In his keynote kick­ing off SAP’s SAP­PHIRE NOW con­fer­ence, Chris­t­ian Klein, CEO, COO, and mem­ber of the Exec­u­tive Board at SAP, high­light­ed the need for com­pa­nies to be agile and resilient — two words that were giv­en a lot of air­time through­out the online con­fer­ence. This notion trick­led down through­out the rest of the SAP­PHIRE NOW Reimag­ined keynotes and sessions.

As the world con­tin­ues to grap­ple with the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, SAP unveiled new inno­va­tions to its prod­ucts that will help cus­tomers car­ry on through any unplanned inci­dent, even the mas­sive black swan event we are all expe­ri­enc­ing. The rest of the con­fer­ence focused on how the newest inno­va­tions in SAP’s solu­tions aid cus­tomers and help them run more resilient enterprises.

“The promise of SAP’s intel­li­gent enter­prise is to pro­vide you with the required agili­ty and resilien­cy need­ed to give you con­fi­dence in uncer­tain times,” said Thomas Sauer­es­sig, mem­ber of the Exec­u­tive Board of SAP SE for SAP prod­uct engi­neer­ing dur­ing his keynote address.

How SAP Reimag­ined SAP­PHIRE NOW for 2020

This year was a first for SAP­PHIRE NOW, with atten­dees tun­ing in dig­i­tal­ly instead of con­ven­ing in Orlan­do. SAP made COVID-19 a key talk­ing point through­out the con­fer­ence, assur­ing atten­dees that it under­stands the dif­fi­cul­ties they are fac­ing. In a ses­sion with jour­nal­ists, Klein dis­cussed how more than 90% of SAP’s work­force is cur­rent­ly work­ing from home and how impor­tant SAP sees its respon­si­bil­i­ty to keep employ­ees safe and equipped to do their job. Dur­ing his keynote focused on the SAP Intel­li­gent Enter­prise, Luka Mucic, CFO and SAP Exec­u­tive Board Mem­ber, dis­cussed how the SAP staff is being asked to adopt ​“an agile mind­set and culture.”

Klein also dis­cussed how SAP is aware of the impor­tance that the cur­rent eco­nom­ic pres­sures have placed on the company’s solu­tions, and the impact its own cus­tomers have on glob­al business.

“As many indus­tries are suf­fer­ing, we see that some of our solu­tions are more rel­e­vant than oth­ers,” he said. ​“When you talk about sup­ply chain and e‑commerce, the good thing is that, often­times, SAP soft­ware is at the cen­ter of these needs.”

Many of the conference’s keynotes and ses­sions were geared toward how the inno­va­tions to SAP’s plat­form can help cus­tomers stay resilient dur­ing the cur­rent eco­nom­ic con­di­tions and beyond.

Expand­ing the SAP Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Platform

Over the course of the week of SAP­PHIRE NOW Reimag­ined, the soft­ware com­pa­ny announced a few key upgrades to its port­fo­lio of solu­tions. One of the most wide-reach­ing were the inno­va­tions to the SAP Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Platform.

“The Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Plat­form is SAP’s com­mon tech­nol­o­gy foun­da­tion,” said Juer­gen Mueller, CTO of SAP and a mem­ber of the Exec­u­tive Board. ​“It ensures that all appli­ca­tions are easy-to-use and per­fect­ly integrated.”

The plat­form includes mul­ti­ple SAP solu­tions and pro­vides the bedrock to run the company’s Intel­li­gent Enter­prise. At the cen­ter of these new addi­tions are more direct work­flows to allow an eas­i­er — and faster — tran­si­tion of crit­i­cal data from SAP appli­ca­tions and solu­tions to oth­er SAP and non-SAP solu­tions across an orga­ni­za­tion. Addi­tion­al­ly, arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence capa­bil­i­ties have been embed­ded into the plat­form, allow­ing cus­tomers to make sense of their data to dri­ve busi­ness deci­sions. Oth­er key inno­va­tions include the new release of SAP HANA 2.0 SPS 05, fur­ther inte­gra­tions of SAP Cloud Plat­form Inte­gra­tion Suite, and an updat­ed ver­sion of SAP Data Ware­house Cloud focused on cus­tomers in the retail industry.

“Many cus­tomers I have spo­ken with have expressed the need for agili­ty and quick time to val­ue, made even more urgent by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic,” Mueller said. ​“To achieve both, tech­nol­o­gy becomes even more impor­tant, and SAP can help meet those chal­lenges. We’ve added sig­nif­i­cant enhance­ments to every major com­po­nent of our Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Plat­form to help cus­tomers across all indus­tries over­come obsta­cles stem­ming from the ubiq­ui­ty of data, com­plex­i­ty of IT, and busi­ness volatility.”

