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In Berlin, Portfolio News, ERP & Finance

Eye-Tracking: Control Your Computer with Your Gaze

Historically, exceptional situations always give innovations a nudge. When the pandemic hit, companies of all sizes and areas of business had to rethink the ways their workforce would work best in the ‘new normal.’

Many companies have always been investing heavily in how their workforce can work best, whether they are developers, sales and services employees, or in administration. Each has individual needs, but what they all have in common is that they need access to a computer in order to fulfill their tasks. They use a keyboard, a mouse, and touch as the de-facto, standard interaction with the machine. This technology hasn’t evolved much over recent years.

At offices, we are used to working according to ergonomic standards whereas in our home offices we may not have these standards available.

Next Generation of User Experience – From ‘Touch Less’ to ‘Touchless’

Did you know that, on average, 25% of a work day is spent using a mouse, accounting for thousands of clicks and scrolls? We switch between the keyboard and mouse up to 2,000 times per day. In an internal pilot at SAP with 35 users from different departments, almost 500 kilometers of mouse-movement distance was measured within six weeks.

This not only costs a lot of time but also causes stress-related diseases, such as repetitive strain injuries (RSI), also known as ‘mouse arm.’

With the eye-tracking solution NUIA from SAP partner 4tiitoo GmbH Munich, it is possible to provide an innovative tool to employees, working to address their ergonomic situation, reduce mouse movements and mouse-keyboard swaps, and improve efficiency and appearance during customer calls.

All SAP colleagues can order this solution to use in the office and even their home offices.

Following its pledge to flex, SAP’s future of work plans include monitors equipped with eye-trackers by default and the ability to download necessary software just by scanning a QR code.

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In Berlin, Munich, CRM & Customer Experience

Too Good To Go Partners With Waze to Fight Food Waste

Too Good To Go is an app that connects users to stores and restaurants with unsold surplus food and offers it at a discounted price. This week, the company announced that it has partnered with Waze, a GPS navigation software app, to fight food waste.

The partnership is called Waze for Good initiative, and it will last throughout the month of August. On the Waze app, the map will feature 100 Too Good To Go partner businesses in the metro areas of Washington D.C., Seattle, New York, Philadelphia, and Portland. Some of the featured stores will include Just Salad, Auntie Anne’s La Colombe, Juice Press, PLNT Burger, Café d’Avignon.

Waze users will see dropped pins on the map for Too Good To Go business partners. When selected, these pins will give information about the business and the initiative. The participating partners will offer “surprise bags” of surplus food, costing around $3.99-$5.99 each, that users can pick up. Earlier this month, Too Good To Go partnered with JOKR, a ghost grocery store chain to offer similar $5 surprise bags of surplus products.

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In Press, Berlin, Consumer Industries, Announcements

DataRobot Acquires Zepl to Enhance Enterprise AI Platform Capabilities for Advanced Data Scientists

DataRobot, the leader in enterprise AI, today announced the acquisition of Zepl, a cloud data science and analytics platform. The acquisition — unveiled today at DataRobot’s virtual conference, AI Experience Worldwide — will unlock new capabilities within DataRobot’s enterprise AI platform for the world’s most advanced data scientists.

“We have always known that to lead the AI market, we must embrace all creators of AI systems, from analysts and citizen data scientists who prefer using a GUI to advanced data scientists who love to code,” said Dan Wright, CEO of DataRobot. “Through the addition of Zepl, we now give advanced data scientists more flexibility to use our enterprise AI platform within their existing workflows, including the ability to use their own code. By incorporating Zepl into the DataRobot platform, we plan to further democratize data science across every enterprise and significantly accelerate our code-centric roadmap.”

Zepl was founded by the creators of Apache Zeppelin, an open source notebook for data and analytics that has been downloaded more than 500,000 times by data scientists from some of the biggest brands in the world. Zepl provides a self-service data science notebook solution for advanced data scientists to do exploratory, code-centric work in Python, R, and Scala with enterprise-ready features such as collaboration, versioning, and security.

DataRobot will incorporate Zepl as a cloud-native, self-service notebook in its enterprise AI platform to drive productivity, efficiency, and collaboration for multiple personas. This will unlock additional flexibility for data scientists who prefer to code by allowing them to write their own tasks and custom models extending the out-of-the-box capabilities provided by DataRobot. With the integration of Zepl, business analysts will be able to build models using the power of DataRobot’s automation and then collaborate with their advanced data science colleagues for additional customization if desired, all on the same platform. It will also provide a more transparent view of the code behind DataRobot blueprints, further enhancing trust and explainability within the platform.

