Key Announcements and Insights from SAP Sapphire 2025

The Bramasol team concurs with nearly everyone we engaged with in Orlando that this was one of the most well-attended and productive SAP Sapphire events in recent years. Beyond the significant announcements from SAP, our conversations with companies across various industries revealed a growing excitement about the potential for change and a readiness to embark on the next steps.

SAP-Sapphire-portal

SAP Sapphire 2025 was packed with major announcements, particularly around AI and cloud ERP. Here are some of the key highlights:

Expansion of SAP AI Solutions and Capabilities

AI once again took center stage with the announcement of SAP AI Foundation, an operating system for SAP Business AI, along with an expanded library of AI agents. AI Foundation forms the backbone of SAP’s AI technologies and provides comprehensive developer tools to build, extend, and run custom AI solutions at scale—all within one seamlessly unified system.

Also, the omnipresent Joule copilot was expanded to support users across a widening range of SAP applications. Joule helps SAP’s cloud users work faster, get instant insights, and achieve better outcomes by simply asking questions or telling the system what to do in natural language. New Joule capabilities were announced for consultants and developers, aiming to accelerate SAP project implementations and ABAP development, respectively.

From a strategic partnering standpoint, SAP introduced SAP Business Suite Acceleration Program with Microsoft Cloud, which provides customers with a smooth path to next-generation SAP Cloud ERP solutions delivered through the global partner ecosystem. Also, expanded partnerships with Google Cloud and NVIDIA were announced, focusing on areas like AI-powered supply chains and digital twin technologies.

SAP AI Foundation

The entire Bramasol team is excited about working closely with SAP to bring frontline AI capabilities into many of the Office of the CFO, finance, compliance, quote-to-cash, procure-to-pay, and other focus areas for our clients across multiple industry segments.

Acceleration of SAP Cloud ERP Capabilities

The continued evolution of SAP S/4HANA Cloud ERP (formerly called "Public" version) is accelerating with widespread adoption by both large and mid-size companies. Following the introduction of SAP Business Suite in February 2025, companies have more tools for aligning their implementations with line of business applications. New Business Suite Packages provide fast-track implementation for areas such as finance, supply chain, operations, human resources, procurement and sales. Each package offers built-in integration and intelligence, with the option to add more features as needed.

For companies that opt to maintain an on-premises strategy with SAP Cloud ERP Private Edition, SAP also announced updates to its RISE with SAP support services, which follow a methodology for adopting SAP Business Suite applications. This gives enterprises an opportunity to tailor cloud ERP software to optimize operations, while retaining company-specific configurations and customizations and accessing capabilities that offer a competitive edge. Leveraging RISE with SAP enables a streamlined implementation that  starts fresh with SAP Cloud ERP by using a hybrid approach to modernize SAP Cloud ERP Private package offerings and other Business Suite packages and solutions.

SAP Cloud ERP

The combination of SAP applications, SAP S/4HANA Cloud ERP, SAP Business Suite, SAP Data Cloud, and SAP AI solutions provide what SAP CEO Christian Klein refers to as a "flywheel effect" that brings multiple elements together to create new forward energy. This synergy of applications, context-aware data, and ubiquitous AI capabilities works in concert to help companies power through uncertainties, such as macroeconomic issues, by assuring alignment of all assets and actions. 

Enhanced Quote-to-Cash, Subscriptions, and Compliance Solutions

From Bramasol's perspective, we were very excited to see an unprecedented level of interest in how SAP Cloud ERP and all the new announcements are creating a clear and tangible path forward for transforming the key application areas that have always been in our wheelhouse. As with the overall "flywheel effect" SAP Cloud ERP momentum is driving a whole range of new opportunities such as:

  • Building out and scaling Quote-to-Cash, Procure-to-Pay, and Subscription models
  • Tackling new Revenue Recognition and Compliance challenges
  • Unlocking value through Contract & Lease Management
  • Rapidly implementing unified quote-to-cash-compliance processes in SAP Cloud ERP
  • Simplifying finance innovation with SAP Business Technology Platform

Throughout dozens of meetings with business executives, finance and technology leaders from many different industries, the Bramasol team saw an extraordinary level of eagerness and readiness to put new solutions to work in transforming various aspects of their finance-related business workflows. It is clear that the flywheel is turning and gaining steam for forward-looking organizations to act now and reap the benefits sooner rather than later.

Bramasol-at-Sapphire-1

This trend also was exemplified by the overflow crowd that attended Bramasol's exclusive roundtable event on Tuesday night at Sapphire. The level of excitement was palpable and the interactions between attendees centered around sharing the successes many of them are already seeing from leveraging SAP Cloud ERP and related SAP solutions!

Bottom Line

Sapphire 2025 clearly demonstrated that we have now entered the "action phase" of business transformation, with cloud-based advantages, unified data, streamlined operations, and embedded AI as an accelerant. It's also becoming clear that those companies that don't move quickly are at risk of falling behind.

The time for choosing is now. Which group are you in?

Check out these resources to learn more:

 

About the author

David Fellers

Dave is CEO of Bramasol. After joining the company in 2007 as VP of Professional Services, he became CEO in 2011 and has led the company through record-setting growth and revenues highlighted by a successful re-focusing on serving the Office of the CFO. By building a deep and broad consulting practice that leverages our Comply, Optimize, Transform™ disciplines and a track record of co-innovation with SAP, Dave has positioned Bramasol as the go-to partner for clients that are looking to move into the Digital Solutions Economy and/or to leverage the Digital Transformation of finance using SAP S/4HANA.