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In San Francisco, Featured, Service Industries, CRM & Customer Experience, Announcements

SAP.iO Foundry San Francisco Kicks Off B2B Innovation in Sales & Service Program

May 11, 2023 — SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) today launched the 2023 program focused on innovation in B2B Sales & Services at SAP.iO Foundry San Francisco. The 11 startups have been selected by a jury of SAP experts, partners, customers, and investment funds to join the program.  

This program is for startups with innovative solutions for B2B sales and service processes and experiences to help improve the customer journey. Customer Experience (CX) is SAP’s largest addressable market with a strong demand for more CX partner solutions that SAP customers can leverage.

During this 5-month program, the selected startups will build and develop long-term partnerships with SAP by defining joint use cases, product integration and various business development opportunities. SAP customers have been involved in the cohort selection and will be supporting by evaluating opportunities for proof of concepts.

The following startups are participating in the SAP.iO Foundry San Francisco 2023 program: 

  1. Aisera is a leading provider of ChatGPT and Generative AI solutions for customer and employee experiences covering IT helpdesk, customer service/support, HR, sales, and finance.
  2. Ascendo connects human and machine to achieve proactive support.
  3. AmplifAI is the AI-driven performance enablement platform for employee-centric enterprises, helping hybrid teams maximize business outcomes, boost productivity and improve engagement.
  4. Bounti AI-driven growth operating system turns customer data into real-time alerts and hyper-personalized actions for sales and customer experience representatives to drive customer expansion and retention.
  5. InsideBoard is a digital success platform powered by AI, which brings business value to digital transformation programs. InsideBoard engages users to adopt digital solutions and processes, while also making sure they continue to perform optimally over time.
  6. Knowmax works with Fortune 500 brands to help improve knowledge management capabilities for customer experience organizations by moving knowledge from being static to a guided-assist based approach, helping create a single source of truth.
  7. Lucy serves as an ultimate AI Answer Engine℠ across the enterprise—getting users the right answer, at the right time, no matter where they sit in the organization.
  8. Neuron7 provides AI-generated resolution intelligence for complex service organizations that need fast, accurate issue resolutions at scale.
  9. Pryon rapidly transforms organizations’ untapped wealth of approved content into AI-powered experiences that greatly increase the productivity of customers, employees, and partners. By leveraging proprietary computer vision and large language models, the company fuses disparate sources to then deliver fully attributed and trusted answers that accelerate workflows.
  10. Quiq helps enterprises deliver great digital customer experiences using its asynchronous messaging platform to automate 30-80% of customer issues with AI and handle the remainder with human agents working in Quiq’s digital contact center.
  11. Salesroom is an AI-based meeting intelligence platform that gives customer-facing teams real-time coaching cues, suggests meeting agendas, automates note-taking, and generates highlights so sellers stay present, creating a lasting impression with buyers. 

About SAP.iO
SAP.iO curates a relevant and diverse startup ecosystem that extends the value of SAP solutions and meets the continuously evolving needs of our customers. Our programs provide dedicated support to the most promising startups as they launch and scale relationships with SAP and our global network of customers, partners, and employees. Since 2017, we have connected thousands of SAP customers with innovative enterprise software startups, helping them find solutions to their unique needs. For more information, visit http://sap.io/.  

In Announcements, Foundries, Paris, Featured, Service Industries, Sustainability

SAP.iO Foundry Paris Launches Its New Program: Sustainability in the Service Industries

January 11, 2022 — SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) today launched a startup program focused on sustainability as part of the 7th edition of SAP.iO Foundry Paris. Eight international startups have been selected by a jury of SAP experts, partners, customers and investment funds to join the program.

SAP.iO Foundry Paris, SAP’s startup acceleration unit in France, has already supported more than 50 startups. In three years, SAP has achieved the goal set at the #ChooseFrance summit with the French government in 2018 to support the startup economy.

This new program focuses on four topics related to different issues concerning sustainability in the service industries:

  • Responsible design and production
  • Responsible sourcing
  • Resource recovery and re-use
  • Responsible consumption

Sébastien Gibier, Director of SAP.iO Foundry Paris, said: “SAP.iO has always been a great incubator for startups. This year, the focus on sustainability will allow scale-ups to amplify their impact. SAP France is delighted to continue this program focused on innovation. We are particularly pleased to have met our objectives set with the government.”

Over the next 12 weeks, startups will have access to one-on-one mentoring from SAP executives, exposure to SAP® technology and application programming interfaces (APIs), and opportunities to collaborate with SAP customers around the world.