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In Consumer Industries, Press, Berlin, Munich

Sustainable Business Is Better Business for All

Sustainability is the business challenge of our lifetimes.

Customers are increasingly educated and demand products and services that minimize negative environmental impact. Investors are integrating climate risk in their portfolio strategies. Government regulation is on the rise around the world, affecting carbon emissions, waste management, product design, and producer responsibility. Employees are increasingly vocal about their employer’s environmental policies and actions, making it challenging for businesses to recruit top talent without a genuine environmental vision and track record.

Based on Accenture research*, enterprises with high ratings for environmental and social governance (ESG) performance attained operating margins nearly four-times higher than those with low ESG ratings and generated annual total returns to shareholders that were double their peers. According Accenture and United Nations (UN) Global Compact research, 54% of CEOs agree sustainability is critical to the future success of their organizations, and 71% of investors believe the pandemic will accentuate global policies to tackle risks related to climate change.

From Periphery to Core

Enterprises must show accountability through ESG performance and manage end-to-end operations responsibly. By reimagining its business model, any company can operate in an intelligent way, minimize negative environmental impact, and unleash a new dimension of enterprise resource planning (ERP). Decision-makers can use this intelligence to design better products, create engaging experiences, and equip employees to do their best work by eliminating busywork. They can create an efficient, ethical, and adaptable supply chain, reaching beyond organizations and first-tier suppliers to proactively manage performance and risks with trading partners around the world.

Just like any other core business function, sustainability performance must also be managed in real time and integrated into wider business decision making. True, integrated reporting will go hand-in-hand with ESG management, and information transparency will provide a solid foundation to optimize financial results and sustainability performance together.

Most companies have a long way to go before they move beyond the basics of simply reporting ESG performance to actively steering their business operations toward ambitious sustainability goals. While the UN Global Compact’s SDG Ambition program has challenged companies to enhance their commitment to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), only 25% have set goals aligned to societal or environmental needs. Although CEOs acknowledge the universal call-to-action to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all, less than 50% have implemented sustainability into their operations.

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In Foundries, Article, Berlin, Consumer Industries

With Stylumia, Real-Time Data Intelligence Powers Competitive Retail Advantage

Consumer fashion may be among the most unpredictable markets on the planet, but one startup in India has created a demand sensing platform based on artificial intelligence (AI) that combines the brilliance of data scientists with seasoned industry experts to ferret out trends with uncanny accuracy. The idea is to close the gap between supply and demand.

“We help companies create demand-driven fashion forecasts from consumer data across a holistic value chain,” Ganesh Subramanian, founder and CEO at Stylumia, said. “Our demand sensing engine collects and analyzes publicly available global data to rank product trends, providing fashion designers, retail buyers, and merchandisers with a much deeper understanding of real-time consumer demand signals.”

More Profitable and Sustainable Business

Forecasting fickle consumer appetites for unseen products has long stymied the most experienced minds in the fashion world. Stylumia can reveal breaking trends, allowing people to make design and merchandising decisions perfectly in sync. This can reduce under- and overbuying.

According to Subramanian, the typical Stylumia customer has improved the prediction accuracy of style and color levels by up to 30% and increased sales and revenue between 25% to 50%, compared to the performance of products not designed and merchandized using the platform. Customers have also reduced excess inventory and carbon footprint levels by an aggregated average of up to 40%.

“When products are selling well, companies have less stock and are able to lower their carbon footprint because they’re using fewer resources while generating the same amount of revenue,” he said. “Since our founding, we have reduced the number of garments that our customers have produced by over 60 million while their sales and profits have grown.”

Consumer Intelligence Research on Steroids

From its headquarters in India to hubs in Australia, the U.S., and the UK, Stylumia’s teams work with fashion, sports, and lifestyle brands that represent companies of all sizes worldwide.

Instead of brainstorming solely by intuition, designers and buyers log in to their personalized portal to storyboard ideas using Stylumia’s AI-fueled algorithm or their own images for design inspiration. As they select colors, materials, patterns, and other product features, Stylumia instantly surfaces trending demands against the designer’s ideas. They can view similar products, see where selling levels are highest, and save and share their ideas with colleagues.

