ASUG members emerged victorious at this year’s SAP Innovation Awards, announced April 10.
Held annually to honor and celebrate the achievements of forward-thinking SAP customers and partners who leverage cutting-edge SAP product and cloud technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI) and business AI, the SAP Innovation Awards celebrated its 11th edition by naming winners in seven categories:
- Business Innovator
- Sustainability Hero
- Industry Leader
- Partner Paragon
- Transformation Titan
- Experience Wizard
- Services Supernova
Out of 170 businesses, one in three advanced as finalists, and 30 winners were then selected. This year, one third of the winners belonged to the ASUG community. Accenture was named a Business Innovator, alongside Bosch, Honeywell, and The Royal Eswatini Sugar Corporation (RES), while B/S/H/ was awarded the title of Experience Wizard. RES was named an Industry Leader, while PwC received the Partner Paragon prize. In the Services Supernova category, Accenture was a winner, while Bosch and Roche triumphed as Transformation Titans. These ASUG members’ submissions are detailed below.
SAP published more than 150 submissions, all visible on the SAP Innovation Awards website. ABB, Blue Diamond Growers, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Daimler, Energy Harbor, Heartland Dental, Krones, LeverX, Globant, Stryker, Suncor, Tech Mahindra, and Western Sugar Cooperative were also among the ASUG members, partners, or associates selected as SAP Innovation Awards finalists.
Juergen Mueller, SAP Chief Technology Officer and Member of the Executive Board of SAP SE, served as an executive sponsor of this year’s awards. “These winners come from various industries and locations worldwide,” Mueller wrote in his published announcement of the results. “What all of them share is the use of SAP products and technologies to create innovative solutions for their customers, employees, and communities.”
Mueller further congratulated all participants “for demonstrating remarkable abilities and highlighting the importance of curiosity and continuous learning” in their submissions. Winners could opt to receive either an exclusive trophy and complimentary pass to SAP Sapphire in Orlando or a $1,000 SAP4Good donation voucher.
Inside ASUG Members’ Award-Winning Submissions
Accenture, named a Business Innovator, leveraged RISE with SAP to pursue its journey to a clean digital core. The business also developed an intelligent virtual assistant for financial leaders, earning the title of Services Supernova.
First, expanding into more diverse businesses amid exponential growth, which increased system complexity and made upgrades cost- and resource-intensive, Accenture sought to harness industry standard solutions, enhance quality and predictability, and adopt a consumption-oriented model, minimizing capital expenditure investments instead of ownership. Through RISE with SAP’s tech-managed services, Accenture leaned into fit-for-purpose SaaS applications, upskilled 50% of its retained IT team, transitioned its functional IT team to composable architecture, removed 21% of its custom code from the core, achieved 77% faster integration, and accelerated corporate allocations by 50%.
Accenture also developed a Generative AI Financial Advisor solution to streamline the creation of financial narratives and receive live alerts on key financial metrics. Harnessing the synergy between human collaboration, SAP solutions, and artificial intelligence technologies, the solution fits with the Global Enterprise Generative AI Framework, leveraging generative AI using Microsoft Azure Open AI and Cohere platforms integrated with an SAP Business Warehouse, SAP HANA systems, and other hyperscalers supported by SAP BTP services (SAP AI Core and SAP AI Launchpad). The results? 60% faster financial narratives generation, 15% faster remediation of financial discrepancies on finance departments supported by generative AI, and 13,280 finance risk user alerts per month.
Bosch, named a Business Innovator, streamlined field service management processes from service order generation to service order dispatch, service execution and confirmation, installed base updates, and customer billing. Also named a Transformation Titan, Bosch built a comprehensive B2B customer service solution on SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP).
For the former project, Bosch sought to streamline work order scheduling and technician deployment by implementing the SAP Field Service Management solution. Integrated with SAP S/4HANA and SAP Sales Cloud, SAP Marketing Cloud, and SAP Commerce Cloud solutions, along with other applications, SAP FSM eliminates the need for manual data entry and reduces the risk of errors. The implementation yielded a 6% productivity increase for service technicians, as well as better data quality and transparency.
To achieve its SAP BTP-powered digital customer service platform, an all-in-one digital system including a customer order platform, dealer integration, and return/claim and warranty management, Bosch capitalized on SAP BTP while keeping its core SAP ECC systems clean, using an API-first approach to communicate with SAP ECC as well as the SAP BTP Extension Suite. Reducing end-to-end process time by 72%, increasing customer onboarding by 250%, and reducing customer claim volume by 57%, the flexible extension solution puts an emphasis on efficiency.
Honeywell, named a Business Innovator, was faced with reimagining supply chain visibility to boost supplier collaboration and performance. Honeywell selected SAP Business Network Supply Chain Collaboration to improve supplier collaboration in operational procurement, invoicing/payments, inbound logistics, and supplier quality, also achieving better data accuracy and execution. As of December 2023, Honeywell had onboarded 6.4K suppliers through the SAP Business Network.
The Royal Eswatini Sugar Corporation (RES), named a Business Innovator and Industry Leader, is digitizing with the help of SAP Intelligent Agriculture, which assists small growers in improving their yields and gives them insights into when is the best time to harvest, also empowering farmers and RES’ extension officers to plan, execute, and measure key tasks, such as managing sustainability and industry reporting. Thus far, RES has been able to drive greater efficiencies in yields, predictability, and cost reductions from combining close to real time outgrower data with agronomic models, satellite, and climate data.
B/S/H/, named an Experience Wizard, transformed its omni-channel customer experience (CX) approach with what it calls the OneConsumer (OCO) project, shifting technically and logically to a new, SAP-powered omni-channel data integration and synchronization architecture. Connecting all relevant systems and processes through SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) for holistic data integration and establishing a common consent and preference management solution based on SAP Customer Data Cloud consumer profiles, the Bosch subsidiary also integrated consumer data across engagement solutions like SAP Commerce for direct sales activities, SAP CRM for service processes, and in parallel implemented SAP Marketing Cloud, enabling greater direct marketing and personalization capabilities.
PwC, named a Partner Paragon, created an ESG Reporting Manager, successfully mastering the requirements of the CSRD and the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS). Reducing the complexity of data collection and aggregation to provide an end-to-end solution for automated and full scope CSRD reporting including quantitative and qualitative information, PwC’s solution includes specific content packages enhancing the capabilities of SAP Sustainability Control Tower (SCT) and ensuring compliant and audit-proof CSRD reporting while addressing wider net-zero ambitions.
Roche, named a Transformation Titan, developed SAP Cell and Gene Therapy Orchestration as a co-innovation with SAP. This industry standard cloud solution for multi-product cell and gen therapy orchestration enhances Roche’s ability to deliver cell and gene therapies to patients globally. Due to a change in portfolio needs, Roche and SAP pivoted from deploying SAP Cell and Gene Therapy Orchestration for a Phase 1 autologous cell therapy product to deploying it for a commercial gene therapy product, showcasing the modularity, flexibility, and interoperability of the solution. SAP Cell and Gene Therapy Orchestration supported Roche’s first commercial launch of a novel commercial gene therapy for the treatment of Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, giving patients access to this life-saving treatment.
To browse the winners’ entries in full, visit SAP.
ASUG extends its warmest congratulations to all of these deserving winners, whose SAP innovations power the technology progress of not only their businesses but the greater ASUG membership community.