With so much technology already in place, adding cloud solutions can feel like just another layer of complexity. But the real challenge isn’t the solutions themselves—it’s making them work smarter, faster, and with greater impact.

According to a Forrester Consulting Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study commissioned by SAP, interviewed SAP customers found a way to tap into the guidance, expertise, and support they need to navigate challenges and achieve their cloud ambitions. And it all began with the expanded editions of the SAP Preferred Success offering.

A vice president of financial systems from a financial services company succinctly described the impact in an interview for the Forrester Consulting study: “The expanded editions of SAP Preferred Success have opened new doors for us. We can use the time saved by working with the SAP product specialist to focus on new functionality and dive deeper into existing features like never before.”

Implementing, adopting, and optimizing cloud solutions can be a struggle for many organizations. Why? Their internal teams often lack the time and expertise to leverage the solutions fully. At the same time, the rest of the business is stuck searching for external technology partners to manage applications and wrestle with customizations that slow down progress.

But here’s the good news: expanded editions of SAP Preferred Success can provide direct access to SAP product specialists who can give tailored guidance, enable proactive monitoring, and accelerate problem-solving.

Impact backed by real-life customer experiences

The expanded editions of SAP Preferred Success can go beyond smoothing the cloud adoption experience; they can also offer a strategic advantage that helps transform business operations. For the TEI study, Forrester Consulting interviewed SAP customers using the expanded editions—many of whom faced similar challenges, including limited expertise, resource constraints, and difficulty optimizing cloud solutions.

With access to comprehensive services such as how-to guidance and in-depth expertise, new-feature activation, prescriptive solution reviews, and proactive monitoring, surveyed organizations reported:

• 65% higher internal SAP team efficiency, saving US$1.3 million over three years: Regular check-ins with SAP product specialists can empower internal teams with direct access to training materials, insights on upcoming releases, and proactive issue prevention.
• 50% lower application management service costs, worth $1 million: Organizations can significantly reduce reliance on external service partners by equipping internal teams with advanced SAP expertise.
• Optimized customizations, worth $408,000: Leveraging SAP’s standard design frameworks and expert guidance help streamline custom development efforts, minimize rework, and improve system performance.

Beyond the numbers, the true value of the expanded editions is reflected in real-world stories. In fact, an HR platform architect of a manufacturing company shared with Forrester Consulting: “When we face an issue, the SAP product specialist gives us a direct and clear answer within one day, and sometimes within hours. Also, the expanded editions of SAP Preferred Success give us access to a whole network of highly skilled SAP experts.”

The cloud’s potential continues to expand

As cloud technology evolves, its potential continues to grow. Yet, realizing its full value requires more than just technology—it demands the right expertise and guidance. Backed by real-life customer experiences analyzed by Forrester Consulting, it’s clear that strategic advantage is available through the expanded editions of SAP Preferred Success.

Learn more about the full impact of the expanded editions of SAP Preferred Success in the 2025 Forrester Consulting study, “The Total Economic Impact™ of the Expanded Editions of SAP Preferred Success.”

And if you’re ready to take the next step, ask your SAP sales representative about including the expanded editions of SAP Preferred Success in your quote.

Gokhan Nalbantoglu is head of Global Sales for Cloudified Services at SAP.
Peter Roberts is SVP and chief product owner for SAP Preferred Success at SAP.

In this blog post, we’ll discuss the preconfigured system solutions from SAP as well as SAP solutions dedicated to specific industries.

Discover how Joule delivers AI capabilities across SAP Build solutions, including ABAP, to accelerate app development and automation proficiency for developers.

Read the announcement: https://news.sap.com/?p=232583
Learn more: https://www.sap.com/products/artificial-intelligence/business-technology-platform.html

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Every year, Germany’s EHI Retail Institute presents awards for outstanding use of technology in retail. At a ceremony during the EuroCIS 2025 trade fair, it honored the winners of its 18^th Retail Technology (reta) Awards. Among them was German fashion chain Ernsting’s family, whose omnichannel pricing solution enables it to maintain consistent prices across all customer touchpoints and to manage promotions in real time. The company’s pricing concept—designed by SAP, CAS, and consenso—is central to its omnichannel strategy.

Plenty of people have started a business in their garage. Few have chosen the laundry room of their parents’ clothing and home textiles store. But that is exactly what Kurt Ernsting did in 1967 when he set up minipreis, a low-price fashion shop that would later become a household name throughout Germany. Today, with its award-winning online presence and some 1,925 stores in Germany, Austria, and the Netherlands, Ernsting’s family—as the fashion chain is now known—is one of western Europe’s largest omnichannel clothing retailers.

