In the bustling world of startups having a groundbreaking idea is just the beginning. To truly thrive, emerging businesses need powerful tools that can grow alongside them, adapting to ever-changing demands.

Enter SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition: a game-changing, flexible ERP solution designed to meet the unique challenges of emerging businesses. This cloud-based platform not only streamlines operations but also empowers startups to innovate and scale without limits, offering a competitive edge in today’s fast-paced market.

Let’s explore why SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition is the ultimate ally for startups looking to gain a competitive edge and aiming to transform their visions into reality.

Scalability and Flexibility for Rapid Growth

Startups often experience rapid changes in size, scope, and strategy. SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition is built with scalability at its core. As a business evolves, SAP cloud ERP solutions allow for effortlessly adding new features, modules, and users as needed. This adaptability helps ensure that an ERP system remains aligned with business goals, enabling startups to stay agile and responsive to market changes. Whether a company is a small team today or planning to expand globally tomorrow, cloud-based ERP from SAP adapts to needs without the need for costly and disruptive upgrades.

Gero Decker, general manager of SAP Signavio and co-managing director of SAP Berlin, witnessed the impact of SAP cloud ERP on business growth: “Being a founder myself, I can tell you that SAP cloud ERP is a key catalyst for achieving hockey stick growth.”

Cost-Efficiency for Tight Budgets

One of the biggest challenges startups face is managing limited resources. SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition operates on a subscription-based model, which means lower upfront costs and predictable expenses. This financial flexibility allows startups to allocate more resources toward innovation and growth rather than being tied down by expensive IT infrastructure.

Enhanced Collaboration and Real-Time Insights

In a startup environment, every decision counts. SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition provides real-time analytics and insights, empowering a team to make informed decisions quickly. The platform fosters collaboration by connecting different departments and ensuring everyone has access to the same up-to-date information. This unified approach not only streamlines operations but also enhances productivity across the board.

Robust Security and Compliance

For startups, especially those handling sensitive data, security is paramount. SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition comes equipped with world-class security features, ensuring data is protected against threats. Additionally, SAP’s compliance tools help with navigating complex regulatory requirements, offering peace of mind when expanding into new markets.

Seamless Integration with Other Tools

Startups often rely on a variety of software tools to manage different aspects of their business. SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition integrates easily with other applications, creating a seamless ecosystem where all business processes are connected. This integration reduces manual work, eliminates silos, and allows a startup to operate more efficiently.

Support and Expertise from a Global Leader

When you choose SAP, you’re not just choosing software, you’re gaining access to decades of experience and a global network of experts. SAP provides comprehensive support to help startups navigate the complexities of ERP implementation and maximize the benefits of the platform. This partnership approach ensures that a company is never alone on its journey to success.

The SAP startup community is a unique resource that is supportive for all startups, which all share SAP S/4HANA Cloud in place as their business backbone, alongside the dedicated SAP for Startups Team.

Companies like Get Your Guide, FINN, and everdrop have leveraged extensive support and expertise from SAP to achieve strategic goals and drive their businesses forward. This is just a sample of the many successful partnerships SAP has with clients.

Bits & Pretzels in Munich, September 29-30

For startups looking to transform operations and scale business, SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition is the solution they have been waiting for. Don’t miss the opportunity to see it in action: Join us at Bits & Pretzels in Munich, September 29-30, 2024, where we’ll be showcasing the full capabilities of SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition.

Curious to find out more? here.

“Attending Bits & Pretzels 2024 offers unparalleled networking, learning, and funding opportunities, bringing together 5000+ top entrepreneurs, investors, and industry leaders,” ” shared Stefan Wagner, managing director of the SAP Labs Munich Campus. “It’s a unique chance to gain insights, build partnerships, and experience the event’s vibrant blend of business and culture during Oktoberfest in Munich.”

As president and chief product officer for Cloud ERP, I am excited to reveal how SAP cloud ERP solutions can revolutionize startup operations, slashing costs and turbocharging efficiency. Come and discover how SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Cloud Edition can drive your startup’s success. We look forward to seeing you there!

Jan Gilg is president and chief product officer of Cloud ERP at SAP.

