Business travel costs continued to climb in the first half of this year, driven in part by rising fuel prices and broader transportation pressures. However, according to SAP Concur data, companies around the world largely maintained their travel activity despite the higher prices.

The data suggests that while organizations are becoming more thoughtful about trip economics, most are still prioritizing in-person meetings and employee travel.

Travel costs rose across most categories 

 According to SAP Concur global data from January 1–May 31, 2026, overall business travel costs increased across nearly every major category year over year. Airfare rose more than 8%, hotel rates increased nearly 6%, and car rental costs climbed roughly 5%.

At the same time, the average cost of fuel-related expenses surged. The average transaction in Concur Expense in the gas category increased approximately 22% globally, rising from $50 in February to $61 in April with similar spikes seen in countries around the world. 

Transportation patterns shifted in select segments

Those increases are already influencing some travel decisions. While overall air and hotel booking volumes remained relatively flat year over year, there have been some shifts in how employees travel once they arrive at their destinations, as car rental bookings declined roughly 4% globally. Additionally, rail bookings increased approximately 4%, suggesting some organizations may be looking for more cost-effective or efficient transportation alternatives as fuel prices rise.

Premium travel demand remained strong

Even with costs rising, companies did not significantly reduce premium travel spending. Premium cabin bookings—including business and first class—increased about 9% year over year. By comparison, economy bookings remained flat, while premium economy bookings declined approximately 15%.

Companies are balancing traveler experience alongside budget pressures. For longer flights and international trips in particular, some organizations still view premium travel as a worthwhile investment.

What to watch in the second half of 2026

There are early signs that rising costs and operational disruptions could begin affecting demand, with significantly higher average airfares and reduced airline capacity in some parts of the world. The coming months will help determine whether these disruptions create a short-term adjustment or shape a broader shift in business travel behavior. For now, the data suggests companies are willing to absorb higher travel costs rather than scale back travel plans.

Research shows that business travel remains closely tied to professional opportunity and relationship building. In a recent survey conducted in the U.S. on behalf of SAP Concur, 90% of frequent business travelers say traveling for work has positively impacted their careers, underscoring the employee experience and retention benefits of continuing to prioritize business travel even as costs rise.

As organizations navigate higher travel costs in 2026, the data suggests many still view business travel as a worthwhile investment in relationships, employee development, and long-term growth.

Charlie Sultan is president of Concur Travel at SAP.

Methodology: SAP Concur analyzed expense transactions tagged as “gas” in Concur Expense between January 1, 2026, through May 31, 2026, and equivalent time periods from 2025. SAP Concur analyzed air, rail, hotel, and car bookings in Concur Travel for trips booked and undertaken between January 1, 2026 and May 31, 2026 and the equivalent time period in 2025.

SAP SuccessFactors has earned 19 Top Rated awards from TrustRadius this year, marking a significant milestone driven entirely by customer feedback.

As one of the industry’s most trusted independent peer review platforms, TrustRadius is known for its rigorous verification process and commitment to unbiased, customer‑led insights. These awards are based on real user experiences, making them especially meaningful.

This recognition reinforces a clear message: organizations are turning to SAP SuccessFactors solutions not just to manage HR but to modernize it. As companies move towards more autonomous, AI-driven ways of working, they need HCM solutions that bring together data, insights, and action. That’s exactly what the SAP SuccessFactors portfolio can deliver.

Momentum across the portfolio

This year’s results highlight strong and growing momentum.

SAP SuccessFactors increased from 12 Top Rated awards in 2025 to 19 in 2026, reflecting deeper customer satisfaction across the HCM landscape.

Recognized categories include:

• HR Management
• Workforce Analytics
• Talent Management
• Compensation Management
• Workforce Management
• Applicant Tracking
• Talent Intelligence
• Corporate Learning Management
• Payroll
• International Payroll
• Pay Equity
• Recruiting Automation
• Employee Performance Management
• HR Compliance
• HR Service Delivery
• Employee Onboarding
• Succession Planning
• Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI)

This breadth reflects the strength of SAP SuccessFactors solutions as a unified suite—connecting people, processes, and data across the workforce. SAP SuccessFactors solutions can provide the foundation to turn those connections into real-time insight and action.

