NEWS 47 - The World Management

31 January

Transforming Customer Support With Artificial Intelligence

Customer support is one of the cornerstones of a successful business, yet it remains one of the most complex and demanding areas of the knowledge economy. It requires synthesizing vast amounts of information — including customer business needs, industry specifics, technology, and governance — into actionable insights.

At SAP, we’ve harnessed the power of artificial intelligence (AI) and other data-driven technologies to revolutionize customer support, turning it into a seamless, efficient, and value-added experience.

The Evolution of the Knowledge Economy

Beyond resolving everyday challenges, we continue to serve our customers as true business partners, collaborating with them to help them achieve their broader business goals. While we live in a knowledge economy, where economic value is derived from that knowledge and how we apply it, this paradigm is changing. As humans, our role in the economy is evolving as AI systems increasingly replicate human cognitive skills — retrieving and using the right knowledge at the right time.

In this new paradigm, success will be determined not by how much you know, but by how effectively you can allocate and manage resources to get work done. In customer support, this means moving from simply resolving issues to orchestrating AI tools and human expertise to deliver optimal outcomes.

AI, including generative AI, becomes a collaborative partner, enabling support teams to allocate resources efficiently and focus on higher-value tasks. Recognizing this paradigm shift, we go beyond resolving everyday challenges and serve our customers as true business partners, collaborating with them to help them achieve their broader business goals — as the world changes.

AI Is the Perfect Partner for Customer Support Transformation

At SAP, AI is built into core business processes of customers, connecting finance, supply chain, procurement, sales, marketing, human resources, and IT. Data-driven technologies such as AI, robotic process automation (RPA), and process mining elevate support experiences for our customers. They do it by simplifying support access, addressing complex scenarios using AI agents, and enhancing automation to increase efficiency while delivering personalized solutions, as well as taking advantage of system metrics and process insights.

The Customer Support & Cloud Lifecycle Management organization at SAP also drives AI innovation to analyze process metrics collected from the customer’s systems to evaluate efficiency, bottlenecks, and opportunities for improvement; improve processes using domain-specific machine learning models; and build AI solutions that can be integrated into applications used in a business process or scenario.

Generative AI: Elevating Customer Support

Generative AI has been a game-changer for customer support. It empowers our support teams by enhancing the quality and speed of outcomes and enabling more personalized recommendations for customers. It also opens new possibilities for orchestrating AI services in combination with AI agents.

AI agents streamline support processes by automating time-consuming tasks, such as retrieving and assessing information, while enabling human-machine collaboration. This allows support professionals to focus on improving both customer satisfaction and operational efficiency.

Real-World Impact: AI Use Cases in Customer Support

SAP has developed more than 50 AI-driven use cases, showcasing the transformative power of AI in customer support. These include:

Precise and fast generative AI-infused recommendations appear for customers while they type their requests. Customers also benefit from proactive recommendations on trending content and preventative recommendations like system health checks.
Smart ticket routing ensures support tickets reach the right experts, quickly.
Proactive issue identification detects and addresses potential problems before they escalate.
Internal workflow enhancements deliver efficiency gains from workflows such as intelligent search, automated error categorization, clustering of tickets with the same root cause, or expert swarming for complex issues.

Other generative AI capabilities include summarizing tickets, assisting in knowledge creation, and improving communication with customers.

These advances not only elevate support experiences for SAP customers, but also create significant efficiencies for our support engineers.

The SAP Advantage

SAP’s AI-driven support strategy is structured around three key pillars:

Capturing business opportunities with domain-specific AI models: By leveraging our domain expertise and historical data, we design machine learning models tailored to specific support challenges. These models enable precise and actionable recommendations.
Gathering real-world process insights: Using tools like SAP Signavio, we capture and analyze detailed process insights. This provides a solid foundation for identifying improvement opportunities.
Building and integrating AI solutions: We integrate AI-driven solutions into existing workflows, ensuring seamless application and measurable impact. Process insights guide ongoing refinements and enhancements.

And the numbers speak for themselves: SAP’s AI support scenarios are called up more than 1 million times by our customers on an average day. More than 35,000 end users use our AI capabilities per month.

