As a global leader in the lifting and securement industry, Kito Crosby manufactures and distributes products like critical lifting and rigging solutions, specialized hardware, cranes, and electric hoists. Headquartered in Richardson, Texas, with facilities worldwide, its mission focuses on safety, innovation, and global impact.

With a diverse portfolio of brands—Kito, Crosby, Harrington, Gunnebo Industries, Peerless, and eepos—the company has experienced rapid growth, scaling its business from millions to billions in revenue. But the number of acquisitions left the company with a fragmented IT landscape of outdated, unsupported, and unscalable systems.

To establish a unified digital core and standardize processes, Kito Crosby embarked on a RISE with SAP journey, implementing SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition to achieve its long-term single global instance strategy.

A winning strategy

Kito Crosby chose a greenfield, clean core strategy to eliminate the existing fragmentation and enable long-term scalability, Johnson Lai, Chief Digital Transformation Officer and Chief Information Officer, shared in an interview. “In the past, we did not integrate our ERP systems, and this left our IT landscape very fragmented and limited our business process capabilities,” he said. “Therefore, we wanted to refresh all of our ERP systems and really lay down a greenfield start that we can begin to create a transformational change for the entire company.”

Selecting a greenfield and clean core approach—basically standing up an entirely new system that prioritizes standard functionalities over customizations—was key to remedying Kito Crosby’s current technology landscape, so that processes like order to cash, accounting, manufacturing, and shipping could be integrated. This approach also allowed the company to take a close look at core processes and streamline operations, especially in warehouse management and S&OP, Lai said.

Considering the project scope, Kito Crosby did not have the internal talent needed to stand up the servers and infrastructure, so it decided to move forward with RISE with SAP and SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition. “SAP comes with a lot of great stuff, and we wanted to take advantage of that,” Lai said.

The company began the transformation in North America, as that is its largest market and therefore posed the greatest risk in operating on a legacy, unsupported ERP system.

Never underestimate change management

While Lai shared that employees were motivated and excited to get started initially, the enormity of the project quickly became overwhelming.

Ironically, many wanted to customize the new SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition solution to act like the legacy tech. “Everyone agrees to the clean core approach until it’s their turn to look at their function, at which point they want customization. There was a piece of resistance to using ‘vanilla’ functionality,” Lai said. “Once we showed people live demos with their own data, that’s when the change resistance started to decrease,” he added.

In IT specifically, there was a strong desire to build and run their own infrastructure and servers rather than have another company step in. A sense of ownership and accountability is important, Lai said, but ultimately Kito Crosby’s need to get off the legacy system in North America quickly made it necessary to partner with SAP. And it was the right move: “Now some of the folks who questioned why we outsourced some of that to SAP are our biggest champions…We find working with the SAP team is no different than working with ourselves.”

For companies with digital transformation projects on the horizon, Lai cautions to “never underestimate the change impact that employees face.” Projects of a global scale require planning on all fronts, including allocating time for employees and business leaders to get on board.

Lessons learned and benefits gained

The ERP system revamp delivered measurable business value to Kito Crosby, including improved customer service, stronger inventory control, and more efficient manufacturing and warehouse operations. Notably, the business process improvements and enhanced system functionality drove Kito Crosby’s on-time delivery to its highest levels in more than 10 years.

“We see that benefit across the globe and we’re excited about taking what we’ve done in North America throughout the entire world, consolidating all those little ERPs that are outdated and unsupported into SAP to get to that single global instance,” Lai said. Since going live on SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition and fully embracing its native capabilities, Kito Crosby has unlocked measurable business value and operational excellence. The transformation has driven strong performance gains across critical KPIs, including higher customer on‑time delivery, meaningful reductions in back orders, improved inventory accuracy, and accelerated intercompany processing.

At the same time, warehouse operations are setting new benchmarks for efficiency, achieving record volumes for receiving and put‑away, replenishment, and shipping. These results have been delivered safely, with zero injuries and fewer resources.

To the cloud—and beyond

Following its recent acquisition by leading worldwide designer, manufacturer, and marketer of intelligent motion solutions Columbus McKinnon, Kito Crosby is continuing to build on its strong digital foundation.

“Because we started with a greenfield and kept a clean core as much as possible, we feel like the upgrades will go even faster and with less effort,” Lai said. “We want to get to the latest [SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition] version so we can take advantage of the AI capabilities of Joule.”

Next on the ERP systems consolidation docket: the SAP ERP Central Component (SAP ECC) 6.0 system in Europe.

“This is just one example of how our IT team is empowering the broader organization to further delight our customers and end user,” Lai shared. “As we continue to scale our business, we expect even greater returns as we further capitalize on the technology, expanded capabilities, and AI tools within our SAP landscape.”

Gillian Hixson is an integrated communications specialist at SAP.

