NEWS 35 - The World Management

07 May

SAP SuccessFactors Named a Leader in IDC MarketScape for Worldwide Talent Acquisition 2025 Vendor Assessment

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SAP SuccessFactors has once again been recognized as a Leader in the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Talent Acquisition 2025 Vendor Assessment (doc #US53236625, March 2025). SAP SuccessFactors was previously named a Leader in the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Modern Talent Acquisition Suites 2022 Vendor Assessment (doc #US48357022, June 2022).

In today’s fast-changing world of work, hiring the right talent has never been more critical—or complex. HR and talent acquisition leaders are under growing pressure to deliver fast results, navigate rising uncertainty, and keep up with rapidly evolving skills needs in their business.

According to the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025, 63% of employers cite skills gaps in the labor market as the primary barrier to business transformation, while 86% expect AI to significantly transform their business over the next five years. The study also reports that talent availability is declining, making it harder for organizations to find the right talent with the right capabilities needed for the future. At the same time, organizations are rethink i ng their approaches to hiring, embracing AI and moving toward more agile, skills-based strategies to compete for talent in a dynamic and evolving job market.

That’s why selecting the right technology partner matters now more than ever. Organizations need a solution that can help them stay ahead of change, drive smarter hiring, and fuel growth and long-term business success. “Talent acquisition priorities are changing, leading to evolving concentrations and points of entry in an increasingly diversifying vendor space in the market,” says Zachary Chertok, senior research manager, Employee Experience at IDC. “Increased pressures to reduce the time to place qualified talent in roles that fill persistent and evolving skills gaps are leading talent acquisition buyers to rethink their approaches to hiring and the tools that support them.”

SAP SuccessFactors is proud to be named a Leader in the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Talent Acquisition 2025 Vendor Assessment. SAP SuccessFactors solutions can empower organizations of all sizes to address the ever-changing challenges of hiring in today’s complex, skills-driven world of work.

IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Talent Acquisition 2025 Vendor Assessment by Zachary Chertok, March 2025, IDC # US53236625.

IDC MarketScape vendor analysis model is designed to provide an overview of the competitive fitness of ICT suppliers in a given market. The research methodology utilizes a rigorous scoring methodology based on both qualitative and quantitative criteria that results in a single graphical illustration of each vendor’s position within a given market. The Capabilities score measures vendor product, go-to-market, and business execution in the short-term. The Strategy score measures alignment of vendor strategies with customer requirements in a 3-to-5-year timeframe. Vendor market share is represented by the size of the circles. Vendor year-over-year growth rate relative to the given market is indicated by a plus, neutral, or minus next to the vendor name.

The report analyzes the expansive talent acquisition ecosystem, evaluating 22 vendors for user experience, native solution capabilities, future development pipelines, and company criteria, including size, scope, geographic reach, and future growth targets. We believe SAP SuccessFactors’ position as a Leader reflects visionary product strategy, continuous innovation, comprehensive solution functionality, and demonstrated customer value and satisfaction. The IDC MarketScape states, “SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting is part of the SAP SuccessFactors HCM suite and provides AI-enabled tools, resources, and services to support recruiters and talent teams to source and align talent to their best-fit connection points within the organization.” Highlighting SAP SuccessFactors’ strengths, the report mentions, “SAP SuccessFactors customers find that the solution provides them with deep insights drawn from across the existing and modeled workforce. SAP SuccessFactors’ AI and analytical capabilities support clients to tie candidate-centric hiring practices into the evolving and modeled skilling and position needs of the organization.”

Helping companies hire smarter and faster

Hiring today isn’t just about filling open roles. It’s about building strong talent pipelines, finding people with the right skills and potential, creating exceptional candidate experiences, and aligning every hire to overall HR and business goals. SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting and SAP SuccessFactors Onboarding offer comprehensive, AI-enabled solutions that can simplify global hiring to help organizations attract, engage, and hire top talent with the right skills needed today and in the future.

The IDC MarketScape notes, “SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting helps recruiters maintain fluid and flexible organizational talent pipelines that retain and progressively match high-performing talent to where they are best fit within the evolving organization.” The report continues, “Overall, recruiters and talent acquisition teams find that SAP SuccessFactors’ recruiting and talent acquisition capabilities are feature rich, support dynamic and evolving compliance and sourcing needs, and support custom and AI-informed workflows and candidate progression.” SAP SuccessFactors solutions can enable organizations to accelerate hiring with AI-enabled talent acquisition capabilities, including AI-enhanced job descriptions, AI-assisted applicant screening, AI-recommended interview questions, AI-driven skills-based job recommendations, AI-assisted onboarding and offboarding, AI-assisted writing, and AI-driven interview summarization.

