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Empowering Deskless Workforces and Shaping the Future of People Management

How a company manages its people says a lot about who they are. It can mean the difference between surviving or thriving as a business. Leadership teams are realizing the current workforce has a diversity of talents and that how people work is different than it was only a few years ago. Many companies are looking for solutions to not only manage this change but to position themselves as the best possible solution for their customers.

While 80% of the world’s employees are deskless, only 1% of enterprise software investment is for deskless workforce-focused solutions. Managing these employees involves unique hurdles like communication barriers and limited digital access. Similarly, the role of people managers has evolved significantly in the modern workplace.

In a joint effort between SAP.iO Foundry Tel Aviv and SAP SuccessFactors, it was revealed that two populations need a great deal of support with innovation — deskless workforces and people managers.

To address these needs, ten startups were selected to solve the unique challenges of deskless workforces and people managers. These startups collaborated with SAP, developing solutions that integrate with SAP products to serve our diverse range of customers. From our work together, we gleaned valuable insights that we have highlighted in a new report.

Get your copy of the latest ‘Empowering Deskless Workforces and Shaping the Future of People Management’ report HERE.

Startup trends 2024: Innovations in e-commerce CX

Enterprise e-commerce solutions have to be holistic, comprehensive, relevant, and up-to-date with customer needs and market trends. In order to deliver an end-to-end suite of applications and services, large e-commerce vendors have to maintain a clear strategic partner approach.

At SAP, innovation is a core element of our partner strategy. In order to offer customers a relevant ecosystem of partners, we always scout for solutions that are both innovative and enterprise-ready to complement our offerings. To deliver on that commitment, in 2017 SAP established SAP.iO, with an ongoing mission to build the company’s next generation of partners.

Here are five startup trends for 2024 in the e-commerce space, represented by startups that graduated the SAP.iO program and are now certified SAP partners.

  1. Personalization – Jebbit
  2. Customer advocacy – Mention Me
  3. Immersive experiences – Obsess
  4. B2B commerce – Zoovu
  5. Video commerce – Smartzer

Startup partnerships lead the way in e-commerce innovation

E-commerce has come a long way, but we can expect even more innovation ahead as startups set their sites on ways to improve it as consumer needs and habits change.

New technologies, with AI likely playing a big role, will help brands deliver seamless, personalized, and interactive e-commerce experiences that drive loyalty and sales.

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Zespri Automates Global Kiwi Fruit Quality Control with Clarifruit

A new case study was published by Clarifruit, together with SAP customer Zespri.

 

Zespri shared: “Integrating Clarifruit into our SAP system was a breeze.”

Who is Zespri?

Zespri is the world’s largest kiwi fruit marketer, based in New Zealand. They sell high-quality produce in over 50 countries, and they pride themselves on maintaining impeccable quality across their supply chain. Before partnering with Clarifruit, Zespri faced a number of challenges associated with unstandardized quality control practices, and a lack of objective data on which to base sound business decisions.

From Many Standards to One: The Urgent Need for Uniform Quality Control

Before launching their partnership with Clarifruit, Zespri took a decentralized approach to quality control. This was inevitable, given the global reach of their business. But it meant that different locations had different standards, without a single, uniform set to regulate all of them. As a result, inspectors conducted quality checks in different ways, bringing a great deal of subjectivity into the supply chain.

They approached Clarifruit with a set of specific aims:

  • Standardize QC Processes: Unify inspection methods across the entire supply chain, from growers to market destinations.
  • Optimize Data Accuracy: Establish a system for objective, consistent data collection to make better business decisions – and faster.
  • Reduce Waste: Minimize produce waste throughout the supply chain

Zespri Finds Answers at Clarifruit

Once they discovered Clarifruit, Zespri quickly recognized the value that the quality control platform provided their business.  Clarifruit’s platform combines an inspector mobile app and a real-time analytics dashboard, solving both of Zespri’s most pressing needs in a single, easy-to-use solution that could be rolled out across all locations instantly, and in real-time.

