NTT DATA Business Solutions Wins SAP MEE Award

NTT DATA Business Solutions AG clinched the SAP MEE Award for Partner Excellence 2024 for its exceptional performance in cloud technology. The accolade serves as a testament to the company’s commitment to driving innovation and delivering robust cloud-based solutions that propel digital transformation. The SAP MEE Partner Excellence Award is more than just a trophy […]

The post NTT DATA Business Solutions Wins SAP MEE Award appeared first on InsideSAP.

SAP Datasphere Equips Businesses for Future AI Challenges

In an age where artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping enterprise technology, SAP is stepping up to the challenge. It has unveiled a suite of data innovations designed to arm businesses with the tools necessary to turn vast data reserves into actionable insights, strategic growth, and enhanced operational efficiency. The latest enhancements within the SAP Datasphere […]

The post SAP Datasphere Equips Businesses for Future AI Challenges appeared first on InsideSAP.

Businessman using a phone while commuting on a bus

SAP Concur Enriches Travel and Expense Experiences with Generative AI at SAP Concur Fusion 2024

LAS VEGAS SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) today announced new product and partnership milestones that reimagine travel and expense management experiences and offer new capabilities powered by generative AI.

Connect travel, expense and invoice management for today visibility and control

These announcements were made at SAP Concur Fusion 2024, the flagship conference for SAP Concur users and experts, from March 19-21 in Las Vegas.

AI is only as good as the quality and breadth of the data it draws upon. SAP Concur is one of the global market leaders in travel and expense solutions with more than 92 million end users booking travel and/or processing expenses.

SAP debuted new business AI capabilities in SAP Concur solutions to help customers save time and improve accuracy when managing business travel and expenses:

  • Concur Request: Now uses generative AI to provide intelligent cost estimates for trip planning.
  • ExpenseIt solution: Customers can upload receipt images to ExpenseIt web, where it taps AI to automatically create a new expense with several key fields prepopulated. Plus, ExpenseIt now itemizes hotel folios using generative AI.
  • Generative AI search: A new capability within Concur Support allows SAP Concur customers to type questions in natural language and get quick answers using generative AI without having to submit a support ticket.

The evolution of Concur Travel, featuring a consumer-grade user experience, now offers new content and features:

  • Hotel and rail content: New direct integrations to American Express GBT, BCD, CWT RoomIt, FCTG and HRS designed to enhance the traveler’s shopping experience by providing more options, clarity and transparency. Additionally, users can search, book and purchase UK rail content.
  • Microsoft Teams integration: Travelers can share a reservation from their Concur Travel trip list to a Microsoft Teams chat, so that coworkers can book the same trip.
  • Sustainability-based travel decisions: Through an integration with Thrust Carbon, one of the travel industry’s leading independent sustainability intelligence platforms, evolution of Concur Travel users can view and sort the greenhouse gas emissions of each flight segment, as well as rail and car rental options, and browse hotel providers by emissions, certifications and sustainability scores.

The new, reimagined Concur Expense experience is AI-powered, optimized for mobile and already being used by early adopter customers. In the new experience, expense reports are automatically created and easily managed thanks to the following capabilities and a new partnership with Mastercard:

  • Automatic expense entry, itemization, and categorization with ExpenseIt
  • Timeline view of expenses
  • Intelligent notifications such as missing receipts, missing attendees or expense reports ready for submission
  • Attendee suggestion based on expense type and amount
  • Automated expense creation for Mastercard transactions

To learn more about announcements at SAP Concur Fusion or to join the virtual event, visit here.

Visit the SAP News Center. Follow SAP at @SAPNews.

Subscribe today to receive weekly news highlights from the SAP News Center

Media Contact:
Kelly Murray, +1 (978) 708-6821, kelly.murray@sap.com, ET
SAP Press Room; press@sap.com

This material is provided by SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company for informational purposes only, without representation or warranty of any kind, and SAP or its affiliated companies shall not be liable for errors or omissions with respect to the material. The only warranties for SAP or SAP affiliate company products and services are those that are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services, if any. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. No part of this material may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or for any purpose without the express permission of SE or an SAP affiliate company. SAP SE or its affiliated companies have no obligation to pursue any course of business outlined in this material or any related presentation, or to develop or release any functionality mentioned therein. This material, or any related presentation, and SAP SE or its affiliated companies’ strategy and possible future developments, products, and/or platform directions and functionality are all subject to change and may be © 2024 SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved. See Legal Notice on www.sap.com/legal-notice for use terms, disclaimers, disclosures, or restrictions related to this material. 3 / 3 changed by SAP SE or its affiliated companies at any time for any reason without notice. The information in this material is not a commitment, promise, or legal obligation to deliver any material, code, or functionality. Some software products marketed by SAP SE and its distributors contain proprietary software components of other software vendors. Please note the national product specifications may vary. 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 2023 Annual Report on Form 20-F.

