During this holiday season, 58% of Gen Z and millennials say they would trust an AI agent to compare prices and recommend the best option. This marks the beginning of a monumental shift in how consumers shop and a new challenge for retailers in creating customer loyalty.

Seismic shifts are not new for retailers—back in 1999, e-commerce was still an afterthought. By 2000, everything changed as retailers went all-in on digital.

In 2025, we are living in yet another pivotal year. This holiday season might feel familiar as you scroll through deals, compare brands, and race to beat shipping deadlines. But beneath the surface, something far more transformative is happening. The year 2025 will likely be the last consumers shop as they do now.  

Agentic AI is reshaping commerce by making shopping faster, smarter, and effortless. Discovery is moving from people browsing their favorite brands to intelligent orchestration. Instead of opening 10 tabs to hunt for the right deal, shoppers will simply ask: “Find me the highest rated black, puffy winter coat, size 10, under $200 that ships in two days.”

The agent will handle the rest—scanning thousands of options, validating reviews, confirming delivery timelines, even factoring in loyalty perks. That future isn’t tomorrow; it’s already here, and by next holiday season, most shopping journeys will begin, evolve, or end with AI agents.

While this type of shopping creates convenience for shoppers, it creates a challenge for retailers that have focused on brand campaigns and poured millions of dollars into advertising to be the “brand of choice” in the discovery process. Decades of investment into SEO, paid traffic, and brand recognition are losing their edge. While not abandoning these strategies entirely, they must evolve for the AI-first world.

However, there is something that hasn’t changed over the course of decades: the need to create loyal customers who make repeat purchases and give the greatest share of their wallets. This, too, is more challenging than ever. In fact, 72% of consumers report that this holiday season they will only stay loyal to brands that consistently meet their needs in the moment.

Creating customer loyalty in the age of agentic commerce means conquering two critical fronts:

• Optimizing for discoverability: Agents will favor retailers that make buying seamless.
• Creating customer loyalty post-purchase: With discovery being augmented by AI agents, humans will now give their ongoing loyalty based on post-purchase experiences. On-time delivery, easy returns, and rewards that feel personal are the new battleground for brand equity.  And with agents learning from human behavior, exceeding shopper expectations post-purchase can ultimately impact a brand’s likelihood of being recommended in the discovery phase.

The question remains: how do we move from esoteric AI conversations to practical strategies?

Discovery and loyalty: How to win in the age of agentic AI

• Make your catalog agent-ready: Treat AI as a new kind of shopper. Ensure product feeds are rich, structured, and machine-readable, complete with attributes, use-case-driven descriptions, real-time pricing, and accurate inventory. Clean, structured product data is now the foundation of intelligent discovery.
• Create solutions, not just SKUs: AI-driven traffic behaves differently. Design bundles, add-ons, and value stacks that solve specific problems and allow agents to match shoppers with outcomes, not just product lists.
• Build trustworthy, accessible information: Operationalize trust by surfacing verified reviews, transparent pricing, sustainability details, and clear return policies. Make this data accessible through well-structured APIs, not scraping, so agents and humans see the same reliable truth.
• Let prediction power personalization: Use unified data and AI to predict what customers want before they act, enabling real-time next-best-actions across email, SMS, push, in-app, and other emerging channels. This predictive intelligence turns fragmented campaigns into connected, personalized experiences that deliver higher engagement and revenue.
• Make loyalty the thread that ties every experience together: Loyalty is no longer a program. It’s a relationship. Use every interaction to tailor meaningful, emotional moments that adapt, remember, and feel consistent across channels in order to help convert agent-driven traffic. Then, use personalized exclusives and perks to foster high-value relationships with those new customers.
• Deliver on your promises, every time: Eighty-eight percent of customers leave a brand after one bad experience. That’s why operational reliability is the new loyalty. Bring order, inventory, payments, and fulfillment into alignment, so customers receive what they were promised, when they were promised. Loyalty now begins at checkout.
• Prepare for the new return economy: Agent-driven buying makes it easy for consumers to purchase first and decide later. Set clear limits to protect margins and reduce friction in the returns journey because a seamless return can build more loyalty than the purchase itself.

SAP is already helping brands prepare for this future with AI-enabled technologies across commerce, loyalty, order management, and customer engagement.

