WALLDORF — SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) and Haleon, a global consumer health company, today announced Haleon’s decision to adopt SAP Business Suite to enhance the enterprise’s digital infrastructure and advance AI capabilities across its business.

This decision will help Haleon operate, scale and serve consumers in new ways by building stronger, more agile foundations for delivering its trusted everyday health products. It marks a significant milestone in Haleon’s transformation into a world-class consumer company.

“Delivering a better consumer experience starts with strong foundations, and leading digital technology and infrastructure are at the heart of this,” said Claire Dickson, Haleon’s chief digital and technology officer. “Our latest partnership with SAP is another important step in our journey to becoming a world-class consumer company. It will revolutionize how we operate, with AI-enabled systems driving faster, simpler, more integrated ways of working. This will allow our people to focus on what matters most—serving consumers and unlocking growth.”

SAP Business Suite will drive the simplification and standardization of critical processes across Haleon’s global operations, enabling more integrated, automated end-to-end processes across diverse parts of the organization.

With clearer visibility across markets and more intuitive systems replacing fragmented workflows, the business can operate with greater speed, consistency and resilience. These improvements strengthen supply chain responsiveness, support innovation and help Haleon better respond to changing consumer needs. This enables Haleon to deliver trusted everyday health products at scale while strengthening collaboration with the healthcare professionals who recommend its products to consumers worldwide.

Haleon can drive greater business efficiencies by integrating core processes across finance, supply chain, HR and sales in one connected system with real-time data. By building AI into everyday work and embedding it within Haleon’s digital infrastructure and across its functions, teams can make better data-driven decisions and respond more quickly to changing consumer needs. The automation of routine work across multiple functions frees up employees’ time so they can focus on more strategic work that delivers value for the business and consumers while accelerating growth.

This digital transformation program builds on a long-standing relationship between the two companies, with the transition from Haleon’s current platform on SAP ERP Central Component beginning later this year.

“AI outcomes depend on connected processes and trusted data,” said Peter Maier, SAP’s senior vice president for strategic customer engagements. “With SAP Business Suite, Haleon is building an AI-ready foundation that embeds intelligence across the enterprise, helping simplify operations, improve resilience and scale innovation.”

Haleon plans to adopt SAP Cloud ERP applications with embedded AI and deploy the SAP Business Data Cloud solution to harmonize SAP software and third-party data in a governed, single source of truth. This connected platform will be able to support AI-assisted innovation and enable agentic AI, where AI agents can identify issues earlier and recommend actions across key business processes.

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Media Contacts:
Lawrie Benfield, SAP, +44 7776515259, lawrie.benfield@sap.com, GMT
Sonya Domanski, SAP, +44 7345465928, sonya.domanski@sap.com, GMT
SAP Press Room; press@sap.com
Gemma Thomas, Haleon, gemma.x.thomas@haleon.com

The agreement referenced in this announcement was signed outside SAP’s first quarter reporting period.

Top image courtesy of Haleon

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The Würth Group, a subsidiary of Adolf Würth GmbH & Co. KG, is one of the leading players in the development, production, and sale of fastening and assembly materials.

The company manages an extensive portfolio of more than 125,000 products. Despite its strong market position, digitalizing procurement across diverse customer environments remains a key challenge, particularly in e-procurement, where large customers often have very different requirements, even when market standards exist.

To address this, Würth recognized the need to better connect procurement processes and now collaborates closely with leading e-procurement systems and platforms. The company has driven the harmonization of customer processes and ensured seamless onboarding to SAP Business Network. At the same time, Würth actively supports its customers in harmonizing and digitalizing their own internal workflows.

As the world’s largest procurement platform, SAP Business Network enables more efficient procurement and automated order processing and provides end-to-end transparency across the purchase-order‑to‑invoice flow between Würth and participating customers. This scope involves purchasing orders, delivery confirmation, and invoices, with exceptions managed through clearly defined workflows.

Save time and boost efficiency: seven minutes saved per order

Manual processing of orders, sent as PDFs or via non‑integrated channels, creates disproportionate effort, especially in relation to the order value, since indirect materials often involve smaller order values with many order items.

