SAP’s “Source from Ukraine” initiative, launched in March 2023, has a clear goal: to increase spending with Ukrainian companies while also generating business benefits for SAP. This shows SAP’s deep understanding of social responsibility as an integral part of its commitment to a sustainable future.

The initiative aims to activate procurement spend as a means to support Ukrainian suppliers in rebuilding their businesses. Beyond sourcing for quality goods and services, SAP has a focus on integrating ESG (environmental, social, and governance) principles into decision-making as is standard with its procurement policy.

It highlights SAP’s commitment not only to sourcing products from Ukraine, but also to promoting social change.

Built-In Sustainability 

In implementing the initiative to attract more suppliers from Ukraine, SAP initially focused on the IT sector and conducted a rigorous selection process. So far, suppliers, including industry leaders like Softserve, Unicsoft, and Luxoft, have been selected. SAP’s commitment extends beyond services to include product areas, where notable Ukrainian companies producing innovative environmentally sustainable products have been discovered.

At SAP Spend Connect Live in Vienna, Austria, held in October 2023, Ukrainian manufacturers Rekava, Mol’far Tea, and Releaf Paper showcased their sustainable and innovative products. Rekava, for example, specializes in producing biodegradable candles made from recycled coffee grounds, while Mol’far focuses on minimalism and ethical environmental practices in tea production. Releaf Paper is the world’s first manufacturer of paper made from fallen leaves, promoting sustainable products such as paper bags. By supporting these unique Ukrainian companies, SAP is not only contributing to the economic reconstruction of the country, but also sustainability efforts.

One of SAP’s tier one suppliers, ABC Premium, has taken an important step by offering Rekava candles within its purchasing catalog, available to SAP employees on the SAP Ariba Buying solution.

Strong Alliances for Reconstruction

At the outset of the project, the NGO Impact Ukraine helped SAP connect with Ukrainian suppliers. It focuses on microfinance, procurement, and recruitment from Ukraine. The collaboration is facilitated by the voluntary engagement of professionals from the technology, healthcare, and finance sectors. With Impact Ukraine’s support, SAP and other organizations can further advance their goals regarding procurement from Ukraine.

SAP’s commitment to promoting innovation, sustainability, and economic growth through partnerships with Ukrainian companies not only fulfills its aspirations for procurement with purpose, but also contributes to making the world a better place.

Helping the World Run Better 

The “Source for Ukraine” initiative builds on global efforts to integrate social enterprises and diverse suppliers into SAP purchasing opportunities. Beyond SAP’s own internal purchasing efforts, the SAP Corporate Social Responsibility (SAP CSR) team is also investing in social and sustainable procurement ecosystems alongside public, private, and social sector partners like the European Commission, Deloitte, World Economic Forum’s Global Alliance for Social Entrepreneurship, and Social Enterprise World Forum’s People and Planet First verification.

Consider that US$5.3 trillion in annual commerce is transacted on SAP Business Network. If we can help create a small shift in procurement spend to organizations prioritizing people and planet like Releaf Paper, we could collectively increase investment in sustainable development in a way that is not possible through corporate philanthropy alone. To join our efforts, please e-mail: csr-global@sap.com.

Elena Parker is chief revenue officer for Intelligent Spend and Business Network, MEE, at SAP.

A smooth support experience and efficient support teams work together to delight and retain customers when it comes to customer support.

Stefan Steinle, executive vice president and head of Customer Support, SAP SE, shares more about how the Customer Support organization at SAP is harnessing artificial intelligence (AI) to help bring innovative improvements and deliver value to businesses.

Q: What are your views on the idea that businesses need to look beyond the customer to deliver outstanding customer support? 

A: Customer support is a differentiating factor in the success of any business, as it directly impacts customer satisfaction and in turn customer retention.  

While the primary role of customer support is to fix customer issues promptly and effectively, it is equally important to address the needs of support engineers. I would even go one step further and say that customer support is not just about customers. Yes, you heard that right. It may seem counterintuitive, but there’s another side to the story of retaining customers. The customer’s support experience and the engineer’s support efficiency are two sides of the same coin.