The following startups are participating in the SAP.iO Foundry Paris program:

  • ACTRADIS assists companies in the compilation, verification and digitization of documents on a sharing platform.
  • bloXmove is a decentralized mobility blockchain platform that provides easy-to-integrate interfaces for verifying identities and credentials, smart contracts and revenue distribution.
  • Cozero offers a digital carbon action platform covering the end-to-end carbon management process of companies to optimize their environmental and economic footprint throughout the supply chain.
  • HESUS provides solutions for the transport and treatment of soil and construction waste, while reducing their environmental impact.
  • Leanpath provides a comprehensive food waste prevention platform – including measurement, discovery and automation tools – enabling partner customers to reduce food waste by 50% or more in more than 40 countries.
  • Liftango guides international organizations and cities in planning, launching and implementing shared mobility projects. It solves parking, congestion and zoning problems by improving the efficiency of transportation services through on-demand transportation technology.
  • Madaster offers a cloud platform that provides a single point of access to leverage real estate data to meet environmental, regulatory, health and financial ambitions throughout the lifecycle of the object.
  • TotalCtrl creates digital products in collaboration with restaurants, hotels, municipalities and individuals to eliminate manual processes, streamline food inventory management, easily generate monthly cost of goods sold and accounting reports.

About SAP.iO
SAP.iO delivers new partnerships and products for SAP by accelerating and scaling startup innovation as well as incubating employee businesses. SAP.iO brings together innovators from all regions, industries and sectors to transform the way businesses work. Since 2017, SAP.iO has helped 380+ external startups and internal ventures accelerate their growth while enabling thousands of SAP customers to access to innovation. For more information, visit http://sap.io/.

In Portfolio News, COVID-19, Service Industries

With a SAP collaboration and a round A underway, Pico comes out punching from Covid-19 crisis

The Israeli startup is currently working with over 60 sports teams globally from some of the biggest leagues in the world and was selected to take part in SAP’s first-ever fan experience–focused startup accelerator program.

It is no secret that there are many tech companies that benefited from Covid-19. For Haifa-based startup Pico, which has created a technology to turn engaged, anonymous sports and entertainment fans into identifiable customer profiles to support business objectives, the pandemic has not only been good for business but has helped validate what the company has been preaching for years.

“Covid-19 accelerated our growth tremendously. In the last two years we were running around with our sales pitch that you have to know who your digital fans are because most of your fans are online and not at your stadium and you don’t have data about them and need to start building this database. Now it isn’t us doing the pitch, it is the teams and the leagues doing it,” Pico CEO Asaf Nevo told CTech. “Everyone in the industry now says we have to understand who these people are. They suddenly realize there is a void, sometimes of tens of millions of fans, that they are spending tens of millions of dollars a year to engage with, but have no idea who they are. In these rough times when we don’t know when people will be back at stadiums, we have to understand who they are, start monetizing them, and begin to look at digital engagement as a new revenue stream.”

Pico is currently working with over 60 sports teams globally from some of the biggest leagues in the world, including the NBA’s Los Angeles Clippers, German football Bundesliga clubs Werder Bremen and Borussia Dortmund and several NHL teams.

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In Munich, Portfolio News, Foundries, Press Release, Service Industries

SAP.iO Co-Leads Innovation with Munich’s SAP Garden

SAP announced its first-ever fan experience–focused startup accelerator program. From the latest SAP.iO Foundry location in Munich, eight startups have been chosen to participate in the upcoming fall cohort held in collaboration with SAP Garden, a multipurpose sports arena being built by Red Bull in Munich’s Olympiapark.

The collaboration aims to identify innovative technologies for use in in the stadium. SAP Garden will be the new home for local top teams EHC Red Bull München and FC Bayern München Basketball as well as for public ice sports.

Red Bull and FC Bayern München have been longtime SAP customers. With a passion for innovation, creativity and success, the three stakeholders are coming together to pool their expertise to set new standards for the fan experience.

“Together with our long-standing partners and customers Red Bull and FC Bayern, we want to create unforgettable fan experiences in the SAP Garden,” said Thomas Saueressig, member of the Executive Board of SAP SE and responsible for SAP Product Engineering. “The SAP Garden will show innovative solutions and technologies from SAP and startups that put fans front and center. We are looking forward to working together with the cohort to build tailor-made solutions that elevate the fan experience in the SAP Garden.”

