Seven insights and key learnings from SAP Sapphire 2024

PwC’s EMEA SAP Alliance Leader Marc Bourdé recently attended SAP Sapphire in both Orlando and Barcelona. Here are his top seven insights and learnings from the events.

#1 GenAI is transforming SAP’s user experience through Business AI – including through a planned integration between Joule and Microsoft Copilot

SAP is pumping significant resources into GenAI, with Business AI enhancements announced right across their product portfolio. One of the most exciting is SAP’s plans to put its GenAI copilot ‘Joule’ at the heart of its new user interface. This means that employees will be able to ask questions and perform their activities using natural language. 

Beyond that, SAP announced that it’s integrating Joule with Microsoft Copilot. SAP’s CEO Christian Klein pointed out: “This two-way integration is the only one in the industry so deep that no matter which copilot you use, it's one experience”. 

#2 PwC is making waves by automating and turbocharging data analysis using GenAI

The plans for Joule open up a whole new world of opportunities for SAP partners to develop use cases to augment the solution. During Christian Klein’s keynote he mentioned PwC’s market leading “Autocommenting” with GenAI solution, which enables clients to create financial reports and then automatically detect outliers, peaks and troughs in data, and also use GenAI to add comments explaining the reasons behind these trends and anomalies. This essentially automates the data analysis process, reducing manual work by around 20-40% while accelerating time-to-insight. 

To learn more about our Autocommenting with GenAI solution, read this blog.

#3 GenAI can de-risk and accelerate a S/4HANA implementation in a cost effective way…

GenAI isn’t just enabling new use cases for what SAP calls “Business AI”. It can also slash the time and cost of SAP implementations when you aim for a Clean Core (staying on SAP’s standard ERP functionality), because AI can automate part of the implementation’s activities. 

But there’s an important caveat: a high level of AI efficiency is only possible for clients that avoid extensive customisation and adhere to a Clean Core ERP concept. In our experience, the more a client retains a Clean Core, the more efficient the delivery, as improvements have shown to range from approximately 5 to 30%.

#4 … but staying on the standard release is key

Since the launch of RISE with SAP in 2021 and GROW with SAP in 2023, SAP has been eager to point out that customers switching to these solutions will benefit from new functionality. At this year’s Sapphire, the message intensified further, as every keynote, presentation and executive discussion advised clients to embrace a Clean Core ERP strategy with a fit-to-standard approach in order to adopt SAP Business AI and ESG innovations at speed. Special custom functionality should be developed in SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP), leaving the core ERP untouched so that clients can move to new releases as they’re introduced.

PwC was delighted that two of our clients at SAP Sapphire gave presentations showing their peers how it is possible to achieve >92% alignment with standard SAP processes to future-proof investments in SAP and benefit from innovations.

Other clients are eager to follow in their footsteps, as SAP’s message about the benefits of standardisation is getting through. A year or two ago, our clients on SAP S/4HANA on-premise or SAP ECC were asking us why they needed to move to a clean core. Fast forward to this year, and clients are asking us how they can get there. This journey involves changing technology, governance, business processes and the fundamental mindset. There’s a significant change management effort associated with it.

#5 Clients can get extra funding from SAP to move to a clean core

PwC is one of very few organisations that has been certified as a “RISE with SAP Validated Partner”. The PwC method is aligned with the principles of SAP’s Activate methodology to deliver a fit-to-standard approach. Because of this, clients who work with PwC can get extra funding from SAP’s RISE with SAP Migration and Modernisation Programme to help them adopt a clean core. PwC has already helped several clients to do exactly this.

#6 SAP is encouraging clients to move to public cloud

Muhammad Alam, SAP’s Head of Product Engineering, used his keynote to highlight that SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition is a great fit for organisations of all sizes. He commented: “A great example of this is PwC, our largest SAP S/4HANA public cloud customer. They use SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public cloud, because of the depth of capability and update-safe extensibility, allowing them to develop truly market-differentiating capabilities.”

It's a good point, because SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition is a key enabler of our strategy: to accelerate breakthrough outcomes.

#7 SAP’s latest acquisitions help prepare for a future of continuous innovation

In November, SAP completed the acquisition of the LeanIX architecture documentation solution. At Sapphire, SAP revealed its plans to acquire WalkMe, a training package that guides employees through business processes. Working hand-in-hand with SAP’s Signavio solution for managing, mining and documenting business processes, WalkMe will help organisations train their staff as new innovations transform business processes. This is important, because the move to cloud means that SAP clients stand to benefit from new innovations every few months, rather than every few years. 

If you’d like to discuss any of the topics raised in this blog, or to share your own learnings from Sapphire, please get in touch.