The world is moving faster, and technology is transforming how we do our jobs. It is clear that the way we work is changing rapidly. So… shouldn’t we also change how we train and develop our employees?
As large organizations continue to utilize outdated and generalized professional development methods in the effort to help their employees grow, studies have shown that 75% of HR staff find that their professional development programs are ineffective, and 60% of employees are dissatisfied with professional training they receive (Deloitte Workplace Survey 2018).
This is where GrowthSpace comes into the picture. GrowthSpace is an online one-on-one coaching platform that offers high-quality coaching for tech companies, at the cost of an average workshop. GrowthSpace’s tailor-made service pinpoints an employee’s greatest challenge, matches the employee with the perfect coach who has relevant, hands-on work experience from a similar organization, and creates a personalized 2-month coaching experience. Whether an employee is looking to become a first-time manager, achieve KPIs, or boost creativity, GrowthSpace has the right coach and the right program to meet his or her specific needs.
One of the biggest challenges facing the retail industry lies in the inefficiency of daily store operations. If the right product is not on the shelf or out of stock, a purchase might be missed. ARpalus’s solution powered by AI, Computer Vision, and Augmented Reality digitizes shelves, allowing CPG manufacturers and retailers to better execute their in-store operations.
Dimension fondamentale dans le développement d’une startup digitale orientée B2B, la recherche de partenaires commerciaux est à la fois un axe stratégique fort et une clé de lecture prépondérante pour les potentiels investisseurs. Alors quels en sont les enjeux, quel est le bon moment, quels sont les bons partenaires à approcher ?
Les prérequis
Élaborer une stratégie de partenariats commerciaux ne peut être efficace que pour une startup suffisamment mature et structurée pour en affronter les contraintes. C’est la stratégie globale de la startup qui définit les partenariats commerciaux visés. Vous devrez donc connaître parfaitement les acteurs du marché que vous visez, leur position sur les différents marchés, leurs interlocuteurs, leurs solutions, et votre complémentarité.
Among the (many) steps on the road from an idea to a successful business, the decision to join a startup accelerator program for early entrepreneurs is a fundamental one.
It often raises very deep questions, sometimes even going so far as to question the very nature of entrepreneurship, the genesis of the project, its ambition, its outline. Joining a startup accelerator can only be achieved after having thoroughly considered the implications of such a process and the opportunities it might create. Let’s shed some more light on some key questions early-stage entrepreneurs need to ask themselves…
Le Village by CA, écosystème unique où startups et grands groupes se rencontrent et coopèrent pour innover ensemble, s’apprête à accueillir 9 nouvelles startups au sein de son entité parisienne. Ces dernières ont passé avec succès le comité de sélection vendredi 22 novembre 2019. Pour elles, c’est parti pour deux ans d’accélération au sein du Village by CA. Lire la suite…
Nov 14th, 2019 marked the culmination of our three months long Experience Management accelerator program, in close collaboration with SAP Customer Experience & Qualtrics. However this is just the beginning of a long term relationship with these startups. Over 100 people gathered (regardless of the rain!) to celebrate the graduation of SAP.iO Foundry San Francisco’s Experience Management Cohort. It was a great moment for our startups to present in front of an audience that was a mix of SAP Executives, SAP Customers, Startup Founders, Ventures Capitalists & industry experts. The following startups presented:
Askdata: Powerful Natural Language engine turns text questions into queries that search across enterprise data for the best answer.
Breinify: Makes any marketing system smarter by adding individualized & time driven predictions to drive spur-of-the-moment purchases.
Constructor: AI-first Commerce search and discovery solution that learns from usage to increase personalization and conversion rates.
Findmine: Increases Commerce basket sizes by using ML to generate and display product collections that can be used together.
Idiomatic: Easily identify top product and service issues by analyzing large amounts of customer interactions with AI/ML
Setsail: Accelerate pipeline and flexibly drive strategic priorities using SetSail’s weekly sales incentive system
Wisy: Gathers unique consumer and market insights for brands and retailers while increasing consumer engagement via mobile experiences.