 With automation, Würth saves approximately seven minutes per order on average — approximately 490,000 minutes annually or about 8,167 hours. The platform enables digital order transmission, catalog exchange, and automated invoice matching, materially improving process efficiency.

Seamless customer purchasing journey

With around 3,000 sales representatives in Germany, more than 600 pick-up branches, and numerous on-site storage solutions, including automated dispensing machines, Würth offers customers a truly omnichannel purchasing experience. Through SAP Business Network, all these touchpoints can be seamlessly integrated, giving customers that adopt this approach full transparency, as every order becomes visible directly within their own system.

One construction industry leader worked with Würth to integrate dispensing machines and branch pick‑ups into SAP Business Network, digitalizing its procurement processes. This integration has largely eliminated manual activities in day‑to‑day order handling of standard processes. Exceptions are automatically identified and routed through defined workflows, while payment instructions are triggered once the purchase order, goods confirmation, and invoice are successfully matched.

Stronger supplier-customer partnership

Beyond operational savings and improved collaboration, Würth enhances the customer experience through near-real-time integration across procurement, invoicing, and logistics. Digitalized procurement processes help meet customer requirements more reliably and further strengthen the supplier-customer partnership.

With 34 German national soccer league championship wins in its 125-year history, FC Bayern Munich is one of the largest and most successful sports clubs in the world. It has built a massive global audience, with more than 200 million social media followers, up to 75,000 spectators in attendance at every men’s league home match, and a growing fan base for its other teams, including women’s soccer and men’s basketball.

Keeping FC Bayern at the top is no mean feat, and the action on the pitch is supported by a global administrative team of over 1,200, in addition to the thousands of operational staff who work to deliver a seamless experience to the fans who fill the Allianz Arena for each home match. The focus on match-day operations encompasses everything from security to ticketing to retail, as well as managing one of the largest parking garages in Europe, which accommodates up to 12,000 cars that must enter and exit within a few hours.

FC Bayern’s match-day operations generate a staggering volume of data, but capturing and making sense of every fan interaction—both in the stadium and among the hundreds of millions tuning in worldwide—was becoming a herculean undertaking. Fan data was siloed in more than 50 legacy systems, creating a fragmented information landscape that hindered FC Bayern’s ability to understand and serve its legions of fans.

Thankfully, a club that has been in the business of winning for over a century is no stranger to innovation.

Game plan: data

Dominik Winter, head of Development and Process for FC Bayern Munich, captured the club’s challenge in a nutshell: “Everything needs data.” Everyone from the firefighters and police who supported match days to the IT teams and retail staff “needed data, and everyone needed the same perspective on the data,” Winter explained.

But the club’s data was sprawled across dozens of siloed systems, each tied to different vendors and service providers. And when it came time to make crucial match-day decisions, team members had to rely on analog, piecemeal methods of sharing information—often through SMS and radio. As a result, no one ever had the same information at the same time.

FC Bayern needed to harness its vast amount of information with a single, integrated system that provided a unified, 360-degree view.

From silos to a streamlined system

The storied sports club has enjoyed a partnership with SAP dating back more than a quarter of a century. Therefore, SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) was a natural fit for the next step in the club’s digital journey. The platform includes SAP Integration Suite to help capture and combine data from disparate sources and systems, including both SAP and non-SAP systems. This newly integrated data landscape provides a single source of truth across the organization, enabling real-time data analytics that not only streamline match-day operations and optimize the fan experience on-site but also provide invaluable insights to fuel long-term strategic planning.

For example, Winter explained, the club now has access to an up-to-the-minute, “high-level” overview of FC Bayern fans—”how they behave, what they’re interested in, how old they are, whether they buy jerseys, whether they only go to soccer matches, whether they are already interested in basketball,” and more—that has facilitated a much deeper understanding of fans, not only on the individual level but also across the entire fan base.

