The Power of Connection: Harnessing Customer Experience for Competitive Advantage

Every customer interaction is a chance to win loyalty and drive growth. Companies that prioritize customer experience can stand out with seamless, high-quality interactions that build lasting connections.

Newly unveiled innovations and partnerships revolutionize the way work gets done

In the AI era, relying on standalone line-of-business applications limits growth. To unlock their full potential, businesses need a connected business suite, a unified data strategy, and a powerful data foundation — forming an integrated system that breaks down silos, empowers teams, and enables personalized engagement.

Foundation for intelligent growth

With more than 50 years of expertise in managing critical business data, SAP helps companies unlock AI that is relevant, reliable, and responsible. This year at SAP Sapphire, we announced innovations for customer-centric, AI-powered growth — whether paired with SAP or non-SAP solutions. These innovations build on the three critical growth drivers:

  • SAP Business Suite delivers real-time insights and connections across systems and data. With built-in AI, it transforms complexity into clarity and enables fast, agile action.
  • SAP Business Data Cloud centralizes trusted internal and external data, breaking down silos to deliver real-time visibility and insights for personalized experiences.
  • SAP Customer Experience (SAP CX), is central to this growth strategy and brings AI into every interaction — from marketing to service — tapping into business-critical data to deliver seamless, context-rich experiences, while maximizing the value of existing SAP investments.

This integrated approach enables smarter decisions, more responsive service, and long-term loyalty.

Our latest innovations expand upon this growth engine, helping companies stand out.

AI-driven automation for accelerated impact

Our expanding Joule Agent portfolio bridges the gap between intelligence and automation. These ready-to-use AI agents automate routine tasks deliver value quickly with minimal configuration. New agents include:

Working seamlessly within existing SAP CX environments, Joule Agents preserve human judgment where it matters most while automating the rest, freeing teams to focus on growth.

Quote Creation Agent: Automated quote drafts from customer email requests

Connections that drive efficiency and growth

SAP Enterprise Service Management unifies service delivery across sales, marketing, HR, finance, procurement, and more, powered by AI and embedded across SAP Business Suite. With its unique focus on user experience, it boosts productivity and operational excellence.

For SAP CX users, it centralizes processes for sales inquiries and support, accelerating close rates and shortening deal cycles. This unified approach turns fragmented service into seamless, AI-powered orchestration.

Key capabilities across the SAP portfolio include:

  • Human Capital Management: Self-service and AI routing of complex issues frees HR teams for strategic priorities
  • Finance: Automates accounts receivable/payable inquiries, disputes, and discrepancies to improve accuracy, shorten AR turnover, and accelerate cash flow
  • Customer Experience: Centralized, AI-driven sales inquiries and support, improves response times and boosts close rates

Automation and unified systems help streamline operations and strengthen customer relationships, fueling satisfaction and growth.

Centralized, AI-powered case summaries, timelines, recommended answers

Smarter revenue management for maximized growth

Launching in the third quarter 2025, SAP Revenue Growth Management helps consumer packaged goods companies optimize promotions, budgets, and ROI with AI insights and real-time financial data. Public cloud integration helps prevent overspend and supports SAP Sales and Operations Planning with SAP Integrated Business Planning.

Key enhancements include:

  • Visibility into revenue, margin, ROI, volume, and profit and loss data for account performance insights and better trade promotion decisions
  • Promotion spend insights via integrated SAP Cloud ERP
  • More accurate forecasting with SAP Integrated Business Planning and streamlined budget planning with SAP Analytics Cloud
  • Improved trade promotion budget management at customer and product levels, aligned to financial plans

By turning promotion data into demand signals, companies can optimize promotion strategies, reduce overspend, and deliver personalized, data-driven interactions at scale.

Insights into investments and account potential for key account managers

Scalable success: from self-service insights to full B2B commerce

SAP B2B Self-Service Portal, a powerful SAP Cloud ERP add-on, gives B2B customers secure, 24/7 access to real-time order data from all sales channels. Designed for digital-first buyers, it reduces support workload and creates a solid foundation to scale and expand into full B2B e-commerce.

Key capabilities include:

  • Native SAP Cloud ERP integration for real-time order and invoice data across channels with no middleware or data duplication
  • Omnichannel visibility — EDI, email, phone, fax, direct sales, e-commerce — for one-stop customer order data access
  • Rapid time to value with preconfigured data models, UI templates, and our vetted partner ecosystem
  • Faster issue resolution with user emulation, allowing support teams to see what the buyer sees
  • Future-ready scalability that easily extends to full B2B e-commerce without re-platforming

With low TCO and deployable in just weeks, the portal supports digital-first convenience and long-term growth.

Real-time order status, delivery estimates, and payment updates across channels

Easy, adaptable, future-ready payments

While SAP B2B Self-Service Portal empowers B2B customers with real-time access to orders and transactions, SAP Commerce Cloud, open payment framework modernizes payments. Its no-code, low-code architecture enables flexible support for methods like buy now, pay later and a wide range of third-party payment service providers, including Stripe, Adyen, Worldpay, and Airwallex. Announced in the first quarter, the solution allows rapid deployment and customized payment solutions.

