It has been three years since SAP Sapphire last occurred in person, and I was thrilled to meet with our customers and partners again this week. As SAP Sapphire comes to a close, I am taking a moment to reflect on how the world has changed since the pandemic. Many organizations were not prepared for the impact such a change would have on their business, and they were forced to adjust in real-time—realizing that the digital transformation conversations of the past now needed to be put into action and accelerated.

Fast forward to SAP Sapphire 2022 and a new world, where in-person and hybrid experiences came together in Orlando, Florida and virtually across the globe. Microsoft and SAP are celebrating the one-year anniversary of RISE with SAP on the Microsoft Cloud, which helps organizations of all sizes modernize their SAP solutions in the cloud. We have made great progress on the various aspects of our product innovation, delivering new service offerings, frameworks, and tools, that have helped our customers and partners simplify and further accelerate their SAP modernization journey. We have summarized the most recent product announcements here: SAP on Azure Product Announcements Summary—SAP Sapphire 2022.

SAP Sapphire 2022 gave us an opportunity to reconnect with customers and partners—celebrating our joint success, discussing new business priorities, and identifying areas where Microsoft can further help accelerate their growth. We were honored to see many customers and colleagues at Microsoft on stage to share their experiences and best practices. It is most rewarding and humbling to see the level of trust that SAP, our customers, and partners place on our technology platform and to see its impact across various industries and customer scenarios. Below are several session highlights in case you missed them.

SAP Sapphire 2022 session highlights

Spur innovation like the NBA with RISE with SAP on Azure (session ERP159)

The National Basketball Association (NBA) wanted to eliminate limitations of its on-premises data centers and moved its SAP applications and other IT resources to the cloud. The NBA’s Puneet Toteja, AVP, Business Systems Lead, discussed how using RISE with SAP with the AI, data warehouse, and personalization capabilities of Microsoft Azure has enabled the NBA to merge business, game, and fan data to deliver enhanced fan experiences. Learn more about the NBA’s journey with Microsoft and SAP.

Get insights into how Walgreens set up a best practice-based platform (session SE111)

David Durdan, Senior Director, Global Enterprise Architecture for Walgreens Company shares how the pharmacy chain embarked on a retail and finance transformation to deliver benefits to both customers and employees, using the SAP S/4HANA Retail solution and other SAP solutions hosted on Microsoft Azure. Learn more about Walgreens’ journey with Microsoft and SAP.

Jump-start your journey to becoming a demand-driven enterprise (session SCM157)

Microsoft’s Dhaval Desai, Principal Lead, SAP Supply Chain Engineering shared how Microsoft embraced RISE with SAP on Microsoft Cloud to transform its supply chain to a collaborative, digitally connected network that helps it sense and respond to demand changes quickly. Results from this joint Microsoft and SAP initiative include reduced latency in information sharing, improved forecast accuracy, and increased supply chain visibility, including visibility of supplier commitments.

Explore PEPCO’s “Smart” approach to converting to SAP S/4HANA (session ERP137)

Exelon-owned Electric Power Company, PEPCO, provides electricity and gas to two million customers. In this session featuring Exelon’s Manager of Customer Projects and System Support Walter Stefy and Accenture Managing Director Muthu Maran, discover how they designed and executed a journey to cloud transformation and upgraded to SAP S/4HANA on Microsoft Azure in just eighteen months using Accenture’s Smart field approach.

Find out how your peers are optimizing their supply chains (session SCM125)

Microsoft’s Dhaval Desai, Principal Lead, SAP Supply Chain Engineering joined a panel of industry leaders from Blue Diamond Growers, Varidesk and SAP to share how their organizations have addressed diverse supply chain resiliency issues with SAP solutions, including the SAP Integrated Business Planning for Supply Chain solution.

Automate sales ordering to improve compliance and the customer experience (session CX156)

Merck and Co.’s Ann Wallach, Director of SAP Delivery will share how this global pharmaceutical company modernized and automated its vaccine ordering process, which was previously handled through fax and phone and required manual entry of sales orders. Merck was able to modernize by leveraging the scalability of SAP Commerce Cloud on Microsoft Azure to improve the customer experience and payment-card industry compliance.

Learn more

I hope you’ve enjoyed SAP Sapphire in-person or virtually as much as we did. To learn more, check out the SAP on Azure Product Announcements Summary. My team and I look forward to continuing our discussion and meeting many of you around the world as we hit the road with SAP visiting eight cities in the remaining 2022!