SAPphire Archives

Sapphire 2026 – What SAP actually did for CX

by Thomas Wieberneit | May 15, 2026 | Analysis, Blog |

SAP Sapphire 2026 was a major platform announcement, a competitive shot at ServiceNow, a coherent acquisition story across Reltio, Dremio and Prior Labs. It featured an Anthropic partnership that puts Claude at the center of the SAP Business AI Platform. For anyone who cares about customer experience, it was also a missed opportunity dressed up as ambition. If you watched only the keynote, you concluded SAP barely talks about CX. Klein did finance with JP Morgan. Herzig demoed pharma pricing. Industry AI showcased RWE wind turbines. The named flagship was the Autonomous Close Assistant. CX got line items. That reading is incomplete. Here is what actually happened for CX at Sapphire 2026, what it means competitively, and what SAP and SAP CX customers should do about it. What SAP actually shipped for CX On the same day as the keynote, Balaji Balasubramanian, SAP’s CX President and Chief Product Officer, published a substantive announcement listing ten named Joule Assistants for CX. Marketing gets Content and Campaign Assistants. Commerce gets Merchandising, Shopping and Order Management Assistants. Sales gets Sales, Deal Qualification and Deal Closing Assistants. Service gets Case Management and Service Management Assistants. The supporting announcements are the part most analyst coverage missed. A Google partnership brings Gemini into SAP CX, plus adoption of the open Universal Commerce Protocol. Vercel handles storefront development. SAP Unified Payment runs on Adyen, with Checkout.com and PayPal configurable. Expanded Parloa and Amazon partnerships cover voice and digital service. A new SAP Commerce Cloud, cloud ERP edition targets mid-market. Two Industry AI scenarios for CX: Autonomous Revenue Growth Management and Unified Commerce. All of it planned...

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...