Forecasting the future

With a solid, integrated data foundation established, FC Bayern is looking ahead and will be adding AI to its technology line-up to maximize the value of its data across the organization, from amplifying process efficiency to developing robust, data-informed predictive capabilities.

For organizations looking to undertake their own digital transformations, Winter advised to not put the cart before the horse: “To use AI, you need to have good data.” And while Winter cautioned that every organization’s process is unique, he recommended listening as a good first step for everyone: “Talk to your users. What are their problems? What do they need to know? What processes are they trying to optimize?”

While the journey is not always easy, FC Bayern knows that winning is always worth the effort.

For the full FC Bayern Munich episode and the on-demand Better Together: Customer Conversations series, visit sap.com/btp.

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

Top photo courtesy of FC Bayern München AG

SAP Partner Awards – Regional locally recognize partner success in sales, innovation, technology, services, and solution areas within each region.

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

In-region winners are announced at local kick-off events and regional partner summits in Q1. These partners have proven success in transforming customer business by harnessing cloud and AI technologies aligned with SAP’s business strategy. To encourage continued innovation, these partners are recognized for the value they deliver in fostering exceptional customer impact.

Recipients of these prestigious awards are a part of SAP’s wide-ranging partner base. Selections are made using system-generated data on key performance indicators and weighted metrics aligned with SAP’s communicated business strategies. A steering committee of designated regional representatives review and rank achievements accordingly.

Congratulations to the 2026 winners for this esteemed recognition!

2026 SAP Partner Awards – Regional

Recipients by region

Middle and Eastern Europe (MEE)

• Business Transformation Management, Excellence: NTT DATA Business Solutions
• Customer Transformation, Large Enterprise: Deloitte
• Innovative Solution, SAP Store: Qualtrics
• Innovative Solution, Solution Extensions: Tricentis
• Managed Service Provider, Top Performance: T-Systems International
• RISE with SAP Methodology: Accenture
• SAP Business AI, Partner Innovation – Customer AI Use Case: PwC

Latin America and Caribbean (LAC)

• Customer Transformation, Partner-Led Territories: Seidor
• Customer Transformation, Corporate: Seidor
• Customer Transformation, Large Enterprise: Accenture
• Small Enterprise Growth: Heinsohn
• Delivery Quality: Globant
• Customer Success Management: ADP
• SAP Cloud ERP, New Customer Acquisition: Seidor
• SAP Cloud ERP, Installed Base Transformation: Seidor
• Rising Star: Kyndryll
• SAP Business Data Cloud Success: Solveplan
• SAP Business AI, Customer Adoption: Seidor
• Business Transformation Management, Excellence: NumenIT
• SAP Business Suite Success: Seidor
• Innovative Solution, SAP Store: Fioneer
• Innovative Solution, Solution Extensions: Tricentis
• Procurement Transformation Sales Excellence: Team Eight
• Finance Transformation Sales Excellence: Seidor
• Customer Experience Sales Excellence: Seidor
• Supply Chain Management Sales Excellence: NTT DATA Business Solutions 
• Human Capital Management Sales Excellence: ITGES
• The Best Partner of the Year: Seidor

North America (NA)

• Customer Transformation, Partner-Led Territories: Syntax
• Customer Transformation, Corporate: NTT DATA Business Solutions
• Customer Transformation, Large Enterprise: Accenture
• Small Enterprise Growth: Vision 33
• Delivery Quality: Deloitte
• Customer Success Management: NTT DATA Business Solutions
• SAP Cloud ERP, New Customer Acquisition: VistaVu Solutions
• Rising Star: KPMG
• SAP Business Data Cloud Success: The Hackett Group
• SAP Business AI, Customer Adoption: Accenture
• Business Transformation Management, Excellence: Impriva
• SAP Business Suite Success: Cognitus
• SAP Store: Redwood
• Innovative Solution, SAP Store: Laidon Group
• Partner Solution Success: OpenText
• Innovative Solution, Solution Extensions: Vistex
• Partner Learning and Skills Growth: Deloitte
• RISE with SAP Methodology: Accenture

Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA)