What our customers are saying

Across thousands of verified reviews, customers consistently point to one thing: impact. From operational efficiency to better decision-making and improved employee experiences, SAP SuccessFactors solutions are helping organizations move faster and work smarter.

• “With SAP SuccessFactors HCM AI, we get helpful, actionable insights to make the best decisions. For instance, the insights we gain help us streamline HR operations, especially when it comes to managing our payroll.” — HR Assistant, RED 360 – Agence de communication Digitale (Marketing & Advertising, 51–200 employees)

• “SAP SuccessFactors is our core platform and supports our finance and HR processes. We use every module for recruiting, compensation, and learning. It supports our HR transformation and lays the foundation for our data.” — Senior Program Manager, Amtrak

• “SAP SuccessFactors HCM stands out among other human capital management solutions due to its comprehensive suite of cloud‑based tools, strong global compliance capabilities, and seamless integration with other SAP systems.” — SAP SuccessFactors Administrator, Sura Asset Management

• “For enhancing employee experience, AI offers personalized recommendations for their learning and development, which increases their productivity and engagement.” — Senior HR Manager, ACLIMAR (201–500 employees)

• “SAP SuccessFactors HCM is considered a ‘best of breed’ for a reason. The fact that it does allow for in‑depth customization, and its ability to be tailored not only to individual business needs, but also it allows for best practice follow‑up while ensuring organizations remain compliant with several legal requirements.” — Global HRIS Lead, AB Agri Ltd

• “We leverage [SAP SuccessFactors] Employee Central Payroll (ECP) for our payroll engine and for our payroll calculations. Having ECP makes everyone’s life easier… the payroll control center will simulate the payroll before you run the actual payroll. That gives you a lot of analytics and KPIs to analyze results or potential issues well in advance.” — Team Lead for SAP SuccessFactors and Payroll, Ryanair

• “In our organization, we mainly use Joule in SAP SuccessFactors to automate and complete tasks through natural conversation, which eliminates manual steps. [It] plays a big role in eliminating the constant back and forth and guesswork involved in finding accurate information, as well as completing routine tasks, for example, workforce insights, budget and planning, document retrieval, etc. Additionally, it makes navigating [SAP SuccessFactors] seamless.” — Stage Manager, Le TNT

Looking ahead

We’re incredibly grateful to the customers that shared their experiences on TrustRadius with insights that continue to guide our innovation.

Building on the introduction of Autonomous HCM at SAP Sapphire, our focus is clear: helping HR move beyond managing processes to orchestrating work. By bringing together AI, data, and workflows, SAP SuccessFactors solutions enable organizations to operate with greater speed, clarity, and confidence, so they can not only adapt to change but actively shape what comes next.

Learn more about the impact customers are seeing with SAP SuccessFactors solutions.

Lara Albert is chief marketing officer for SAP SuccessFactors.

“Why do oil and gas remain important today?” asked Graham Young, VP EMS Operation at Harbour Energy, at the recent TAC Insights conference for SAP for Energy and Utilities in Toulouse.

“The global energy demand won’t stop growing,” he explained. “As renewables only provide a small share of the energy we currently use, we’ll still need oil and gas that are safely produced as we transition to a lower carbon world.”

Crude oil still remains indispensable where alternatives are limited, particularly in heavy transport and the chemicals industry, and natural gas plays a key role in the low-carbon transition, both as an energy source and in large-scale hydrogen production.

A unique model

What’s interesting about Harbour Energy, one of the world’s largest and most geographically diverse independent oil and gas companies, isn’t just that it’s big. What’s interesting is how it got big and how it operates differently from traditional energy companies. The company was founded in 2014 by private equity firm EIG Global Energy Partners with a goal to build a global, independent company by acquisition.

“We’re basically trying to solve a very hard problem. How do we scale like a major, but stay agile like a startup?” Young said during his presentation about Harbour’s rapid growth journey. He explained that in a company that grows through acquisitions and runs multiple ERP systems, the role of technology is less about “one system” and more about connecting everything, standardizing insight, and accelerating change.

Masters of integration

Most oil and gas giants grew over decades. Harbour did it in about 10 years by pursuing an aggressive strategy of mergers and acquisitions, buying assets such as oil fields from industry giants like Shell. The company also scaled rapidly across 11 countries giving it a broad geographical reach. Crucially, Harbour Energy was often able to integrate acquisitions within a year, demonstrating a rare combination of speed and integration.