For retail merchandisers, the tool improves forecast accuracy for better assortment planning down to the local level. They can see which sizes, colors, and styles are most popular by geography. Subramanian added that the platform is not just for large consumer brands.

“We’re democratizing intelligence for small and midsize companies that can use these insights for their growth too, bringing the right products to the right geographies at the right time,” he said.

Read More…

In Blog, Berlin, Business Technology Platform, Foundries

With Data And Analytics, Consumer Products Companies Seize New ‘Moment Of Opportunity’

Since 2015 and the rise of e-commerce hyper scalers,  we have witnessed a fundamental shift in consumer behavior, one that has dramatically accelerated due to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a Bain & Company. Consumers today are increasingly making buying decisions on the values that they hold dear– health and wellness, sustainability, safety, ethically sourced materials – instead of factors like price and convenience.

As businesses look for new ways to reach, engage and serve consumers, the delivery of timely, tailored and relevant experiences have become key. While this shift represents significant transformation challenges for companies, it also represents an enormous opportunity to drive the next wave of growth in consumer industries.

For over 75 years, industries have organized themselves around the concept of the “two moments of truth” – get a consumer into a store to purchase a product, and influence them to use the product. And hopefully, the cycle repeats. In this linear path to purchase with touchpoints that focused on getting consumers to complete transactions in a store, the retailers, consumer products companies and wholesalers in the value chain had well-defined and complementary roles, and all stakeholders favored economies of scale.

This is no longer the case. Today, companies are reaching consumers directly in “moments of opportunity”, requiring them to have a more holistic understanding of consumer desires. This model favors economies of speed – companies that can spot moments of consumer opportunity and organize themselves the fastest to orchestrate the delivery of experiences and products, will win.

To respond effectively to these behavior shifts, consumer products companies need to differentiate themselves as a ‘category of one’, where their business is so unique that there are no direct competitors, and these companies need to make innovative and data-centric decisions.

One example that illustrates this dramatic shift comes from a Google study.  One participant spent 73 days and made 250 touchpoints (several  blogs, merchant websites, local retailers, product reviews on YouTube) before buying a single pair of jeans. Indicative of today’s consumers, this consumer is engaged with and desires to be inspired by brands through viewing multiple options before making a selection.       

This example demonstrates the changes businesses have to make to succeed going forward. We expect that soon, 50% of consumer products industry growth will occur through a direct business model. Consumer-facing companies will need to build compelling consumer experiences based on:

  1. Consistent master and consumer data across all channels to enable a consistent and meaningful experience
  2.  Full visibility of the entire value network, from sourcing and partner networks to all consumer touchpoints, both physical and virtual, and actual consumption
  3. Live access to, and use of, both structured and unstructured data to assess demand drivers and market dynamics in real time
  4. Scaled, quantitative and qualitative analysis of consumer perception, sentiment and feedback to deliver a unified, personalized user experience

Key Technologies & Innovations

So how can companies transform and adapt quickly to meet these new expectations and needs while reaping benefits in productivity, efficiency, personalization, and profitability. With intelligent technologies that can quickly increase consumer-centricity.

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In Press, Berlin, Supply Chain Management

Cardano Foundation Announces Partnership With Supply Chain Traceability Solution Scantrust

The Cardano foundation has announced a partnership with Scantrust, a supply chain traceability solution, in order to streamline the supply chain management process, as well as optimising security.  

Scantrust is a company that uses QR codes to bring products online, and aims to turn products and packaging into a “direct connection with consumers”. The company provides protection from counterfeiting, supply chain awareness, and consumer engagement, using blockchain technology to secure, track, and create consumer interactivity with a QR code.

Current Scantrust partners include HP Indigo, Hyperledger, and SAP, and the company has worked with Fortune 500 companies and SMEs across 168 countries. 

One of the areas that blockchain technology has revolutionised is the supply chain. Blockchain solutions have allowed companies to trace, track, and empower the producer and consumer. A number of traceability companies have emerged in recent years, covering industries from food, textiles and high-end consumer products. What they share in common is the ability to create true transparency from the start of the supply chain all the way through to the consumer. 

Advancing innovation in blockchain technology has allowed companies to promote their ethical approach to consumer goods, increase transparency, and secure against counterfeiting. Frederik Gregaard, CEO of the Cardano Foundation, commented on the partnership with Scantrust: 

“Empowering trust and transparency across all industries and digital agreements is at the heart of the Cardano Foundation’s missions. I am proud of our Integrations team, who have worked tirelessly with Scantrust to deliver the first solution of its kind to leverage metadata on the Cardano blockchain. Together with Scantrust, we are helping brands to reconnect with their consumers, increase transparency in their supply chain, and fight counterfeit activity.”

