# Customer Success Keynote: Connected to Win: From Moment to Momentum | SAP Sapphire Orlando 2026

## Метаданные

- **Канал:** SAP
- **YouTube:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpDHkeHIezc
- **Дата:** 14.05.2026
- **Длительность:** 54:40
- **Просмотры:** 465
- **Источник:** https://ekstraktznaniy.ru/video/50731

## Описание

In the age of AI, business advantage comes from being connected, ready, and able to act when it matters most.

Every customer journey begins with a moment that demands change. Real value is created when that moment becomes momentum. In this SAP Sapphire Orlando 2026 customer keynote, SAP leaders and customers explore how connected data, clean core transformation, SAP Business Suite, and SAP Business AI help organizations turn complexity into clarity and innovation into measurable outcomes.

Hear from Thomas Saueressig and Jan Gilg as they discuss SAP’s vision for the Autonomous Enterprise: a future where people set the direction, AI supports execution, and business processes run with speed, trust, and resilience. Customer leaders from Lockheed Martin, Aeropuertos Argentina, ExxonMobil, and Levi Strauss & Co. share real transformation stories across aerospace and defense, aviation, energy, and retail. Together, they show how connected systems and responsible AI can improve readiness, si

## Транскрипт

### Welcome and why the world runs on connected systems []

Please welcome to the stage Thomas Saurasig. — Hey. Good morning Orlando. How are you doing this morning? I see we need to wake up a little bit more. But actually, when you woke up this morning, did you think about whether the world still runs? lights turn up when you flip the switch? You probably, I guess, will have more wondered why you've actually chosen the extra gin and tonic at the Howl at the Moon yesterday night. But here's the point. Every day, billions of people wake up trusting that the world simply runs, that phones charge, and planes land. And this morning, when you woke up, you got ready, came here, actually without thinking what had to happen to make all of this possible. But behind the scenes, utility companies balanced weather, demand, supply in real time, so you could just flip the switch. You got dressed up. The clothes that you wear passed through global supply chains, warehouses, ports, and even your morning coffee is a global orchestration. Does anybody actually know how many companies are in this coffee supply chain which you will see here then live in Orlando? 29 for coffee. Maybe it was moved by logistics company who delivered trillions linking ports, factories, and communities at continental scale. You ordered a ride, but thousands of components, suppliers, and production steps had to align before that car ever reached this street. You then paid for it using an online finance solution that executed the payment across operating systems with zero tolerance for delay. And then you arrived here at the convention center expecting that everything runs smoothly. So life feels simple. It may seem simple, but if you zoom out and the scale what you deliver and enable becomes staggering. Last months we all watched in awe as Artemis 2 completed first crew lunar flyby since 1972. That's also coincidentally our birthday. We all saw the rocket and the mission, not the complexity behind it. Every single prime contractor of Artemis 2 runs on SAP. So because we don't stop in this planet, we actually fly to the moon. But kidding aside, these examples are not systems you can pause, not processes you can get wrong, not industries where failure is an option. You can be so proud of what you make possible every single day. What you deliver is what keeps the world moving and often without anyone noticing. And we are so proud to be your partner on that journey. And we also aware of the responsibility we carry. And that's the reason why we fully committed to operational excellence

### SAP’s commitment to customer success and operational excellence [3:17]

excellence with actual SLA achievement of 99. 998. And we do not compromise on security and compliance. Just as an example, reduce the mean time to detect by 75%. But transformation at this scale doesn't happen alone with technology. It's also about the people who make it happen. And that's the reason why I'm excited to welcome on stage the global president customer success in Americas and member of the extended board. Welcome Jan Gilg. — Yeah, good morning Orlando. How are you? Good to see you. Yeah. Yeah, I love what you said about Artemis too. Actually, that's it's kind of a perfect metaphor of what we do at SAP here. Because watching, you know, this capsule against the moon out there, it was quite graceful, effortless. But behind it, if you think about it, there's some deep engineering, some extreme complexity that has to be managed. And that is kind of almost like operations, you know, that is a huge undertaking, and the same is true for enterprise IT. The run side is something that's often super underestimated, but also underappreciated. It is the run that actually makes everything that we've just talked about, what you just talked about possible. It is what keeps a world of highest complexity operating reliably, continuously, and at scale. And SAP is that invisible hand helping you all to turn complexity into productivity. So, the trains actually run, payments clear, and parcels arrive. And for that, to all of you here in the room, and actually to our 440,000 customers out there, a big, big thank you. So, give yourself a hand of applause. Fantastic. —