Peo­ple and the Intel­li­gent Enterprise

The idea of SAP’s Intel­li­gent Enter­prise is noth­ing new. Yet, dur­ing this year’s SAP­PHIRE NOW, the con­cept took a slight­ly dif­fer­ent angle. Dur­ing his keynote address, Klein dis­cussed what the Intel­li­gent Enter­prise means to SAP and how the com­pa­ny is pur­su­ing this notion through its prod­ucts. Lat­er in the week, Mucic drilled down to what this con­cept means for peo­ple, par­tic­u­lar­ly SAP employees.

“The Intel­li­gent Enter­prise has to equip peo­ple with the right process­es, tools, and insights to deliv­er val­ue to our cus­tomers,” said Mucic in his keynote address. ​“Espe­cial­ly in times of cri­sis, we have a respon­si­bil­i­ty to sus­tain our col­leagues’ work, and to ensure that not only their phys­i­cal health is fine…but also their men­tal health.”

Through his keynote, Mucic high­light­ed that peo­ple are the key to a company’s finan­cial suc­cess — a strik­ing and encour­ag­ing note to hear from a CFO in these times — and it is vital to empow­er employ­ees with resilient solu­tions. A key way to do that with the help of the Intel­li­gent Enter­prise is to cre­ate an end-to-end busi­ness envi­ron­ment where data and busi­ness process­es are con­nect­ed. Mov­ing for­ward, SAP will like­ly con­tin­ue to evolve this con­cept, but it will like­ly focus on bring­ing val­ue to peo­ple and orga­ni­za­tions in the near term.

“Intel­li­gent Enter­prise helps us strike a bal­ance between our own needs in terms of run­ning a prof­itable busi­ness and help­ing our cus­tomers, where pos­si­ble, by keep­ing up our sus­tain­abil­i­ty efforts,” Mucic said.

Mea­sure Sus­tain­abil­i­ty with Cli­mate 21 

In the quest to help com­pa­nies sus­tain­ably con­duct their busi­ness, SAP unveiled a new pro­gram dur­ing the con­fer­ence: Cli­mate 21

“We are con­vinced that sus­tain­abil­i­ty rep­re­sents a clear com­pet­i­tive advan­tage and a finan­cial and eco­nom­ic ben­e­fit,” Sauer­es­sig said.

The solu­tion, which was intro­duced dur­ing Saueressig’s keynote address, rep­re­sents a new strate­gic ini­tia­tive for SAP. Work­ing with part­ners, the soft­ware com­pa­ny will pro­vide embed­ded sus­tain­abil­i­ty met­rics across its port­fo­lio. The goal is to help cus­tomers map their car­bon foot­prints, allow­ing them to reduce those foot­prints to achieve envi­ron­men­tal and eco­nom­ic advantages.

The pre­mière solu­tion to come out of Cli­mate 21 is SAP Prod­uct Car­bon Foot­print Ana­lyt­ics. The appli­ca­tion lever­ages SAP S/4HANA data to help users cal­cu­late their car­bon foot­print based on their green­house gas emis­sions. Com­pa­nies can cal­cu­late where they stand com­pared with their com­peti­tors to under­stand which of their prod­ucts pro­duce the most emissions.

“Cli­mate 21 is the embod­i­ment of the Intel­li­gent Enter­prise because it spreads across the end-to-end busi­ness process through­out our entire port­fo­lio,” said Saueressig.

SAP Indus­try 4.Now 

Through­out the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, sup­ply chains all over the world have strug­gled with the mas­sive dis­rup­tion. Dur­ing the con­fer­ence, SAP announced new addi­tions to its solu­tions asso­ci­at­ed with Indus­try 4.0 — which it has brand­ed as Indus­try 4.Now. Orig­i­nal­ly con­ceived to be adapt­ed to man­u­fac­tur­ing, this ini­tia­tive applies to sup­ply chains and pro­cure­ment to strength­en these processes.

“This is about con­nect­ing process automa­tion and man­u­fac­tur­ing with enter­prise data,” said Bernd Bran­dl, senior vice pres­i­dent and glob­al head of DSC solu­tion sales at SAP. ​“You can under­stand exact­ly what your cus­tomer needs to opti­mize process­es and upgrade sup­ply chain planning.”

As part of Indus­try 4.Now, SAP will begin embed­ding pro­duc­tion solu­tions with automa­tion, pre­dic­tive ana­lyt­ics, and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence to pro­vide real-time insights into busi­ness process­es. There are now more than 100 inno­va­tions avail­able across SAP’s sup­ply chain solu­tion. This work will con­tin­ue as SAP part­ners con­tin­ue adding to these solutions.

“This will only become a real­i­ty if we do this togeth­er,” Sauer­es­sig said.

The entire­ty of SAP­PHIRE NOW — includ­ing keynotes and break­out ses­sions—is avail­able on-demand. Be sure to hear from the company’s lead­ers about the newest inno­va­tions and announcements.

Reg­is­ter today for ASUG­FOR­WARD, tak­ing place on June 22 – 25, to learn, exchange ideas, and gain infor­ma­tion about your SAP invest­ment that you can put into prac­tice imme­di­ate­ly.