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In Supply Chain Management, Business Technology Platform, Article

NavVis & Wandelbots Named Top Innovative Artificial Intelligence (AI) Powered Startups Based in Germany

AI startups are one of the most popular and influential upcoming sectors in the market nowadays. From sales to software development to the medical sector, artificial intelligence has the power to revolutionize a wide range of businesses. Two of SAP.iO’s startups have been named most innovative AI startups  based in Germany.

NavVis enables service providers and businesses to record and share the built environment as photorealistic digital twins by bridging the physical and digital worlds. Their SLAM-based mobile mapping systems produce high-quality data at scale and speed with survey-grade accuracy. Users can make better operational decisions, increase productivity, optimize business processes, and increase profitability through digital industrial solutions. It serves the needs of the manufacturing, AEC, retail, real estate, and facility management sectors.

Wandelbots’ user-friendly software democratizes robotics. Wandelbots provides a straightforward approach to robot programming and a single platform for developers to produce more user-friendly robot software. Through the use of demonstration-based training, it creates solutions that allow the integration of robots driven by AI. Its main product is a pen with sensors that can track human movement in real time and send that information to a robot so it can duplicate it.

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In Berlin, Supply Chain Management

Chekkit’s Traceability and Consumer Intelligence SaaS now available on the SAP store

Chekkit Technologies today announced that its Traceability and Consumer Intelligence SaaS is now available on SAP ® Store, which recently merged with SAP App Center as the single digital marketplace for SAP and partner offerings.

By integrating with SAP Advanced Track & Trace for Pharmaceuticals, Chekkit’s Traceability and Consumer Intelligence SaaS helps Pharmaceutical Producers, Marketing Authorisation Holders (MAH), and Pharmaceutical Contract Manufacturers (CMO) comply with traceability & anti-counterfeit regulations in Nigeria and across Africa, giving them access to real-time market data, patient insights, and supply chain visibility (diversion tracking). This service allows for a real-time remote understanding of product supply chain journeys as well as data-driven decision-making using insights on product efficacy, side effects, and preferences in order to serve consumers better.

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In Inspiring Innovators, Interview, Supply Chain Management

Inspiring Innovators: Taro Sasaki CEO and Founder of Hacobu, On being a little ‘crazy.’

At SAP.iO, we work with innovative people and new technologies that positively impact our world every day, and we think it’s time to share their stories with you! In our series, “Inspiring Innovators,” we get to hear how founders, CEOs, and presidents of cutting-edge startup technologies overcame, thrived, and pursued their goals. SAP.iO’s Alexa Gorman sat down to discuss the road to success and lessons learned with some of our most inspiring startup founders.

Meet Taro Sasaki

Taro Sasaki has always enjoyed inventing things, even from a very young age. It is no surprise that his path led him to entrepreneurship, where he uses his love of discovery and educational training to create new businesses. With a background in consulting, Taro decided he wanted a more international perspective, so he attended business school in the United States. After spending two years in the States as a consultant, he returned to Japan, where a colleague shared an opportunity for him to be the CEO of a new beauty discovery eCommerce platform. His next steps led him to launch a new company that also provided goods in the food industry. With a taste for entrepreneurship, Taro decided that he wanted to launch a business that would look to solve problems that could make a difference in his community.

With this goal in mind, Taro Sasaki founded Hacobu. Hacobu developed MOVO, a cloud-based integrated logistics solution and operations management system utilizing in-vehicle terminals. It allows users to connect with carriers and shipping companies online. The platform accumulates distribution data from various companies to optimize the physical distribution system. In doing so, saving time, money, and providing data for properly sourcing suppliers to make the process running efficiently for the end users in communities both small and large. Toyota Industries Corporation, Nestle, and Unilever are just a few companies that utilize Hacobu’s innovative technology.

“It is hard to be an entrepreneur because if you think too logically, you might not take the risk and miss something. You must apply some logic, be smart, but also something you need to be a little crazy.”

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In Press Coverage, Sustainability

COI Energy Featured on NYSE Floor Talk

SAP.iO startup COI Energy was recently invited to participate on NYSE Floor talk.

