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In Foundries, Press, Berlin, Portfolio News

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 Portfolio News, Foundries, Press, Tokyo

SAP.iO Foundry Tokyo Kicks Off Accelerator Program Focused on Consumer Products

 SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) announced its first consumer-products-focused business-to-business technology accelerator program at SAP.iO Foundry Tokyo. The cohort will comprise four early-stage startups in the retail, consumer goods and distribution industries.

“COVID-19 has led consumers to adopt new habits and behaviors, which will continue in the long term,” said Hirofumi Suzuki, SAP Japan president and representative director. “This program will allow us to offer our customers new digital technologies to connect with consumers.”

The SAP.iO zero-equity-ask program is designed to accelerate innovation and drive new business models for SAP’s customers. During the 13-week virtual program, the startups will have access to curated mentorship, exposure to SAP technology and application programming interfaces (APIs), and collaboration opportunities with SAP customers.

The SAP.iO Foundry Tokyo Fall 2020 program includes the following startups:

  • ChatBook provides marketing automation solutions to generate leads and deliver personalized experiences across the entire customer journey through instant communications platforms.
  • True Data provides Big Data marketing services and advanced analysis technology at scale by integrating the gender, behavior and other ID data with product-trend point-of-sale data.
  • Vox Japan provides a connected reusable boxing service with remotely operated smart delivery carts that authenticates and tracks delivery and pickup information by smartphone.
In San Francisco, Portfolio News, Foundries, Press, Article

SAP Kicks Off SAP.iO Foundry San Francisco for “Future of Work” Startups

SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) earlier last week kicked off its virtual accelerator program focused on human resources (HR) technology and the future of work, at SAP.iO Foundry San Francisco. The program is offered in conjunction with SAP SuccessFactors solutions, providing world-leading cloud-based, people-focused HR technology.

Over the next 12 weeks, SAP will accelerate six early-stage HR technology startups that are focused on recruiting, talent and team management, well-being and collaborative learning for human resources.

The selected startups will have access to curated mentorship from SAP executives, exposure to SAP technology and application programming interfaces (APIs), and opportunities to collaborate with SAP customers. The program will culminate at the SAP.iO Cohort Demo Day in December 2020.

“With digital transformation changing the way people work in real time, and a much greater number of employees performing their jobs remotely, we see a trend with our customers to embrace new technologies to ensure employees have the necessary tools to succeed and remain attractive for their employers,” SAP SuccessFactors President Jill Popelka said. “We are looking forward to working with these companies to provide our customers with their innovations as part of the SAP SuccessFactors ecosystem.”

With five out of six startups founded or led by underrepresented entrepreneurs, SAP.iO continues to follow its 2019 SAP.iO No Boundaries initiative and fulfil its commitment to accelerate more than 200 startups around the world.

The SAP.iO Foundry San Francisco program includes the following startups:

  • Cloverleaf uses behavioral tools to provide ongoing insights into team effectiveness and provide customized, contextually relevant coaching to improve performance.
  • Crosschq has pioneered Human Intelligence Hiring, the next essential cloud software category, which includes reference checking and robust talent analytics to help build diverse teams.
  • Cuéntame is the first online mental health platform for Spanish-speaking employees. Cuéntame provides employees access to digital content, meditations and video therapy with certified psychologists, promoting daily mental health care and emotional well-being.
  • Knockri is an AI skills–based assessment tool that reduces bias and scientifically shortlists top-performing candidates to interview.
  • Landit is a personalized career pathing technology that increases the success and engagement of women and diverse groups in the workplace. The platform offers a turnkey solution to enable companies to attract, develop and retain their talent.
  • Mathison is a diversity talent marketplace that uses AI to help employers find candidates for their most important roles. It centralizes the talent network of hundreds of organizations serving underrepresented communities.
In Foundries, Portfolio News, Funding Announcement

MANTA Raises $13M for Its Unified Lineage Platform with Bessemer Venture Partners, SAP.iO, Senovo VC, and Credo Ventures

MANTA, a unified data lineage platform provider, has announced the close of a $13 million funding round led by Bessemer Venture Partners, accompanied by SAP.iO Fund, German VC fund Senovo, and Czech VC fund Credo Ventures.

MANTA’s platform pioneers the data management market, providing users with a fully automated lineage solution that helps them understand journeys and dependencies between data assets across the company’s entire system. Thanks to automation, the platform augments an organization’s data management and gives its users immediate and in-depth visibility into the state of their environment by drawing a clear, yet detailed map of all of their data flows and connections. This enables users to assign context to the assets that they are working with, accelerate development, speed up modernization processes, ensure data quality and security, and boosts governance efforts. The detailed and accurate visual presentation of the sources that data comes from, where it is flowing in the environment, and what happens to it along the way is being generated by connecting to the technology sources, downloading the programming code from there, and analyzing it in an automated way.

