SAP Business Suite Archives

SAP Connect 2025: Unpacking CX, AI, and Does Cinderella Finally Get to Dance?

by Thomas Wieberneit | Oct 8, 2025 | Analysis, Blog |

Before immersing myself into SAP Connect 2025, I had a number of questions that I would like to get answered during the event. These included the ones below and naturally focused on SAP’s CX and AI sides of the house. Some of them I got answered, some of them not, at least not explicitly. What is the plan to make SAP CX more prominent in the CRM/CX marketplace and what are main reasons that you see for customers preferring other CX solutions over SAP’s? What do customers say that they are missing in the CX suite? Where do you see the limits of agentic technology in the near to mid-term? Apart from adoption problems … And where do you see most potential for agentic AI going forward? What are adopted (agentic) use cases that concentrate on business transformation, gaining capabilities, uplift as opposed to “increasing efficiency”? How does SAP deal with the dichotomy between “human augmented by machine” and mass layoffs? SAP Consulting as well as SIs do face a need to change their business models away from billable hours. What do you recommend SIs do? How does SAP support them in this venture? How do you foresee the overall ecosystem change with an estimated increase of use and deployment of generative and agentic AI But more about all this in a minute. Of course, SAP took this event to announce a flurry of new capabilities across its suite of applications, AI, and technology, as evidenced in the long innovation guide and the theme-describing press release for the event, although I’d say that the event went well beyond “AI...

SAP Sapphire Orlando 2025: How to Steer Through Uncertainty with the AI-Powered Flywheel

by Thomas Wieberneit | May 26, 2025 | Analysis, Blog |

The news SAP just held its annual Sapphire event in Orlando, FL. It is totally under the theme of uncertainty and how technology, in particular SAP’s technology, can help businesses steer through poorly charted waters, to use a nautical metaphor. Uncertainty is caused by evolving regulatory situations, tariffs and shipping delays with their impact on the supply chain, waning consumer confidence in the light of all of this, and of course, the big gorilla in the room: AI. SAP’s response to this is the “SAP Flywheel”, which consists of three components Applications, of which SAP commands the broadest portfolio amongst all business applications vendors Data, which all these applications create, which in turn gives SAP extensive access to semantically rich business data AI, which analyses all this data, makes it actionable and, in turn feeds it back to the applications, closing the loop to establish the flywheel. SAP demonstrated how this works in a scenario that showed how a C-suite consisting of a CFO, CRO, COO and CHRO use the integrated SAP suite with embedded AI to rapidly respond to new tariffs, managing compliance, assessing financial impact, developing strategies, adjusting supply chain plans, and aligning people strategy, all based on unified data. Key announcements are based on the concept that AI is changing how businesses, and therefore its business applications, operate. Supporting this, is the purpose of SAP’s business AI, which has its foundation in SAP’s Business Technology Platform, BTP. A centerpiece of this change in how businesses – and users – operate is Joule, which is embedded (or will be soon) in all SAP applications and being expanded...