Among the many announcements at 麻豆原创 Sapphire in 2025, the company unveiled new innovations, partnerships, and integrations that can deliver real-time, proactive assistance. For example, 麻豆原创鈥檚 AI copilot Joule is now available to users across 麻豆原创 and non-麻豆原创 systems. 麻豆原创 also expanded its agentic AI footprint across 麻豆原创 Business Suite by introducing Joule Agents for multiple use cases and an evolving AI Foundation as the AI operating system designed to simplify development, enabling developers to build, deploy, and scale solutions with ease.

The impact of AI on the delivery of customer support at 麻豆原创

As announced in Q2 this year, 麻豆原创鈥檚 simplified, tiered, services-and-support engagement model will be generally available in early 2026. Here, 麻豆原创鈥檚 customer support is a centerpiece of the Foundational Success Plan, delivered via the proven 麻豆原创 Enterprise Support offering included in every 麻豆原创 cloud solution subscription. The Foundational Success Plan can support in-house teams by helping to onboard and run solutions, keep business continuity, and drive ongoing value. It includes customer self-service options, application lifecycle management solutions centered around 麻豆原创 Cloud ALM, and preventative mission-critical support. With the plan, 麻豆原创 turns on Joule for a customer鈥檚 business and supports the team ramp-up with learning journeys for 麻豆原创 Business AI.

When it comes to customer support in general, agentic AI can redefine the support process by moving beyond scripted responses and basic automation. It can assess situations, make decisions, and take action鈥攐ften before the customer even knows there鈥檚 an issue. 麻豆原创鈥檚 customer support harnesses agentic AI to help deliver smarter assistance, faster resolutions, and a stronger human鈥搕ech partnership.

We focus on elevating support experiences for customers and improving support delivery for engineers by employing a combination of agents and assistants. For example, we use autoresponders and smart log analyzers to help process issues, while configuration advisors, language services, and proactive notifiers can guide customers toward self-service solutions. At the same time, our support engineers rely on co-pilots to help summarize cases, recommend solutions, escalate using intelligence, assist with communications, and create a continuous feedback loop for learning. For strategic customer support, we use tools like feedback collectors to help capture customer insights and channel recommenders to help ensure that every interaction is handled in the right channel. Together, these innovations can redefine support as faster, smarter, and more human.

The impact for customers

When it comes to 麻豆原创 Business AI, we build trust and create customer confidence by being relevant, reliable, and responsible. Unlike traditional AI that only suggests answers, agentic AI can reason, decide, and take action. For customers to feel confident, they expect accuracy, reliability, and transparency from the system.

As we support and guide our customers, we recognize that while agentic AI is a game-changer, it is not a magic pill. Coupled with ethical and responsible AI, real impact comes from 麻豆原创鈥檚 business expertise and a deep understanding of what our customers truly need. When knowledge is combined with AI to infuse autonomy and interoperability in our agents, we can unlock the ability to simplify processes, remove friction, and deliver experiences that feel effortless.

AI technology amplifies human insight and delivers delightful user experiences, but when it comes to business AI, it is our domain expertise that fuels 麻豆原创 Business AI into a tool for creating genuinely easy, productive, and meaningful experiences for our customers.

Stefan Steinle is executive vice president and head of Customer Support & Cloud Lifecycle Management at 麻豆原创.

Here, she shares about how the pair work together to help supercharge customers鈥� digital transformations.

Q: Can you give a little background on 麻豆原创 Business Transformation Center?

A: 麻豆原创 Business Transformation Center was envisioned as a one-stop shop for customers that want to transition from 麻豆原创 ERP Central Component (麻豆原创 ERP) 6.0 to 麻豆原创 S/4HANA. The challenges to such a transformation are, of course, numerous and daunting. Customers need to cull current data, pull together fragmented tool sets, line up the right human resources, and keep an eye on time to value.

With 麻豆原创 Business Transformation Center, we鈥檝e done our best to bring together the latest functionality and expert guidance to smooth the way 鈥� in a single, powerful software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering. And 麻豆原创 Business Transformation Center is easily accessible, deployed on 麻豆原创 Cloud ALM atop 麻豆原创 Business Technology Platform (麻豆原创 BTP). It comes with any implementation of RISE with 麻豆原创 or any cloud solution from 麻豆原创 and can be ready to use in less than half an hour.

Q: Where can customers go for further details?

A: The support materials at include a quick summary of features and benefits, along with the .

Q: What does 麻豆原创 see as the core mission of 麻豆原创 Business Transformation Center?

