There’s no better proving ground for the incredible power of digitalized food chains than India, one of the most populated countries worldwide. As India’s leading food agritech company, WayCool Foods has pioneered a data-driven strategy designed to close the gap between supply and demand, decreasing food waste and increasing revenue for every organization across the value chain.
“With one integrated platform that connects data from farmers through processing, warehouses, and retail, we are transforming the traditional food chain from supplier-driven to demand-driven,” said Karthik Jayaraman, co-founder and managing director at WayCool. “We selected RISE with SAP because it is a flexible, cloud-based foundation for our growing business. SAP S/4HANA provides a single source of truth company-wide and across our ecosystem, helping us produce and deliver the delicious food that consumers want on their table.”
The company has already reduced food wastage by up to 96% while improving the average income of farmers by over 13%.
Although India is one of the world’s largest exporters of agricultural products today. By 2030 over ninety million Indians could be at risk of hunger, if productivity is not increased. As India’s leading food agritech company, WayCool Foods has pioneered a data-driven strategy designed to close the gap between supply and demand, decreasing food waste and increasing revenue for stakeholders across their value chain.
SAP technology helps Way Cool build a more sustainable supply chain, reduces food loss and creates a reliable income stream for farmers. Focusing on innovation and efficient supply chain systems, WayCool has managed to restrict the food loss in its supply chain to 1%.
Learn more: https://sap.to/60515f6Rc
00:00 Risk of Hunger
00:19 Creating A Sustainable Farm to Consume Supply Chain
00:39 Traditional Farming Practices
00:55 How Does Tech Help Local Farmers
01:17 Procuring Just Right
01:34 Infusing Technology
01:49 Tracing the Products from Source to End Customers
01:58 Creating A Demand Driven Supply Chain
02:11 Waste in The Food Supply Chain
02:33 Transformative Role of Tech
SAP Best Practices for SAP S/4HANA Cloud provides ready-to-use business process content for core business processes in finance, sourcing and procurement, manufacturing, sales, and the supply chain, as shown in this figure.
SAP’s “Source from Ukraine” initiative, launched in March 2023, has a clear goal: to increase spending with Ukrainian companies while also generating business benefits for SAP. This shows SAP’s deep understanding of social responsibility as an integral part of its commitment to a sustainable future.
The initiative aims to activate procurement spend as a means to support Ukrainian suppliers in rebuilding their businesses. Beyond sourcing for quality goods and services, SAP has a focus on integrating ESG (environmental, social, and governance) principles into decision-making as is standard with its procurement policy.
It highlights SAP’s commitment not only to sourcing products from Ukraine, but also to promoting social change.
Built-In Sustainability
In implementing the initiative to attract more suppliers from Ukraine, SAP initially focused on the IT sector and conducted a rigorous selection process. So far, suppliers, including industry leaders like Softserve, Unicsoft, and Luxoft, have been selected. SAP’s commitment extends beyond services to include product areas, where notable Ukrainian companies producing innovative environmentally sustainable products have been discovered.
SAP is powering equitable access to economic opportunity, education and employment, and the circular economy
At SAP Spend Connect Live in Vienna, Austria, held in October 2023, Ukrainian manufacturers Rekava, Mol’far Tea, and Releaf Paper showcased their sustainable and innovative products. Rekava, for example, specializes in producing biodegradable candles made from recycled coffee grounds, while Mol’far focuses on minimalism and ethical environmental practices in tea production. Releaf Paper is the world’s first manufacturer of paper made from fallen leaves, promoting sustainable products such as paper bags. By supporting these unique Ukrainian companies, SAP is not only contributing to the economic reconstruction of the country, but also sustainability efforts.
One of SAP’s tier one suppliers, ABC Premium, has taken an important step by offering Rekava candles within its purchasing catalog, available to SAP employees on the SAP Ariba Buying solution.
Strong Alliances for Reconstruction
At the outset of the project, the NGO Impact Ukraine helped SAP connect with Ukrainian suppliers. It focuses on microfinance, procurement, and recruitment from Ukraine. The collaboration is facilitated by the voluntary engagement of professionals from the technology, healthcare, and finance sectors. With Impact Ukraine’s support, SAP and other organizations can further advance their goals regarding procurement from Ukraine.
SAP’s commitment to promoting innovation, sustainability, and economic growth through partnerships with Ukrainian companies not only fulfills its aspirations for procurement with purpose, but also contributes to making the world a better place.
Helping the World Run Better
The “Source for Ukraine” initiative builds on global efforts to integrate social enterprises and diverse suppliers into SAP purchasing opportunities. Beyond SAP’s own internal purchasing efforts, the SAP Corporate Social Responsibility (SAP CSR) team is also investing in social and sustainable procurement ecosystems alongside public, private, and social sector partners like the European Commission, Deloitte, World Economic Forum’s Global Alliance for Social Entrepreneurship, and Social Enterprise World Forum’s People and Planet First verification.
Consider that US$5.3 trillion in annual commerce is transacted on SAP Business Network. If we can help create a small shift in procurement spend to organizations prioritizing people and planet like Releaf Paper, we could collectively increase investment in sustainable development in a way that is not possible through corporate philanthropy alone. To join our efforts, please e-mail: csr-global@sap.com.