At SAP, collaboration is not only an invaluable tool for progress, but a key advantage that continuously benefits our customers, employees, partners, and communities at large. The latest example of our commitment to co-innovation is the SAP.iO Foundry Munich, which has just launched its first accelerator program. As the second SAP.iO Foundry to open in Germany, it seeks to leverage a rich ecosystem devoted to inclusive entrepreneurship, technological expertise, and enablement.
Out of over 150 applicants, seven impressive startups were chosen to take part in our Fall 2019 Commerce and Marketing program. We are excited to introduce the SAP.iO Foundry Munich’s first cohort:
8select is a plug-and-play software solution
offering a curated shopping engine (CSE) to online retailers enabling them to
personalize product recommendations for end consumers. It allows retailers to
cross-sell by publishing automatically curated product sets (such as outfits)
along the customer journey.
Dotaki Boosting conversion with AI-enhanced user experience
Dotaki takes conversion rates to the next level
for online merchants by using artificial intelligence to personalize digital
content and experience according to each individual visitor’s method of making
purchasing decisions.
presize.ai Mobile Body Scanning Software for Fashion E-Commerce
presize.ai provides mobile body scanning software
for fashion e-commerce, creating a more enjoyable experience by matching the
best-fitting clothes with shoppers’ unique body reality apps for web.
parcellab is a cloud-based service that helps
brands provide a personalized and branded customer experience during checkout,
shipping and return processes.
rapitag IoT solutions for unique customer experiences
rapitag is a leading provider of secure mobile
checkout and unique customer experiences in retail. rapitag offers the world’s
first patented antitheft IoT security tags for one-click buying, helping
retailers to connect and digitalize their physical stores.
Expivi is an interactive and visual e-commerce
platform that generates an immersive shopping experience with instant 3D
configurations and artificial reality. Businesses are able to upgrade their
online stores by using Expivi on their own existing marketplace.
With the immense potential in the entrepreneurial spirit of Europe and as part of SAP’s strategy, I’m very excited to share the news that SAP.iO recently announced the launch of its first accelerator program in Tel Aviv. SAP.iO Foundry Tel Aviv further expands SAP’s operations in Israel and reflects SAP’s commitment to the dynamic Israeli high-tech ecosystem where we have been active for more than two decades, currently employing approximately 800 developers in our R&D centers in Ra’anana and Tel Aviv.
We are excited to collaborate with amazing entrepreneurs and welcome the following startups to our SAP.iO Foundry Tel Aviv Fall program:
ARpalus helps CPG and retailers understand and predict their shoppers’ preferences using an AR-simulation platform, measuring real behavioral patterns and delivering AI-optimized in-store execution.
A no-code smart form builder that empowers enterprises to quickly convert paper forms and clunky PDFs into compliant eForms with deep-analytics in less than two weeks.
EasySend serves over forty enterprise customers, including leading financial institutions and insurance companies in the US, Germany, Japan and Israel. EasySend’s has been adopted by over 90% of the Israeli financial and insurance market and tier-1 US and German financial
Online coaching platform for enterprise employees.
GrowthSpace replaces traditional employee training, like workshops or seminars, with personalized 1X1 training. Using technology, GrowthSpace offers personalized training at the cost of traditional training. Users hold one-on-one video coaching sessions targeted at a specific professional challenge.
A direct mail platform that bridges the gap between offline and online campaigns.
Outgage is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) marketing direct-mail platform that makes a connection between offline and online campaigns to create personalized brand experiences, for effective conversations between enterprises and their customers.
Silverback is an AI-driven sales decision hub for online retailers, empowering them to offer the top-performing products at the most competitive price and optimize promotions to massively boost sales.
Building the world’s leading fast and easy self-checkout system using AI loss prevention technology.
Supersmart provides the world’s first scan-and-go solution with advanced loss prevention capabilities, enabling consumers to instantly check out their fully-loaded cart or basket and have a positive customer experience.
YOUTILIGENT uses machine learning and the Internet of Things to enable vendors and service providers to change the way they communicate with their appliances, through a new connected consumer solution.
SAP.iO Venture Studio makes a €1 million follow-on seed investment in Brilliant Hire, a bias-free, skill-based pre-screening platform that helps digitize recruiting to provide faster and greater insights
Brilliant Hire co-founders, Swetha and Hemant with Juergen Mueller, CTO of SAP
In most hiring processes, hitting the buzzer to catapult candidates to the next round does usually not occur as quickly as on prime television shows. Talent is nevertheless what both are looking for.
