Check out our how our Consumer Products cohort helps companies create and engage with consumers in moments of opportunity! Hear how our amazing 7 startups bring value to SAP & our customers at our concluding event.
Security startups among the most-funded in New York City’s tech scene
Risk-management and security startups are in the spotlight among venture capitalists in the wake of increased remote work and a rise in high-profile cyberattacks.
And while current lockdowns and economic conditions may interfere with traditional deal making, a recent report tracking New York City-area startups reveals a surge of new funding.
These New York startups, which include BigID Inc., Payfone Inc. and BlueVoyant, offer software for cybersecurity, data governance and other risk-management functions.
Business interest in such technologies has intensified in recent years as companies seek ways to better manage risk-and-compliance issues associated with an explosion of user data, said Ram Jambunathan, a managing director of SAP.iO, the early-stage venture-capital arm of business software maker SAP SE.
No matter where you are in the world, times are chaotic. It can feel easy to be consumed by the latest headlines about the Coronavirus/COVID-19 pandemic because information is moving and changing rapidly. In light of these circumstances, it’s important that everyone has a plan.
Whether you own a small business, run a nonprofit, are head of your household, or are just looking to keep yourself healthy, we believe everyone is important. We want to be a partner in enabling you to run your day-to-day operations and, therefore, have created two, free templates on Ruum by SAP that outline an interactive checklist for managing the risks of COVID-19. These custom templates were built as a solution for teams and individuals who want to have a plan in place, but don’t necessarily have the time or resources to build one from scratch.
We want to make it easy for you. Here are COVID-19 planning checklists for Ruum users:
All of the information in these checklists was based on the latest information from the CDC and was not created by SAP. We also recommend reviewing the latest CDC guidelines for businesses or the latest CDC guidelines for households.
Ruum is a lightweight tool that helps users collaborate in real-time. Within Ruum, users create a living document where they can distribute tasks, set deadlines, input comments, and provide feedback simultaneously. It reduces the time spent on administrative and coordination work, allowing teams, families, or individuals to focus more on tasks that really matter. Ruum by SAP operates within the New Ventures and Technologies unit at SAP, which is on a mission to future-proof SAP and our customers’ businesses through technology innovation and product incubation.
Our hope is that having a plan and checklist in place can eliminate some of the uncertainty and fear surrounding this pandemic. For us, it’s essential to put our employees, customers, and public health first in this challenging time.
About New Ventures & Technologies
To future-proof SAP and our customers’ businesses, SAP the New Ventures and Technologies (NVT) organization drives transformative innovation through technology innovation and product incubation. NVT identifies commercial opportunities in the SAP ecosystem, explores and pioneers the business impact of emerging technologies and makes them enterprise-ready. For more information, visit our website.
“In particular, aligning on expectations from each stakeholder – academia, start-ups, and corporations – is a key to establishing trust and long-term success,” said Ram Jambunathan, Managing Director, SAP.iO.
Universities and industry have a lot to learn from one another – and partnerships between the two can be mutually beneficial while especially serving the university’s entrepreneurial students.
It can be difficult to get these partnerships right, but with a structured collaborative framework on the part of the university, an eye to common values, flexibility and smart programmes for budding start-ups, these partnerships can benefit all involved.
Here’s how universities can better partner with industry and become more entrepreneurial.
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
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.
Everywhere I turn, I hear concerns about technology and workforce automation causing job losses. For employers, however, it seems that the real worry lies not in eliminating but retaining their workforce.
How can they prepare their existing talent pool – and their organizations – to thrive in the new economy? How can they deal with the impending mass migration of jobs toward those requiring new skills?
Those are the fundamental questions that emerged from my discussion with Emily Lambert, Content Marketing specialist at Plum, Inc. Plum offers a solution, also called Plum, that is now available on SAP App Center. It uses the precepts of industrial and organizational psychology combined with – you guessed it – artificial intelligence (AI) to help organizations hire, grow, and retain top talent.
German multinational software firm SAP SE is setting up an accelerator program in Israel, seeking new technologies in order to expand the portfolio of technologies and services it can provide to customers.
The Foundry program will be run by SAP.iO, a strategic business unit of SAP set up in 2017 to work closely with startups and tap into their innovations. The unit either invests in early stage startups or runs accelerator programs that provide selected startups with mentorships, a co-working space, and access to its 400,000 customers globally who can work closely with entrepreneurs to make sure their specific needs are met. The program will also make available data and SAP platforms startups may need to develop their technologies.
Seven startups have been selected for the first accelerator cohort:
- ARpalus is an AR and predictive analytics retail technology startup that uses artificial reality (AR) and predictive analytics for the automatic collection and deep analysis of large-scale shoppers’ behavioral data.
- EasySend helps financial enterprises improve customer experience and increase operational efficiency by allowing them to digitize all of their paperwork and “cumbersome” forms.
- GrowthSpace develops tailored online coaching platforms for enterprise employees. Users hold one on one video coaching sessions with specific career objectives.