© 2024 SAP SE. All rights reserved.
SAP and other SAP products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP SE in Germany and other countries. Please see https://www.sap.com/copyright for additional trademark information and notices.

SAP and NVIDIA to Accelerate Generative AI Adoption Across Enterprise Applications Powering Global Industries

Customers Can Harness Their Business Data in Cloud Solutions from SAP Using Customized LLMs Deployed with NVIDIA AI Foundry Services and New NVIDIA NIM Microservices


WALLDORF and SANTA CLARA, Calif.SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) and NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) today announced a partnership expansion focused on accelerating enterprise customers’ ability to harness the transformative power of data and generative AI across SAP’s portfolio of cloud solutions and applications.

The companies are collaborating to build and deliver SAP Business AI, including scalable, business-specific generative AI capabilities inside the Joule copilot from SAP and across SAP’s portfolio of cloud solutions and applications – all of which are underpinned by the SAP generative AI hub. The generative AI hub facilitates relevant, reliable and responsible business AI and provides instant access to a broad range of large language models (LLMs).

 As part of SAP’s ongoing initiative to build generative AI directly into the applications that power the world’s businesses, the partnership aims to help customers adopt generative AI capabilities at scale across their organizations. SAP will use NVIDIA’s generative AI foundry service to fine-tune LLMs for domain-specific scenarios and deploy applications with new NVIDIA NIM™ microservices. SAP and NVIDIA plan to make the new integrated capabilities available by the end of 2024.

“Enterprise customers want to leverage state-of-the-art technology that delivers real business value,” said Christian Klein, CEO and Member of the Executive Board of SAP SE. “Strategic technology partnerships, like the one between SAP and NVIDIA, are at the core of our strategy to invest in technology that maximizes the potential and opportunity of AI for business. NVIDIA’s expertise in delivering AI capabilities at scale will help SAP accelerate the pace of transformation and better serve our customers in the cloud.”

“SAP is sitting on a gold mine of enterprise data that can be transformed into custom generative AI agents to help customers automate their businesses,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA. “Together, NVIDIA and SAP will bring custom generative AI to the thousands of enterprises around the world that rely on SAP to power their operations.”

Harnessing Business Data and Generative AI to Advance Customer Insights

SAP and NVIDIA plan to collaborate to integrate generative AI into cloud solutions from SAP, which include the latest release of the SAP Datasphere solution, SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) and RISE with SAP.

SAP plans to build additional generative AI capabilities within SAP BTP using NVIDIA’s generative AI foundry service, featuring NVIDIA DGX™ Cloud AI supercomputing, NVIDIA AI Enterprise software and NVIDIA AI Foundation models. These new capabilities are designed to be the basis of SAP’s development and deployment of generative AI for customers and is expected to be accessible in the generative AI hub in SAP AI Core and SAP Datasphere.

Additional generative AI initiatives include:

  • New capabilities for the Joule copilot: Joule can leverage retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) capabilities built by NVIDIA and SAP, which can be deployed on leading hyperscalers or SAP’s own cloud environments. As a natural-language, generative AI copilot, Joule helps customers unlock the potential in their business by automating time-consuming tasks and quickly analyzing business-critical data to deliver more intelligent, personalized experiences.
  • Innovative use cases leveraging SAP S/4HANA Cloud, SAP SuccessFactors and SAP Signavio: SAP and NVIDIA are exploring more than 20 generative AI use cases where the companies can combine assets to simplify and enhance digital transformation. Among these are generative AI features that can automate enterprise resource planning with intelligent invoice matching in SAP S/4HANA Cloud; improve human resources use cases leveraging SAP SuccessFactors; and accelerate new generative AI insights from SAP Signavio to better process business recommendations and optimize SAP’s customer support processes.
  • Unifying AI data sources with SAP Datasphere: Built on SAP BTP, SAP Datasphere enables integration and a unified view of semantically rich SAP data with third-party data across the enterprise landscape to help customers adapt faster to market changes and make more efficient and better informed decisions. With SAP Datasphere, customers can confidently access a high-quality data fabric using AI and machine learning (ML) models. To accelerate SAP’s federated machine learning (FedML) capabilities for SAP Datasphere, NVIDIA and SAP are facilitating easier access to data for data scientists and enhancing ML workload performance with the support of NVIDIA accelerated computing platforms and NVIDIA AI Enterprise data science software such as NVIDIA RAPIDS™.
  • Using LLMs for the ABAP programming language: To aid developers in creating domain-specific language code, SAP plans to use NVIDIA AI foundry services to assist in fine-tuning LLMs. This will build on SAP’s use of generative AI models to assist developers who use ABAP through the company’s ABAP Cloud model and SAP Cloud Application Programming model.