Benefits include:

  • Rapid customization of payment experiences for seamless experiences
  • Flexibility to meet evolving buyer needs
  • Seamless scalability while ensuring compliance and security
  • Reduced complexity and time to value

Together, these capabilities form the foundation for long-term growth.

Real-time data intelligence for seamless experiences

As businesses gain control over payment experiences, they also need real-time visibility into the transactions driving their operations. Customers expect consistent, personalized experiences across channels, from in-store to mobile to online, at every touchpoint.

SAP Order Management Services, a modular, cloud-native solution bundle, unifies point-of-sale and digital order data, processes high-volume transactions in real time, and ensures accurate inventory availability across locations. It supports flexible fulfillment and returns, such as buy online, pick up in-store (BOPIS), and return anywhere, and enables more intelligent inventory planning, sourcing, and channel-aware promotional planning.

These capabilities reduce operational friction, increase loyalty, and help businesses scale profitably and sustainably.

Turning customer experience into competitive advantage

These innovations enable a growth strategy that transforms customer experience into a powerful competitive advantage. By connecting data, processes, and interactions with AI-driven insights, businesses can deliver proactive, tailored experiences that foster loyalty and fuel growth.

SAP is committed to helping customers harness the power of customer experience. These innovations reflect our focus on delivering real-world value and unlocking new growth opportunities.

Learn more about our SAP CX innovations and how they can help your business grow.


Balaji Balasubramanian is president and chief product officer for SAP Customer Experience.

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New SAP SuccessFactors Innovations Help HR Leaders Tackle Uncertainty and Skills Gaps

Global economic shifts and a surge in AI adoption are driving a dramatic increase in change and uncertainty. While we have long talked about the ways AI can augment jobs and the need for a deeper understanding of skills, this is no longer something that is coming in the future.

Newly unveiled innovations and partnerships revolutionize the way work gets done

It is happening right now, and employees are feeling the impact. They are being asked to learn new skills and work differently, all while managing return to office and intensified geopolitics. 

HR is at the center of it all – from responding to changing regulations in order to maintain compliance, to forecasting workforce needs and new skills gaps, to helping employees learn how to integrate AI into their roles. The reality is that HR is being asked to make informed and strategic decisions quickly and all employees are expected to work smarter and faster. 

At SAP Sapphire, we announced several new SAP SuccessFactors innovations to support organizations in navigating this rapid change. These innovations leverage the power of SAP Business Suite – including our unmatched business data and AI – to further strengthen our global reach and connection across the enterprise that only SAP can provide. 

Unrivaled AI to boost employee productivity and engagement 

SAP is leading the market with groundbreaking agentic AI advances, helping organizations accelerate business outcomes and deliver best-in-class employee experiences. Within SAP SuccessFactors HCM, AI is embedded across every product. Additionally, SAP’s AI copilot Joule is available on mobile and Joule understands more than 10 languages. Customers are already seeing incredible results. 

At SAP Sapphire, we introduced the first of our HR agents, the Performance and Goals Agent, to give managers critical insights and drive more productive conversations with their employees. To put this into perspective, imagine you are a people manager. The Performance Agent, via Joule, can alert you that you have a performance review with one of your employees coming up but that they do not have any peer feedback. The agent can work on your behalf to collect feedback from your employee’s peers, summarize that feedback, and prepare you before your conversation.

With many more agents coming, these will collectively work together to reason and execute cross-functional, end-to-end processes. 

Unmatched data to take the doubt out of decision-making 

Geopolitical instability is making workforce planning more challenging and unpredictable. Whether it’s in response to tariffs, regulations, or shifting business priorities, HR leaders need the ability to quickly access data and insights to make strategic recommendations. 

People Intelligence in SAP Business Data Cloud is a new solution that transforms people, skills, finance, and other business data into readily available, AI-driven workforce insights. For example, HR and business leaders can ask questions like “Do we have the right mix of employees and contractors?” or “Which skills will be in high demand based on upcoming business initiatives?” With these insights, they can make proactive, informed decisions to take more strategic actions, drive higher employee engagement, and ensure compliance.  

People Intelligence in SAP Business Data Cloud

More efficient workflows to drive employee productivity 

If the demand from employees and leaders alike is to facilitate ways for employees to work smarter and faster, automation and built-in guidance is key to helping them adopt new tools. 

With WalkMe for SAP Successfactors HCM, we are helping organizations speed up adoption of SAP SuccessFactors solutions. Employees can receive contextual guidance and automation for critical HR workflows. At the same time, HR leaders can access insights on how employees are using these tools to understand where there may be gaps or challenges. No-code content creation tools make it easy to customize in-app guidance and optimize workflows, helping employees quickly adapt. This means more productivity, reduced training costs, and maximized investments – all in the flow of work. 

We have also introduced a new HR service delivery solution, SAP SuccessFactors Enterprise Service Management, to accelerate ticket case resolutions. Employees can access more self-service tools to quickly get answers and resolutions. AI-driven case management tools, powered by core HR data, enable service reps to work faster and smarter — guiding them through complex scenarios with automation, dynamic forms, AI-generated case summaries, and email drafts — boosting efficiency, compliance, and resolution speed.