Elena Parker is chief revenue officer for Intelligent Spend and Business Network, MEE, at SAP.
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From a small Dutch village to the bustling halls of Harrods, Beau’s journey of tech and transportation is truly inspiring. His passion and dedication, supplemented with an SAP Certification, prove that big dreams do come true. Start your own journey towards success today: https://sap.to/60535DIeX
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SAP standard workflows are preconfigured templates within the SAP system that define a series of sequential steps required to complete a specific business process.
SAP Sapphire is always a time of excitement, but this year has truly been remarkable, especially with our incredible progress in AI. Since Q4 last year, we have delivered 50 new AI innovations, and we are on track to ship more than 100 AI use cases in 2024.
Taking Business to the Next Level in the Era of AI
SAP Business AI is center stage at the show and top of mind for our customers. These innovations are not just about technological excellence; they’re about delivering real-world results.
Our goal is to provide clear and meaningful value with AI. More than 27,000 customers are already experiencing the substantial impact of SAP Business AI. For example, Team Liquid, a leader in the competitive esports and gaming world, saves approximately 10,000 hours per year on manual analysis. But we’re not stopping here. With SAP Business AI, we are both changing how businesses operate and revolutionizing how users interact with SAP software.
Generative AI copilot Joule is rapidly becoming the natural language interface across the portfolio as we continue to embed AI across SAP applications at an accelerated pace. Our focus on advancing AI means that customers benefit from effective solutions that drive real-world results.
Sandra Voeller, CEO of Agilita AG, agrees. “Using SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition and SAP SuccessFactors with Joule copilot poises Agilita to redefine industry standards,” she said. “These tools are not just innovations; they are our future — unlocking unprecedented business agility and intelligence. I’m thrilled for the transformative journey ahead.”
We have also engaged our robust partner ecosystem with business AI to offer customers more choices to tackle their specific business needs. Over 60 ecosystem partners are working on more than 80 use cases built on AI Foundation on SAP BTP, including the generative AI hub. This same foundation powers innovation for our development teams and customers, ensuring tailored enterprise-class AI solutions that address real business challenges and opportunities.
Dive into the latest AI capabilities and ecosystem innovations we are presenting this week at SAP Sapphire, all aimed at delivering real-world results:
New Business AI Capabilities and Ecosystem Innovations
Joule
Video: Make every touchpoint count and every task simpler with Joule
Joule is transforming how users interact with SAP business systems, making every touchpoint count and every task simpler. Business users can execute transactional tasks 90% faster and access SAP Help Portal content 95% quicker without leaving their SAP applications.
Since its launch in September 2023, Joule has quickly become pervasive across the SAP portfolio, streamlining operations, improving decision-making, and boosting efficiency across various business functions. Today, Joule is already embedded in HR, finance, ERP, sales, services, marketing, and commerce applications, transforming how employees, managers, accountants, field personnel, and front-office professionals work. By the end of this year, 80% of the most frequently performed transactions across SAP business applications will be fully automated with Joule.
Joule is also integrated with multiple components of SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP), enhancing everything from application development to integration and data management. In the second half of this year, we plan to expand Joule’s reach to supply chain management, analytics, and planning solutions through integration with SAP Ariba, various supply chain management solutions, and SAP Analytics Cloud. Joule will also support several additional languages, including German, Spanish, French, and Portuguese. With a multilingual Joule integrated across the SAP portfolio, businesses around the globe will be able to work faster and smarter and achieve better outcomes.
Achieve faster insights with Joule in German, Spanish, French, and Portuguese (available later this year)
We are also enhancing Joule with additional capabilities to help the ecosystem streamline SAP implementations. Joule will provide consultants with vital information through natural language interactions, drawing from insights in more than 200,000 pages of product documentation and knowledge shared by the SAP community. Once rolled out to an ecosystem of more than 5 million consultants, this capability has the potential to save up to 600 million working hours per year. This is especially critical for supporting customers transitioning to SAP S/4HANA Cloud as part of RISE with SAP, helping them accelerate implementations and save money.
The SAP partner ecosystem is embracing AI innovations that accelerate customer value. “We’re embracing Joule and Joule’s SAP Consulting capabilities to help our clients build the organizational agility needed to continuously transform with a generative AI-enabled digital core,” shared Lan Guan, chief AI officer at Accenture.
This capability will be available later this year.
In the future, save implementation time with Joule’s SAP Consulting capabilities
Human Resources
Transforming HR with AI creates dynamic, inclusive, and future-ready workplaces. With Joule integrated into the SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting solution, hiring managers can create compelling, bias-free job descriptions 90% faster, significantly enhancing hiring efficiency and outcomes.
We have also expanded Joule capabilities across the SAP SuccessFactors HCM suite to enhance the employee experience. Employees will soon be able to get instant answers to HR policy questions and complete HR processes using natural language. Joule’s advanced document grounding capabilities will enable comprehensive responses by accessing business documents in SAP and third-party repositories such as Microsoft SharePoint.