Every day, companies around the world rely on SAP applications to run the operations that keep their businesses moving.  In fact, 84% of global commerce touches an SAP application.

Over decades, our customers have built powerful digital foundations on SAP to run end-to-end business processes across their enterprises—often extending and customizing these systems to support their unique business needs. Now, many are entering the next phase of transformation: modernizing their SAP landscapes to unlock the full potential of AI.

As companies move to cloud-based SAP environments and clean-core architectures, they are preparing to embed intelligence directly into business processes. This enables new forms of automation, with AI agents that operate across enterprise systems and execute increasingly complex tasks.

Modernizing these systems while introducing AI at scale is a significant undertaking. It requires technologies that integrate with existing applications, operate reliably within mission-critical workflows, and meet the governance standards enterprises demand.

That’s why, over the past few years, we have partnered with NVIDIA to combine advanced AI technology with deep business context. Our goal is to help organizations accelerate modernization and apply AI across the applications and processes key to their success. This collaboration will be showcased at NVIDIA GTC.

Building the foundation for enterprise-grade AI

Through our collaboration with NVIDIA, we are accelerating the entire life cycle of enterprise AI—from model development to high-performance runtime execution—and powering AI scenarios across our portfolio. NVIDIA NeMo™,  which consists of open libraries such as NeMo Gym and NeMo RL, helps accelerate large-scale model training across distributed RL environments. It enables teams to build and refine enterprise-grade AI models faster.

Models are hosted through SAP AI Core and generative AI hub, where our customers and partners leverage those best suited to their use cases. NVIDIA NIM microservices optimize inference performance, and we have observed up to a 20% improvement compared to another popular open source serving engine. Enabled by NVIDIA GPUs and NVIDIA NIM, the increased performance allows organizations to combine advanced AI models with trusted SAP business data and processes to ensure that AI operates within the workflows that drive business operations.

Modernizing the business logic that runs the enterprise

AI models trained on SAP knowledge and accelerated using NVIDIA technologies are already helping customers tackle some of their most pressing modernization challenges. For example, evolving business logic embedded in the SAP systems that run their operations.

For decades, organizations have extended SAP applications with custom ABAP code that reflects how their businesses operate. That logic captures years of operational knowledge across finance, supply chain, service processes, and more. But modernizing these environments for the cloud and preparing them for the next generation of AI-driven innovation can be complex.

To help accelerate this journey, SAP developed SAP-ABAP-1. a foundation model trained exclusively on real-world ABAP code and the business logic used across SAP environments. The solution incorporates specialized models for code-related tasks, including StarCoder2 for code completion, and Codestral for deeper code understanding and explanations. These models are served through NVIDIA NIM microservices to deliver high-performance inference.

SAP Joule for Developers brings these capabilities into the developer experience, helping teams analyze existing ABAP code, understand how customizations interact with core business processes, and generate new code when needed. By making decades of embedded business logic easier to interpret and update, we help organizations accelerate modernization and preserves the knowledge that makes their operations unique.

Connecting AI to business operations

The collaboration between SAP and NVIDIA also explores how AI can operate within enterprise workflows to help organizations apply intelligence across both physical operations and complex planning environments. One emerging area is embodied AI, in which intelligence extends beyond software systems into the physical world. By combining AI reasoning with sensors, robotics, and enterprise data, organizations can connect real-world observations directly with digital business processes.

For example, predictive maintenance alerts from SAP Asset Performance Management can trigger robotic inspections that analyze equipment using thermal, visual, and acoustic signals. These signals are evaluated alongside asset histories and maintenance records to identify potential issues. Joule then orchestrates follow-up actions through SAP Field Service Management, prioritizing work orders and guiding technicians with the right operational context. By linking physical-world insights with enterprise workflows, organizations can turn physical-world signals into coordinated enterprise actions.

The same principle applies to complex planning environments. Supply chains today must manage a constantly shifting web of constraints, from supplier availability and transportation disruptions to evolving customer demands. With NVIDIA, we are exploring technologies, such as NVIDIA Metropolis and NVIDIA Cosmos, to bring the latest AI advancements into warehouse management, safety, and asset inspection.

Together, we are also bringing new capabilities to SAP Integrated Business Planning that combine agent-based reasoning with the NVIDIA cuOpt GPU-accelerated optimization engine. This enables planners to simulate complex supply chain scenarios and evaluate alternatives with more speed and accuracy. By integrating advanced optimization with SAP’s supply chain planning capabilities, organizations can dynamically model constraints, adapt plans as conditions change, and make more confident decisions in increasingly complex environments.

Collaboration with large-scale SAP customers helps identify real operational bottlenecks, paving the way for AI-driven solutions. At NVIDIA GTC, SAP has unveiled a collaboration with Foxconn. The Taiwan-based global electronics manufacturer and manufacturing solutions provider will work with SAP to develop AI-powered innovations for manufacturing and supply chain operations.