SAP SuccessFactors Enterprise Service Management

Helping HR lead through change

These new innovations are strengthening the entire SAP SuccessFactors HCM portfolio. AI is embedded, ubiquitous, and in almost all cases, accessible via Joule.

By combining business, HR, and skills data with unrivaled AI and fully integrated analytics, SAP is giving our customers the tools they need to keep up with the rapid pace of change. The impact? Employees and leaders can be more productive, make more informed decisions, and deliver more value.

More Information

Learn more about these innovations in these SAP Sapphire Virtual sessions: New SAP SuccessFactors HCM Innovations to Transform Your Workforce and How IBM and Standard Chartered are Transforming Work with SAP. 

Learn how to simplify your journey with the new SAP Business Suite packages for core HR, talent acquisition, pay for performance, and learning and career development. 


Dan Beck is president and chief product officer for SAP SuccessFactors.

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Information About Upcoming Merger of LeanIX GmbH into SAP SE

Publication of SAP SE, Walldorf,
pursuant to Sec. 62 para. 3 sent. 2 half sent. 1 UmwG

– Information about upcoming merger –

  1. It is intended to merge LeanIX GmbH (local court of Bonn, HRB 19137) as transferring company in the course of a simplified group merger into SAP SE as acquiring company. Therefore, the assets of LeanIX GmbH in its entirety together with all rights and obligations are transferred to SAP SE with effectiveness as of 1 January 2025, 0:00 a.m. (“effective merger date”). From the effective merger date to the date of the expiry of LeanIX GmbH pursuant to Sec. 20 para. 1 No.2 UmwG
    all acts and businesses undertaken by LeanIX GmbH shall be deemed to have been undertaken for the account of SAP SE.

    SAP SE is the sole shareholder of LeanIX GmbH. A merger resolution of the acquiring company SAP SE is not necessary pursuant to Sec. 62 para. 1 sent. 1 UmwG. A resolution of the general meeting of Shareholders of SAP SE on the approval of the merger agreement is also not required because SAP SE as the acquiring company holds the share capital of LeanIX GmbH in full. Since SAP SE holds all shares in LeanIX GmbH, the preparation of a merger report, a merger audit and an audit report is not required pursuant to Secs. 8 para. 3 sent. 3 no. 1 a), 9 para. 2, 12 para. 3, 60 UmwG.

  2. The stakeholders of SAP SE with a combined holding of one-twentieth of the share capital of the company are herewith advised of their right to request the convention of a general meeting to decide on the approval of the merger (Sec. 62 para. 2 sent. 1, para. 3 sent. 3 UmwG).
  3. A resolution of the shareholder’s meeting of LeanIX GmbH on the approval of the merger agreement is not required pursuant to section 62 para. 4 sent. 1 UmwG because SAP SE is the sole shareholder of LeanIX GmbH.
  4. As of the date of this announcement, the following documents can be assessed by the links below:
    1. The draft merger agreement between SAP SE and LeanIX GmbH.
    2. The annual financial statements and, where required, the annual reports of the companies who are parties to the merger for last three fiscal years:

      2022 SAP SE Statutory Financial Statements and Review of Operations (HGB)
      2023 SAP SE Statutory Financial Statements and Review of Operations (HGB)
      2024 SAP SE Statutory Financial Statements and Review of Operations (HGB)
      2021 LeanIX GmbH
      2022 LeanIX GmbH
      2023 LeanIX GmbH

SAP SE, May 23, 2025

The Board of Directors

Driving Business Resilience with New Finance and Spend Capabilities

This year has been marked by continuous disruption, shifting regulations, and unstable geopolitical conditions. But it has also been characterized by new opportunities to generate business value.

Newly unveiled innovations and partnerships revolutionize the way work gets done

This is true for each function within an enterprise. Teams within HR, Sales, Marketing, Finance, and Spend are positioned to drive impact in every aspect of business — from revenue growth to cost management to overall business agility and resilience.

The innovations shared at SAP Sapphire in 2025 reflect our commitment to bringing out your best, providing a clear path to guide organizations toward certainty in a time where that is rare. These innovations will empower organizations to navigate the complexities of the current landscape and emerge stronger, more adaptable, and better equipped to face the future. 

Here are a few innovations that we announced that support Finance and Spend teams in delivering increased value.

Introducing embedded virtual cards in SAP Ariba

Many organizations work to be nimble as it relates to finding the right supplier at the right time, which can mean introducing one-time vendors into the supplier landscape. While this helps with business agility, it often comes with a cost: time-intensive supplier onboarding processes that involve manual effort that is better used elsewhere. Traditional payment methods, like checks and physical credit cards, not only require more work, they can introduce fraud risk and security vulnerabilities.

That is why SAP is embedding virtual card payments into SAP Ariba Buying and SAP Ariba Buying and Invoicing. We are supporting the flexibility and agility needed to help businesses run at their best. At no additional cost, our customers can now use virtual credit cards for pay on purchase order transactions. With virtual cards, customers can:

  • Prevent overcharges and fraud
  • Enjoy payment flexibility
  • Better manage spend security
  • Reduce manual effort of supplier setup processes
  • Enhance vendor payment efficiency
  • Maintain control of payments made outside of procure-to-pay ERP processes

Using virtual cards requires minimal change management efforts, giving buyers the ability to adjust card parameters based on enterprise-wide objectives without disruption.