Instant answers to HR policy questions with Joule
A new generative AI writing assistant capability helps employees draft personalized and measurable performance goals, development plans, and feedback reports more effectively and consistently. This saves employees up to 30% of the time spent crafting written communications and reduces the time people managers spend defining individualized development goals by 60%.
Managers also benefit from AI-assisted person insights that summarize complex compensation data, make recommendations, and provide talking points for discussions with employees — saving time and improving retention rates. Similarly, recruitment becomes more productive with the new AI-assisted applicant screening capability, which helps identify the most promising candidates by matching skills extracted from resumes with those in job descriptions.
Provide actionable feedback to employees quickly in SAP SuccessFactors HCM
These AI-driven enhancements empower organizations to build a connected, data-driven, and employee-centric workforce, leading the way in HR innovation and efficiency.
Finance
With SAP Business AI, we’re enhancing performance across a range of financial activities, from payments and expense management to financial close, invoice management, auditing, and forecasting.
For example, financial collection departments are leveraging generative AI in SAP Enterprise Service Management to automate processes, analyze and summarize correspondence, prioritize urgent issues, and generate automated replies. These capabilities reduce costs by up to 70% and accelerate service requests by up to 30%, enhancing customer satisfaction.
Accelerate service request resolution with SAP Enterprise Service Management
Billing specialists are now using Joule integrated into SAP Advanced Financial Closing to unlock unstructured content from inbound customer correspondence, improving the accuracy of risk determinations. Joule also generates summaries of project profitability, prioritizes projects for further analysis, and proposes actions for project improvement. Additionally, SAP Fiori apps now feature Joule-enabled insights, allowing the copilot to summarize available data and produce visual data narratives.
Joule in SAP Fiori applications summarize available data (available later this year)
Later this year, new generative AI capabilities in SAP Advanced Financial Closing will automate error detections and root cause analysis, helping users quickly resolve common closing errors. With up to two hours saved per error remediation, customers will be able to accelerate closing times while lowering support and compliance costs. Financial controllers will be able to also take advantage of personalized video data stories, highlighting top projects based on key metrics such as recognized revenue, utilization rates, and margins. Collections specialists using SAP Billing and Revenue Innovation Management will be able to mitigate risk of late customer payments by analyzing customer behavior and business correspondence to predict the likelihood of delayed payments.
SAP Advanced Financial Closing will help to quickly resolve common closing errors (available later this year)
Integrating AI into finance helps businesses streamline processes, reduce costs, and drive meaningful business outcomes.
Supply Chain
SAP Business AI is empowering companies to create risk-resilient and sustainable supply chains. By leveraging AI, customers can increase supply chain agility and efficiency.
For instance, generative AI-powered capabilities in SAP Transportation Management will expedite freight verification and documentation, enabling companies to achieve up to 50% faster inbound delivery note processing and reduce truck idle time at the gate by 40%. The system will automatically extract, post, and check critical information from delivery notes, streamlining the validation of freight orders.
Joule will play a crucial role in enhancing supply chain management. Later this year, supply chain planners will benefit from integration with SAP Integrated Business Planning for Supply Chain by getting detailed analyses of planning runs. Joule will identify the root causes of order delays and suggest corrective measures. Logistics providers will be able to use Joule to expedite transportation planning and the intake of goods in SAP S/4HANA Supply Chain for transportation management, enhancing overall logistics efficiency.
Joule gathers new product ideas and searches for product similarities
For manufacturers, SAP Business AI will significantly improve quality management. SAP Quality Issue Resolution will allow users to address recurring issues faster by using AI to bundle similar quality incidents and identify effective problem-solving processes. Furthermore, AI in SAP Asset Performance Management will aid technicians, inspectors, and managers in visually inspecting asset conditions. Images collected from visual inspections will be able to be easily annotated, displayed, and compiled into inspection alerts, facilitating timely and accurate maintenance decisions.
These advancements will make supply chain management more agile, efficient, and sustainable for customers.
Procurement
With SAP Business AI, we’re transforming procurement into a proactive, data-informed, and agile operation.
For example, AI in SAP Ariba Category Management allows procurement organizations to reduce the onboarding time for new category managers and accelerate category strategy and planning development by as much as 56%, improving operating margins and outcomes.
External Workforce We have added new generative AI capabilities to the SAP Fieldglass portfolio, enabling procurement departments to streamline the recruitment of external workers. Hiring managers can generate and maintain effective job descriptions faster, while project managers can deliver detailed statements of work more rapidly. This enables businesses to quickly identify and engage contractors with the right skills and qualifications. Job descriptions can be easily translated into 21 different languages, and a new resume-ranking capability can surface the most promising candidates, leading to as much as a 15% reduction in work orders. This flexibility allows customers to quickly react to fluctuating workloads and rapidly fill expertise gaps.
Develop comprehensive job descriptions quickly in SAP Fieldglass
Buyer Journey A new generative AI feature in the buying 360 capability for SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition will make procurement more intelligent, allowing buyers to bundle products and services into a single transaction. Users will be able to describe their purchasing needs using natural language, and the system will generate a recommended bundle of products and services ready for purchasing. This will save users considerable time spent searching catalogs for individual items while also enhancing the efficiency of the procurement process. These capabilities are planned for later this year.