“A lot of companies struggle after acquisitions,” Young said. “Systems break, processes clash, value gets lost. At Harbour, we focus on quickly stabilizing new assets, extracting synergies early, and reducing operating costs even while growing.”

Young’s team took a different approach to technology. While most companies push for one massive ERP system, Harbour doesn’t blindly take that path. It runs multiple ERP systems when it makes sense, focuses on fit-for-purpose architecture, and uses tools to connect processes rather than force everything into one box. Such flexibility is a big advantage for a company that keeps acquiring new businesses.

The digital backbone

Because Harbour Energy operates multiple ERP systems rather than a single monolithic platform, complexity is unavoidable. SAP’s integrated tool chain, particularly SAP LeanIX solutions and the SAP Signavio portfolio, connects this landscape by aligning processes, linking capabilities to systems, and providing a unified view of ‘what’s where,’ ultimately creating visibility across an otherwise fragmented environment.

“Before we implemented the SAP tool chain, processes were hidden in Excel and PDFs. It was all part of the local knowledge we acquired,” Young said. “We had no clear view of duplication or inefficiencies. For example, we found that we had dozens of HR systems, which we were able to reduce by half.  We were able to consolidate 33 different ways to do travel expenses into just one.”

One major impact is speed. Whereas traditional transformation planning took up to 24 months, now, with the tool chain and process modeling, key design cycles can sometimes be achieved in four to six weeks. This is enabled by standard process templates and automated modelling for faster validation cycles leading to faster execution of integration and transformation programs.

In addition, tools like the SAP Test Automation solution by Tricentis and SAP Cloud ALM for application lifecycle management help ensure that releases are safer and fewer operational surprises occur during go-lives, which is critical in an industry where downtime is expensive.

By connecting systems and processes, the tool chain enables cost transparency across business units and investment prioritization based on real data. This directly supports financial discipline and shareholder value creation

For a company built on acquisitions, probably the biggest value driver is that the tool chain helps rapidly map the systems of acquired companies and compare them against Harbour’s core model identifying what to keep, retire, or migrate. This is why Harbour can integrate acquisitions quickly instead of getting stuck in years of IT consolidation.

Structure before automation

Only when processes are structured and visible can they be used for automation, which is why these tools all play a crucial role in enabling AI adoption. Standardized workflows and process maps are input for AI tools, and digital adoption platforms guide users through systems.

The three key engines provided by the SAP tool chain include:

• Transparency engine makes the business visible end-to-end
• Standardization engine aligns processes, systems, and capabilities globally
• Acceleration engine speeds up M&A integration and transformation delivery

Together with SAP Analytics Cloud for global forecasting and planning, these tools are at the heart of the company’s successful business transformation.

Young listed the three strategic levers keeping the company strong, resilient, and ambitious. The first is maintaining strict financial discipline, followed by using data driven insights that ensure the company remains competitive, and, last but not least, equipping the business teams with advanced capabilities ensures resilience.

“The SAP tool chain allows us to grow aggressively through acquisitions without collapsing under complexity,” Young concluded. “It’s essentially the difference between chaotic expansion and controlled, scalable growth.”

Check out the SAP integrated tool chain and its core capabilities here.

WALLDORF — SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) today announced authorization to use from the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) to process information classified as “VS-NfD” (“Restricted – For Official Use Only”) on SAP Cloud Infrastructure in Walldorf/St. Leon-Rot. This strengthens SAP’s sovereign cloud portfolio for public sector organizations and regulated industries and enables security-critical SAP and customer applications to run in the cloud.

SAP is therefore one of only a few providers in Germany that will be offering a cloud environment whose key security components have received corresponding authorization to use from the BSI – and currently the only provider whose platform will be able to support both SAP applications and customer-specific applications in a high-performance, VS-NfD-compliant environment in the near future.

The authorization to use applies to workloads running on SAP Cloud Infrastructure in SAP’s own data centers in the Walldorf/St. Leon-Rot region, which are operated exclusively by security-cleared personnel. The authorization to use represents an important milestone and forms the basis for the subsequent full BSI approval SAP is working toward, including the recertification of SAP Cloud Infrastructure according to ISO 27001 based on the German IT-Grundschutz framework.

