NEWS 23 - The World Management

17 October

Intelligent Applications: The Next Step in Data-Driven Decision-Making

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During his keynote at last week’s SAP Connect event, Muhammad Alam, member of the Executive Board of SAP SE, SAP Product & Engineering, announced an expanded set of SAP Business Data Cloud Intelligent Applications.

An intelligent application includes three distinct layers: data products, domain content, and applications. When all these components come together, intelligent applications become a suite of adaptive, AI-powered applications that can learn from data, understand business context, and act on behalf of a user. They are built to complement SAP’s transactional applications and sit on top of SAP Business Data Cloud.

But what makes these applications different from existing analytics solutions? “Traditional reporting and analytics is focused on producing insights and reviewing past performance,” said Brian Raver, vice president, SAP Business Data Cloud Product Marketing. “With intelligent applications, we go a step further. We provide out-of-the-box data products, model them together for actionable insights, and close the loop by allowing the intelligent applications to continuously learn and adapt based on that data.”

Three layers of an intelligent application

Data products

These are ready-to-use, curated data sets that are delivered for analytics, AI, machine learning, and operational use cases and provide insights related to a specific business topic or challenge. “A data product consists of a refined data set, metadata describing the data set, and an access port or application programming interface (API), allowing to exchange data with third-party applications,” Raver explained. Metadata provides detailed descriptions of the data set, including business definitions and explanations of each field, ensuring that users understand the context and meaning of the data they are working with. Available data products are published in a catalog for developers and data professionals for easy discovery and direct access to various use cases from analytics to application development.

Domain content

Data products are then combined into SAP Datasphere semantic models that power SAP Analytics Cloud stories and planning models. These out-of-the-box, interactive dashboards enable customers to analyze performance, monitor key metrics, and plan for high-value business scenarios.

What is an SAP Analytics Cloud story?

An SAP Analytics Cloud story is an interactive dashboard or report that allows a user to visualize, analyze, and share data insights in a highly flexible, presentation-style format. A story can combine charts, tables, text, images, and other visual elements. This helps to explore and understand data from different perspectives.

Applications

Pro-code applications transform the domain content and data products into recommended actions that are directly connected to SAP transactional systems. Over time, they continuously learn and adapt based on business outcomes. The future vision is for these applications to go beyond recommendations and empower AI agents to act on their own. “Intelligent applications encapsulate end-to-end business processes, while AI agents act as users within these processes,” Raver explained. “AI agents can interact with intelligent applications to perform tasks typically done by human users.”

Benefits for customers

An important benefit for customers is that intelligent applications extend the value of existing investments in SAP Business Suite. According to Raver, a key advantage lies in the intelligent applications’ deep connection with SAP’s transactional systems. “These applications provide out-of-the-box data assets that not only fuel intelligent applications but are also accessible for developers and data professionals to use in their own analysis,” Raver explained. This built-in access to curated, high-quality data allows customers to unlock insights and drive value faster, without requiring extensive data engineering resources.

Looking ahead, as AI capabilities continue to mature, these intelligent applications are expected to evolve from providing recommendations to taking actions autonomously. “In the future, these applications could act on their own, learning from user behavior to automate repetitive tasks, free up time for more strategic work, and reduce the need for manual intervention,” Raver said.

By combining trusted SAP data, intelligent automation, and emerging AI agents, the intelligent applications are helping to close the loop between insight and action.

What sets SAP apart

Unlike other vendors that need to reverse-engineer data, SAP provides ready-to-use data products, helping to save customers significant time and effort. “This seamless integration and the ability to deliver immediate value set SAP apart in the competitive data market,” Raver said.

In addition to the SAP-delivered data products, SAP also enables bi-directional zero-copy sharing of semantically rich data products between SAP Business Data Cloud and other partner data platforms, starting with the already available Databricks Data Intelligence Platform. This capability, called SAP Business Data Cloud Connect, enables seamless access to data where it resides, helping to eliminate costly data preparation and loss of semantics and business context. As a next step, SAP Business Data Cloud Connect for Google BigQuery is planned to be generally available in the first half of 2026. Additional partnerships with key players in the data platform market are expected to follow.

With the latest announcements, SAP now offers three intelligent applications—Finance Intelligence, People Intelligence, and Cloud ERP Intelligence Private—and another three in restricted public preview—Spend Intelligence, Supply Chain Intelligence, and Revenue Intelligence. “Intelligent applications powered by curated data products will transform how businesses operate by making data-driven decisions faster and more efficiently. As the market continues to evolve, these apps will play a crucial role in helping companies stay ahead of the curve,” Raver said.

17 October

BUSINESS NEWS

Orchestrating Supply Chains Through Cloud-Based Business Networks and Generative and Agentic AI Solutions

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At a time when global supply chains are enduring acute strain from seesawing tariff rates, escalating military conflict, and proliferating compliance requirements, enterprises large and small are turning increasingly to cloud-based business networks and emerging AI solutions to provide actionable insights, operational resilience, and, above all, confidence despite volatile times.

Visibility has always been essential for navigating uncertainty in business-to-business commerce. Yet it is also insufficient. After all, what good is merely seeing across the various tiers of the supply chain if a business lacks the ability to identify available alternatives, shift course immediately, and counter disruption before it impinges on the balance sheet?

At Supply Chain Connect at SAP Connect Las Vegas, our customers and partners had an extraordinary opportunity to explore our latest SAP Business Network innovations—and the generative and agentic AI solutions that are rapidly reshaping enterprises’ ability to extend N-tier visibility and take the decisive actions necessary to preserve the smooth flow of operations from the dual threats of volatility and risk.

To strengthen every link in the supply chain, businesses need to connect their mission-critical operational processes with those of their trading partners. Doing so enables them to achieve transparency, foster collaboration, drive efficiency, and maximize customer satisfaction. Through the vast troves of operational data that millions of trading partners accumulate in the routine course of day-to-day operations, SAP Business Network—the world’s largest business-to-business platform—is uniquely positioned to help business leaders orchestrate their supply chains for success, no matter the circumstances.