Sourcing By the end of the year, sourcing managers will be able to leverage intelligent product and supplier recommendations to create requests for proposals much faster with Joule integration in SAP Ariba Sourcing . These recommendations will consider cost-effectiveness, carbon footprint impact, local compliance regulations, and past transactions, optimizing spend management performance.
Create RFPs faster with Joule in SAP Ariba Sourcing (available later this year)
Through these enhancements, SAP Business AI is making spend management more efficient, responsive, and cost-effective.
Sales, Services, Marketing, and Commerce
SAP Business AI is revolutionizing sales, services, marketing, and commerce operations, significantly improving productivity and customer engagement. For instance, the SAP CX AI Toolkit provides a comprehensive, configurable AI solution for e-commerce, marketing, sales, and service teams. These professionals can use it to streamline content creation tasks and analyze data from across the enterprise – with e-commerce teams experiencing productivity increases of 50%, larger average order values, and higher conversion rates.
Sales Productivity New AI capabilities enhance the productivity of sales professionals using SAP Sales Cloud. Sales teams can benefit from predictive forecasting, which predicts the likelihood of closing deals across the entire business portfolio. This gives chief revenue officers more comprehensive revenue forecasting, enabling better strategic decisions.
In addition, predictive recommendations will enhance sales efforts by suggesting the best people to involve in a deal and the most suitable products for each customer. This will eliminate manual extensive research on customer needs and preferences, allowing sales teams to focus on selling. AI account summaries and lead boosters will automatically generate detailed reports about sales prospects, combining company details, industry context, and relevant news. As such, we can reduce the manual effort needed for information gathering, giving salespeople more time to close deals.
Reduce lead information gathering efforts with lead boosters in SAP Sales Cloud
Digital and User Experiences Today, a generative AI tool builder already enables system administrators to create customized AI tools for business users leveraging data from SAP Commerce Cloud, SAP Sales Cloud, and SAP Service Cloud solutions. These tools can help personalize content to meet specific customer experience needs.
By the end of this year, SAP CX AI Toolkit will also introduce new AI features to enhance customer interactions. An AI shopping assistant will allow shoppers to ask questions using everyday conversational language and receive accurate product information and personalized product recommendations on sites powered by SAP Commerce Cloud. This will enable consumers to find products faster and improve their overall shopping experience.
Build custom tools for specific use cases with the AI tool builder in SAP CX AI Toolkit
SAP CX AI Toolkit will make marketing and sales teams more productive. Later this year, a new image creation feature will allow business users to generate new product images for their SAP Commerce Cloud catalog using natural language prompts, significantly reducing image production times. They will also benefit from an AI expert recommendations feature, which will identify experts within their organization who can provide needed answers and insights. Instead of wasting time browsing through emails and organizational charts, these professionals will be able to use natural language to express their needs and instantly find the right experts. This capability will be generally available later this year.
Generate new product images using natural language in SAP CX AI Toolkit (available later this year)
These advancements in SAP Business AI are transforming sales, services, marketing, and commerce operations, making them more efficient, personalized, and successful.
IT and Platform
SAP Business AI embedded in SAP BTP empowers IT professionals and business experts to extend SAP solutions and drive faster, better decision-making throughout the enterprise while accelerating customers’ digital transformations.
For example, professional developers are leveraging generative AI capabilities in SAP Build Code to accelerate application development by 30%. They can generate data models, services, and samples with a few simple prompts and use natural language to automate business logic and testing.
Application Development Joule continues to increase developer productivity and simplify the extension of SAP applications. Integration with ABAP Cloud will revolutionize the work of the 5 million-strong ABAP developer community, accelerating the development of extensions that interact with SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition, and SAP BTP, ABAP environment. Trained on over 250 million lines of ABAP code, Joule will be able to outperform industry-leading general-purpose code assistants. We expect more than 10% efficiency increase, based on initial studies and benchmarking. Early adopters are using this innovation to generate ABAP business objects and will soon be able to complete and explain code and create unit tests. The first capabilities will become available later this year.
Joule continues to strengthen SAP Build Code capabilities by enabling developers to use generative AI to quickly build SAP Fiori front ends for SAP S/4HANA Cloud, greatly simplifying clean-core extensions.
These advancements in SAP Business AI are empowering IT professionals and business experts to innovate faster, streamline operations, and drive meaningful business outcomes.
Accelerate the creation of ABAP Cloud apps with Joule’s ABAP Developer capabilities (Labs preview; available later this year)
Process Innovation We are continuously strengthening SAP BTP with new AI capabilities that accelerate process innovation. Joule integration with SAP Build Process Automation empowers process experts to generate automation and workflows using natural language requests without IT intervention. Similarly, Joule integration with the SAP Signavio portfolio enables users to leverage natural language requests to generate process models. By empowering users with varying levels of expertise to innovate, customers can accelerate time-to-value and free IT professionals to focus on more strategic tasks.