Read More…

In Article, Berlin, Consumer Industries

Fashion Tech India: Real-Time AI Data Drives Competitive Retail Advantage

Consumer fashion may be among the most unpredictable markets on the planet, but one startup in India has created an AI-based demand sensing platform that combines the brilliance of data scientists with seasoned industry experts to ferret out trends with uncanny accuracy. The idea is to close the gap between supply and demand.

“We help companies create demand-driven fashion forecasts from consumer data across a holistic value chain,” Ganesh Subramanian, founder and CEO at Stylumia. “Our demand sensing engine collects and analyzes publicly available global data to rank product trends, providing fashion designers, retail buyers, and merchandisers with a much deeper understanding of real-time consumer demand signals.”

More profitable and sustainable business

Forecasting fickle consumer appetites for unseen products has long stymied the most experienced minds in the fashion world. Stylumia can reveal breaking trends, allowing people to make design and merchandising decisions perfectly in synch. This can reduce underbuying and overbuying.

According to Subramanian, the typical Stylumia customer has improved the prediction accuracy of style and color levels by up to 30 percent, and increased sales and revenue between 25 to 50 percent, compared to the performance of products not designed and merchandized using the platform. Customers have also reduced excess inventory and carbon footprint levels by an aggregated average of up to 40 percent.

“When products are selling well, companies have less stock and are able to lower their carbon footprint because they’re using fewer resources, while generating the same amount of revenue,” he said. “Since our founding, we have reduced the number of garments that our customers have produced by over 60 million, while their sales and profits have grown.”

Consumer intelligence research on steroids

From its headquarters in India, to hubs in Australia, the United States, and the UK, Stylumia’s teams work with fashion, sports, and lifestyle brands that represent companies of all sizes worldwide.

Instead of brainstorming solely by intuition, designers and buyers log into their personalized portal to storyboard ideas using Stylumia’s AI-fueled algorithm or their own images for design inspiration. As they select colors, materials, patterns, and other product features, Stylumia instantly surfaces trending demands against the designer’s ideas. They can view similar products, see where selling levels are highest, and save and share their ideas with colleagues.

Read More…

In Berlin, Press Release, Munich, Consumer Industries, Energy & Natural Resources, CRM & Customer Experience

SAP.iO Launches Sustainable Future Accelerator Program with Accenture to Drive Startup and Partner Innovation

SAP.iO kicked off a global sustainability-focused accelerator program alongside Accenture at SAP.iO Foundries Berlin and Munich. The Sustainable Future program aims to help early-stage B2B startups get up and running quickly to enable companies across multiple industries to address sustainability challenges and create a positive impact on both industry and society.

Sustainable Future is the largest SAP.iO cohort to date. Thirteen startups have been selected to work with SAP.iO Foundries Berlin and Munich, in tandem with Accenture experts and leading companies in various industries.

“To address global challenges such as climate change, businesses must partner on all levels and across organizations, industries and regions,” said Daniel Schmid, SAP chief sustainability officer. “Teaming up with Accenture to accelerate early-stage startups is part of our holistic innovation approach to integrate new solutions in our portfolio that help our customers understand and improve their environmental and societal impact.”

Sustainable Future is an equity-free program that seeks to propel digital transformation and corporate-startup innovation in four target areas including carbon tracking and trading, resource efficiency, climate risk tracking and mitigation, and circular economy. The program builds upon SAP and Accenture’s long-standing partnership and shared commitment to using technology to help the world build a more sustainable future.

“Our clients are increasingly turning to technology to enable sustainability agendas across their business and deliver on their purpose-based missions to drive value for their stakeholders,” said Caspar Borggreve, global lead for the Accenture SAP Business Group. “Together with SAP, we are helping startups bring innovation to life with solutions and services that allow companies to raise the bar by integrating sustainability into their core processes, strategies and operating models.”

The startups in this cohort will receive curated mentorship, access to SAP technology and application programming interfaces (APIs), and exposure to SAP and Accenture customers to develop high-impact proofs of concept. The accelerator program will run for three months and conclude with a demo day on July 8, 2021.