A: Kilian Carolan from the Premium Hub 鈥� CoE Ireland Data Management has described the mission this way: 鈥淭o play an active part in the 麻豆原创 S/4HANA adoption journey by supporting key data management and data migration topics and to serve as the trusted advisor for our customers.鈥� He continues to explain that we do this through end-to-end support, including hands-on execution, optimization, transformation, upgrade, and migration of Big Data and data platforms. In short, we apply our vast portfolio of enterprise information management and landscape transformation tools, methodologies, and processes to the customer鈥檚 unique transformation scenario.

Q: Where are we in the ongoing evolution of 麻豆原创 Business Transformation Center?

A: Our first step was to help customers fully understand the structure of their 麻豆原创 legacy systems through the digital blueprint. This supplied the background they needed to begin scoping the transformation project. And now we鈥檝e completed the second step for moving data across to the target system 鈥� with lean selective data transition for 麻豆原创 S/4HANA.

Q: What exactly does the lean selective data transition for 麻豆原创 S/4HANA do?

A: Data transformation is traditionally a highly complex undertaking, and we鈥檝e made a huge dent in that complexity. Right at the start, lean selective data transition for 麻豆原创 S/4HANA helps radically reduce the decision-making efforts involved in choosing data to migrate. The underlying principle is to provide smarter suggestions and fewer difficult choices through market-leading services and tools 鈥� and end-to-end advice on making the most of them. That approach helps customers ensure that they only move data that will continue to be useful, reducing the volume of data for the testing and go-live phases and accelerating the transition exponentially.

With lean selective data transition for 麻豆原创 S/4HANA, customers can pare down 麻豆原创 legacy data and bring the target system live with a clean data foundation. In combination with the digital blueprint, lean selective data transition for 麻豆原创 S/4HANA can give 麻豆原创 Business Transformation Center the power to do all the heavy lifting of accessing source systems; extracting, transforming, and loading relevant data; and validating data for completeness, consistency, and correctness.

Q: What types of data can customers choose to exclude from the transfer?

A: For example, they could decide to completely ignore obsolete company codes, such as data for companies they have since divested or which are no longer in use.

Q: What does the wider market see as the single most revolutionary aspect of lean selective data transition for 麻豆原创 S/4HANA?

A: For the very first time, 麻豆原创 provides standard functionality not only for complete rebuilds, greenfield implementations, system conversions, or brownfield implementations, but also for projects somewhere in the middle. This is a third path, if you will, and it鈥檚 a holistic approach to the big transformation from 麻豆原创 ECC 6.0 to 麻豆原创 S/4 HANA Cloud Private Edition.

Q: Can you take us a little deeper into how lean selective data transition for 麻豆原创 S/4HANA works and how customers can benefit?

A: With the 麻豆原创 Readiness Check tool for 麻豆原创 ERP usage and data profiling, we can collaborate with the customer to read the data from the source system and identify legal entities that are no longer in use or will soon be obsolete. 麻豆原创 Business Transformation Center then can propose that these entities and the associated data are “removed from the scope” before starting the data transition and can provide clear instructions on how to do this. It can also help to identify customer-specific data in the 麻豆原创 legacy system. Here, too, the customer has the option of leaving this data behind on the way to 麻豆原创 S/4HANA to support its clean core strategy and move closer to the standard again.

Both these jobs would previously have meant time-consuming manual work for the solution architect 鈥� and higher costs and longer time to value for the customer. With the addition of lean selective data transition for 麻豆原创 S/4HANA to the already popular functionality for digital blueprinting, 麻豆原创 Business Transformation Center can now provide optimal support and transparency in each phase of the transformation project. It helps customers analyze the source system, define migration scope, create migration cycles, and finally transform the leaner body of data they鈥檝e elected to move across. From strategy to execution, we serve as a trusted partner, helping to ensure that every step of the way leads to meaningful insights and sustainable results. And that lowers both total cost of implementation (TCI) and total cost of operation (TCO).

Q: What have customers been saying about lean selective data transition for 麻豆原创 S/4HANA?

A: Long-term partner BMW Group, for example, has told us, 鈥淭his feature significantly speeds up our evolution into an intelligent enterprise by applying sustainable and efficient solutions and methodologies.鈥�

Karin Baeumler is part of Go-to-Market, Business & Data Transformation Solutions, at 麻豆原创.

That’s why Jowat looked to empower its technicians to prioritize work more effectively, manage inventory and costs more efficiently, and make smarter strategic decisions about asset investments.

