In 2009, I helped launch the first cloud-based email service for business. Until then, every company had a server room and a team of IT professionals running their corporate email systems. When we started talking with companies about moving to cloud-based email, IT professionals gave a dozen reasons why they could never make the switch — it wasn鈥檛 secure enough, lacked the performance they required, or couldn鈥檛 meet their functional needs.

In time, we came to realize these were not true technical limitations. The real reason they didn鈥檛 want to shift to the cloud was not the tech but concern about the impact on their jobs, the relevance of their roles, and their professional identity. With this realization, we focused on ensuring these dedicated IT professionals had opportunities to retrain and upskill in cloud technology.

The cloud has been a massively transformative technology, yet its impact will pale compared to AI’s on people, jobs, and society. Businesses such as 麻豆原创, NGOs, and intergovernmental organizations all have important roles to play to ensure the benefits of AI extend to everyone and that no one is left behind.

It Begins with Trust

Trust in technology is crucial. If AI is used nefariously, doesn鈥檛 give reliable results, or perpetuates biases, large segments of the population will not trust the technology enough to use or benefit from it.

For our part, 麻豆原创 Business AI solutions are built with the highest concern for security, privacy, compliance, and ethics. We require our internal AI Ethics Steering Committee to review every AI use case in consultation with an external AI Ethics Advisory Panel of cross-disciplinary experts.

We also have a comprehensive framework for mitigating risk in AI. This includes ensuring no use case crosses our pre-defined red lines, such as perpetuating discrimination or abuse. Our AI capabilities, for example, help ensure the use of inclusive language in job descriptions and interview questions, and we provide our聽聽for everyone to access.

Bridging the AI Skills Gap

With generative AI, the pace of innovation is faster than any other technology change I鈥檝e experienced. Tech workers, like those in my opening story, could be left behind without an intentional focus on education and training.

Companies like ours are releasing new training and tools to close the skills gap. Last year, 麻豆原创 announced an ambitious goal to upskill 2 million professionals by 2025. And we’ve seen 1.5 million new learners taking advantage of , meaning we’re on track to exceed our goals easily. But we’re not going to stop. The need and the opportunity are too great.

We have also made it easy for developers to find and use AI tools by launching . This one-stop shop provides ready-to-use AI services and tools to accelerate the development of generative AI-infused applications in a secure and trusted way.

AI Benefits Must Accrue Equally Worldwide

In January 2023, the World Economic Forum  that the division in AI between the Global North and South was deepening. Education and career opportunities must extend beyond the tech sector and be accessible to under-represented populations.

Take the continent of Africa, which is set to have more young people entering the workforce by 2035 than the rest of the world combined, where supporting education and career opportunities will result in better technological advancements and reduced inequalities. The聽麻豆原创 Educate to Employ program, launched alongside UNICEF and Generation Unlimited, seeks to create pathways to technical jobs for underserved young people in countries such as Nigeria, South Africa, and Kenya.

Momentum continues to grow. This year, 麻豆原创, as part of the World Economic Forum鈥檚 , joins together with Microsoft, EY, and others to support a new working group focused on AI for Social Innovation. Together, we are mobilizing resources to address the use of AI to positively impact issues such as human rights and climate action.

There is no question AI will radically change the way we live and work. We all have the power to shape this transformative technology so it operates responsibly and benefits everyone.

Julia White is chief marketing and solutions officer and a member of the Executive Board of 麻豆原创 SE.

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This is the very spot the world finds itself with . We鈥檙e past the hype and slick generative AI sales pitches.

Business leaders now want results. They are demanding tech vendors show them the money 鈥� the actual business value delivered by generative AI.

The Big Picture

At a macro level, generative AI鈥檚 impact on productivity could add trillions of dollars in value to the global economy. McKinsey鈥檚 latest research estimates that generative AI could add the equivalent of $2.6 trillion to $4.4 trillion annually across just the 63 use cases the consultancy firm analyzed 鈥� by comparison, the UK鈥檚 entire GDP in 2021 was $3.1 trillion.