NVIDIA AI Enterprise Powers Production-Grade Generative AI Across Cloud Solutions from SAP

Once models are ready for deployment in cloud solutions from SAP, SAP plans to use NVIDIA AI Enterprise software, including NVIDIA NIM inference microservices and NVIDIA NeMo Retriever™ microservices. NVIDIA NIM can be used to accelerate and maximize inference performance across the accelerated infrastructure from SAP. Using NVIDIA NeMo Retriever microservices, SAP plans to add RAG capabilities that enable generative AI applications to more securely access data running on SAP software to improve accuracy and insights. Customers can plan to use RAG on both SAP and third-party data.

To learn more about the SAP and NVIDIA partnership, watch the replay of Huang’s GTC keynote address.

Visit the SAP News Center. Follow SAP at @SAPNews.

About NVIDIA

Since its founding in 1993, NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) has been a pioneer in accelerated computing. The company’s invention of the GPU in 1999 sparked the growth of the PC gaming market, redefined computer graphics, ignited the era of modern AI and is fueling industrial digitalization across markets. NVIDIA is now a full-stack computing infrastructure company with data-center-scale offerings that are reshaping industry. More information at https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/.

About SAP

SAP’s strategy is to help every business run as an intelligent, sustainable enterprise. As a market leader in enterprise application software, we help companies of all sizes and in all industries run at their best: SAP customers generate 87% of total global commerce. Our machine learning, Internet of Things (IoT), and advanced analytics technologies help turn customers’ businesses into intelligent enterprises. SAP helps give people and organizations deep business insight and fosters collaboration that helps them stay ahead of their competition. We simplify technology for companies so they can consume our software the way they want – without disruption. Our end-to-end suite of applications and services enables business and public customers across 26 industries globally to operate profitably, adapt continuously, and make a difference. With a global network of customers, partners, employees, and thought leaders, SAP helps the world run better and improve people’s lives. For more information, visit www.sap.com.

Revolutionize how you interact with SAP business system while simplifying your day-to-day with faster work, smarter insights and better outcomes

Note to editors:
To preview and download broadcast-standard stock footage and press photos digitally, please visit www.sap.com/photos. On this platform, you can find high-resolution material for your media channels.

For customers interested in learning more about SAP products:
Global Customer Center: +49 180 534-34-24
United States Only: 1 (800) 872-1SAP (1-800-872-1727)

For further information, contact:
SAP: Scott Malinowski, +1 (617) 538-6297, scott.malinowski@sap.com
SAP Press Room; press@sap.com
NVIDIA: Shannon McPhee, +1 (310) 920-9642, smcphee@nvidia.com

Certain statements in this press release including, but not limited to, statements as to: the benefits, impact, performance, features, and availability of NVIDIA’s products and technologies, including NVIDIA’s generative AI foundry service, NVIDIA NIM microservices, NVIDIA DGX Cloud AI supercomputing, NVIDIA AI Enterprise software, and NVIDIA AI Foundation models, NVIDIA accelerated computing platforms, NVIDIA AI Enterprise data science software such as NVIDIA RAPIDS, RAPIDS cuDF and cuML, NVIDIA NeMo Retriever microservices; NVIDIA’s partnership with SAP, the benefits and impact of such partnership, and the features and availability of its services and offerings; SAP sitting on a gold mine of enterprise data that can be transformed into custom generative AI agents to help customers automate their businesses; and NVIDIA and SAP bringing custom generative AI to the thousands of enterprises around the world that rely on SAP to power their operations are forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause results to be materially different than expectations. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially include: global economic conditions; our reliance on third parties to manufacture, assemble, package and test our products; the impact of technological development and competition; development of new products and technologies or enhancements to our existing product and technologies; market acceptance of our products or our partners’ products; design, manufacturing or software defects; changes in consumer preferences or demands; changes in industry standards and interfaces; unexpected loss of performance of our products or technologies when integrated into systems; as well as other factors detailed from time to time in the most recent reports NVIDIA files with the Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC, including, but not limited to, its annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. Copies of reports filed with the SEC are posted on the company’s website and are available from NVIDIA without charge. These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and speak only as of the date hereof, and, except as required by law, NVIDIA disclaims any obligation to update these forward-looking statements to reflect future events or circumstances.