Today, SAP helps our customers to accomplish these objectives with a suite of AI-infused supply chain management applications—all of them integrated with ERP and adjacent line-of-business applications to connect seamlessly with trading partners. By applying advanced analytics, operational insights, predictive signals, and recommended actions derived from both internal and external data sources, SAP Business Network has set in motion an increasingly autonomous supply chain.

The innovations underlying it, meanwhile, are accelerating.

To further distinguish SAP as the leader in enabling supply chain orchestration, I am extremely excited that in the first half of 2026 we will deliver a new product to help provide enterprises with capabilities for issue detection, insight, and action across their supply chains. Aptly called SAP Supply Chain Orchestration, this new solution will help deliver N-tier insights and transform external and internal signals across supply chains into prioritized actions. These capabilities will rest on the SAP Business Network foundation, drawing upon master data as well as native AI solutions to help orchestrate workflows and dramatically expand visibility across every tier of the supply chain.

SAP Supply Chain Orchestration can equip our customers with the tools and inference-driven insights they need to help mitigate multi-tier risk, enhance compliance, and bolster decision-support. The goal is to head off disruption before it arises—and to offer our customers one of the most elusive yet priceless advantages that anybody can have in these turbulent times: peace of mind.

That’s why our customers entrust so many of their core operational processes to SAP Business Network in the first place: for peace of mind, for resilience, for enduring value. Our strategy to deepen that value takes root in our ongoing transition to SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP), working to provide faster speeds, easier integration, faster collaboration, and continuous innovation on a grand scale, across industries. Our vision takes shape through intelligent applications, network convergence, and unmatched extensibility. Our priority to accelerate the value we make available to suppliers on the network finds example through our innovations that help simplify e-invoicing, expand automation, and facilitate discoverability by new potential trading partners. All these strategic elements take center stage in our product strategy, each of them strengthened by the unmatched generative and agentic AI capabilities that customers and partners have come to rely on from SAP in our quest to make the world run better and improve people’s lives.

Couldn’t join us in Las Vegas? Check out the Supply Chain Connect at SAP Connect Virtual keynote session, “Supply Chain Orchestration – Run Supply Chains That Think, Connect, and Adapt,” presented by Dominik Metzger, president and chief product officer, SAP Supply Chain Management.

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

17 October

BUSINESS NEWS

SAP LeanIX Marks Fifth Consecutive Year as a Leader in Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for EA Tools

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SAP LeanIX has once again been recognized as a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Architecture Tools, marking its fifth consecutive year of this acknowledgment.

The Gartner Magic Quadrant research methodology says that “Leaders execute well against their current vision and are well positioned for tomorrow.”

In this year’s Magic Quadrant, SAP LeanIX was positioned furthest and highest in both Completeness of Vision and Ability to Execute, which also marks the first time an SAP solution has been positioned in this way.

We believe this result reflects the unique strength of SAP LeanIX solutions in helping enterprises:

Make confident, data-driven technology investment decisions
Drive transformation initiatives that deliver measurable business impact
Accelerate AI innovation while ensuring responsible governance

“Our goal is to empower our customers to build transformation as an ongoing capability, rather than a one-off project,” Dee Houchen, chief marketing officer at SAP Signavio, said. “As transformation never ends, our solutions help companies secure a full picture of the applications they’re running and, more importantly, the capabilities they offer. This means understanding exactly how those applications can be best deployed to maximize efficiency and productivity. Enterprise architecture planning is at the heart of this approach, and we believe being recognized as a Leader for the fifth consecutive year by Gartner reaffirms our unwavering commitment to value realization for our customers.”

In today’s dynamic business landscape, enterprise architecture planning and implementation are vital for organizational transparency, smarter decision-making, and business growth, and SAP LeanIX maintains an ongoing dedication to innovation and customer satisfaction in this field, as part of SAP’s integrated business transformation toolchain.

In our opinion, this repeated recognition of SAP LeanIX solutions provides useful context regarding the state of the enterprise architecture market. As a vendor, SAP LeanIX empowers organizations to make informed decisions about technology investments, map and support large-scale business transformation, and implement sound AI governance to ignite AI innovation across the enterprise.

The Gartner Magic Quadrant equips businesses with valuable insights to make informed decisions. Get a complimentary copy of the latest Gartner Magic Quadrant, recognizing SAP LeanIX solutions, here.

Lucas de Boer is Global Marketing program lead for SAP Signavio.

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner and Magic Quadrant is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and are used herein with permission. All rights reserved.

16 October

BUSINESS NEWS

The Management Myth: Why Your Best Talent Needs Different Learning Paths

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Management has long been treated as the default marker of professional success. Moving into leadership is often seen as a sign of growth and the next logical step for high performers. But for many, this assumption that career progression must lead to people management can leave talented individual contributors feeling misaligned with their passions and strengths.

Take this common pattern: a brilliant software engineer gets promoted to team lead, only to find the new role demands completely different skills. Technical expertise doesn’t always translate into leadership success. Managing people requires mentoring, conflict resolution, and strategic decision-making—skills that aren’t always developed in technical roles.

When companies push top performers into management without proper support or alternatives, they risk losing great individual performers, like engineers or developers, and gaining ineffective managers. As a result, some employees may feel disconnected from the work they love, and stepping back can feel like failure rather than a strategic career choice.

This default move to management can often be a symptom of an organization’s professional learning gaps, where high-performing individual contributors can plateau because structured learning paths for deepening expertise are missing. Plus, it can often be a moment where professional learning is missing and newly minted managers aren’t provided with the proper management training, which sets both individuals and teams up for struggle. Professional learning plays a critical role in this juncture of individuals’ careers, and being able to provide the appropriate learning in this moment is crucial.

The case for dual career paths

Not everyone is cut out for—or interested in—management. A 2024 survey by CoderPad found that 36% of tech workers have no interest in taking on managerial responsibilities. Some professionals thrive as individual contributors, while others excel as people managers, technical leads, or mentors. Recognizing this, forward-thinking companies offer a genuine choice: pursue a management career or deepen expertise as a specialist. This dual-ladder system allows growth that aligns with their strengths, interests, and motivation.