• Customer Transformation, Large Enterprise: Accenture
• Delivery Quality: Deloitte
• Partner Learning and Skills Growth: EY
• RISE with SAP Methodology: IBM
• SAP Business Data Cloud Success: Accenture
• SAP Business AI, Customer Adoption: Deloitte
• SAP Business Suite Success: Accenture
• SAP Business AI, Customer Use Cases: PwC
• SAP BTP Extensibility: Capgemini
• Customer Transformation, Corporate: Seidor
• Customer Transformation, Partner-Led Territories: Tano Digital Solutions
• Rising Star: KPMG
• SAP Store: Planon
• Partner Solution Success – Best Solutions Extensions Performance: OpenText
• Innovative Solution Extension – Growth: BlackLine
• Corporate Social Responsibility: Seidor

Asia Pacific (APAC)

• Customer Transformation, Corporate: PwC
• Customer Transformation, Large Enterprise: Accenture
• Customer Transformation, Partner-Led Territories: NTT DATA Business Solutions
• Delivery Quality: Abeam Consulting
• Partner Learning and Skills Growth: Infosys
• RISE with SAP Methodology: Deloitte
• SAP Cloud ERP, New Customer Acquisition: Citek Technology Joint Stock Company
• SAP Cloud ERP, Installed Base Transformation: PwC
• Rising Star: KPMG
• SAP BTP Extensibility with SAP Build and Clean Core: Accenture
• SAP Business Data Cloud Success: Accenture
• SAP Business AI, Partner Innovation – AI Cloud Application: Deloitte
• SAP Business AI, Partner Innovation – Customer AI Use Case: ASPN CO, LTD.
• SAP Business AI, Customer Adoption: EY
• SAP Store: Qualtrics
• Business Transformation Management, Excellence: DyFlex Pty Ltd
• SAP Business Suite Success: PwC
• Partner Solution Success: OpenText
• Sustainability: Deloitte
• Managed Service Provider, Top Performance: Accenture
• Procurement Transformation Sales Excellence: ABeam Consulting
• Finance Transformation Sales Excellence: PwC
• Customer Experience Sales Excellence: PT Eclectic Consulting
• Supply Chain Management Sales Excellence: PwC
• Human Capital Management Sales Excellence: Deloitte
• Regional Strategic Services Partner: ABeam Consulting

Dina Blasi is a global partner marketing director, leading partner awards and recognition at SAP.

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.

Productivity, typically measured as output per hour worked, is the primary long-term driver of income growth and living standards. Both the U.S. and Europe have experienced slower productivity growth since the mid-2000s compared with earlier decades.

Now, however, many economists and policymakers view AI as a potential catalyst for reversing that slowdown. AI—especially the rise of generative AI and AI agents—is widely expected to shape the next phase of productivity growth in advanced economies, including those in the U.S. and Europe.

The key question for business leaders is not whether AI will matter, but how large the productivity gains will be, how quickly they will materialize, and which region will benefit most.

Productivity growth

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) estimates that AI could raise annual labor productivity growth in advanced economies by roughly 0.4 to 1.3 percentage points, depending on adoption intensity and sector exposure. These gains would be meaningful because even an additional half percentage point of annual productivity growth compounds significantly over a decade.

However, the OECD and other economists stress that outcomes depend heavily on complementary investments in digital infrastructure, workforce training, and organizational change, rather than on technology alone.

Between 1995 and 2019, U.S. labor productivity grew at 2.1% annually compared to one percent in Europe. This disparity arose in part because companies in the U.S. invested more aggressively in information, communications, and technology while those in Europe were constrained more by regulatory and other factors.

Expectations for AI-driven productivity gains remain generally stronger in the U.S. than in Europe. Goldman Sachs suggests that widespread adoption of generative AI could raise U.S. labor productivity growth by around one to 1.5 percentage points per year.

Several structural factors support this view. The U.S. has a deep technology ecosystem, global leadership in AI research and venture capital, and a large, digitally intensive services sector, including finance, professional services, and IT, where generative AI tools can be rapidly deployed.