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 2023 Annual Report on Form 20-F.

© 2024 SAP SE and NVIDIA Corporation. All rights reserved.

SAP and other SAP products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP SE in Germany and other countries. Please see https://www.sap.com/copyright for additional trademark information and notices.

NVIDIA, the NVIDIA logo, DGX, NVIDIA NeMo Retriever, NVIDIA NIM, and RAPIDS are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of NVIDIA Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries. Other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated. Features, pricing, availability, and specifications are subject to change without notice.

Please consider our privacy policy. If you received this press release in your e-mail and you wish to unsubscribe to our mailing list please contact press@sap.com and write Unsubscribe in the subject line.

How Procurement Teams Can Drive Innovation in Services Procurement

Businesses have always relied on third-party services to help them get things done. Today’s business environment makes procuring the right services at the right price from the right provider crucial for success. And yet, many organizations lack a mature approach to sourcing and managing services. This exposes them to greater risk and higher costs, and it leaves them unable to measure project outcomes effectively.

These are among the findings of the newly released Benchmarking Services Procurement: A Global Study, conducted by Art of Procurement and sponsored by SAP. In examining the current state of services procurement, the study seeks to answer two basic questions: Is procurement moving beyond the role of “a pass-through for services contracts”? And how are procurement teams using new approaches and technology to innovate services procurement?

The Challenges of Procuring Services

Whether it’s for IT consulting, marketing services, facilities management, or legal services, procuring services through a third party gives organizations access to personnel with advanced skills and expertise. It can also be cost-effective.

Business leaders have taken note, as highlighted in 2023 research from Ardent Partners. “On average, professional services spending comprises between 45% and 65% of an organization’s total non-employee spending,” Ardent reports.

However, acquiring these services requires a significant level of procurement sophistication. Many services are too complex to fit neatly into a catalog and sourcing them requires organizations to consider key questions, including:

  • Are we buying labor or an outcome?
  • What is the cost mechanism – daily rates, time and materials, fixed-fee?
  • Can we balance risk with agility?
  • How do we maintain our service provider relationship?

Procurement teams have the expertise to bring a higher level of maturity to professional services. They provide a strategic approach that streamlines everything from sourcing and contracting to invoicing and vendor management. But are businesses taking full advantage of their expertise?

Benchmarking Services Procurement: A Global Study by Art of Procurement and SAP

Three Things the Study Tells Us

The Art of Procurement study reveals a lot about the state of professional services procurement. Here are a few of my thoughts – from a global perspective.

Many organizations aren’t benefiting from technology.

Fifty percent of respondents said they purchase services contracts via e-mail and phone, and 23% buy from the same procurement catalogs they use to buy goods. Only 27% use a technology platform designed for services procurement.

Choosing not to use services procurement technology creates compliance and governance challenges. It also limits buyers’ ability to get the best pricing. Moreover, e-mails and phone calls don’t provide a secure, centralized data trail, which is useful for demand planning and forecasting and for making strategic decisions about insourcing and outsourcing.

Too often, bidders seek fixed pricing. That inhibits innovation.

Seventy-nine percent of respondents said they use some form of fixed pricing to buy services. Although this allows them to know the price up front, it also presents challenges. For example, with fixed pricing, statements of work must be tightly written to detail exact project requirements. Otherwise, businesses could pay for more than they receive.

The Art of Procurement research also notes “a worrisome lack of risk and reward mechanisms in services procurement contracts.” It warns that disregarding these innovative mechanisms can jeopardize supplier relationships and stifle innovation. “Without clear incentives for success and mitigations for failure, procurement could unintentionally foster a transactional, short-term mindset in suppliers, leading to cut corners or a reluctance to invest in long-term innovation.”

Organizations prefer single project bids, which are less efficient.