A brand already building for the future

Global sports brand Mizuno offers a glimpse ahead. Historically reliant on seasonal campaigns, Mizuno wanted a more sustainable way to engage its diverse customer base across 10 product categories and multiple channels. Mizuno unified its customer data and used AI to create personalized journeys, turning one-off interactions into long-term relationships.

The results speak for themselves:

• 52% year-over-year (YoY) increase in active customers
• 62% increase in revenue from premium customers
• 35% increase in customer win-backs
• 33% increase in the number of orders

SAP: A partner built for scale, stability, and growth

As customer behavior evolves and AI reshapes what’s possible, one thing remains constant: SAP’s commitment to helping brands win their biggest commercial moments. This year’s holiday results make that clearer than ever. We’re not just helping brands plan for peak season—we’re helping them execute it with precision, intelligence, and confidence.

Nearly 20% YoY growth in total messages sent underscores the trust brands place in SAP Emarsys to deliver at scale. Mobile and emerging channels surged—in-app (+61%), SMS (+32%), push (+27%), and inbox (+91%) all saw significant YoY gains—as brands met customers exactly where they were browsing and buying. Omnichannel maturity accelerated with brands using a richer mix of channels to create connected, high-value experiences across every stage of the shopping journey. And with 100% uptime and flawless reliability, teams executed independently and confidently, even during their highest-volume moments.

Paired with exceptional commerce performance, the story becomes even more compelling: brands used more intelligent engagement to guide shoppers toward higher-value purchases (+18% YoY average order value) and ultimately drove substantial YoY revenue growth (+40% gross merchandise value)—all powered by a CX portfolio that delivered uninterrupted performance with 100% uptime through the holiday shopping rush, ensuring we’re here for our customers when it matters most.

This is what partnership looks like: scale, intelligence, reliability, and results so brands can focus on creating exceptional customer experiences, not managing technology.

Looking ahead

The year 2025 will be remembered as the last holiday season where brand mattered more than the overall experience.

This year, 39% of shoppers report a positive impact of AI on their retail experience and 48% of shoppers would support brands bringing more AI into their buying experience. This sets the stage for growth in 2026 as AI agents deliver relevance, trust, and immediacy, making shopping simpler, smarter, and more satisfying for people everywhere.

The brands that win won’t be the ones shouting the loudest. They’ll be the ones using SAP to be most discoverable, dependable, and unforgettable.

By anticipating needs and creating better, personalized journeys, AI will enhance every stage of commerce. And SAP is here to make that future happen.

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

We’re witnessing the AI revolution in customer support as it happens.

From decades of customer support defined by reaction to calls, tickets, or queues, to the evolution of proactive support with pre-AI digital platforms, to the current AI-powered ecosystem that is redefining how support teams strategize, operate, and deliver resolutions. AI-enabled support anticipates needs, predicts failures, and delivers instant, seamless resolutions at scale.

And most importantly, this shift is as transformational as it is technological.

Keeping pace with transformation

As customers navigate complex and ambitious transformation projects, whether it’s moving to the cloud, scaling AI, or modernizing complex operations, there is always a quiet mandate: systems supporting critical business processes must run smoothly because the costs of downtimes have never been higher.

For businesses, uninterrupted operations are non-negotiable. SAP’s AI-driven support can anticipate issues before they arise, helping to ensure critical processes run smoothly, even during high-volume peak events. SAP uses SAP Business AI to help prevent issues proactively, working to ensure a smooth experience by avoiding system outages, platform scalability issues, data overloads, or service overloads. During the peak sales event of Cyber Week 2024, SAP achieved 100% uptime for SAP Commerce Cloud customers. As the Cyber Week 2025 numbers come in, we already have delivered 100% uptime and improved GMV for global sales events like Singles Day (GMV reached €7,108.72M, or +180.2% YoY, with 6,315.99K orders, or +46.4% YoY) and El Buen Fin (GMV hit €12,341.70M, or +13.18% YoY, and 10,385.74K orders, or +32.24% YoY).

Scaling self-service with AI

Structured knowledge and curated content enable SAP to build AI and AI agents with high confidence levels. Today, over 82% of customer issues are addressed via self-service. This allows users to get instant resolution to issues or bridge knowledge gaps they face during the use, implementation, and continuous improvement of SAP’s solutions.

AI in instant response and resolution

When it comes to delivering instant response and resolution in customer support, the impact of AI-integrated services is remarkable. When SAP’s Auto Response Agent is highly confident of the solution, based on the underlying data and knowledge, it can deliver highly relevant solutions that can save customers significant time and effort. Additionally, the first contact resolution rate for cases answered automatically by the agent is at par with what human-human support interactions achieve.