Process AI solutions from SAP Signavio introduce a new collection of generative AI capabilities trained on a large language model (LLM) comprised of expert business process knowledge and more than 5,000 SAP best practices. Later this year, the process recommender feature will provide ready-to-use, AI-generated business process model recommendations and suggest the most influential measures to assess the performance of a business process. This will offer vital insights into streamlining operations and reducing overhead. A prompt-based process mining feature will automatically generate business-relevant charts and metrics in response to natural language requests for business insights, dramatically lowering the effort for business users who need answers to complex business questions.
The process recommender feature in SAP Signavio offers insights to streamline operations (available later this year)
Integration System integration is foundational to the success of enterprise automation initiatives and effective ecosystem collaboration, but connecting heterogeneous systems inside and outside the enterprise is an onerous task. Later this year, developers will be able to take advantage of Joule integration with SAP Integration Suite and use natural language to accelerate the design of integration flows across SAP and third-party applications.
A new AI-powered anomaly detection capability will recommend remedial actions when API usage patterns or performance fall outside desired thresholds due to unusual errors, traffic surges, suspicious API access, or unusual latency. With performance insights and support for identifying causes and effects, administrators of complex technology landscapes will be able to act faster, achieving greater operational efficiency at a lower total cost of ownership.
Accelerate the design of integration flows with the Joule integration with SAP Integration Suite
Content Creation and Compliance IT administrators, training managers, and content developers will be able to cut the time spent writing content by up to 20% with automatic content generation and enrichment in SAP Enable Now. Customers use the digital adoption platform to improve the adoption, productivity, and efficiency of their software by providing in-application help and e-learning content to users. New generative AI capabilities will add to this value, enabling companies to free up resources for more critical tasks and accelerating knowledge transfer within organizations.
SAP Enable Now improves the adoption, productivity, and efficiency of software
Compliance and IT professionals can leverage Joule for enhanced productivity and precision. Joule integration with the new regulatory change manager tool on SAP BTP enables these professionals to evaluate numerous regulatory updates within the context of their business and SAP solutions. With insights and quick answers on the typically more than 1,000 annual regulatory changes, users can save 70% of the time usually spent on understanding local and global regulations. The tool provides impact analysis across SAP products and solutions, helping customers maintain compliance and seamlessly manage their day-to-day operations. Compliance and IT professionals can also use AI in localization as a self-service for SAP S/4HANA Cloud to automate tasks such as payment format localization and form localization, reducing processes that once took days to just a few hours.
Administration With Joule integrated in SAP BTP cockpit, administrators can automate tasks and onboard new users more easily. They can search for information 95% faster and execute transactional tasks or navigation 90% more quickly. The business impact is substantial, as the cockpit helps these professionals manage resources, services, and security, monitor application metrics, and perform actions on cloud applications.
Accomplish tasks and onboard new users easily with Joule in SAP BTP cockpit
Redefining the capabilities of IT and platform management positions SAP customers at the forefront of technological advancement and operational excellence.
Industries
SAP is delivering trusted AI and machine learning across industries to manage complexity, overcome challenges, and help customers modernize. AI-driven solutions empower businesses to streamline operations and focus on strategic outcomes, driving significant value in their respective fields.
Oil, Gas, and Energy, Agribusiness, and Metals and Mining Commodities traders and business operators will soon be able to eliminate repetitive data entry tasks with SAP S/4HANA for commodity management for physical contracts. With Joule, business operators will be able to create new commodities deals by simply describing the deal using conversational language. Planned for later this year, the capability will allow traders to focus more on producing better commercial outcomes for their clients rather than getting bogged down by administrative tasks.
Industrial Manufacturing Sales engineers in the manufacturing sector will benefit from more precise product configuration recommendations for complex, configurable products through SAP Intelligent Product Recommendation. By simply describing requirements in natural language, sales engineers can generate tailored recommendations that better meet customer needs. Generative AI services can analyze text from diverse sources, such as emails and notes captured in SAP Customer Experience solutions or multi-page specification documents such as request for proposals or requests for quotations. SAP Intelligent Product Recommendation also provides suggestions based on estimated parameters for lead times and CO2 footprints, enhancing accuracy and efficiency of product configurations, and ultimately improving customer satisfaction and operational efficiency.
Quickly gather product configuration recommendations with SAP Intelligent Product Recommendation
Public Sector and Higher Education Later this year, Joule will be enhanced with budget and grant management business context for the public sector, higher education, and research industries. With this new context awareness, Joule will streamline and improve the user experience for these regulated industries, enabling users to navigate their financial systems more efficiently and make better strategic decisions. For example, SAP S/4HANA users will be able to ask Joule for definitions, summaries, or how-to guidance, saving time and reducing the demand on IT departments. This enhancement will help government organizations and higher education institutions manage their budgets and grants more effectively, reducing extensive training typically required during financial system rollouts.
Breakthrough AI Innovations
SAP is pushing the boundaries of AI with the new SAP Foundation Model for structured data, investing in this cutting-edge AI technology to unlock the value of generative AI technology advancements for structured business data. The goal is to deliver a foundation model that is business-centric by design, providing actionable, job-specific insights directly within SAP applications customers use daily.