The evaluation process was completed in approximately 12 months and was characterized by close and constructive cooperation between the BSI and SAP — a sign of the growing collaboration between public authorities and industry in the field of IT security.

SAP Cloud Infrastructure: A Fully Sovereign Cloud Infrastructure from Germany

SAP Cloud Infrastructure is an Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) platform fully developed and operated by SAP, based on open-source technologies.

It is designed to provide customers with digital sovereignty across four dimensions: data sovereignty, operational sovereignty, technical sovereignty and legal sovereignty.

The foundation is a fully sovereign cloud region of SAP Cloud Infrastructure, comprising three independent availability zones in physically separated data centers in Walldorf/St. Leon-Rot. This sovereign cloud platform is further reinforced by a robust security and compliance foundation, demonstrated through certifications including ISO/IEC 27001 based on IT-Grundschutz for the data centers, EN 50600/ISO/IEC 22237, TSI Level 3+ and C5 Type II. Additionally, SAP Cloud Infrastructure has conducted a self-assessment against the BSI’s C3A (Criteria enabling Cloud Computing Autonomy) catalog, confirming compliance with all digital sovereignty requirements.

The VS-NfD authorization to use adds an important building block for security-critical use cases with the highest requirements.

As a deployment option within SAP Sovereign Cloud, SAP Cloud Infrastructure is an integral part of SAP’s portfolio for digital sovereignty. Together with the SAP Sovereign Cloud On-Site offering and Delos Cloud, SAP provides customers with demanding regulatory requirements the freedom of choice, control, and robust security they need.

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Media Contact:
Dana Roesiger, dana.roesiger@sap.com, +49 16090820259, CET
SAP Press Room; press@sap.com

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 2025 Annual Report on Form 20-F.
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Put simply, talent acquisition at SAP is complex. Hiring 20,000-25,000 people annually across 160 countries creates a complicated landscape that requires streamlined workflows, clear communication, and scalability.

“Last year, we were in the process of planning the optimization of our talent discovery tech stack and then something happened,” Eric Goldstein, global head of Talent Discovery for SAP, said. “We acquired SmartRecruiters in September, so we had to pivot in an agile way.”

SmartRecruiters for SAP SuccessFactors enables enterprises to manage the entire hiring lifecycle, from sourcing to onboarding, with AI-enabled recruiting capabilities that can result in faster time-to-hire, improved candidate experiences, and deeper analytics for workforce planning.

For SAP, this means adding much-needed rigor and precision to its global talent acquisition operations. This will not only elevate the quality of hires but also the candidate experience, which Goldstein identified as the “biggest game changer.”

Building a more intelligent hiring process

SmartRecruiters for SAP SuccessFactors helps optimize processes, increasing transparency and personalization. This means improved experiences and processes for candidates, hiring managers, and recruiters. “We have been through a time where we focused solely on the recruiter experience. Then it was fashionable to focus only on the candidates. Now we really see that with SmartRecruiters, it really is an enhanced experience for all stakeholders that are involved in the recruiting process,” Ilka Sagner-David, global head of Talent Discovery Solutions and Innovations at SAP, said.

Candidate perspective

Seventy percent of candidates that apply for jobs are mindful to take their valuable time to do so, Goldstein shared, reiterating that it is important for companies to match that commitment when shaping and delivering the candidate experience. With SmartRecruiters for SAP SuccessFactors as the foundation, it becomes possible for every pre-qualified applicant to interview, receive personalized and constructive feedback post-interview, and maintain 24×7 interaction with agentic AI built into SmartRecruiters.

“In our opinion, only responding with polite, automated rejection notes is not enough. [Candidates] need to be provided with some constructive, actionable feedback—and that’s what we [at SAP] are going to be able to do,” Goldstein said.

Hiring manager perspective

SmartRecruiters for SAP SuccessFactors can give hiring managers a more precise and consistent way to identify strong candidates, helping to reduce time-to-hire while improving hiring quality. AI-prompted interview questions focused on skills can support more relevant and structured conversations while greater transparency across interview panelists can create better alignment throughout the evaluation process. In addition, AI-supported feedback collection can make it easier for interviewers at SAP to capture timely, consistent insights, enabling its hiring teams to make more informed decisions with greater confidence. 