In the survey, 39% of respondents said they set rates by project. Managing bids one by one forces businesses to go back to the market continuously – requiring more proposals, more negotiation, and more contracts.

But there’s also good news. The remaining 61% of respondents say they use either frameworks or preferred supplier panels to drive efficiency. A framework is a general agreement with pre-qualified suppliers, outlining terms and conditions under which specific goods or services will be procured. Panels are groups of pre-approved suppliers, selected for their ability to deliver specific services. These suppliers meet specific qualification criteria and have undergone a competitive selection process.

Overall, the Art of Procurement study paints a picture where procurement is not putting forth its expertise to help the business acquire and manage professional services. As such, it is conceding its strategic role to stakeholders and suppliers.

How Technology Can Help Turn the Tide

The Art of Procurement study advises procurement teams to “select and implement technology with breadth in mind, aiming to address as much services spend as possible rather than allowing pockets of sourcing activity to flow through non-standard platforms and processes.”

SAP Fieldglass Services Procurement is a broad technology application that can simplify how external services projects are initiated, engaged, managed, and completed. It can enable procurement teams to:

  • Initiate service requests with competitive bidding, facilitating collaboration on bid criteria with colleagues, expedited approvals for authorized terms and budgets, and distribution of bids to services providers.
  • Engage selected vendors through a negotiation process that follows a side-by-side evaluation of all responses, and then finalize an agreement.
  • Manage global services engagements within a single, centralized system – securely onboarding workers, tracking deliverables, validating work, and generating invoices.
  • Complete the project with automated offboarding, including terminating system access, retrieving assets, and giving performance feedback.

SAP Fieldglass has been named to the G2 list of Best Software Products for 2024, based on user reviews. It is also one of G2’s Best Mid-Market Products for 2024.

Procurement Must Lead the Way

Based on the findings of the Art of Procurement study, it’s clear that organizations need to adopt a more mature approach to services procurement. Procurement teams have the expertise to lead this transformation, although they must do more to assert themselves within the business. Technology can help accelerate this by enabling procurement to establish consistent, end-to-end processes for initiating, engaging, and managing external service projects.

Read the Art of Procurement report here.


Gordon Donovan is global vice president of Research, SAP Procurement, and External Workforce at SAP.

Get weekly news highlights from the SAP News Center

SAP Celebrates Innovation with Hasso Plattner Founders’ Award

Through an awe-inspiring virtual gathering of nearly 50,000 employees, SAP SE heralded the most innovative projects of the year with the announcement of the Hasso Plattner Founders’ Award winners for 2023. This coveted accolade cements the company’s commitment to fostering a culture of creativity and excellence. The Hasso Plattner Founders’ Award is SAP’s highest honor […]

The post SAP Celebrates Innovation with Hasso Plattner Founders’ Award appeared first on InsideSAP.

Cloud-Based Visibility Equips Trading Partners to Counter Supply Chain Disruption

With geopolitical conflict and climate change roiling global shipping corridors from the Suez Canal to Panama and elsewhere, enterprises rely increasingly on cloud-based business networks and artificial intelligence (AI) applications to extend visibility, facilitate collaboration, and ensure they stay one step ahead of the looming threat of disruption.

Meanwhile, as legislation to bolster transparency in supply chains takes hold around the world, the digital platforms through which trading partners carry out interconnected operational processes have become indispensable for managing risk, advancing sustainability objectives, and verifying adherence to ethical business practices – even as volatility in international commerce gathers pace.

After rebounding from several years of logjammed seaports, idled factories, and quarantined workers, many businesses find that though COVID-19 has receded, disruption stubbornly persists. Yet visibility across all aspects of the supply chain – from sourcing raw materials and managing logistics capacity to securing working capital solutions and managing dispersed physical assets – remains paramount in the quest to ensure business continuity, instill operational resilience, and deepen competitive advantage.

