SAP Fioneer, Mastercard Team Up on Financial Services Solutions

SAP Fioneer, a global frontrunner in the financial services solutions arena, has forged a strategic alliance with payment giant Mastercard. This promising partnership seeks to revolutionize the way financial services are ingrained into the commercial payment, lending, and card management sectors. Launched just two years ago in 2021, SAP Fioneer is the outcome of a […]

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SAP Acquisition of LeanIX Elevates Business Transformation

SAP and LeanIX GmbH have revealed their strategic move towards reshaping the business transformation domain. With the planned SAP acquisition of LeanIX, two leaders in the enterprise architecture management (EAM) software space promise to give businesses an upper hand in continuous transformation through AI-driven process optimization. LeanIX, a key player in the EAM sector, has […]

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A Sneak Peek at All Things Procurement at SAP Spend Connect Live in Vienna

In just a few weeks, we’ll gather in Vienna, Austria, for SAP Spend Connect Live 2023. This is an extraordinary opportunity for SAP and its customers to come together to share ideas, experiences, and best practices that are helping businesses succeed.

Personally, I am so excited to attend SAP Spend Connect Live because it’s an opportunity to continue the conversation we started earlier this year at SAP Sapphire about the innovations that will drive the future of procurement. I also love the chance to connect with our customers in open, in-person discussions.

Register for SAP Spend Connect Live

Along with my keynote appearance and a full slate of customer meetings, I’ll join Daniel Holz from Google Cloud to discuss our partnership in one of the largest Google Cloud platform migrations. Attendees will see a demo of how SAP and Google are empowering strategic purchasers in supplier management through generative AI.

Continuing our Conversation

At SAP Sapphire in May, we showed innovations that are transforming the way businesses do procurement. We introduced the buying 360 capability for SAP Ariba Buying, the next evolution of guided buying, which provides an updated user experience and can incorporate intelligence into each step of the purchasing process to help make purchases more sustainable, personalized, and predictable. With this next iteration, users can receive targeted suggestions for goods and services based on their role and the organization’s procurement and sustainability policies. This personalized approach helps make procurement more focused and strategic.

We also introduced SAP Ariba Category Management, which became generally available in August. This solution can empower category managers to use data insights strategically to identify trends, develop and implement strategies, and evaluate success relative to tangible business metrics. Intelligent category management is key to reducing manual processes and focusing energy and resources on strategic initiatives to create and support resilient supply chains.

As we look forward to SAP Spend Connect Live, you can expect new announcements to take procurement to the next level. Of course, you’d have to be living under a very big rock not to notice the hot topic of the day: artificial intelligence (AI). The release of ChatGPT earlier this year has only supercharged this discussion. SAP is a leader in providing AI-powered, end-to-end business processes. And now, with the new generation of AI, we can step into the next horizon for business applications.

With SAP Business AI, transparent, responsible artificial intelligence can help you make every aspect of your business run smoother and more intelligently. We are creating “systems of intelligence” that can enable organizations to preserve their core business processes while also freeing them to adapt, adjust, and uniquely optimize for their needs. With systems of intelligence, processes are self-learning to optimize business outcomes.

Improve business outcomes with intelligent category management

At SAP Spend Connect Live, we look forward to demonstrating the ways SAP continues to leverage AI to help procurement teams increase productivity and expand on the strategic value they bring to their organizations. Beyond AI, be ready to hear about all the latest SAP innovations during the keynotes and our full slate of learning sessions.

Procurement Session Highlights

We’ve scheduled more than 35 learning sessions to bring you up-to-date on the very latest in procurement and our procurement solutions. You’ll hear from SAP experts, procurement leaders, and, most importantly, SAP customers who will share their experiences and best practices.

The sessions will cover many areas of interest – including generative AI, sustainable procurement, environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) best practices, and improving supply chain visibility. Of course, we’ll also provide the latest details and demonstrations of new and planned SAP procurement innovations.

Here are some quick links to our procurement sessions:

To date, we’ve scheduled more than 20 sessions where our customers will share their success stories and best practices. Here are a few of my recommendations:

See the full list of customer success sessions here.

Join Us in Vienna!

SAP Spend Connect Live takes place October 9-11, 2023, at the Messe Wien Congress Center in beautiful Vienna, Austria.

This event is for you. It’s an opportunity to join our community of procurement and supply chain leaders from businesses and industries across the world to share ideas, learn from each other’s success, and discuss best practices.

I look forward to joining you there. Get started by registering here.


Salvatore Lombardo is senior vice president, chief product officer, and head of Engineering for SAP Procurement.

