“In a world of geopolitical tensions, product and skills shortages, and new regulations, our customers continue turning to SAP for the solutions they need to solve their most pressing challenges,” said Christian Klein, CEO and member of the Executive Board of SAP SE. “The innovations we’re announcing at SAP Sapphire build on our heritage of responsibly developed technology and decades of industry and  process expertise to ensure our customers’ success today and in the future.” 

AI Built for Business 

At the dawn of a new AI era, SAP is strengthening its commitment to embed powerful AI capabilities across its portfolio to help customers solve business-critical problems in the flow of work.  

Customers can use SAP Business AI with confidence because it is built responsibly. Today, SAP is announcing a raft of advancements to SAP Business AI, including innovations that personalize customer engagement, make procurement more productive, and expand organizations’ abilities to find and develop critical talent across their entire workforce.  

SAP also draws on the strength of its rich ecosystem to benefit customers. Yesterday SAP announced the next step in its longstanding partnership with Microsoft. The companies will collaborate on integrating SAP SuccessFactors solutions with Microsoft 365 Copilot and Copilot in Viva Learning, as well  as Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI Service to access powerful language models that analyze and generate natural language. The integrations will enable new experiences designed to improve how organizations attract, retain, and skill their people. 

“South East Asia digital economies are at an inflection point, and to truly enable businesses to drive sustainable success, data is key to give organizations that competitive advantage. Companies will also need to harness the power of generative AI to solve their most complex problems with data-driven insights, automate processes, innovate faster, and build resilient and agile supply chains while putting sustainability at the center of their operations,” said Verena Siow, President and Managing Director, SAP South East Asia. 

Moving Toward a Green Ledger 

Fifty years ago, SAP revolutionized financial accounting with enterprise resource planning (ERP) software. Today, SAP reinvents the “R” in ERP by extending the definition of resources to include carbon.  

Amid rapidly changing regulatory requirements and rising stakeholder pressure to operate sustainably,  enterprises need an accounting system for emissions that is as auditable, transparent, and reliable as  their financial data accounting. With SAP’s new green ledger, which moves companies from carbon estimates to actual data, companies can manage their green line with as much visibility, accuracy, and confidence as their top line and bottom line.  

SAP is announcing an update to the SAP Sustainability Footprint Management solution, a single solution that calculates and manages the full range of corporate, value chain and product-level emissions. SAP is  also announcing the SAP Sustainability Data Exchange application, a new solution for enterprises to securely exchange standardized sustainability data with partners and suppliers so they can decarbonize supply chains faster. 

SAP’s green ledger offering is planned to become part of the RISE with SAP and GROW with SAP. 

Innovations Across the Portfolio, Platform and Ecosystem Shore Up Customers’ Resilience 

SAP also announced a host of innovations across the rest of its portfolio. For example, drawing on the success of SAP Business Network, a comprehensive B2B collaboration platform where some US$4.5  trillion of trade is conducted annually, SAP announced SAP Business Network for Industry. This offering combines the benefits of networked supply chains with SAP’s unique industry expertise to ensure customers across consumer products, high tech, industrial manufacturing, and life sciences can boost supply chain resilience quickly.  

Innovations launched across SAP Business Technology Platform dramatically accelerate business process optimization and enable enterprise automation at scale. Advancements in SAP Signavio mean customers get critical process insights in hours, not days. Updates to SAP Integration Suite bring together holistic processes across SAP and non-SAP systems on-prem and in the cloud. And new event integration capabilities in SAP’s low-code offering, SAP Build, give business experts the power to trigger automation across all business processes. 

As customers face increasingly fractured data landscapes, SAP also recently built on its commitment to open data that boosts customers’ ability to uncover deep, actionable business insights with an extensive expansion of its partnership with Google Cloud. The comprehensive open data offering enables customers to build an end-to-end data cloud that brings data from across the enterprise landscape using the SAP Datasphere solution together with Google’s data cloud. 

SAP also doubled down on its commitment to upskill two million people worldwide by 2025, as the need for top-notch professional developers continues rising along with the increasing pace of technological innovation. The company announced new programs to meet the growing demand for SAP experts across its ecosystem to continue driving customers’ ongoing business transformation in the cloud.  

Visit the Sapphire 2023 News Guide and follow SAP on Twitter at @SAPNews.  

SAP announced the appointment of Rudy Abrahams as its new Managing Director, SAP Philippines.  

In his new role and building on SAP’s 27-year history in the Philippines, Abrahams will be responsible for SAP Philippines’ customer-centric and innovative approach to driving digital transformation in the country. His focus areas include helping customers, partners, and communities tackle the biggest issues they face, such as business transformation in the cloud, building a resilient supply chain, and creating a sustainable future. He will report to Verena Siow, President and Managing Director for SAP South East Asia.

“I am thrilled that Rudy Abrahams will bring both his leadership and deep experience in business transformation to SAP Philippines. His exceptional track record and passion for helping our customers, partners and communities run better, will be instrumental in supporting the Philippines and South East Asia’s digital economy and growth,” said Verena Siow, President and Managing Director for SAP South East Asia. 

“The last two years demonstrated how critical digital technologies, such as cloud and artificial intelligence (AI), are for business continuity and to thrive amid uncertain times. In the Philippines alone, we saw more businesses adopting cloud technologies to remain competitive and ensure that they adhere to the demands of their end-user customers,” said Rudy Abrahams, Managing Director, SAP Philippines. 

“The Philippines has been pushing its national digital transformation agenda, especially with the ongoing projects both from the private and public sectors. We believe that private-public-plural partnerships are integral in achieving the country’s goals. At SAP, we aspire to be a trusted technology partner that can enable more organizations in the country to transform into intelligent, sustainable enterprises. Above all—collectively with our customers and partners—we aim to make a profound and unique impact on sustainability,” added Abrahams.   

Abrahams brings over 25 years of ICT experience in the public and private sector, with expertise in large-scale digital transformation and a leadership style that puts people first. He was most recently the Vice President and Head of SuccessFactors for SAP South East Asia, where he was responsible for driving revenue, engaging customers, and collaborating with partners toward business outcomes and customer success.  

“As a company that puts people first, we aim to continuously make SAP an ideal place for work and foster every individual’s professional and personal development. By leveraging SAP technology, we always make sure that we embed diversity and inclusion practices in our processes. We know enterprises in the Philippines have also been pushing for workplace equality, policies, and education. So, I look forward to sharing best practices and ideas with our partners and customers in this area,” concluded Abrahams.  

Visit the SAP News Center. Follow SAP on Twitter at @SAPNews.