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In Inspiring Innovators, Foundries, Blog, Interview, Supply Chain Management, Technologies

Inspiring Innovators: Paula Paw Co-CEO of VersaFleet, On Being Tenacious

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

Meet Paula Paw

Just four days after submitting her last exam paper, Paula Paw was offered a job at VersaFleet. Paula joined VersaFleet as a pioneering team member and played a central role in its growth journey. Graduating from the National University of Singapore with a Bachelor of Arts and Social Sciences, she started her career at VersaFleet in Sales and Marketing. Over the course of 6 years, she was promoted to Senior Sales Executive, Regional Sales Manager, Head of Sales Strategy & Operations Planning, and now leads the company as Co-Chief Executive Officer.

VersaFleet is a transport management software that optimizes route plans and fully digitalizes supply chains, all the way to the last mile. At VersaFleet, Paula now focuses on accelerating VersaFleet’s growth and synchronizing essential company functions, from sales & marketing, product design, and engineering, to finance and people operations. The company’s mission is to provide technology for all transporters — in any industry, market, or country. They built VersaFleet in hopes that the technology would enable the unsung heroes of logistics to get home in time for dinner.

“The goal for the coming years is to establish a stronger market presence so that we can serve the brands that face difficult challenges. When we help them, it will have a trickle-down effect, and the drivers will ultimately benefit; we are hoping to create a better work-life balance.”

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In CRM & Customer Experience, Sustainability

Footprint: How Shoe Sizing Tech is Helping Cut Returns, Costs and CO2

Tom’s special Guests this week are Carolin Kleinert, Co-Founder & CBO Brand, People & Culture, and Onur Ergin, CTO of Footprint. Carolin and Onur discuss the needor better and more accurate shoe sizing- which will limit ecommerce retur fns. Tune in!

During the discussion Tom finds out more about how a digital sizing approach will help customers find the right fit for their favorite brands. Buying shoes online is never going to be easy, but by using Footprint to take a scan of their feet, the customer can order accurate sizes, and in turn avoid contributing to the mountain of returned goods that end up in a landfill each year.

Tune in here!

In Business Technology Platform

RealWear Raises $23.5 Million to Turn Successful Industrial Wearable into High Growth Assisted Intelligence Platform Business

RealWear, the world’s leading provider of assisted reality solutions for frontline industrial workers, announced that it closed its Series C for $23.5 Million. Led by Foundry Group, the new raise enables RealWear to shift and expand from a hardware-centric to a platform-centric company, creating even deeper connections to, and value for, its global customers.

“The funding marks the next stage of growth for the business, as we provide technology for frontline workers toward a vision of assisted intelligence where contextual data for the frontline leads to better decisions, ultimately improving operational productivity and safety,” said Andrew Chrostowski, Chairman and CEO, RealWear.  “In addition to building new hardware, we will use these new funds to grow a unified software and services platform across our human-centric wearable products.  Expect more game-changing tech to come.”

Currently, 41 of Fortune 100 companies are using RealWear devices for business resiliency, productivity, training and employee engagement including Mars Petcare, Goodyear, Colgate-Palmolive and ExxonMobil. RealWear partners will be able to tie into our cloud systems to improve their understanding of app performance and aggregate device utilization.

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In Foundries

The Take: With Tighter Purses, VCs Look Kindly on Startups with Customers

The days of easy money for startups are waning. In the first quarter of this year, investor funding commitments were down 19% from the prior quarter, the largest percentage decline in nearly eight years, according to analytics firm CB Insights.

Inflation and rising interest rates have made money more expensive. Investors are telling startups to reduce spending to ensure that they can survive if they cannot raise more money over the next two years. That has led many in the tech space to lay off employees or reduce non-essential spending.

SAP’s Take

With the focus now on producing real business value, programs that offer immediate access to customers are more desirable to startups that need to succeed. The SAP.iO program helps new, innovative business-to-business (B2B) companies scale and grow. With access to customers and the ability to scale, startups can be more confident in securing their next round of funding.

These B2B workhorse startups are less likely to ever capture the attention of the consumer. But their ambitions are similar: to become big and successfully build better products to help their customers thrive.