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SAP S/4HANA Cloud Is a Leader in the 2023 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Cloud ERP for Service-Centric Enterprises

We are excited and honored to share that SAP has been recognized as a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant™ for SAP S/4HANA Cloud in Cloud ERP for Service-Centric Enterprises for the second year in a row.

The recognition is based on our completeness of vision and ability to execute in the cloud ERP market for service-centric enterprises. As service-centric enterprise customers transition their mission-critical enterprise resource planning (ERP) processes to the cloud, we believe they look to recognized vendors for the technology to transform and realize business value. According to Gartner, “Leaders execute well against their current vision and are well positioned for tomorrow.” We’re honored to be recognized in this space.

Magic Quadrant for Cloud ERP for Service-Centric Enterprises. Source: Gartner (August 2023). Click to enlarge.

This is truly fantastic news and, I believe, further underlines the impact cloud ERP has on the service-centric industries by fulfilling their current and future technology needs. SAP offers integrated cloud solutions that can support an organization’s E2E business processes, spanning across all functions. SAP helps manage every part of an organization: enterprise resource management, spend management, human capital management, and customer relationship management. This deep know-how enables SAP to understand that every business is different and that within a business not every application has the same infrastructure or process requirements.

An Integrated Cloud ERP Solution

IT decisions are influenced by several different factors, whether it be the sensitivity and gravity of the data, the locality and level of availability required, or the need to scale ERP systems up and down. Businesses are complex entities and, as such, the most efficient IT environments will be able to combine cloud services – leveraging the flexibility of choice SAP provides, whether they are public, private, or hybrid solutions. But complexity conceals value and opportunity. SAP S/4HANA Cloud is at the core of this transformational process that enables companies to grow, optimize, and transform on their own terms while providing for the smooth integration of all business processes.

A great example is REHAU China and its intelligent transformation journey to more countries in Asia under its “Cloud Asia Until 2025” plan. According to Chengbo Yu, CIO, Asia-Pacific Region, REHAU AG China, the company looked to “building a cloud-based business platform that’s fit for the future in a dynamic market and facilitating business process standardization and integration across Asia Pacific and the world and achieving supply chain excellence along the industry value chain.” That is the value it unlocked with SAP’s latest intelligent technologies, products, and solutions. This is a classic example of how cloud transformation is best achieved with process standardization, where composable services come together to support end-to-end processes.

Download a copy of the report

I believe the Gartner Magic Quadrant™ for Cloud ERP for Service-Centric Enterprises is an interesting report of what trends and market forces drive conclusions. Businesses that are prepared to act quickly by orchestrating a planned digital transformation early on are better suited to respond to the dramatic changes in the operating environment. To quote the report, “this Magic Quadrant reflects Gartner’s definition of ‘composable ERP.’ We define this as an adaptive technology strategy that enables the foundational administrative and operational digital capabilities for an enterprise to keep up with the pace of business change. This strategy delivers a core of composable applications and as-a-service software platforms that are highly configurable, interoperable, and flexible to adapt to future modern technology.”

With this in mind, SAP has pursued a unified solution in the cloud that responds to our customers’ business requirements. I have often written about how product design needs to be customer-driven and how we need to meet their unique industry needs with solutions that enable their growth and profitability. “No matter what industry you are in, there is no greater benchmark of success than customer feedback,” said Thomas Saueressig, member of the Executive Board of SAP SE, SAP Product Engineering. “The more feedback we get from our customers, the better we can serve them with innovations that help companies solve today’s business problems and take on tomorrow’s challenges. With SAP S/4HANA Cloud, they are best positioned to do so impactfully and sustainably.”

This perspective guides every decision our teams make when we are defining, investing in, and designing our solutions for every business, including organizations that aren’t yet completely ready for the cloud. SAP S/4HANA Cloud is a complete, composable cloud ERP solution powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and analytics that helps customers run mission-critical operations in real time from anywhere and can give them the insight and information they need to steer their business through changing and challenging times. It enables them to digitally transform their business by helping build flexible value chains with end-to-end processes, introduce new business models in their industry, and expand globally yet sustainably with a trusted partner in SAP.

Making real progress on sustainability requires real data. We’re rising to that challenge at SAP by introducing the green ledger, ledger-based accounting for carbon so companies can manage the carbon entering and leaving their systems and balance their “carbon books” the same way they balance their financial books. SAP Sustainability solutions help customers replace estimated or average emissions values with actual, verified data, accelerating the move toward a green ledger where bottom-up, audit-ready sustainability values are managed with the same accounting quality as corporate financial data. The green ledger offers deep insights by being embedded into RISE with SAP S/4HANA Cloud and the GROW with SAP solution, with additional capabilities added with every release.