Support engineers are responsible for resolving complex issues and ensuring customer satisfaction. They are the first line of defense in protecting the company’s reputation. By investing in the well-being of support engineers, customer support can significantly elevate the customer support experience. 

Q: What constitutes a great support experience for customers? 

A: I can’t emphasize this enough: customers love self-help. They find satisfaction in testing workarounds, playing around with tips and tricks, and arriving at a solution without raising a ticket. What does this mean for us? It is our job to provide comprehensive SAP Knowledge Base Articles, guided tutorials, and other self-service options. 

Next, we need to accept that customer preferences are diverse. Not everybody has the same choice when it comes to interacting with support teams. Some like tickets, some prefer live agents to bots, and some like talking on the phone. We address this by offering multichannel support. 

Time is always a huge factor in a customer’s support experience. Maybe the issue they are facing is a minor speedbump or a major showstopper. Our job is to get them back on track. This includes personalization and the sharing of engagement history across support channels, to help ensure the customer is not forced to repeat its complaint at every desk. 

There are many more, but if you asked me to pick one – I would think proactively addressing customers’ issues, even before they realize there is a problem, constitutes a great support experience.   

Q: What can improve support efficiency among support teams and engineers? 

A: Any business that takes pride in offering exceptional customer support would address three areas and ask the following questions to ensure that their support teams are fully empowered:  

• People: Are your teams well-trained? How is the culture? Are employees collaborating and sharing knowledge? Are your systems set up to spotlight engineers who handle complex tickets with high quality solutions? 
• Processes: How well do you minimize manual efforts and automate repetitive tasks? Do you have clear protocols and escalation paths?  
• Technology and infrastructure: How robust is your ITSM system in managing and tracking customer queries? What productivity improvements have you implemented?  

Q: How has SAP elevated support experiences among customers?  

A: While we are invested in fine-tuning our Customer Support systems and processes regularly across multiple criteria, I would like to focus on our AI-powered solutions. 

When it comes to elevating support experiences among customers, our efforts are toward providing a smooth journey – right from when they encounter a problem down to its successful resolution. 

Those familiar with SAP systems know that our products are mapped to product functions, which you select when you create a new ticket. Now with AI, the system can predict the product function related to your case, and you can have the option to narrow your selection down very quickly. The system can also automatically suggest products when you try to select a product in the case creation form in SAP for Me. Similarly, the system can automatically route your ticket to the right queue by suggesting application components sorted by relevance for your new case. 

Another valuable AI-powered service is customer solution matching, where the system displays solutions provided to other customers that match your customer profile. With Incident Solution Matching, the system provides suggestions in the side panel of the get support app on SAP for Me. You can also see the top content suggestions related to your issue description. Our predictors and categorization machine learning models help enhance Incident Solution Matching recommendations by providing the correct contexts for a given issue description. 

SAP for Me helps bring together important alerts, metrics, and insights about your SAP product portfolio with a single access point. Built-In Support can embed the support experience into the product experience, offering context-aware guidance integrated into the user interface of cloud solutions from SAP. 

At the end of the day, all of these translate to a smooth and effortless experience for end users trying to log a support request. 

Q: How has SAP improved support efficiency among support teams and engineers? 

A: When it comes to improving the efficiency of support engineers, we lean on minimizing tedious, manual efforts and automating what can be automated. 

For example, with the expert finder, engineers can view a list of relevant experts who can handle the topic best. When intelligent swarming is applicable, the system can sort relevant swarming areas and experts by relevance, considering historical data. Given a case assigned to a category, the system can propose the most granular application component to which the ticket can be assigned. 

Support engineers can view top SAP Notes and SAP Knowledge Base Articles matching the topic of the issues they’re handling. The system can detect outbreaks by matching a case with other cases where the same issue was reported. The system can also predict outbreaks by reviewing customers with similar profiles.

Other services include automatic translation, communication assistants, text extractors, channel recommenders, and solution recommenders. These are just a few examples of how AI is making the day-to-day of a support engineer a little bit better. And SAP is fully on board to explore exciting options in this area. For a detailed showcase of our AI-powered solutions, check out Your Ultimate Guide for SAP Sapphire Orlando in 2024. 

Renuka Abraham is part of Customer Support at SAP.