Agentic AI

In both Europe and the U.S., AI agents represent a particularly important development. Unlike earlier automation tools that handled isolated tasks, AI agents—like Joule Agents from SAP—are designed to plan, reason, and execute multi-step workflows. For example, an agent might manage customer service tickets, draft responses, query databases, escalate issues, and update systems—all with limited intervention.

In knowledge-based industries, this kind of workflow automation could significantly raise output per worker. But rather than replacing entire occupations, AI agents may reduce time spent on repetitive administrative and “long-tail” tasks, enabling workers to focus on higher-value analysis, strategy, and interpersonal activities.

Despite stories about failed corporate AI projects, which can typically involve bolt-on or stand-alone AI pilots rather than a more integrated, holistic approach, recent evidence from the U.S. suggests that productivity gains are already emerging in some sectors. For example, financial institutions have reported significant efficiency improvements in back-office operations through AI deployment.

Similarly, experimental studies in professional services show that generative AI can increase output quality and speed, particularly for less experienced workers, effectively narrowing skill gaps within teams.

European outlook

The outlook for productivity gains in Europe from AI is more mixed. According to a recent International Monetary Fund (IMF) report the medium-term gain in productivity from the AI alone would vary considerably across countries, and for Europe as a whole would be rather modest: about 1.1 percent cumulatively over five years.

But with pro-growth reforms, the IMF suggests that much bigger gains are possible over the longer run. Like the OECD, the IMF emphasizes that regulatory frameworks, labor market structures, and the pace of technology diffusion will strongly influence outcomes.

Several structural differences shape Europe’s trajectory and the size of what has been called the “AI growth dividend.” First, AI adoption among small and midsize enterprises (SMEs), which form a larger share of the European economy than in the U.S., tends to be slower. Second, Europe’s digital market remains more fragmented across national boundaries, languages, and regulatory systems, which can complicate scaling technology platforms. Third, the European Union has taken a more precautionary regulatory approach to AI governance. While this may reduce certain risks, it could also dampen short-term productivity gains if compliance burdens slow deployment.

Europe’s strengths

That said, Europe has strengths. It leads in advanced manufacturing and industrial engineering, sectors where AI-driven optimization, robotics, and predictive maintenance can raise capital productivity. In these areas, AI agents embedded in industrial systems could significantly enhance supply chain efficiency and reduce downtime.

In addition, as SAP executives have pointed out, Europe has an enormous repository of structured business and manufacturing data, which is essential for reliable and effective AI systems as well as trust in AI Agents.

If AI adoption accelerates in manufacturing and energy systems and if European companies seize the opportunity to build advanced AI agents and apps using their business data, Europe could see much more robust medium-term productivity gains. As an example, SAP’s internal use of AI tools has already significantly improved its own developer productivity.

Labor flexibility

A critical factor in both the U.S. and Europe is labor market adjustment. Historically, the U.S. labor market has demonstrated greater flexibility, with higher rates of job switching and occupational mobility. This flexibility may facilitate faster reallocation of workers into AI-complementary roles, amplifying productivity gains, though this could be offset by more effective existing workforce retraining.

As the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) has noted, AI’s productivity effects are unlikely to be automatic. Productivity gains from AI depend on complementary investments in skills, management practices, and digital infrastructure. The BIS warns that without these, AI tools may produce only marginal efficiency improvements.

The historical lesson from past general-purpose technologies, such as electricity and IT, is that productivity surges occur only after organizations redesign processes to exploit new capabilities and take a holistic rather than piecemeal approach toward implementation.

No AI bubble

While some investors have expressed concerns about an AI bubble, total AI spending in the U.S. is still below one percent of GDP. Joseph Briggs, senior global economist at Goldman Sachs, notes that this is well below historical infrastructure cycles. For comparison historical infrastructure investments such as IT spending, railroads and canals typically represented between two and five percent of GDP.

Like these previous investment waves AI, particularly agentic AI, is likely to generate significant productivity growth and a corresponding boost to GDP in those regions and sectors that seize the AI opportunity.

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.