The Road Ahead: Human-Machine Collaboration in Support

The future of customer support lies in human-machine collaboration. By combining the analytical power of AI with human expertise, we can deliver unparalleled support experiences. AI agents will play a pivotal role in this transformation, assisting with things like ticket triage, data analysis, and troubleshooting, thereby enabling support teams to focus on strategic activities. As AI continues to evolve, these agents will become even more capable of providing real-time insights and proactive solutions to anticipate customer needs before they arise.

SAP’s commitment to AI-driven innovation ensures that we remain at the forefront of customer support transformation. By continuously evolving our AI capabilities, we are setting the stage for a new era of value-driven, scalable, and efficient customer support.

But there is one thing that AI will never replace: the empathy, care, and passion of our support teams, ensuring every customer feels supported as we solve their challenges together. The future of customer support lies in blending AI’s analytical power with human expertise. By working together, we’re setting a new standard for customer success.

Thomas Saueressig is a member of the Executive Board of SAP SE leading Customer Services & Delivery.
Stefan Steinle is executive vice president and head of Customer Support & Cloud Lifecycle Management at SAP.

31 January

BUSINESS NEWS

SAP Is a Leader in the 2025 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Configure, Price, and Quote Application Suites

by twm@twm.com.sg 0 Comments

For the seventh consecutive year, Gartner has named SAP a Leader in its Magic Quadrant for Configure, Price, and Quote Application Suites.

SAP CPQ enables organizations — however complex, across however many channels, and regardless of which CRM they run — to produce quick and accurate quotes, accommodating the most advanced configuration and pricing requirements, resulting in a better sales experience and faster sales cycles.

This graphic was published by Gartner, Inc. as part of a larger research document and should be evaluated in the context of the entire document. The Gartner document is available upon request from SAP. Click to enlarge.

Gartner evaluated 15 vendors and named SAP a Leader based on our “ability to execute” and “completeness of vision.” This recognition serves as an acknowledgment of SAP’s ongoing commitment to providing our customers with a CPQ solution that can meet and exceed their needs.

SAP CPQ is an essential component of SAP’s portfolio of products that help automate the quote-to-cash process, which enables organizations to convert sales opportunities into profitable repeat customers. SAP’s customers can transform to “everything-as-a-service” with innovative revenue models, can quickly adapt to market changes, support multiple sales channels and ensure regulatory compliance with end-to-end automation.

Our customers are the reason we do this, and they participated in the Gartner Peer Insights process by providing reviews that included:

“A Must buy along with SAP Eco System”
“SAP CPQ is an amazingly stable and consistent product with the ability to connect with different platforms and creating value for customer.”
“SAP CPQ is user-friendly and simplifies the configuration process. SAP CPQ can scale to meet the need for business.”
“An excellent integrated configuration solution, easy to setup and use”
“Everything is well laid and easy to navigate. Easy to teach people who have never use the system.”
“Really love using this platform, really simple to use and a good configurable system with enhanced features!”

Customer case studies provide descriptions of specific value.

In under 15 minutes, the sales team at Cleaver-Brooks is creating sales quotes for its complex boiler systems. The company has been using SAP CPQ since 2005 to help automate and scale its legacy quoting process, empowering more than 700 salespeople creating many thousands of quotes per year.

“You basically give the salesperson one to two days of their week back by using SAP CPQ,” Dominic Kasten, director of Sales Technologies at Cleaver-Brooks, shared. “When you give time back to salespeople, you are encouraging them to sell solutions to customers instead of just reacting to specifications.”

EXFO Inc., has created a quote system with a 360-degree view of customers to slash response times, improve quote accuracy, and enhance customer experiences. It has also created a new revenue stream by combining products and services in a single quote while increasing the number of quotes created per month by 70 percent.

“SAP CPQ underpins an intuitive system that helps sales teams produce speedy, accurate quotes, letting them concentrate on what matters most to customers,” said Sheila Thibodeua, CRM Solutions and Digital Sales manager at EXFO.