By combining SAP’s enterprise applications and business context and Foxconn’s manufacturing expertise, organizations can enhance operational efficiency, increase resilience, and advance decision-making across complex production and supply networks.

Experience agentic AI at NVIDIA GTC

SAP is enabling Joule Agents across its application portfolio, helping organizations automate tasks and coordinate complex workflows within business processes. At NVIDIA GTC, visitors will see how these capabilities are extended using Joule Studio on SAP Business Technology Platform to build agents tailored to specific enterprise scenarios.

And because SAP’s AI architecture is model-agnostic, organizations can bring their own models into these workflows, in addition to those deployed through SAP AI Core. The hands-on experience at NVIDIA GTC will demonstrate how organizations can build AI-driven workflows that operate directly within the enterprise systems that run their business.

It all happens at NVIDIA GTC, taking place March 16-19, 2026. Join us to see how SAP and NVIDIA are helping organizations modernize enterprise systems, accelerate AI adoption, and move toward the AI-native enterprise:

• Attend our session: Accelerating Enterprise AI with NVIDIA: How SAP Builds, Scales, and Runs Agentic Workflows on Tuesday, March 17, from 2:00-2:40 p.m.
• Visit the SAP booth, #2001, to explore agentic AI in action, participate in hands-on vibe-coding with Joule Studio, and witness next-generation enterprise automation

Learn more about SAP at NVIDIA GTC.

Brenda Bown is chief marketing officer for SAP Business AI.

NEW ORLEANS — SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) today announced new AI-enabled capabilities, travel and expense management enhancements, and new and expanded partnerships at SAP Concur Fusion 2026, the flagship conference for SAP Concur solutions users and experts.

SAP is expanding the Joule solution across SAP Concur solutions and introducing new automation capabilities:

• A new integration between Joule and Microsoft 365 Copilot, now available, embeds travel and expense tasks into everyday productivity tools. Employees can create and submit expense reports, upload receipts, book travel and receive policy guidance in SAP Concur solutions without leaving Microsoft applications.
• Two new Joule Agents further streamline expense compliance and reporting.
  • Expense Automation Agent automatically creates and populates expense reports for employees so all they have to do is review, refine and submit.
  • Expense Pre-Submit Audit Agent validates receipts and flags discrepancies before submission to reduce report rejection and reimbursement delays.
  • Both agents are currently available through the SAP Early Adopter Care program with general availability expected later this year.
• New AI-based rule creation tools simplify the complex task of managing policy rules in the Complete by SAP Concur and Amex GBT, Concur Travel and Concur Expense solutions.
• The SAP Sales Cloud solution now integrates with Booking Agent to streamline workflows and enhance productivity for sales teams.

SAP Concur and American Express Global Business Travel (Amex GBT) announced new innovations to Complete, an AI-enabled codeveloped solution for booking, servicing, payments and expensing. New capabilities include AI-enabled travel support with handoff to a live travel counselor and a specialized home page for travel managers. Concur Expense also integrates with Amex GBT Egencia for customers worldwide.

Joint customers of SAP Concur solutions and American Express can now create and manage American Express Virtual Cards in Concur Expense, supporting employee spending with controls and added security. The virtual cards can also be used in Concur Travel. This capability is available now to select U.S.-based American Express® Corporate and Business customers using Concur Expense with availability for all such customers planned for Q3 2026.

SAP Concur teams up with Visa to integrate Concur Expense and Visa through the Visa Commercial Integrated Partner program. Initially, real-time notifications (RTN) from Visa card swipes will automatically create expenses in Concur Expense. This capability is planned to be available through SAP Early Adopter Care in Q3 2026. SAP Concur solutions will now support RTN from all major credit card networks.

Additionally, SAP Concur solutions are advancing corporate travel with enhanced booking, expanded global access and intelligent traveler support. The new experience in Concur Travel supports guest bookings, expanded Cleartrip content in India and additional airline options. TripIt Pro adds Image to Plan with Apple Intelligence and expanded Risk Alerts to help travelers organize itineraries and monitor disruptions.

Learn about these announcements at SAP Concur Fusion or join the virtual event. 

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

Media Contact:
Kelly Sheldon Murray, +1 (978) 708-6821, kelly.murray@sap.com, ET

This document contains forward-looking statements, which are predictions, projections, or other statements about future events. These statements are based on current expectations, forecasts, and assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results and outcomes to materially differ. Additional information regarding these risks and uncertainties may be found in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including but not limited to the risk factors section of SAP’s 2025 Annual Report on Form 20-F.
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In October 2025, at SAP Connect, we introduced next‑gen SAP Ariba and outlined a major shift in how procurement technology must evolve to meet today’s realities. Today, that vision becomes real.