SAP integrates WalkMe Premium with SAP Ariba and SAP Concur

In a time when digitalization is imperative, minimizing obstacles and reducing change management efforts is key to a smooth business transformation. Time and time again, I hear leaders report that one of the biggest challenges of implementing new software is employee change management.

Introducing WalkMe Premium for SAP Ariba solutions, a platform that provides real-time, in-app guidance for users to reduce the time and effort associated with adopting new technology in the workplace, empowering employees to maximize business value with SAP Ariba. Customers can also take advantage of WalkMe Premium for SAP Concur solutions, which offers users valuable, easy-to-follow training content, all within the SAP Concur user interface.

The WalkMe solution is a digital learning platform that helps users apply process knowledge in real time to navigate complex software tasks. With WalkMe Premium integrated directly into SAP solutions, employees can access in-app prompts for standard tasks, like creating purchase orders or managing approvals, with pre-configured industry templates that eliminate the need to learn overly technical processes.

The in-app workflow guidance can be adjusted as needed to keep processes up-to-date, allowing for little to no change management effort to ramp employees up faster than ever — all while preserving process compliance. At SAP, we know that clear, concise user guidance is key to accelerating technology adoption. I expect that the integration of the WalkMe solution into SAP solutions will be a gamechanger for organizations experiencing technology updates and changes.

New Joule Agents enhance finance and spend functionality

New agentic AI capabilities are coming to finance and spend solutions with Joule agents that will be integrated across SAP Business Suite. These new agents include:

  • Meeting Location Planner Agent: Automates time-consuming group travel tasks, improving efficiency and user experience
  • Expense Report Validation Agent: Uses alerts and guided experiences to help employees fix issues based on past data, company policy, and patterns before submitting reports
  • Sourcing Agent: Uses past event data and supplier information to autonomously create sourcing events tailored to specific needs and users can easily modify these events to efficiently manage supply chain disruptions.
  • Dispute Resolution Agent: Analyzes dispute details and relevant business records to validate cases and propose solutions
  • Accounts Receivables Agent: Uses data related to overdue receivables to perform appropriate follow-up tasks with customers

Additionally, SAP Ariba Procurement customers will soon be able use Joule to enhance daily tasks such as retrieving supplier bids, displaying past purchases and approvers, and providing easy access to supplier information. Joule innovations will also be available soon in SAP Fieldglass solutions, enabling users to accelerate existing workflows and processes.

SAP Taulia Receivables directly integrated into SAP finance solutions

Embedded finance capabilities have been expanded with the integration of Receivables Finance, powered by SAP Taulia, in SAP finance solutions. Finance teams now have a fast, scalable way to unlock capital from outstanding receivables in a time when businesses are battling inflationary pressures, tariffs, and supply chain volatility. This capability can be activated immediately in SAP finance solutions.

Once activated, SAP Taulia Receivables enables users to:

  • Dynamically manage working capital
  • Accelerate receivables through true sale
  • Use Joule-powered insights to make informed liquidity decisions

Expanded SAP Ariba Procurement and travel and expense offerings in SAP Business Suite

In keeping with our promise to deliver a connected, suite-first experience for our customers, SAP Business Suite includes extended SAP Ariba and SAP Concur functionality.

The newly announced SAP Business Suite application packages align with the strategic business needs of our customers with line of business-specific bundles, delivering an improved buying experience. With strategic sourcing package, our procurement customers can manage the source-to-contract process from start to finish. Within the SAP Finance Premium package, customers have access to operational procurement capabilities, including requisitioning, invoice management, and B2B collaboration, along with expense management capabilities from SAP Concur.

Achieving success in a new era of procurement

Amid the unpredictable nature of today’s finance and spend landscape, agility is the secret to long-lasting success. SAP’s advanced AI capabilities, powered by harmonized data and paired with an integrated suite of applications, ensure productivity, accuracy, and an optimized employee experience.

With SAP, you can handle anything that comes your way.

If you did not get a chance to attend SAP Sapphire, access on-demand content from the event platform here.


Etosha Thurman is chief marketing officer for Finance and Spend Management at SAP.

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Unstoppable Together: Partners Will Deliver the Promise of SAP Business Suite

A familiar adage reminds us that “success favors the bold.” To SAP, those words are more than a saying. They’re woven into our DNA.

Explore news from our partners, announced at SAP Sapphire

Since our beginnings in 1972, SAP has led with a bold strategy. That spirit continued through to our pivot to the cloud five years ago and, more recently, with Joule, our powerful AI copilot.

I spoke about this during our latest SAP Global Partner Summit at SAP Sapphire in Orlando, joined by SAP Executive Board Members, including CEO Christian Klein, COO Sebastian Steinhaeuser, and SAP Product and Engineering Head Muhammad Alam, during an exciting, live-streamed keynote.

Our boldness has paid off. SAP was named Europe’s most valuable publicly traded company this year, and our cloud revenue has surged more than 25 percent. SAP continues to dominate our market because we have the boldness to change and influence the direction of our industry.