To learn more about how SAP helps to automate quote-to-cash, visit the SAP CPQ, SAP Billing and Revenue Innovation Management, SAP Subscription Billing, and SAP S/4HANA Cloud areas of sap.com.

Jonathan Rhodes is head of Product Marketing for SaaS ERP at SAP.

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. 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.

31 January

BUSINESS NEWS

SAP Introduces SAP Demo Environment 2.0 for Partners

by jennychua@twm.com.sg 0 Comments

SAP today announced the launch of the new SAP Demo Environment 2.0, a platform designed to benefit partners by providing easy access to the entire SAP solution demo portfolio. This allows partners to effectively communicate the value of SAP solutions, helping customers understand how these tools can address their specific challenges and enhance their businesses.

Product demos play a crucial role in helping customers visualize the core features and capabilities of SAP solutions. Customers want to see tangible proof of how SAP solutions can solve their pain points and improve their success. However, creating tailored demos that reflect customer needs can be resource-intensive and time-consuming. The new SAP Demo Environment is designed to provide clarity and confidence, simplifying this process and enabling partners to deliver high-quality, relevant demos that resonate with customers.

Using Live Data to Showcase Real-World Scenarios

Through the Content Discovery tool, partners can gain free and unlimited access for up to 10 users to an integrated, pre-scripted demo landscape with a continuously updated library of, as of the start of 2025, more than 240 demos to 100 SAP solutions across various landscapes. These turnkey, scripted demos utilize live data to showcase real-world scenarios and processes, allowing to effectively address customer challenges and demonstrate the full potential of SAP solutions. With access to interactive demo scripts, professionals can build their own knowledge and leverage interactive value journeys to explore demos in a click-through format without needing a live system.

Driving Meaningful Business Outcomes in Delivering Value to the Customers

As many organizations are undergoing digital transformation, the new demo environment is a game-changer. It empowers users to enhance their skills and leverage future-ready demos that can directly address customer’s needs, ultimately helping to drive meaningful business outcomes and foster long-term partnerships.

“The new SAP Demo Environment 2.0 is a significant leap forward in equipping SAP partners to effectively convey the value of SAP solutions,” says Karl Fahrbach, chief partner officer at SAP. “By streamlining the demo process with a comprehensive library of cutting-edge demos and interactive demo scripts, partners can double-down on their commitment to innovation excellence, drive customer success, and unlock new opportunities for growth.”

Andre Bechtold is SVP and head of Solution and Innovation Experience at SAP.

31 January

BUSINESS NEWS

Balancing the Scales: How Supply Chain Professionals Can Juggle Competing Stakeholder Priorities

by sherwin@eyeconz.com 0 Comments

Managing supply chains is like conducting an orchestra: it demands artful coordination, precision, and leadership. Supply chain leaders, like conductors, must foster collaboration and harmonize multiple interconnected components to achieve a seamless outcome.

This was the key insight gleaned from the panel I hosted at the North American Supply Chain Executive Summit (NASCES) last fall, “A NASCES24 Speaker Roundtable – A Supply Chain Discussion.”

Unlike musicians, supply chain professionals work with stakeholders who span roles and organizations, each with differing objectives. While finance pushes for cost reductions, sales and marketing may demand speed, and operations might prioritize risk mitigation. It is up to supply chain leaders to carefully balance these competing goals, ensuring efficiency without compromising other interests.

Here are my key takeaways from the panel, which featured supply chain leaders from prominent companies in the high-tech, retail, and consumer products industries.

Leverage Innovative Procurement and Multi-Sourcing Strategies

In today’s dynamic global landscape, change can happen instantly. Businesses must navigate an array of factors, including geopolitical conflicts, natural disasters, shifting consumer preferences, intricate regulations, and more. A common theme among the panelists involved leveraging multi-sourcing and digital procurement tools to empower supply chain managers to be flexible when addressing unexpected disruptions.

Multi-sourcing strategies involve diversifying the supplier base to mitigate the risks associated with relying on a single provider. By adopting this approach, businesses can ensure continuous supply and maintain operational resilience. For example, if one supplier faces a disruption, a manufacturing company can quickly shift to another supplier, minimizing downtime and meeting production timelines.