The Sustainable Future cohort includes the following startups:

  • Astraea provides an integrated platform to access, analyze and deliver earth-observing data and geospatial information using artificial intelligence (AI).
  • Blacksquared GmbH / Changers.com motivates and rewards employees in a playful manner to participate in healthy and environmentally friendly activities.
  • Breeze Technologies measures and analyzes common pollutants like nitrogen oxides, ozone or particulate matter in real time using machine learning and Big Data technologies.
  • Carbon Minds GmbH has built the largest and most regionalized lifecycle database for the chemical industry to help companies reduce their environmental impact with evidence-based guidance.
  • Circular IQ is a digital platform that monitors the circular performance of different suppliers, products, components and materials throughout supply chains to improve their impact on people and the planet.
  • CodeCheck is a mobile application that promotes source transparency and enables consumers to check the ingredients in food and cosmetics by scanning the barcode.
  • Emitwise helps businesses measure, report and reduce their carbon footprint across their operations and supply chains by automating data collection and processing.
  • Footprint Technologies GmbH enables consumers to accurately measure their feet at home and find the right shoe size, thus avoiding returns, costs and CO2 emissions for online retailers.
  • GreenPlat provides traceability from the extraction of raw materials until the final disposal of generated waste using blockchain technology to create transparency across the supply chain.
  • Journey Foods uses machine learning, AI, data scraping and cohort analysis to recommend the most nutritious and more sustainable ingredients for food companies.
  • Lixo is an AI-powered waste detection system to improve the performance of recycling companies, from waste collection to sorting and recycling.
  • Lizee helps retail brands enact their rental business model and successfully enter the circular economy.
  • Too Good To Go connects consumers to restaurants and stores that have unsold, surplus food to fight food waste.
In Foundries, Article, Berlin, Supply Chain Management

Sustainable Farming: Agranimo Integrates with SAP BTP

Despite the ongoing debate of whether it’s a fruit or a vegetable, the avocado has been an export hit around the globe. Avocados are grown in the southern hemisphere but are immensely popular in countries where they cannot be harvested. There is also growing consumer awareness that intensive avocado farming leads to environmental issues in the countries of origin.

‘Driving through the rural areas of Chile, you will notice how severely the country has been going through a major drought during the last five to seven years,’ Nikita Gulin says. ‘Part of it is due to climate change, but it cannot be denied that intensive farming is adding to the problem.’ Chile’s GDP relies heavily on agriculture. Apart from avocados, food crops include blueberries, cherries, and walnuts. ‘Water efficiency is a huge topic for Chilean farmers and the country as a whole.’

For Gulin, Aganimo’s Russian-born founder and CEO, and his Chilean co-founder, CTO Sergio Esteban, this was an obvious problem to tackle.

‘In Chile, everybody knows someone working in the agricultural sector, whether it’s an uncle or the friend of a friend,’ Esteban says. ‘When we looked at the problem and solutions already available, it became clear that there was much room for improvement by means of technology – and we had the skills to do that.’

To combine their technical knowledge with research on agriculture, they made contact with academia. ‘The University of Chile immediately wanted to collaborate,’ Gulin says. Agranimo has 10 employees located in Chile, Russia, and Germany with backgrounds in technology, research, and practical experience in agriculture.

‘Chile is not the only country with this problem,’ Gulin explains, ‘It’s really all over the world – water is rare. From our first application for water efficiency, our vision grew as we expanded to more climate-related issues. Water is still one of the key components, but we are now working with any information that can be derived from climate and soil data.’

Read More…

In Foundries, Press, Berlin, Energy & Natural Resources

For the First Time, Vegetation Risk to the Entire US Electrical Transmission Grid Has Been Analyzed With Satellite Data

For the first time in history, vegetation encroachment risk to the entire publicly available U.S. transmission grid has been analyzed from space by the Berlin-based startup LiveEO.

The goal of this large-scale analysis was to demonstrate LiveEO’s market-leading analytic capabilities to a North American audience. In total, over 15,000 public satellite images were used to evaluate risk to 574,000 miles of electricity lines. (Details about the analysis can be found at www.live-eo.com/us-power-transmission-grid-analysis).

The analysis covers the detection of vegetation along the transmission grid, as well as the identification of grid segments that are exposed at dangerously close distances. These are some of the biggest challenges and operational cost factors for utility companies in maintaining their assets. Proven by studies vegetation is one of the main challenges for utilities globally, causing up to 56% of externally triggered power interruptions. In the United States alone, approximately US$ 6 billion is spent on vegetation management by utility companies annually.