I’m pleased to announce that next‑gen SAP Ariba is now available, marking the next phase in SAP’s journey to reimagine source‑to‑pay for the age of AI. This milestone represents the transition from announcement to execution, bringing a fundamentally rebuilt platform into customers’ hands.

This milestone comes alongside strong industry recognition. SAP has been named a Leader in the 2026 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Source‑to‑Pay Suites, an acknowledgment that aligns with the delivery of next-gen SAP Ariba and our continued focus on platform modernization and AI‑driven innovation at enterprise scale.

Why rebuilding the foundation matters

As procurement leaders know, AI’s potential is widely recognized, but its impact has often been uneven. Confidence is high, yet results depend on more than algorithms alone. AI only delivers value when it is supported by the right data, processes, and platform architecture. That belief shaped our decision to rebuild SAP Ariba from the ground up.

Independent analyst firm Ardent Partners describes next‑gen SAP Ariba as “a complete reengineering of the largest and most entrenched source‑to‑pay platform in the world,” emphasizing that this move goes far beyond adding AI features to legacy systems. Instead, it establishes the architectural foundation required for AI to operate reliably and at scale.

This aligns with what we consistently hear from customers that sustainable impact requires modernization at the core.

An AI‑native source-to-pay platform built on SAP Business Technology Platform

Next‑gen SAP Ariba is built on SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP), providing a unified, real‑time data foundation across the source‑to‑pay lifecycle. This shift enables tighter integration with SAP Cloud ERP, improved extensibility, and faster innovation delivery.

By moving to SAP BTP, SAP Ariba can support open APIs, cross‑suite data consistency, and the responsiveness required for intelligent, AI‑driven procurement operations—capabilities that are increasingly expected of leading source‑to‑pay platforms but are difficult to achieve on legacy architectures.

Current next‑gen capabilities will continue to be delivered incrementally throughout 2026 and into 2027, giving customers flexibility to adopt innovation at a pace that aligns with their business priorities.

Embedded intelligence with Joule: moving from insight to action

A defining element of next‑gen SAP Ariba is the deep integration of Joule directly into procurement workflows. Rather than treating AI as an optional add‑on, next‑gen SAP Ariba can embed intelligence where work happens—supporting faster, more informed decisions while reducing friction across everyday processes.

Early capabilities include:

• A Bid Analysis Agent, which can automatically evaluate complex bid scenarios, including total cost considerations
• AI-assisted contract support to help automate routine inquiries, generate summaries, and provide instant access to contract details

These capabilities reflect a broader shift from systems that require constant manual input to platforms that actively support outcomes.

A more unified, intuitive procurement experience

Next‑gen SAP Ariba also addresses long‑standing fragmentation across the source‑to‑pay lifecycle.

Key improvements include:

• SAP Ariba Intake Management, now globally available, providing a single entry point for procurement requests
• A simplified SAP Fiori‑based user experience, delivered through a central launchpad
• A modernized contract lifecycle, supported through integration with Icertis Contract Intelligence

Together, these improvements are designed to make procurement easier to engage with while working to ensure processes remain connected, compliant, and intelligent behind the scenes.

What this means for customers

For existing SAP Ariba customers, next‑gen SAP Ariba provides choice and continuity. Customers can:

• Transition to next‑gen SAP Ariba on a voluntary basis.
• Access next‑gen capabilities without commercial implications.
• Run current and next‑gen environments in parallel during an active transition, reducing risk and disruption.

SAP is providing tools, services, and advance timelines to support a managed transition, allowing organizations to move forward with confidence rather than urgency.

The foundation for what comes next

Next‑gen SAP Ariba is not an endpoint, it is the foundation for the future of procurement.

With an AI‑native architecture, embedded agentic intelligence, and a unified user experience, this new generation of SAP Ariba helps organizations move beyond transactional efficiency toward smarter decisions, greater resilience, and measurable business outcomes.

As Ardent Partners observed, this rebuild has the potential to act as a catalyst—not just for SAP Ariba customers, but for the broader procurement technology landscape. By combining scale, data, and AI in a fundamentally new way, next‑gen SAP Ariba is helping define what modern source‑to‑pay platforms can deliver.

With the solution now available, we look forward to partnering with customers as they move from vision to value. Together, we can shape the future of intelligent procurement.

Baber Farooq is senior vice president of Product Marketing for SAP Ariba and SAP Fieldglass.

The SAP Partner Awards showcase top-performing partners that have excelled in helping customers bring out their best.

SAP has restructured the award recognition to provide more meaningful distinction, reflect our partners’ essential contributions, and ensure all award categories align to the Partner Ecosystem Success strategy. The newly created SAP Partner Awards replace previous recognition programs, including the SAP Pinnacle Awards, the SAP Global LoB Partner Excellence Awards, and the SAP Regional Partner Excellence Awards.