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Bringing startups together with SAP customers at SAP’s Industry Advisory Councils in 2023

By Muzna Siddiqi, Business Development Manager

SAP.iO unlocks numerous opportunities for startups in our portfolio to connect with SAP customers and expand the reach for their solutions.  One of the most sought-after experiences in 2023 was the opportunity to showcase startup innovation at one of SAP’s Industry Customer Advisory Council meetings.

This year, SAP.iO secured invites for select startups to engage directly with CIOs, CTOs and VPs of IT to highlight their innovations at SAP Industry Customer Advisory Councils for the Fashion and Consumer Products industries.  The SAP.iO team also represented select SAP.iO startups at the Industrial Manufacturing, and Aerospace & Defense Industry Council meetings. These councils meet twice a year to provide input to SAP, network with colleagues, and learn about new innovations in the market.

Fashion Industry Customer Advisory Councils

Starting off in the spring in New York City, over two dozen of SAP’s strategic customers in Fashion came together to discuss their industry’s latest innovations and pain-points, with a specific focus on sustainability, supply chain, and marketing. To showcase innovations in these areas SAP customers participated in a role-play workshop where they analyzed startups with a common challenge of sustainability in mind. SAP.iO startups, Obsess, Ecocart, and Inspectorio, were chosen to take part in the engaging workshop, where they showcased their solutions and impact on sustainability initiatives.

“SAP.iO put on a dynamic session with three of their startups during the recent SAP Fashion Council.  It was a super engaging session and we experienced firsthand some of the exciting innovations SAP is adding to its ecosystem” 

Ralph Vibhustien, Executive Director – Global GIS Retail, The Estée Lauder Companies Inc.

These customers also had an opportunity to engage with Mention Me.arinaee, and YZR in Istanbul this fall. In another role-play workshop, the three startups had to make the case for why they should be selected as the top contender for a pilot at a fictitious fashion brand.  All three startups made their case and, following a brief collaborative exercise and presentation among the customer attendees, a winning team was selected.

Consumer Products Industry Customer Advisory Councils

In May of this past year at a Consumer Products Advisory Council, Wisy, an SAP.iO startup, participated in a panel discussion along with a leading consumer products company.  As part of the discussion Wisy’s CEO and Founder shared both how the company collaborates with its customers while the executive representative from the SAP customer company offered best practices for evaluating startups for potential pilots.

To round off the year, the SAP Consumer Products Customer Council also hosted a session with a focus on artificial intelligence (AI), where Mention Me and ChAI showcased how they are using AI in their applications to support the needs of consumer products companies.

Industrial Manufacturing and Aerospace and Defense Customer Advisory Councils

In addition to our longstanding showcases at the Fashion & Consumer Products councils, SAP.iO had the opportunity to collaborate with two new SAP Industry Councils in 2023. We presented the concept of open innovation and how SAP is building an ecosystem of innovative startup partners relevant to Industrial Manufacturing and the Aerospace and Defense Industries. Relevant SAP.iO startups were showcased for each council laying the groundwork for exciting future collaborations in 2024.


Engage With SAP.iO in 2024

Interested in engaging with the SAP.iO team to learn more about the potential to leverage startup innovations? Reach out to Paul White, VP of Business Development, SAP.iO Foundries (pa.white@sap.com) or Muzna Siddiqi, Business Development Manager for more details as to how you can engage with our startups.

New Startup Solutions Available on SAP Store : Fall 2023

200+ SAP.iO startups deliver their apps, add-ins, and integration kits to SAP’s global customers through SAP Store. SAP Store is the online marketplace where customers around the world can discover, try, buy, and renew enterprise solutions from SAP and its trusted partners. We are excited to share with you the latest startup technologies to be added to the store! You can check out all of our portfolio technologies that integrate with SAP solutions on the SAP Store.

 


Transmute Connector

by Transmute Industries, Inc.

Put your supply chain data in the fast lane of trade with verifiable credentials

Our integration seamlessly connects the benefits of Transmute’s Verifiable Data Platform to your existing SAP S/4HANA setup, so you can leverage the power of verifiable credentials (your data’s “digital twins”) with ease. By transmuting critical trade documents into the most secure, interoperable, context-rich data format, companies maximize transparency and governance of their supply chain data, all while automating customs compliance.  This solution was incubated and/or funded by SAP.iO and works with SAP Digital Manufacturing, SAP S/4HANA Cloud, and AP S/4HANA for procurement planning. Check out a product video here, and find them out on the SAP Store here.

