Feed aggregator

Crypto investigator Coffeezilla argued that saying one thing and trading against it is still a pump-and-dump and unethical.

The banking associations argued that U.S. banks were “notably absent” as asset custodians for Bitcoin ETFs despite them playing that role for other ETPs.

New research from Coin Metrics found that 51% and 34% attacks on Bitcoin and Ethereum are no longer possible from nation-state attackers if their goal was to destroy the blockchains.

Hong Kong crypto stocks surge even as local markets tank, OKX to invest in L1s, Philippines central bank hates retail CBDCs. Asia Express

Coinbase’s net income of $273 million marks the firm’s first profitable quarter since Q4 2021.

NFT Collector DCinvestor — who may have the world’s best collection — says the Apple Vision Pro is a game changer for appreciating NFTs.

WALLDORF — SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) has created a new end-to-end growth area focused on AI under the leadership of Dr. Philipp Herzig in the newly created role of chief artificial intelligence officer (CAIO).

The new unit oversees the entire value chain for SAP Business AI, from product development and research through to customer implementation. In this new role, effective January 2024, Herzig reports directly to CEO Christian Klein.

Be ready for AI built for business with SAP Learn how

Herzig’s team will collaborate with innovators across SAP to infuse artificial intelligence into every part of the company’s portfolio. With this new setup, SAP aims to further accelerate the pace at which customers can benefit from groundbreaking business AI solutions and services. The newly established division also underscores the central importance of business AI as a strategic driver for SAP’s ongoing growth.

Herzig’s team consists of strong leaders, including Walter Sun, who continues to lead all product engineering efforts on business AI, as the global head of AI. Sun moved from Microsoft to SAP in September 2023.

“SAP’s increased focus on business AI marks the start of a completely new generation of enterprise innovation, and I’m honored to have the chance to help customers make the most of this unprecedented opportunity,” said Philipp Herzig, CAIO at SAP. “I look forward to working with our team, as well as our ecosystem of customers and partners, to drive the development and delivery of relevant, reliable, responsible business AI that fundamentally changes the way business runs.”

Visit the SAP News Center. Follow SAP at @SAPNews.

Media Contacts:
Hilmar Schepp, +49 6227 7-46799, hilmar.schepp@sap.com, CET
Alex Vaught, +1 (206) 678-5712, alex.vaught@sap.com, PST
SAP Press Room; press@sap.com

Get the latest news and stories from SAP delivered to your inbox weekly Sign up now

This document contains forward-looking statements, which are predictions, projections, or other statements about future events. These statements are based on current expectations, forecasts, and assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results and outcomes to materially differ. Additional information regarding these risks and uncertainties may be found in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including but not limited to the risk factors section of SAP’s 2022 Annual Report on Form 20-F.
© 2024 SAP SE. All rights reserved.
SAP and other SAP products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP SE in Germany and other countries. Please see https://www.sap.com/copyright for additional trademark information and notices.

Electric vehicles (EVs) are transforming the mobility experience in corporate fleet management. A great example is the partnership between Mercedes-Benz and SAP where the companies are both customers and vendors to each other. Mercedes-Benz is using SAP solutions to digitalize its omnichannel buying experience, and SAP is the first customer using its own technology to manage the company’s vehicle fleet in Germany.

As longtime partners, SAP and Mercedes-Benz have a history of shared knowledge for mutual competitive advantage. The fleet management program is grounded in the companies’ similar business philosophies and product road maps. 

Mercedes-Benz has committed to move the company’s B2B business to 100% digital and plans to sell 25% of all new cars online by 2025. The company selected SAP Commerce Cloud to help support this mission. It will create a future-proof composable commerce portfolio designed to reliably power the company’s digital strategy, including a standardized offering across different markets. It will also simplify processes and reduce time-to-market.

Benefits of Digitalized Fleet Management

From the SAP employee’s perspective, ordering a company EV couldn’t be simpler. Instead of time-consuming manual research and back and forth communication with the car dealer, employees can use the guided buying capability in SAP Ariba solutions to order the EV they want directly from the Mercedes-Benz online catalog. They can choose the features they want, such as car make and model, color, and equipment packages, within SAP’s pre-set guidelines.

“The car configurator automates the EV selection process end-to-end, eliminating manual steps and saving time while providing the employee with a highly personalized experience,” said Steffen Krautwasser, head of SAP’s global car fleet. “Automating the approval process assures data consistency and eliminates the need for manual quality checks.” 