Traditional AI models require significant effort, expertise, and training data to handle specific tasks on structured data effectively. In contrast, we are developing SAP Foundation Model to adapt to multiple use cases with minimal or no fine-tuning. Ultimately, we aim to bring the same transformative power to structured business data that LLMs have brought to text. While LLMs like GPT-4 excel with unstructured text and images, they struggle with the structured data typical in enterprises, often performing between 20 to 50% worse than narrow AI methods. SAP Foundation Model will bridge this gap, focusing on structured business data to deliver more accurate predictions and insights while maintaining the versatility of foundation models.
Early benchmark tests are promising, showing SAP Foundation Model outperforming narrow AI models by up to 15% on customer datasets after a quick fine-tuning round. This superior performance, combined with its deep understanding of complex business processes, promises to enable businesses to reap the rewards of AI faster and more efficiently.
With SAP Foundation Model, we aim to set a new standard for AI in the business domain, transforming how enterprises leverage data to achieve remarkable outcomes. Learn more here.
Responsible AI
At SAP, innovation goes hand in hand with responsibility. We are committed to ensuring that AI technologies are not only innovative but also ethical, secure, and sustainable. The strategic use of business data is integral to the success of AI, and by leveraging business data responsibly, we not only enhance the capabilities of AI solutions but also improve outcomes for customers.
SAP remains firm in its commitment to prioritize data privacy and security as it releases new AI capabilities. The same rigorous standards that govern all SAP product development extend to AI offerings. Strong security, product, and data privacy protocols are applied to help ensure AI solutions are developed responsibly, with all AI use cases reviewed by an AI ethics committee.
Building on the fundamental dedication to responsible AI that we started back in 2018, this year, SAP is proud to further the commitment by affirming the 10 guiding principles of the UNESCO Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence. These principles cover proportionality, safety, fairness, sustainability, privacy, human oversight, transparency, responsibility, awareness, and multi-stakeholder collaboration, ensuring that AI solutions respect human rights and contribute to sustainable development.
In line with this commitment, sustainability is a key pillar of SAP’s corporate strategy. We are determined to harness the benefits of AI while minimizing its energy footprint and helping customers manage theirs. For example, a new AI-enabled capability in SAP Sustainability Footprint Management enhances the accuracy and speed of carbon footprint calculations through automated, intelligent emission factor mapping recommendations, reducing manual effort and improving precision.
Accurately speed up carbon footprint calculations with SAP Sustainability Footprint Management
By integrating responsible AI practices into innovations, we continue to drive meaningful and sustainable business outcomes for customers.
New AI Partnerships
The vast SAP partner ecosystem is fully engaged with SAP Business AI. Leading up to and at SAP Sapphire, we have announced groundbreaking new and expanded partnerships to accelerate AI adoption across business processes:
Accenture: Accenture and SAP are helping clients transform business models, processes, and customer and employee experiences while realizing value through data and AI. This year at SAP Sapphire, Accenture is announcing its plans to embrace the consulting capability for Joule and ABAP code generation in compressed cloud ERP transformations. Additionally, Accenture and SAP are teaming on SAP Signavio and SAP LeanIX solutions to help customers with insights, governance, and other capabilities to achieve their transformation outcomes.
Apple:We are deepening our partnership with Apple to revolutionize the boardroom with AI and spatial computing. By integrating Apple Vision Pro with business applications from SAP, users can create an infinite enterprise workspace, and navigate tasks using their eyes, hands, and voice. SAP has launched apps like SAP Mobile Start and SAP Analytics Cloud, giving users the ability to create a spatial boardroom to visualize their entire enterprise. Now, with SAP Build Code, customers can easily bring their SAP apps to Vision Pro, iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch. SAP is also leveraging the power of Apple’s Neural Engine to run SAP AI workloads securely and privately on Apple devices, supercharged by SAP BTP.
Amazon Web Services (AWS): AWS and SAP announced an expanded, strategic collaboration to transform modern cloud ERP experiences and help enterprises drive new capabilities and efficiencies with generative AI. Together, SAP and AWS are striving to make it easier for customers to adopt RISE with SAP on AWS, to improve the performance and efficiency of SAP workloads running in the cloud, and to embed generative AI into an enterprise’s entire portfolio of business-critical applications.
Boston Consulting Group (BCG): BCG announced a new offering with SAP, which recommends opportunities to maximize transformation investments using SAP Signavio and SAP LeanIX solutions. The offering allows companies to navigate continuous change and prioritizes ways to onboard AI-based innovations.
Google Cloud: We have teamed up with Google Cloud to help joint customers better predict and mitigate supply chain risk. The expanded partnership begins by enabling marketing and sales departments to understand the impact of their campaigns on product sales, thus increasing forecast accuracy. This is achieved by integrating Joule and SAP Integrated Business Planning for Supply Chain with Google’s Gemini AI assistant and Google Cloud Cortex Framework’s Data Foundation. By capturing previously hard-to-detect demand signals, companies can react faster and make more informed, agile decisions in a dynamic global market.