SAP partners are an essential extension of our team, driving success throughout the Customer Value Journey and helping our customers bring out their best. We rely on our partners’ unique industry expertise, implementation methodologies, and complementary solutions to meet the specific needs of customers, especially as they transition to the cloud and embed artificial intelligence (AI) into their business practices.

To exemplify our ongoing commitment to partners, our new awards framework continues the tradition of rewarding outstanding achievements and excellence. These awards recognize significant partner contributions in market units, regionally, and, most prestigiously, at the global level.

We are pleased to announce the 2026 SAP Partner Awards – Global winners. Only 23 partners are recipients of this esteemed award. These influential partners have illustrated the ability to help customers thrive through innovative services, products, and solutions.

The 2026 SAP Partner Awards recognize 50 categories globally and are based on performance from January 1, 2025 to December 31, 2025. As in previous years, selections were determined using system-generated data on core weighted metrics and key performance indicators. A steering committee of global SAP representatives then viewed, vetted, and ranked the achievements according to internal criteria aligned with SAP’s communicated business strategies.

Recipients will be celebrated during SAP Partner Summit and SAP Sapphire and will be invited to exclusive networking opportunities with peers and SAP leadership. These partners will also receive a communication package to help promote their success. To further amplify this achievement, SAP will list winners on its website for a year and through its communication channels to maximize global exposure to prospects and customers.

Congratulations to the 2026 winners. We look forward to applauding your success at SAP Partner Summit and SAP Sapphire.

Karl Fahrbach is chief partner officer at SAP.

Built on SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP), SAP Distributed Energy Resources (SAP DER) can provide a trusted data backbone that helps unify technical assets with commercial agreements, transforming millions of prosumer devices into coordinated services.

From energy sharing and dynamic pricing to cloud-native and interoperable flexibility markets, the solution can connect meters, markets, and customers to enable business models such as energy communities, virtual power plants, and demand response. Combined with a curated ecosystem of specialist technology partners, SAP empowers utilities to own their energy transition. 

The energy transition runs on data, but data is getting harder to manage 

The energy transition is reshaping the power landscape. Utilities are evolving from centralized generation toward systems powered by millions of distributed energy resources: solar panels, EV chargers, heat pumps, and batteries owned by consumers and prosumers alike. The number of connected assets is growing rapidly, generating vast amounts of operational, commercial, and customer data. Managing this data reliably and consistently is one of the defining challenges of the next energy decade. 

At the same time, digital energy platforms and new market entrants are intermediating the customer relationship, offering integrated propositions that bundle connectivity, flexibility, and billing into a single stack. Utilities that do not act risk being reduced to commodity providers.

To unlock the value of distributed energy resources, utilities need more than connectivity. They need data orchestration: a trusted, intelligent foundation that harmonizes information across every process, partner, and device and ensures they own rather than rent their energy transition capabilities. 

From distributed assets to orchestrated intelligence 

The SAP Distributed Energy Resources solution is designed to meet exactly this challenge. Built on SAP BTP, it enables utilities to manage distributed energy resources-related data at scale across production, consumption, and storage while helping to ensure reliability, performance, and consistency. 

Rather than acting as an operational control system, SAP DER focuses on data orchestration and integration. It helps ensure that distributed energy resources data can flow seamlessly between operational, commercial, and analytical systems, providing a single source of truth that can connect the physical and digital worlds of energy. 

“The complexity our customers face with prosumer data is exponential. They need reliability, performance, and consistency across all their data sources, and that’s exactly where SAP Distributed Energy Resources comes in.” 

Kim Maren Ekrutt, Global Industry Business Unit Utilities Co‑Head, SAP 

Two pillars of the SAP DER solution 

1. Complex installation and prosumer data orchestration: technical and commercial foundation

Manage the full spectrum of prosumer-related data, covering both complex technical installation details, such as meters, solar panels, batteries, EV chargers, and heat pumps, and the commercial information required to operate distributed energy resources at scale. This includes customer and prosumer master data, product structures, tariffs, contracts, grid connection agreements, feed-in contracts, and all commercial relationships linked to each installation. 

By bringing together technical asset data with commercial attributes and agreement information, the solution can provide a unified and reliable model of every installation. This is essential because distributed energy resources cannot be managed with technical information alone. Commercial products, grid contracts, flexible tariffs, and incentive agreements determine how energy flows are measured, settled, billed, shared, or monetized. 

This pillar becomes the foundation for energy communities, virtual power plant participation, flexibility programs, dynamic pricing, capacity and congestion management, and any business model involving prosumers and distributed energy assets. 

2. Energy management and sharing 

Track and analyze how energy is consumed, produced, stored, and shared, enabling new energy community and peer-to-peer business models. With high-resolution energy data and intelligent allocation algorithms, utilities can offer transparent, fair, and regulation-compliant energy sharing services to residential and commercial participants alike. 