There’s a tremendous convenience factor in captured EV data as well. In one pilot program for select EVs in SAP’s fleet, the digital twin will automatically track mileage. Drivers will no longer need to manually enter mileage every time they recharge, and SAP can use this data to better manage the fleet.

Connected Data Drives Sustainable Business

Once ordered, EVs are tracked as assets in SAP’s financial system. After delivery, SAP Digital Vehicle Suite creates a digital twin that can capture relevant, secure data across the EV’s lifetime. SAP’s fleet management team can track CO2 emissions based on green energy usage, mileage, and the number of vehicles on the road. Krautwasser envisioned reporting this data to support the company’s global sustainability commitments.

SAP Digital Vehicle Suite delivers a holistic approach to vehicle, sales, and data management Learn more

“Performance data from the EV digital twin can help corporate fleet managers guide employees in choosing the best vehicle for their driving needs,” said Krautwasser. “Over time, drivers can better understand travel ranges between charges.” 

Data is expected to help address so-called range anxiety, alerting EV drivers when their vehicle needs a charge and, most important, where to recharge. Mercedes-Benz is investing in charging infrastructure to create an ecosystem that would be integrated with public and private charge point providers in the U.S., China, and Europe.

The partnership also reflects a shared commitment to sustainability. Mercedes-Benz has committed to become carbon neutral by 2038, and transition to 100% electric vehicles by 2030 wherever possible. SAP is transitioning the company’s vehicle fleet for employees in Germany to all EVs by 2025 as part of its corporate commitment to be carbon neutral by 2030.

Omnichannel Is Fastest Path to Customer Love

The digital experience is extremely important for customers who expect convenience and quality. Organizations in many industries have shifted to an omnichannel strategy that offers people their preferred experience, whether online or in-person, building brand loyalty and repeat business.

“We want to provide a seamless journey for employees as they research, select, purchase, and enjoy their vehicle,” said Krautwasser. “The most exciting part of our EV fleet management strategy is how we can use our knowledge to enhance the employee experience. Through data and digital services, we can get closer to our employees and act quickly based on their feedback, making improvements and introducing new offerings that keep us on top of trends and support SAP’s sustainability commitment.”

EVs represent a profound business model shift for the entire automotive supply chain as automakers sell direct to customers, provide digital services from vehicle data, and explore new revenue opportunities. It’s clear that Mercedes-Benz and SAP are going the distance for a sustainable and satisfying driving experience.

Susan Galer is a communications director at SAP. Follow her @smgaler.
Top photo courtesy of SAP employee Jude Calvin Parong.

Get the latest SAP news delivered to your inbox once a week Sign up

Today’s digital workplace is constantly evolving, but the way we work is still siloed and complicated. Employees often waste time switching between applications, searching for information, finding data, and seeking recommendations and insights to get work done. They desire an intelligent work experience to boost engagement and productivity.  

SAP Build Work Zone provides a unified, intelligent work experience for the modern workforce.

2024 IDC MarketScape: Experience-Centric Intelligent Digital Workspaces Recognition

SAP has been recognized as a Major Player in the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Experience-Centric Intelligent Digital Workspaces 2024 Vendor Assessment (doc # US49741923, January 2024), based on IDC analysts and customer feedback. We believe this recognition acknowledges SAP’s ongoing dedication in delivering a modern, robust digital workplace solution to optimize user engagement and productivity, and to drive overall business agility.

Read an excerpt of the IDC MarketScape report now Get the complementary copy

IDC defines an intelligent digital workspace as a well-organized system of tools working together to enhance end users’ overall productivity and experiences. This system integrates intentional design, engineering, and artificial intelligence (AI) to provide a customized and seamless view of tools for user tasks. It ensures secure access to resources from any location or device and enables IT and security professionals with complete oversight.

As stated within this IDC MarketScape report, “Client organizations we interviewed noted that SAP Build Work Zone reinforced the importance of collaboration and knowledge management.”

Here are the additional highlights on strengths of SAP Build Work Zone noted in the report:

• A unified digital workspace: SAP Build Work Zone supports building blocks of content, user interface (UI) integration cards, and home page widgets to embed and display SAP or third-party business data in one workspace. Guided experiences sit on top of workflows to guide the user journey.
• Streamlined user tasks: SAP Task Center is used within SAP Build Work Zone to act as a unified inbox to provide one place for all approvals and to dos. Global announcements can be tracked for reads and to check length of time spent on content items with native SAP analytics, or with third-party tools such as Google Analytics or Qualtrics. Customers have noted that SAP Build Work Zone provided a friendly UI and access to all functionality on the mobile app.
• Seamless connection to a comprehensive product suite: SAP Build Work Zone is used to connect the SAP suite of capabilities — including SAP S/4 HANA, SAP Success Factors, and SAP Integrated Business Planning solutions — to handle workflow and collaboration of tasks across multiple IT and business users. SAP Build Work Zone offers pre-built workspace templates with public, private, or external access and an impersonation feature to preview workspaces in-context of specific audience segments.

