Innovations should be encouraged

Innovations should be encouraged

In the digital economy, co-operation and innovation are key foundations for a successful business. To successfully manage today's business challenges and build a successful business in the future, SAP believes in collaboration between established companies that are in the process of digital transformation and small, innovative and fast-moving companies start-up’s full new ideas.

"Thanks to our state-of-the-art technology and investment in the development of new technology, with which we can create new business values, we have a link between these two worlds. Since the digital world has no boundaries we offer global collaboration on all levels of cooperation", said Tina Vidergar, Integrated communication Central Eastern Europe, SAP.

How SAP connects and helps startups?

Cooperation and co-innovation are the core principals of successful business in the digital economy. To successfully manage today’s business challenges and build the successful business in the future, we believe in cooperation between established companies, who are on the path of digital transformation, and small, innovative, fast and full of new ideas companies and start-ups. We are the connection between the two worlds with our cutting-edge technology and investments in the development of new technology, with which new business values can be unlocked. Since the digital world does have no boundaries, we offer all the cooperation on the global level.

We give our cutting-edge technology for free, for all start-ups that would be interested building amazing enterprise applications, we opened an early stage accelerators, and we invest in new technology through our Sapphire Ventures, SAP will plow $700 million into startups and $300 million indirectly via stakes in a dozen venture firms worldwide.

Startup Focus - Is a global Accelerator for Tech Start-ups in the areas of Big Data, IoT, predictive and real-time analytics Space (Augmented reality/Virtual reality; machine learning, artificial intelligence, mobile, etc.). Since its beginning in 2012, more than 5500 start-ups joined the program are working on or with SAP HANA and SAP Cloud Platform technology. Joining Start-Up Focus gives start-ups immediate access to cutting Edge technology SAP HANA and SAP Cloud Platform, access a network of hundreds of investors and Influencers and help with acceleration of Market traction. As an example, one of the fastest growing German companies - Celonis started in Start-Up Focus and is now a crucial part of SAP, selling the product to all SAP customer database. *SAP Process Mining on SAP HANA by Celonis helps organizations improve their bottom line and increase the efficiency of core business processes.

SAP.iO

SAP.iO, an open innovation model, which enables innovators both inside and outside SAP to use the power of SAP data, application programming interfaces (APIs) and platform technologies to unlock new value for customers. As part of the model, SAP.iO Fund, seeded with an initial investment of US$35 million, to make early-stage investments in software startups that will expand the SAP ecosystem.

SAP IoT accelerator

The SAP IoT Startup Accelerator is a globally accessible co-innovation program for selected B2B startups that are innovating in the world of the Internet of Things. The Accelerator helps startups grow and scale their business alongside SAP, our vast partner ecosystem, and a global customer base. SAP announced in 2016 an investment of 2 billion euros in IoT by 2020.

What is Innovmatch?

InnovMatch is an innovative approach to tackle today’s business challenges. InnovMatch aims to enable innovative companies, start-ups, developers, entrepreneurs and students from around Central and Eastern Europe to tackle specific business challenges, and by using SAP Cloud Platform, helps them unlock new business value for customers. Established companies from different industries and different CEE countries decided to participate in the project and have presented their business challenges that need to be solved for them to run their business together. We see the project as a great connection between established businesses, innovative entrepreneurs, and startups, through our cutting-edge technology and together we can build the intelligent business together.

Is overall focus on startups slowing down the development of software industry, since today everyone is a startup?

The software industry is changing fast and this year on SAPPHIRE; SAP biggest event for customers, we discussed that era of standardizing business software, which SAP was leading for four decades, has changed. Business needs are driving the change, and we need to adopt to the needs of the digital economy. 45 years ago, five developers in an established company had a great idea how to help run the business better and so and the idea became a „startup, “ and it grew into SAP, one of the biggest software companies. Since beginning innovation was the driving force behind SAP growth, so we still innovate, and we strongly support the development of all innovative ideas, coming from all sides, for that we are opened and give many different options for young, entrepreneurial thinkers, that would like to build smart apps and step into the business.

How is InnovMatch different from other competitions for start-ups?

The essence of Innovmatch is its vision of Building Intelligent Business Together. This is a project that aims to connect established the business; well know companies from CEE like Atlantic Grupa, Sportina, Selgros, Eurocash, GoodAI and innovative community of students, start-ups, entrepreneurs, developers through SAP Cloud Platform. We are looking for ideas that can best solve already existing business needs and with that, all parties in the project can grow their business.

At the same time, we also invite all start-ups that would like to use the power of SAP Cloud Platform and get into the business to present their ideas. The project is opened to all innovative ideas that can help the business run better.

Do you think that these competitions are actually a way how to “buy“ and buy ideas that have not yet become a company?

We are running several „competitions,“ with different aims. Our Startup Focus is looking for best start-ups building industry-specific solutions on SAP HANA, SAP.iO is looking for best machine learning and artificial intelligence ideas to help them grow and to integrate in the overall development of this specific field and with InnovMatch we are looking best solutions for the existing business needs, by using SAP Cloud Platform.

There is a very specific goal behind each of our initiatives and also applicants joining our programs have very specific goals - some need the technology to boost their business idea, some need the capital to boost their business idea, some would like to build upon already existing SAP applications and partner with SAP on a long run and some are helping change the business models by introducing totally new perspectives.

We believe that this kind of „competitions“ are aimed to bring together the best from all worlds and to help find the new ways how to build and run business in the future.

What is the focus of this year InnoMatch?

The overall focus is the same as SAP strategic focus - Build Intelligent Business Together.

We want to connect the established companies, with their very specific business needs. Innovative community and our technology. Between the three we believe that any business need can be solved and it can be solved in a way that all participating parties have great benefits out of it joining this different approach.

What has been accomplished up till now?

In the past two years, we have invited start-ups to present their ideas and build them on SAP Cloud platform. This year we evolved the project and we have also invited our clients, established companies from around CEE to participate. We are looking forward to this year Match.

In the past two years, we had more than 60 applications, some were just in idea phase and some with very well developed applications/solutions.

Last year the winner was e_Vineyard from Slovenia, a vineyard management system. The guys have developed the application, used the potential of SAP Cloud Platform, especially the ioT module and are offering the final product to the market. They visited our premises at SAP Palo Alto, discussed the technology and also the go-to-market with our experts. We are continuing the conversations how to include them into some of SAP global projects, such as Connected Agriculture and Startup Focus program.

The company that won the first year Shop UP from Bulgaria, the application offering in-store and customer metrics to help its clients be more effective. The guys were presenting their application on SAP Global retail Summit and are a part of Startup Focus program.

Some of the companies that were attending our competition have built extensions of SAP solutions and can offer them to our customer base and some of the companies have decided to become SAP partners.

The opportunities arising from the Match are numerous, and we are open for all, as long we are supporting our vision of Building Intelligent Business Together.