Connecting data, processes, and people 

Utilities already rely on SAP for mission-critical processes such as meter to cash, asset management, and customer experience. SAP DER can extend this foundation, linking every asset, agreement, and customer interaction within one coherent data model. This integrated approach helps turn technical data into business value, powering use cases such as smart tariffs, dynamic pricing, and energy sharing. For utilities, this means a single enterprise backbone that can connect the traditional meter-to-cash world with the emerging flexibility and distributed energy resources economy. 

A partner ecosystem for the energy flexibility market 

No single vendor can address the full breadth of the distributed energy landscape. SAP has assembled a curated ecosystem of specialist technology partners, each bringing deep domain expertise that complements SAP’s enterprise data platform. Data stays with the utility, business logic remains under their control, and the customer relationship belongs to them. 

SAP’s technology partners extend the platform across six critical domains: 

• Flexibility management and virtual power plants: Orchestrate and monetize prosumer assets, including EVs, batteries, heat pumps, and solar inverters, for flexibility markets and smart charging services. 
• Energy communities and energy sharing: Design and operate energy communities with transparent allocation, dynamic local pricing, and full regulatory compliance. 
• Grid congestion and capacity management: Forecast, detect, and resolve grid congestion at the low-voltage-network-level while unlocking flexibility revenues. 
• Energy portfolio management and trading: Access wholesale and flexibility markets with real-time pricing, dynamic quotations, and risk management. 
• Customer insights and energy disaggregation: Deliver behind-the-meter visibility through non-intrusive load monitoring and appliance-level analytics. 
• Demand response and load management: Design and execute demand response programs, combining customer incentives, dynamic pricing, and automated device control. 

“Our role is to help utilities master the growing data complexity and turn it into opportunity. With SAP Distributed Energy Resources and our partner ecosystem, we’re connecting data, processes, and partners into one intelligent platform that enables utilities to own their energy transition.” 

Kim Maren Ekrutt, Global VP & Co-Head Industry Business Unit Utilities

About SAP Distributed Energy Resources 

SAP Distributed Energy Resources provides utilities with a public cloud platform to help model, manage, and share distributed energy resources data across operational and commercial domains. Integrated with SAP’s core utilities portfolio and a curated global partner ecosystem, it can enable reliable data exchange, smart energy management, and customer-centric innovation for the distributed energy era. 

Mateu Munar is senior director of Industry Business Unit Utilities at SAP.

Long before a customer becomes your customer, their engagement with your brand begins. Customer experience (CX) starts with early interactions like marketing engagement, product exploration, and initial conversations with sales teams.

These critical pre-purchase moments generate interest and open pathways toward deeper customer relationships. Organizations that convert interest into measurable outcomes with clarity, accuracy, and speed strengthen the overall customer experience, thereby boosting loyalty and bottom lines.

CX becomes even more meaningful as opportunities progress into clear agreements supported by accurate configuration, pricing, and quoting. This transition from opportunity to agreement represents one of the most consequential stages in the customer journey.

Lead-to-cash represents a coordinated motion across sales engagement, pricing precision, service alignment, and performance visibility. When these capabilities operate together, organizations deliver consistent customer experiences while maintaining operational clarity.

Eight years running: a leadership signal at the heart of lead-to-cash

Within the lead-to-cash journey, quoting connects sales engagement, performance management, service continuity, and ERP alignment. It represents a critical moment where customer intent is translated into accurate pricing, configuration, and agreement terms.

When SAP CPQ operates within SAP Customer Experience, it becomes part of a connected lead-to-cash motion that spans SAP Sales Cloud, SAP Service Cloud, sales performance management solutions, and SAP ERP. Sales teams engage with structured opportunity data and guided pricing logic. Service teams inherit full visibility into agreed terms. Performance leaders access insights grounded in accurate pipeline and quoting data.

When it comes to this level of intelligent, real-time, connected processes, very few companies can compete. SAP was again recognized as a Leader in the 2025 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Configure, Price, and Quote Application Suites. This marks the eighth consecutive year SAP has been positioned in the Leaders quadrant based on Ability to Execute and Completeness of Vision.

SAP CPQ supports organizations in producing accurate quotes — even in environments with advanced configuration and pricing requirements — helping accelerate sales cycles and improve sales execution across complex selling environments.

Extending CPQ leadership across SAP Customer Experience

In modern enterprises, quoting connects directly to demand generation, pipeline management, contract processes, fulfilment, and service delivery. SAP Customer Experience brings together commerce, customer data, marketing, sales, service, and sales performance management into an integrated portfolio designed to support truly connected customer journeys.

Within this portfolio, SAP CPQ plays a pivotal role in the lead-to-cash journey. When integrated with SAP CX solutions, it helps align pricing strategy, product configuration, customer agreements, and sales performance insights across the revenue lifecycle. The result is a more reliable transition from opportunity to revenue realization.