COI Energy stands for “Circle of Influence.” Founder & CEO SaLisa Berrien named her company after the people and organizations like @SAP_iO that help to propel her company forward.  SaLisa said that she learned how to make a dollar out of $0.15 from my grandparents. This has helped COI Energy thrive during and beyond the pandemic. They are helping businesses eradicate energy waste in their facilities and repurpose the waste to balance the electric grid, protect the environment and uplift marginalized communities with clean energy resources. Enterprise businesses can find us them on the SAP AppStore and join the movement by quadrupling their impact with COI Energy.

Learn about the SAP partnership and more on today’s #NYSEFloorTalk #BlackBusinessMonth

See interview here…

In Supply Chain Management, Business Technology Platform, Awards

Astraea and NaVis Identified as Leaders in Location and Geospatial Intelligence by IDC

Astraea and NaVis were identified as innovative solutions for location and geospatial intelligence in a recent IDC Market Glance report. Creating intelligence is only possible when an enterprise combines data (internal or external) with analytics and has the underlying tools and structures to store, organize, and maintain the data. Therefore, examining the location and geospatial intelligence market requires considering data, analytics and visualization, and location-enabled tools.

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In Paris, Funding Announcement, Business Technology Platform

Oslo-based foodtech company TotalCtrl receives investment from Newday

TotalCtrl, an Oslo-based food waste prevention software company, announced recently that it has received a significant investment from Norwegian investment company Newday.. Besides Newday, existing investors, including Loyal. VC, also invested. The company says it will use the funds to accelerate its growth nationally and internationally.

TotalCtrl is a foodtech company that leverages its Inventory Management System to help the food industry optimise the planning, purchasing, and use of food inventory by providing data-driven insights and decision support to make fact-based and sustainable choices.

The company works with Halden municipality, Nordic Choice, and Bergstadens hotel – which can show good results in food waste reduction and improved profitability.

Further, TotalCtrl is a certified B corp company, which means it maintains the highest standards in social and environmental impact globally.

“Today is a big day for us at TotalCtrl. The fact that Newday, through a comprehensive process, has chosen to invest significant amounts and not least to contribute important experience, expertise, and passion – means that we can now take the company to a new level. Moreover, Newday’s investment means that TotalCtrl now has the muscle to grow”, says Charlotte Aschim, CEO of TotalCtrl.

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In HR & People Engagement, Awards

Crosschq Named a Finalist in the 2022 SaaS Awards

 Crosschq, pioneers of the Talent Intelligence Cloud™, which is powering a revolution in data-driven hiring and people analytics, today shared it has been declared a finalist in the international business software program, The SaaS Awards. A partner of the popular Cloud Awards, the SaaS Awards strives to represent software from around the world across a number of categories. Crosschq has been recognized in the Best SaaS Product for Recruitment category.

A data-driven recruiting platform, Crosschq helps take the guesswork out of hiring, delivering valuable candidate insights and advanced analytics. The company’s suite of products supports streamlined processes, enhanced outcomes and improved quality of hire while integrating easily and securely into existing workflows.

James Williams, Head of Operations for the SaaS Awards, shared, “This year, the SaaS Awards received a very strong shortlist. All chosen finalists demonstrated a remarkable commitment to innovation. It was a pleasant surprise to see so many innovative solutions on the shortlist, but Crosschq proved to the judging panel it was a clear choice to make it to the next stage, with every possibility of being selected as the ultimate category winner.”

Crosschq CEO Mike Fitzsimmons commented, “Given the challenges associated with hiring and the number of companies looking to solve these problems, it’s a tremendous honor to stand out as a SaaS Award finalist and speaks directly to what differentiates Crosschq. We’re not just another solution provider; we’re changing how companies think about recruiting and making a measurable impact for our customers.”

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In CRM & Customer Experience

How Zoovu secured Spotlight Status and became the fastest riser in the SAP Store in 2022

It’s hard to look at the last 6 months here at Zoovu and not be incredibly proud of what we’ve built and continue to build, we announced a $169 million Series C round with FTV Capital  to continue establishing ourselves as the go-to solution for Discovery experiences and we’ve continued to strengthen our partnership with SAP.  As of August, Zoovu is featured in the SAP Store as the Spotlight solution for their over 425,000 customers.

As I mentioned in our post about participating in SAP’s SAP.iO program this past spring, I’m a firm believer in the idea “We are Better Together.” When an SAP customer integrates Zoovu, we both benefit from showcasing how solutions work together to provide everything a business needs to thrive and meet their customer needs and expectations. In essence, SAP and Zoovu complement each other and supercharge customer experiences as a unified solution.  For this reason and more (read on to find out), SAP continues to highlight Zoovu as a game changer for their customers to supercharge content discovery with a variety of experiences powered by AI and semantic knowledge.