Recruiter perspective

Recruiters are often bogged down by manual tasks, such as outreach, prospect identification, and candidate screening, making it nearly impossible for them to step into the role of a trusted advisor. With SmartRecruiters for SAP SuccessFactors, recruiters can experience automated internal and external prospect identification, personalized outreach and prioritization of candidates, and, therefore, the ability to focus on higher value-add advisory and relationship management.

“It’s going to allow the recruiters to focus on relationship management with candidates and hiring managers, really challenging the feedback of how well the interview panel measures skills proficiency,” Goldstein said.

Bringing AI into the candidate journey

A key to the successful delivery of these benefits is SmartRecruiters Winston for SAP SuccessFactors, an AI-driven, candidate-facing agentic experience. At SAP Sapphire Orlando, Karl Baert, global head of People Solutions for SAP, demonstrated how Winston can facilitate the application experience for candidates.

In the demo, he acted as a candidate applying for an open position at SAP, showing how through a natural language conversation with Winston, he completed his application by uploading his CV and verifying some personal details with Winston. “All that information is very, very quickly brought together so with just a few questions my application is done,” Baert said, adding that “there’s also a few checks happening along the way because we want to make sure the data we are collecting is the right quality.”

Winston also collects feedback from the applicant. “Measuring the quality of your agent and what’s happening with it is important. It’s something that really needs to be actively monitored just to ensure that the information provided by the agent is accurate,” Baert said.

“The implementation of SmartRecruiters is the foundation for infusing AI into our processes,” Sagner-David said. But, she added, “we shouldn’t just plan to transfer everything tomorrow, but ensure we’re liberating AI when it makes sense.”

The next step

Currently, SmartRecruiters for SAP SuccessFactors is being implemented into SAP’s HR systems for two phases of user acceptance testing, with the global go-live expected in September.

SAP bringing SmartRecruiters for SAP SuccessFactors to life across its own organization is more than a technology rollout, it’s a glimpse into the future of hiring at scale: more intelligent, more human, and more connected. By combining AI, better experiences, and real-word enterprise rigor, SAP is not only transforming how it hires but also helping to define what modern hiring can look like for companies everywhere.

Learn more about SmartRecruiters for SAP SuccessFactors.

A finance leader looks at an overdue invoice. The ERP confirms the fact: Payment is late, the supplier is on file, the contract is active.

What it cannot say is why this supplier keeps slipping, what resolved a similar dispute last time, or that the same supplier has a delayed shipment in logistics and a renegotiated contract in procurement at the same moment.

The reasoning behind enterprise decisions has stayed locked in human judgment, scattered across systems.

For 50 years, enterprise software has been an excellent system of record. Closing the reasoning gap on top of it is what enterprise AI was always meant to do.

From AI-first to AI-native

The first wave, the AI-first approach, added intelligence inside existing applications. A feature can summarize an invoice or suggest a journal entry, but it lives within one application and cannot see across the landscape. Three barriers keep it confined: It lacks business and process context, it sits on disconnected systems without a shared data model, and it lacks the governance to be accountable at scale.

Meanwhile, the pace of change is unforgiving. Agentic systems, new interaction models, and new ways of grounding AI in business data are arriving faster than most architectures can absorb. As SAP CEO Christian Klein noted this year at SAP Sapphire, 80% accuracy may suffice for consumer AI; it is nowhere near enough for the world’s most business-critical processes. Bolting more intelligence onto isolated applications will not close that gap. It only multiplies the silos.

So what does it actually take to move beyond isolated AI features and build an enterprise that reasons, learns, and acts as one, without sacrificing the trust, governance, and reliability the business depends on? It is the question CIOs, CTOs, and enterprise architects are working through right now.

The foundation behind the Autonomous Enterprise

It takes a new foundation, and that is exactly what SAP’s AI-Native North Star Architecture provides.

This is not a white paper that sits on a shelf; it is the technology foundation SAP is actively building to bring the Autonomous Enterprise to life: a business where agents, orchestration, and data work in one continuous loop to turn intent into trusted outcomes.

The shift it enables is from AI-first to AI-native, where software operates across the landscape as a system of context: an intelligence layer connecting data, process knowledge, decision history, and semantics. Agents reason over the whole picture, not fragments. Every interaction feeds intelligence. Every correction becomes a learning signal. Value shifts from software as a service to outcome as a service.