### The Autonomous Enterprise and AI at scale [5:22]

— And then, I mean, in your role, you're talking daily with customers. What do you hear from our customers? Yeah, it's quite a mixed picture. Um there's a lot of excitement on the one hand side, but there's also pressure. And the expectation to deliver now measurable results, um it's real, yeah? And customers, they are focused on how fast they can actually put it to work across the enterprise. And how to scale it and connect it to real-time business processes because that is the only way to capture tangible results. But the pressure of the board is also real. I think we all feel it. Yeah? Do more with less. You probably hear it every day. And the elephant in the room, AI in the enterprise is complex. It is complex. And that's because the challenge isn't AI itself. It's the disconnected apps and the fragmented data everywhere. So, there is this need for trusted seamless integration that led us to our vision of the autonomous enterprise. And you heard about it yesterday. So, we are moving beyond just tools to a system that understands your business and anticipates your needs and acts with precision, turning complexity into your greatest competitive advantage. It's a world where businesses must operate smarter, respond faster, and free up capacity for what matters most. And where AI doesn't just generate insights, but also drives execution end-to-end. And agents act in a reliable and responsible way using a trusted framework of governance and with people that are providing the oversight. And this is where AI becomes truly operational across the enterprise. So, your business doesn't just react, it runs even better. And Thomas, when I think about what you just talked about, planes that land, supply chains that deliver on the promise, and systems people trust without even thinking about it, that is pretty much the essence of what the autonomous enterprise is all about. This is also exactly where our commitment as a company comes in. We actively want to support you do. And we also continuously invest into you to address these elephant in the room as I mentioned to get AI really live and adopted in the enterprise. So, our goal is to help you become an autonomous enterprise step by step. And continuous innovation is actually at the core of what we want to do together, which is by the way embodied in Rise with SAP. So, we want to help you make AI value real today. And that's also what you heard yesterday. With Rise with AI, we want to activate three assistance for you. With the Max Success Plan, we want to take one step further to really ensure that all relevant assistance get productively live in your environment. And that's something what also turns the entire notion around that basically value is created while you transform. So, we don't need to wait till the transformation is finished. So, when you are committed to Rise with SAP to go with us into this innovation journey, we are committed to support you every step on the way. Also in complex hybrid landscapes including that we connect with on-premise system for selected assistance as well. And what is also super important for me and I mentioned that a couple of times, we don't want to leave any customer behind. That's also reason why we continuously invest for instance into sovereign cloud and sovereign AI capabilities that also our customers in highly regulated industries benefit from these innovations at scale. And also, I want to use that moment to say thank you for all of your feedback. Your feedback makes us better. So, also thanks to all the user groups actually which bring that to us. Because one thing is absolutely clear for us as a customer a company. Listening to our customers is what drives everything what we do. And that's actually why we're here today. Today

### Customer stories begin [9:26]

you will hear from customers who actually make it happen, who makes transformation happen every single day. So, instead of slides, the real stories will be brought onto this couch. Here our customers will share how they are transforming their businesses in the real world. So, no theory, no abstraction, just first-hand experiences on how we actually bring these systems to life. So, I would suggest we start right away with our first customer, and this company is supporting the most advanced aerospace and defense missions on this planet. So, it's my pleasure to welcome the SVP and CIO Enterprise Business Digital Transformation at Lockheed Martin, Maria Demaree. —

