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In Portfolio News, CRM & Customer Experience, Foundries, Berlin

Half a Million Shoppers Have Now Shopped At a Zippin-Powered Store

With 50 Stores Launched Worldwide, Zippin Hits Key Milestones in Adoption of Checkout-free Technology

Zippin, the leading provider of checkout-free technology, announced that it has reached a key milestone having served over half a million shoppers in one of its 50 Zippin-powered stores. Zippin calculates that it has saved consumers over 83,000 hours to-date, conservatively estimating that frictionless retail reduces the average shopping trip by 10 minutes.

As our desire for more and more frictionless experiences continues to grow, Zippin plans to scale rollout of its technology with key partners around the globe, improving the overall retail experience, and establishing its position as the top checkout-free platform provider.

“Retailers are under immense pressure to deliver fast, frictionless experiences for consumers, and this is especially true in high-traffic venues where time is limited,” said Krishna Motukuri, CEO and co-founder of Zippin. “We recognize that speed can’t come at the expense of accuracy. With each new store launch, Zippin’s AI improves its ability to provide the best experience for both retailers and shoppers, who are fast coming to expect this level of convenience. That’s why it’s so important that we continue to scale, quickly.”

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In Portfolio News, Supply Chain Management

Shippeo’s Shipment Tracking ETA Accuracy Leaps Forward With a Giant 32% Improvement

Shippeo, a leading provider of global shipment visibility, has achieved a significant advancement in its predictive shipment ETA performance, aided by investments in new AI/ML infrastructure and sophisticated algorithms. As a result, shippers and logistics service providers are seeing improved accuracy and reliability of estimated times of arrival (ETAs) of their shipments, thereby increasing the efficiency and predictability of their supply chains.

he recent challenges caused by major supply chain disruptions have reaffirmed the need for organisations to improve shipment traceability on a global scale. Although it has never been easier to track shipments travelling throughout the world in near real-time thanks to more affordable devices and better connectivity, the type of data that supply chain management values is changing.

Shippeo’s Chief Product Officer, Anand Medepalli, says: “The question supply chain managers are asking themselves is shifting from ‘where is my shipment’ at the macro level to a more granular ‘When will it arrive at the next stop?’ and ‘Are there any risks of a delay?’”. This means that the ability to predict shipment ETAs at a very granular level is increasingly becoming a must-have, critical capability for shippers.

This improved ETA brings a range of benefits to manufacturers. Shippeo customers report that having accurate ETA predictions for shipment arrival times improves team productivity at key delivery sites, while boosting KPI performance, increasing sales and, of course, raising customer satisfaction levels. At the same time, these manufacturers, many of which are operating globally, are decreasing stock-outs or production line halts by as much as 76%, as well as reducing late penalties by 25%, dwell times by 30% and reducing unexpected freight costs.

As with any algorithm, ETA accuracy depends heavily on the quality of data inputted, which is why Shippeo’s core R&D focus is to continually enhance the accuracy and reliability of the data feeding the ETA predictions. In its latest third release, in addition to data quality, the company has revamped its machine learning (ML) infrastructure, as well as the methodologies and models its data scientists and ML engineers use. The result is an impressive 32% improvement in ETA accuracy up to 48 hours before a scheduled delivery.

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In New York, Supply Chain Management

Rheaply redefines circular economy in architecture

When a building gets demolished, or refurbished, what happens to its parts? They might get destroyed, or just thrown away to the back of a junkyard, never to be seen again – or, they will get reused. And it’s that last option that Garry Cooper Jr, founder of Rheaply, decided to tackle when he launched his enterprise asset management venture in 2016. Rheaply is a digital platform that serves the circular economy, essentially enabling the rehoming of parts of buildings and equipment just before a structure is torn down, placing them in new, local buildings in construction, in a bid to enhance upcycling, sustainable architecture and local enterprise.

Ohio-born Cooper is now based in Chicago and the idea to found Rheaply was born there, thanks to his keen observation skills and entrepreneurial mind (while now he operates in the construction and architecture world, his background is in science). ‘It was super organic,’ he says. ‘I came to Chicago in 2008, and studied at Northwestern University, trying to find a cure for Parkinson’s Disease. I noticed in our lab we had lots of material that we were not using, from chairs, to plastics, chemicals, and I kept hearing people saying, oh if only I had this or that, and I knew we had whatever they needed somewhere in our closet. So I started a resource sharing platform – it was basically a cart!’