Evolving the Digital Workplace with SAP Build Work Zone  

Unify Experiences Enterprise-Wide

Business users gain centralized access to SAP and non-SAP business applications, processes, and information, including custom-built apps and extensions, from desktop to mobile using SAP Build Work Zone. The solution offers a personalized, role-based user experience, for example, allowing business users to quickly search for applications or information they need, promptly manage tasks and notifications through the integrated inbox, and stay updated on content, apps, workflows, and processes that are seamlessly integrated across the business landscape without constantly switching around applications or leaving their desktops.

Build Workspaces Simpler and Faster with Low-Code

Business users are empowered to build and customize business sites visually. They can build branded sites, pages, and workspaces for different purposes and complexity. Our pre-built line-of-business content — including home pages, workspaces, integrations, and guided experiences — dramatically accelerates their time-to-value. For example, HR users can create pages for benefits announcements and design workspaces for learning academies. With the flexibility to design a tailored digital experience, business users can organize their work intuitively by bringing together their favorite business applications and unstructured content side-by-side, within a unified environment.

UI integration cards is a powerful widget to visualize data from back-end systems, allowing business users to quickly gain business insights into, for example, purchasing trends, account receivable overview, or compliance checklist. In addition, guided experiences streamline complex, difficult processes that span multiple systems, transforming them into simple, fast, and error-free experiences. This empowers business users to self-service their way through cross-application processes such as onboarding, returning to work, or submitting parental leave requests with ease and confidence.

SAP Build Work Zone is part of SAP Build, a portfolio of low-code solutions that enables the people closest to the business problems to create and augment enterprise applications, automation processes, and design workspaces and business sites visually.

Optimize Team Effectiveness Within and Beyond the Enterprise

SAP Build Work Zone is also designed to amplify team effectiveness across internal employees, external customers, partners, and suppliers. Business users can visually create workspaces to facilitate better team engagement through knowledge sharing, streamlined business processes execution, content management, and implementing best practices. They can also leverage surveys, polls, and interactive Q&A sessions to gather valuable feedback, improving communication and work synergy.

Many SAP Build Work Zone customers have created purpose-built business sites to actively engage with their external customers, partners, and suppliers. For example, a supplier business site is created for suppliers to self-service various business operations, including supplier onboarding, accessing policies, managing account payables and invoicing processes, and obtaining product knowledge along with Q&As. By empowering suppliers to address their requirements and needs, not only enhances their engagement and efficiency but also saves internal teams’ time for more impactful, high-value activities.  

Unlock the Future of Digital Workplaces

Like many customers and partners, Heartland Dental and Avvale chose SAP Build Work Zone and SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) to improve more than 5,000 business assistant’s user experience and productivity across more than 1,700 dental practices within the national dental network. Since its initial rollout in 2023, it has been reported that 33 hours per day have been saved across the initial 200 supported offices.

Looking ahead, SAP remains dedicated to delivering the best-in-class innovations to our customers to enable their business success, such as injecting business AI capabilities by enabling SAP Joule as the digital assistant for intelligent interactions within SAP Build Work Zone.

Learn More

• Read a complimentary excerpt copy of the IDC MarketScape Experience-Centric Intelligent Digital Workspaces report
• Join the SAP Build Work Zone community

Sid Misra is vice president for Product Marketing and Solution Management at SAP.

Get news and stories from the SAP News Center delivered to your inbox each week Subscribe now

About IDC MarketScape Experience-Centric Intelligent Digital Workspaces
This IDC research explores the intelligent digital workspace environment, offering further insights on the pace of adoption, the potential success of technology, and the level of market excitement. This aims to empower IT and business decision-makers to evaluate investments based on their own judgments.

Three-quarters of new investment is estimated to come from ETFs as Bitcoin breached the $50,000 mark.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology is analyzing the iOS version of the Trust Wallet app for a vulnerability that could potentially be used to steal funds from crypto wallets.

Leading gold ETFs have seen outflows of $2.39 billion so far in 2024 as the price of spot gold declines.