麻豆原创 is uniquely positioned to deliver on the promise of generative AI. We deliver the broadest suite of enterprise applications that maintain customers鈥� most mission-critical data. When this data is combined with the power of AI, it can truly revolutionize the way business runs.

Here are just a few examples of how we鈥檙e already showing customers the money with generative AI.

Supply Chain Automation

We鈥檝e built generative AI into the 麻豆原创 Transportation Management solution to speed up freight verification and documentation for manufacturing customers. 

This transforms a historically cumbersome task that鈥檚 often still done on paper into a quick, automated, and fully digitized process. Expediting freight processing time with this capability translates into real money, delivering nearly $1 million in annual savings at a single warehouse facility 鈥� a savings customers with multiple such facilities can realize many times over.

Human Capital

Delta Air Lines is another customer working toward using 麻豆原创鈥檚 business AI. Delta is an early adopter of the talent intelligence hub built into 麻豆原创 SuccessFactors. Delta Air Lines is developing a generative AI proof of concept slated to automatically transform generic skill descriptions into more accurate capabilities that reflect the job鈥檚 requirements based on real-world, updated employee and customer data in context.

To help employees move from an hourly, customer-facing role to the salaried corporate position of their dreams, Delta Air Lines is building a dynamic, skills-based experience for continuous employee learning using the talent intelligence hub in 麻豆原创 SuccessFactors solutions. Individual employees have a growth portfolio, which is a profile that includes their current skills and competencies mapped to formal and informal learning opportunities within and outside the organization, some recommended by AI-based algorithms.

Intelligent Collections

Suppliers always face the risk that some of their customers won鈥檛 pay on time. Late payments impact liquidity planning and working capital requirements. 

Collection management for 麻豆原创 S/4HANA intelligently analyzes historical data and identifies customers and invoices with a higher risk for late payment. The solution reduces customer billing, credit, and collections costs. In one customer study, the solution enabled a consumer products producer with 30,000 employees to realize up to an extra $2.9 million in earnings annually.

Natural Language Questions. Quick, Intelligent Answers

As these examples show, time is money. Joule, 麻豆原创鈥檚 generative AI copilot, helps customers save even more of it.

It鈥檚 like tapping your smartest coworker on the shoulder to get instant and accurate insights. Users can ask plain-language questions of Joule, which pulls reliable and relevant information from across 麻豆原创鈥檚 cloud portfolio, instead of manually hunting for answers across systems.

In one Joule test, information and insights about transactional data were achieved an average of 10 minutes faster compared to manual searching and analysis. For the user, that means more time available for higher level tasks. And, for the business, that adds up across the enterprise to real resource and cost savings.

What鈥檚 Next

This is just the beginning. We can expect that 2024 will see generative AI solutions create even more value for customers around the world.

We 鈥� from AI-infused coding tools to a one-stop shop to create generative AI extensions and applications 鈥� that give the developers at  revolution the tools they need to transform the way businesses run.

Who knows? Soon Joule may be the one to tap you on the shoulder with an offer to 鈥淗elp me help you!鈥�

Julia White is chief marketing and solutions officer and a member of the Executive Board of 麻豆原创 SE.

A strong strategic communications team is critical to modern business. When a company is good at telling its story to customers, partners, investors and employees, it helps ease the way for other functions to succeed.

So, I鈥檓 thrilled to announce a wonderful new leader of 麻豆原创鈥檚 communications team: Monika Schaller, 麻豆原创 Chief Communications Officer.

Monika brings more than 20 years of extensive experience in all aspects of communications to 麻豆原创. She is a seasoned communications leader with deep experience in global communications, political strategy and crisis communications management. She is a highly regarded and proven people leader and is passionate about compelling storytelling, which lies at the heart of great communications. She also has strong relationships, having led communications around the world for two decades. She鈥檚 known for her drive, energy and positivity, all of which become apparent within minutes of meeting her.