 

UPCYCLE

by A1A K.K.
Cost data platform to discover cost reduction opportunities

By building a cost database for the manufacturing industry that allows buyers to store and search for quotes and prepare and utilize quotation data, we will create a procurement organization that promotes logical cost reduction for buyers and contributes to profits.​ This solution was incubated and/or funded by SAP.iO and works with SAP Ariba Sourcing, SAP S/4HANA Cloud, SAP Integration Suite, and SAP ASE service. Check out a product video here, and find them out on the SAP Store here.

 

LiLz Gauge

byLiLz Inc.

36ZERO Vision

by 36ZERO Vision GmbH

Venture Activity Fall 2023

SAP.iO’s ecosystem of successful raises and exits

Fall 2023

SAP.iO has curated over 525 startups in SAP’s startup ecosystem. We’re proud that many of the startups from our programs continue to raise VC funding and have successful exits. This demonstrates that SAP startup technologies are addressing the rapidly changing requirements of the marketplace and have risen to the occasion of meeting customer needs. Here are the latest raises and exits you should know about!

Funding


Sensyn Robotics closed a ¥2.25B Series C round on October 27, 2023. The company has raised approximately 3.6 billion yen so far, and with this latest financing, the total amount raised will be approximately 5.85 billion yen.

Inkelink closed a ¥100M Series B round on November 14, 2023.  This round of financing was led by Bank of Communications Overseas Chinese Digital Economy Fund, and Huafeng Emerging Industry Fund, Shenqi Capital, and Chongqing Mingyue Lake Fund also participated in the investment, with Huafeng Capital serving as the long-term exclusive financial advisor to help Inkelink steadily move forward in the field of new energy digital intelligent manufacturing.

Exits


Rephrase.ai was acquired by Adobe on November 22nd. In September 2022, Rephrase.ai raised $10.6m in its Series A funding round led by Red Ventures and joined by Silver Lake, 8VC and others.

Did You Miss These 2023 Customer Success Stories?

SAP.iO is building a relevant and diverse startup ecosystem that extends the value of SAP solutions to meets the evolving needs of SAP customers. Our portfolio of startups helps customers to foster adoption rapidly while realizing the value of innovation. In 2023 we were able to share many customers success that highlight our great partnerships.  Check out our ever-growing list of successful collaborations!

Helping Customers Innovate with More Than 125 AI-Powered Startup Partner Solutions

We are proud to share that SAP.iO has surpassed the 125-mark for AI-powered startup partner solutions in our partner ecosystem. These solutions are fully integrated with SAP and available via SAP Store for immediate adoption by SAP customers. The encompassing solutions range across lines of business and industries, including finance, HR, supply chain, and customer experience.

MaintainX Makes Equipment and Regulatory Downtime a Thing of the Past With $50M in New Funding

MaintainX, the leading maintenance and frontline work execution platform, today announced $50M in Series C funding led by Bain Capital Ventures (BCV) with participation from existing investors Bessemer Venture PartnersAmity VenturesAugust Capital and Ridge Ventures. Other strategic new investors include Jeff Immelt the former CEO of GE, Jeff Lawson the CEO of Twilio, Steve Pagliuca a Senior Advisor to Bain Capital, Rob Bernshteyn the CEO of Coupa Software, Chris Comparato the Chairman and CEO of Toast, and Allison Pickens the former COO of Gainsight. The new capital will accelerate the MaintainX feature roadmap, with additional AI-driven predictive capabilities and data-driven functionality. Following the company’s Series B in June 2021, this investment brings total funding to $104 million while achieving a valuation of $1 billion.

The world’s leading manufacturing, industrial, logistics, hospitality and facilities management companies rely on MaintainX to prevent downtime and ensure 24/7 operations. MaintainX prevents costly failures and ensures regulatory compliance by arming teams with the right data, while increasing productivity of maintenance workers and other frontline staff by digitizing workflows.