When I look at the value of Zoovu in the market and specifically for SAP’s customers, it’s a trite but true pandemic lesson: the digitization of sales impacted businesses of all types, those who sell to consumers and those who sell to businesses. For B2B organizations, they were scrambling to adjust to a digital first world and facing the reality of “how do we communicate and sell complex offerings online?” for the first time.

This shift of streamlining operations to drive business cost savings while still making impact requires a solution like Zoovu. By tackling time and money drains on businesses, such as providing continuous enrichment of product content and enabling self-service content discovery experiences, Zoovu is an incredibly powerful platform for any business selling on digital channels. Regardless of selling model, we automate any sales conversation and content discovery at scale.

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In Awards, HR & People Engagement

Paradox Named Human Resource Executive Top Product of the Year For Third Time in Four Years

Paradox, the conversational recruiting software company helping companies like Unilever, McDonald’s, and General Motors get hiring work done faster by automating repetitive tasks, was today named HR Executive Top Product of the Year by Human Resource Executive.

This is the company’s third HRE Top Product honor since its first entry in 2019 — and this year was presented for Traitify by Paradox’s Animated Assessment, a revolutionary personality assessment built around custom, relatable images that have been intentionally and scientifically crafted to produce more accurate assessment results.

In 2019, Paradox won HRE’s top award for its Hire product — which is fundamentally changing high-volume hiring through fast, mobile-first experiences that automate up to 90% of the process for field hiring managers. And in 2021, the company won for Experience Assistant — which transforms how people engage with career sites, instantly turning them into dynamic, hyper-personalized experiences that evolve with every interaction.

“We’ve always believed that if you get the people thing right, you can build teams that change the world — and in many organizations, assessments play a key role in that mission,” said Paradox CEO Aaron Matos. “I’m proud to work with a team that cares so deeply about building the next generation of recruiting technology. This is just another step in the journey to help our clients transform how they build great teams.”

In an article announcing this year’s winners, judges from Human Resource Executive noted: “Candidate and employee assessments don’t have to be a burden. Paradox has done the nearly impossible by creating an innovative assessment program that is more engaging, perceptive and frankly looks like a dating app. The software provides reports to both hiring managers and candidates based on research culled from more than 5,000 study participants, including a match score for each candidate using Paradox’s underlying Ideal Candidate Profile.”

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In HR & People Engagement

Plum Named a Top HR Product of the Year by Human Resource Executive®

Revolutionary talent assessment platform Plum today announced the selection of Plum Leadership Potential as a Top HR Product of 2022 by Human Resource Executive® magazine and the HR Technology Conference & Exposition®.

Every year, the editors of Human Resource Executive and program chair of the HR Technology Conference review Top HR Products of the Year submissions with the goal of highlighting new solutions that improve and enhance the work of HR leaders in today’s ever-evolving business landscape. Submissions were judged on product innovation, value added to the HR function, intuitiveness for the user and the ability to deliver on what they promise. Winners represent six critical HR competencies, with Plum selected in the Talent Management category.

“For more than three decades, Human Resource Executive has recognized the groundbreaking technologies that offer real value to HR leaders. This year, our judges reviewed many innovative solutions, with the difficult task of selecting only a handful of winners,” said Elizabeth Clarke, executive editor of Human Resource Executive. “Plum stood out for its Leadership Potential offering, which brings a new approach to talent management and makes it easy for employers to identify their next generation of leaders.”

Plum Leadership Potential enables organizations to identify high-potential talent using proven science combined with scalable technology. Leveraging the results of Plum’s single assessment, organizations gain the ability to measure leadership potential in every employee instantly. This ensures all members of the workforce get considered equitably for their aptitude. Using objective criteria, Plum Leadership Potential helps organizations strip away bias and build more diverse leadership pipelines. By surfacing employees with leadership potential – regardless of race, gender or background – employers can engage, develop and retain future leaders who will be critical to their organization’s success moving forward.