Supporting SAP Business AI

SAP Business AI supportability is all about making AI real for customers through the right systems that drive successful adoption. As SAP delivers AI capabilities across its portfolio, we enable customers to have the right support when they encounter issues in early deployment.

As customers scale AI across their organizations, we have concrete processes and tools to help support them, so they can deploy new AI with the utmost confidence. For example, the Incident Solution Matching service is integrated with SAP Joule for Consultants, allowing efficient support information retrieval and helping to eliminate the hassle of searching through vast amounts of SAP documentation.

Empowering support engineers with AI

AI is not just transforming customer outcomes, it’s also transforming how our engineers and experts deliver precision and speed, freeing them from logistical tasks so they can focus on support requests that need specialized attention. Thanks to SAP’s AI-integrated self-service offerings, we’re able to instantly resolve customer issues four out of the five times they come to us.

AI-powered solution recommendations in self-service can eliminate the need for at least 10% of the cases being created. This is a big win for human-generated knowledge being delivered by AI-generated tools. Every third case gets submitted with an AI-recommended product component for optimal routing and faster processing.

In SAP’s multi-location, multilingual, global setup, standardized communication is key. Around 10% of responses by support engineers take advantage of SAP’s AI-assisted language optimization services.

There’s more. We have agentic case resolution, AI-assisted creation of SAP Knowledge Base Articles, and automatic error categorization, covering use cases that help our engineers deliver their best work with greater accuracy and higher quality.

And, of course, SAP runs its own products and solutions, serving as a first reference for our customers. As Dr. Benjamin Blau, SAP’s Chief Process and Information Officer, puts it: “This is ‘SAP runs SAP’ in action. As customer zero, we validate every AI innovation in real-world complexity before it reaches you. We’ve architected this multi-agent AI on our own SAP Business Technology Platform, including the SAP AI Core foundation, and our service and support data lake. Agentic case resolution is a blueprint for enterprise-grade, responsible AI, proving the power and maturity of the SAP Business AI portfolio, empowering customers with faster resolutions for an elevated experience.”

Will AI replace support teams?

Short answer: No.

To elaborate, let’s take the example of an AI agent that automatically responds to customers. SAP’s instant response and resolution are only activated when the system is very confident with its response. Our commitment to the relevant, reliable, and responsible use of AI helps ensure that there’s no experimentation with customer cases that deserve hands-on attention from engineers and experts. The legacy of trust that SAP has earned over 50 years of industry leadership, which is also trusted by 90% of Fortune 500 companies, drives this rigor applied to AI.

What does this mean for our engineers? Any move to augment our work with AI is not about replacing people. It’s about freeing time, energy, and creative space to focus on high-impact tasks that need critical thinking and human insight. AI amplifies human expertise. Customers benefit from this blend of machine intelligence and human insight, ensuring every solution is relevant and responsible.

It’s also important to highlight that SAP is a growth company. The use of technology helps us deliver what customers expect from support teams and build ongoing knowledge that feeds AI systems for intelligent decision-making, also meeting the future demands of AI-augmented support.

Yes, the world is witnessing role reductions across the industry with the adoption of AI in business workflows, but we also see the emergence of critical new roles that help us navigate the current reality. How many of us had heard of AI trainers or carbon accountants 15 years ago?

These are exciting times for innovation. SAP’s partnerships, such as our collaboration with Databricks and Snowflake, empower developers to turn business data and AI into real business outcomes.

We’re truly at the crossroads of innovation and transformative tools that can turn imagination into impact. SAP‘s Chief Technology Officer, Philipp Herzig, summarizes it perfectly: “AI is transforming business at every level, but it’s people who turn transformation into progress. With SAP Business AI, we’re combining the best of human ingenuity and machine intelligence to deliver impact that matters.”

Stefan Steinle is executive vice president and head of Customer Support & Cloud Lifecycle Management at SAP.

The U.S. federal technology landscape is entering a new era, one defined not by migration alone, but by modernization with purpose. For decades, progress meant upgrading infrastructure or shifting workloads to the cloud.

As the pace of digital demand accelerates and mission priorities grow more complex, it is clear that traditional modernization approaches can no longer keep pace.