### Lockheed Martin on readiness, transformation, and mission outcomes [10:26]

— So, Maria, I think it's fair to say that you absolutely operate in high-stakes settings, without a doubt. But, how do you think about transformations differently than potentially other companies? Yes. So, thank you first of all for having me. I'm proud to be here with you both today representing Lockheed Martin. And we definitely do operate in a high-stakes environment. But, I think what's important for us to talk about is that transformation is not the goal. Readiness is for us. And in this environment, readiness really is important for our workforce, our systems, but most importantly for the men and women that serve our nation and our allies and protect our freedoms. So, for us, you know, I can tell you I have over 30 years experience working with Lockheed Martin and with our customers shoulder to shoulder in their missions. And when you think about mission success, it really changes how you think about tech and data. And the real question becomes not what did we do this week, although my team that's here today will tell you that I ask them that regularly, but really it's about are we getting the customer what they need when it really matters, that readiness. Because for us the stakes are high and they are human. Oh, absolutely. And you mentioned about readiness quite often. Tell us a little bit what readiness means for you in your environment. Sure. So, for us readiness is really the ability to move with speed and clarity and confidence across the enterprise. For us that's engineering, manufacturing, supply chain, every part of how we design, build, and sustain the products that we build. And for us we're on a journey right now. We call it 1LMx. It's the largest transformational investment that our company has made in history. And you know, that is not a small lift for us to do this transformation. It makes SAP one of our most important partners. The challenge for us is not so much the effort, but the complexity of what we're trying to do. We're a 120,000 person company. We're over 100 years old. We have disconnected systems and fragmented processes as we look back. And right now our customers need exponential speed and throughput. So, we know as you said, we operate in a highly regulated environment as well. Really strict security requirements and data requirements for us. So, several years ago now we made the deliberate shift to redesign our processes end-to-end. We are using AI. We are using the SAP platform. And we're embracing a model-based enterprise to really connect the digital thread as we look at design, build, and sustain life cycle. And with that our real goal is to reduce our cycle times and improve the responsiveness. Because in our environment readiness really depends on continuous reliable performance. And that's where the true digital integration really becomes critical for us. Mhm. Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, once you recognize the need, um what did it take you to move Lockheed Martin forward uh as a more connected or responsive enterprise? Yes. I you know, responsiveness is the word that really comes to mind. So, as we identified the gap, we really shifted from what do we need to do to how do we do this at scale? So, our focus really became on that connected enterprise and making sure that our systems and our data and our processes are operating together as a whole. And I can tell you SAP has been a huge part of this journey with us. Um you've really moved from a vendor relationship to a true and trusted partner. And that shift really happened when we moved from talking about technology to talking about mission outcomes. And I feel that SAP has really invested in understanding our business, our customers, and the environment that we work in. And a way that I describe SAP often is, you know, when something's happening and I call you, Thomas, or one of my team calls their colleague the counterpart — quickly. — Yes, that works with us. You know, we'll have a problem on a Friday and I'll say, "Oh, we need this. This is urgent. " And you'll say, "We'll have it to you by Thursday. " And you'll deliver it on Tuesday. You know, and that relationship, that trust, and that ability for you to commit to me enables me to commit to those people that have really important missions to deliver. No, and it was all that's super critical to us. Without it all, but also if you think about now this transformation that you have, Lockheed Martin and Tyler this one and makes me fascinating to see all the outcomes what you see. If there's one shift in thinking you would love to leave this audience a little bit with, what would that be? I would say the shift really for us was that it doesn't transformation doesn't start with technology. You have to do the work of rethinking your processes, how your decisions are made, how your operating model is going to work end-to-end. And AI can be a powerful enabler, but to really create value it's got to be embedded into the foundation and it has to be owned by the process owners. You it's not something you can ask the CIO to bolt on and expect it to scale. Although many of us CIOs here are asked to do that. You have to do the hard work. It's necessary. And with SAP, this for us is how we operate today. There is no shortcut. You have to do the work, but thanks to our partnership, it's not a future state for us. It's how we are operating. Yeah, and I mean what you said, I mean it's really a business transformation. It's really with the process this embedded in the change management. I think that's what it's really about to have a holistic view on this transformational journey. I mean that's this is amazing. I think also just here what I mentioned earlier, I want to really reiterate that. For us sovereign cloud is absolutely strategic. That's the reason why we committed more than 20 billion in investment to really ensure that all of the portfolio, also what you've seen yesterday with the autonomous enterprise will be available in the sovereign cloud and for sure also here specifically with NS2 in the US to make that happen. And here, our commitment is clear. We deliver full stack sovereignty, which means data sovereignty, operational sovereignty, technical sovereignty, and legal sovereignty. Because we truly believe there should not be any trade-off between innovation and sovereignty. And with our more than 60,000 critical infrastructure customers, that's absolutely critical for us to bring them on this journey to the autonomous enterprise together. But Jan, I mean if you listen to the journey of Maria and Lockheed Martin, what are your takeaways? Yeah, I mean we talked about complexity earlier. I think this is complexity in a highly regulated environment and still there's so much innovation that you're driving. So I think if that's possible in such an environment, it is possible anywhere. Yes. Absolutely. With great partners. — Good. Before we bring out our next customers, a quick show of hands here in the audience. Who has ever been stuck on an airplane because the runway was icy? Show of hands. See a lot of hands. I know it's unimaginable here in Orlando with the temperatures, but think back to the winter. I think pretty much everybody. Our next customer has been actually doing