Fixed assets average 24 years old while still in operation, the highest age since 1947 according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. By better maintaining infrastructure, ensuring preventive maintenance compliance, and providing asset and plant-level data insights, companies using MaintainX achieve higher productivity. As aging infrastructure is replaced, smarter machines generate more data and frontline workers using MaintainX evolve into knowledge workers empowered with the right insights.

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GenAI-Powered Recruiters Boost Qualified Candidate Pools By 55%

Matching qualified candidates with open positions just became a lot more cost-efficient with GenAI. Sense Talent Labs has developed an AI-powered talent engagement app that reduces cost per hire and gives job seekers that all-important human touch to bond with an organization’s culture.

“We provide intelligent personalized candidate journeys from sourcing and screening through interviews, hiring, and onboarding,” said Alex Rosen, co-founder and head of products at Sense. “Our full lifecycle talent and engagement platform empowers recruiters and candidates with individualized interactions. Organizations can find, hire, and onboard qualified people faster, boosting recruiter productivity and giving candidates a higher quality experience.”

Sense’s customers are from a variety of industries worldwide including retail and hospitality, manufacturing and logistics, healthcare, and technology. Rosen said that on average companies reduce time to hire by 30% and cost per hire by 35%, while increasing the number of qualified applications by 55%.

Surprisingly personalized automation from GenAI chat bot

Embedded in SAP SuccessFactors, Sense AI Copilot sources and pre-qualifies candidates from an organization’s existing applicant database and new applications. The conversational AI chat bot asks important questions based on the job description including someone’s last job title, years of experience in pre-designated responsibilities, and willingness to work certain hours at a particular location. Candidates that pass the first pre-screening are automatically scheduled for interviews with the appropriate hiring managers based on updated calendars.

“The chat bot knows as much as possible about each candidate based on all the touch points that they’ve had with the company, such as jobs they’ve previously applied to and their resume background,” said Rosen. “There are no redundant questions that reflect what someone’s already provided on their application. Without wasting any time, the chat bot asks the candidate for new information, speeding up the entire process.”

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Trustpair Recognized as an SAP Spotlight Partner App

Trustpair, a leading payment fraud prevention platform for large companies worldwide, today announced its recognition as an SAP Spotlight Partner App. Trustpair is now listed among the top 50 apps globally on the SAP Store.

The platform was selected as a Spotlight Partner for its proven ability to help companies fight the growing risk of vendor payment fraud through automatic international account validations. Spotlight Partner apps are validated by SAP and are selected for providing strong performance and outstanding customer support.

“We’re thrilled to be selected by SAP as a top partner. Our recognition as a Spotlight Partner is a testament to the business criticality of vendor payment fraud prevention. Fraudsters are increasingly becoming more sophisticated in their ability to usurp suppliers’ identities and intercept their payments. Companies can fight back by strengthening their account validation processes and data reliability across the procure-to-pay chain, which are two areas in which our native integration with SAP helps solve,” said Baptiste Collot, co-founder and CEO of Trustpair.

Trustpair helps more than 250 large global companies prevent vendor payment fraud across the entire procurement process with access to the most reliable third-party data worldwide. Trustpair’s platform monitors millions of data points from internal and external data sources and provides real-time international account validation at various points in the supplier lifecycle. Companies can continuously monitor and enrich their vendor data with Trustpair and get a complete view of their fraud risk.

Andonix.ai Named to Fast Company’s Third Annual List of the Next Big Things in Tech

Andonix, a leader in smart technology solutions for the manufacturing sector, today announced its recognition in Fast Company’s third annual Next Big Things in Tech list. This honor is awarded to breakthrough technologies that are set to redefine various industries, from healthcare and security to AI and data.

This year, 119 technologies developed by established companies, startups, or research teams are featured for their innovative advancements and potential to influence consumers, businesses, and society. While not all are currently in the market, each is reaching critical milestones to make a significant impact within the next five years.

