The promise of generative AI is in its ability to support individual businesses with individual needs; not just automating work, but identifying what work can or should be automated, as well as the best place to start.

With the release of new process AI capabilities for SAP Signavio — process recommender and performance indicators recommender — SAP is taking a step closer to realizing this promise.

Embedded into SAP Signavio Process Transformation Suite, these novel capabilities deliver instant, tailored process and metrics recommendations that will help process owners and process analysts accelerate process model design, more readily define their process monitoring strategy, and improve the quality of business outcomes.

SAP Signavio and SAP LeanIX solutions are core elements of the Business Transformation Management portfolio, which leverages SAP Business AI technology, initiatives, and principles to help customers on their transformation journeys, and deliver generative AI capabilities that are specific to the process world.

The latest release of SAP Signavio Process Transformation Suite features the following:

• An AI-assisted process recommender provides process owners with preconfigured process models suggestions out of a database of more than 5,000 best practices from SAP.  This new generative AI capability will help process owners move fast from the initial exploration phase to process design by instantly narrowing down hundreds of options to those that present a best match to their business.
• Users are suggested preconfigured process models which serve as a great foundation they can save, edit, and further perfect, saving weeks, if not months, of stakeholder interviews and lengthy workshops currently required to design a new process or redefine an existing one.
• An AI-assisted performance indicators recommender delivers instant recommendations on the most relevant process performance indicators (PPIs) to be applied to a specific process, based on a database of thousands of KPIs and PPIs.
• A capability to identify key process metrics among a variety of options, which is critical to measure success, can recommend the most relevant measures to assess the performance of a business process, providing companies with much needed insight into how they can streamline operations and reduce overhead.

“Generative AI is impacting every facet of modern organizations, and every process — from finance to sales, procurement, and supply chain management — can benefit from this transformative force,” shared Dee Houchen, head of Market Impact for SAP Signavio. “With generative AI serving as a catalyst, we are developing the third generation of our business process management solutions to make people’s work easier and help them perform it faster. When it comes to process management, generative AI can also extend the horizon of our thinking, by providing suggestions that experts can build on. At the same time, we can see generative AI lowering the entry barriers to disciplines such as process analysis, acting as a knowledge multiplier and helping companies to scale.”

In addition to these newly released capabilities, a process mining co-pilot currently in beta testing is expected to be released in November this year. The AI-assisted process analyzer, also known as text-to-insights, will empower users with any skillset to extract deep insights and obtain valuable knowledge from process information simply by using natural language and a question/answer approach. Along with improving the time to insight, this new co-pilot will help continue the trend of democratizing process mining, ensuring as many people as possible within an organization can contribute to process excellence.

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

At 14, Coco Yoshizawa of Japan recently became the youngest medalist at the 2024 Summer Olympics, using a skill she mastered during primary school to bring her to the podium. Coco and her peers are proving on an international stage that it is never too early to accomplish incredible feats. The Olympic Games are not the only place we can look to for young, driven leaders.

A recent global study by We Are Family Foundation (WAFF), produced in part with support from SAP, introduced the complexity of incorporating intergenerational collaboration into projects, highlighting how youth in particular face a lack of opportunities to lead and contribute. Young people are often left out of the conversation when it comes to the world’s unprecedented challenges, despite offering a unique and personal perspective on shaping the future.

People under the age of 30 make up more than half of the world’s population. Why block these important voices?

Laalitya Acharya is an impact entrepreneur who invented an AI-driven device to detect water contamination in seconds. In parallel, she founded an organization aimed at finding the intersection of research, advocacy, and policy work through summits discussing action to scale clean water solutions. She continued as an active activist on the topic of closing the water gap by attending events like COP28 as a We Are Family Foundation delegate — all before the age of 20.

Age has not stopped either of these accomplished youth from taking action. In fact, in most cases, being young can be an asset. Young people embody the qualities needed to lead in an increasingly unpredictable and technology-driven time — from the determination to be a leader in one’s athletic field to enacting meaningful change on climate issues.

In honor of International Youth Day 2024, here are three reasons we should never let age become an obstacle to actualize powerful ideas.

1. Young Entrepreneurs Offer Fresh Perspectives

Young impact entrepreneurs like Laalitya are governed by their life experiences and insights, shaped by a rapidly changing global landscape and unprecedented access to technology. Laalitya’s innovation, for example, was born out of a family trip to India, where she was inspired to research solutions when she was personally affected by contaminated water. With an interest in AI, she wanted to find a unique way to blend technology with advocacy to change the “mold of what we think about as water advocacy.”

When given the opportunity, youth can bring groundbreaking ideas and challenge traditional engagement models at the corporate and policy levels. Companies like SAP are leveraging these unique insights with initiatives like Youth to the Table, in which they enable young leaders to rethink the status quo in conversations with key partners at events like COP and The World Economic Forum.