What’s even more notable is that we are shaping the future together with our partners, which had their best year ever in 2024. Partners are leading the change with us across everything we do — from introducing new customers to SAP innovations to extending our growing portfolio, especially as demand for proven AI value continues to take off.

To top it off, it is our customers that see some of the biggest wins. Our partners ensure our customers achieve true business transformation, enabling them to operate, provide products and services, and compete at their best. We are committed to their success today and tomorrow — and that’s why we have to make our next bold move together.

SAP Business Suite: Harmonized business applications, AI, and data

The SAP Global Partner Summit highlighted the opportunities SAP Business Suite offers our partners and customers. Our vision of the suite evolves Software-as-a-Service into Suite-as-a-Service. Only SAP has it — unrivaled AI, unmatched data, unparalleled applications — offered together in one seamless experience, and the opportunity is enormous. SAP Business Suite will help customers solve their toughest business challenges like never before.

With the suite, partners can meet customers where they are and grow to unlock their full potential. It sets up customers for the clean core they need to scale, but also represents incredible upsell and cross-sell opportunities for SAP partners, regardless of partner type.

Beyond this, SAP is introducing new SAP Business Suite packages to simplify customers’ engagement with the SAP portfolio. This new approach aligns capabilities and product offerings with customers’ lines of business. Partners can guide customers to the best-fit packages that deliver the integration, intelligence, and additional functionality needed for their specific business.

Even more opportunities for partners

To drive growth and empower our partners to innovate and scale at their best, we are also bringing our “A” game with leading initiatives that demonstrate our unwavering commitment to their success:

  • We announced the new SAP Referral program, launching in North America in the third quarter, that rewards partners for every lead they can’t close on their own.
  • This year, we launched partner-led territories globally, allowing partners to become more self-sufficient across the entire Customer Value Journey.
  • Our award-winning SAP PartnerEdge program has evolved to be even stronger,including a new leveling framework focused on cloud performance.
  • We’ve adapted our commercial models for software partners to ensure they are integrated into SAP Business Suite, with new packages that include partner solutions to help deliver the full end-to-end experience to our customers.

How to capitalize on partner opportunities with SAP

There are four key actions for partners ready to seize the great opportunity that SAP Business Suite and our evolving partnership create:

  • Autonomy: Learn more about partner-led territories and begin taking more control of the Customer Value Journey, with enablement and support from SAP. Always lead with SAP Cloud ERP as a sustainable growth engine. The opt-in window is now open, and SAP will continue to expand territories.
  • Quality: Customers will benefit from optimal performance and scalability when partners apply RISE with SAP Methodology to every project. Ensuring that customers preserve a clean core and use our integrated toolchain will deliver a smooth transition to the cloud.
  • Innovation: Building complementary solutions to SAP Business Suite using SAP Business Technology Platform. Partner solutions are a key component of our value proposition.
  • Learning: Explore the SAP Learning Journey for SAP Business Suite on SAP Learning Hub and understand how we integrate applications, data, and AI across all functions to enhance business processes from end to end. Partners also have the opportunity to elevate their credibility in the market by earning SAP Business Suite certifications.

Focusing on these four key areas will allow our partner ecosystem to capitalize on the opportunity of SAP Business Suite.

Winning together

Now, more than ever, partners must demonstrate their commitment to driving customer value, backed by deep technical expertise and business transformation experience.

We need to work together, much like a sports team, each identifying our strengths, committing to the position we’ll play, and building our skills. And, as in the story of a championship team, it starts with belief. That belief will propel us to deliver exceptional value for our customers.

Be bold, and we’ll be unstoppable together.


Karl Fahrbach is chief partner officer of SAP.

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A New Era of Sustainable Enterprise Management, Powered by Applications, Data, and AI

In boardrooms worldwide, a critical revelation is taking shape: granting sustainability data more decision-making power is the most strategic decision you can make today.

Newly unveiled innovations and partnerships revolutionize the way work gets done

By embedding sustainability into core business applications, unifying fragmented data across the enterprise, and amplifying human expertise through AI, SAP is transforming how organizations turn sustainability commitments into competitive advantage.

Across the C-suite, leaders face pressure to make good on their organizations’ sustainability commitments while ensuring these initiatives create tangible value for their specific business units and departmental operations.

COOs grapple with maintaining resilient supply chains while embedding sustainability metrics for better risk prediction. CFOs struggle to gain visibility into integrated financial and non-financial data needed to manage reporting and drive sustainable growth. CPOs seek transparency of suppliers’ sustainability footprints across the source-to-pay process, while CHROs work to engage talent with authentic sustainability performance. Meanwhile, CROs need verified sustainability data to build brand trust and enable green premium pricing, and CIOs face the complex challenge of integrating sustainability data while managing governance, cost, and AI-driven innovation.

What’s missing is not awareness, but actionable, decision-grade sustainability data worthy of sitting alongside financial and operational metrics. This is why we build sustainability directly into our applications, generating new, usable data at the source of business activity.

Organizations find themselves constrained by financial systems, inconsistent data, and business processes that were not designed to address sustainability’s multifaceted nature. By ensuring this sustainability data becomes part of customers’ larger data story and drives core processes, we overcome these constraints.