Dynamic sourcing, a strategy that involves the continuous evaluation and adjustment of supplier relationships, enhances agility by allowing companies to adapt to market fluctuations and stay competitive. For instance, a company can procure raw materials from the most cost-effective supplier based on real-time market conditions, driving down costs without impacting product quality or production schedules.

Enhanced supply chain visibility is another crucial benefit. With real-time insights into supplier performance, managers can pinpoint inefficiencies and optimize costs. Additionally, increased transparency improves compliance with regulatory and environmental standards, helping meet ethical sourcing practices and sustainability goals.

Invest in Digital Transformation and AI

Panelists emphasized how supply chain leaders are leveraging AI, using it as a tool to respond quickly to emerging trends. Technology is a superpower when it comes to balancing different priorities — digital platforms, generative AI, machine learning, and predictive analytics provide supply chain teams with centralized visibility. This empowers them to be more agile, strategic, and efficient.

Additionally, advanced platforms that leverage AI can provide real-time data about inventory, shipment, and delivery statuses, which help reduce silos between various stakeholders. This transparency minimizes conflicts and aligns efforts across departments, ensuring cohesive decision-making and a collaborative work environment.

Level Up Your Demand Forecasting

When dealing with an unpredictable business environment, panelists shared how they are increasingly relying on accurate demand forecasting for stakeholder alignment. Leveraging AI-powered predictive analytics enables them to anticipate demand fluctuations and adjust their strategies accordingly. This foresight fosters trust and ensures that all internal stakeholders are working together toward collective objectives.

Panelists highlighted that this can also ensure that each team is supported in their daily tasks. For instance, manufacturing teams can receive adequate stock, finance teams can avoid excess inventory costs, and operations can maintain smooth workflows. Predictive analytics turns forecasting into a strategic advantage, enabling companies to address potential issues proactively and reduce risks.

Achieving Supply Chain Harmony

Competing stakeholder priorities don’t have to create friction. By investing in AI, implementing dynamic sourcing, and adopting cloud-based procurement platforms, supply chain professionals can turn these challenges into opportunities for innovation and collaboration. The result is a supply chain that is not only efficient and productive, but also resilient and adaptable — a true asset to every stakeholder involved.

The key to harmonizing stakeholder priorities lies in leveraging advanced technologies and adopting innovative strategies. With the right tools and mindset, supply chain leaders can transform challenges into opportunities, creating a supply chain that is agile, efficient, and able to meet stakeholder needs.

SAP Business Network is specifically designed to address many of the issues and challenges discussed. It provides the necessary tools to seamlessly connect buyers and suppliers, streamline procurement and supply chain processes, and ensure that every stakeholder thrives in rapidly changing markets. By investing in such technology, businesses can build a future-ready supply chain that drives resilience and long-term value.

To learn more about these insights and hear the full discussion from supply chain executives at leading companies, I encourage you to watch the recording from the North American Supply Chain Executive Summit. You’ll gain valuable perspectives on how industry leaders are navigating complex supply chain challenges and balancing diverse stakeholder priorities in today’s dynamic business environment.

30 January

BUSINESS NEWS

SAP Q4 Results 2024 Mark a “Strong Close” for the Year

by twm@twm.com.sg 0 Comments

SAP released its financial results for Q4 and full fiscal year 2024, marking a strong finish to the year. For the fourth quarter of 2024, SAP’s cloud strategy continued to show positive momentum. SAP’s current cloud backlog reached €18.08 billion, reflecting a 32% year-over-year growth, with cloud revenue rising by 27% to €4.71 billion. The […]

The post SAP Q4 Results 2024 Mark a “Strong Close” for the Year appeared first on InsideSAP.

30 January

BUSINESS NEWS

SAP AppHaus Network Powers AGILITA’s AI Sales Solution

by cybersite 0 Comments

In August 2024, SAP AppHaus Network partner AGILITA introduced the AGIL AI.Sales solution on the SAP Store, leveraging SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) to enhance sales processes through AI-driven automation and user-centric innovation. The SAP AppHaus Network is known for its focus on human-centered design, ensuring that innovation aligns with business needs and user […]

The post SAP AppHaus Network Powers AGILITA’s AI Sales Solution appeared first on InsideSAP.