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In Uncategorized

Alexa Gorman, the Startup Whisperer at SAP

Alexa Gorman, Global Head of SAP.iO Foundries & Intrapreneurship at SAP, appeared on the n-tv podcast “So techt Deutschland.” Gorman discussed her 23 years at SAP, the company’s culture, and how she selects startups for investment. She said that cooperation between SAP and startups is not a one-way street, in fact they benefit from each other. “There must be added value for both sides. Then this cooperation is really successful,” she said. Gorman also discussed where she is looking for new partners and how founders differ in the different countries.

Original Article Here…

In Funding Announcement, HR & People Engagement

Talent Development Platform GrowthSpace Announces $25 Million in Series B Funding

GrowthSpace, the world’s first outcome-focused talent development platform, today announced $25 million in Series B funding led by Zeev Ventures. Existing investors M12 (Microsoft’s venture fund) and Vertex Ventures participated in this round, which brings the total amount raised to $44 million.

“We’re thrilled with the Series B investment led by Oren Zeev, that enables us to continue partnering with hundreds of forward-thinking companies looking to strengthen investments in the future of their employees, who will be able to drive business KPIs and impact performance through our outcome focused talent development platform,” stated Omer Glass, CEO and Cofounder of GrowthSpace. “The demand for our solutions is strong as we achieved a 5x ARR growth in the last 12 months. Additionally, we have built a network of 1,500 experts in over 50 countries, and look forward to expanding our reach and impact even further.”

The funds will be used to scale global operations to help meet the rapidly accelerating demand of the G2 category leader. The GrowthSpace talent development platform connects employees to relevant experts at scale, solving a major challenge in a $360* billion+ market.  As a market leader in supporting employee professional growth, Growthspace platform understands the challenge of an individual or a group and leverages sophisticated algorithms to match them with a proven, relevant expert for a development sprint. This can then be implemented dynamically and at scale, across an entire organization.

The platform can be implemented modularly to address specific requirements or set up as a comprehensive solution, enabling companies to plan and execute various talent development programs. Customers can utilize individual and group coaching, mentoring (internal & external), training, workshops, and lectures. GrowthSpace enables HR and organizational development executives to dynamically allocate resources and funds between different types of programs based on corporate goals and people requirements. This enables a centralized wallet powering a decentralized system that can be driven by each individual and team.

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In Uncategorized

Providing Access to Opportunity for Innovators to Start Up with SAP

Starting a new business is never easy. For underrepresented entrepreneurs such as women and people of color, however, the challenges can be especially daunting.

In 2018, SAP’s network of no-equity-ask external startup accelerators SAP.iO Foundries was embarking on a journey: exponentially scale its global ecosystem of innovative startup partners to help SAP customers extend their SAP software landscape. At that time, the team was shocked to learn that despite the fact diversity yields better innovation, the majority of venture funding primarily goes to invest in startups founded or led by a very narrow demographic. For example, only 2.3% of global venture capital (VC) funding went to startups with only female founders, and Black women in the U.S. had raised just .0006% of all tech venture funding since 2006.

As a steward of purpose-driven innovation, SAP recognized its duty to be intentional about how it invested in and scaled its ecosystem of software startup partners. It recognized that driving inclusive entrepreneurship in the enterprise software and VC industries could accelerate innovation, reduce bias, and drive better outcomes.

In 2019, SAP launched SAP.iO No Boundaries, the first comprehensive inclusive entrepreneurship initiative for underrepresented and underestimated entrepreneurs in the business software industry. SAP pledged to scale SAP.iO Foundries with a focus on inclusive entrepreneurship and set an ambitious target of supporting at least 200 startups founded or led by underrepresented entrepreneurs by 2023.

The SAP.iO team crafted a clear and effective strategy to achieve this commitment:

  • People: Scaled a diverse team and mentor community of leaders with connections to different communities around the world. The SAP.iO Foundries team is currently 63.3% female and represents more than 15 nationalities, compared to SAP’s overall 34.3% women in the workforce.
  • Processes: Committed to investing the time to empower more entrepreneurs to start up with SAP, review every application for the program, set transparent criteria for selecting startups to participate in programs, and regularly measuring progress.
  • Participation: Attended, sponsored, and hosted events such as Culture Shifting Weekend, StartOut Equity Summit, HBCU National Braintrust, and more to expose underrepresented founders and their investors to the opportunity of partnering with SAP.
  • Partnerships: Created partnerships with organizations including the United Nations Foundation, World Economic Forum, Les Déterminés, Latino Startup Alliance, Gentry, Chatham House, StartOut, and more.