Retaining talent by valuing expertise

Providing both management and expert career paths does more than boost job satisfaction; it helps retain top talent. When employees see a future that matches their interests, they are more likely to stay, contribute at a higher level, and innovate. It also fosters a culture of continuous learning, where growth isn’t reserved for those who manage others.

Organizations don’t just need boardroom executives or “managers of managers”; they need top performers at every level. That means intentionally creating and rewarding non‑managerial opportunities—with clear progression, pay parity, and visibility.

Supporting employees in finding their path

Effective support for career choice goes beyond general promises of opportunity and structures on paper. Organizations need a clear distinction between management and expert tracks, defined criteria for progression, protected time for learning, and leaders equipped to coach learning and development across both tracks. It also calls for clarity on which competencies are evolving in both leadership and expert roles, ensuring development targets skills, not titles.

Turning that clarity into impact requires a learning infrastructure: curated curricula, mentoring, communities of practice, and visible milestones that normalize expert development. In the SAP context, SAP Learning Journeys and skill-validation programs provide organized resources that can support building and maintaining skills over time, enabling development at different depths and paces, independent of title changes. SAP Certifications serve as neutral milestones that can validate skills, increase transparency, and make expert progression comparable to managerial advancement.

15 October

BUSINESS NEWS

AI Is the Growth Engine Leaders Are Betting On

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Growth, simplification, and artificial intelligence (AI) are no longer optional. That is the unmistakable signal from SAP’s Global Business Priorities Study, which surveyed nearly 12,000 executives across 20 markets and 31 industries. The results capture both urgency and possibility.

Across the world, 95 percent of companies say growth is a priority for the year ahead. Their top focus areas—including expanding market presence, broadening distribution through partners, and scaling operations—speak to leaders’ determination to create value in a climate of uncertainty and change.

In my engagements with customers, I see this reality every day. Companies everywhere want to grow, but they want to grow with confidence. They are looking for partners who understand their unique challenges, who support them with their long-term ambitions, and who can help them keep pace with rapid change.

Technology is central to this ambition. Nearly all respondents in the study rank simplifying work and improving processes alongside growth. Here, artificial intelligence stands out. Nine in 10 organizations have already made generative or agent-based AI a priority, and more than 70 percent have some form of AI in use. While concerns about data quality and talent remain, the message is clear: AI has moved beyond experimentation into the mainstream of how companies operate and unleash value.

From Frankfurt to Dubai to Singapore: How regional differences shape opportunities and risks

Regional differences tell a powerful story. In Europe, AI adoption comes with caution. Large enterprises put compliance, privacy, and transparency first, while many mid-market firms are still piloting solutions. In Asia-Pacific, the pace is different. Mid-market companies there already report strong AI use above global averages, and growth expectations run high. For them, AI is a way to seize advantage quickly in a fast-moving market.

These contrasts show why cultural intelligence matters so much for global leaders. Whether in Frankfurt, Singapore, or Dubai, I see how local realities, regulations, and expectations shape both risks and opportunities. In Europe, energy costs and geopolitical uncertainty drive supply chain strategies. In Asia-Pacific, digital adoption and market dynamism set a different pace.

Sustainability is another area where nuance matters. European companies place it near the top of their priorities, tracking or slightly exceeding global benchmarks. Asia-Pacific firms value sustainability but often rank it lower than growth and speed to market. Each is weighing trade-offs in its own context, creating exciting opportunities for SAP to bring the most relevant technology, data, and practices to each region to help organizations achieve both economic and environmental goals.

The through-line in all of this is agility. Supply chain fragility, geopolitical conflict, inflation, and regulation continue to test even the best-run organizations. Technology can enable agility, but only if leaders embrace change themselves, rethinking processes, investing in skills, and building cultures of continuous learning and exploration. Security and ethical standards must also be the cornerstones of every AI conversation.

Turning AI potential into outcomes by centering value creation and integration

I believe this is a time for grounded optimism. The appetite for growth is real and the technology to achieve it is more advanced than ever. Innovation is accelerating at an extraordinary pace, with daily breakthroughs showcasing the expanding potential of AI.

There is a recent example that demonstrates AI’s ability to process multi-step tasks for over 30 hours. This achievement highlights not only the rapid evolution of AI, but also how increasingly accessible and capable these technologies are becoming.

However, as AI systems grow more autonomous and context-aware, organizations must recognize that true value doesn’t come from raw capability alone. To harness AI effectively, especially in enterprise environments, a consistent semantic layer is essential. It ensures alignment among data, tasks, and outcomes, enabling AI to reason reliably across systems and scale impact without losing coherence.

Companies must also move beyond simply adopting AI to actively testing and refining applications to gain a significant advantage. Equally important is a deliberate approach to managing the human element of a transformation, rooted in structured and human-centric change management.

Realizing AI’s true promise requires a fundamental shift in how people, applications, and data connect. Success relies on deeply connecting every part of an organization’s business, delivering end-to-end transformational value. A seamless, integrated suite provides insight and agility, whether responding to a problem or ensuring readiness when opportunity knocks.

This is where SAP Business Suite is a game changer, integrating applications, data, and AI in a virtuous cycle that delivers tangible business outcomes. At our inaugural SAP Connect event earlier in October, we showcased new applications, strategic data partnerships with Google Cloud and Databricks, and a new network of role-based AI assistants in Joule across every line of business.

Altogether, our continuous innovation marks the beginning of a new era powered by self-reinforcing AI, data, and applications. By keeping customer needs and value realization at the center and leading with innovation, businesses can not only navigate uncertainty, but build a more resilient, intelligent, and sustainable future.

Manos Raptopoulos is chief revenue officer of APAC, EMEA, and MEE, and a member of the Extended Board of SAP SE.