SAP’s Future of Work Trend Report identifies three major areas relevant to work that are undergoing massive changes with the spread of artificial intelligence (AI): future of workforce, future of people practices, and future of HR.

Here Christian Schmeichel, Chief Future of Work Officer at SAP SE, discusses these transformations.

Q: The second half of 2024 has begun, and SAP is positioning itself as a business AI company, including offering an AI assistant for its business software. What do SAP employees think about the company’s increased focus on AI?

A: AI is no longer a new topic within SAP’s workforce. According to an internal study from late 2023, 80% of respondents are optimistic about AI. This has been confirmed. It’s also because we are a software company. There are certainly industries where the workforce is more cautious about AI, but this is less the case at SAP, partly because we place a high value on privacy and data protection. Our employees also see the great opportunity that SAP has with business AI to unlock the next stage of development for our portfolio. This excites many.

Q: As chief future of work officer at SAP, your team is responsible for predicting and managing changes in the workplace. How is the spread of AI currently influencing the future of employees?

A: The race for the future has intensified with AI. Our customers want to know how their workforce structure needs to evolve and what steps they need to take as a company to ensure current and future employees have the skills and qualifications needed to collaborate effectively with AI.

Global megatrends such as climate change and the entry of younger generations into the workforce are additional challenges that interest us at SAP. Like other companies, we are also exploring scenarios to determine what skills we will need in 5 to 10 years, how roles and activities will change, and what level of AI and robotics will be required in different teams. It’s not easy for anyone to imagine where we will be in five years, which keeps things exciting.

Q: What impact does the further spread of AI have on daily work?

A: Unlike other technological changes in the past, the current development in the context of AI is a fundamental shift in the interaction between humans and machines. I believe that learning to work with AI, including learning to delegate tasks, is necessary. We already see generative AI being used in all areas of work, and the topic is becoming very tangible. This ranges from research and data analysis to creating reports, presentations, and meeting minutes. It may turn out that we will take on tasks with a completely different focus in the future. For example, we may do tasks that cannot or should not be entrusted to AI because they require decisions that are currently beyond its capabilities, such as creativity, strategic thinking, or moral judgment.

Q: Can we speak of a shift away from purely role-specific work towards skill-based tasks?

A: Certainly. Depending on the role, whether it’s in development, sales, consulting, or more, there are specific, typical applications of AI. However, it also involves developing a certain mindset that involves a lot of self-reflection: what am I best at and what can I do better than AI in the future? Where can I best apply my skills? I believe this will become increasingly important. With a stronger focus on widely applicable skills rather than rigid role profiles, there is a certain fluidity in the organization. Employees will become increasingly flexible and will not need to switch roles or departments to take on tasks that match their skill set and interests. I see this as a great opportunity to increase job satisfaction.

The second major area involves the corresponding digital application skills. These include practical skills, such as giving a prompt in a way that AI can provide what is needed, as well as knowledge of ethics and compliance.

Q: Such comprehensive changes in a short period of time demand a lot from employees. How can the right people practices support them?

A: An important first step is to be aware of the changes that are happening. We live in an era where there are ever faster and more impactful technological changes happening. Employees need a toolbox to successfully face this massive change they experience every day. Topics such as mental health have been important at SAP for some time, and we see that practical techniques for stress management and adapting to changed work situations are in high demand. However, the use of AI also offers great opportunities to promote a good work-life integration.

Q: How does the application of AI today and in the future affect HR work?

A: There are already numerous exciting use cases for AI in HR that aim to make processes more efficient. For example, in recruiting, AI can generate job postings faster and create tailored interview guides. In the area of learning, there are already good opportunities, such as providing personalized information and individual training.

In addition to possible efficiency gains, AI will help the HR department become even more strategic in the future. Transactional tasks can increasingly be automated and taken on by AI, giving HR professionals more time for strategic tasks. For example, more focus could be placed on providing personal advice for employees, which is currently often hard to do given the many daily demands on HR professionals.

Q: What does the use of AI mean for the work of the People & Culture organization at SAP specifically?