2. Young Innovators Show a Strong Sense of Resilience and Adaptability

In an era characterized by constant change, from the onset of COVID-19 to the developments in AI, young people have an intrinsic ability to navigate uncertainty and apply a dynamic approach. While the entrepreneurial journey is rarely easy, tech-driven acceleration adds a level of urgency that forces them to remain scrappy and leverage the resources available to them in the moment. 

Renata Koch Alvarenga, a young activist from Brazil, understood the power of accessibility when she founded EmoderaClima at 22. The initiative looks to tackle the climate crisis through the lens of gender equality in the Global South, providing an online database with multilingual educational content to empower young people impacted by climate change in Latin America. As she looks to make resources accessible to all, she is required to adapt to the ever-changing business and policy setting in Brazil. Young people like Renata leverage resources like technology to adapt to difficult environments, a testament to their unique strengths as leaders.

3. Young People Emphasize the Importance of Community

Technology has not only given young impact entrepreneurs activists a louder voice than ever, it gives them a community at their fingertips. Whether it was the community they were born into or the community they’ve created, young people are more likely to support the causes and people they care about than former generations. Per a study on young changemakers by The Possibilists in partnership with SAP, 92% of respondents are motivated by the opportunity to do something for their community.

Young people know how to mobilize for their cause or community. Innovators like Larissa Napoli (27), who is the coordinator and member of the Quebrada Agroecológica, a project that promotes water security and agroecology in several Brazilian communities, are fueled by a sense of dedication. Much like the 70% of gen-Z were involved in social or political causes in 2021, she and her colleagues started locally and scaled their initiative through the power of digital channels. Their passion translates into meaningful action that can influence key decision-makers.

SAP believes in the power of collaborating with young impact entrepreneurs and innovators. Through partnerships with ChangemakerXchange, Generation Unlimited, The Possibilists, and We Are Family Foundation, we gather insights and promote initiatives that enact inclusive change. From bringing youth delegates to COP28 to introducing young changemakers at SAP events, we aim to give young innovators a valued voice.

If you are interested in learning more on how to close the intergenerational gap, We Are Family Foundation’s study offers interesting insights on the competitive advantages of working with young leaders.

We invite you to join us in this work; let’s inspire future solutions through meaningful solutions that erase age as an obstacle and ensure everyone’s opinion is valued.

Selina Henn is Strategy and Operations associate for Corporate Social Responsibility at SAP.

I am excited to share that registration for the 2024 SAP TechEd Virtual event is now live!  

SAP TechEd is our premier event for our core developer audience to explore the latest SAP innovations and gain hands-on technical experience. This year, we have expanded the program into a continuous learning experience with both virtual and in-person opportunities.

SAP TechEd Virtual

Start your learning journey by registering for SAP TechEd Virtual, taking place October 8-9, 2024. At the free two-day event, attendees will be the first to hear the latest SAP technology announcements and gain technical expertise through a wide range of engaging sessions led by SAP and partner experts.

We will offer over 100 sessions, most of them filmed live from SAP AppHaus Heidelberg and served up in a number of different formats to provide a range of learning opportunities.

To jumpstart your learning journey, you can also join Devtoberfest on September 23, 2024, featuring fun contests and content aligned to the SAP TechEd Virtual event.  

SAP TechEd on Tour and Other In-Person Events

If you want to take your learning journey to the next level, join in person with SAP TechEd on Tour.

SAP is offering four separate tour stops around the globe, organized in collaboration with SAP user groups. Each stop will offer hands-on learning opportunities, deep-dive lecture sessions, and meet-the-experts all presented by SAP experts, partners, and many customers.  

We are also bringing back the Developer Garage, a great opportunity for attendees to learn by doing.

The “Four on Tour” stops include:

• ASUG Tech Connect, taking place November 12-14, 2024, in West Palm Beach, Florida, U.S.
• SAUG-X Conference, taking place November 19-20, 2024, in Melbourne, Australia 
• UKISUG Connect, taking place December 1-3, 2024, in Birmingham, UK 
• DSAG TechXchange, being held in April 2025 in Wiesbaden, Germany 

In addition, the SAPinsider EMEA 2024 event will provide another in-person opportunity, featuring lecture sessions related to SAP TechEd along with hands-on and deep-dive learning experiences with peers and SAP experts.

• SAPinsider EMEA 2024: Copenhagen is taking place November 12-14, 2024, in Copenhagen, Denmark

Please register for SAP TechEd Virtual today or make plans to attend one of the in-person SAP TechEd on Tour stops.

JG Chirapurath is chief marketing officer for SAP Business Technology Platform.

Earlier this year, SAP announced a comprehensive set of resources and services to help customers build a cloud-first business strategy. SAP also announced the infusion of business AI capabilities throughout its portfolio of business applications.