Adopting the right AI-enabled talent acquisition strategy is what puts innovative businesses ahead. Darussalam Assets, a large and diversified holding company in Brunei turned to SAP SuccessFactors solutions to transform HR’s impact on its business, increasing productivity and efficiency to over 30 subsidiaries across 14 industries. “With SAP Business AI technology embedded in SAP SuccessFactors solutions, we’ve seen significant benefits such as reducing our overall recruitment time from months to weeks. The AI features have streamlined processes for generating and updating job descriptions and creating competency-based interview questions, making our recruitment process more efficient and standardized,” shares Salehin Basir, human capital development manager at Darussalam Assets. The company has seen significant benefits, such as four-times more efficient hiring processes, a 75% reduction in recruitment time, and deeper insights into important HR metrics that improve data-driven decision-making and reduce bottlenecks.

Powering a skills-based, AI-driven talent strategy

With a talent landscape defined by continuous change, the future of hiring relies on taking a skills-based approach to identifying, securing, and growing the right talent. The World Economic Forum reports that 70% of organizations plan to hire for emerging, in-demand skills, while 51% intend to reskill or upskill existing employees to fill growing skills needs. Whether an organization is focused on developing talent from within or bringing in new capabilities to keep their business ahead, SAP SuccessFactors solutions can help talent teams stay agile, efficient, and aligned to business needs.

According to trusted HCM Industry Analyst Josh Bersin’s Emerging Trends in Talent Acquisition for 2025 factbook, talent acquisition leaders state a growing priority to implement skills throughout their talent functions and strategies—for both hiring and internal mobility. The factbook shares, “AI plays a key role in deploying skills in a scalable and sustainable way, particularly as in-demand and job-specific skills are constantly changing. It can help match skills to jobs, identify skill adjacencies, pinpoint where talent with specific skills is located, uncover learning opportunities, and more.”

Our latest HR trends research finds growing workforce confidence around the potential value of AI, with 70% of managers agreeing that using AI technology for skills-based decision-making would be somewhat or very valuable, and an overwhelming majority of employees (88%) feeling positively about skills-based decision-making. The IDC MarketScape highlights how SAP SuccessFactors users can quickly see value from implementing skills-based hiring strategies, noting: “Simplified application processes help candidates apply from any device and leverage AI to parse skills from their resumes to match those with the company’s evolving skills architecture and talent intelligence.”

Bringing these insights to life, Capgemini is a powerful example of how leading organizations are building skills-based talent strategies ready for the future. Capgemini, a global business and technology partner with 340,000 employees across more than 50 countries turned to SAP SuccessFactors solutions when looking for an HR infrastructure that would allow it to attract, retain, and grow market-leading skills. Capgemini built a skills engine to support the moments that matter across the employee lifecycle, including recruitment, onboarding, talent management, compensation and rewards, learning, and succession management. The company is implementing SAP SuccessFactors HCM to enable skills-based people management and deliver a highly engaging people experience.

Going beyond talent acquisition, SAP SuccessFactors solutions help align hiring to overall HR strategies, with connected, unified learning and talent solutions; a single skills foundation; AI-enabled talent intelligence; and advanced, cross-suite capabilities. The IDC MarketScape notes, “SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting is a natural extension of the SAP SuccessFactors environment that gives companies a fully integrated platform for insights-driven, end-to-end candidate and employee lifecycle management.” The assessment further notes, “Talent acquisition teams can benefit from deep continuous workforce planning insights that guide for and optimize the balance between internal mobility and external hiring for a higher efficacy in talent placement.”

As we look toward the future, organizations that embrace skills-based talent strategies and AI-driven talent acquisition will be best positioned to adapt, grow, and lead in an ever-changing world of work. Learn more about why we were named a Leader in the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Talent Acquisition 2025 Vendor Assessment and discover more about SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting and SAP SuccessFactors Onboarding.

07 May

BUSINESS NEWS

Four Keys to Successful Change Management from the Bain Playbook

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About nine out of 10 ERP implementations fall short, often due to lack of adoption by either employees or business units, according to global consultancy Bain & Company. So, how do experts such as Bain ensure success during their own big-bang implementation of, say, SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud?