“Startups are seeing the value of working with SAP,” said Alexa Gorman, senior vice president of SAP.iO, “because of the access to our customer base that we’re able to give them globally and different markets across all industries.”

Most of the participating startups are headed by founders that have deep industry expertise and have decided to make a leap out of the corporate world and launch something based on their experiences.

“What I’ve seen are VCs [venture capitalists] that are not willing to take huge bets on an unproven new way to solve the challenge that businesses are facing today,” Gorman said. “A lot of companies are being founded with customers or with a target list of potential customers before they even launch.”

SAP.iO selects startups that already have seed funding, with the sweet spot having received Series A or Series B funds. They usually have their first corporate customers, a team in place, “and they’re ready to scale, and that’s where we can help them,” Gorman said.

“They fit where we see customer demand for solutions that we don’t necessarily have in our portfolio,” Gorman explained. “So, the companies that we work with are going to be future SAP partners.”

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In Featured, Global

2022 Global Startup Ecosystem Index Report Recognizes SAP as a Leading Corporate Innovator

Recently released, the 2022 Global Startup Ecosystem Index Report, produced by StartupBlink, ranks the Startup Ecosystems of 1,000 cities and 100 countries. SAP was recognized as a leading corporate innovator in Germany alongside Siemens, and Bosch. In this report you can discover the latest startup ecosystem trends by region and across 12 industries, read in-depth case studies on some of the most exciting and fastest growing ecosystems, and find out how your city and country rank globally in comparison to neighboring ecosystems.

Access the report here…

In Global, Featured, Sustainability

SAP.iO Startups Supporting Employees’​ Mental Health

Mental health is a vital part of our overall health; a fact that has been undervalued historically. With the growing number of individuals experiencing symptoms, it is important to advocate and provide solutions that will help improve people’s lives. May is Mental Health Awareness month, where we take time to reflect on what that means for ourselves, our family, our friends, and our colleagues. At SAP, the Executive Board set aside May 31st as SAP Mental Health Day 2022, in line with SAP’s ongoing ‘Are You OK?’ Mental Health Initiative. This day is an opportunity to switch off from work, rest, reflect, and dedicate time for self-care.

As we navigate the pressures of a fast-paced ever-changing world, we must keep mental health a priority. I think there is an opportunity to provide the help necessary for all to thrive with the proper attention. Like SAP, many enterprises are now making mental health a priority; after all, you want the best for your employees and want them to reach their full potential so that you can achieve great things together. At SAP.iO, we work with founders who have identified a need for greater focus on mental health and have launched businesses with innovative solutions and resources to address it.

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In CRM & Customer Experience, Sustainability

Lizee & Heuritech Named Leading Early-Stage Companies Reimagining Luxury Retail by CB Insights

SAP.iO startups Lizee & Heuritech were named as two of the top 70 early-stage startups that are spurring innovation beyond traditional e-commerce platforms by CB Insights.

Startups developing virtual enablement platforms, new materials, and metaverse tech are looking to make the $387B luxury retail industry more sustainable and engaging for younger generations.

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In Supply Chain Management

Shippeo Ranks High in the 2022 Magic Quadrant™ for Real-time Transportation Visibility Platforms

Shippeo, a global leader in real-time multimodal transportation visibility, today announced it has been positioned by Gartner, Inc. in the “Challengers” quadrant of the Gartner® Magic Quadrant for Real-time Transportation Visibility Platforms1. Shippeo is positioned furthest and highest on Ability to Execute and Completeness of Vision in the Challengers quadrant. The ‘ability to execute’ decision criteria take into consideration companies’ products and services, sales execution and pricing, customer experience and operations, as well as overall viability, market responsiveness and marketing execution. ‘Completeness of vision’ focuses on marketing understanding and strategy, sales strategy, product and vertical strategy, innovation, geographic strategy, and business model.

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In San Francisco, HR & People Engagement

Sounding Board Wins 2022 HR Tech Award For Talent Development

Leader Development Platform Named Best Innovative or Emerging Tech Solution by Lighthouse Research & Advisory

Sounding Board, Inc., the first Leader Development Platform designed to bridge the leadership gap,shared that it has been named Best Innovative or Emerging Tech Solution for Talent Development by the Lighthouse Research & Advisory HR Tech Awards.