A: The goal is to fully leverage the potential of AI as part of our transformation to best support our leaders and employees with their daily work. At the same time, it’s about continuously improving the efficiency within certain areas of the People & Culture organization. There is great interest among our employees in working with AI applications. To date, more than 50,000 employees have used the generative AI experience lab tool and submitted over 5 million prompts. It can now be said that AI is seen not only as a collaborative tool but also as a partner for work. Thinking “AI first” is an important aspect for continued success and to achieve our goal of becoming the No. 1 business AI company.

Furthermore, forward-looking HR work aims to create an attractive work environment where employees can do their tasks with a high level of motivation and enjoyment. In the age of AI, it will become increasingly easier to recognize in a timely manner how the workforce is doing and where there may be issues to act accordingly. Survey and feedback formats developed and controlled from the People & Culture organization should, with the help of AI, allow for results much faster in the future, helping to respond promptly to developments and needs within the workforce.

Q: How does the spread of AI influence your own work?

A: As chief future of work officer at SAP, I am excited about the opportunity to be at the forefront of the major changes that AI brings to HR work — and in the People & Culture Board area at SAP, we are actively driving the topic as a showcase for our own SAP solutions. For my role, this means actively shaping the influence of AI on the development of our workforce and the entire HR department alongside my team. This includes strategic workforce planning, modern work methods, and impulses for the further development of the HR organization to guide the future of work at SAP toward an exciting and digitalized future. AI will fundamentally change the work of employees, and the next few years will certainly be some of the most innovative in HR and the larger technology world. This is a great opportunity to significantly shape the development of the working world at SAP.

For more information:

• Future of Work Trend Report 2024
• SAP Responsible AI Handbook
• SAP Business AI

SAP Spend Connect Live returns next month to Las Vegas, and I can’t wait.

Beneath the glow of its famed neon lights, the city is set to play host to the world’s premier spend management conference, where SAP will showcase the increasingly vital role played by AI-enabled cloud solutions in shaping the flow of business-to-business commerce – and in ensuring the transparency needed for trading partners to foster collaboration, gauge sustainability, and bolster resilience throughout global supply chains.

To carry out business processes with confidence and continuity amid uncertain market conditions – from procurement and supply chain to logistics and asset management – organizations rely on an unending stream of data amassed through the routine course of operations. A firm’s growth prospects typically correlate with its access to such data, both its own and that of its trading partners. The higher the quality of that data, the more valuable the insights it contains, particularly when analyzed by emerging AI capabilities. At a time when operational data increasingly determines competitive advantage, businesses have turned to cloud-based networks to harness its potential. Operational data has thus become one of the most precious resources in any organization.

Of course, successful businesses have always set themselves apart by access to scarce resources. But did you know the same holds true for world-class cities as well?

Settled in 1905 as a rail link between Salt Lake City and Los Angeles, the sleepy stopover known as Las Vegas was an unlikely candidate to become one of the fastest growing U.S. cities a century hence. Limited in arable land, much of the region lay fallow in the early twentieth century. But with the opening in 1936 of the Hoover Dam only 50 kilometers to the southeast, a city was born and a spectacular growth story begun. The world’s largest public works project of its day, construction of the dam required 21,000 workers to excavate 4.2 million cubic meters of rock, lay 937 kilometers of pipe, and pour 3.5 million cubic meters of concrete – enough to pave a highway stretching from Lisbon to Lapland.

Completed more than two years ahead of schedule in the depths of the Great Depression, the Hoover Dam soars 221 meters over the Colorado River, irrigating 1 million hectares of farmland in California, Arizona, and Nevada. It provides drinking water for urban centers including Phoenix, Tucson, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas and produces 4 billion kilowatt-hours of sustainable hydroelectric power annually for millions of homes and businesses across the southwestern U.S.

For nearly nine decades, the Hoover Dam has served as a conduit through which water and electricity flow in abundance, giving rise to a thriving city synonymous with legendary entertainment, a resplendent skyline, and limitless opportunity. For its part, SAP Business Network too is a conduit for exponential growth. But the precious resource it distributes is operational data, and its beneficiaries are the millions of trading partners that conduct business through its enterprise applications augmented by new generative AI capabilities.