To learn more about how these enhanced strategies impact the customer support strategy, I met with Stefan Steinle, executive vice president and head of Customer Support, SAP SE.

Q: SAP has an ambitious goal of being No. 1 in the enterprise applications and business AI space, and it is already clear that the support strategy must be equally ambitious. To what extent does our corporate strategy influence the support strategy?

A: To a great extent! Don’t forget that SAP is also on track to be No. 1 in market share, No. 1 in customer satisfaction, No. 1 in customer lifetime value, and No. 1 in portfolio adoption. Yes, the heavy hitters required for impact are all part of our company goal.

Right from its inception, our Customer Support organization has distinguished itself as a team with an expanded business function that goes beyond bug fixes and issue resolutions. Solving tickets and resolving customer issues are the day-to-day tasks to achieve our larger goal of helping customers maximize their business value, secure their existing investments, and optimize their SAP operations. In a nutshell, we are a business partner that proactively works with customers to achieve their business goals.

Q: What do customers want from Customer Support?

A: As guardians of customer business value, our primary focus is to understand what customers expect from us – both the expressed and the implied requirements. With a legacy of over 50 years, SAP is the world’s largest provider of enterprise application software, which also makes us a trusted advisor for over 437,000 customers across 190 countries. Customers rely on our rich expertise for guidance on how to run their business transformation.

In a support engagement, nobody likes surprises. Customers want us to be proactive, especially with respect to ease of implementation and implementation quality. They also expect us to identify potential issues early, prevent them, and inform them of applicable solutions and workarounds that we have used for other customers. As with any customer/provider relationship, they expect us to adhere to SLAs, quick response times, and quality benchmarks.

Our customers want us to process their feedback beyond the scope of issue resolutions. They expect us to cascade this feedback back to our development teams to improve product quality, supportability, and usability.

Q: How do we address these expectations?

A: We have a four-fold approach: guide, empower, solve, enhance.

Guide – by drawing on more than 50 years of expertise
We provide guidance by offering the tools, methodologies, and processes to help customers transform their processes and IT landscape. We help them transform their solution in the cloud with the help of SAP Cloud ALM, our application lifecycle management solution.

Empower – because customers love self-service options
I can speak for myself that when I am a consumer, I would choose a five-click self-service option any day over a five-minute phone call. I find that I am not alone here: our customers love self-help. They prefer DIY fixes to raising a ticket. We help address this by providing detailed SAP Knowledge Base Articles, guided tutorials, and other self-service procedures.

Solve – and get the business workflow back on track
Issues that need specialist skills or technical expertise are immediately assigned to support engineers who can resolve the problem at hand while working to ensure that we help our customers with quick, reliable, and high-quality solutions. 

Enhance – by mining customer and end user feedback
Imagine that you are the developer of a mobile app and some of your users have notified you of minor bugs that they have managed to bypass because they are techies. You know that not all users are tech-savvy, and the so-called “minor bugs” could end up being showstoppers for most users. This makes a solid business case for you to set aside resources to convert user feedback into proactive product improvements in your next release. Regular mining of customer and user feedback helps refine your products in quality, supportability, and usability – before the issues snowball into something unmanageable.

Customer Support at SAP has set up a system among our Product Management, Engineering, and Cloud Operations teams to feed customer requests back into the product, helping to ensure that we can monitor and prevent issues from happening in the first place.

Q: What is it about Customer Support at SAP that really delights the customer?

A: Four keywords: self-service, real-time, built-in, and bi-directional!

Time is at a premium and customers are vocal about it. In today’s fast-paced society where consumers are spoiled for choice with real-time options, such as collaboration tools, e-booking, flight tracking, QR code payments, or digital health records, it is only natural that support services are also available in real time. Market pressures and the nature of businesses have evolved to a stage that real-time actions are the order of the day. Real-time processing is no longer a unique offering; it is a basic expectation.

With SAP’s live channels, customers can chat in real-time using Expert Chat or Schedule an Expert with the same technical experts who would also be processing the ticket. You would be surprised that this is not such a common offering in our business segment.

Built-In Support moves support right into the product, providing one consistent support experience no matter what application or solution you are in. SAP’s support is also bi-directional, with smart AI solutions constantly monitoring application and support data, allowing us to proactively reach out to customers to help prevent issues from arising in the first place. This approach takes Customer Support beyond the scope of traditional reactive support. It leverages AI to predict and prevent issues, helping to reduce downtimes and customer effort and establish a collaborative relationship with operational efficiency. Note that all of these offerings are part of every cloud subscription through SAP Enterprise Support.

Our AI-powered Real-Time Support is designed along the concept that the customer needs support anytime, every time, and all the time.

Renuka Abraham is part of Customer Support at SAP.