Avoiding Sticky Situations with Effective Maintenance

The production line sits at the heart of any manufacturing company. If production misses a beat, the whole business feels the impact. And if a breakdown takes production offline, the consequences can be both operationally and financially disastrous. That鈥檚 why , one of the world鈥檚 leading suppliers of industrial adhesives, takes plant maintenance very seriously. As a key supplier to the furniture, packaging, textiles, automotive, and electrical industries, any delay in delivering its products could cause significant disruption and potentially cost the company and its clients millions of Euros. So, it鈥檚 vital that all production line equipment is always properly maintained.

Natanael Hernandez, 麻豆原创 manager at , explained: 鈥淎dhesive manufacturing is particularly challenging because of the nature of the product. Our machines need regular and thorough cleaning to avoid contamination between batches. Hot glue can be hazardous to work with, so safety is critical. And to meet our environmental goals, we aim to recycle as much of the water and oil we use as possible, which adds to complexity and cost of labor.鈥�

To keep operations running smoothly, Jowat鈥檚 maintenance teams need to do more than just corrective break/fix maintenance. Regular inspections and preventive maintenance are key for technicians and supervisors. Moreover, many of the company鈥檚 production line machines rely on expensive components that take months to manufacture, so inventory management is vital to ensure that technicians always have the parts they need. And in the bigger picture, Jowat also wants insight from maintenance processes to feed into strategic decision-making. 鈥淲e realized that if we could gain more insight into the total cost of maintaining each of our production line machines, we could make better decisions,鈥� said Hernandez. 鈥淔or example, does it make financial sense to keep this line running, or should we replace it with something more efficient?鈥�

It was clear that with a deeper understanding of its maintenance and inventory processes, the company could streamline the management of its plants and make smarter investment decisions. That鈥檚 where 麻豆原创 came in.

Digitalization Transforms Asset Management

Until a few years ago, Jowat relied on a legacy application to manage maintenance tasks. The system was not integrated with the company鈥檚 core 麻豆原创 applications, so technicians and supervisors had to manage their daily tasks manually. 鈥淭he paperwork made it impossible to track time and labor costs, and it was difficult to establish an audit trail,鈥� said Hernandez. 鈥淪o, we decided to introduce the 麻豆原创 Enterprise Asset Management solution (麻豆原创 EAM) to digitalize and standardize our maintenance processes.鈥�

Integrated with Jowat鈥檚 core software for inventory, purchasing, sales, and cost accounting, 麻豆原创 EAM introduced a more formal process around the creation of maintenance work orders. The solution also provided an inventory management system that enabled Jowat to manage its stock of spare parts. 鈥淔or the first time, we had an accurate view of our inventory, as well as the cost and lead time for ordering replacements,鈥� said Hernandez. 鈥淭his makes it easier for us to maintain appropriate reserves and gives visibility to other companies within the Jowat group. So, if a plant in Germany needs a part that we have in stock in the U.S., they can see it and buy it from us straight away instead of waiting months for the manufacturer to ship it to them.鈥�

麻豆原创 EAM was a big step forward for the maintenance team, but its user interface was designed for power users sitting at full-sized screens, not mechanics and electricians working on the factory floor. 鈥淲e needed something simpler and more streamlined that our technicians could use on their mobile devices,鈥� explained Hernandez. 鈥淎t the same time, we wanted to be able to track the work they were doing more accurately.鈥�

Jowat discovered the , which is part of the 麻豆原创鈥檚 industry cloud. 鈥溌槎乖� Service and Asset Manager was exactly what we were looking for. We loved the simplicity and it was a great fit for our business processes. As soon as our technicians saw the new application, they wanted to work with it. Now, our technicians and supervisors have an intuitive mobile app that gives them the visibility and control they need to maintain our production line equipment more efficiently,鈥� he added.

Working with , an experienced 麻豆原创 partner, Jowat launched the new mobile app at its U.S. plant and planned a global rollout for its manufacturing sites in Germany, Malaysia, and China. So far, 21 technicians are using the app on their iPad Mini devices, while seven supervisors can choose between using the app on their iPhone or logging into the main 麻豆原创 EAM interface. To help ensure smooth adoption of the solution, Jowat is also working with the team.