“We executed this change management successfully by leveraging our own playbook on ourselves,” Ramesh Razdan, Global Chief Technology/Information Officer, Bain & Company, told SAP. “Just as we have done [with clients] multiple times across the globe, in partnership with SAP.”

The “playbook” is Bain’s methodical guide to modernizing an organization’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. And it played a vital role in Bain’s own ERP journey.

07 May

BUSINESS NEWS

How Learning Helps Beat Burnout

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Burnout is hitting the workforce harder—and earlier—than ever. While previous generations often confronted the most difficult challenges in their careers and personal lives in their 40s, younger generations are now facing workplace exhaustion earlier than ever.

One in four Americans report hitting peak burnout before turning 30, and over half of American workers across age ranges say they are currently experiencing at least moderate levels of burnout. The state of modern workplace stress is accelerating, and it can create mental health concerns for employees—as well as high turnover, low productivity, and worse business outcomes for employers.

What’s fueling it? Increasingly, experts point to “pseudowork.” Pseudowork is busy work: the constant churn of e-mails, meetings, and low-impact tasks that leave employees drained and unfulfilled.

When a workday is filled with seemingly endless busy work, it may be a natural reaction to get home and ask yourself, “What did I actually accomplish today?” Simultaneously exhausting and demoralizing, pseudowork may be a key contributor to the burnout increasingly felt by younger generations.

If pseudowork is a key contributor to employee burnout, then the solution may be the opposite: opportunities for real learning and development in the workplace. Almost a third of employees report that high-quality training at work left them feeling “truly enlightened and invigorated.” They also felt “highly valued and empowered” by their employers, recognizing the continuous investment in their development. In addition to the obvious benefit of creating a more highly-skilled workforce, learning opportunities help employees feel a sense of achievement, excitement, and empowerment—breaking up the pattern of pseudowork and combatting burnout in the process.

This kind of meaningful learning can be unlocked through SAP Learning Hub, which allows people from the entire SAP ecosystem to access a wide range of SAP Certifications to enjoy while taking a break from answering yet another e-mail. Structured SAP Learning Journeys can allow workers to dive in at their own pace according to their unique needs and goals. They can be seamlessly integrated into daily work routines to allow employees to forge their own continuous learning path. As an SAP learner said herself, “SAP Certification boosts my confidence and adaptability. Continuous learning not only enriches my knowledge base but also ensures that the solutions I provide are cutting-edge and in sync with the evolving tech landscape.”

By integrating continuous learning into daily routines, organizations can do more than build skills—they can reinvigorate their teams and begin to truly counter the effects of pseudowork.

Sabine Benz is head of Enablement and Engagement at SAP.

05 May

BUSINESS NEWS

Serax Reduces Manual Work with SAP Business AI

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Serax, a Belgian design brand with an international presence, crafts contemporary homeware. Collaborating with renowned designers and artisans worldwide, Serax creates distinctive collections of tableware, furniture, lighting, and other home accessories. The company designs pieces in Europe and manufactures them globally.

Serax is a customer-centric company that prioritizes excellent service for its B2B and B2C customers. It was precisely this customer focus that led Serax to implement SAP Business AI solutions to help automate its order-to-cash process.

The challenge

The order process is straightforward for most customers, including B2C. Customers order what they want on the web shop, and the order is directly entered into SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition.

However, Serax’s B2B customers often still place orders by generating a PDF in their ERP system and automatically sending it to Serax’s customer service mailbox. These B2B manual orders amount to 30% of all orders coming into Serax.

Serax’s strong commitment to customer service means the company is happy to facilitate this, but it strains the customer service team. Once Serax receives the order, the customer service team must manually download the PDF, double-check dates and quantities, and then enter the order details into SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition to create the sales order. This entire process is time-consuming and error-prone.

“Providing excellent service is one of our core priorities, and this can be enabled by gaining efficiencies in certain processes,” says Sara Goris, SAP product manager at Serax. “That’s basically what led us to this use case. Our customer service team was still entering 30% of all orders manually into the system. We wanted to streamline that process from our side, especially since many of our customers will continue to send sales orders in PDF format.”

The solution

Serax needed a solution to automatically create sales orders from PDFs. It achieved this by activating and fine-tuning an app called Create Sales Orders—Automatic Extraction. This app was built with SAP solutions for quote-to-cash management using SAP Fiori, which allows businesses to create web and mobile applications.

