

From AI hype to real value 

Building a new application is only the first step. On the path to scaling, lifecycle management, identity and access management, security, compliance, and governance must all be consistently taken into account. Release management, testing, and continuous improvement processes add further complexity. “The companies that invest in the right foundation today will benefit from AI to its full extent tomorrow,” says Andre Bechtold, president and head of SAP Industries & Experiences. 

For companies, this means overcoming fragmented data silos and developing an integrated data strategy. Legacy systems must be integrated into a modern data and AI platform on which AI models can genuinely create value. Torsten Welte, head of Energy & Natural Resources Industries at SAP, summarizes it as follows: “AI is fundamentally transforming the energy industry. The business must understand what is technologically possible. And IT must understand what the business needs.” 

SAP Business Suite can provide the essential foundation for this. AI is already natively embedded in the suite in the form of Joule. This can open up concrete use cases for the energy industry: in the area of asset management and predictive maintenance, utilities can proactively manage assets and grids before disruptions occur. The Utilities Customer Self-Service Agent, in turn, enables 24/7 self-service for customers and can reduce service costs by up to 90%. 

Distributed energy requires intelligent networking 

The topic of distributed energy resources (DER) remains of central importance. In the past, energy flowed in only one direction: from the power plant to consumers. In the future, it will be bidirectional. Consumers that generate their own energy will actively feed it back into the grid. 

DER describes precisely this principle: the generation of electricity through millions of decentralized resources such as solar panels, EV chargers, heat pumps, and battery storage systems by consumers and so-called prosumers. These assets generate vast amounts of data. Their orchestration represents one of the key challenges of the energy transition. 

The SAP Distributed Energy Resources solution provides a platform for a single source of truth: technical assets, commercial contracts, and customer data are brought together in a coherent data model. This helps create the foundation for new business models such as smart tariffs, dynamic pricing, energy sharing, and demand response.

SAP consistently relies on a growing partner network built around its own data platform. Markus Bechmann, global VP and co-head of Industry Business Unit Utilities at SAP, describes it this way: “Dynamic pricing and smart tariffs are no longer distant concepts. They are the business models of tomorrow. With SAP, energy providers already have the technological foundation today to seize these opportunities.” 

SAP Experience Centers: experiencing AI, not just discussing it 

To make AI tangible, SAP Experience Centers offer visitors the opportunity to experience AI in real-world scenarios beyond classic demo environments. One central example is the SAP Energy Park in Walldorf. Using real infrastructure on the campus, SAP demonstrates how the company itself is implementing the energy transition. This includes e-mobility, intelligent asset management, and energy communities. 

A new chapter for the energy industry 

The SAP for Energy & Utilities Conference in Toulouse has once again demonstrated that AI in the energy industry is no longer a topic for the future. However, the path from pilot project to company-wide transformation requires more than technological enthusiasm. To meet the challenges of the energy transition, what is needed—alongside technological innovation—is a solid foundation of data, processes, and organization.