Connected lead-to-cash experience

For CX leaders, lead-to-cash is a core driver of experience differentiation and revenue execution. A connected lead-to-cash strategy ensures that:

• Customer intent is translated into accurate configuration and pricing.
• Sales engagements reflect approved pricing and product standards.
• Customer agreements are consistently captured and supported across systems.
• Sales performance and revenue outcomes remain visible and aligned across teams.

Business impact of connected lead-to-cash

Lead-to-cash determines how consistently organizations translate customer engagement into measurable outcomes.

By combining SAP Customer Experience capabilities with a CPQ solution recognized for its ability to execute and completeness of vision, organizations strengthen alignment across sales, pricing, service, performance management, and ERP systems, transforming engagement into measurable outcomes with confidence and precision.

In today’s environment, customer experience and operational precision are closely connected. Strength in one reinforces performance across the other.

You can learn more about how SAP CX connects SAP Sales Cloud, SAP CPQ, SAP Service Cloud, sales performance management solutions, and SAP ERP across the lead-to-cash journey here.

Sindy Conway is senior Product Marketing consultant for SAP Customer Experience.

In the NHL, decisions off the ice are just as critical as the plays on it. From trades to contracts to long-term planning, each front office is responsible for shaping its team’s future while keeping pace with a fast-moving, competitive League. Just as in business, success depends on turning data into informed, timely decisions that drive results.

Founded in 1917, the National Hockey League (NHL) is comprised of 32 Clubs located across North America. It serves a global fan base of nearly 700 million annual spectators across in-arena, broadcast, and digital channels. With millions of fans worldwide watching and Clubs fighting for any edge they can find, the NHL needed a future-focused way to manage critical decisions shaping the game.

To develop, maintain, and grow a roster within the salary cap system’s guidelines is no small undertaking, especially given the numerous variables that change in real time. While instituting the salary cap helps maintain evenly balanced teams that deliver thrilling games, it also contributes to a complex front-office balancing act, where every potential trade or player acquisition poses a mind-numbing array of opportunities and complications, short and long term.

Across the League, Clubs develop their own roster-management approaches, each using different tools and resources. No matter the variations among the solutions, they were mainly labor-intensive, disconnected systems, which meant that teams did not necessarily have access to real-time data, let alone reliable data, or an efficient means to access and analyze the data they did have.

The NHL, however, had a vision—a unified system that would consolidate player and League data into one platform accessible to all Clubs.

The SAP-NHL Front Office App for iPad delivers on that vision by providing a centralized view of the League, down to the team level, and drilling further into player data, enabling front offices to make more informed, real-time decisions with greater accuracy and efficiency.

First steps: consolidation and collaboration

Before the League could make that vision a reality, several obstacles needed to be resolved, starting with what Chris Foster, VP of Digital Business Development at the NHL, described as the League’s primary pain point: disconnected, legacy data management systems. Pascal Bornet, AI and automation expert, applauded this approach, advising organizations to “start with the friction points.”

Phase one, Foster explained, was “really updating our backend,” consolidating all the League’s data, from contract to salary information, and combining it with player statistics and video clips on SAP HANA Cloud.

Armed with a new database that would provide a seamless, fully connected single source of information for every NHL Club, the League was ready for its next challenge: creating a digital front-office solution that would meet the needs of 32 entirely different front offices, each with their own systems, priorities, “use cases, day-to-day responsibilities, and current challenges with data or workflows,” Foster explained.

The key to developing the League’s new application, Foster said, was leveraging “design-thinking principles” and “authentic user feedback” to create a single solution that would offer real added value to each user, from GMs to analysts to administrators, on each NHL team.

A power play digital solution

That disciplined, user-centered approach, combined with the NHL’s diligent attention to data consolidation, enabled the League to launch its SAP-NHL Front Office App for iPad in record time. While not mandatory, the app quickly proved its value and was rapidly adopted by all 32 Clubs. 

The app has already transformed day-to-day operations for Clubs, thanks to its ability to seamlessly access and interpret a single, reliable, and interconnected source of information on three different levels. The broadest level, the league view, offers data across the entire NHL, including current and projected salary caps for each club, off-season scenarios, and draft pick conditions; the team view breaks down the contracts of each player on the roster and provides visual cues for free agents or injured players; and the player view displays bios, contract PDFs, no-trade clauses, waiver status, performance bonuses, and even video clips of game highlights for every player in the League.

As Bornet said, “It’s about the right data, instantly and everywhere.” By rethinking the process first and prioritizing user needs, the League created a foundation for change—one that keeps “humans firmly in command” and uses technology to “amplify judgment, not replace it,” Bornet added.

Foster attributed the new app’s resounding success to the processing power of SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP), which enables club-specific customizations and allows for real-time calculations to fuel mission-critical decision-making.