With the app, Serax can drag and drop the PDF from the customer’s e-mail into the app before it orchestrates the entire process. First, it sends the PDF to SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP), where document information extraction extracts the data. The document API uses pre-trained A I to take PDF files as inputs and return structured data. The second step is data matching. The application maps the extracted data to the master data, such as sold-to party, ship-to party, and product. This helps ensure the extracted data from the PDFs makes sense in the context of Serax’s business.

A sales order request is created, and the customer service employee is notified to review it and convert it into an actual sales order in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition.

Results

The application has cut the number of manual B2B orders by 33%.

The time saved lets Serax invest back into better customer service. “Time savings mean our customer service employees can spend more time on real customer service instead of putting in an order,” says Ragna Qvick, digital business manager and HR performance manager at Serax. Serax’s employees also have more time for value-adding activities like upselling or cross-selling.

This jump in efficiency enables Serax to grow its business by adding more capacity for the team. “We either needed more resources or for our existing people to become more efficient so that they can focus on more value-adding tasks for our customers,” Goris says.

Another benefit of automation is reduced errors, as customer service employees no longer need to enter precise values from the PDF when creating sales orders. Instead, they can rely on document extraction to populate the order; they only need to confirm the values. “It reduces the risk of errors because when it’s a human action, there’s always a chance of errors in quantities or other details,” Qvick says.

Future

Serax and its partner Flexso are already looking at additional capabilities to automate the flow fully. This way, customer service employees will no longer need to open the emails and drag and drop the PDF. “We have a proof of concept running to automate the process fully. It will pick up the attachment from the mailbox directly into SAP S/4HANA,” Goris says. “It will also inform the customer service rep if anything is missing. They get a notification via Situation Handling to know when to intervene.”

Learn more about how SAP Business AI can help transform your organization’s efficiency and help drive success:

05 May

BUSINESS NEWS

SAP Extends Contracts with CEO Christian Klein and CFO Dominik Asam

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WALLDORF — The Supervisory Board of SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) today announced that it has further extended the contract of Christian Klein, CEO and chairman of the Executive Board. Initially set for three years starting in May 2025, the contract has now been extended to five years, continuing until April 2030.

The Supervisory Board has also extended the contract of Dominik Asam, CFO and member of the Executive Board, at his own request for two years to March 2028. These decisions ensure continuity and stability within the Executive Board, which as a leadership team collectively oversees the successful execution of SAP’s long-term strategy.

“Christian Klein and Dominik Asam, together with the executive team, have played an instrumental role in SAP’s ongoing success, providing steady leadership throughout the company’s transformation journey,” said Pekka Ala-Pietilä, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of SAP SE. “On behalf of the Supervisory Board, I thank them all for their contributions to strengthening SAP’s position as a global leader in enterprise technology.”

Klein (45) started his career at SAP in 1999 as a student. After holding various positions across the company, including Chief Financial Officer of SAP SuccessFactors and SAP’s Chief Controlling Officer, he was appointed Chief Operating Officer of SAP in 2016, a role in which he continued until 2021. Klein has been the sole CEO of SAP SE since 2020.

Prior to being appointed CFO of SAP in 2023, Asam (56) had served as CFO at Airbus SE from April 2019 to February 2023 and Infineon Technologies AG from 2011. In 2010, he was Head of Group Controlling at RWE AG. From 2005 to 2010, he held various roles at Siemens AG, including CEO of Siemens Financial Services and Corporate Vice President and Treasurer.

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Media Contact:
Marcus Winkler, +49 6227 767497, marcus.winkler@sap.com, CEST
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 2024 Annual Report on Form 20-F.
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02 May

BUSINESS NEWS

VFS Global Leverages SAP Software to Power Digital Cross-Border Mobility

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WALLDORF and DUBAI — SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) today announced that VFS Global, the world-leading provider of visa, consular and technology services to governments and diplomatic missions, will leverage SAP software to help it develop leading-edge AI-powered digital solutions for cross-border mobility and citizen services.

Cross-border mobility and citizen services are becoming increasingly digital, and governments are looking into the use of innovative technologies such as artificial intelligence to drive efficiency and sovereign security. To accelerate its innovation road map and help governments meet the increasingly complex needs of travelers and citizens, VFS Global is adopting SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition and other SAP solutions.