Cloud-based pricing process

“Because we aim to create seamless shopping experiences for our customers, we’ve already been following an omnichannel strategy for a while,” explains Hans-Jörg Blaeser, director of Technology & IT Services at Ernsting’s family. “This is why ensuring uniform pricing across all sales channels was the next logical step for us—not least because we were redesigning our online shop and needed a new pricing engine and campaign management tool anyway,” adds Dennis Reßmann, head of Software Engineering at the company.

The fashion retailer opted for a cloud-based omnichannel pricing solution. “The cloud architecture allows you to manage price queries centrally across all channels, use intelligent mechanisms to fine-tune price promotions, and integrate new stores and touchpoints with ease,” says Patrick Pierron from implementation partner CAS.

Two components, one award-winning solution

The solution at Ernsting’s family consists of two main components. One is the omnichannel pricing solution itself. This is based on SAP Omnichannel Promotion Pricing, which helps ensure consistent and uniform pricing across all customer touchpoints, such as online shops, brick-and-mortar stores, and customer and “endless shelf” apps, even when Internet connectivity breaks down.

“We operate a dense network of stores, so we are far from immune to this modern-day reality,” says Nils Böhmer, senior IT coordinator for Sales at Ernsting’s family. Lines can be damaged during construction work, routers can fail, and LTE coverage can be patchy, so there are a number of compelling reasons for having offline capabilities. Ernsting’s family therefore uses local PPS (promotion pricing service) boxes, which are offline derivatives of the cloud solution. “These PPS boxes synchronize regularly with the cloud-based omnichannel pricing solution,” Pierron says. “This means that stores always have the latest prices and can process sales even when the Internet is down.”

The second component of the new omnichannel pricing solution is a reduction tool. Based on consenso’s price engine, this tool manages price reductions dynamically according to local conditions, sales figures, and inventories—right down to individual store level. According to Philipp Borgmann, senior team lead for IT Merchandising, and Marcel Ruholl, managing partner at consenso, “This pays off in two ways. First, the system-driven price proposals have a positive effect on the balance sheet. And second, fewer stock transfers mean a lower carbon footprint.”

Seamless interaction

Another benefit of the Ernsting’s family solution is the way it seamlessly integrates the reduction tool, SAP Omnichannel Promotion Pricing, and SAP ERP. Price reductions calculated in the tool are automatically transferred to the central SAP system and distributed in real time to all the stores and to the online shop through SAP Omnichannel Promotion Pricing. “This is the best possible foundation for dynamic, error-free, and hyper-personalized pricing in real time,” says Philip Konitzer, head of Industry Division Retail in SAP Customer Services & Delivery Germany. During the project, he and his team were on hand to answer questions about the functions and performance of the SAP components.

Key elements of success

Despite being highly complex, the new omnichannel pricing solution went live quickly and without incident. The implementation partners who worked on the project attribute this largely to the company’s transparent and effective approach to change management. “All the stakeholders—from operational and strategic teams to management—were fully on board from the get-go,” Pierron recalls. This made it possible to define all the relevant requirements during the preliminary study, compare them with the capabilities in the SAP products, and identify the necessary adjustments at an early stage. Some of these were co-innovated with SAP and incorporated into the standard SAP Omnichannel Promotion Pricing solution; others were developed exclusively for Ernsting’s family in SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP).

“The way the project participants interacted was exemplary,” says Ernsting’s family project lead Mark Dinkhoff, head of IT Projects. And the proof is there for all to see: the solution is stable and running smoothly in both the online shop and at the company’s more than 1,900 stores in Germany and Austria. As part of its international expansion strategy, Ernsting’s family opened six new stores in the Netherlands at the end of last year. The roll-out went smoothly there too, confirming that the company’s award-winning omnichannel pricing solution is not only technically robust, but suited to international markets as well. This is great motivation for Ernsting’s family to push ahead with its expansion plans.

This was first published on the German SAP News Center.

SAP customers manage multiple SAP systems (SAP S/4HANA, SAP SuccessFactors, SAP Ariba, etc.) in complex hybrid landscapes with applications spanning on-premise and cloud environments.