There’s a strong connection between achieving business objectives and hiring the right talent, hence increasing the quality of candidates within the hiring funnel is fundamental to success. Tech is promising a shortcut to identifying the best candidates for job offerings, by also eliminating (un-)conscious bias towards applicants, and improving hiring efficiency. Will software be the next recruiting manager you meet in an interview? Not quite, but it could make all the difference.
Brilliant Hire offers skills-based job applicant screening, providing faster and greater insights without bias. The latest funding allows the venture to proceed with the recently released Brilliant Expert Network. Brilliant Experts is a complimentary service to Brilliant Hire, providing experts who evaluate candidates at any skill level and any discipline. With this service, recruiters simply send candidates the Brilliant Hire link and subsequently receive a full breakdown of a candidate’s skills from the expert. On the backend, the Brilliant Hire teamensures the quality and availability of the evaluating expertsremains high. The platform is unique across the screening industry by combining both machine learning with human evaluators.
Brilliant Experts has been used at SAP by the Silicon Valley Next Talent program over the past few months. With the addition of Brilliant Experts, Brilliant Hire removed the burden of assessment evaluation and decreased the wait time of applying candidates by more than 50 percent:
“We went from a one to two weeks response time to just two days. This resulted in over 400 candidates screened and only 100 qualifying ones to be interviewed – all without burdening recruiters or managers.”
Caitie Sullivan, program manager, Silicon Valley Next Talent Program, SAP
The team has shown early successes, including helping software company SAP SuccessFactors hit their ambitious 2019 hiring targets. This includes hiring over 100 engineers across the San Francisco and Bangalore offices. Beyond SAP, Brilliant Hire has been used by Mercedes-Benz R&D and the Second Harvest Food Bank.
Today, Brilliant Hire is offering a 3-month trial allowing companies to screen up to 300 candidates evaluations for just $1. Simply head over to the SAP Store to start your trial today.
To continue delivering their vision of screening-as-a-service, the new funding enables the team to grow in key areas. During the second half of 2019, Brilliant Hire will add Go-To-Market experts, designers and various engineering resources across San Francisco and Bangalore — hence hiring themselves! If you believe in the team’s mission and are interested in joining, reach out to their General Manager, Ryan Phillips, at ryan@brillianthire.io or check out the team’s career page.
About Brilliant Hire
Your hiring process is biased, we can help you fix it. Be brilliant in the way you hire. Try Brilliant Hire via the SAP Store and find more information on brillianthire.io.
About SAP.iO Venture Studio
The SAP.iO Venture Studio invests in small, entrepreneurial teams inside SAP and helps them build and launch successful products that attack some of the biggest problems in enterprise software. More information on sap.io/studio.
The past few years have seen incredible innovation and execution take place and taken many companies to horizons never imagined before. Yet these SaaS businesses require a specific structure and well oiled parts to function well. Any large organization like SAP, which has sustained the years and grown its revenue base, recognizes that a few right mechanisms can be key to achieve fast growth and long term sustainability.
The startup journey is hard. An estimated 75% of venture-backed companies never return cash to investors; only 1% go on to become unicorns. Startup success requires brutally efficient execution and a bit of luck. My own experience as a startup founder attests to this. When we started T-Networks (now a part of Broadcom), we had to build our own semiconductor fab and packaging facility, while at the same time competing with deep-pocketed, well-established multinationals. A “pivot” in those days, should we decide we needed to change in tack (e.g., different product in different segment), was going to be a fairly difficult (if not impossible) road to travel. So, I have to say I’m excited (and perhaps even a little envious) when I see the opportunities entrepreneurs have today — to build, test, refine, and even pivot — now that the need to construct the infrastructure required to develop the actual product is removed.
Of course, there are still challenges. In enterprise software, it also requires industry expertise, access to strong networks, and an ability to reach customers — all of which pose significant barriers to many entrepreneurs who aspire to transform industries. This is where a strategic partner like SAP can help early-stage startups scale the barriers to success.