“We take great pride in partnering with SAP as a leading and trusted technology and AI company,” said Zubin Karkaria, founder and CEO of VFS Global. “By combining our deep expertise in visa, consular and citizen services with SAP’s world-class solutions, we empower governments to enhance efficiency, strengthen security and enable seamless mobility for millions of travelers around the world.”

“With SAP solutions at its core, VFS will be able to leverage the latest innovations to become an even stronger partner for governments, travelers and citizens worldwide,” said Christian Klein, CEO of SAP SE.

In line with its vision to embrace technological innovation to support governments and diplomatic missions worldwide, VFS Global has also chosen SAP Business Technology Platform and the SAP Business Data Cloud solution to deliver leading-edge and AI-powered solutions to its customers and to drive operational excellence across its global operations.

“By combining the strengths of VFS Global and SAP, we are elevating cross-border mobility and citizen services to the next level,” said Michael Nilles, member of the VFS executive board and chief digital and technology officer. “Strategically, this positions us as a leading force in shaping the future of GovTech and TravelTech, powered by technology and AI innovations that benefit governments, travelers and citizens worldwide,” he added.

Visit the SAP News Center.

Media Contacts:
Lesa Plingen, +49 622 776 9000, lesa.plingen@sap.com, CET
SAP Press Room; press@sap.com
Nathan Fletcher, nathanf@vfsglobal.com, BST

02 May

BUSINESS NEWS

American Printing House for the Blind Empowers People Thanks to High Tech

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With the powerful virtual tethers we feel binding us to our smartphones and gadgets, we can easily forget that some technologies provide freedom to others, such as low-vision and blind people.

“We create devices that promote independence,” Alejandro Erick Franco, CIO and vice president of Information Technology at American Printing House for the Blind (APH), said in an interview at SAP Sapphire. This includes APH’s Monarch tablet-style braille reader, which also renders images via equally finger-friendly “tactile graphics.”

There’s also APH’s older navigation app that can help low-vision or blind users find restaurants and venue facilities, or pinpoint any of the booths at, say, a massive enterprise software conference spanning the entire Orange County Convention Center.

01 May

BUSINESS NEWS

SAP Business Data Cloud Picks Up Steam with Customer and Partner Updates

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Despite years of technological investments, companies continue to struggle to get the most from their data. In a global survey of 1,200 business and technology leaders, 55 percent cited poor data quality as their biggest challenge. Nearly half struggle to harmonize data across multiple ecosystems.

With even more investments being made in AI, it’s more important than ever for customers to have a solid data foundation.

That’s why in February of this year, SAP introduced SAP Business Data Cloud. This fully managed SaaS solution unifies and governs SAP and third-party data, enhancing decision-making and AI value. Databricks is natively available in SAP Business Data Cloud, which provides data and AI professionals access to industry-leading data engineering, AI, and machine learning capabilities within a single solution.

SAP Business Data Cloud momentum

Since the initial launch, we’ve made progress to support customers and advance their business data fabric journey.

Several have already adopted SAP Business Data Cloud and expect significant benefits. For example, Swedish steel distributor Tibnor is the first live SAP Business Data Cloud customer and plans to integrate SAP data with non-SAP sources so it can respond more quickly to changing market conditions.

Dag Åselius, senior IT advisor and longtime former CIO at Tibnor, said: “We’ve always tried to stay ahead of the curve in our industry. SAP Business Data Cloud opens new opportunities for integrating external data quickly — something we couldn’t even imagine just a few years ago.”

This customer momentum builds on a successful pre-launch beta program. SAP received positive feedback from those customers that saw benefits across the board, including a 20 to 50 percent improvement in data models. Moreover, the beta community agreed that SAP Business Data Cloud will allow them to get greater value out of existing investments in SAP Datasphere and Databricks.

SAP Business Data Cloud and Databricks momentum

SAP is bringing the power of Databricks into SAP Business Data Cloud with SAP Databricks, now generally available on Amazon Web Services. The allows us to serve the needs of a broader community of data and AI professionals and provides customers benefits:

Simpler access to all data: Easily connect to contextual SAP data using zero-copy Delta Sharing and blend with third-party data
End-to-end AI and machine learning: Develop AI and machine learning models with end-to-end lifecycle management from data prep and experimentation to deployment
Pro-code environment: Write Spark scripts, run SQL analysis, or create machine learning models in any notebook
Trusted data foundation: Build intelligent insights on a unified and trusted data foundation that governs and protects data and AI assets

Together, SAP Business AI and SAP Databricks offer powerful, complementary AI and machine learning capabilities.