SAP Business Network powers transparency, resiliency, and sustainability

To help provide businesses with the 360-degree visibility and collaborative capabilities they require across complex trading relationships, SAP Business Network can connect people, processes, and systems across multiple enterprises to help digitize transactions, harness data-driven insights, and create transparent, resilient, and sustainable supply chains. Through SAP Business Network for Procurement, trading partners can gain process efficiencies, improve supply assurance, and achieve business process and regulatory compliance by increasing operational transparency. With SAP Business Network Supply Chain Collaboration, companies can achieve supply chain visibility by enabling plan-driven automation, optimizing capacity and inventory, and streamlining workflow. Aided by SAP Business Network for Logistics, shippers and carriers can work together in unison, track and trace goods in transit, and achieve transparency throughout the supply chain by optimizing logistics processes, increasing on-time deliveries, and mitigating third-party risk. Relying on SAP Business Network Asset Collaboration, owners, operators, and service providers can strengthen joint processes and the flow of shared information through a single, consistent version of asset master data to help streamline asset maintenance processes and reduce maintenance costs. With the benefit of SAP Business Network for Finance, trading partners can enhance payment security, free up working capital through early-payment discounts, and leverage access to capital bound up in outstanding receivables.

By linking together the routine business processes of trading partners, cloud-based networks establish the breadth of data necessary to apply predictive and generative AI applications to yield meaningful insights and outcomes. Through large language models and other forms of machine learning, cloud-based applications create new content with characteristics resembling that which precedes it. With every successive effort, generative AI sharpens its ability to tailor desired content.

As the world’s largest platform for business-to-business commerce, SAP Business Network can present an ideal setting for generative AI, in that it helps bring together an extremely large volume of trading partners across hundreds of millions of transactions representing US$5.3 trillion in commerce annually. Later this year, generative AI capabilities in SAP Business Network will be able to help detect errors and present automatic summaries when businesses create invoices. AI will also enable the network to help enrich catalog content and discovery posting responses for suppliers.

SAP Business Network has accumulated significant structured content over many years to help generate broad operational insights for trading partners. When buyers, suppliers, carriers, and financing solution providers share operational data with each other in real time, the mutual value they create can be exponential rather than additive, enabling all participants in commerce to plan ahead with confidence, continuity, and enduring resilience.

For further information on SAP Business Network and how we are equipping enterprises large and small with the digital tools needed to counter disruption, visit sap.com/businessnetwork.


Jörn Keller is executive vice president and chief product officer of SAP Business Network.

Stay in touch and follow SAP News on LinkedIn

SAP Announces New Commerce Cloud Payment Solution, Drawing on Vast Partner Ecosystem to Help Retailers Gain an Edge

Composable payment options enhance the customer experience at
checkout and accelerate retailers’ business growth


WALLDORF SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) today announced a new composable payment solution to help retailers stay ahead of changing customer expectations. The new solution, SAP Commerce Cloud, open payment framework, helps retailers become more agile as new payment options – such as buy now, pay later – gain popularity.

Unlock business agility and transform customer experiences with SAP Commerce Cloud

The framework integrates SAP Commerce Cloud with numerous third-party payment service providers (PSPs), including Stripe, Adyen, Worldpay and Airwallex, based on their specific use case. Additionally, SAP’s composable architecture allows retailers to cherry-pick payment partners tailored to their unique needs and international markets, enabling them to build at their own pace, scale their business faster and avoid being confined to a single provider.

“Retailers want to extend more payments options to shoppers and quickly, and SAP is leveraging its vast partner ecosystem to fulfill this need,” said Leslie Hand, group vice president, Retail & Financial Insights, IDC. “With SAP’s deep understanding of retail and commerce and new offering to have a quick connection to the PSPs, retailers can adopt the plug and play framework they need that greatly reduces the complexity of a traditional integration. It’s great to see SAP delivering on its promise to offer composable solutions, so customers can adjust to new market requirements when and where it works best for them.”

SAP Commerce Cloud’s seamless and native integration capabilities ensure PSPs can be rapidly adopted, and it reduces complexity by eliminating the need to integrate and deploy extensions to the commerce codebase. The framework is extensible and headless, helping ensure the front end and back end are decoupled and operate independently, creating an opportunity to cater to a wide range of channel requirements and add on new solutions, including prebuilt payment experiences available on SAP Commerce Cloud, composable storefront. It also ensures customers have the freedom to pick their preferred payment method, which enhances the checkout experience.

“SAP’s unmatched industry expertise is the foundation of our strategy, as it enables us to deeply understand the complexities of delivering seamless and positive customer experiences that reinforce the brand promise with every interaction,” said Sven Denecken, Senior Vice President and Global Head of Product Marketing for SAP Industries & CX. “SAP’s unique, industry-led approach to composability places the retailer’s digital commerce needs front and center while we work with them to manage their digital transformation, navigate pathways to sustainable growth, and deliver on industry expectations.”

