Kathy Gibson is at Saphila Transcend in Sun City – The world around us is evolving faster than ever. In a chaotic and unpredictable environment, and with new technologies emerging almost daily, industries are being reshaped, and customer expectations are shifting.
“Uncertainty is not going away,” says Olaf Winkler, BTP product management at SAP. “You need to think about how you can transform your business for the years to come.”
At the same time, artificial intelligence (AI) is revolutionising decision-making, redefining efficiency, and helping make it easier to run the business, he adds.
“The pace of change is accelerating, and businesses are asking how they can stay ahead of the change; how they can build business that don’t just keep up with change, but thrive on it.
“The ability to adapt, to innovate, to seize opportunities is no longer an advantage, but a necessity,” Winkler says.
He believes that, to be resilient and navigate uncertainty, companies need to embrace entrepreneurial skills.
“We believe that in this time of change and technology disruption, entrepreneurial skills are more relevant than ever in small or corporate organisations.
“The first key skill is courage,” Winkler says. “This is about being adaptable, having no fear, and moving forward in a focused and lean way.”
The second is resourcefulness. “Ensure you have the right resources in place, to accomplish a lot with few resources, and to execute on anything.”
The third key skill needed in this fast-changing world is self-discipline. “Be self-driven,” Winkler says. “Think about transformation from a technology point of view, but prioritise what is important for the business.”
At the same time, organisations need to be very clear about the way they want to go forward, Winkler adds. “Clarity is needed now more than ever – not as a choice, but a necessity. Be clear about your transformation and about what you want to achieve.”
Winkler explains that SAP’s Business Technology Platform (BTP) is the foundation on which the company has built its technology and transformation ecosystem.
As the foundation that underpins Business Suite, Business Data Cloud, and Business AI, BTP allows organisations to integrate and extend business applications faster; create business-relevant apps; and innovate and accelerate with AI.
Winkler points out that it is a unified platform available as public cloud or multi-cloud that harmonises SAP and non-SAP applications, empowering customers and partners to innovate.
BTP is powered by more than 90 applications and services
There are currently 33 000 customers on SAP BTP, including 66% of the largest companies in the market.
New on SAP BTP is better integration between SAP Build and SAP S/4 HANA. The company has also introduced additional AI features with Joule for Developers.
In addition, SAP is continuously adding BTP to new data centres and regions. It has already built out to seven new regions this year, with more on the cards.
There is more functionality for users and more AI available for SAP S/4 HANA Cloud.
More features are available in SAP Business Data Cloud (BDC), and SAP’s Integration Suite makes it easier for customers to bring their ecosystem together.
The new releases are especially relevant for developers.
SAP Build now offers the ability to create Joule Skills and AI Agents – Joule Skills where the process path is known, and AI Agents where it isn’t.
“Now, developers are able to enhance Joule’s out-of-the-box capabilities to support organisation-specific workflows,” Winkler says. “They can deploy, monitor and manage their own Joule Skills in SAP Build. “And, with the agent builder in Joule Studio they can build their own customised AI Agents.”
There are also new features to help ABAP developers improve their efficiency. “In the ABAP cloud environment, we have released intelligent features that help developerss with testing, and Joule will even offer recommendation to improve code.”
Further enhancements improve developer efficiency in SAP HANA Cloud, helping them to make smart decisions while handling large amounts of interconnected data to achieve meaningful outcome.
“BTP addresses the challenges of digital transformation and helps to accelerate customers’ move to the cloud,” Winkler says. “It helps customers to optimise and integrate processes so they can innovate while keeping the core clean.
“This empowers them to unlock the power of business data and AI.”