30 January

BUSINESS NEWS

Cirque du Soleil Adopts RISE with SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition

by jennychua@twm.com.sg 0 Comments

Cirque du Soleil has embraced RISE with SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition to modernize its operations and sustain its global creative leadership. Cirque du Soleil has long been recognized for its groundbreaking performances, blending acrobatics, storytelling, and visual artistry. However, ensuring seamless operations behind the scenes requires a robust technological foundation. To enhance efficiency and […]

The post Cirque du Soleil Adopts RISE with SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition appeared first on InsideSAP.

30 January

BUSINESS NEWS

Proactive Customer Care: SAP’s Blueprint for E-Commerce Success

by cybersite 0 Comments

Imagine being in the online queue for a concert you’ve been anxious to get a ticket for. As the countdown progresses, it’s finally your turn. Just when the purchase is about to be completed, the page refreshes endlessly, goes blank, and displays a message that an error has occurred, forcing you to start over. This seems like a minor issue, but when the realization of going back to the end of the queue hits, frustration can quickly overshadow the initial excitement.

From the customer’s side, this experience could affect the reliability of future purchases. It could make them think twice before shopping there again, especially if they already had concerns about the difficulties in completing transactions. From the company’s perspective, a website outage implies significant losses, such as direct revenue loss due to a main sales channel being shut down, and a loss of organizational trust, potentially driving customers to competitors.

In retail and e-commerce business, customer experience is paramount. A company whose e-commerce frequently experiences downtime could receive a negative market reaction from investors.

These experiences highlight the importance of robust support readiness programs, especially during holiday seasons when businesses strive for more sales and revenue through their digital platforms. With customer expectations at an all-time high, businesses need reliable, scalable, and innovative solutions to deliver exceptional shopping experiences. Proactive support measures can considerably reduce system failures during peak times, which not only reinforces customer satisfaction but also protects organizational trust and revenue. SAP’s holiday support readiness program is designed to address these needs. It offers a strategic, data-driven approach to help businesses thrive during peak periods.

The holiday support readiness program is a customer experience program by SAP to help safeguard and establish strong support for digital commerce and retail customers during high shopping times. Key features of the program include:

Comprehensive coverage: It can cover events ranging from Singles Day in China and El Buen Fin in Mexico to Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas, and New Year’s.
Extensive participation: Last year, 143 customers with 200 tenants used SAP’s holiday support readiness program to navigate the holiday rush successfully.
Early preparation: Preparation begins 4–6 months in advance, involving collaboration among customer support, cloud operations, and product engineering teams.

The focus on customer experience has increased due to the expansion of interfaces through which customers interact with companies. In a survey conducted in the European Union in 2023, 70% of respondents bought products or ordered services electronically in the preceding 12 months. For corporations, this online influx depicts a figure of more than US$300 billion in the last quarter of 2024 alone for U.S. retail e-commerce sales. To approach these complexities, companies have steadily turned to advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) to strengthen their support systems.

In 2024, SAP introduced a preventative care model under the transformation blueprint, aimed at delivering predictive, proactive, bi-directional support integrated with AI-driven insights and automation, allowing teams to predict potential problems and address them before they impact customers—and potentially millions of users. SAP’s proprietary AI tools are deployed to help streamline support processes, enhance operational insights, and enable predictive and proactive engagement.

This represents a pioneering shift in the industry, positioning SAP as a front-runner in AI-driven, predictive, and proactive support solutions. The model provides a comprehensive, 360-degree customer support profile, helping to accelerate issue detection and anticipate potential problems, with AI-integrated features like a virtual support assistant, resource and web traffic predictions, a recommendation engine, case history analysis, issue correlation, and pattern recognition.