Coinbase shares have surged ahead of its fourth-quarter earnings call on Thursday, with analysts tipping likely strong trading volumes in the quarter.

South Korea's young people are known as the "N-Po generation" — a phrase that suggests they were abandoned. But they've found new hope in cryptocurrency.

The Framework Ventures co-founder’s journey from teen communist to co-owning $1.4 billion of SNX and LINK — while dodging SBF’s “dogshit.”

The digital transformation that comes with the introduction of new software solutions has a big impact on the way we learn. This has prompted the Learning Services team at SAP to review the future viability of our services with our customers. What you have told us was enlightening.

What has been most interesting to hear is that 95% of customers we spoke to create their own customized, in-house content. They are recognizing the importance of creating more microlearnings in the form of video tutorials and in-application help. Seventy-nine percent of our customers create online content that learners can self-serve at when they need it. As one customer shared, “We are looking for the sweet spot of not overwhelming users with content, to provide the right content at time of need.”

This helps to fully realize the established trend towards learning in the flow of work.

Here are some common pitfalls we have heard from our customers and some tips to consider on how to avoid them:

Not clearly documenting your learning and enablement strategy

While there is a clear focus on creating learning content, the holistic view of the learning ecosystem is not necessarily given the attention it deserves. You wouldn’t build a house without a solid foundation underneath it.

Consider your enablement strategy to be the foundation for your enablement journey. Clearly document every learning and enablement activity you need to undertake, with detailed timelines, milestones, and roles and responsibilities through the project lifecycle and beyond into business as usual. The enablement strategy should be a document that is communicated widely to all stakeholders in your organization. Your learning approach should be clearly understood by all early in the project.

Diving straight into content creation without a learning needs analysis Learn more about the impact of learning and enablement on user adoption Start your SAP Learning Journey

All too often, the focus is on creating content as quickly as possible, without the due diligence of carrying out a thorough learning needs analysis beforehand. Consider what happens if you do the “big shop” at the supermarket without a shopping list. You buy things that you don’t necessarily need and you forget some important things you do need. How much more efficient can that shop be with a clear, itemized list?

If you don’t base your content creation plan on a learning needs analysis, you risk wasting energy on content that never gets consumed or you miss content that users need, which in turn decreases adoption. Planning and preparation are key. Take the time to conduct a thorough learning needs analysis.

Focusing on content creation pre-go-live, but having no clear plan on keeping that content current

In a fast-paced project environment, the onus is on getting the learning content created to beat the go-live clock. But what happens then? You’ve finished the big shop and now need to fill up your car’s tank. You’ve been so focused on driving your car to the destination that you don’t notice that you have run out of gas. The subject-matter experts and key users you so heavily relied on during the content creation phase go back to their day job or move on. Only 42% of the customers we interviewed have a key user network. Quickly, the content is out-of-date and no one is referencing it anymore. Who is tracking whether it is being consumed? Who is measuring learning effectiveness? Only 17% of our customers create knowledge checks. The content you worked so hard on is quickly dead, forgotten.

Don’t underestimate the key user network for delivering training and keeping enablement content up-to-date beyond go-live. A key user network is invaluable in a digital learning enterprise. Nurture and invest in that network where you can. Plus, all too often, there is no clear hand-off from the project to business as usual. Plans for this should be in place early, back at the enablement strategy stage. As the old saying goes, “failing to prepare is preparing to fail.”

Takeaways

If you really want to drive adoption, clearly document your enablement strategy, understand the learning needs of your people, and provide the right learning at the right time. To work efficiently, learning content must be continually kept up-to-date, especially in a dynamic cloud world where agility, innovation, and flexibility are key. Have a plan, at the outset, on how you want to get the most out of your learning content and ensure key stakeholders understand the value of tracking content usage and keeping it current.

To understand the learning and enablement activities in more detail, check out the free SAP Learning Journey: Getting Started with Learning and Enablement in SAP Projects.

Sarah Gretton is global digital portfolio manager for Learning Services at SAP.

Connect with SAP News on LinkedIn Stay in touch

BTC’s price seems unstoppable even pre-Wall Street as the highest levels since late 2021 greet Bitcoin bears.

The endorsement follows European Union member states voting to approve the final text of the EU’s AI Act.

New Zealand Central Bank Governor Adrian Orr jested during a parliamentary committee meeting on Monday, but Bitcoiners argue there's truth to his joke.

Some Bitcoin ETF issuers will pull their funds as the tussle for market share and low fees heats up, while investors reap the rewards in the meantime, say analysts.