For example, SAP Business AI allows customers to embed AI directly within their business processes. It also helps customers develop and expand AI models trained on their SAP data and deploy them directly into business processes for closed-loop decision-making.

Additionally, SAP Databricks provides a comprehensive workbench for data preparation and machine learning experimentation, as well as predictive, AI, and machine learning modeling. Customers can use SAP Databricks to develop customized AI and machine learning models on harmonized SAP and non-SAP data, tailored to their unique requirements.

Get started with SAP Business Data Cloud

Today, SAP is introducing a promotional offer to help customers get started. We will offer SAP Databricks services at a discounted consumption rate for a limited time through April 30, 2026. This will accelerate SAP Databricks workloads by allowing customers to consume more capacity at no additional cost.

Don’t miss SAP Sapphire, to be held May 19-21, 2025, in Orlando, Florida. Register for SAP Business Data Cloud sessions here.

For more about the latest SAP Databricks news, read more from Databricks here.

Irfan Khan is president and chief product officer of Data and Analytics at SAP.

30 April

Businessman explaining wind turbine models to colleagues in office

BUSINESS NEWS

How SAP Employees Can Help Shape a Sustainable Future Through Pro Bono

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Spend few minutes scanning social media, watching television, or perusing neighborhood shops this past month, and you’ll see companies and communities across the globe showing up to celebrate Earth Day.

Or, more specifically, to celebrate the astonishing beauty of the planet we share and to leverage an opportunity to inspire individual action to ensure a livable, thriving world for everyone.

Earth Day 2025, themed “Our Power, Our Planet,” was a reminder of the unique role we can each play in building a more sustainable future. While not everyone may feel an immediate connection to the topic of climate action — other social issues may more deeply influence the choices we make and the actions we take to leave our mark on the world — it is clear that the health of the planet has an effect on every aspect of life, from the economy to our everyday well-being.

Employees at SAP are encouraged to bring their best, whole selves to work. One program making this possible is the Acceleration Collective. The Acceleration Collective is a virtual pro bono consulting program delivered with SAP social impact partner MovingWorlds on the TRANSFORM Support Hub. The program pairs employees with social enterprises — for example, impact-led organizations prioritizing people and planet over profit — to help solve business challenges that organizations are experiencing.

Pro bono consulting for people- and planet-first companies offers employees the chance to explore what is possible at the intersection of their professional experiences and their personal values. Not only does the Acceleration Collective allow employees to influence solutions to problems they see in the world, it also allows them to gain new expertise in a practical way, especially in areas like sustainability.

In honor of Earth Day, we are sharing stories of mutual learning and leadership development from pro bono engagements that have empowered SAP employees to partner with impact businesses focused on advancing sustainable practices and driving meaningful change for the world.

Alliance of learning and leadership

Late last year, Youssef Zekhnini, a Customer Success Manager in the Netherlands, took on a project working on a team of employees and representatives from CycleUp Textiles. A circular social enterprise that helps the environment by diverting textiles from landfill and upcycling them into luxury goods, CycleUp also empowers marginalized individuals in rural Ireland through training and skill development in the art of upcycling.

Collaborating with the CycleUp team and engaging with their mission provided Zekhnini with “valuable insights into how sustainable business models can positively affect a wide range of people within a community,” and helped him realize “that these models are often more complex than they appear.”

Their work together offered a focused opportunity for Zekhnini to strengthen his leadership skills, which “really highlighted the importance of clear communication, teamwork, and decisiveness,” challenging him “to step up, stay focused, and lead collaboratively in order to deliver a meaningful and impactful result.”

In just a few months, Zekhnini was able to gather new learnings about himself and the capacity for leadership that exists inside all of us, and more deeply understand what is possible when businesses are built and run with sustainability at their core.

Journey of insights and impact

For Sydney, Australia-based Jason Luo, an enterprise architect, and Felicity Zare, a Customer Success partner, their work with Circular Cities Asia helped them understand sustainability “as both a mindset and a practice” and reframe it as “a long-term growth opportunity, not just a compliance topic,” respectively.

In his reflection, Luo shared how the stories of specific families that have benefited from this client’s mission “crystallized the human dimension of sustainability” for him.