The annual program seeks to help buyers and employers learn about the best companies in the industry for technology selection purposes. An independent judging panel reviewed each submission and selected winners in six categories: Core HR/Workforce, Employee Experience, Talent Acquisition, Talent Development, Talent Management and Total Rewards and Employee Wellbeing.

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In Funding Announcement, Business Technology Platform

Data lineage platform Manta raises $35M to help companies map data flows

Manta, a data lineage platform that helps enterprises understand and visualize the flow of information through the organization, has raised $35 million in a series B round of funding.

The raise comes as companies across the industrial spectrum struggle under a growing deluge of data, with countless siloed systems from SaaS applications to data lakes making it difficult to derive any kind of meaningful insights. Manta, for its part, tracks data from its origin through its entire flow to consumption, bringing visibility to the “where,” “how” and “what” of their data assets.

“Data management has undergone a massive transformation in the past decade, with data infrastructure growing in complexity, evolving into data ecosystems with thousands of components aimed at one goal — derive the most value from your data to inform critical business decisions,” Manta founder and CEO Tomas Kratky told VentureBeat.

Manta sits in the middle of every application in an organization’s tech stack, automatically scanning and mapping all data pipelines and data transformations — this will include data sources such as SaaS apps, data warehouses, data integration tools (i.e., ETL and ELT), APIs, Excel documents, databases and more.

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In Sustainability

Accelerating Innovation Toward a Circular Economy

Sustainability has become a business imperative. Consumers, investors, regulators, and employees are all increasingly demanding socially, environmentally, and economically responsible products and services that have been designed, produced, used, and recycled with circularity principles in mind. At SAP, we are convinced that technology will help to turn this challenge into a big opportunity for companies that lead the way. That is why we launched SAP Cloud for Sustainable Enterprises, with dedicated solutions to provide the transparency that is urgently needed to enable a circular economy.

Our consumption of natural resources has devastating effects for humans, wildlife, and the planet. It is more urgent than ever to shift from linear take-make-waste models to a circular economy, where waste and pollution are designed out, products and materials are kept in use for longer, and natural systems can regenerate. A circular economy isn’t just about fixing environmental wrongs; it is about making sustainability profitable and profitability sustainable across industries, sectors, and lives.

The packaging sector is a good example. According to Statista, more than 130 billion parcels were shipped in 2020, and the number is rising. This packaging frustrates retailers and consumers and causes untold environmental damage. The good news is that circular business principles such as designing for reuse and recycling are gaining ground in the industry.

One exemplary company is LimeLoop, which offers retailers everything they need, including reusable packaging, reverse logistics, visibility, and analytics. As a result of its unique approach, LimeLoop has helped divert more than 1 million single-use packages from landfills. Its customers report a 53% increase in customer engagement, 93% savings on resources, including trees, water, and oil, and 41% savings on packaging and inventory.

Rental, repair, and resale models are also gaining ground in the retail industry. Furniture manufacturer and retailer IKEA has launched several resale pilots in the last few years. Lizee, the re-commerce software company, is on a mission to “transform the retail industry from linear to circular” by helping retailers move from selling to renting and reselling. Its clients, which include brands such as Decathlon and adidas, don’t have to start from scratch to build a rental and resale business model. Lizee provides the technology systems that will help them become even more successful in e-commerce and more sustainable at the same time.

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In Sustainability, Inspiring Innovators, Foundries, Blog, Interview

Inspiring Innovators: Daniela Schiffer Co-founder & CEO of Changers.com on nerves of steel

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 Alexa Gorman sat down to discuss the road to success and lessons learned with some of our most inspiring startup founders.

Meet Daniela Schiffer

Daniela Schiffer started studying art and worked as an artist until 2007 with the hope that art would be a tool she could use to influence change in society. After some time, she realized to achieve her goals she would need to find another way to influence behavior change. Working with an advertising agency doing a lot of communication primarily for high tech and renewable energy companies, she saw a different path forward. Daniela grew changers.com to address the issue of behavior change in terms of climate control, looking to incentivize and motivate sustainable and healthy behavior. Not a small undertaking by any means, this task takes perseverance and, at times, nerves of steel.