“The scale combined with the detail of the analysis represents a milestone in satellite data analytics for utility companies and proves that satellite data represents a viable alternative for vegetation management to Lidar or foot patrols.” says LiveEO’s Co-Founder Daniel Seidel. “Additionally, these insights can be made actionable directly via our tool set of mobile and web apps, and API integrations to improve workforce efficiency in the field and to realize OPEX saving” adds LiveEO’s other Co-Founder Sven Przywarra.

Read More…

In Foundries, Article, Berlin, New York

Startups Are Re-Defining Cybersecurity As A Driver For Growth

Imagine a world where businesses execute strategies without worrying about securing data. Now imagine a world where fast paced cybersecurity capabilities enable trusted data to become a source for growth. Guess what? Both are possible today.

A lot of ink has been spilled over data protection and now that National Cybersecurity Awareness Month is here, it’s high time we underscore the importance of secure data becoming a growth driver.

According to a 2020 Accenture report, on average, it makes sense for organizations to look beyond their four walls to protect their ecosystems since cybersecurity programs actively protect only 60 percent of an organization’s business ecosystem. Considering 40 percent of breaches come via this route, organizations don’t have the luxury of being too complacent. This may be why 2019 saw $10 billion in privacy and security company investments at an all-time high, according to Crunchbase. Let’s take a closer look at what’s driving this.

Addressing security gaps

While enterprises are overburdened with privacy laws (GDPR and CCPA), complex attacks, and increasingly sophisticated attackers, means cybersecurity startups are more proactively addressing the need for data protection. This is accomplished by providing best of breed point solutions to address security gaps not easily addressed by slower incumbent security solutions offering broader suites of often poorly integrated features. In the process, they are also helping manage enterprise IT complexities, minimize risk, comply with new regulations and allow for more nimble business processes that can expand opportunities beyond traditional industry boundaries and drive revenue growth, including the pursuit of new digital business models.

Speaking of new business models, enterprises are either already operating on-prem or considering how they can move to the cloud. By aligning with cybersecurity startups, enterprises can focus more on what they are good at while also gaining the agility to align and refine strategic planning to make a more secure transformation to the cloud.

How to thwart evolving threats

Let’s face it. Technology and the threats that often keep IT departments and executives alike up at night are both consistently evolving. As a result, cybersecurity startups often times have more laser-focus when it comes to attracting top talent to tap next-generation technologies (AI, machine learning, blockchain, etc.) to solve specific security problems which can be complimentary to existing security solutions. Thus, startups can help enterprises securely scale, be more relevant in the market and be more responsive when it comes to vulnerabilities/threats tapping the latest innovation.

Having more openness toward outside innovation in today’s volatile global economy should further validate the breadth of opportunity for cybersecurity innovation. Why? There is clearly a need for simple and effective ways to create, enforce, and monitor our security policies/controls across multi-cloud and even hybrid environments. Ideally, this functionality can help businesses aggregate vast amounts of data more quickly, remain more agile and avoid downtime which can hurt operations, reputation and revenue.

Make no mistake. We need to move the typical thought process on security away from the notion that cyberthreats are only an external issue. In fact, it’s quite the opposite case and yet another reason cybersecurity innovation must continue to evolve.

Verizon’s 2019 Insider Threat Report found that 57% of database breaches include insider threats and the majority, 61%, of those employees are not in leadership positions when they compromise customer data. This only strengthens the idea that making sure your digital operations are secure, scalable, compliant and interoperable is crucial not just your IT department but to compliance officers as well as those in sustainability, procurement, finance and strategy alike. Thus, collaborating with security startups is more important than ever in a world being forced to increasingly operate remotely due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

I would be remiss not to mention that data is increasingly valuable, and the backbone to AI, so tapping next-generation cybersecurity technologies is no longer a nice have. It’s a requirement to secure data and leverage it for growth opportunities. At least it should be for the modern enterprise that will witness over 500 billion connected things by 2030.

Impact of data and analytics

Due to the advancement of the internet of things, data is being used like never before in human history. The ability to safeguard data privacy, create new intelligent applications for IoT and also use data to predict next generation applications opens the door for startups to help manage complexities in IoT systems, especially as cloud computing moves closer and closer to edge computing.