This no-code, low-code framework gives retailers a low-cost, adaptive, and agile payments system that can best fit their business and customer needs. It covers common payment needs and end-to-end payment processes across authorization, capture, refunds, and re-authorization as well as automatic updates with security and compliance standards.

  • Example use case: A jewelry retailer that leverages a leading PSP wants to expand its payment options to offer a buy-now, pay-later payment option. They can add the new offering with a few clicks, immediately make the option available while meeting security requirements, and help guarantee an end-to-end payment experience for the customer.

SAP Commerce Cloud helps deliver profitable digital commerce growth, from discovery to delivery and beyond, and can be implemented with agility across industries such as retail, automotive, consumer products, utilities, and many others globally through its headless and composable offering. The open payment framework for SAP Commerce Cloud is in beta and SAP customers can join now. It is planned to be generally available in H2 2024.

Read comments from SAP partners here.

Visit the SAP News Center. Follow SAP at @SAPNews.

Media Contact:
Jillian Baker, +1 (212) 653-9600, jillian.baker@sap.com, ET
SAP Press Room; press@sap.com

Get the latest SAP news delivered to your inbox weekly via our newsletter

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 2023 Annual Report on Form 20-F.
© 2024 SAP SE. All rights reserved.
SAP and other SAP products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP SE in Germany and other countries. Please see https://www.sap.com/copyright for additional trademark information and notices.


Partner Quotes: SAP Announces New Commerce Cloud Payment Solution with Partners

WALLDORF SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) today announced a new composable payment solution to help retailers stay ahead of changing customer expectations.

The new solution, SAP Commerce Cloud, open payment framework, helps retailers become more agile as new payment options – such as buy now, pay later – gain popularity. The framework also integrates with any third-party Payment Service Provider (PSP), including Stripe, Adyen, Worldpay and Airwallex, based on their specific use case.

SAP partners are an extension of our business, bringing experience and domain expertise that help retailers innovate, transform, and simplify. SAP’s payment partner ecosystem is made up of many providers who are solving some of the most critical industry or region-specific business needs to empower shoppers to buy and pay on their own terms.

SAP partners are important to this initiative. Read the following comments from SAP partners, many of which have apps available on the SAP Store online marketplace, about their involvement.

Adyen

“Adyen has a strong foundation of servicing customers through our existing SAP Commerce Cloud integration, and the open payment framework is the first step of a larger strategic partnership with the goal of enabling digital payments for customers across a larger range of SAP solutions. Adyen and SAP support some of the world’s largest enterprise organizations, and this partnership provides a gateway for those companies to easily migrate to a single global payments platform with the flexibility and support that Adyen is known for. Working closely with SAP, we intend to scale our already considerable payments processing volumes to the next level.”

– Kyle Jenke, VP, Global Head of Partnerships, Adyen

Worldpay

“Worldpay’s collaboration with SAP using the new open payment framework for SAP Commerce Cloud aims to revolutionize the way businesses manage their payment processing, offering seamless and secure solutions for our customers around the globe. By combining SAP’s industry-leading software with Worldpay’s innovative payment technology, we can provide businesses with a comprehensive payment ecosystem that optimizes efficiency, enhances security, and drives growth. We look forward to the exciting opportunities this collaboration around SAP Commerce Cloud will bring, and we are committed to continuing to innovate and provide cutting-edge solutions in the payment industry.”

– Maria Prados, SVP, Global Enterprise Go to Market, Worldpay

Airwallex

“This is an important first partnership between Airwallex and SAP, as we mutually look to support merchants with their international expansion plans. As one of four official payment service providers added to the SAP Commerce Cloud solution, Airwallex’s global payments and proprietary financial infrastructure will provide merchants with even more choices and payment options that suit their growing customer base. This is the start of a long-term relationship in which we look forward to strengthening our enterprise playbook and further scaling into the Americas and EMEA while supporting SAP’s business in APAC.”

– Ravi Adusumilli, EGM, Americas, Airwallex

Media Contact:
Jillian Baker, +1 (212) 653-9600, jillian.baker@sap.com, ET
SAP Press Room; press@sap.com

Whether you’re searching for a partner, looking to join our ecosystem, or trying to find resources — discover the power of partnership with SAP

We Can’t Achieve Net Zero Without the Circular Economy

The connection between net-zero emissions and the circular economy is backed by research. When it comes to cutting greenhouse gases, the main focus is on improving energy efficiency and transitioning away from fossil fuels to renewables, but that only accounts for 55% of greenhouse gas emissions. The remaining 45% is tied up in products, materials, and food.