SAP.iO Foundry Munich 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 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 at SAP, Red Bull and FC Bayern to develop proofs-of- concept, access SAP technology and application programmable interfaces (APIs), and identify opportunities to collaborate with SAP executives and customers. The accelerator program will run for three months and conclude with a demo day in early December.

The cohort consists of the following startups:

  • Ariadne Maps provides a crowd analytics platform enabling retailers to infer meaningful insights from traffic data and trends to optimize advertising and marketing, maximize sales and offer the best service to visitors.
  • MultiBall merges sports and gaming, using fully immersive interactive solutions that combine fitness, entertainment and education while providing marketing opportunities for businesses.
  • io is reinventing the sports fan experience using augmented reality, allowing spectators to visualize and interact with live data, which is directly overlaid on top of the pitch and even on top of the players — in stadium or at home.
  • INS Insider Navigation Systems delivers a hardware-independent augmented reality indoor navigation system enabling precise 3D positioning, intuitive navigation and location-based AR content.
  • Pico turns engaged, anonymous online fans into identifiable customer profiles through personalized, one-to-one messaging, driving conversion from existing digital channels and increased revenue from enhanced sponsorships, tickets and merchandise sales.
  • TAWNY offers an emotion analytics software-as-a-service solution to capture and analyze human affective states driving consumer decisions and behavior.
  • Wagawin drives user engagement with interactive advertisements, allowing businesses to gain unique audience insights leading to more customized advertising options.
  • Zippin enables retailers to quickly deploy frictionless shopping in their stores, by employing artificial intelligence, machine learning and sensor fusion technology to create the best consumer experience. In December 2019, Zippin raised a $12 million Series A funding round, in which the SAP.iO program was a contributing investor.
In Article, Portfolio News, Service Industries

Swap Your Frequent Flyer Guilt For Sustainable Air Travel

The air travel industry is waking up to a post-pandemic world filled with people who have a heightened awareness of climate change and sustainability. The entrepreneurs behind Jet-Set Offset are turning these concerns into action for both consumers and businesses. Using the startup’s carbon-based offsetting tool, companies can donate one cent for every air mile flown by employees to environmental non-profit organizations.

Read More…

In Service Industries, Network & Spend Management, Uncategorized

SAP.iO Foundry San Francisco Launches Accelerator Program Focused on Travel and Expense Management

SAP) kicked off the SAP.iO Foundry San Francisco business-to-business (B2B) travel technology accelerator, with eight early-stage enterprise startups.

This program is geared to improving the travel and expense management experience for SAP’s customers, and includes the SAP Concur portfolio. Startups in the program will have access to curated mentorship, exposure to SAP technology and application programmable interfaces (APIs), and opportunities to collaborate with SAP customers.

“Collaboration with SAP.iO will help foster an open innovation ecosystem and will help us deliver new emerging technologies that bring value to our customers,” SAP Concur President Jim Lucier said. ” We look forward to working with the rising stars in the travel technology industry and helping them scale.”

The following startups are participating in the SAP.iO Foundry San Francisco Spring 2020 program:

  • Bacarai is launching the world’s first group airfare marketplace — providing travelers the ability to shop, purchase and manage group trips online.
  • Hotailors is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform that provides enterprises with full visibility over contingent worker travel, ensuring that bookings meet travel policies, expense limits and safety standards.
  • Jet-Set Offset provides technology that enables companies to offset their carbon footprint generated from flying with an automatic one-cent-per-mile donation to an environmental nonprofit organization chosen by the individual or company.
  • Jojonomic is the first mobile expense management system in Southeast Asia connected to the region’s financial and tech ecosystem, serving tens of thousands of users across hundreds of enterprises.
  • Lumo is a platform that uses machine learning to predict flight delays. Lumo’s APIs and SaaS products are used by travelers, travel management companies, airlines, travel insurance and travel technology companies to help proactively manage disruptions hours to weeks in advance.
  • RoadGoat is a location-technology platform that enables businesses to integrate critical data consisting of about 4.3 million travel destinations, driving rich user experiences that translate to higher engagement and increased bookings.
  • Tripgrid is a flexible project-based workspace that helps businesses automate and streamline travel workflows, such as travel documents and reports, data normalization and cost reconciliation.
  • 30SecondsToFly produces software employing artificial intelligence for the travel management industry to help automate call centers, providing greater service at lower operational costs.

The accelerator program will conclude with an SAP.iO Demo Day presentation at the beginning of June.