15 October

BUSINESS NEWS

LESER Drives Operational Excellence with Digital Twins and SAP Business Network Asset Collaboration

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LESER GmbH & Co. KG is a leading German company specializing in designing and manufacturing safety valves. Founded in 1818 and headquartered in Hamburg, Germany, LESER is recognized as the largest manufacturer of safety valves in Europe and one of the global leaders in the industry.

The manufacturer was heavily reliant on manual documentation, which caused delays in accessing and updating critical data and documents, resulting in data quality and compliance issues.

To address these challenges and optimize asset management, LESER sought to establish seamless data integration through a unified single source of truth. After thorough research and careful comparison of options, the valve manufacturer successfully chose to implement digital twin technology with SAP Business Network Asset Collaboration to help optimize collaboration with customers.

Error-free asset data and streamlined collaboration with smart asset management

Relying on a manual documentation process was not only time-consuming but also prone to errors and delays. This was causing significant challenges in accessing and updating critical data and documents, leading to poor data quality and inefficiencies across the ecosystem. Recognizing the need for a modern solution on the operator side, LESER identified the importance of supporting customers with a centralized asset management system. LESER decided to digitize its asset management system by implementing a centralized, cloud-based platform. This platform enables LESER to seamlessly share the digital twin with customers, enhancing transparency and data sharing while continuing to manage internal processes separately.

By implementing the digital twin technology integrated with SAP Business Network Asset Collaboration, LESER created a one-to-one virtual replica of each piece of physical equipment and product, consolidating all relevant data and documentation into a single, accessible platform.

“The digital twin acts as a precise digital mirror of the physical safety valve, enabling our customers to receive complete, error-free, and up-to-date data about the safety valves,” Pierre Draheim, manager of Product Data Management at LESER, explains.

LESER provides digital twins both for new (greenfield) and existing (brownfield) safety valves, centralizing all relevant data and documents. Each valve is labeled with the globally-standardized ID link, or QR code, IEC 61406 that allows LESER’s customers to directly access and sync product-specific information with their asset management systems, enabling seamless data transfer, documentation compliance, and cost reductions of up to 95% for initial recording.

“By embracing digital innovation, we have empowered our customers to boost their operational efficiency,” Draheim says. He emphasizes that this not only helps LESER achieve substantial time-savings but also enables the company to focus on core activities and drive greater business growth: “It’s a win-win. Not only us, but also our customers achieve significant improvements in overall productivity.”

Reduce operational costs with real-time digital twin integration

Automating valve data sharing within SAP Business Network Asset Collaboration has made it much easier for LESER operators and service providers to coordinate maintenance, eliminating the need for manual data reconciliation. This automation cuts down on administrative work, helps avoid unnecessary downtime, and optimizes spare parts inventory, all of which contributes to a substantial decrease in operational costs.

By standardizing and digitizing data with a globally-standardized ID link, multiple service providers get instant access to accurate, up-to-date information.

“With the introduction of the digital twin and SAP Business Network Asset Collaboration, we can now automate valve management, making the entire process faster and more reliable,” Draheim says.

Ensure safety and quality through global and regulatory compliance

Making sure safety valves meet international standards at every step requires a high level of automation in managing product data. This is especially important for LESER. “Compliance is not just about meeting regulations, but about the ‘rules of the game’ in the industry, which enable an automated exchange of information across different IT systems and stakeholders,” Draheim says.

With such a significant market presence, LESER holds its suppliers and materials to very high standards, ensuring every part complies not only with global regulations but also local rules. This level of care is particularly essential for operators working in industries with strict safety and regulatory conditions.

Beyond setting these standards, LESER keeps detailed records to maintain full transparency and traceability across the supply chain. This integrated approach helps the ambitious company reduce the need for additional level approvals and supports safe, reliable plant operations all over the world. In return, its customers experience improved reliability and confidence in the products and services they receive, creating a positive impact throughout the entire value chain.

Learn more about LESER’s transformation.

Oyku Ilgar is part of SAP Supply Chain Thought Leadership & Awareness.

14 October

BUSINESS NEWS

Innovate, Connect, and Deliver: Accelerating Value Across SAP Business Suite

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What happens in Vegas doesn’t have to stay in Vegas, especially when it’s about the future of enterprise technology. At last week’s SA P Connect event in Las Vegas, SAP Executive Board Member and Chief Operating Officer Sebastian Steinhaeuser took to the keynote stage on the final day to share how SAP is creating a new era of productivity, intelligence, and business outcomes for customers worldwide.

Before diving into the heart of the keynote, Steinhaeuser invited SAP solution area CMOs to deliver lightning-fast recaps of news from the various SAP Connect event tracks. In just under two minutes each, they covered finance, procurement, supply chain, HR, and customer experience. From autonomous accounting and next-gen procurement to AI-driven talent acquisition and smarter customer loyalty, the message was clear: SAP is innovating across every business function.

The real challenge: connecting priorities

As Steinhaeuser pointed out, “The reality is each business area has its own unique priorities and, of course, all-important urgent matters.” The real challenge is not just launching new features; it’s aligning processes, data, and teams to conquer uncertainty and achieve true customer focus. “Simply putting an [AI] agent on top of a broken process will solve nothing,” he said.

The flywheel: AI, data, and apps in motion at SAP

So, how does it all work together? Enter the “flywheel” model: the dynamic cycle of AI, data, and applications that drives synergy across the enterprise. This is not just a theoretical approach. Steinhaeuser showed how “SAP runs SAP” using the flywheel model.

Graphic demonstrating "flywheel" model: AI, data, and apps

First, he said, SAP uses “role-based AI assistants, powered by specialized agents, [to] support team members across all areas of SAP.”

Next comes data. Earlier this year, SAP became “customer zero” for SAP Business Data Cloud (SAP BDC), connecting all enterprise data in a single layer to generate faster and better insights across financial, workforce, and sales planning. “We’re excited to go live with the first set of intelligent apps, starting with People Intelligence,” he added.