“I realized that ethical practices and community empowerment are not trade-offs but foundational pillars for modern enterprises,” he said. “Sustainable business models succeed when they are rooted in authentic relationships and local context. Sustainability requires balancing ambition with empathy, innovation with inclusivity, and vision with adaptability — lessons I’ll carry forward in all future endeavors.”

Circular Cities Asia helps to foster circular innovation in Asian cities by building capacity and testing eco-solutions on university campuses through community, mentorship, and hands-on projects. Their SAP pro bono team supported them with the prioritization of key customer segments, the development of value proposition canvases, and the design of targeted pitch decks. Beyond these deliverables, “the insights, knowledge, and expertise [the SAP team] brought to the table were invaluable, allowing us to refine our strategy [and gain] a fresh perspective on how to align our operations with future growth and sustainability goals.”

Zare, who felt an extra special connection to this organization, as she has family from South East Asia, also shared that participating in the Acceleration Collective “helped sharpen facilitation skills” and that for her, “translating our SAP knowledge into actionable strategies for a small, impact-driven team was a valuable stretch opportunity and reinforced the need to lead with clarity, empathy, and structure.”

Luo echoed this sentiment, articulating that a key takeaway from his experience was “the importance of adaptive communication — translating complex ideas into actionable steps for both our client and my peers.”

Their journey together enabled Circular Cities Asia to focus and amplify their impact and offered their pro bono consultant team from SAP the kinds of insights and skill development that will support them as their careers continue to grow inside of SAP and beyond.

Through their experiences working with CycleUp Textiles and Circular Cities Asia — social enterprises uniquely focused on shaping the future of sustainability — Zekhnini, Luo, and Zare have done more than just invest in their own growth. They have aligned their careers with their personal values and applied their skills in ways that can leave a lasting impact on the planet.

As environmental degradation and resource depletion continue to pose significant challenges, the world of business needs more leaders who are committed to participating in the creation of real change. These stories can show that pro bono consulting offers a stepping stone to meaningful collaboration and partnership that helps employees not only develop a growth mindset, but also a deeper understanding of what it looks like to drive sustainability from within a business.

As more SAP employees across the globe take on the opportunity to work alongside extraordinary, inspiring social entrepreneurs through pro bono consulting, these ripple effects will continue to spread, driving innovation, encouraging collaboration, and empowering future leaders to tackle the most pressing issues of our time.

Erin LaBarge is program lead of Global Employee Engagement Strategy for SAP Corporate Social Responsibility at SAP.

30 April

BUSINESS NEWS

REWE Group Chooses the Cloud to Transform Digitally with RISE with SAP

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WALLDORF — SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) announced that REWE Group has chosen the RISE with SAP journey to migrate its IT infrastructure to a cloud-based platform and modernize its IT processes across finance, accounting and human resources.

With 16,000 food retail stores and travel agencies across 21 countries, the Germany-based REWE Group impacts and nourishes 50 million customers across Europe each week. Aligned with REWE Group’s mission to deliver the best performance, REWE digital, the IT unit of REWE Group, will migrate 73 SAP software systems to Google Cloud over several years. SAP S/4HANA Cloud allows REWE Group to benefit from greater infrastructure scalability, IT landscape efficiency and the ability to flexibly adapt its technological resources to business requirements in real time.

Guido Hoepfner, COO of REWE digital, said: “This is a significant step forward in the digital transformation of the entire REWE Group. Through our deepened partnerships with SAP and Google, we are taking the harmonization of processes and the standardization of the company’s technical operating models to a new level. By introducing leading cloud solutions from SAP, we are aligning ourselves with the technological market standard. This allows us to continue setting the pace for digitalization and innovation in retail and tourism.”

Harmonized and standardized IT processes are crucial for REWE Group’s digital transformation, as it modernizes its business processes and increases operational synergies. SAP S/4HANA Cloud helps REWE Group streamline its existing on-premises systems and leverage more of SAP’s innovations in the future, including artificial intelligence. REWE digital expects to significantly reduce its hardware and operating costs by standardizing its IT infrastructure.

“RISE with SAP offers the REWE Group a perfect opportunity to further advance its cloud integration and digital transformation. We are excited to be part of this critical transformation for the company. By migrating to the cloud, the REWE Group will benefit from our continuous developments, including innovations in artificial intelligence, and take the next step into the future,” said Alex Klaeger, president Middle and Eastern Europe at SAP.

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Media Contact:
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SAP Press Room; press@sap.com

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