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In Portfolio News, Supply Chain Management, Awards

Revuze’s New Market Research Solution “Sentimate” Nominated for Two Customer Experience Awards

Sentimate, the first-ever free, self-service market research platform developed by Revuze, enables brands of all sizes to perform customer experience research.

Revuze, the provider of AI-powered market research for the world’s biggest brands, has been nominated in two categories at the inaugural edition of the US Customer Experience Awards, which will culminate in an online ceremony on June 30, 2022. The awards for which Revuze is competing as a finalist are Best Innovation in CX and Best Technology.

Revuze’s new solution, Sentimate, is the first-ever free platform that delivers instant access to market research analysis on over 300,000 products. With Sentimate, product companies of all sizes — including small and medium-sized businesses, as well as business individuals — can easily monitor their customers’ experiences, identify emerging trends, and perform many research tasks on any product, including SWOT analysis, competitive analysis, and category analysis.

“We are honored to be nominated at the US Customer Experience Awards for these two important categories,” said Boaz Grinvald, CEO of Revuze. “With the unprecedented boom in eCommerce that our society is experiencing, finding innovative ways to monitor customer experience has become critical. Brands are on the lookout for new ways to keep up with their market dynamics; our solution, Sentimate, fills one of the big gaps of traditional market research.”

“Sentimate is destined to change the game for product companies committed to improving their customer experience, as well as individual analysts searching for insights on consumer products, as it is the first AI-powered tool capable of substituting lengthy and costly research methods, including focus groups,” Grinvald continued.

As businesses strive to become more customer centric, it’s imperative for them to have the ability to perform research tasks on a daily basis in order to make informed, data-driven business decisions. Sentimate achieves this by always being up to date and accessible at any time.

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In Foundries, Global, ERP & Finance, Network & Spend Management

5 Visionary Companies Leveraging Startup Innovation to Optimize Business, Finance and Operations Processes

SAP’s ERP, Financial Management, and Spend Management solutions help thousands of businesses increase efficiency and gain insight to guide their businesses by solving complex business problems. Since 2017, SAP.iO has been building an ecosystem of startup solutions to help customers extend the value of their investment in these SAP solutions and we’re proud that over 145 startups in our portfolio are integrated with SAP solutions including SAP S/4HANA and SAP Ariba and are available on the SAP Store. 

 

Each of the 5 companies featured below are staying ahead of the curve by leveraging startup innovation to optimize their business, finance, and operations processes. 

 

Decathlon & Trustpair: Reducing risk by detecting and preventing wire transfer fraud

Decathlon, a leading sporting goods retailer, teamed up with Trustpair to build a clean Vendor Master File and work with reliable supplier data to comply with Loi Sapin II regulations in less than 4 months. Today, Decathlon continues to prevent payment errors and reduce fraud risks by continuously auditing third party databases. 

Trustpair works with SAP S/4HANA, SAP HANA, and SAP Ariba and is available on SAP Store 

Bunge & Sedna: Harmonizing global supply chain communications 

Bunge has over 25,000 employees across 40 countries and was looking for new ways to bring their global supply chain team together. They used SEDNA’s intelligent communication system to harmonize workflows, processes, and information across the company – resulting in improved visibility and productivity. 

Sedna works with SAP S/4HANA Cloud & Industry Cloud and is available on SAP Store 

RWE Power & Pexapark AG: Customizing benchmarks and delivering insights for renewable energy prices   

RWE, a leading German energy company, required clear and up-to-date insights into the current market pricing of clean energy to scale their investment in renewable energy. They partnered with Pexapark to develop a customized pricing, analysis, sourcing, and monitoring solution that models forward pricing curves across European markets on demand. 

 Pexapark AG works with SAP S/4HANA and is available on SAP Store 

Dole & Clarifruit: Developing a next-gen quality control platform to target a 10% reduction in fruit loss 

Dole joined forces with Clarifruit to launch an innovative commercial partnership to automate their quality control processes and reduce fruit loss. By implementing an AI-powered solution, Dole can automatically collect inspection data, integrate it into their ERP system, and provide their leadership team with high-quality real-time information and analytics. 