Today, Daniela Schiffer is Co-founder and CEO of Changers.com, a company that looks to change behavior through its CO2 Fit app. This app motivates employees to use a bicycle instead of a car, walk more often, use public transport, and participate in eco-friendly and healthy activities. Here employees learn more about waste reduction, healthy nutrition, energy-saving, and address green mobility. Changers is doing so by building an ecosystem for climate currency, meaning that by saving CO2, you earn climate coins to spend in their marketplace for products and services with partners. Changers was recognized as a EUPD TOP BRAND in workplace health promotion and by the Solarimpulse Foundation for efficient climate protection.

“I want to motivate people, not by showing them all the threats to the future, but by showing them how they can positively impact change by simple changes in behavior.”

Read more and watch highlights of Alexa and Daniela’s discussion here. 

In Foundries, Portfolio News

Round 2: Even MORE SAP.iO Human Experience Management Startups to Keep Your Eyes on

This batch of startup solutions are helping SAP SuccessFactors HXM customers enable employees to be their best

SAP customers are changing the world of work for good with the next generation of human capital management solutions, putting people at the heart of their HR strategies. As SAP customers continue to utilize SAP SuccessFactors solutions to set up their employees for success, they can now additionally access over 25 solutions from SAP.iO startups that 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.

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In Foundries, San Francisco, Supply Chain Management, Awards

Supply Chain Innovator Verusen Scores Three Awards

Verusen, the global supply chain intelligence innovator, today announced it has received three awards recognizing its leadership, accelerated growth, and positive impact on the supply chain industry.

Verusen was recognized as an Atlanta Business Chronicle’s Pacesetter, one of the city’s fastest-growing private companies. The company was ranked #16 overall and #2 in the Manufacturing / Supply Chain category. To qualify for the Atlanta Business Chronicle’s Pacesetter list, companies headquartered in greater Atlanta had to have over $1 million in 2021 revenue and over 50% 2-year growth in sales.

Verusen was honored for the third year in a row as a Technology Association of Georgia (TAG) Top 40 Innovative Technology Companies in Georgia for its contribution to innovation and economic growth within the state of Georgia’s technology sector.

Paul Noble, Verusen Founder and CEO, was named a Deeds, not Words Leadership Award nominee at the 2022 Supply Chain & Procurement Awards. This distinction goes to individuals who exemplify vision, inspiration, coordination, perseverance, and empathy.

“From our inception, our purpose has been to revolutionize the supply chain industry. It’s an honor to be recognized as we continue to scale and reinvent how business gets done,” said Paul Noble, Founder and CEO of Verusen. Every day, we continue to prove our value with our innovative AI platform, diverse and inclusive workplace culture, and approach to sustainability.”

Verusen leverages deep learning, artificial intelligence (AI), data harmonization, and decision support to help global brands control risk, attain supply chain resiliency, and improve economies for their operations. Verusen raised $25 million in Series B funding earlier this year after the company raised $8 million in its Series A round in the previous year.

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In CRM & Customer Experience, Awards

Deepgram Named One Of Inc. Magazine’s Best Workplaces For Second Year in a Row

Deepgram, a leading automatic speech recognition software company, today announced that it was named to Inc. Magazine’s Best Workplaces list for the second consecutive year. The annual Best Workplaces list is a result of a comprehensive analysis of U.S.-based companies that have built an exceptional company culture. This year companies were evaluated on their ability to create a collaborative and supportive work environment for in-person and remote employees as a result of the pandemic.

Deepgram is honored among 475 companies that were selected based on the quality of employee responses to an independent survey conducted by Quantum Workplace. Each company submission was evaluated based on a number of categories, including company culture, management effectiveness, perks, and fostering employee growth.

“We’re proud to receive this recognition from Inc. Magazine for the second year in a row,” said Scott Stephenson, CEO and co-founder of Deepgram. “As of March 2022, Deepgram’s team has grown 60% YoY, and this acknowledgment is a testament to our commitment to maintain and even improve our culture as we grow. Our mission at Deepgram is to power the next generation of voice experiences, and we know prioritizing our people is critical to achieving that vision.”

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