SAP recently held one of its landmark events, Innovation X, in London to champion and promote innovation. Particularly innovation in the digital age using digital platforms (in this case, SAP’s platform and its partners’ technologies) in what the company likes to call the era of design thinking.

Staged at the Printworks venue in London’s historic East End, SAP Innovation X featured more than 60 sessions presented across five stages. The event aimed to engage hearts and minds with powerful stories of life-changing innovation. “The UK and Ireland can build on a massive historical track record in innovation ... and this goes way back to the mother of all change projects—the Industrial Revolution,” said Jens Amail, managing director for SAP UK and Ireland.

Sessions and Speakers

Among the SAP customers showcasing innovation concepts and methodologies at the event were global brands including Barclaycard; Jaguar Land Rover; McLaren Technology Group; Elephants, Rhinos and People (EPI-USE Labs); and The Body Shop.

Some of the most interesting presentations during the event included:

Data and Disruption

Simon Carpenter, VP digital core at SAP, delivered Navigating in a VUCA World. VUCA is an acronym that stands for volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. When a combination of qualities are taken together, it characterizes the nature of some difficult conditions and situations. This has become the norm in business today. Attendees learned how to survive VUCA and what they need to do to gain a competitive advantage in challenging times.

Designing Sustainably

Director of the London Design Festival Ben Evans presented a session dedicated to discussing our responsibility to design for a more sustainable future in all industries. Evans drove home that we owe it to our society, economy, and environment to embed sustainability throughout our businesses and activity. SAP announced a partnership with future London Design Festival exhibitions where they will share 20 stories of sustainable projects, products, and initiatives from companies on the frontiers of design thinking.

Business Transformation

Consumer credit reporting company Experian detailed its adoption and rollout of SAP CPQ (Configure Price Quote). The company has used this SAP software to help to enable sales, reduce the time it takes to produce quotes, and standardize its global pricing process. Gary Sonnenthal, global sales automation strategic initiatives, joined the conversation to talk about what led him to choose SAP CPQ and how it transformed their business.

Employee Experience

While showcasing SAP SuccessFactors and its support for employee experiences, SAP also used Innovation X to welcome James Sharpe, EMEA customer experience (CX) lead at Deloitte Digital. Sharpe examined how digital enterprise transformation has become a priority for many organizations. He asked, “With scores of technologies in the mix, are SAP users actually transforming their organization and culture, or are they just digitally optimizing processes?”

Intelligent Experience

Amail closed his keynote by noting SAP has completely redesigned its suite to promote its Intelligent Enterprise initiative. All of its offerings are now sitting on intelligent technologies and the SAP digital platform.

Since announcing this focus on the intelligent enterprise during the 2018 SAPPHIRE NOW and ASUG Annual Conference, SAP has defined this vision as having SAP HANA as the digital core, SAP S/4HANA as the business processes component, and SAP C/4HANA as the customer experience component.

“Most recently, with the acquisition of Qualtrics, we are redefining the customer experience space. We can now combine operational data with experience data along the entire value chain, so it’s a combination of customer experience, employee experience, product experience, and brand experience. And now we will shake up the traditional CRM market as we know it,” Amail added.

All of this is tied together with SAP Leonardo, which adds a layer of innovation and offers SAP’s approach to design thinking strategy to help customers solve their business challenges.

Why the X-Factor?

So, why did SAP call this London-based event Innovation X? And can we expect to see similar initiatives and messages being delivered elsewhere around the globe including the Americas?

As is often the case with SAP, it’s obvious if you think about it. Emblazoned across so many airport advertisements, the SAP Run Simple tagline was meant to suggest that it’s all about automating IT for the sake of simplicity. SAP Innovation X is also meant to suggest innovation for the user experience. And the X conveys an open-ended “innovation anywhere and everywhere” factor.

Innovation Matters

Innovation is certainly important to ASUG Members. According to ASUG’s 2019 State of the Community study, 51 percent of respondents say innovation not only matters to them, but it affects job satisfaction. Of the technologies it notes as truly emerging, 81 percent of participants expect artificial intelligence, machine learning, IoT, and conversational user interfaces to have a significant impact on their business in the next two years.

We can certainly expect innovation to play a part in presentations delivered at SAPPHIRE NOW and ASUG Annual Conference in May 2019.

If you’re planning to attend SAPPHIRE NOW and ASUG Annual Conference, don’t miss the day of learning about SAP Leonardo. There will be an ASUG Pre-Conference Seminar on Business Process Innovations for the Intelligent Enterprise and all things related to SAP Leonardo.Register today and save your spot.