Andonix leads in AI-integrated manufacturing. Our tech streamlines operations empowers workers, and enhances productivity. Fast Company’s recognition validates our industry-transforming innovation”

— David Yanez, Andonix CEO

Andonix’s AI-Powered Platform, Andi, stands at the forefront of this technological revolution, seamlessly integrating data from various sources like PLCs, IIoT Sensors, ERPs, MES, and wearables. Andi is much more than a data integration platform; it’s a powerhouse of AI-driven capabilities. With a vast knowledge base of over 1000 manufacturing skills, Andi is adept at various tasks across the manufacturing spectrum. What sets Andi apart is its advanced AI, which can learn from experienced workers and assimilate institutional knowledge from manuals and handbooks. This continuous learning cycle allows Andi to adapt and evolve, making it a critical tool for frontline workers and managers in manufacturing. Andi simplifies complex manufacturing challenges, democratizing AI in the sector and providing real-time, actionable insights for immediate decision-making.

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How Pryon mitigates the risks of GenAI in enterprise contexts

With every technological innovation comes a downside; in the world of AI and its generative iteration, KM professionals must strike the balance between enhancing workflows with AI and protecting their enterprise against the risk of open generative AI (GenAI) solutions.

Experts from Pryon joined KMWorld’s webinar, Navigating the Risks of Generative AI for Knowledge Management, to explore how Pryon’s AI knowledge management platform can aid in achieving that risk/reward balance when implementing GenAI in the workplace.

Chris Mahl, president and COO at Pryon, introduced Igor Jablokov, founder and CEO at Pryon, who explained that “while generative AI is transformative in certain public, imaginative, and creative use cases, there is certain issues associated with them showing up in more enterprise contexts.”

Upon inspecting these technologies, Jablokov continued, there is an extensive list of dangers, which include:

  • Frequent hallucinations
  • Static training data
  • Problems memorialized in code
  • High risk of data leakage
  • Vendor lock-in
  • Reverse engineering
  • Lack of user access control
  • Prompt injection attacks
  • Supply chain attacks
  • Universal and transferable adversarial attacks
  • Copyright legal gray area
  • Legal constraints
  • Toxic and biased responses
  • Limitations of monolithic LLM architecture
  • Extensive energy consumption
  • Model collapse
  • Model drift
  • Poisoned training data

This laundry list of potential risks in implementing GenAI for proprietary use cases illustrates that while the technology is exciting, it’s not without its drawbacks. For instance, static training data—which limits an LLM to outdated information—can prevent the language model from outputting the most up-to-date information. Furthermore, models will not reliably “forget” wrong or outdated information, ultimately reducing overall model performance, according to Jablokov.

Outside of accuracy, GenAI poses unique privacy concerns in enterprise contexts. Leaking sensitive proprietary data, vendors using that data to train an LLM, masked queries revealing the content an LLM is trained on, and more can land an enterprise vying for innovation in hot water.

Enter Pryon, a platform purpose-built to eliminate the risks posed by purely generative approaches. Pryon transforms static content into interactive knowledge, ingesting information of any classification—including public, personal, published, and private content—and eliminating the distance between critical information and those who need it most.

Pryon reduces risk of hallucinations and bias, while simultaneously employing document-level access controls and RAG methodology that does not require model training on user queries. Enterprises have full control of the knowledge set available to the models, as well as access to various tools that enable additional control over responses.

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Yellow.ai Achieves Tenfold Growth in North America Over Two Years

Yellow.ai, a global leader in conversational AI, announced tenfold growth in North America over two years. This remarkable success is attributed to significant customer acquisitions, continuous enhancements in product capabilities — especially in support automation and customer service solutions — ongoing product innovations, strategic partnerships, and key executive appointments. During this period, North America’s revenue share surged even as the company doubled in revenue YoY globally.Amid this growth, Yellow.ai recently ranked 13th in the Bay Area and 88th nationally on the 2023 Deloitte Technology Fast 500™, a ranking of the fastest-growing technology, media, telecommunications, life sciences, fintech, and energy tech companies in North America, now in its 29th year. The recipients of the Technology Fast 500 award are chosen according to the percentage increase in fiscal year revenue from 2019 to 2022. In this period, Yellow.ai experienced remarkable growth, with a staggering 1803 percent increase.