The SAP.iO Fund and SAP.iO Foundries invest in and accelerate early-stage startups at the leading edge of B2B software innovation, who leverage a combination of emerging technologies like AI or IoT, business process expertise, and new business models. We realize that agile, early-stage startups complementary to SAP can expand and enhance the SAP ecosystem and solutions, giving our customers access to relevant, cutting-edge solutions. While SAP can help startups target customer needs, connect to SAP systems, and access SAPs broad customer base.
A key challenge many startups have after finding product-market fit is scaling. This can require significant investment, especially on the customer acquisition side — from marketing to sales to customer success. But what if the right partner could help to identify and prioritize high-value prospects, make those introductions, and then even help to drive the sales process? This is the type of startup partner SAP and SAP.iO strives to be — even for early-stage startups.
Startups that SAP.iO supports receive strong and unprecedented exposure to our field and customers. We have dedicated resources on the SAP.iO team that ensure SAP.iO startups get visibility and interest from internal account teams, customers, and partners. For example, during the first half of 2019 alone, at least 150 major customers visited SAP.iO Foundries in NA and Europe to meet with the startups SAP.iO is supporting.
In particular, on the go-to-market side, startups ask about the tactical ways that SAP typically partners with startups, where the field is provided incentives to position and / or sell a startup partner’s solution. In my session today at Techcrunch Enterprise 2019, I shared the stage with 3 SAP.iO Fund startups — BigID, Medal, and Plum — who discussed the various ways they work with SAP to scale sales and deliver value to customers:
CO-SELL — in this model, startups get exposure to the SAP customer base via the SAP AppCenter. SAP customers can discover, try, and buy startup solutions. Customers transact through the SAP AppCenter, on the startup partners’ contract paper. Select partners may have special pipeline generation activities supported by an SAP Business Unit.
RE-SELL — in this model, startup partner solutions can be sold via the SAP Solution Extension program, where the solution is sold by the field on SAP contract paper and is also supported by dedicated partner management. This is generally reserved for more mature startups.
OEM (INBOUND) — in this model, the startup solution is embedded into an SAP solution. SAP then sells the combined offering on SAP paper, with the startup receiving a license fee from SAP for using their IP.
By leveraging these types of partnerships, startups can dramatically expand their reach, pipeline, and ability to deliver value to SAP customers. It’s important to note that startups dramatically increase success working with a channel partner if they already have a successful, scalable, repeatable sales formula (or process) that they can teach to the partner. Contrary to popular startup mythology, early-stage startups can have success cracking the code with large enterprise partners — SAP.iO is proof of this.
The startup journey is hard. An estimated 75% of venture-backed companies never return cash to investors; only 1% go on to become unicorns. Startup success requires brutally efficient execution and a bit of luck. My own experience as a startup founder attests to this. When we started T-Networks (now a part of Broadcom), we had to build our own semiconductor fab and packaging facility, while at the same time competing with deep-pocketed, well-established multinationals. A “pivot” in those days, should we decide we needed to change in tack (e.g., different product in different segment), was going to be a fairly difficult (if not impossible) road to travel. So, I have to say I’m excited (and perhaps even a little envious) when I see the opportunities entrepreneurs have today — to build, test, refine, and even pivot — now that the need to construct the infrastructure required to develop the actual product is removed.
Blog written by Christian Klein, COO & Executive Board Member of SAP
Tomorrow’s SAP starts today. Having just returned from an amazing trip in Japan, South Korea and China, it’s clear that SAP Asia is embracing the innovation, energy and spirit that will take SAP to great heights in the future.
During the week, I spent time with customers, partners and colleagues, and from each and every one of them, I had the sense of their commitment to innovation, their engagement with technology and the powerful potential that this region holds. I also engaged with the media, who see SAP as leading the move to the intelligent enterprise.
I also met the start-ups and investors forming the first cohort of the SAP.iO Foundry in Tokyo, as well as over 600 employees who attended the All Hands Meeting and a coffee corner in person and online.
For shoppers aged 30-64 years old, 73 percent have posted online product reviews. This can have a huge financial impact: 94% of shoppers say an online review has convinced them to avoid a business. The problem for product manufacturers and retailers is how to quickly make sense of consumer sentiments across multiple online forums – not to mention data from internal sources like call centers, stores or surveys. With all that unstructured data and no way to make sense of it, companies struggle to understand their customers, competitors and markets. Currently, most organizations rely on data scientists and analysts, but this manual process is slow and expensive.