 Clarifruit works with SAP S/4HANA and is available on SAP Store 

SAP & 4tiitoo: Leveraging eye tracking technology to improve employee ergonomics 

As part of their “pledge to flex” initiative, SAP worked with 4tiitoo to implement their AI-powered gaze control solution that provides employees with an innovative tool that helps improve ergonomics by reducing mouse movements and mouse-keyboard swaps. This new feature is already working to improve employee wellbeing, increase efficiency, and embed accessibility across business processes. 

 4tiitoo works with SAP S/4HANA Cloud and is available on SAP Store 

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In Foundries, Portfolio News

SAP.iO Takes the SAP Consumer Products Customer Advisory Council

On April 13th, over 50 of SAP’s top customers in Consumer Products gathered virtually at this year’s SAP Consumer Products Customer Advisory Council (CPAC). The group met to discuss the latest trends, challenges, and innovations in the industry, with a focus on exceeding the ever-changing, diverse expectations of consumers. To demonstrate innovations SAP is bringing to customers SAP.iO Startups Jebbit, Mention Me, Teamcore, and Wisy were chosen to present their applications during the session.

“We had four SAP.iO startups join the SAP Consumer Products Council to show innovation that is extending SAP. Teamcore and Wisy are innovative solutions that extend SAP’s solutions for Retail Activity Optimization and Jebbit and Mention Me deliver edge innovations in consumer products marketing. The attendees loved the session and are pursuing next steps.”

-Harris Fogel, Global Vice President Consumer Products

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In Venture Studio, Blog, Global

Celebrating twelve months of Source Agent by SAP

Last spring, the SAP.iO Venture Studio welcomed a new employee-led venture to their portfolio: Source Agent by SAP. Time flies and with this big achievement just flying by, we wanted to talk to the growing team about their first year together and take a peek into its plans for the coming months.

The first 365 days

Starting a business is often a huge step. With just an idea and a vision starting to build from scratch requires great determination — but also handling a lot of uncertainty. However, it is an even greater feeling if one manages to build something that actually works. Transforming strategic sourcing for businesses into a web-based process that supports sourcing managers in their procurement strategy had been on Travis Mattern and Will Caseber’s mind for a while. It ultimately resulted in launching their journey as co-founders of their own venture, Source Agent by SAP, in 2021. They have since come a long way.

After participating in the six-month SAP.iO Intrapreneurship program, the two founders secured funding and started their branding process. Since then, the founding duo behind Source Agent by SAP hired their first employees, built a website and stepped up their social media presence, established a go-to-market approach, and built their concierge delivery model for opportunity assessments with help from the SAP.iO Venture Studio, SAP’s in-house incubator for employee-led ventures.

“Looking back, we did a lot in a short time with a small team. I think our biggest achievement was convincing customers to engage with us, to explore how they manage their sourcing function, and ultimately take a critical look at where they might have opportunities to save money for their organizations,” said Will, Head of Operations and Go To Market for Source Agent.

Challenges and learning along the way

Source Agent by SAP’s solution helps companies maximize the value of their eSourcing software investment and provides a holistic and personalized strategy to address spend intelligently and impress your stakeholders. The venture is currently on track to deliver a working version of their solution to help customers visualize their spend and strategically apply eSourcing in their business. But with so much work already done, what have been some of the challenges the team faced in the past year?

“With the current hot job market, hiring technical resources was — and is — very challenging,” said Travis, General Manager of Source Agent. “I did not anticipate it would take so long to find qualified resources.”

Hiring while working from home brings another challenge to the mix. However, as the old saying goes, good things take time and the team has since expanded from two co-founders to thirteen people today.

Even though Travis and Will knew the potential of their idea from day one, the true value of the approach became most apparent when talking with prospective customers.

“My greatest learning this year was the confirmation from prospects that we are bringing a new concept that is highly in demand by an underserved market.” Will said. “To give the best possible outcome, we use both the sourcing activity on the SAP Business Network and market data from our data partners. But this learning also increases the pressure for the team to move at pace.”

A peek into the future

With their first seven customers, the team is currently working hard on their solution and are eager to make moreprogress.