Finally, the app layer: SAP has moved from SAP ERP Central Component (SAP ECC) to SAP Business Suite and SAP Cloud ERP, through RISE with SAP. “The SAP Business Suite is where data is created and where AI delivers impact,” Steinhaeuser said.

But processes continuously evolve with AI, he said, noting that business transformation management, powered by solutions like SAP Signavio and SAP LeanIX, helps SAP and its customers continually improve processes and architecture, with AI embedded everywhere. The company also uses WalkMe to ensure employees stay informed and engaged at every step.

“Driving SAP’s own transformation, I understand the challenges you face,” Steinhaeuser said. “I am convinced leveraging the flywheel of AI, data, and apps across the entire SAP Business Suite is how we win together.”

Embedded AI: tangible value, secure, and seamless

Brenda Bown, chief marketing officer of Business AI at SAP, took the stage to highlight how business AI is showing up in day-to-day work. “I’ve heard three consistent themes in conversations [with customers]: first, you want AI that can provide tangible value; second, that is secure and properly governed; and third, that works seamlessly across your teams and business. We’re here to deliver just that,” she said.

Joule is now embedded in use cases in trusted SAP applications and is making work faster and easier across the enterprise. “By the end of this year, we will have more than 400 of these AI use cases,” Bown said. Joule Agents automate tasks across departments, and the new agent builder in Joule Studio (generally available in December) helps customers extend, build, or customize their own agents. SAP LeanIX AI Agent Hub and agent mining capabilities in SAP Signavio provide governance and transparency for AI agents.

Bown noted that customers like Matur Fompack are using Joule in SAP SuccessFactors to hire faster and improve career development. “The results are phenomenal: a 48 percent reduction in HR process execution time and 40 percent faster employee development and career planning, and, most importantly, a better employee and candidate experience,” she said.

Graphic: Matur Fompack uses SAP SuccessFactors, showcasing stats of 86 Joule use cases effectively implemented, 48% faster HR process execution and 40% faster employee development

For processes that require multi-step workflows and nuanced decisions, SAP introduced a new generation of role-based AI assistants. “They know your role in the organization, because they are role and context aware,” Bown said. These assistants tap into the right agents for the job, removing any guesswork and helping humans unlock new levels of insight and productivity.

She also showcased how agents collaborate across departments, automate workflows, and even extend SAP’s business logic to autonomous devices like robots. Early pilots with partners like NEURA Robotics are already showing Joule Agents planning and executing real work in the real world.

Data and intelligent applications: unified and actionable

Data is only valuable when it is actionable. Irfan Khan, president and chief product officer for SAP Data and Analytics, highlighted SAP BDC, which unifies enterprise data and powers intelligent applications. “SAP BDC offers the most powerful foundation for connecting your existing data, building next-generation applications, and the ability to foster and deploy reliable AI,” he said. And the new SAP Business Data Cloud Connect solution enables secure, bi-directional data sharing with partners like Databricks and Google Cloud.

Intelligent applications bridge the gap between people and AI. They support smarter decisions and collaboration. “These applications learn from your data and include business simulations to support every business leader with smarter decisions,” Khan explained. “If we don’t have a reliable data foundation built around trust, having reliable and resilient data, it becomes very debatable whether or not AI will succeed.”

From insight to action: transformation in practice

How do organizations turn strategy into action? Michael Ameling, president of SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP), demonstrated how SAP Business Suite helps drive innovation by uniting core applications, data, and AI, all powered by SAP BTP and Business Transformation Management solutions. “Let’s say you want to understand and improve a business process,” he said. “SAP Signavio lets you dive deep and understand every detail, and can suggest concrete actions. Then, use those insights to improve the process in SAP Build by automating processes and building your own agents.”

He demonstrated how SAP BTP and the Business Transformation Management portfolio can help organizations connect systems, gain visibility, and automate processes. Tools including SAP Signavio, SAP Build, and SAP Integration Suite are helping customers like Blue Diamond Growers streamline operations and accelerate transformation.

Graphic: SAP customer Blue Diamond identified 500 innovation opportunities, saved 2,000 hours annually, and delivered 30 process improvements.

Services and support: accelerating innovation and realizing value

SAP’s Anja Schneider, SVP and global head of Premium Engagement and Advisory, wrapped up this segment of the keynote by focusing on how the company’s services and support teams help customers realize the full value of their SAP investments.

“We’re with you every step, like a personal trainer,” she said, highlighting how SAP’s suite methodology, integrated tools like WalkMe and SAP Cloud ALM, and expert guidance help customers realize the full value of their SAP investments. She pointed to IBM’s transformation project as proof: working with SAP MaxAttention teams and a clean core approach, upgrades went smoothly with low incidents for more than 150,000 users across 175 geographies.

Customer perspective: Southern California Edison’s journey

Real-world impact matters. Southern California Edison (SCE) SVP and CIO Todd Inlander shared how the utility company’s transformation journey with SAP is helping modernize its foundational systems and optimize back-office processes. Facing unprecedented demand and environmental challenges, the company is leveraging SAP solutions, including SAP Business AI capabilities, to transform its operations.

“We need to adhere to our mission: to deploy safe, reliable, affordable power,” he said. “We can’t do that by doing things the way we’ve always done. We have to incorporate SAP. We’re using it to transform the way we work in our environment. We need to leverage AI because we don’t have enough humans to do all the work. We have to scale.”

As SCE deploys SAP Business Suite over the next year, it’s focusing on keeping a clean core and reducing customizations. “When we implemented ECC 15 years ago, about 66 percent of our enhancements were never used. We’re learning from that experience,” Inlander said. He went on to note that SCE will use the SAP deployment time to continue to transform its back-office operations. “We’ll be integrating Joule and other AI solutions because doing things the way we’ve always done them and expecting a different outcome is the definition of insanity.”

Steinhaeuser closed the keynote with a look to the future: “We’ve made great progress across all lines of business to deliver a unique experience for you—with AI becoming your personal assistant, powered by data that defies boundaries and applications that take insight to action. The cross-capabilities you just saw now make the flywheel spin.”