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In Foundries, Portfolio News, Funding Announcement

MANTA Raises $13M for Its Unified Lineage Platform With Bessemer Venture Partners

MANTA, a unified data lineage platform provider, has announced the close of a $13 million Series A1 funding round led by Bessemer Venture Partners, accompanied by SAP.iO fund, German VC fund Senovo, and Czech VC fund Credo Ventures to redefine data management with automation.

MANTA’s platform pioneers the data management market, providing users with a fully automated lineage solution that helps them understand journeys and dependencies between data assets across the company’s entire system. Thanks to automation, the platform augments an organization’s data management and gives its users immediate and in-depth visibility into the state of their environment by drawing a clear, yet detailed, map of all of their data flows and connections. This enables users to assign context to the assets that they are working with, accelerate development, speed up modernization processes, ensure data quality and security, and boost governance efforts. The detailed and accurate visual presentation of the sources that data comes from, where it is flowing in the environment, and what happens to it along the way is being generated by connecting to the technology sources, downloading the programming code from there, and analyzing it in an automated way.

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In Foundries, Video, San Francisco

How Olivia by Paradox Improved BOK’s Recruiting Process

In a bid to modernise their recruiting process, BOK Financial needed to find a solution that could easily integrate with its existing SAP SuccessFactors tech stack. According to Maciel, the company needed an intelligent solution that could automate administrative work so that its recruiters—what BOK Financial refers to as talent advisors—can focus their time and efforts on more strategic, value-adding work.

The financial institution was experiencing several challenges within its recruitment process, namely:

  • manual administrative tasks were weighing recruiters down
  • candidate expectations were growing—the company needed to match these expectations to keep up with demands
  • candidate foot traffic was increasing and the company felt that its talent advisory team’s ability to keep up was lacking

More importantly, BOK Financial needed a flexible solution. Maciel said it was important for them that the solution can be customised to the way they do business and the way they acquire talent. The company wanted a solution that aligned with its relationship-based business model. Maciel explained,

“We were focused on shifting our time from transactional recruiting to what we call talent advisory. So with the increased traffic on our career site, as well as in our recruiter inboxes, we needed a seamless candidate experience that really aligned with the rest of our business model. The focus for us was engagement through real-time communications.”

Through the SAP App Center, the company found the solution they required. With Olivia by Paradox, Maciel said that BOK Financial was able to transform candidate experience and engagement. She said that the SAP-validated solution enabled them to mirror the positive experience BOK Financial’s customers had with the experiences of its candidates:

“Olivia really helped us transform the way talent explored our jobs, the way they engage with us—providing the same experience that our consumers have come to expect.”

Another positive outcome the company was able to achieve was the increase in the completion rates of candidates who come into BOK Financial’s career site and converse with Olivia—up to 10% according to Maciel. 

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In New York, Foundries, Press

Cogniac selected to join SAP’s Fall 2020 Accelerator Program

SAP.iO recently announced the launch of SAP.iO Foundry New York Fall 2020, SAP’s virtual accelerator program that supports startups led by diverse entrepreneurs.

“We are super excited to be part of SAP.iO Foundry NYC Cohort,” says Cogniac’s Co-Founder and VP of Systems, Amy Wang, PhD. “We look forward to introducing Cogniac’s Drag and Drop Visual AI Platform to SAP customers in automotive and manufacturing industries, to bring visibility, focus, and agility and enable them to lead in the new Industry 4.0 world.”

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In Foundries, Blog, Paris

Les relations simples : la nouvelle innovation venue des startups

Quelque part au cours de la vie économique du XXᵉ siècle, le monde de l’entreprise s’est peu à peu enfermé dans une conception froide, où le secret et l’opacité étaient devenues des notions fondamentales. La transparence fut alors souvent vue tantôt comme de la naïveté, tantôt comme un leurre. En centrant leur attention sur leur produit plutôt que sur leurs utilisateurs, les acteurs économiques, se positionnant en « sachants », se sont peu à peu coupés de leur client. Or ce monde a vécu. La transparence, l’expérience client, la conception collective et la réciprocité, incarnées par le nouveau souffle venu des startups, sont devenues des piliers de tout acteur économique contemporain. En d’autres termes, c’est l’avènement des relations simples. 

Lire la suite…

In Article, Foundries

How Startups Can Turn Innovation Into Strategic Value

Even though the term innovation remains a buzzword du jour, it can also unequivocally change lives in a split second. Case in point: The world pivoting to digital strategies sooner than planned due to COVID-19. Digital innovation is now influencing the employee and customer experience faster than ever before. But to remain resilient and agile during volatile times, B2B companies are leaning on the startup community to take innovation to the next level.