This is why SAP.iO Foundry Berlin just kicked off its Data & Analytics cohort and why SAP.iO is proud to accelerate cybersecurity innovation through companies such as BigID, a SAP.iO Fund portfolio company focused on helping organizations know their data for privacy, protection and perspective. We have also recently welcomed LISNR, a startup focused on contactless authentication using ultrasonic sound verification, to our SAP.iO Foundry New York Fall Cohort.

Read More…

In Press, Berlin, Portfolio News, Foundries

Helping Startups Turn Untapped Data into New Business Opportunities for SAP Customers

 SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) announced its first data and analytics-focused SAP.iO Foundry Berlin startup accelerator program.

Seven startups have been chosen to participate in the virtual fall cohort held in collaboration with the SAP HANA and Analytics team with focus on the unique opportunities of data and analytics in the business-to-business space.

“Businesses are faced today with massive amounts of data coming into their lines of business practically from everywhere, just like a running faucet,” said Gerrit Kazmaier, president, SAP HANA and Analytics. “Our mission is to turn this untapped resource into a superpower that provides business value for everyone. It’s truly important to think about how we can connect people to data so they can use it for the benefit of their customers. Data is vast. We need to tackle it with lots of imagination.”

SAP.iO Foundry Berlin is part of SAP’s strategic business unit designed to accelerate innovation and drive new business models for SAP. The SAP.iO Foundries program is a global network of equity-free accelerator programs located in strategic startup hubs. It provides startups with access to mentorship, exposure to SAP technologies, and opportunities to meet and collaborate with SAP customers.

The selected startups will work closely with mentors from SAP, to develop proofs-of-concept, access SAP technology and application programming interfaces (APIs), and identify opportunities to collaborate with SAP customers. At the program’s core are the interactions with SAP’s customers who provide invaluable insights and guidance to the startups throughout their time in-program and beyond. The program will run for three months and conclude with a demo day in early January.

The cohort consists of the following startups:

  • C2RO is a Canada-based artificial intelligence (AI) company offering privacy-aware AI video analytics for physical spaces. It leverages the existing surveillance cameras and uses GDPR-compliant and proprietary edge-cloud AI to accurately analyze the behavior, demographics and journey of people. The same way Google Analytics revolutionized the digital world, C2RO is revolutionizing the physical world.
  • datazeit reveals information hidden in web and social media and delivers end-to-end data intelligence to accelerate digital business transformation.
  • Teamcore identifies on-shelf availability and lost sales opportunities. It prioritizes tasks after processing stores sales, stock and in-store data on machine learning (ML) algorithms. The platform enables a structured sales methodology by creating a problem-solving workflow across the entire retail sales and operations team, empowering consumer product companies to better store execution.
  • nwo.ai is an intelligence amplification platform that harnesses ML techniques and human metadata to identify global cultural shifts early and throughout the lifecycle of trends across various sectors.
  • Stylumia solves the problems of fashion, lifestyle, sports and home validation, prediction, and design generation. Its data-driven approach combines consumer demand sensing with the client’s own data for context-relevant validation, prediction and generation.
  • Ubermetrics’ new enterprise intelligence solution provides highly actionable signals on business-critical events. Using state-of-the-art artificial intelligence (AI) technology, Ubermetrics distills public information from millions of sources down to meaningful events, such as strikes at suppliers, competitor product launches and over 50 other categories.
  • ZEPL delivers an enterprise software-as-a-service data science and governance solution that supports enterprises as they are looking to deliver AI-driven applications to help solve business challenges where massive sets of data are in play.
In Foundries, Article, Berlin, COVID-19

SAP Boosts Industry-Wide Innovation with Startup Partnerships

The COVID-19 pandemic is an extreme test in business agility, particularly across some of the hardest hit industries like healthcare, supermarkets, and manufacturing. Iristrace, a European-based startup, has developed a cloud-based platform that one hospital in Spain is testing to provide better patient care regardless of unpredictable demands.

Healthcare providers can use the COVID Patient Record Management mobile app to monitor real-time data about everything from hospital bed capacity by room to what equipment each patient is being treated with, and their vital signs.

“The algorithm helps simplify decisions for more informed and effective conversations about next steps,” said André Kingham, chairman of Iristrace. “Like most organizations, hospitals can’t easily rework IT systems to add new protocols. Our cloud-based solution allows the hospital to quickly evolve protocols and cascade compliance into patient care without IT expertise.”

Read More…