This isn’t a peripheral issue; sustainability now intersects every critical business function, and the thoughtful organization of sustainability data. Its application to business processes prepares organizations for their agentic AI future, where sustainability metrics contribute to broader business intelligence tools like margin optimization agents rather than being siloed in sustainability-only solutions.

In this environment, SAP emerges as a strategic partner that combines sustainability data with business processes to drive real change. By harnessing the power of SAP Business AI and SAP Business Data Cloud, we translate intricate sustainability challenges into clear, executable strategies.

This week, we introduced a new evolutionary step of sustainability solutions that go beyond traditional software updates. These solutions are designed to bridge the critical gap between organizational ambition and tangible outcomes. We help businesses manage risk, ensure compliance, and unlock meaningful enterprise-wide value.

This is more than a technological upgrade; it’s a strategic framework for sustainable business innovation. And now, we’re translating that strategy into action, through AI-powered innovations that scale.

AI for sustainability at scale: New innovations for EHS and product compliance

Beginning in August 2025, new SAP Business AI capabilities will be available in beta, embedded within key sustainability applications to help customers ready their data, automate processes, and amplify their expertise. These AI-driven innovations streamline operations across environmental, health and safety (EHS) and product compliance workflows, driving measurable and scalable impact.

Here’s a look at what’s coming:

  • AI-assisted permit management in SAP S/4HANA for EHS environment management simplifies and automates permit handling by capturing and extracting key data from permit documents and automatically proposing relevant follow-up tasks to ensure compliance.
  • AI-assisted safety observation reporting with Joule, SAP’s AI copilot, in SAP S/4HANA for EHS workplace safety, enables seamless, intuitive incident reporting through a conversational interface, reducing barriers to shop floor safety documentation.
  • AI-assisted safety instruction generation in SAP S/4HANA for EHS workplace safety suggests appropriate safety instructions based on risk assessments and job hazard analyses, supporting proactive and preventive measures.
  • AI-assisted compliance information processing in SAP S/4HANA for product compliance automates the extraction and mapping of critical data from declarations, certificates, and safety data sheets, improving accuracy and freeing teams from tedious manual work.

These features will be available in beta and will be part of the new SCM premium package, reflecting SAP’s commitment to delivering embedded, business-ready AI that drives real outcomes.

AI that’s already delivering value

SAP customers are already leveraging Business AI to supercharge their sustainability efforts, including:

  • In SAP Sustainability Control Tower, AI accelerates environmental, social, and governance (ESG) report generation with editable templates, generative text, and visualizations, freeing teams to focus on ESG execution, not formatting.
  • In SAP Sustainability Footprint Management, AI automates emission factor mapping by intelligently matching products to thousands of lifecycle assessment database entries, complete with confidence scores.
  • In SAP Green Token, AI automatically validating and extracting data from International Sustainability and Carbon Certification (ISCC) PLUS supplier declarations, minimizing errors and increasing speed.

These intelligent capabilities help customers reduce costs, mitigate risk, and drive business performance across reporting, carbon management, circularity, and regulatory compliance.

What’s next: unlocking enterprise-wide sustainability insights

In the second half of 2025, SAP will make SAP Sustainability Control Tower available as an Intelligent Application within SAP Business Data Cloud. This will unify sustainability data and business operations on a single platform, enabling consistent reporting, deeper insight, and smarter decision-making across the enterprise.

A technology preview of these solutions will be made available to selected customers before general availability.

One sustainability data model: From complexity to clarity

SAP is also introducing new sustainability data products throughout 2025 as part of our strategy to deliver hundreds of curated and governed datasets across SAP Business Suite. These data products, accessible via SAP Business Data Cloud, will include:

  • Structured emissions data (air, water, wastewater) from SAP EHS Management and SAP S/4HANA for product compliance
  • Additional datasets from SAP Sustainability Footprint Management

This unified sustainability data model will empower customers to strengthen compliance, simplify analytics, and scale sustainability programs with confidence and clarity.

Process intelligence meets sustainability intelligence

True progress does not just come from better data, it comes from better processes. That is why SAP is embedding sustainability impact metrics into the SAP Signavio Process Transformation Suite starting in autumn 2025. These new capabilities will include:

  • SAP Signavio Value Accelerators: Pre-built process models and industry best practices tailored for regulatory-specific use cases
  • SAP Signavio Process Intelligence: Analytics tools that identify opportunities to optimize business processes and embed sustainability at scale

With these additions, customers can align process transformation efforts with environmental goals, helping close the gap between strategy and execution.

Your best, made real

With SAP, sustainability transforms from a compliance checklist into a lever for innovation, resilience, and growth. By embedding sustainability into applications, unifying data across the enterprise, and enabling intelligent automation through AI, we empower organizations to be sustainable while accelerating performance.

From frontline safety to carbon reporting, from real-time data to boardroom insights, this is what “your best, made real” looks like.

Welcome to a new era of sustainable enterprise management, powered by SAP.


Sophia Mendelsohn is chief sustainability and commercial officer at SAP.
Gunther Rothermel is chief product officer for SAP Sustainability.