New York City-based startup, Revuze, has found a way to automate this process using its artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm to analyze customer opinions from different channels and data stores, tracking their perception of specific products and markets. The company believes it’s closing the last gap in customer experience with its solution which is already used by giants like Dolby, Pampers, Oral-B, Zara, Gillette and Barbie.
1. Ram, SAP is a purpose-led organization. What is one thing you do, in life or business, that demonstrates this?
I am often asked why we are doing this. Well, fundamental to everything we do is for our customers’ benefit, which is in turn reflected in business performance. It turns out that these groups of founders, such as women and minorities who have traditionally been ‘underinvested in’, consistently deliver high business returns, because they are building solutions that customers want. It makes sense to prioritize and emphasize our efforts and investments to support these groups – they’re doing all the right things.
As managing director of SAP.iO, I have global responsibility for supporting early-stage external startups through our unique mix of investments and incubation. As part of this, I am extremely proud to be driving SAP.iO No Boundaries, our commitment to supporting underrepresented entrepreneurs in business to business tech, through which we have pledged to support more than 200 select, high potential B2B tech startups by 2023.
Some critics ask if we have lowered the bar. My response to that is absolutely not! It simply means we need to search harder to find these entrepreneurs because they generally don’t have the access or the network to find funding or customer introductions that other groups typically enjoy. So it’s not about giving special favors, but it’s about ensuring we are able to hear their voices.
I personally know of the struggles and hurdles that women or other underrepresented entrepreneurs in tech face – in building a network, getting funding, attracting customers and being taken seriously. I personally know women who were told ‘You don’t need an investor, you need a rich boyfriend’, ‘I can’t invest in someone if they are going to have a family at some point’, or even (believe it or not) ‘You won’t date an investor? Sorry, I can’t work with you’.
As an entrepreneur and innovator, myself, this one is personal for me and we need to change the status quo!
2. Ram, who is the one person you consistently read and why?
One person who I consistently read, and follow is Horace Dediu (@asymco), author of the asymco blog and an expert on how innovations are absorbed by markets, and why some platforms end up winning. Horace combines a structured way of thinking with deep content expertise that results in foresight on how the future will evolve, including in areas such as mobile computing and the future of transport (e.g., micro-mobility, electric vehicles). He then tests these predictions over time with a rigorous, data-driven approach, but also notes: “All great insights I’ve ever seen have come from n=1 [data points]”.
I first discovered Horace in 2009 when I stumbled onto his initial blog post where he shared his predictions (starting from 2007) how Nokia / like competitors would evolve through 2014. And, as the years evolved, his predictions came to be stunningly prescient. He ended his first post in this way:
“The key takeaway from this analysis is that the industry standard product cycle for an integrated, platform-based product is 5 to 8 years and if one competitor can achieve a 2 to 3 year cycle, then the more nimble competitor can “turn inside” the industry and, within two cycles, dominate it. Although smaller competitors are able to turn product faster, they are usually unable to sustain the platform heavy lifting (which takes an order of magnitude more effort/assets).”
I think all of us at SAP can recognize parallels to what’s happening in enterprise software, and the importance for SAP to run nimble and simple. And I’ve been hooked since.
3. What is one life lesson that you’d share with your younger self.
About Ram Jambunathan
Ram is the Managing Director of SAP.iO. In this role, Ram is responsible for the SAP.iO Fund, which makes direct investments into early stage startups and the SAP.iO Foundries, a global network of top-tier, primarily zero-equity ask startup acceleration programs for startups in areas strategic to SAP. Ram has been with SAP for 10 years, leading various strategic initiatives. Before joining SAP, Ram was consultant at McKinsey & Co., a founder of T-Networks (now part of Broadcom), and a Member of Technical Research & Development at Lucent Technologies. Ram has more than 5 patents and more than 10 peer-reviewed publications, and received his doctorate in Electrical Engineering from the University of Michigan Ann-Arbor. In his spare time, Ram practices freestyle rapping about SAP.iO.
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