“We spent a lot of time in the first year establishing a brand, building a team, developing partnerships, and learning from customers via our concierge services,” Travis summarized. “We are now growing our development team to digitize our learnings and deliver on our vision of simplifying strategic sourcing.”

Thinking back about the first year of Source Agent by SAP, Travis recapped: “Our first year was stressful, yet very exciting.”

Well, we congratulate Source Agent by SAP to their first twelve months as an employee-led venture and are excited to hear about their next milestones and the ongoing partnership with the SAP.iO Venture Studio.

Happy first anniversary to Source Agent by SAP!

About Source Agent by SAP

Great sourcing shouldn’t be a secret. Source Agent by SAP gives you the insights and strategies to address spend intelligently and wow your stakeholders. Identify sourcing opportunities by aligning your spend to current market intelligence. Receive a targeted sourcing strategy and supplier recommendations based on your data and requirements for each spend category. Quickly convert strategies and plans into eSourcing event prep and execution. More on this venture on www.sourceagent.io/

About SAP.iO Venture Studio

SAP.iO Venture Studio drives a new era of organic growth at SAP. It invests in new ventures founded by small, entrepreneurial teams inside of SAP who are focused on building the future of enterprise business processes. SAP.iO Venture Studio provides design, development, and sales support to help these ventures launch. Founding teams join the SAP.iO Venture Studio primarily through the SAP.iO Intrapreneurship and Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR) programs. Find out more on www.sap.io/studio/

In Berlin, Business Technology Platform

Vyasa Layar Now Available on SAP Store

 Vyasa Analytics LLC, an innovative provider of highly scalable deep learning AI analytics software for healthcare, life sciences, and business applications, announced today the availability of its Vyasa Layar offering on SAP® Store, the online marketplace for SAP and partner offerings. Through Vyasa Layar data fabric, users can connect to Sybase® and to SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) with SAP HANA® to create a unified data experience regardless of data format or storage location.

Vyasa’s offering accelerates the discovery of actionable intelligence by improving the accessibility and visualization of organizational data. Its deep learning data fabric, Vyasa Layar, unifies data across disparate silos, regardless of where data are stored or structured, and without requiring a data lake. When connected to SAP environments such as SAP HANA, Vyasa Layar is able to create a harmonized data experience for customers to extract critical insights from both structured and unstructured content within a single platform. Recently, Vyasa collaborated with SAP to provide a public sector client with a data fabric solution that unifies silos of unstructured content with structured customer data in SAP HANA to enable a paradigm shift in their analytics capabilities that will help improve financial forecasting and customer interactions.

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In HR & People Engagement, Foundries

Keep Your Eyes on These SAP.iO Human Experience Management Startups

Since 2017, SAP.iO has been working closely with SAP SuccessFactors in order to help build an ecosystem of innovation for HR leaders. As SAP customers continue to utilize SAP SuccessFactors solutions to ensure that their employees have the tools needed to thrive, they can now additionally access over 25 solutions from SAP.iO startups are integrated with SAP SuccessFactors and are available on the SAP Store for customers to discover, learn, and adopt.

Check out these Human Experience Management startups available on SAP Store that are leading the future of work and HR technology.

In Foundries, Munich, Interview, Inspiring Innovators

Inspiring Innovators: Christine Moon President & Co-Founder of BlueSpace on Staying Curious

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, presidents of cutting-edge startup technologies overcame, thrived, and pursued their goals. SAP.iO’s very own Alexa Gorman sat down to discuss the road to success and lessons learned with some of our most inspiring startup founders. Today we spent time with Christine Moon of BlueSpace to discuss how she used curiosity as a guide throughout her entrepreneurial journey.

Meet Christine Moon

Christine Moon is a perfect example of when life takes you to a fork in the road to look at it as an opportunity. Born in South Korea, she moved to the US as a child for her dad’s work. Not able to speak English and a new culture shook up her world, and she started to look at life differently as she learned new customs. A short time later, her family moved back to South Korea, and she faced another period of readjustment. The influence of other cultures allowed Christine to be curious and learn to enjoy the ride.