To operationalize this model, SAP leverages collaboration approaches among product engineering teams, cloud operations—database administrators and technical operations managers—technical support, and mission-critical teams to convey comprehensive case analysis reports and detailed recommendations and action plans for each customer. This can allow SAP to identify and resolve future issues before customers are affected, helping to reinforce system stability during peak sales periods. For example, the proactive support process for the 2024 Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales events involved holistic health checks for over 143 customers and 200 production environments, setting a new standard in holiday readiness.

When aligned with the organizational strategy, a support program can foster a more positive customer journey, resulting in improved customer loyalty. “The holiday support readiness program isn’t just about managing the current peak; it’s about preparing for the next one. Our focus on preventative, AI-driven support means that our customers can focus on their business, not on system stability,” says Stefan Steinle, executive vice president and head of Customer Support & CLM at SAP.

For enterprises, joining the holiday support readiness program can also offer the following advantages:

Minimize downtime: It helps ensure e-commerce platforms are ready when it matters most.
Optimize performance: It uses AI and automation to help maintain peak system health and customer satisfaction.
Stay ahead: Proactive monitoring and predictive support help keep organizations one step ahead of potential outcomes.

Looking forward, preparing for upcoming retail peak seasons cannot be overstated. SAP Sapphire in 2025 will hold dedicated sessions to help ensure customers are well-equipped for these challenging periods. From live demos to expert interactions, attendees will be able to witness firsthand how SAP’s tools help keep businesses running smoothly and engage directly with solution experts.

Our commitment at SAP Sapphire in 2025 is to equip customers with the knowledge and tools needed for uninterrupted success during every peak period. The holiday support readiness program is about turning challenges into opportunities for growth. With these resources, businesses will be better prepared to face uncertainties and use favorable circumstances in demanding times, ensuring sustained development and customer satisfaction.

Don’t wait until the next holiday season to find last-minute solutions. Be a part of the holiday support readiness program now and secure your business’s performance for future peak sales periods.

30 January

BUSINESS NEWS

SAP and Qualtrics Unveil New Employee Experience Solutions

by twm 0 Comments

SAP and Qualtrics have announced a renewed partnership, integrating their technologies to provide organizations with advanced tools aimed at enhancing employee experiences and workforce engagement. In November 2018, SAP SE announced its intent to acquire Qualtrics International Inc. for $8 billion, recognizing the potential of combining Qualtrics’ experience management capabilities with SAP’s operational data to […]

The post SAP and Qualtrics Unveil New Employee Experience Solutions appeared first on InsideSAP.

28 January

BUSINESS NEWS

Sebastian Steinhaeuser to Join the SAP Executive Board – Executive Board Member Thomas Saueressig’s Contract Extended

by jennychua@twm.com.sg 0 Comments

New Extended Board, including Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and Chief Revenue Officers (CROs), will further enhance efficiency and accelerate transformation.

WALLDORF — SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) today announced that Sebastian Steinhaeuser (39) has been appointed to join the SAP Executive Board. He will lead a newly formed board area called Strategy & Operations, continuing to support the execution of SAP’s strategy and driving simplification in operations. The SAP Supervisory Board also extended the contract of Executive Board Member Thomas Saueressig, head of Customer Services & Delivery, for another three years until 2028.

SAP also announced that it is forming an Extended Board* comprising senior leaders from across the company, including the newly appointed CTO, Co-CROs and Chief Marketing Officer (CMO). The new SAP Extended Board will act as a strategic advisory body, driving execution of the company’s AI-first, Suite-first strategy. It will leverage global leadership to align with key initiatives and ensure smooth execution across the organization, while the SAP Executive Board remains the ultimate managing body of SAP SE.

New Board Area to Drive Strategy Execution and Simplification

The new Strategy & Operations board area will ensure that SAP continues successfully executing on its transformation journey by driving the company’s strategy internally and externally, as well as by simplifying internal operations. Bringing Strategy & Operations together with Global Marketing – led by newly-appointed CMO Ada Agrait – will also promote closer collaboration to deliver customers and partners an enhanced digital experience.