Get ready-to-run cloud ERP with SAP S/4HANA Cloud

With SAP’s cloud-first approach, SAP S/4HANA Cloud is at the core of our RISE with SAP and GROW with SAP offerings, which help unlock new ways of doing business. The goal is to respect organizations’ individual pace of movement to become an intelligent and sustainable enterprise by supporting them with clear and transparent road maps and by helping ensure that new innovations can be made available to them on a continuous basis.

A progressive combination of technology and innovation are key to the growth of any business today. We believe SAP’s inclusion in this Gartner Magic Quadrant™ for Cloud ERP for Service-Centric Enterprises once again highlights the fact that we are doing the right thing by our customers in creating a leaner, more responsive, customer-oriented business to help drive and deliver innovative solutions in the cloud. Customers repeatedly tell us they recognize that software-as-a-service (SaaS) ERP is their ultimate end-state.

We are thrilled to be recognized as a Leader again in this year’s Gartner Magic Quadrant™ for Cloud ERP for Service-Centric Enterprises. But our ambitions don’t stop here. We are continuing to invest in making SAP S/4HANA Cloud even better with innovations that will make our products smarter and more efficient for enterprises of all scale – global, large, and mid-market. We understand the importance of making the right investment decisions when it comes to digital transformation, and we believe a strong digital backbone is the centerpiece. With SAP’s cloud ERP solutions, we continue to focus on growth and value generation for businesses and their customers and we are here to be a partner on this journey.

You can read the full report here.


Jan Gilg is president and chief product officer of Cloud ERP at SAP.

Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Cloud ERP for Service-Centric Enterprises, Denis Torii, Sam Grinter, Tim Faith, Naveen Mahendra, Neha Ralhan, Robert Anderson, 29 August 2023.
This graphic was published by Gartner, Inc. as part of a larger research document and should be evaluated in the context of the entire document. The Gartner document is available upon request from SAP.
GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally, and MAGIC QUADRANT is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates and are used herein with permission. All rights reserved.
Gartner does not endorse any 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.

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Versuni Gains Agility with HXM and Connected Cloud ERP as Strong Data Foundation

Contemporary living at its finest is exemplified by a rich blend of technology, innovation, and design that delivers an unparalleled experience. In the modern home, for example, a new generation of domestic appliances makes cooking and cleaning easier and more enjoyable, bringing the benefits of comfort and convenience to what were once demanding daily household chores. These innovations in the home afford us precious time to spend with the people we love and improve our quality of life.

Versuni, formerly known as Philips Domestic Appliances, excels in its purpose to help people turn their houses into homes, so they can lead happier, healthier lives. Versuni is headquartered in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, with innovation, manufacturing, and commercial centers across the globe and a footprint in over 100 countries. With a global workforce of approximately 6,400 employees, Versuni advances a workplace culture of collaboration, empowered decision-making, and employee engagement supported by leading-edge HR. 

As its name suggests, Versuni – think “universe” – wants consumers to know that “our universe is the home” and specializes in domestic appliances that make routine tasks simple, enjoyable, and sustainable. Versuni has brands such as Philips, Saeco, Gaggia, Preethi, Philips Walita, L’OR Barista, and Senseo to cover cooking, coffee, garment care, floor care, and climate care.

Digital-First Company for Consumer Engagement

Versuni took the unique opportunity of reinventing itself as an independent company to transform its entire technology landscape. To succeed in a dynamic, consumer marketplace, it had to evolve from best-of-breed solutions that served its healthcare parent company to best-of-suite applications that power advanced, digital-first consumer goods organizations.

“Since we are in consumer products, we needed to be a digital-first, insight-led company to enable us to go for lifetime engagement with our consumers across our connected products,” says Lokesh Rastogi, IT platform leader for Finance and HR, Versuni.

Exuviate Transformation Wins SAP Innovation Award

Versuni builds a digital-first future with RISE with SAP

To establish a foundation for future growth, Versuni adopted an outside-in approach to harmonizing and simplifying all processes in a bid to achieve end-to-end transparency. The IT project was given a fitting name, “Exuviate,” to describe how the organization shed its old technology layer so it can transform into something new and distinctive as a consumer-focused enterprise.

Versuni worked with Tata Consulting Services (TCS) to carry out an organization-wide, greenfield implementation by leveraging SAP Intelligent Enterprise Framework for processes, SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) for collaboration and integration, and RISE with SAP for cost control. While firmly adhering to best practices, Versuni laid out a strategy guided by a crisp logic: “SAP unless…; cloud unless…; and best of suite.” Considered to be one of the largest RISE with SAP projects in any industry, the transformation was completed in a record 18 months, when Versuni transitioned to SAP S/4HANA Cloud, private edition in all countries.