To deliver on rapidly evolving government missions, agencies must move beyond lifting and shifting legacy systems. The true transformation lies in reimagining operating models to support continuous, secure, and scalable innovation.

Shift from modernization to transformation

Legacy IT structures, designed for predictability and control, often limit progress. Risk-averse approaches that once provided stability now constrain agility and innovation. Federal agencies leading the way are adopting future-ready, cloud-native architectures that emphasize interoperability, flexibility, and resilience. These architectures do more than modernize technology; they modernize how agencies work, collaborate, and deliver results.

Reducing technical debt has become a strategic imperative, but emerging technologies also demand a balance of governance and innovation. Federal leaders are reframing their approach to modernization as an ongoing process, a state of persistent transformation where technology, mission, and operations evolve in sync.

Measuring what matters: from cost to capability

As agencies embrace new models of delivery, success must be evaluated through a dual focus:

• Total cost of ownership (TCO): Sustaining efficiency by lowering infrastructure costs and simplifying operations
• Total cost to innovate (TCI): Accelerating value creation by enabling teams to activate, test, and scale new capabilities with minimal risk and complexity

This broader lens allows agencies to view modernization as an investment in agility, resilience, and readiness—ensuring they can respond to what’s next, not just what’s now.

Partnering for a smarter, more agile government

Driving this shift requires strategic collaboration across the public and private sectors. Programs such as the U.S. General Services Administration’s OneGov initiative are redefining how government acquires and deploys technology. By consolidating procurement and engaging directly with technology providers, OneGov helps create greater transparency, efficiency, and long-term value for taxpayers.

In alignment with this vision, SAP has partnered with GSA to provide federal agencies with expanded access to both SAP licensed-based products and white glove migration, all while avoiding data egress fees. These initiatives help agencies reduce technical debt, accelerate digital transformation, and establish a secure, cloud-native foundation for the future.

Building the innovation-ready enterprise

Modernization is not a destination, it is a capability. Agencies that continually adapt their operating models will define the next generation of public service. The path forward is clear:

• Reimagine modernization as operating model transformation, not just technology refresh
• Balance efficiency with innovation by measuring both cost savings and speed to value
• Build future-ready enterprises where mission and IT operate as one, powered by cloud, automation, and AI

Together, we are shaping a smarter, more secure, and more agile federal enterprise, one that is ready to meet the demands of a rapidly changing world and deliver enduring value to citizens.

David Robinson is president of Cloud ERP and acting managing director of U.S. Public Services at SAP.

As a global leader in high-strength fastening systems, precision parts, and assemblies for the automotive industry,  KAMAX stands at the forefront of innovation–not only in manufacturing, but also in operational excellence.

Headquartered in Homberg (Ohm), Germany, with worldwide locations, in 2024 KAMAX generated €1 billion in revenue and employs 4,000 people dedicated to serving OEMs globally.

To maintain its competitive edge, the ambitious company embarked on a transformative journey to streamline its supply chain through digitalization and intelligent logistics management. This transformation centers around the deployment of SAP Extended Warehouse Management (SAP EWM), SAP Transportation Management  (SAP TM), and a comprehensive SAP S/4HANA platform, supporting superior logistics efficiency, transparency, and sustainability.

Optimizing logistics at scale

Handling approximately 400 transports daily across multiple global plants, KAMAX manages two distinct logistics flows: goods pre-packed and stored in warehouses, and a “pack-to-order” system where items are packaged just before shipment. Currently, three plants operate on SAP S/4HANA with SAP Extended Warehouse Management and one pilot plant with SAP Transportation Management integrated, while others are transitioning from SAP ERP Central Component (SAP ECC).

The implementation of the advanced shipping and receiving process dramatically improved logistics transparency and efficiency.

“The use of the unified package builder, which leverages real data instead of estimates, allows us to provide precise shipping information to freight forwarders earlier in the process,” Jens Hoidem, director of IT Business Solutions at KAMAX, explained. This improvement enhances truck planning and communication with carriers, positively impacting the company’s logistics operations daily.

KAMAX collaborates exclusively with freight forwarders, working with approximately 20 carriers globally. At the advanced shipping and receiving pilot plant, about 60 deliveries per day are coordinated, involving around 2,000 handling units across five to six trucks. This network supports operational responsiveness without compromising control.