Meta: We are expanding our partnership with Meta by integrating Meta’s Llama 2 and Llama 3 models into the generative AI hub within SAP AI Core as part of our business AI strategy. This integration will allow customers to create dashboards based on rich content with Llama’s qualitative conversational outputs and explore use cases built with Meta Llama 3. The wide range of capabilities offered by Meta Llama 3 will enable users to get assistance with key activities, including the auto-generation of custom scripts to extend dashboards, and the delivery of the most accurate scripts directly in SAP Analytics Cloud.
McKinsey & Company: McKinsey has expanded its Value Finder offering, powered by SAP Signavio, SAP BTP and generative AI. Value Finder rapidly analyzes and prioritizes thousands of potential process optimization opportunities for clients – using a proprietary McKinsey and SAP technology portfolio with generative AI – to capture measurable productivity, growth, and asset efficiency benefits enabled by SAP S/4HANA transformations.
Mistral AI: SAP will add new LLMs from Mistral AI, a global company headquartered in Paris specializing in generative AI, to its growing corpus of world-class AI models in generative AI hub. This addition to SAP AI Core will make it easier to build generative AI use cases for SAP applications.
NVIDIA: We are partnering with NVIDIA to leverage its AI and Omniverse platforms for next-generation business operations. ABAP developer capabilities and consulting capability in Joule will take advantage of the NVIDIA AI Enterprise software platform, including NVIDIA NIM inference microservices. NVIDIA NeMo Retriever, a collection of generative AI microservices, will connect AI applications with proprietary data, improving the accuracy and relevance of AI responses. We are also integrating NVIDIA Omniverse Cloud APIs into SAP Intelligent Product Recommendation, enabling salespeople to visualize 3D products via digital twins in real time. This integration optimizes the sales process for complex products, helping customers make more informed decisions faster than ever.
WALLDORF — SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) and WalkMe Ltd. (NASDAQ: WKME) announced today that the companies have entered into a definitive agreement under which SAP will acquire WalkMe, a leader in digital adoption platforms (DAPs).
WalkMe’s solutions help organizations navigate constant technology change by providing users with advanced guidance and automation features that enable them to execute workflows seamlessly across any number of applications. This results in higher adoption of the underlying application and as such drives value realization.
The Executive and Supervisory Boards of SAP SE and the board of directors of WalkMe have approved the transaction for US $14.00 per share in an all-cash transaction, representing an equity value of approximately US $1.5 billion. The offer price represents a 45% premium to WalkMe’s closing share price on June 4, 2024.
The envisioned combination complements SAP’s Business Transformation Management portfolio around SAP Signavio and SAP LeanIX solutions to help customers on their transformation journeys.
“Applications, processes, data and people are the four key elements of a successful business transformation,” said Christian Klein, CEO and member of the Executive Board of SAP SE. “By acquiring WalkMe, we are doubling down on the support we provide our end users, helping them to quickly adopt new solutions and features to get the maximum value out of their IT investments.”
WalkMe: Focus on Analyzing Adoption and Business Transformation
“We are thrilled to join forces with SAP. This acquisition marks a significant milestone in our journey, providing us with the resources and customer base necessary to enhance our product offerings and expand our market reach,” said Dan Adika, CEO of WalkMe. “By leveraging SAP’s extensive ecosystem, we are poised to unlock substantial growth opportunities and deliver even greater value to our customers. Together, we look forward to a future filled with innovation and exceptional service.”
WalkMe helps organizations boost enterprise productivity and lower risk by enabling consistent, effective and efficient use of software and the workflows it enables. Its DAP works on top of an organization’s application landscape, detects where people encounter friction and provides the tailored support and automation they need to complete the job to be done, right in the flow of work, across any application. Importantly, WalkMe will continue to fully support non-SAP applications.
Soon, WalkMe will launch the WalkMeX copilot, which will use WalkMe’s contextual awareness and AI to suggest the best next step for any workflow, anywhere. WalkMeX has the capability to always be on, serving as an overlay to any application, including copilots from different vendors that companies use in their landscapes. Integrating the strength of WalkMe’s adoption capabilities with SAP’s copilot Joule will boost AI assistant and productivity gains for all SAP customers. Additionally, integrating distinctive e-learning features in the SAP Enable Now solution with WalkMe will form the center of SAP’s people-centric transformation approach going forward.
The acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions, including the receipt of WalkMe shareholder approval and necessary regulatory clearances, and is expected to close in the third quarter of 2024. The impact of the transaction on SAP’s non-IFRS earnings per share for fiscal 2024 is expected to be immaterial.
WalkMe (NASDAQ: WKME), headquartered in Tel Aviv, Israel, pioneered DAP innovations and solutions so companies can effectively navigate the constant change brought on by technology. With WalkMe, organizations drive enterprise productivity and reduce risk by ensuring consistent, responsible, and efficient adoption of software and the workflows it powers. Our AI-driven platform sits on top of an organization’s tech stack, identifies where people experience friction, and delivers the personalized guidance and automation needed to get the job done, right in the flow of work. Customers like IBM, Nestle, ThermoFisher Scientific, and the U.S. Dept. of Defense trust WalkMe to create the people-centric experiences required to boost the effectiveness of their workflows and maximize software ROI.