### Aeropuertos Argentina on the Snow Agent and proactive airport operations [17:16]

something about exactly that. So, please welcome Gustavo Sabato, the CTO of Aeropuerto Argentino. Did you hear there's a lot of Latin America customers out — Yes, yeah, you saw that. — Yeah, so terrible. But First time in Latin America customers on stage. That's amazing. So, Gustavo, tell us a little bit about your company, Aeropuerto Argentina. What are they doing? — First of all, good morning and thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to share our experience. Aeropuertos Argentina is a company that started 27 years ago. We move around 90% of the commercial flights. We move 43 million passengers in 1 year. And specifically we had 3,300,000 flights in a year. We are 2,700 people and we love to say that we connect people, cargo, and cultures. We are part of Corporación América Airport that is the largest operator in amount of airports around the world and we have operations in six countries. Argentina Uruguay, Brazil, Ecuador, Armenia, and Italy. If we talk about the experience or the things that we are doing, first of all it's important to mention what does it mean the weather condition for the airport. It's one of the main concern that we have. Because as you know, we can close the airport because of the weather. In the case of Argentina, we have winter disruptions and this winter affects airports, eight airports, 14,000 flights, and 1. 4 million people. Historically, the process were manual or fragmented and we have an impact in the cost of the highly high cost in the operations and also in safety probably safety risk, but also in environmental because of the use of the chemicals to clean the ice or the snow. Um, this because of that it's clear that we try to do this main agent to minimize this problem that we call it snow. So that's basically when you build a solution that you call it the snow agent. — Yes. — And so tell us a little bit about that and what was the impact? — Yeah. Yeah, let me tell you that snow meaning a smart network operating winter. We try to do the same, you know, but basically orchestrate — Basically orchestrates in for weather information, runway sensors, and also operational procedures and maintenance process. This the system generates alerts in some conditions, release work order, create work orders, and also track execution, check availability of resources, and maintain the communication between the control tower and the people that is working in the operation. Uh, basically this is the main thing that the system do. Uh, benefits. We expect to have 16% of decrease in cost. We will try to minimize the use of CO2 in 45 tons, but the main thing is that we have we pass to a from a reactive model to a proactive model that it's clear that we will have less interventions in the runway and will impact the customer satisfaction in a positive way. — That's people get stuck on a icy runway. — I mean one of the big topics is also how quickly can you get time to value? How quickly can we from idea to impact? How long did it take you? Uh, first of all I want to mention that the initially we start talking with people that report to me and told me we want to participate in the sub innovation tournament. And the beginning I said, "No, I have no time. " Then I said, "Okay, I will reconsider, go ahead. " And we take the winter operation as my most important area to work. In February we start talking with SAP. In March we start operating with we start developing an MVP. And now in 2 weeks we will start at implementation of the two airports. And in the next winter we will do the next six. So, you built a snow agent on top of your existing core. You built it on the platform but on top of your existing core. How critical was that? I think we implement we upgrade SAP from R3 to S4 in 2023. And it's clear that this it was a big advantage for us because we review many process across the company. Uh, on top of that we implement specifically the BTP architecture. And then the AI model on the top of that. But for me it's clear that it will be faster and easy if you have a clean core. And how easy was it you mentioned there's multiple data sources obviously that you had to connect to. How easy was that? It wasn't easy because you have a lot of databases, lot of information not standardized. And also you have a lot of knowledge in the mind of the administrators of the airports. We put all together. It wasn't so easy. We put this in SAP. And then at this point we have a minimum inter-manual intervention. But the reality is we have only one version of the truth at this time. And this is so good. Something that we expect is with more and more information try to uh uh be more efficient the system and try to obtain more benefit for the future. The next step for us is not only move to the airport in Argentina, and try to move to Armenia that has the same condition in some cases, but for me it's more important to move to other process. That this is for me very good to do. Well, thanks so much Gustavo for sharing the story. Next time I'm stuck on the runway, I hope the airport runs actually your snow agent. So, congratulations again to the whole team. Thank you so much. — It's a fan club. So, Thomas, what do you think? Main impact what you heard? — first of all, I think you should sell that app actually to all airports. That's the No, but kidding aside, I think what is striking for me when you talked about it, people are always busy, so they don't have time. But you gave them time. It's a leadership choice to go into this innovation. And then quite frankly, 12 weeks and it's there. So, it's absolutely doable today, and that's I think super exciting for everybody. So, give room for this innovation, make use of the people and the technology which is at hand today.

### Partners, RISE with SAP, and the AI platform ecosystem [24:02]

today. Thank you. Good. But even for customers who aren't keeping an airport running in a blizzard, we see a consistent pattern here. Regardless of size or industry, solid technical fundamentals are the key to moving past the hype and really unleashing the outcome from AI. And this is where our partner ecosystem comes in as well. And let me do a quick shout-out here. Our partners are here to help you transform with RISE, leveraging the RISE with SAP methodology. And they are already also building agent on our business AI platform. Over 700 have been built in Joule studio 1. 0, and yesterday you saw the next version. And we are backing them up with a $100 million investment, ensuring that when you transition to an autonomous enterprise, you have the specialized expertise and the co-innovation power available to lead in your industry. But what do you say? Should we switch gears? And uh no pun intended. — Uh quick question to the audience. Just think about, you know, what was your first car? And uh maybe what was the color of your first car? And how did it feel uh when you went to the gas station for the first time to fill it up? Just think about that. And maybe Thomas, question to you, what was your first car? A BMW. — Oh. — What should I say? — A good price with a happy customer, for sure. All right. Mine was a Daihatsu. — All right. So, our next customer literally provides the fuel for so many of those stories and memories, but also the energy that powers really our daily lives. And they are on a transformational journey that's setting a new standard for their industry. And to tell us more, please welcome on stage now the vice president of ExxonMobil Global Services, Bill Keeler. — That's a lovely coach, right? — It's a lovely coach. Yeah. It's getting