On premise today, cloud-ready tomorrow

Currently, three of KAMAX’s plants run on SAP S/4HANA, with the remaining plants on SAP ECC, all on an on-premises basis designed to be cloud-ready for future transitions.

Hoidem pinpointed the critical process improvements brought by advanced shipping and receiving in combination with SAP Extended Warehouse Management and SAP Transportation Management: “The shipping registration now uses the unified package builder, relying on accurate, real data rather than estimated figures. This has substantially improved truck planning and early communication with our freight forwarders, impacting around 60 deliveries and about 2,000 handling units daily at our pilot plant.”

Over 95 percent of KAMAX’s transport is by truck. “We maintain a global footprint close to our OEM customers to optimize delivery times and costs,” Hoidem added. “We currently engage about 70 to 80 different freight forwarders worldwide, facilitating diverse and dynamic transport needs.”

Sustainability and process automation

KAMAX has a bold strategy for sustainability and aims for carbon neutrality by 2037. Implementation of SAP Extended Warehouse Management and SAP Transportation Management plays a crucial role in supporting KAMAX’s goal by enabling better route planning, efficient truck utilization, and minimizing empty runs.

“Reducing CO2 emissions through smarter transport management is a key project outcome,” Hoidem added.

The German company is also actively advancing in automation. In China, KAMAX has piloted RFID technology integrated with automated guided vehicles (AGVs) to automate intra-logistics, reducing manual labor and enhancing productivity.

Nexineer, the company’s digital subsidiary, has developed an Operator Cockpit linked with SAP Extended Warehouse Management for real-time monitoring and automated production order management. Using laser technology, KAMAX automated piece counting, saving about 40 labour hours in May at their Slovakian plant across 1,200 containers.

KAMAX plans to roll out SAP Extended Warehouse Management, SAP Transportation Management, and advanced shipping and receiving across all seven plants, progressively improving automation and digitalization of intralogistics processes. “We aim to integrate AI for advanced receiving and transportation management, continuing to optimize costs and capacity,” Hoidem shared.

To better organize its internal processes, collaborate more efficiently worldwide, and prepare for further growth, The Ocean Cleanup is implementing SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition.

The step is part of the digital transformation needed to support the organization’s global mission.

The Ocean Cleanup focuses on reducing plastic pollution in rivers and oceans, operates internationally, and is growing rapidly. To date, the organization has already removed more than 40 million kilograms of waste.

However, its ambitions go further: by 2040, The Ocean Cleanup aims to have removed 90 percent of floating ocean plastic and cleaned up plastic pollution in 90 river cities. This represents a major scale-up of the work, with more activities and installations in rivers and oceans worldwide.

Flexible growth

To properly manage global processes and support international activities, The Ocean Cleanup urgently needed a modern and scalable system. The Dutch nonprofit organization chose to replace its existing system with SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Public Edition.

The modern ERP platform enables The Ocean Cleanup to achieve its growth ambitions: the system is easily scalable and can be flexibly adapted as processes, projects, or international activities expand.

A strong foundation for global collaboration is essential. For example, financial teams must work closely with fundraisers to optimally distribute donations across international projects while project teams, engineers, and data analysts coordinate daily on technology, planning, and budgets for initiatives in rivers and oceans worldwide.

“Perfect coordination between teams is essential; we hunt plastic together as a pack,” Aurelia Ferraro, senior partnership manager at The Ocean Cleanup, shared. “The system helps us with that collaboration, allowing us to respond quickly to new challenges.”

“We are growing exponentially, and our internal processes have become increasingly complex, with operations spanning multiple countries,” Ferraro further explained. “SAP S/4HANA is the ideal system to manage that complexity.”

She emphasized that the transformation is about more than just technology: “Change and innovation are always complex, but our organization is accustomed to change. We invest a lot of energy in communication and training, which ensures smooth SAP adoption.”

Fast implementation and configuration

Joost van Lankveld is a strategic advisor at Scheer Nederland, The Ocean Cleanup’s implementation partner. He added: “Together with The Ocean Cleanup, we are following a phased implementation. SAP’s 80-20 fit-to-standard approach allows us to implement quickly, after which we configure specific processes in SAP according to The Ocean Cleanup’s needs.”

The implementation began with financial administration and purchasing modules for five Dutch entities. The upcoming phases will include project management and logistics modules that provide insight into The Ocean Cleanup’s complex river and ocean projects. The organization expects to complete the transition to SAP S/4HANA by the end of 2025.