Key administrations are aware of this and are starting to act accordingly. Accelerating innovation in industrial products and fuels for a net-zero, circular economy is one of five priorities in U.S. President Joe Biden’s Net-Zero Game Changers Initiative. Meanwhile, the new Circular Economy Action Plan (CEAP) is a main element of the European Green Deal.

In parallel, the UN is collaborating multilaterally to create policy to regulate plastics. The UN Plastics Treaty is a consensus by 175 nations to deliver a legally binding agreement to tackle plastic pollution by the end of 2024. This is significant because plastic has become fundamental to the products we create and the packaging we use to contain and ship them. Plastic has an enormous impact on the environment due to the emissions involved in its creation and mismanaged plastic waste polluting the air, the oceans, our food, and even our blood.

Currently, the linear economy dominates, as only 7.2% of the world’s resources are reused or recycled. In the case of plastic, we take oil from the ground, turn it into products and packaging, use them, and throw them out when we’re finished. Continuing like this isn’t an option because we will run out of resources, worsen global warming, and cause further damage to our ecosystem. The circular economy is about running the resources around in loops, so materials retain their value and can be reused.

It sounds logical, so why aren’t we doing it already? The first reason is financial. In the long term, the circular economy will create jobs, cut costs, improve profitability, and secure supply lines. Achieving this, however, requires massive capital investment in the short term. Additionally, more data is required to help us understand the impact of our decisions. And we need a new, more collaborative way of working.

Capital investment-wise, we must invest in designing and manufacturing products with circularity in mind. We need to adapt and build machinery and systems to rescue resources from existing products and turn them into new items. The labor market must evolve to train people in the skills required and to make circular economy jobs attractive, with good remuneration and benefits packages. More wealth must also flow back up the supply chain to ensure the sustainability of raw materials and to enable growth and sustainable manufacturing. To help companies and financial institutions understand the benefits and necessity of the circular economy, more education is required.

Record, report, and act on your sustainability goals with SAP solutions

Data systems need to evolve to give companies insights on material flow and traceability, help them avoid waste, extend periods of use, recover and regenerate materials, and make informed decisions about products and packaging. This is where SAP comes in, with 80% of the world’s businesses using our software.

Take plastic again: the SAP Green Token solution can help businesses trace plastics back to their source polymer to understand what type of material is used in every plastic element in a product. This can help companies prove the environmental credentials of a given plastic. SAP Responsible Design and Production can be used to understand how recycled and recyclable a component is and can help a company understand the true end-to-end cost of a material. This can be useful in regulating certain materials for comparison and decision-making purposes as well as in helping businesses anticipate taxes and fees associated with their products.

We can interrogate upstream supply chain data, which relates to what a product is made from, but we don’t yet have a complete downstream picture of what happens to a product at its end of life. Recyclability varies wildly between countries, so to understand how recyclable materials are in certain countries or jurisdictions, a partnership approach with national governments, local authorities, NGOs, and others is required to build a database that can inform companies which types of plastic to use or avoid for certain markets to achieve circularity. SAP can add value by collecting this data and pulling it into solutions.

At the same time, to embrace the circular economy, our way of working must evolve. Instead of working in silos within our individual businesses and in vertical supply chains, we need to work collaboratively to share the data and bring the skill sets and processes together. For example, SAP works with groups of companies, such as with the WBCSD, to establish frameworks for exchanging data. SAP Sustainability Data Exchange started with embedded carbon in products, but the application can be extended to track other important material information for the circular economy like recycled content or water content.

Collaborations between businesses and non-corporate bodies accelerate progress. A clear example of this is how, by working with the WBCSD and the Ocean Plastics Leadership Network, SAP works towards updating solutions to help customers respond to new requirements that arise from the negotiations.

The ambition is to replicate this approach to plastic for other products, such as steel, batteries, electronics, textiles, and even food. With a circular economy across these industries, I’m convinced we can get halfway to net zero and if, in parallel, the energy experts continue to move the needle on energy efficiency and renewable power generation, we’ll get the rest of the way.

Learn more about SAP Sustainability solutions at sap.com/sustainability.


Darren West is a product expert in Circular Economy at SAP.

Subscribe to the weekly SAP News Center newsletter

Previous Next
Close
Test Caption
Test Description goes like this