### ExxonMobil on clean core, data, and business-led transformation [26:17]

warmer and warmer, yeah. So, ExxonMobil operates at extraordinary scale. You know, and what was happening in the business that made it clear the company needed to rethink its operating model and how that simplifying processes, aligning technologies enabled that. Yeah, it's a really great question. And you're absolutely right about the scale we operate in. Everybody thinks about the gas station. And my first car was a Renault, by the way. — Not many people will know what that was in this room, but uh we do so much more, right? Truly global uh company. Not only do we have the oil and gas business, we have the plastics business, we have a lot of innovation in our products. And what we have been seeing over the last several years is our industry is one that is seeing a lot more change in its future than it's had in its past. So we've been around 150 years essentially doing the same thing very reliably, very efficiently. But you know, as the energy transition takes place, we're looking to different business models, different decisions that have to be made. And when we step back as a corporation and thought about how we would actually operate in that environment, we realized that we needed a fundamental strategic shift to become a much more nimble organization. Simplify the organizational structure within the corporation that had grown up over the years. And then once you do that, to aid the decision making, we also had to do something with our processes and absolutely with our data, which was fragmented and difficult to get and every question was a science project. Um as I'm sure some of us have shared here on the couch. Um and so that was kind of the rationale. We want to be able to get to decisions faster so we can react to the market faster and so we can pivot as we see the world evolve around us. Um and that is really why we started this transformation, business led transformation, to fundamentally revisit our processes and revisit our data. Now, we've been around a long time, 150 years, and we had been really good at building IT systems. Um and we have a long partnership with SAP. And so we had a very large installed base of SAP, which we had improved significantly with customizations. — And um I discovered earlier of week actually Jan is responsible for some of those customizations in there in the — ago. Yeah, a long time ago. — thing is that they're now gone. So, now he's helping us get rid of them. But, um yeah, I mean, that is what fundamentally drove — drove the um drove the need to do a true transformation at scale across all of ExxonMobil. Yeah, I mean, Bill, I mean, it's actually interesting when you talk about this this years of building these systems and customization. But, you also mentioned you want to become more nimble and everything, which also led when you had the clarity where the business wanted to go, a lot of focus on simplification and standardization, including all the work what you did with the processes, consistent processes, the clean core activities. How did SAP help you on that journey? Yeah, it's a really good question, Thomas. Um you know, when we thought about how are we going to go and actually attack this problem, um we were concerned that we had a lot of inbuilt um you know, knowledge, a lot of sort of anchoring in our past in the organization. And as you say, we really wanted to transform away to what we would call industry standard processes, using technology to do what it was designed to do, uh not trying to improve on it. Um and as you say, get to clean core, because at the end of the day, we're trying to future-proof our environment. And so, we want to be upgrade stable. We want to be able to take new capabilities like AI as they become, you know, established in the marketplace, and not have that be a heavy lift for us as it is in today's environment. So, thinking about our partners was a really important first step on this journey. Um SAP, as you know, we've been close partners for many decades. And it was obvious you were going to be part of this journey. We also were pleased, I think, to find that both our companies were kind of strategically aligned in the direction of travel. And so, not only were we wanting to transform our business processes, we wanted to get off a you know Exxon Mobil data center driven on prem environment to cloud based and that's when we started to talk to you about rise. We aligned on that's the direction of travel we want to go. We also wanted a really trusted partner who could hold us kind of hold the straight line to us when we began to convince ourselves that maybe we couldn't quite adopt industry standard. And so that was part of the relationship that you brought that to us. You gave us points of view on how this is done in other places and why it would work at Exxon Mobil. And then frankly, as you all know, there are some areas where there were gaps and we needed to you know we did the customizations cuz we had to. And so you know driving that product road map, I think that has been a real partnership as well. So SAP brings a very large amount to this undertaking. And you mentioned AI. Obviously lots of excitement about AI, but you've taken a very delivered approach. So maybe you can share a little bit about the role of data as a foundation and why this is so essential from your perspective before AI can really have an impact. Yeah, I mean the transformation we're doing is first and foremost about the data. Data is the asset which has been trapped. And so what we really want to do, like that I'm sure you too as well, we're really wanting to release that and we believe that it is important that we spend the time to get that foundation right. I really liked what the gentleman from JP Morgan said yesterday, completely aligned with that. If we can't get this foundation right, we will pay the price for that you know ever more. So yes, there's a lot of AI hype just now and we are doing some AI stuff, but I think that we are happy to let that carry on over here on the side a little bit. Let's get our fundamentals absolutely solid and that will put us in a really sound place, you know, clean core, upgrade stable, we will be able to take and fully leverage whatever comes down the pike. No, [clears throat] and I mean your transformation as I said at the beginning is is ginormous. It's probably pretty unique a green field approach with that kind of a complexity, but maybe finally you want to share some thoughts leadership lessons learned that you can share with the audience and some of them are certainly at the same point in time. Yeah, well, um I mean it'll be obvious to everybody in the room, but I'm actually I live in Texas. So, as we say in Texas, this is not my first rodeo. Um so, I have a few lessons I've learned over the years and we've baked into this, but you know, I would say there's kind of three things that are really important when you're taking on a massive transformation like this. One is being super clear about what your strategy is. What is the strategic intent and ensuring that your leadership across the corporation is aligned behind that. Then you need to put in place really strong governance. All right, there are lots and lots of decisions that need to be made and they quickly consistent with that strategy. And when you have thousands of people employed in the transformation, you know, that can be a problem if you don't have that governance in place. And then, you know, picking the right partners. That is really important. Picking partners who don't just see this as a job, but win-win and we can grow together through that transformation. I would say those are the fundamental things. Thanks so much Bill for sharing that here with the audience and Thomas, what's your key takeaway from the Exxon story? I mean from my side again we talk about leadership. It requires leadership to do all of that, but then think about the scale. ExxonMobil capable to standardize radically to build this foundation to really then take AI to the next level and that's actually striking to me. So, I think it's a great example of what can be done actually. And I love what you said it's because it's all about the trusted partnership which we want to establish also as part of our engagement which I think is a common theme here on this couch as well because SAP wants to be more than just a vendor because we're so central in this business operations of all these large phenomenal companies actually. Now, before actually I invite the next guest, I need to do a little change of my costume actually. — Give me 5 seconds.