Working with entrepreneurs beyond the four walls of your business brings a different flavor of technology to the table which helps B2B sectors digitize. And that’s a real value driver for those considering how training employees, implementing internal policies, retaining talent, ensuring well-being, and creating successful customer experiences can more strategically optimize results throughout an employee’s workforce journey and the entire customer lifecycle.

Sure, building third-party application programming interfaces (APIs) on top of existing inventions has been around for 20 years. But the global volatility emerging from COVID-19 has shown corporate leaders their businesses need to be more nimble to create collaborative and inclusive work environments while also delivering optimal outcomes and experiences for customers.

Clearly, employees and consumers alike want real improvements to keep up with the accelerated pace of change the digital economy is mercilessly creating. This is likely why the use of third-party APIs from startups is on the rise. B2B companies simply can’t afford to overlook the power of startups to not only attract top talent and keep them, but also improve digital commerce experience capabilities. Startup innovation must be seen as a value driver and strategic engine of B2B growth.

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In Press, Portfolio News, Uncategorized

ClearMetal to Provide Integrated Global Ocean Tracking for SAP Logistics Business Network

 ClearMetal, a leader in Continuous Delivery Experience (CDX) for supply chain and logistics solutions, today announced that it has joined the SAP Logistics Business Network as an SAP partner for international shipment in-transit visibility data. Using ClearMetal’s platform, customers will be able to leverage the most trusted and accurate international freight data to improve on-time delivery, reduce logistics costs and optimize inventory.

The addition of ClearMetal’s international ocean visibility data allows customers to track event status, transportation route and estimated time of arrival using cleaned and enhanced data. By using proprietary machine learning to cross-reference inputs and enrich supply chain data, ClearMetal’s platform draws out hidden patterns, enabling users to make smart business decisions based on up-to-date, trustworthy information.

“We’re proud to partner with SAP to provide customers with high quality international freight data to help them simplify their complex supply chains and enable a superior digital B2B experience in the global transportation space,” said Christopher Mazza, Senior Vice President Customer Experience and Business Development, ClearMetal. “We’re looking forward to helping empower some of the world’s top companies to drive greater profitability in the supply chain using accurate data.”

Using artificial intelligence, ClearMetal reconciles data across hundreds of data partners, thousands of unique data feeds and millions of historical records. The data that ClearMetal provides SAP Logistics Business Network is based on a feedback loop that constantly learns, adjusts, and gets smarter to provide the most accurate data and the best possible customer experience. With the addition of ClearMetal’s international freight data for ocean shipment, customers are able to more accurately determine lead time, promise date and inventory level based on the freight transportation mode, carrier, routing and exceptions – resulting in reduced costs and improved reliability and cash flow.

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In Foundries, Video, Portfolio News

Adding a Green Dimension to the Top and Bottom Lines

Jan Gilg is not the only person struggling to explain to his children what we are doing to our planet, but he is one person who can make a real difference and lead others to do the same. As president of SAP S/4HANA, Gilg is responsible for SAP’s flagship products in industry solutions, enterprise resource planning (ERP), and digital supply chain.

“My role empowers me to make things happen,” the executive, who views himself as a change agent in a powerful position, says. If you consider that 70 percent of world transactions touch an SAP system in some way, it is clear that SAP software has a huge influence on the global economy. With that power comes responsibility.

“We need to have ambitious goals, because the challenges we face are immense,” Gilg says. “There is a huge demand to rethink how we live and work. We must become sustainable to survive.”

This mindset is critical for Gilg, who is also a member of SAP’s Sustainability Council. Members are nominated by the SAP Executive Board and are responsible for integrating sustainability into their core business area. Gilg’s role is to weave sustainability into the product portfolio.

One of Gilg’s favorite success stories is Queen of Raw, a textile marketplace startup in New York using a textile sustainability application based on SAP S/4HANA. “Waste is a significant problem for the textile industry,” says Gilg, “making it a perfect target for sustainability efforts.”

Each year around $120 billion worth of textiles from across the supply chain goes to waste, causing huge environmental issues and economic loss. For some companies, it swallows up to 15 percent of their bottom line annually. Queen of Raw matches suppliers with unused textiles to potential buyers. The company worked with SAP to develop an easy-to-use automated process on a powerful back-end system.

This sustainability app uses tools like blockchain and machine learning to identify products, confirm the integrity of the suppliers, and match them to Queen of Raw’s 175,000 global users. The system also provides an environmental cost-benefit analysis when a successful match is made.

“Queen of Raw isn’t just doing good for the sake of good. It makes economic sense,” Gilg says. “With tools like this we can show people the return on investment and the value of the circular economics.”