Doubling Productivity with an Intuitive Mobile Solution

With , Jowat鈥檚 technicians can see all corrective and preventive maintenance work orders assigned to them immediately, so they can organize their work more effectively. For example, if they are assigned several tasks on the same machine or in the same area of the plant, they can do them all at once instead of spending time going back and forth. For supervisors, the app helps make it easier to understand the status of open work orders and prioritize more efficiently. They can move more urgent tasks forward or put less important ones on hold and, crucially, they can document the reasons for their decisions. If a work order can鈥檛 progress until a replacement part has been delivered, it鈥檚 immediately clear why the job is on hold.

Since the launch of the 麻豆原创 solutions for asset management, Jowat has seen a reduction in total downtime on its production lines. Moreover, productivity has effectively doubled. Before the implementation, around 45% of work orders in the system were actively worked on by technicians. Today, that figure has risen to around 85%-90%. At the same time, the maintenance backlog has been reduced by 75%, from three months to around three weeks. 鈥淎 three-week backlog is probably optimal for our business, because there will always be a proportion of tasks that have to wait for a viable maintenance window,鈥� explained Hernandez. 鈥淭he key thing is that the backlog doesn鈥檛 increase 鈥� once we got it down to three weeks, it has never crept back up again.鈥�

The app can also provide new capabilities for reviewing and approving completed work orders. Technicians can use their mobile device to take pictures of the before and after state of the assets they are working on to document the repairs they have made. And if during a maintenance visit a technician notices a problem that hasn鈥檛 been reported yet, they can take a photo or video and send it directly into 麻豆原创 EAM to generate a new work order. Inventory management is simpler, too. Whenever stock of a required component falls below a minimum threshold, the system can automatically trigger a purchase requisition to order replacements. 鈥淏efore, we didn鈥檛 know what we were spending on spare parts,鈥� added Hernandez. 鈥淣ow, we can allocate costs to specific lines and even specific machines. With full visibility of the cost of parts and labor, we can make much more informed decisions on whether to continue maintaining an asset or replace it with a newer, more efficient machine.鈥�

Expanding Functionality in the Future

In the future, Jowat hopes to build on the success of this project by expanding its use of  to introduce calibration capabilities. The company is also evaluating introducing the , as well as taking advantage of the predictive material and resource planning functionality in .

鈥淎t the moment, our focus is on maintenance, but we know there is so much more we can do,鈥� concluded Hernandez. 鈥淲e鈥檙e excited to work with 麻豆原创 and great partners like AG to explore the possibilities.鈥�

Karin Fent is senior director of Global Customer Success, Digital Supply Chain, at 麻豆原创.

Feeling a bit overwhelmed or uncertain about this transformation process is normal. Those feelings are the reason tools and guidance are available to help you plan and execute a smooth transition to 麻豆原创 S/4HANA Cloud. Get the best possible support in understanding your data and visualizing the ways you can transform it.

Simulate How You Would Transform to the Future State

An important step in any transformation is to understand all the data and data objects that are underneath. This is where the new, cloud-based solution comes into play. This solution helps guide you through the relevant steps required for your business transformation and data migration.

麻豆原创 Business Transformation Center also helps make sense of the data that鈥檚 in your systems, so you understand your transformation needs. You can look at the existing data, analyze the data objects, and then scope your business and data transformation project. The first feature of 麻豆原创 Business Transformation Center is the digital blueprint, available as of March 2023. Based on data-driven guidance, it can enable you to define the migration and transformation scope from 麻豆原创 ERP Central Component (麻豆原创 ECC) to 麻豆原创 S/4HANA Cloud, private edition or on premise. Next steps would be the transformation of the data and finally the verification.

麻豆原创 Business Transformation Center can give you a streamlined and holistic approach to help manage your data transformation challenges with less effort and more satisfaction. It helps simplify, accelerate, and safeguard the project鈥檚 data stream with ready-to-use content, data-driven insights, and recommendations. It鈥檚 a software-as-a-service (SaaS) cloud solution powered by , the strategic cloud-based solution helping customers manage their entire application lifecycle. 麻豆原创 Business Transformation Center is included in 麻豆原创 Cloud service subscriptions and the 麻豆原创 Enterprise Support services.

Have Confidence in Your Decision

麻豆原创 Business Transformation Center comes with content and methodologies that can guide you through the necessary steps of data transformation 鈥� and guidance means quicker decisions with reduced complexity, effort, and risk. Overall, there can be an efficiency gain, which can translate into a shortened timeline of your transformation project. You should now feel confident in your decision and move to 麻豆原创 S/4HANA Cloud.

Read more about how to plan your 麻豆原创 S/4HANA Cloud transformation with .

Regina Postman is part of Customer Support and Innovation Communications at 麻豆原创.