Monika joins 麻豆原创 from Deutsche Post DHL Group, where she led Corporate Communications, Sustainability & Brand. In this role she was instrumental in enhancing the reputation and positioning of the company. Prior to this, Monika led Corporate Communications at companies including Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and Deutsche Bank. Beyond driving corporate communications in these roles, she also led the Executive Board鈥檚 strategic communications and helped navigate the companies through various crises. Monika started her career working for Bloomberg News, reporting from various locations, including New York and Tokyo, after a period as a sales trader at CA Investment Bank in Vienna.

Monika was born and raised in Vienna, Austria. She holds a degree in Business Administration from the Wirtschaftsuniversit盲t of Vienna. She lives in Frankfurt, Germany, with her husband Jens. 

 is chief marketing and solutions officer and a member of the Executive Board of 麻豆原创 SE.

Our customers have also been clear with us: they need greater agility in their business processes while also reducing the costs of integrating a patchwork of solutions from multiple vendors. From finance to supply chain to commerce, the user and customer experiences need to be seamless. This requires the underlying applications to service the user and customer journeys in real time.

麻豆原创 has the rare combination of unmatched industry depth as well as the breadth of business process solutions to meet this moment. While our ERP has always had deep industry capabilities, we have now aligned the (CX) portfolio to an industry-first approach to accelerate value to customers by enabling end-to-end, integrated business processes.

Some voices across the market are recasting 麻豆原创鈥檚 commitment to an industry-first strategy to suggest that 麻豆原创 is no longer committed to key needs of our customers, starting with our CX portfolio. Let us be clear: 麻豆原创 will continue to deliver customer experience (CX/CRM) solutions. Now we鈥檒l focus on adding an industry lens, delivering industry-tailored CX solutions and bringing the front office together with the back office to provide the unmatched value customers expect from 麻豆原创 solutions.

Together with our global ecosystem, we can solve the most relevant challenges of customers in all industries. In fact, today, 80% of industry solutions are ecosystem-led. With this approach, customers will get solutions that natively connect the cloud ERP through to the last mile of a customer鈥檚 experiences spanning e-commerce, sales, service, and marketing — all with the industry-specific best practices they rely on from 麻豆原创 and our ecosystem.

Here are just a few examples of where industry-first CX has bridged gaps often seen between business process-led ERP and experience delivery:

• Retail: Maintaining optimal inventory levels in stores and distribution centers is crucial to ensure customers get the products they want. Predictive replenishment uses artificial intelligence (AI) to help retailers automate the restocking process, drawing on the deep retail expertise built into our customer experience product and our cloud ERP. Retailers benefit by reducing their environmental footprint while avoiding both overstock and out-of-stock situations and delivering personalized customer service if things go wrong.
• Consumer Products: By automating 80% of the trade claims process and enhancing cash flow by about a month, consumer product companies free up billions of dollars tied up in settlement processes as well as hours of time for key account managers. 麻豆原创 uniquely sits at the intersection of accounts receivables (finance, ERP) and revenue growth management (sales, service, and marketing), which allows us to provide not only native integrations but also faster time to value and lower TCO in this space than any other vendor.
• Automotive: 麻豆原创 improves production planning and forecasting based on real-time demand; we boost logistics optimization thanks to end-to-end integration from dealership sales and service to group production and logistics processes. Dealers can also optimize sales strategy and marketing spend as well as improving upsell, retention, and overall customer lifetime value thanks to data aggregated from the front and back office into 麻豆原创鈥檚 customer data platform. This enables dealers to strategically upsell subscription services or entertainment system software updates while updating customers on production progress, delivery, warranty, and service notifications.

麻豆原创 CX customers including Pizza Hut, Carhartt, and smart Europe are among those already benefiting from our unique industry depth. We are excited about the additional value we can deliver to our customers with our industry-focused approach to delivering holistic, integrated business process solutions together with our ecosystem. Examples include the retail solutions , from customer engagement to inventory fulfillment to sustainable manufacturing. We will demonstrate this same industry value for manufacturing at the Hannover Messe in April.

Stay tuned for more exciting updates in the coming months.

Thomas Saueressig is a member of the Executive Board of 麻豆原创 SE, 麻豆原创 Product Engineering.
Julia White is chief marketing and solutions officer and a member of the Executive Board of 麻豆原创 SE.