### Levi Strauss & Co. on retail agility, data, and AI agents [35:00]

So. — Thank you. So, now I guess the people will already recognize how we switch gears now. So. And here, my next guest is actually the Chief Digital and Technology Officer at Levi Strauss, Jason Gowans. Welcome on stage. — So, before you two start, let me explain the audience what happened here because you're pretty known for your consistent style of clothing because you're Mr. White Shirt. And I don't think I've seen you ever wear anything else than a white shirt, certainly not a denim. — But it looks good on you. I like you you're wearing the brands of our customers. Looks great. I'm consistent. I only buy from our customers. That's my strategy. That's my procurement strategy. No, I mean as a brand I mean everybody knows Levi's, but tell us a little bit about the business and provide some context for your transformational journey. Yeah. Um we talk about Levi's being the uniform of progress, so maybe this is your new uniform. — Let's do that. Nice to be here. Um so, indeed Levi's has been around for a long time, uh 170 years in fact. Uh and for most of that time we've sold men's denim bottoms uh, to wholesale retailers, retailers like Macy's for example. Um, but over the last decade or so we've been going through a big transformation um, to one where the company is now more direct to consumer. Uh, and indeed half of the business now is direct to consumer. So, selling online uh, in stores. We have more than 3,000 stores around the world. Um, we work in more than 100 countries and more than 50,000 uh, points of distribution. And so when you want to be a world-class retailer in that kind of environment, it's really important that you can operate with speed and agility. Uh, and that's where SAP comes into play. No, love to hear that. And you mentioned it. I mean you have wholesale, you have a direct to consumer business. So, it's a quite a variety of data points with a huge supply chain for sure. Can you tell us a little bit about what you did with the data foundation to really start also the AI activities for Levi's? Yeah, I mean to be able to operate like that, it's important that we have a common data back plane to know not just how the business is performing, but where we want to take the business as well. Um, and in the beginning we actually had nine different ERP instances around the world in all those countries. And so, very complex to understand exactly how the business is performing. Um, and so one of the principles of course was that we needed that common data back plane. Um, and this idea of a clean core is something that we held true. Um, and that's something that we we've been working towards. Um, I mean you joined the journey with Rise with SAP. You talked about data and also it's certainly not a secret that you're super active on AI at Levi's. Can you tell us a little bit about the measurable outcomes and value actually you got with the activities you drive with AI? Yeah, so by now we actually have more than a thousand agents deployed throughout the company. It's a lot. Um, and it didn't happen by accident. We've been doing this now for more than 2 and 1/2 years. Um we trained more than 4,000 people at the company hands-on with AI. And what we're seeing now is a lot of these ideas starting to emerge [clears throat] and use cases emerge that we ourselves didn't anticipate. And one such example is with wholesale. So, 80% of our wholesale orders are automatic. They flow through automatically. But we work with many smaller retailers as well. And 20% of our orders are manual. PDFs, email, Excel, you can imagine. And long orders, I mean, size, color combinations, and styles. It can be a lot. And so, it can take sometimes 2 to 5 days to process an order in the past. Now with AI and with the agents that we've built on top of SAP, that process takes 20 to 30 minutes. Oh. Wow. I mean, cloud transformation typically means standardization, right? So, how do you look at the tradeoffs between the standardization but then also to preserve the agility that you need to innovate? How did you do that? Yeah, many of [clears throat] folks already talked about the importance of standardization. And we see it, too. But the reality is that involves a lot of hard conversations. A lot of willingness in country managers to change how they've always done business. But when you think about it, standardization and agility don't stand in opposition. Standardization is what allows us to move with agility. And the work that we've done with AI on top of SAP over the last year is one such example where we've moved really quickly in a short amount of time because we were standardized. I mean, it's a phenomenal story. Think about 1,000 agents already in production. But if you now think about the next 24 months ahead. If you think about what what's next, what is coming. Where do you see the biggest topics for you? Is it autonomous supply chain? Is it AI-led planning? Or do you think about how to revolutionize the customer experience with AI? What are the next plans you have on Michelle, our CEO, would probably say all of the above. So we don't get boring. — Um, but it But I think, you know, joking aside, I think that is the innovation is that AI has allowed us to do so much more than we could in the past. And we see our teams moving with so much more velocity than we ever saw before. And so, it's real. Um, we're moving quickly. We're very excited and over the next 24 months, um, as we look ahead to next year, we'll actually be complete with our S4, um, uh, implementation globally. Uh, we've got Europe left to go in, uh, some parts of, uh, Latin America. But by then, we're done. Um, and then we can really just focus on innovation from there on out. No, absolutely amazing. That's why we are looking forward to really partner together with you to really take it to the next level, uh, together. Young, if you listen to such a phenomenal AI story, what What's your perspective? Yeah, I mean, I feel, you know, tradeoffs are definitely a reality in such a transformation. But I like what you said that standardization does not mean you don't have to be at or cannot be agile. Yeah, so that that's amazing. Yeah. So, basically, what you heard are basically very different journeys in very different industries, starting actually from a very different reality.