Learn about the feature highlights in February 2025 with SAP Datasphere!
The announcement of SAP Business Data Cloud made quite some noise. It puts data, analytics, and AI at the center of our portfolio. Get a two-minute overview of SAP Business Data Cloud.
We also delivered two great releases this month, so let’s check out my top features:
1. SAP Cloud ALM Integration
2. Export and import of IP allowlist

Key Moments:
00:20 SAP Business Data Cloud high-level overview
02:00 SAP Cloud ALM Integration health monitoring
02:57 Export and import of IP allowlist

To learn more about SAP Datasphere, visit: https://sap.to/6057LLV5v
Join our SAP Datasphere community to always stay up to date: https://sap.to/6058LLV5a
Check out our product roadmap for SAP Datasphere: https://sap.to/6059LLV5x

We are excited to announce that SAP has been named a Strategic Challenger in the 2025 Fosway 9-Grid™ for Learning Systems, a multidimensional learning market analysis model. According to Fosway, Strategic Challengers “provide solid performance with solutions that have a richer and broader suite of capability than most other solutions in the Fosway 9-Grid™.”

Investing in learning and talent development has become more critical than ever for organizations, especially in today’s fast-paced and ever-changing business landscape. According to the World Economic Forum, employers expect 39% of key skills required in the job market will change by 2030. As technological advancements like AI reshape industries, organizations must equip their workforce with the skills necessary to adapt and stay competitive. At the same time, employees today are increasingly seeking more personalized opportunities for growth and development.

SAP continues to drive innovation in learning and talent development with the enhanced, integrated learning experience in SAP SuccessFactors Learning. A redesigned homepage helps streamline access to required, role-based, and interest-driven learning, while AI-powered tools can automate skills identification and provide personalized recommendations for learning. Customizable templates and enhanced search can further improve accessibility, creating a seamless learning journey.

Additionally, SAP recently launched SAP SuccessFactors Career and Talent Development, an AI-driven solution that can provide personalized career guidance, helping employees develop the skills and experiences needed for growth. Both SAP SuccessFactors Learning and SAP SuccessFactors Career and Talent Development are powered by the talent intelligence hub, a single source of truth for workforce skills that helps enhance visibility and alignment across the talent lifecycle and is built into SAP SuccessFactors Performance & Goals. These innovations can enable organizations to upskill, retain talent, and build a workforce ready for the future.

“In a tight talent market, building skills is a critical issue for all organizations,” said David Wilson, CEO of Fosway Group. “Too many providers fail to offer personalized, relevant experiences that make an impact. Reflecting its status as a Strategic Challenger, SAP continues to invest in enhancing how learning ensures both employees and organizations thrive in a rapidly evolving skills landscape.”

Organizations of all sizes—from large enterprises to midsize companies—leverage SAP SuccessFactors Learning to help drive their compliance and skills strategies and create a culture centered around continuous learning.

Grundfos, one of the world’s leading pump and water solutions companies, is leveraging the power of the talent intelligence hub in SAP SuccessFactors solutions to become a skills-first organization by shifting the focus from job titles and degrees to a comprehensive understanding of employees’ skills.

 “We had been working with skills and competencies for quite some time before the [talent intelligence] hub,” said Søren Nielsen, Grundfos’ business architect for HR Technology. “But the AI enablement and support are already providing different opportunities to address our skills shortage. In terms of educating and growing our people, we can see how the [talent intelligence] hub can recommend the right training at the right time to help people develop the right skills. Maintaining taxonomies, skills, competencies, and behaviors was a huge, cumbersome task when these were connected to roles. Now, we have boiled it down to talking only about skills. And we can set up a framework that supports both the role and the individual with a top-down and bottom-up approach.”

Purolator, one of Canada’s largest courier companies, chose SAP to unify its HR processes and support and develop its frontline teams. With SAP SuccessFactors Learning, the company launched an award-winning leadership development program to transform managers into leaders. “Overall, the program has generated over CAD 21 million in saved revenue,” said Tennyson Devoe, senior director of Safety and Organizational Excellence at Purolator. “Furthermore, we’ve seen a significant reduction in our injury frequency rate and improved union relations.” The program also gave frontline managers the skills to help a long-tenured workforce adapt to new ways of working.

Looking ahead, we are excited to continue innovating in talent management, skills, and the learning user experience to help our customers solve their biggest challenges, address critical skill gaps, and prioritize their greatest differentiators—their people.

Learn about our position in the 2025 Fosway 9-Grid™ for Learning Systems and discover more about SAP SuccessFactors Learning.

Vinita Venkatesh is vice president of Product Management for SAP SuccessFactors Learning

The purpose of this blog post is to provide you with general guidelines for customizing, executing, and testing the automatic exchange and interest rate update functionality in SAP systems.