Playing the long game

The NHL and SAP have a long-standing technology partnership that has powered several League-wide innovations, including NHL.com/Stats, the SAP-NHL Coaching Insights App, and NHL Venue Metrics. The Front Office App builds on this foundation and represents the next phase of the League’s digital transformation.

While the Front Office App is currently helping each NHL Club shape its team’s future, the League is continuing to look ahead. “This is a project with a multi-year road map,” Foster said.

As the NHL continues its innovation journey, it will remain laser-focused on user experience. Foster advised those looking to undertake their own digital transformation to take a page from the NHL’s playbook: “Let go of preconceived notions and realign your priorities according to user feedback. Be adaptable. Be fluid.” And get excited, because “the possibilities really are limitless.”

That same approach, Bornet added, “applies far beyond Hockey.” The NHL’s emphasis on identifying friction points and applying user-first design offers a practical template for any organization managing complex constraints and real-time decisions. Across industries, the challenge is the same: “too much data, too many variables, and decisions that can’t wait.” The real breakthrough, he noted, “isn’t the technology itself—it’s a mindset shift,” from “adding AI” to “removing cognitive friction,” and from “building for power users” to “designing for actual users.”

Explore the episode, focused on the customer journey

Learn more about how the NHL engineered a game-changing, League-wide digital transformation:

• Thought leadership podcast: Foster and Bornet talk with Thulium CEO Tamara McCleary about the untapped power of data, when it’s reliable, connected, and accessible, and how the NHL went from inspiration to iteration with the end users being essential to the transformation.

• Practitioners’ video: Foster talks with me about the process of creating a mobile app that meets the needs of 32 distinct front offices, each with their own systems, use cases, day-to-day responsibilities, and priorities.

For five seasons on demand, visit url.sap/btpcustomerconversations.

Do you have ideas for topics or technologies we should cover, or would you like to be a guest on the show? We’d love to hear from you. E-mail us.

Timo Elliott is vice president and global innovation advocate for SAP BTP at SAP.

SAP introduces SAP Cloud ERP Private 2025 FPS01. Designed to turn complexity into clarity, FPS01 builds on the landmark 2025 release from October, advancing AI innovations, delivering industry-ready data products, and further strengthening the core to help enterprises navigate today’s global operations.  

A modern foundation for growth at global scale 

In an era defined by global volatility and ambitious growth targets, businesses require a system that doesn’t just record data but actively anticipates needs and simplifies complexity. SAP Cloud ERP Private is evolving into a truly AI-enabled ERP, serving as the critical core foundation that can allow organizations to navigate the realities of global operations while maintaining total control over their footprint. 

To achieve this, innovations in FPS01 are strategically delivered across three key dimensions: AI, data, and applications. 

AI in action: from assistants to agents 

The shift toward an AI-enabled ERP is highlighted by two key advancements in FPS01: 

1. AI assistants and specialized agents: A standout in this release is the Change Record Management Agent for R&D. Previously a manual, high-friction process, this agent can now autonomously analyze change impacts and propose next steps, helping to free R&D teams to focus on innovation. 
2. Process embedded AI: SAP is making the system more intuitive through Joule. Instead of navigating complex menus, users can now use conversational shortcuts, for example, to instantly search service contracts or extend expiring prices in sales, turning multi-minute tasks into five-second interactions. 

Looking at the road ahead, SAP is building toward agent-to-agent collaboration, where specialized agents across functions like R&D and procurement “talk” to one another to resolve bottlenecks before they even reach a human user. FPS01 is a critical step toward that future. 

Data: industry-ready insights 

On the data front, SAP is introducing specialized data products for key industries, like retail, and functional areas, such as asset management and services. These are not just tables; they are pre-configured, business-ready data sets that align with our SAP Business Data Cloud (SAP BDC) roadmap. This helps ensure your data is “AI-ready,” allowing you to move from raw data to industry-specific insights with zero friction. 

Application: strengthening the global core 

On the application side, SAP continues to deliver deep functional enhancements based on direct customer feedback to help ensure your business backbone remains agile. A key highlight is the new Multistage Intercompany Sales and Stock Transfer. Following our commitment at the RISE with SAP moment in November, SAP is further expanding the scope to cover two-entity transfers, enabling automated orchestration across multiple legal entities. This can ensure even the most complex global supply chains remain transparent and compliant. 

A full collection of deep-dive articles on the new FPS01 is available on SAP Community. 

Looking ahead: your catalyst for transformation 

FPS01 reflects a core SAP principle: innovation should be both a foundation for today and a catalyst for what’s next. With enterprise AI, industry-ready data, and a stronger application core, organizations can run smarter and transform at their own pace. 

To see these innovations in person, register for SAP Sapphire to experience the future of the autonomous enterprise. 

Maura Hameroff is chief marketing officer for SAP Cloud ERP Private and RISE with SAP.