Gilg says it’s not enough to tell our children we must protect the sea we swim in and the trees around us. We must show them that we are making a difference. “It’s up to us to decide what kind of a difference we make. That’s why I’m proud to tell them that I am a part of a company that looks out for the world they will live in.”

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In Press, Article, Portfolio News, COVID-19

Shopping Study: Pandemic Accelerates Consumer Demand For Personalized Free Sample Boxes

Consumers are eager to discover new brands, and have never been more open to trying free samples from the safety of their own homes. These were among the recent findings from a consumer shopping behavior survey conducted by startup Sampler.

Ninety-eight percent of respondents reported being more open to new brands, while just two percent said they were sticking to familiar products. What’s more, 98 percent of people were more likely to try new products if they had samples delivered to their home compared to picking them up in-store. Marie Chevrier, Sampler’s founder and CEO, said these findings reflected why product sampling is full speed ahead on a digital makeover.

“Being able to digitally target consumers who have an interest in your specific products is light-years ahead of traditional in-store sampling approaches,” said Chevrier. “Brand managers at consumer packaged goods companies and retailers are amazed at how targeted and measurable they can be, reaching more people who really want their products, and staying close to them. Every consumer brand needs this higher level of targeting, and the pandemic just accelerated that demand.”

Relationships built on personalized samples

Headquartered in Canada, Sampler has helped over 500 of the world’s leading and emerging consumer packaged goods brands send samples to the consumers who are interested in their products, and build lasting relationships that stoke demand for more.

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In Press Release, Portfolio News

SAP Enhances Logistics Business Network to Increase Visibility, Traceability, Reach and Expands Partner Ecosystem

SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) today announced a new release of SAP Logistics Business Network, with new capabilities to increase logistics network visibility, collaboration and reach.

SAP Logistics Business Network enhances coverage for additional modes of transport through new and existing partners, such as the following:

  • project44 provides business-to-business connectivity for freight contracting and visibility capabilities for real-time road shipment tracking and global live ocean tracking.
  • ClearMetal provides in-transit container and shipment tracking with machine learning to cross-reference inputs to further advance ocean-tracking choice to customers.
  • Shippeo, a European market specialist, provides its carrier network, regulatory expertise and data intelligence to connect carriers and the truck telematics systems of millions of trucks for road shipment tracking.

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In Foundries, New York, Portfolio News

IVALDI GROUP AND SAP SET TO ADVANCE SPARE PART FILE STORAGE WITH DIGITAL INVENTORIES

On-demand additive manufacturing start-up Ivaldi Group has announced that it will be participating in the SAP.iO Foundry New York Fall 2020 virtual accelerator program.

The program will see the company working with enterprise software developer SAP to formulate real-time business intelligence regarding the digital management and distributed manufacturing of spare parts. Ivaldi will then have the opportunity to provide SAP’s extensive customer base with its insights, generating business for both parties involved.

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In Foundries, San Francisco, HR & People Engagement

Building an Ecosystem of Innovation for HR Leaders with SAP.iO

With so many changes in the workplace, companies need access to solutions that enable them to be flexible and innovative. Through SAP.iO Fund and SAP.iO Foundries, SAP helps ensure that customers can easily access the latest technologies.

The SAP.iO Foundries program is the company’s global network of equity-free startup accelerators that help promising startups integrate with SAP solutions and accelerate their entry into a curated, inclusive ecosystem whose offerings can be easily accessed and deployed by SAP customers.

This fall, the SAP.iO San Francisco Foundry will kick off its second human experience management (HXM) cohort focused on experiential learning, internal talent mobility and management, agile team management, talent assessment, workforce modeling and human resources (HR) analytics, and culture.

On September 2, SAP leaders and senior HR leaders from Beiersdorf, Cintas, Gerdau, Microsoft, and NTT DATA Services met virtually for selection day to hear 13 innovative startups present their solution and identify the final six startups that will participate in the cohort. The selected HR startups extend the capabilities of SAP SuccessFactors solutions. By participating in SAP.iO Foundries, they will receive curated mentorship and support to build out their integrations with SAP SuccessFactors solutions in order to become an SAP partner and list their solution on SAP App Center.

“I loved watching the startups present,” said Vicki Furnish, vice president of Human Capital at NTT DATA Services. “Their creative approaches to the current HR challenges we are facing were inspiring and would definitely have a positive impact on our recruiting and talent initiatives.”

Selection day provided SAP customers with the opportunity to learn about new solutions that can help address challenges they are facing, such as maximizing learning engagement, building a more diverse and inclusive workforce, and supporting employees’ mental health. At the same time, the startups presenting received input and feedback on their solutions.

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