Powerful business networks, not unlike mighty hydroelectric dams, represent marvels of engineering, feats of architecture, and transformative solutions to formidable operational challenges. With this in mind, I’m hard pressed to think of a more fitting backdrop to spotlight our latest SAP Business Network innovations than the gleaming city of Las Vegas and the vivid growth story it embodies. Please join us there for SAP Spend Connect Live from October 14 to 16, where we’ll explore how customers are countering disruption, extending visibility, reducing costs, infusing sustainability, and strengthening resilience throughout their interconnected operations and those of their trading partners. We’ll devote extensive discussion to the broadening set of capabilities within SAP Business Network’s trading partner experience, aimed at optimizing value for all of the disparate parties engaged in business-to-business transactions. You can bet on an engaging, enlightening set of sessions led by peers; and I hope to see you there.

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

Young people from Manhattan to Mongolia are leveraging technology to address issues of climate change. Those most impacted are also the most incentivized to do something about it. Over 1 billion children — half of all children globally — are at an “extremely high risk” due to the impacts of climate change. Organizations that support young people, including UNICEF, are rallying their support around young innovators addressing the opportunities and the risks climate change poses for youth.

SAP is also committed to finding solutions to climate change and working across generations to make it happen. As the world’s largest provider of enterprise application software, SAP plays a complementary role to organizations like UNICEF. With a unique ability to help the world’s largest companies achieve more across their value chains and drive sustainability at their core, there is enormous potential to use SAP technology for good. Coupled with its technological expertise, there is also a long-standing commitment to accelerate solutions by connecting corporate financial and nonfinancial resources with the expertise of young innovators.

Air pollution is a complicating factor of climate change. On International Day of Clean Air for Blue Skies, the world looks at this issue that is not locked within borders, making it difficult to address. It warms the global climate, exacerbating natural disasters and risking the health of millions of underserved people living in vulnerable areas.

In Mongolia, air pollution is particularly problematic as the country deals with rapid urbanization and a harsh climate. The country has a strong reliance on burning coal because it is inexpensive and readily available. Coal represents 90% of the energy used and is a huge economic export, creating jobs and wealth in a high-need country. Even though coal was banned in Mongolia’s capital city in 2019, coal use has led to enormous levels of smog and mounting health risks for thousands of citizens. In a country known as the “Land of the Eternal Blue Sky,” local youth like Enkhuun Byambadorj are not willing to accept this reality.

Enkhuun was just 17 when she co-founded Breathe Mongolia, an organization leveraging data and technology as a differentiator in solving pollution. With family members affected, she had deeply personal reasons to create tangible action. She quickly understood the value of leveraging technology to scale solutions to the masses and built a centralized source of air quality data for Mongolian communities. “These are all tech-based tools that we use to reach more audiences and more people than we could otherwise,” she said. Today, with information available in English and Mongolian, Breathe Mongolia has become a go-to source for air quality data in the region.

With Climate Week on the horizon, taking place during the annual UN General Assembly, SAP will step forward to represent the value of working with young innovators like Enkhuun with GenU. GenU was founded in 2018 as part of UNICEF aiming to equip youth with the necessary skills and resources to participate in key conversations around pressing global issues.

When given the opportunity, youth bring an impressive passion for creating impact, coupled with a digital-first mindset, that allows decision-makers to channel new solutions. Breathe Mongolia is one of the millions of impact organizations operating globally and putting people and planet first. SAP wants to ensure its success and that of the more than 10 million social enterprises operating globally, many led by young people. Together with leading youth social impact partners like Generation Unlimited, ChangemakerXchange, and We Are Family Foundation (WAFF), SAP is hoping to close the opportunity gap and ensure that youth have the resources they need to innovate and fulfill their potential. This commitment for youth inclusion extends beyond Climate Week and UNGA. Throughout the year, SAP and its leadership team lead by example, involving expert young leaders in the company’s innovation strategy and sustainability programs, opening doors that provide them with a seat at the table.

Whether you are attending Climate Week or participating virtually from home, every sector and individual has a role to play to combat issues like climate change. To better understand the challenges that youth face and the potential to incorporate youth voices in challenging projects, leverage The Possibilists global study on young changemakers and WAFF’s global study on intergenerational collaboration.

If you are a young climate innovator based in North America or Sub-Saharan Africa, we also encourage you to check out resource support through Changemakers for the Planet.

Selina Henn is a strategy and operations associate for Corporate Social Responsibility at SAP.