The future is here, and is powered by the synergy of AI, data, and applications. Every business can turn innovation into impact.

14 October

BUSINESS NEWS

Leading HR with Confidence: Unlocking AI, Skills, and People Insights in the SAP SuccessFactors 2H 2025 Release

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In today’s world of constant change, HR leaders are being asked to do more than ever before: anticipate skills shifts, personalize the employee experience, and navigate complex regulations—all while staying agile in the face of accelerating business transformation.

SAP SuccessFactors HCM gives organizations the tools to lead with confidence. Part of the SAP Business Suite, SAP SuccessFactors brings together global core HR, AI-driven insights, and a unified skills foundation to connect people and processes, close skills gaps, simplify compliance, and build a workforce ready for what’s next.

With the second half 2025 (2H 2025) product release, we’re excited to introduce hundreds of new features and enhancements in SAP SuccessFactors, many enabled by AI. Together, these innovations help HR teams, business leaders, and employees work smarter, move faster, and stay future-ready.

Drive better people and business decisions

Data about people, skills, performance, and business outcomes exists everywhere, but without a clear view, it’s difficult to act. People Intelligence in SAP Business Data Cloud, now generally available, is designed to help organizations make better workforce decisions by unifying SAP and third-party data. Through intuitive dashboards, AI-assisted insights powered by Joule, and hundreds of HR metrics, leaders can now move from insights to action with unprecedented speed.

With pre-built use cases spanning critical areas like skills, compensation, recruiting, learning, performance, and succession, People Intelligence makes it easier to uncover trends, identify opportunities, and take action. By bringing together clean, centralized HR data and powerful AI, it equips HR and business leaders with the intelligence they need to drive meaningful workforce transformation.

Product screenshot: People Intelligence in SAP SuccessFactors

Build a future-ready workforce

To stay competitive, organizations must continuously evolve alongside their people. This release introduces new innovations that align skills, performance, and development with future business needs.

We are excited that the Performance and Goals Agent in SAP SuccessFactors is now available. This agent empowers managers to lead consistent, high-impact performance conversations by analyzing employee data, such as performance goals, activities and achievements, and continuous feedback, to create tailored conversation prompts for each employee. Using Joule, managers receive AI-guided insights like goal progress summaries, key accomplishments, growth focus areas, and development recommendations. Users can ask follow-up questions to dive deeper into any of these areas.

Product screenshot: Performance Goals in SAP SuccessFactors

Additionally, business rules integration in performance management support consistent and transparent performance reviews by automating feedback prompts and actions based on predefined conditions, such as dynamically exposing a comment field only when a rating condition is met.

Succession planning is also getting a boost with skills-based successor recommendations in SAP SuccessFactors Career and Talent Development, which analyzes skills, proficiency levels, and internal work experiences captured in employee growth portfolios to recommend potential successors who might have been overlooked using traditional metrics. And with the new person-based model for talent management, organizations can drive smarter talent decisions, faster reskilling, and greater workforce agility by unifying learning and talent data in a person-based view that follows employees across changing roles, teams, and assignments.

Enable agile and compliant HR

As regulations evolve and business needs shift, HR must stay both agile and compliant. This release introduces new capabilities to help teams adapt quickly while ensuring accuracy and trust.

The new SAP SuccessFactors Workforce Scheduling solution,available to early adopters in January 2026, supports optimized shift planning in manufacturing and other production industries by aligning workforce skills and staffing levels with operational demand. Geofencing in SAP SuccessFactors Time Tracking helps prevent fraud and ensure compliance by defining work site locations and ranges to govern where employees can clock in and out. SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central simplifies U.S. leave management by connecting with FMLA service providers to automate leave deductions and improve tracking accuracy.

Product screenshot: SAP SuccessFactors Workforce Scheduling

Across the suite, our updated home page delivers a more intuitive and personalized experience for users with streamlined navigation, targeted communications, and real-time insights across desktop and mobile.

Extend applications to easily adapt

As workforce expectations and business priorities evolve, flexibility is key. This release delivers new capabilities to help seamlessly connect and optimize HR processes, maximizing investments while supporting the changing needs of people and the organization.

SAP SuccessFactors Work Zone is now enhanced by Joule and generative AI to deliver faster access to information, improved self-service, and more informed decision-making. Joule streamlines tasks with role-based self-service, workflow automation, and real-time insights, while generative AI simplifies feedback, coaching, and goal updates with context-aware insights. Employees can also quickly find company-specific knowledge through Joule for accurate, relevant information when they need it.

Lead the future of HR

With the 2H 2025 release, SAP SuccessFactors HCM helps HR leaders navigate complexity with ease. By uniting global HR, AI-driven insights, and a unified skills foundation, organizations can make smarter decisions, develop future-ready talent, and stay agile in a rapidly changing world.

To learn about our latest innovations and enhancements, check out the SAP SuccessFactors 2H 2025 release brochure or watch the video.

Bianka Woelke is group vice president and head of Application Product Management for SAP SuccessFactors.

14 October

Mixed race business people using technology in office

BUSINESS NEWS

From Innovation to Impact: Latest Release of SAP Cloud ERP Private

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Today’s complex business environment is marked by financial volatility, supply chain disruptions, and rapidly evolving compliance landscapes. With faster and well-informed decisions, these challenges can be turned into strategic opportunities.

As the pace of innovation accelerates, enterprises must not only become more agile, but also modernize their technology foundations to keep pace—simplifying landscapes, embracing cloud architectures, and ensuring continuous access to the latest capabilities.

With AI, enterprises face widening skill gaps that challenge their ability to drive meaningful business transformation. This is where SAP stands at the forefront as a trusted partner, empowering businesses with process- and context-aware AI, underpinned by semantically rich and unified data. Together, these elements form a robust foundation for outcome-driven and sustainable business transformation.

With the 2025 release of SAP Cloud ERP Private, we’re translating this vision into action. The release delivers innovations that matter most to our customers, from a strengthened data foundation to embedded AI and intelligent agents that enhance how work gets done. It enables enterprises to run smarter, modernize faster, and realize the full potential of applications with data and AI across end-to-end business processes.