### Common transformation lessons across industries [41:36]

Yet, there's a common thread where we talk about leadership, how businesses go boldly to the future to modernize the core, and also to move into the cloud to really get this continuous innovation, leverage these innovations to basically make their business better, but also to improve their customers' experiences. And admittedly, I mean, we heard it also. If you think about the stories, large, complex organizations, so transformation is hard. Transformation is a journey because sometimes, for sure, it's complex. You have custom code, regulatory constraints, limited resources. And we should not underestimate the cultural change in organizations to embrace these innovations. But, we are with you on that journey. And we are looking at it holistically. Because for sure we understand what that means. And that's the reason why we are making it more guided, more predictable, repeatable, and less disruptive with our capabilities. And also here again our commitment, we will continuously invest

### AI-assisted migration and modernization demo [42:31]

into you in our tooling. And that's exactly what we want to show to you. Last year, I showed you the integrated tool chain. And this year, we are taking it to the next level on steroid with AI. The agentless migration brings together seven specialized assistants across all of the project phases. And each focus on a specific part. And always one simple goal, to increase the productivity and efficiency, to reduce the cost and time for migrations. And with that, I want to hand it over to Suraj to show us a little bit how that looks like in action. Suraj, over to you. Thanks, Thomas. So, yesterday we announced the migration and modernization assistance that will help you reduce the cost and the complexity of your transformation projects leveraging agentic AI. And it all starts an engagement layer with SAP tool and tool for consulting as the central entry point. Not only as a conversational UI, but to really let you start also the agents working. And what is the one thing that you really need for a proper scoping as well as successful agents? Correct, it's the data. And that is why our agents are actually context and landscape aware. We are including public information. We are including our consultants knowledge. We include our internal documentation. And we are also leveraging all the customer contexts. So, this is the source to have really powerful agents in the end. So, let me now tell tool that I want to migrate my ECC system to S/4HANA private cloud. Jewel is immediately checking in the background which systems are in scope, and I can select the system that I want to actually migrate. I get some high-level information here about the system, but I definitely want to go deeper into that. So, I start the analysis, and Jewel lets me really choose like what are the data types that I want to include in my project. I can further now decide what are the different functional packages that I want to bring into my scope, and I can also choose the different company codes that should be migrated into our cloud system. Once I have done that, we let the system analysis assistant start. This is really the starting point for us. It scans every module, it looks into your data, customizing, it looks into your custom code. So, what has been weeks of preparation activities before can now be done uh over the weekend. So, now let us jump into cloud ALM where all the agents are coming together, and where we can manage our project centrally. So, we can see what are tasks that are pending, what are risks that we have identified, but for the demo here, we really want to check what the system analysis assistant is doing in the background, and which other assistants are actually now prepared to execute this migration. We have a data management assistant that is identifying the inconsistencies in your data, is giving you a proper root cause analysis, giving you solution proposals, and actually an agent that is correcting the data issues that you have. Together with Jewel for developers, our custom code assistant will not only adapt your custom code to make it executable on S/4, we will also bring you to the clean core. We are leveraging agents that can understand your custom code semantically, map it to standard, and give you guidance on which standard can replace your custom functionality, or how you can extend the standard processes in a clean core compliant way. The configuration assistant is leveraging best practices, scoping information, and your very own requirements, so you can pre-configure your S/4HANA system. The test management assistant is leveraging also Signavio process information, again your very individual requirements, and your user stories. It helps you to automate your test preparation, your test scoping, and also your test case creation. The rollout assistant plans the path across the finish line. So, it will help you speed up and paralyze your rollout for every market, for every region, for every plant you want to go into. And the project management assistant is the intelligence layer. For the people that are running the project, it guides you through the relevant tasks at the right time, and identifies risks before they become issues. So, the system becomes the single source of truth for project progress. This is really orchestrated intelligence. It's not seven assistants running individually. So, let this swarm of AI assistants take over the manual, the redundant, the low outcome task, while your experts can focus on what really matters. And this is creating business value for your business. Thank you. —