“Since joining in 2020, Sebastian Steinhaeuser has been crucial in shaping and implementing SAP’s corporate strategy. We believe that Sebastian is not just a leader, but the architect of a future where innovation meets impact. On behalf of the SAP Supervisory Board, I wish Sebastian a very successful start in his new role,” said Pekka Ala-Pietilä, chairman of the Supervisory Board of SAP SE. “Moreover, we are excited to extend our best wishes to Thomas Saueressig for his forthcoming term on the SAP Executive Board. His contributions have been instrumental in accelerating our customers’ journey to the cloud, and we look forward to his continued success.”

After joining SAP in 2020, Steinhaeuser held various positions, including the role of Chief Strategy Officer, where he also ran the growth areas Business Transformation Management, Business Network and Sustainability. In 2024, Steinhaeuser’s role expanded to Chief Strategy & Operating Officer, including oversight of business operations, processes and IT, as well as ecosystem and commercial functions. Prior to joining SAP, Steinhaeuser worked with the Boston Consulting Group, where he supported companies in their corporate and digital transformation journeys.

Further Organizational Updates to Build on SAP’s Successful Foundation

SAP is also announcing a new CTO and new CROs. Philipp Herzig will take on the role of SAP’s global CTO, in addition to his current position as Chief AI Officer. In this role, he will oversee SAP’s technology strategy, innovation, research and corporate development, driving the ongoing success of SAP’s Business AI and Sustainability units while continuing to advance innovation for SAP customers and partners.

Jan Gilg and Emmanuel (Manos) Raptopoulos will co-lead SAP’s Customer Success organization as SAP’s new CROs. Gilg, currently president and chief product officer for Cloud ERP, will oversee SAP Americas and the Global SAP Business Suite. Raptopoulos, the current regional president of SAP EMEA, will manage the SAP EMEA, MEE and APAC regions. Elevating leadership that combines a strong product background with great sales experience will help SAP engage more deeply with customers to translate their challenges into solutions that ensure sustained success. Herzig, Gilg and Raptopoulos will report into SAP CEO Christian Klein and serve on SAP’s Extended Board.

All changes are effective February 1, 2025.

Visit the SAP News Center. Follow SAP at @SAPNews.

*Members of the Extended Board: Ada Agrait (Chief Marketing Officer), Michael Ameling (General Manager, Business Technology Platform), Sebastian Behrendt (Head of Global Finance), Jan Gilg (Chief Revenue Officer, Americas & Global Business Suite), Philipp Herzig (Chief Technology Officer), Thomas Pfiester (Head of Global Customer Engagement), Emmanuel Raptopoulos (Chief Revenue Officer, APAC/EMEA/MEE), TBA (General Manager, Business Suite), Monika Schaller (Chief Communications Officer)

About SAP

As a global leader in enterprise applications and business AI, SAP (NYSE:SAP) stands at the nexus of business and technology. For over 50 years, organizations have trusted SAP to bring out their best by uniting business-critical operations spanning finance, procurement, HR, supply chain, and customer experience. For more information, visit www.sap.com.

Note to editors:
To preview and download broadcast-standard stock footage and press photos digitally, please visit www.sap.com/photos. On this platform, you can find high resolution material for your media channels.

For customers interested in learning more about SAP products:
Global Customer Center: +49 180 534-34-24
United States Only: 1 (800) 872-1SAP (1-800-872-1727)

For more information, press only:
Joellen Perry,+1 (626) 265-0370, joellen.perry@sap.com, PT
Marcus Winkler, +49 6227 767 497, marcus.winkler@sap.com, CET
SAP Press Room; press@sap.com

This document contains forward-looking statements, which are predictions, projections, or other statements about future events. These statements are based on current expectations, forecasts, and assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results and outcomes to materially differ. Additional information regarding these risks and uncertainties may be found in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including but not limited to the risk factors section of SAP’s 2023 Annual Report on Form 20-F.
© 2025 SAP SE. All rights reserved.
SAP and other SAP products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP SE in Germany and other countries. Please see https://www.sap.com/copyright for additional trademark information and notices.
Please consider our privacy policy. If you received this press release in your e-mail and you wish to unsubscribe to our mailing list please contact press@sap.com and write Unsubscribe in the subject line. 