Interconnected applications as the core foundation

A business suite that delivers best-in-class capabilities with a harmonized data model is essential in the age of AI. ERP continues to evolve to meet today’s industry needs, strengthening our customers’ ability to compete and grow with confidence. There are a number of such innovations, including:

Supply chain: Manufacturing customers achieve faster, more reliable order fulfillment through intelligent automation that links order promising with logistics execution. The enhanced advanced available-to-promise (ATP) capability reduces manual effort and optimizes inventory use.
Finance: For multinational enterprises, universal parallel accounting and value chain analysis provide real-time profitability insight and automate intercompany flows, helping finance leaders steer performance proactively and improve transparency.
Asset management: Maintenance planners improve equipment reliability and reduce downtime through enhanced visibility into open preventive and corrective maintenance requirements. Additional insights into maintenance orders and planning buckets enable proactive scheduling and optimized resource use.
Operations: Organizations improve efficiency, transparency, and compliance across entities through the new multistage intercompany sales and stock transfer process. It automates critical steps, enhances visibility, and streamlines execution, enabling faster, more reliable, and scalable supply chain operations.

Data that fuels AI’s transformative power

Trusted, connected, and context-rich data turns AI’s potential into measurable results. When organizations can rely on consistent high-quality data, they gain the confidence to act on insights that drive efficiency and growth.

The semantically rich data foundation within SAP Cloud ERP provides this advantage, serving as the platform for building insights and driving actions. SAP Business Data Cloud unifies SAP and third-party data, delivering insights through pre-built data products and intelligent applications.

With the 2025 release, more than 200 pre-delivered data products are available out of the box, preserving business context and metadata so leaders act on insights, not raw extracts. The result is an AI-ready foundation of trusted, compliant, reusable data assets that accelerates decision-making. Looking ahead, we are developing more intelligent applications through Cloud ERP Intelligence Private that leverage these data products across every business function, expanding the reach and impact of data-driven intelligence.

AI in and across your key business processes

AI is becoming every enterprise’s most powerful assistant, helping people work smarter, make faster decisions, and achieve better and informed outcomes. Embedded in core processes, it provides contextual guidance, intelligent recommendations and reasoning, and automation where it matters most.

With the 2025 release of SAP Cloud ERP Private, we’re embedding AI across key end-to-end business processes. Built on a unified data and application foundation, our AI innovations bring precision, predictability, trust, and security to every decision—across finance, supply chain, manufacturing, and service.

At the center is Joule, now evolving into a role-aware assistant, that tailors insights and actions to each user’s responsibilities. It ensures every interaction is relevant, governed, and grounded in business context, helping teams act with clarity and confidence. We are building a growing library of specialized Joule Agents. Here are a few examples:

Accounts Receivable Agent: Improves liquidity by accelerating collections, reducing overdue invoices, and recommending next-best actions
Dispute Manag e ment Agent: Shortens resolution cycles by identifying inconsistencies, proposing responses for quick approval, and executing follow-ups
Maintenance Planner Agent: Builds on enhanced maintenance insights to boost uptime by recommending maintenance events and coordinating schedules based on integrated and interconnected data across production planning and procurement

Grounded in SAP’s unified data and process model, these agents connect workflows across functions and roles, enabling organizations to act faster, operate smarter, and scale intelligence across the enterprise.

Faster upgrades, faster value

The SAP Cloud ERP Private 2025 release is fully compatible with previous scopes, eliminating multi-step upgrades. Customers can move to the latest version with minimal effort and immediately benefit from advances in applications, data, and AI. With near-zero-downtime upgrades and automated updates, maintenance windows are shorter, delivering faster adoption, lower disruption, and quicker time to value.

Looking ahead together

We continue to co-innovate closely with our strategic and beta customers to turn these innovations into business reality. Our commitment extends beyond technology delivery: we guide every step of modernization, AI adoption, and process transformation.

If you’re ready to be an early adopter, join us to co-innovate, learn, and shape the future together, unlocking new ways of working and sustainable outcomes.

Excited about our innovations? Learn more

For a deep dive into the 2025 release and what it means for your business, join our upcoming webinar: RISE into the Future: Innovation Built for What’s Next. Explore our blog for more details on innovations across finance, supply chain, procurement, and beyond, along with resources to help you get started.

Uma Rani T M is president and chief product officer for Private Cloud ERP at SAP.

10 October

BUSINESS NEWS

New Joule Agents and Embedded Intelligence Supercharge Business Returns Across the Enterprise

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This week at SAP Connect, we introduced the next wave of business AI innovations to empower enterprises. We unveiled our newest Joule Agents, the concept of role-based AI assistants, and new embedded intelligence throughout SAP Business Suite.

New research shows how business AI delivers ROI

To better understand the opportunity to produce returns on investment from AI, SAP commissioned new global research that was shared at SAP Connect. In partnership with Oxford Economics, we surveyed 1,600 executives in medium and large enterprises across eight countries.

We found that today, on average, organizations are benefiting from a 16 percent return on AI investments—a number they expect to nearly double within two years. In addition to impressive financial returns:

94% of business leaders say AI is improving innovation within their organizations
87% say AI is improving customer engagement
78% believe AI agents have the potential to transform their business operations

Infographic: "Value of AI"; SAP & Oxford Economics research

New deep research and AI assistants in Joule expand what is possible

These innovations were engineered based on what our customers tell us they need: to act quickly, simplify complexity, and unlock better, data-driven decisions across the lines of business and processes that matter. But most of all, our customers need AI that drives significant, measurable business outcomes.

To help every organization accelerate returns on investment from AI, at SAP Connect we announced powerful new capabilities for Joule, which makes business data and the entire SAP Business Suite immediately accessible through the power of a simple conversation. And because Joule is grounded in your company’s data, it understands context and delivers insights that are specific, actionable, and relevant to your business.