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Transform Today to be Resilient Tomorrow

In a keynote that blended interactive audience participation, customer conversations, and product announcements, SAP executives and customers took to the SAP Sapphire stage on Wednesday to showcase how cloud computing and artificial intelligence (AI) are reshaping global business.

Newly unveiled innovations and partnerships revolutionize the way work gets done

With the evolving SAP Services and Support portfolio, SAP executives also showcased a new approach to engaging with customers. The message was clear: transformation is no longer optional — it’s survival.

Building on this theme, Thomas Saueressig, Member of the Executive Board of SAP SE, Customer Services & Delivery, emphasized how SAP stands by its customers as an indispensable partner in today’s volatile environment marked by shifting tariffs, global uncertainties, and an accelerating pace of change. “We understand that our customers seek faster transformations, faster time to value, and increased agility,” Saueressig said, adding that SAP is committed to supporting them at every step of the way.

Using RISE with SAP, the company’s transformation-as-a-service offering, and the power of the Business Transformation Management portfolio, SAP can already deliver up to 30 percent cost savings for its customers, and this is more important than ever when budgets are under pressure and organizations need to transform quickly. “But we don’t stop there,” Saueressig said, announcing a further evolution of the RISE with SAP Methodology, with updates to the discovery phase, a project workspace in SAP Cloud ALM, as well as a new transformation preparation service, including tailored transformation road maps for SAP customers.

SAP BTP Innovations Deliver Powerful AI Capabilities to Developers and Business Users Across SAP Business Suite

Businesses today are navigating an era of explosive digital transformation, rising customer expectations, and the need for constant innovation. Meanwhile, many are contending with legacy systems that require cloud transformations to stay competitive.

Newly unveiled innovations and partnerships revolutionize the way work gets done

SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) helps address these challenges. Serving as the foundation of SAP Business Suite, SAP BTP connects, extends, and automates business processes and applications, accelerates application development, and deploys AI capabilities that drive growth and innovation.

This week at SAP Sapphire, we shared amazing firsthand customer and partner success stories and announced new SAP BTP innovations that help customers bring out their best.

Build custom AI agents and Joule skills for your business

AI agents support and enhance businesses by utilizing AI to build deep understanding and perform multi-step workflows across end-to-end business processes. These agents act with purpose and continuously learn, providing organizations with increased operational efficiency, sharper insights, and faster innovation.

Joule Studio, a new capability within SAP Build, enables users to build AI agents and Joule skills that are scalable, secure, and grounded in business context to enhance business specific outcomes. While Joule skills execute rule-based tasks, AI agents plan and execute complex business scenarios. Deeply grounded in business data, these agents drive accurate outcomes in line with goals. The open and extensible framework of Joule Studio enables users to connect with not only SAP, but also non-SAP applications for seamless execution.

Joule Studio, generally available in June 2025, allows customers to design, deploy, and manage custom Joule skills and AI agents with low-code, no-code simplicity. Read our announcement blog here to learn more and register for the upcoming webinar to see Joule Studio in action.

With Joule Studio, we expand our extensibility portfolio SAP Build to the next level for building Joule skills and agents. This way, customers can implement innovations intuitively and efficiently.

SAP Unveils AI-Powered Innovations for Network-Centric Supply Chain Management

As I reflect on this year’s SAP Sapphire event, I’m filled with excitement about the future of supply chain management.

Newly unveiled innovations and partnerships revolutionize the way work gets done

The innovations we unveiled represent a fundamental shift in how businesses can approach their operations in an increasingly complex global landscape. The positive energy from our customers and partners reinforces my belief that we’re on the right path with our AI-first, suite-first, network-centric strategy.

Unifying the supply chain ecosystem

The cornerstone of SAP’s latest offerings is the significant enhancement to the SAP Supply Chain Management and SAP Cloud ERP solutions. These improvements create a more unified and intelligent ecosystem for supply chain management, addressing the multifaceted challenges businesses face today.

Key innovations strengthen end-to-end business processes in SAP Business Suite. The simple handover of complex product data — such as bill of materials, recipes, or material price estimations — streamline the transition from product development to production with SAP Integrated Product Development. Additionally, the integration of service orders into SAP Digital Manufacturing enables advanced manufacturing processes for service and repair processes. Changes in production orders are seamlessly synchronized with the shop-floor execution for highly adaptive processes.

Launched in February, SAP Business Suite is a comprehensive set of integrated solutions, combining cloud ERP, business applications, SAP Business Data Cloud, and SAP Business AI – powered by the SAP Business Technology Platform. At Sapphire, SAP introduced cloud suite packages designed to align with specific line-of-business needs. The SAP Business Suite package for SAP Supply Chain Management offers a comprehensive, AI-driven, and network-enabled solution to help customers integrate data, operational processes, and supply chain functions, delivering greater flexibility, transparency, and responsiveness while supporting sustainability initiatives and metrics.

The introduction of smart guided execution in SAP Digital Manufacturing supports compliant manufacturing in life sciences, chemicals, and regulated fast-moving consumer goods businesses, through intelligent process guidance and a new electronic batch record system. This helps ensure traceability and compliance while reducing errors and improving overall production quality.

