SAP Extends Partnerships to Enable Transformation of Troubled Supply Chains

SAP SAPPHIRE — Transforming troubled supply chains and customer experience is in the spotlight at this week’s SAP Sapphire conference in Orlando. SAP kicked off the event on Tuesday revealing more than a dozen new or expanded partnerships, and product updates. Like last week’s Dell Technologies World conference, SAP is holding its first live event in three years.

Accenture, Apple, IBM, HCL, EY, Google Cloud, Microsoft, OpenText, Siemens and Wipro are among those with which SAP announced new alliances. The latest partnerships aim to facilitate deeper digital transformation capabilities among the various SAP solutions. At SAP Sapphire, SAP also is outlining a broad set of new solutions and integrations aligned with its promise to accelerate the migration of its traditional software to cloud-native solutions.

Christian Klein, SAP’s CEO and board member, kicked off the opening session with a show of solidarity for Ukraine.

SAP’s Christian Klein at SAP Sapphire 2022.

“We stand side-by-side wisdom against this unjustified and horrible war. And these people, especially the children, they need our help,” Klein said.

Klein said SAP will match any donation made associated with the conference.

Pivoting to the conference agenda, Klein said SAP is emphasizing four core priorities: improving supply chains, business process transformation, low-code/no-code application development and enabling environmental sustainability. Helping customers to improve their supply chains is the most obvious opportunity for SAP and its partner ecosystem. While the darkest days of the COVID-19 pandemic, well into its third year, appear to be over, its effects linger. Besides exposing weaknesses in existing supply chains, the pandemic has sparked new expectations moving forward.

According to Klein, 75% of companies globally are experiencing supply chain disruptions.

“So far, only 25% of all enterprises have seen concrete outcomes of data investments into digital transformation,” he said.

Rise with SAP Momentum

A year ago, SAP went live with its Rise with SAP offering, which aims to accelerate the delivery of digital transformation. Klein said SAP now has 2,000 customers using the Rise with business process transformation and cloud migration offering. Among them, 60% are new SAP customers.

“Many of those actually adapted already all of our modular cloud applications in the ERP space,” Klein said.

Klein emphasized several alliance partners that have deployed it for their own operations and to deliver their own solutions. Among them: Accenture, AMD, Atos, HCL, IBM, Microsoft and Wipro. Last week, SAP and Accenture announced the SOAR with Accenture services solution. The new partnership aims to helps large enterprises with their cloud migration with SAP S/4HANA Cloud. Described as a “clean core,” it aims to ease integration with cloud-native business solutions available via the SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP).

Teaming with Apple to Improve Supply Chains

Among the numerous partnerships SAP is revealing is an expanded co-development effort with Apple. The companies’ engineering teams have jointly designed new iOS capabilities to make devices easier to use in …

… order management and fulfillment. That has resulted in two new solutions unveiled at SAP Sapphire.

One is the new iOS-based SAP Warehouse Operator mobile app for SAP’s Extended Warehouse Management (SAP EWM) Apple devices’ AI capabilities. The new offering lets warehouse employees tap the device’s intelligence such as tracking location and computer vision. According to SAP, this will guide warehouse workers faster and more intelligently. The Warehouse Operator tool also aims to enable more accurate barcode scanning. Notably, it will do so by using a device’s camera to process damaged or unique images. It will also enable the use of Apple devices for the picking and put-away processes using EWM.

The other iOS app resulting from SAP’s partnership with Apple is SAP Direct Distribution. The new app aims to automate routine processes for those who deliver goods without using paper. SAP said the app will help digitize workflows for delivery drivers, while reducing errors.

SAP’s Julia White at SAP Sapphire 2022.

“This app gives drivers the ability to execute on a paperless delivery on their daily route using camera location management and offline capabilities of iOS,” said Julia White, SAP’s chief marketing and solution officer. The two apps are available now, while additional apps in development,” she said.

Among some other announcements:

SAP Store Barriers Eliminated for Partners

Although not mentioned in the opening keynote, SAP said it is “removing barriers” for partners utilizing the SAP App Store. SAP said it has eliminated store-specific transaction fees for partners using the SAP Store. Previously, the fees were 15%.

“SAP is working to make it easier for all software companies to work closely with SAP,” according to the announcement posted by SAP SVP of ecosystem success Tom Roberts. “To achieve this, we have created a scalable benefit model and allow partners to choose where they fall on this scale — while keeping revenue share (between SAP and providers) consistent across the scale.”