With the new SAP environment, Versuni reports 30% enhanced agility in its responsiveness, 85% improvement in standardization and harmonization, and 50% increased employee engagement. In recognition of its outstanding success, Versuni’s Exuviate project was chosen as an SAP Innovation Award winner in the Industry Leader in Consumer Products category. For more information, read the press release from SAP Sapphire Barcelona.

Opportunity for a New HR

The Exuviate project had set in motion the total transformation of Versuni’s IT landscape and established new business processes. The challenges facing Versuni’s HR department, however, were especially formidable: after the transition, there would be no way to manage and compensate Versuni’s workforce unless a new HRIT system was up and running globally. Relying on its legacy software was not an option.

Versuni’s HR team chose SAP SuccessFactors Human Experience Management (HXM) solutions to help maximize value and maintain a clean core, one of the priorities of the Exuviate project. The team doubled down on the opportunity to achieve a full-scale HR transformation that affected all underlying HR policies.

“Due to the new setup of Versuni, we wanted to have a new HR policy for all countries, meaning we had a new organization structure to manage, new job family structure, new competencies for jobs, and a new salary structure,” says Amber Smeulders, business unit lead, HR Xperience expert at McCoy and hired by Versuni as program manager to manage the full HR digital transformation. “This was the biggest challenge in our program: it should be a happy marriage between managing a new HR policy together with following the design principles of best practice.”

“The HR transition to SAP SuccessFactors solutions in itself was a massive task, so we ran the HR transformation as a separate pillar within the Exuviate transformation,” says Rastogi. This required Versuni to deploy SAP SuccessFactors solutions in less than one year.

Maximize the value of HR for your people and your business

“We did it in 10 months from design to deployment,” confirms Rastogi. On April 1, 2023, Versuni went live in 52 countries simultaneously with 15 modules of SAP SuccessFactors solutions, including SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central, SAP SuccessFactors Work Zone, SAP SuccessFactors Learning, and SAP SuccessFactors Talent Management.  

“What Versuni accomplished in its HR transformation is nothing short of spectacular,” says Maryann Abbajay, chief revenue officer, SAP SuccessFactors. “Versuni translated a new set of business demands and way of working into SAP SuccessFactors solutions, really taking advantage of the connected cloud environment to gain visibility into its workforce and enable employee-centric HR. This is going to bring a new level of agility to Versuni that will set it on a path for long-term success.”

Versuni worked closely with SAP to ensure it had access to the right resources and expertise. “We hired subject matter experts with SAP SuccessFactors knowledge, but also worked with the HR business to make sure that the design of SAP SuccessFactors solutions and the design of the HR policies were going hand in hand,” says Smeulders. With the right team in place and a clear governance structure, Versuni was able to complete the project in record time and fast track its time to value.

Reporting Gains Strategic Value in Connected Cloud Landscape

Although Versuni was satisfied with the operational reporting available in SAP SuccessFactors solutions, it also needed cross-organizational reporting that leveraged data available in the connected SAP landscape. Therefore, Versuni and SAP created a solution for its management reporting. “We tried it out in HR as a proof of concept,” says Rastogi. “It was highly successful and now we intend to roll it out across the organization. It brings quite some benefits in terms of insights into our HR data.”

Smeulders agrees and looks forward to strategic insights from SAP SuccessFactors with the connected environment. “We would like to combine the HR data with data coming from the other SAP systems to really understand what is best for us when we talk about investment in positions, in HR policies, and in the right talents,” she says.

Complete Transformation in Record Time

By connecting cloud enterprise resource planning (ERP) to SAP SuccessFactors solutions, Versuni has achieved three key benefits. It now has a seamless user journey based on a single source of truth across the entire landscape. Another benefit is the increased visibility achieved from the integration with other systems, especially finance. Also, improved reporting is leading to better decision-making. Rastogi summarizes: “It’s one source of truth, one system, and one number.”

Enhanced employee experience is among the additional benefits of the HR transformation. Payroll consolidation resulted in a reduction of more than 20 providers into one global provider. Versuni lowered costs with a 70% reduction of local applications. Localization for time and attendance is now supported. Nearly all HR processes are now available on a mobile device.

“We’re still on the journey,” says Rastogi. “What is very clear across the organization is a mind shift change, a culture change. We’re starting to see that it is much more collaborative and faster. The decision-making is empowered and much quicker. It’s been a complete transformation – digital transformation as well as business transformation – in record time.”

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Britain’s tenants are feeling much more pressure from soaring interest rates than the rest of the housing market.

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