Customers in asset-intensive industries, such as utilities, travel and transportation, and energy and/or natural resources, benefit from advanced asset health monitoring capabilities in SAP Asset Performance Management.  An enhanced management of time series data  and Internet of Things (IoT) device integration is enabled based on SAP’s partnership with Cumulocity. This allows businesses to leverage real-time data for predictive maintenance and asset optimization, potentially reducing downtime and maintenance costs.

By introducing connected supply chain processes that bridge various SAP applications and cloud ERP, SAP is offering improved data flow, AI-driven insights, and end-to-end process optimization across supply chain and core business functions. This integration is not just about connecting the dots, but creating a seamless flow of information and actions that can transform business operations.

How Joule and agentic AI are revolutionizing supply chain management

Our commitment to AI-driven solutions was evident in several key innovations. SAP’s AI copilot, Joule, is poised to transform supply chain operations. By the end of the year, Joule will enable supply chain planners — for example, demand or supply planners — to quickly and easily interpret supply planning results through intelligent analysis of demand, inventory, and supply planning in SAP Integrated Business Planning. This capability will significantly enhance decision-making processes in supply chain planning.

Simultaneously, SAP’s expansion of agentic AI across SAP Business Suite marks a significant leap toward autonomous supply chain operations.

Key agents announced include:

  • Maintenance Planner Agent: Streamlines maintenance planning and coordination
  • Shopfloor Supervisor Agent: Proactively manages shop-floor disruptions, such as machine failures, and performs necessary rescheduling to maintain productivity
  • Field Service Dispatcher Agent: Autonomously schedules and optimizes service orders in SAP Field Service Management

These agents, set for general availability in the fourth quarter of 2025, promise to transform planning into a proactive, continuous process by monitoring various data sources, surfacing relevant context, and recommending actions.

Enhanced SAP Business Network capabilities for supply chain orchestration and sustainability

SAP announced significant enhancements to SAP Business Network, the world’s largest B2B platform facilitating over US$6.3 trillion in annual commerce across 190 countries. These new capabilities are designed to revolutionize supply chain orchestration by providing unprecedented visibility, efficiency, and compliance in supply chain processes.

New improvements include more streamlined compliance and quality control for mass upload of certificate documents for suppliers and buyer-controlled document mandates for specific certifications.

To enhance supply chain efficiency and sustainability, new advanced logistics collaboration features offer enhanced greenhouse gas emissions tracking with actual transportation data integration and extended ocean freight support with new tendering and dispute handling functionalities.

Another key improvement focuses on enhanced asset management, with cloud-based ERP integration for better synchronization control, bi-directional integration of materials and models, and automated equipment creation through AAS file uploads and integration of quality inspection checklists.

All enhancements are scheduled to be available by the end of 2025, offering businesses across industries the opportunity to simplify tracking of critical certifications, improve compliance, reduce delays, and support regulatory adherence and sustainability goals across the supply chain.

By integrating actual transportation emissions data, businesses gain more accurate carbon footprint analysis, empowering them to better balance operational efficiency with environmental responsibility.

SAP Business Network Commerce Automation, with data federation, is planned to be available in Europe and KSA by the end of the third quarter of 2025. Additionally, SAP Business Network Supply Chain Collaboration, with data federation, is scheduled to be available in Europe and KSA by the end of the fourth quarter of 2025.

The road ahead

As we continue to roll out these new capabilities throughout 2025, I’m more convinced than ever of SAP’s commitment to ongoing innovation to drive value for our customers. In a world where global uncertainties, risks, and disruptions require a delicate balancing act between adaptability and productivity, SAP Business Suite for supply chain management stands out. It leverages intelligence and all relevant internal and external data to provide the insights needed to make the right decisions, enabling business to adapt and thrive.

Our vision is clear: a future where supply chains are not just reactive systems but proactive, intelligent networks that can anticipate disruptions, optimize operations, and drive business growth.

I’m excited about the journey ahead and look forward to seeing how these innovations will transform businesses across industries.

For those who couldn’t join us at SAP Sapphire, I encourage you to join us at SAP SCM Connect in October, where we’ll dive deeper into these innovations and showcase even more exciting developments in our innovation road map.


Dominik Metzger is president and chief product officer of SAP Supply Chain Management.

Get the latest news and stories from SAP Sapphire in 2025

SAP Tells Companies Facing Big Challenges: We Are on Your Side

SAP executives, led by CEO Christian Klein, told IT and business leaders attending this year’s SAP Sapphire event that by tapping into SAP’s “flywheel” combination of the broadest suite of enterprise apps, context-aware data, and world-class Business AI, they can conquer uncertainty.

Newly unveiled innovations and partnerships revolutionize the way work gets done

In a kickoff keynote at the Orlando event, they unveiled a raft of new AI tools, business apps, and partnerships designed to help customers overcome these challenges, transform their operations, and “bring out your best.”

Uncertainty

“All of us face one problem – every company, no matter which industry or geography. And that problem is uncertainty,” said Klein. “Uncertainty about trade disruption, about new regulatory requirements, and about how AI will transform my business and impact my workforce.”

SAP can’t take away macroeconomic uncertainty, he said, “But you have my commitment that we will help your business become more resilient and more resilient – especially in times like these. We will help you bring out your best.”

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