In 2019, her world changed once more. Apple purchased the company where Christine was working. As part of her curious nature, she sat back and asked herself, ‘what have we learned? What do we wish we had?’ the answer to that question was certainty. She wanted the certainty to safely deploy software that allows an autonomous system to “see” the velocity of all objects in all directions and scale it across geographies. This question led to a very different approach and inspired her to start a new company, BlueSpace.

Today, Christine Moon is president and Co-founder of BlueSpace, a company leveraging 4D sensors to provide a safety layer for self-driving vehicles. Their dynamic predictive perception software allows an autonomous system to “see” the velocity of all objects in all directions and won them the 2021 NASA iTech Cycle I award. Starting with Christine’s quest for certainty, they built a company that enables safety performance independent of any training data, a technology that allows for immediate reaction to new objects and scenarios.

“Be curious, and this is what I would share with my children or anyone who wants to think about this entrepreneurial journey and take the critical approach. Don’t be afraid to take a different approach to think outside of what you’re used to come up with a solution.”

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In New York, Awards

The metaverse could be tech’s next trillion-dollar opportunity: These are the companies making it a reality

The metaverse is one of the hottest buzzwords in tech, and this far-reaching vision of a next-gen internet will rely upon an entire ecosystem of companies to make it a reality – including two startups from SAP.iO’s portfolio. Expivi and VNTANA were both identified as leaders in the 3D modeling and capture space by CB Insights. Both solutions are integrated with SAP and are available on the SAP Store.

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In Singapore, Sustainability

iO in Style: The SAP Fashion Customer Council Recap

The latest SAP Fashion Customer Council took place online on April 7th, 2022, where 25 of SAP’s strategic customers in fashion came together to discuss the industry’s latest innovations and pain points, with sustainability front and center on the runway. SAP.iO startups CarbonClick and Shippeo were chosen to present their comprehensive solutions that are solving SAP fashion customers’ biggest challenges, and most importantly, shared how their solutions are leading the way to a more sustainable future.

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In Podcast, HR & People Engagement

Caitlin MacGregor from Plum Featured on The RecruitingDaily Podcast

Caitlin MacGregor from Plum talks about the talent shortage on the latest episode of the RecruitingDaily Podcast.

Plum is a SaaS platform that leverages industrial, organizational psychology to assess people’s innate talents and understand what drives them and gives them a sense of self worth, and what drains them and leads to burnout. The platform can quantify people’s innate talents, like their ability to innovate, communicate, and work well with others.

They work with mid-size to enterprise companies, to help them in everything from hiring through onboarding, as well as employee development, internal mobility, workforce planning, succession planning, leadership potential, and taking this data across the employee lifecycle.

Listen Here…

In San Francisco, HR & People Engagement

Getting Into the Right Mindset: Pointers from Paradox to set you up for a successful journey with SAP

SAP.iO Foundry San Francisco graduate Paradox knows a thing or two about navigating the big, blue, bureaucratic ship that is SAP. From the get-go, Paradox considered SAP a strategic partner and came ready to commit to the path early on. From being the only digital recruiting assistant on SAP Store to use AI/ML to becoming an endorsed app in 2021(and a unicorn at that!), Paradox’s grit and mindset have helped them get a handle on the ins and outs of partnering with SAP, despite the various challenges. We sat down with Sylvia Miller, Paradox’s SVP of Alliances and Partnerships to discuss the mindset needed to optimize SAP as a channel partner.

On your mark, get set, learn!

One of the ways to make the most of your partnership with SAP? Come with a “ready-to-learn” attitude; consider yourself a student in the front row of SAP University! Sylvia emphasized the importance of asking questions, and being in a constant learning mode.

Some questions you should work to answer as an SAP Partner:

  • How does the SAP ecosystem function overall?
  • What are the general expectations of such a large enterprise? (from security and compliance to deadlines).
  • Who are the key stakeholders that I must align with, and how do I reach them?
  • What are the biggest needs and challenges of our mutual clients?
  • What tangible tips and nuggets can SAP.iO’s curated mentorship provide to me?
  • How can our startup organization and solution leverage SAP’s technology and open integration platform?

If you can’t answer these questions throughout your partnership journey, you will likely have a lot of difficulty in navigating a fruitful path forward. Once you do have the answers, there will be plethora of action items and follow ups for you to get to work on.

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