With enterprises continuing to seek automation for improved customer support and reduced operational costs, our omnichannel customer support automation on chat and voice has been a major growth driver in the North American market. More than 20 enterprises have chosen our support automation solutions to bolster their call centers and enhance customer and employee interactions, ultimately yielding superior outcomes and ROI,” said Raghu Ravinutala, CEO & Co-founder of Yellow.ai. What has worked for us in this market is our ‘land-and-expand’ strategy. We begin with a single deployment, and as enterprises witness the impact, they opt for our value-added solutions, expanding use-cases and channels, leading to an average deal size of $200K annually.”

In North America, specifically, Yellow.ai’s key achievements include:

  • New deals across industries, such as utilities, hardware and software, finance, consumer goods, and services. Notable customer wins include Randstad, Ferrellgas, and Logitech.
  • Regional market share growth through strategic collaborations with reputed technology partners, including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Zendesk, SAP, and Genesys. In addition, the company has also partnered with Telarus, Sandler Partners, Avant Communications, CX Effect, and Bridgepointe, giving North American enterprises the ability to access its conversational AI solutions across its Conversational Service Cloud, Conversational Commerce Cloud, and Conversational EX Cloud.
  • Expanding the regional headcount to a 30-member team across sales, marketing, customer success, and product strategy to provide better support for the customers in the region. Yellow.ai has successfully onboarded experienced North American leaders from well-known organizations such as Oracle, Dropbox, SAP, Infosys, Celonis, Cloudera, and more.
  • Yellow.ai’s growth and momentum in the region has been validated by global analyst firms, being featured in 100+ analyst reports in the last 2 years. Most recently, named a Leader in the Opus Research 2023 Conversational AI Intelliview Report. Yellow.ai is also rated 4.5 out of 5 in the Inaugural Gartner® Peer Insights™ Voice of the Customer for Enterprise Conversational AI Platforms and recognized as a Challenger in the 2023 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Enterprise Conversational AI Platforms.

Talking about the experience of working with Yellow.ai, Jessica Osborn, IT Operations Manager, Randstad USA, said, “Right now, we are just stepping into the AI world for support. We have enabled our employees to call in to receive their W2 in seconds where it was taking much longer before. Imagine sitting and waiting to file your taxes but you don’t have your W2 and you cannot get it in real time. The opportunity to provide efficiency and automation was a perfect use case to start.”

Yellow.ai’s robust product roadmap has played a pivotal role in fueling its growth within the North American market. In April, it introduced the Dynamic Automation Platform (DAP), powered by generative AI, allowing businesses to provide highly personalized customer and employee experiences. Building on this momentum, Yellow.ai launched YellowG, a groundbreaking multi-large language model (LLM) using generative AI and Enterprise GPT to empower enterprises to develop tailored solutions for various industries, streamlining complex workflows, and enhancing existing processes with Zero Setup. It also introduced the LifeCycle Optimizer, which crafts personalized user journeys using generative AI.

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Everstream Analytics Named to 2023 ProcureTech100

Everstream Analytics, the global leader in supply chain insights and risk analytics company, announced its inclusion in the prestigious 2023 ProcureTech100 list from ProcureTech and Kearney. This recognition underscores Everstream’s pioneering role in digital procurement technology, providing unrivaled risk analytics and supply chain intelligence that revolutionizes the function in today’s dynamic business landscape.

“The ProcureTech100 are the 100 pioneering digital procurement solutions. Pioneers that are inspiring and driving digital transformation. Pioneers that are customer centric, innovative, high growth and making a social impact. Pioneers that are supercharging procurement, the enterprise and the digital procurement ecosystem.”

Everstream combines billions of supply chain interactions with AI, advanced analytics, and graph technology, to give the world’s leading companies the deepest insight into supply chains, from raw materials to the store shelf. The ProcureTech100 list highlights innovators who are shaping the future of procurement. Everstream, with its groundbreaking n-tier supplier visibility and unmatched supplier scoring sets the benchmark for supply chain optimization.

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