Great Impact

Implementing this strategy has been so successful that by July 2022, SAP.iO achieved its goal of supporting 200 startups founded or led by a female or underrepresented entrepreneur six months ahead of schedule. The 200 startups make up 44% of the SAP.iO portfolio of 450 startups and tie or surpass their counterparts in benchmarks used to measure success. They represent:

  • 51% of the exits in the portfolio (18 of 35)
  • 50% of the unicorns in the portfolio (two of four)
  • 42% in cumulative VC raised by startups within the SAP.iO portfolio (US$2.7 billion of $6.6 billion)
  • A greater likelihood to progress in their partnership with SAP

One of the most successful startups in the SAP.iO portfolio is female-founded Censia Inc. It recently joined the SAP Endorsed Apps, a designation achieved by less than one percent of SAP Store partner solutions. Censia augments HR management software provided by SAP with AI-powered resume review, passive sourcing, and candidate evaluation software. Censia has successfully closed 14 go-to-market opportunities with SAP and major brands such as Tapestry Inc., TJ Maxx, and PepsiCo Inc.

Censia CEO Joanna Riley reflects: “Entrepreneurship is about continuous learning and to be able to be part of SAP.iO, I feel like I’m cheating. I’m learning from lessons that have been learned through years of experience that SAP has acquired and taking those and applying them to my business so that we have a head start. I would recommend any company, especially [those] focused on enterprise, to look at SAP.iO as a real solution to build a produce that is great for enterprise.”

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In Supply Chain Management

7 SAP.iO Startups Identified by CB Insights as Leaders Innovating Connected Packaging and Labeling Across the Supply Chain

From authentication tech to cold chain packaging, CB Insights looked at the companies offering connected packaging and labeling tech to improve transparency, sustainability, and freshness across the supply chain. Seven startups from the SAP.iO Foundries portfolio were identified as leaders in the space. Scantrust was recognized in the Authentication Tech category, CodeCheck and EVRTHNG were recognized in the Connected Packaging & Smart Labels category, EON was recognized in the Fashion Traceability category, Algramo and Limeloop were recognized in the Reusable Packaging Platforms category, and Connecting Food was recognized in the Food Traceability category.

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In Berlin, Supply Chain Management

Manufacturing companies plan their material purchases for production with this AI

Read why SAP Customers like Merck work with GenLots

Dear reader,

If you are looking for …

  1. Latest AI innovation for more sustainable supply chain management
  2. A way to rapidly decrease costs in upstream logistics
  3. An increased digitalization of your operations
  4. A better understanding of your supply chain triangle (costs, cash, and service)
  5. A product already integrated with your SAP system

…for your manufacturing company, then read on:

Why AI in upstream logistics and why now?

SAP customers generate 87% of total global commerce ($46 trillion) and 99 of the 100 largest companies in the world are SAP customers (SAP Corporate Factsheet, July 2022). SAP’s utmost priority is to connect these enterprises in a global sustainable business network.

As we partner with innovative startups like GenLots, we still put our customers first and we leverage the vast number of businesses worldwide that run on SAP to act smarter, more efficiently and more sustainably.

At the recent Viva Technology 2022 in Paris — Europe’s biggest tech event where business meets innovation, my team at SAP.iO (SAP’s startup program) was thrilled to host our partner startup GenLots and discuss on stage how they’ve helped SAP’s customer Merck, a large pharmaceutical company, adapt their upstream logistics (i.e. all operations related to the sourcing of goods destined to be assembled in production) to the challenges of today.

What is GenLots?

GenLots is an AI application helping leading manufacturing companies to achieve their sustainability and efficiency goals through the digitalization of supply and upstream logistics.

In practice, usage of GenLots looks like this:

Let’s say a manufacturing company uses Active Ingredient X in its production and knows the production requirements for this material for the 12 months to come, i.e. the dates on which it will be used and in which quantity. GenLots will automatically compute the Total Cost of sourcing of this material for the next 12 months, including the cost of the material itself (which can be influenced by quantity discounts), the cost of bringing a batch to the manufacturing site each time an order is placed (quality control or transport fees for example), and the cost of holding it until it is used in production (inventory cost).

According to these costs, GenLots’ AI will then optimize the timing and quantity of each order. It may group certain orders to reach a better price, reschedule some deliveries, etc. The savings associated to these changes can reach up to 10% of the Total Cost.

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