AI-native paves the way for the Autonomous Enterprise: one system of context that understands disputes in service, delays in logistics, and contract changes in procurement all at once, and can act on them with full governance and accountability.

Philipp Herzig, CTO and Member of the Extended Board, SAP SE

Crucially, AI-native does not replace what already works. It pairs two complementary paths. The deterministic path keeps the predictable, rule-based execution that compliance depends on. The probabilistic, AI-native path adds reasoning that learns from data and experience. One is reliable but rigid. The other is powerful, but without context and control, often confidently wrong. Context engineering, guardrails, and observability bind the two, turning raw capability into reasoning the enterprise can trust.

The architecture delivers this through four reimagined layers that together form a cognitive core:

• The user experience layer shifts interaction from navigating apps to stating intent, with Joule as the central engagement point.
• The process layer turns applications into capability providers that expose stable APIs, events, and data for agents to orchestrate.
• The foundation layer is where data and AI come together as the intelligent core: orchestration, reasoning, and model services on one side; SAP Business Data Cloud and the SAP Knowledge Graph on the other, with SAP-trained models, including SAP-RPT-1 for structured business data, sitting alongside leading third-party models in one governed generative AI hub.
• The platform layer provides the runtime, governance, and harness that turn stateless models into reliable enterprise agents.

It defines the cornerstone architectural building blocks for agentic systems across experience, process, data, and platform, turning SAP’s unique business context into a living system of intelligence

What does this look like in practice? A finance analyst asks Joule to resolve high-value disputes likely to delay payment. Joule does not act alone. It coordinates AI assistants, which in turn direct specialist AI agents through agentic orchestration: the assistant decomposes the goal, delegates to a finance agent and a service agent, and reconciles their results. People set direction; assistants coordinate; agents execute. Those agents draw on the right information through context engineering, find the correct data through semantic grounding in SAP Knowledge Graph, and act within governed boundaries, routing only exceptions to a human. Each resolution becomes a decision trace that makes the next one smarter.

This is not theoretical. During the 2026 keynote at SAP Sapphire, SAP COO Sebastian Steinhaeuser pointed to life sciences customer Takeda, which is achieving up to 10% productivity gains, up to 25% reduction in revenue loss from stock-outs, and up to five percent reduction in safety stock through autonomous regulated manufacturing. That is what AI-native looks like at work.

Frontier models are available to everyone. Business context is not. Each resolved dispute, each corrected decision, each completed process adds to it, compounding with every interaction.

Trust is engineered in, not bolted on. A set of cross-cutting, SAP-managed qualities holds the layers together: integration, identity, security, observability, and extensibility, with resilience, compliance, and sustainability handled by the platform.

Autonomy only creates value when it is governed, so agents become first-class principals with their own agent identity, scoped to a bounded subset of permissions and audited like any enterprise actor. Harness engineering wraps each model with the sandboxing, memory, and guardrails that make it dependable.

As the paper puts it, the model reasons but the harness governs, and it is the harness, not the model, that determines the ceiling. Open standards such as the Model Context Protocol and Agent2Agent protocol let agents interoperate across the enterprise, while sovereign cloud options keep data residency and compliance built in.

This direction is being shaped with the customer community, not handed down to it: the architecture carries forewords from the leaders of the German-Speaking SAP User Group (DSAG) and Americas’ SAP Users’ Group (ASUG) alongside SAP’s own.

The North Star is a living document. Published openly on SAP Architecture Center, it will keep evolving as the technology and the agentic ecosystem advance, and as customer feedback shapes the design. If you build with SAP or build on SAP, this is your invitation: Read the architecture, push back where it should be sharper, and contribute. The same invitation extends to the wider SAP Architecture Center site, where SAP’s reference architectures are being built openly with the community. 

Read the AI-Native North Star Architecture and open the full paper on SAP Architecture Center or download it as PDF.

Beyond the architecture itself is a single commitment: building systems that learn rather than dictate. For SAP customers, 50 years of process knowledge, governed data, and trusted decision frameworks compound into a new kind of enterprise intelligence that is reliable, transparent, and deeply human.

The Autonomous Enterprise will not arrive as a single product launch. It will be built layer by layer, decision by decision, on the foundation described here, one grounded interaction at a time.

Anirban Majumdar is head of the Office of the CTO at SAP.
PVN PavanKumar is vice president of the Office of the CTO at SAP.