About SAP
As a global leader in enterprise applications and business AI, SAP (NYSE: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 www.sap.com.
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Additional Important Information and Where to Find It In connection with the proposed transaction, WalkMe will prepare a proxy statement to be delivered to its shareholders and furnished to the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”). INVESTORS AND SECURITY HOLDERS ARE STRONGLY ADVISED TO READ THE PROXY STATEMENT WHEN IT BECOMES AVAILABLE AND OTHER RELEVANT DOCUMENTS FILED OR FURNISHED TO THE SEC IN CONNECTION WITH THE PROPOSED TRANSACTION OR INCORPORATED BY REFERENCE THEREIN, BECAUSE THE PROXY STATEMENT AND SUCH OTHER RELEVANT DOCUMENTS WILL CONTAIN IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT THE PROPOSED TRANSACTION AND THE PARTIES TO THE PROPOSED TRANSACTION. This press release is not a substitute for the proxy statement or any other document that may be filed or furnished by WalkMe with the SEC.
The proxy statement and other related documents filed or furnished to the SEC regarding the proposed transaction may be obtained for free from the SEC’s website (www.sec.gov), WalkMe’s website at www.walkme.com or by directing such request to WalkMe’s Investor Relations.
Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of the “safe harbor” provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and other applicable securities laws. All statements other than statements of historical fact, including statements regarding the proposed acquisition of WalkMe by SAP, the expected timing for completing the proposed transaction and the terms thereof, future financial and operating results, benefits and synergies of the transaction, future opportunities for the combined businesses and any other statements regarding events or developments that may occur in the future, may be “forward-looking statements” for purposes of federal and state securities laws. These forward-looking statements involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could significantly affect the financial or operating results of SAP, WalkMe or the combined company. Words such as “expects,” “anticipates,” “intends,” “plans,” “believes,” “estimates,” “predicts,” “seeks,” “targets,” “would,” “will,” “should,” “may” and variations of such words and similar expressions are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. Such statements are based on management’s expectations as of the date they are first made, are not guarantees of future performance and involve certain risks, uncertainties and assumptions that are difficult to predict. Neither SAP nor WalkMe can give any assurances that the expectations in such forward-looking statements will be attained and, therefore, actual outcomes and results may differ materially from what is expressed or forecasted in such forward-looking statements. For example, these forward-looking statements could be affected by factors including, without limitation, risks associated with the ability to consummate the proposed transaction, the satisfaction of the conditions to the consummation of the proposed transaction, including the receipt of certain regulatory approvals, and the timing of the closing of the proposed transaction; the occurrence of any event, change or other circumstance that could give rise to the termination of the proposed transaction; the potential that WalkMe shareholders may not approve the transaction; the ability to successfully integrate operations and employees; the ability to realize anticipated benefits and synergies of the proposed transaction as rapidly or to the extent anticipated by financial analysts or investors; the potential impact of the announcement of the proposed transaction on operating results, business generally and business relationships, including with employees, customers, suppliers and competitors; unanticipated restructuring costs may be incurred or undisclosed liabilities assumed; actual or threatened legal proceedings that have been or may be instituted against SAP or WalkMe in connection with the proposed transaction or otherwise; the ability and costs related to retaining key personnel and clients; risks related to diverting management’s attention from ongoing business operations; delays, challenges, costs, fees, expenses and charges related to the proposed transaction; actions by competitors; general adverse economic, political, social and security conditions in the regions and industries in which SAP and WalkMe operate, including relating to Israel’s ongoing war with Hamas and other terrorist organizations in the Middle East and general hostilities; exposure to inflation, currency rate and interest rate fluctuations and risks associated with doing business locally and internationally, as well as fluctuations in the market price of SAP and WalkMe’s traded securities; natural catastrophes, any pandemic, epidemic or outbreak of infectious disease, warfare, protests and riots, and terrorist attacks; and those additional risks and factors discussed in reports filed or furnished with the SEC by SAP and WalkMe, including SAP’s and WalkMe’s most recent Annual Reports on Form 20-F and in any subsequent reports on Form 6-K, each of which is on file with or furnished to the SEC and available at the SEC’s website at www.sec.gov. Reports filed or furnished with the SEC by SAP are also available on SAP’s website at www.sap.com/investors and by WalkMe on WalkMe’s website at www.walkme.com. Moreover, other risks and uncertainties of which SAP or WalkMe are not currently aware or may not currently consider material may also affect each of the companies’ forward-looking statements and may cause actual results and the timing of events to differ materially from those anticipated. The forward-looking statements made in this press release are made only as of the date hereof or as of the dates indicated in the forward-looking statements, even if they are subsequently made available by SAP or WalkMe on their respective websites or otherwise. Neither SAP nor WalkMe undertakes any obligation to update or supplement any forward-looking statements to reflect actual results, new information, future events, changes in its expectations or other circumstances that exist after the date as of which the forward-looking statements were made.
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