Deep research in Joule, announced at SAP Connect, is a new capability expands what people can do within the Joule interface. It goes beyond quick answers to deliver strategic analysis, reporting, and synthesis in a single, connected experience. It brings together internal SAP data and external intelligence so people can ask complex questions and receive comprehensive research and recommendations—without ever leaving Joule. The deep research capability in Joule will be available in beta this December.

We also unveiled the new concept of role-based AI assistants in Joule, built to partner with people in their specific roles. These assistants connect to the right Joule Agents for the job, removing guesswork so teams can unlock new levels of productivity and insight. Whether it’s a finance leader forecasting working capital, a recruiter evaluating headcount needs, or a planner adjusting inventory, AI assistants surface the right intelligence, at the right time, in the right context. In the background, Joule Agents get work done for you.

These innovations mark the next chapter in how people interact with enterprise systems, helping every role across an organization seamlessly move from inquiry to insight to action.

New Joule Agents autonomously get work done

To help enterprises further accelerate business results, we introduced 14 new Joule Agents at SAP Connect. They help people coordinate, decide, and execute tasks with greater precision. Joule Agents are embedded across core business processes in finance, HR, procurement, and supply chain, in a way that only SAP—with our deep expertise in these functions—can deliver.

For example, rather than navigating multiple systems or running countless manual checks to release an order, a production manager—a key role in the supply chain function—will be able to turn to our Production Planning and Operations Agent, planned for general availability in the Q1 2026. They can simply ask Joule to do it, safely and in real time. The agent will validate and release orders when conditions are met, accelerating production start times and shortening order-to-delivery cycles.

Product screenshot: Joule Agent in SAP solution

And starting December 2025, with the general availability of Joule Studio, now in beta release, customers will be able to create and deploy custom Joule skills and Joule Agents tailored to their unique business needs. Agent builder in Joule Studio is your command center for designing, building, and deploying enterprise-ready custom Joule Agents using the same powerful SAP technologies—including SAP Knowledge Graph for deep business context, SAP Business Data Cloud for comprehensive data access across SAP and non-SAP sources, and SAP’s central identity and authorization services to ensure responsible agent behavior. These capabilities empower every enterprise to extend, customize, and personalize SAP Business AI solutions.

New embedded intelligence across SAP applications

To help our customers move faster and make better decisions where work happens, we continue to bring intelligence directly into the applications they rely on every day. These embedded capabilities extend the same AI-driven guidance that powers Joule Agents into core SAP solutions, enhancing user workflows with context, clarity, and automation. We will have more than 400 of these AI use cases by the end of the year.

Graphic banner: SAP Business AI works for you

For example, in SAP Engagement Cloud, starting in February 2026, AI will orchestrate personalized interactions across HR, marketing, and service, bringing harmonized data, relevant context, and better business outcomes into every engagement. In the SAP Supply Chain Orchestration solution, planned for general release in the first half of 2026, AI will predict shortfalls and fulfillment risks, helping planners simulate and respond with speed and precision.

Additionally, the rebuilt SAP Ariba source-to-pay suite, arriving in February 2026, brings a modern, cloud-native experience to every stage of procurement. Embedded AI guides people with intelligent recommendations, accelerates contract reviews, and surfaces supplier insights in real time. By simplifying sourcing decisions and improving compliance, it helps procurement teams strengthen supplier relationships and capture more value, faster.

Governing AI with visibility and control

As our customers continue to adopt these AI innovations embedded across their functions, we know they need transparency into how it operates, what it influences, and the value it creates. That is why we provide tools to give them the visibility they need to deploy AI with confidence and scale it responsibly.

SAP LeanIX AI Agent Hub helps CIOs and business leaders see their entire AI agents landscape at a glance. From one dashboard, they can understand where agents are deployed, what processes they touch, and how agents are performing. This allows teams to evaluate effectiveness, identify redundancies, and manage AI like any other enterprise asset: aligned to outcomes, governed by policy, and continuously optimized.

Product screenshot: SAP LeanIX AI Agent Hub

Complementing that, agent mining in SAP Signavio gives organizations a powerful way to analyze how AI contributes to process performance. It reveals how AI agents decide and act, flags bottlenecks and non-compliance, and uncovers where automation adds value and how to fine-tune it for efficiency and impact. Together, these tools bring clarity to what has often been a black box: transforming governance from reactive oversight into proactive optimization.

What’s next for business AI

At SAP Connect, we also shared a view into what’s coming and how our innovations will continue to redefine enterprise productivity. For example, we’re developing an outcome-driven user interface that adapts to context in real time. Instead of navigating menus or searching for data, people will simply express what they want to achieve, and the system will guide them through the right actions, insights, and tools.

We’re also extending Joule Agents beyond software into the physical world—connecting your company’s business intelligence to robotics and industrial systems. This opens a new frontier for automation, combining state of the art electronics that utilize physical AI tools, such as computer vision and collision detection, with AI agents capable of reasoning through complex goals and planning multi-step workflows. Reserve your place at SAP TechEd this November to learn more.

Graphic banner: Physical AI photo collage

Ready to start your AI journey?

We know AI is top of mind for most business leaders today. In fact, another finding from the research we commissioned with Oxford Economics is that 41 percent of tasks in global businesses will be supported by AI within two years—up from 25 percent today.

As you continue to explore what is possible with business AI, we’ll keep innovating to deliver systems that are intelligent by design, trusted in operation, and, most important, measurable in their impact.

For us, it’s all about what you hope to achieve. We’re proud to partner with you on your AI journey. If you’re ready to take the next step, here are three things you can do right now:

Learn how to bring the potential of AI into your organization by signing up for our Discover Joule Webinar Series.
In our Customer Success Collection, get inspired about what’s possible by exploring how leading companies are transforming with AI.
Watch SAP Connect virtual sessions, now available on demand, to see our latest innovations in action.

There’s more to come. Join us at SAP Tec hEd on November 4 for the next wave of AI innovations that will transform the enterprise.

Brenda Bown is chief marketing officer for SAP Business AI.