- Outgage is a Software as a Service (SaaS) direct mail platform that bridges the gap between offline and online campaigns to create personalized brand experiences for effective conversations between enterprises and their customers.
- Silverback is a sales intelligence platform for online marketplaces. It uses cross-marketplace analytics to enable online stores, sellers and brands to see their products’ sales performance across different e-commerce channels to enable them to do better pricing, marketing and promotions.
- Supersmart provides a “Scan&Go” solution that allows consumers to instantly check out their fully loaded cart or basket, enabling a positive customer experience.
- YOUTILIGENT uses machine learning and Internet of Things to enable vendors and service providers to change the way they communicate with their appliances.
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.
Global software company SAP has launched SAP.iO Foundry Singapore, its first acceleration programme in Singapore. The accelerator’s first cohort will consist of seven early-stage startups focused on business-to-business technologies, including several that help improve customer experience.
SAP.iO Foundry aims to accelerate Southeast Asian startups, providing them access to curated mentorship, exposure to SAP technology and application programmable interfaces, as well as opportunities to collaborate with SAP customers.
Companies currently include TADA, which offers a data-driven customer advocacy and engagement platform that helps brands attract, engage and retain customers; and Size n Fit, which provides an eCommerce add-on to help online shoppers find apparel that fits and reduce returns. Meanwhile, Flowcast uses patented machine-learning algorithms to harness untapped, complex data to automate credit decision-making and LuxTag provides anti-counterfeiting and anti-theft solutions through blockchain.
SAP SE today kicked off SAP.iO Foundry Singapore, its first acceleration program in Singapore. The program aims to accelerate Southeast Asian startups, providing them access to curated mentorship, exposure to SAP technology and application programmable interfaces (APIs), and opportunities to collaborate with SAP customers. The first cohort will consist of seven early-stage Intelligent Enterprise startups focused on business-to-business (B2B) technology.
“SAP is committed to Singapore’s dynamic startup ecosystem,” said Lalitha Bhaskara, head of SAP.iO Foundries Asia Pacific Japan. “We are excited to be working hand in hand over the next three months with these innovative startups to help them deliver winning outcomes and incremental value to our customers.”
The first cohort also includes several startups founded or led by strong female entrepreneurs, a testament to SAP’s belief that a healthy ecosystem includes entrepreneurs from diverse backgrounds and in line with the SAP.iO No Boundaries initiative.
The first SAP.iO Foundry Singapore cohort includes the following startups:
- Flowcast Inc.: Uses patented machine-learning algorithms to harness untapped, complex data to automate credit decision-making. This provides greater visibility to customers to address underserved markets.
- Pulsifi: Predicts workplace outcomes to identify, retain and develop great people. By using artificial intelligence to incorporate multiple data sources across hard skills and soft traits, this HR analytics platform derives employee success profiles to improve HR decisions across the employee lifecycle, from hiring to development.
- Notarum: Provides a modern workflow tool designed to reduce busywork by automating corporate due diligence. Notarum makes performing due diligence analysis and sharing work with teammates easier than ever.
- Adaface: Enables and automates first-round tech interviews to identify the best engineering talent faster.
- TADA: Offers a data-driven customer advocacy and engagement platform that helps brands moving from transactions to relationships and customers to advocates. This enables businesses to attract, engage and retain customers.
- Size n Fit: Helps online shoppers find apparel that fits. This e-commerce add-on aims to increase sales and reduce returns.
- LuxTag: Provides an anticounterfeiting and antitheft solution that uses blockchain-enabled traceability to deter product counterfeiting and fraud.
Startups by women took merely 2.2 % of venture capital in 2017 according to data from PitchBook Data Inc., a financial data and software company headquartered in Seattle. It was also found that less than 13% of venture capital went to US startups with at least one female founder.
Startups by women and minority founders have been the focus of SAP.iO No Boundaries, SAP’s initiative to offer venture capital and incubation to underrepresented entrepreneurs, since its launch at the start of 2019.
Shoba Purushothaman, a founder of multiple startups in the last 18 years, is one of the women leaders that have received support from SAP. Purushothaman and her co-founders at Hardskills, an online platform that helps companies train their workforce in behavioural skills, have been one of six startups in SAP’s new B2B diversity accelerator in Berlin.
As competition for top talent in every industry heats up, an award-winning AI assistant named Olivia is stepping in to help recruiters and job candidates speed past antiquated hiring norms. The brainchild of Aaron Matos, co-founder and CEO of Paradox, Olivia is entirely mobile and relies on text messaging to compress the timespan between screening qualified people and hiring dates. “The assistant’s job is to get work done, and that’s what Olivia focuses on,” said Matos. “This frees up the recruiter’s time for more valuable responsibilities, like talking face-to-face with qualified candidates.”
In many nations including Germany there’s a lack of women in tech startups. SAP executive board member Adaire Fox-Martin talks about her company’s endeavors to support inclusive entrepreneurship.