### Customer rapid-fire insights on enterprise technology [47:46]

— I mean, thank you so much, and I guess you see how we also transform ourselves to help you with the transformation. But, let's bring it now a little bit back to the couch, and actually a rapid fire question to all of you. What excites you most actually with enterprise tech these days? Let's start with you, Jason. I mean doing it a long time, but I'm very excited about just the pace that we can attack all the problems that we never used to be able to get to. Change at scale. The challenge of managing amazing speed of change. What I'm most excited about is like the role of the CIO is moving from an IT provider to a business partner and with a front row seat at what's about to come and it's very exciting. Exciting answers. One more question. What would you What's the one thing you would tell your peers that tell you this is all very hard to do? It's very hard to do. Yes. I would absolutely agree with that. I think if it's hard and complex then you're probably doing it right and the sooner you start the better. Yeah, it's hard, but this is the reason because the company is asking to do it. It's incredibly hard. — Pick your team well. Yes. Nice one. Yeah, it's hard. It's not that hard though. You don't get to be 170 years old standing still. So I would say keep evolving. Awesome. Good. Well, thanks so much everybody for being here today with us on the couch sharing some of those stories with the audience. Great to have you. Thank you. —

### Closing: AI, enterprise software, and the future of business [49:36]

— So those were amazing stories, but we're not entirely done yet. We do have one more thing and I do want you to think again about one more thing. If you think in your head what is a device or maybe a technology that wasn't even invented when you guys went to high school. Think about it. If you want to call some out, don't only say iPhone. — What a AI. AI is a good one. What else? Virtual phone. — Very good. I think there's lots of examples, lots of technologies, uh and many of those technologies they obviously were highly disruptive. And some of them they created new industries and a new business models and new revenue streams as well. And there were many people uh at the beginning that made predictions that at the end turned out to be completely off. Instead, typically something very different emerged. And there's a big lesson in that from my perspective. Think about consumer video cameras. When they came out, people would predict it would make movie making so cheap that the film industry would get under a lot of pressure. But ever since, if you look at Hollywood today, it's a multi-billion dollar industry. Films uh filmmaking is still very expensive and Hollywood continues to shape the culture around the world. But eventually those cameras they gave way to the cameras we all carry now in our pockets, in our smartphones, and that again gave way to platforms like YouTube and Instagram and so many other platforms and job categories that nobody could have imagined when cameras were invented in the first place. And I think that's a lesson as well. So with every technology wave, there is fear. And every time it turned out in history that the world was better off than before. More jobs, more wealth was created. So the internet did not replace businesses. It became really the foundation for them. The cloud did not limit choice. It expanded it and allowed for continuous innovation. And enterprise software won't go away. It's becoming more essential now because of AI. Because some things won't change. Because companies, they need systems that work. They need people that care, and they need teams that collaborate. So AI will not replace software. It will live inside it. Embedded into the business processes that run the autonomous enterprise and make sure that also in the future nobody has to wake up in the morning wondering if the world is still running. So the world actually doesn't break because of change. It breaks when the change moves faster than your own agility and resilience. And that's where SAP comes in, at the core, in the moments that matter, in the where the system simply need to run. Because in the end, it comes back to one simple idea from earlier. Most people wake up trusting that the world runs. Light turns on, planes land, hospitals run, supply chains deliver. But not by chance, but because millions of processes work in sync. And as the world changes faster than ever, that trust matters more than ever. So as the next disruption comes, and for sure it will, here's what will not change. SAP will be there. We are in this together. When regulations change, we adapt with you. When conditions become volatile, we help you stay resilient. At SAP Sapphire, we talk a lot about technology, but also let me make this a little bit more human. Because in the end, software is a people business. Because every line of code, every algorithm, every transformation starts with people who care. Yes, AI is accelerating what's possible. But it's not just about what technology can do. It's about who builds it, who runs it, who trusts it. Technology may accelerate what we achieve, but it's our humanity that gives it meaning. And that belief shapes everything what we do at SAP. We don't just deliver technology, we help turn complexity into clarity. We don't just respond to disruption, we help to stay ahead of it. We don't just enable transformation, we are at your side every single step of the journey. Because progress doesn't come from standing still, it comes from moving forward together. So tomorrow morning when the world simply runs again, that's nothing to take for granted. That's something we all built here together. And the future is not written by AI, it's written by us. Thank you very much. —