SAPHILA 2025: Transforming the Future with AI, Data, and Applications

Sun City – While the business challenges we encounter are consistent, the landscape of opportunities has shifted dramatically due to the rise of artificial intelligence (AI).

The pace of transformation has accelerated, placing AI as the third significant wave of technological innovation after personal computers and the internet.

This perspective was shared by Timo Elliott, Vice President and Global Innovation Evangelist at SAP, during his address at SAPHILA 2025, the leading biennial SAP user conference hosted by the African SAP User Group (AFSUG) at Sun City, South Africa’s North West Province.

In his keynote, Elliott discussed the rapidly evolving technological landscape driven by AI’s deeper integration.

“AI holds immense potential, but if mishandled, it can lead to unforeseen consequences,” he cautioned.

“Imminent rapid technological change and disruption are inevitable for your business; this trend will not be reversed.

“We need AI to accelerate innovation, and at SAP—where we’ve been harnessing AI for quite some time—we aim to be integral to your innovation strategy.”

Elliott likened the early handcrafted motor vehicles to modern technology, underscoring the need to utilize AI to advance toward more efficient assembly lines.

“At SAP, our mission is to empower you to build the proverbial cars,” Elliott declared.

“In this regard, the SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) is foundational for SAP innovation, integrating the capabilities of AI.”

SAP BTP is a multi-cloud platform that provides users with generative AI-driven development, automation, integration, data, and analytics across both SAP and non-SAP applications.

Elliott explained that SAP BTP serves as the cornerstone for SAP innovation, connecting transactional systems to generate transformational insights, which facilitate the emergence of AI agent systems:

• Transactional systems: For over 50 years, SAP has interconnected and optimized key business processes with unmatched applications and a technology platform that generates rich semantic data, driving the global economy.
• Transformational insights: By centralizing unparalleled data from both SAP and non-SAP sources into a single semantic layer, SAP uncovers insights, advanced analytics, and AI functionalities that empower businesses to promote intelligent growth and innovation.
• Systems of AI agents: Utilizing accurate data from diverse sources, SAP’s exceptional AI agents offer a collaborative edge, maximizing integrated data to enable smarter decisions and transformative results.

Elliott elaborated: “The challenges we face revolve around time, skills, and resources needed to fully utilize this technology.

“For instance, in SAP Build, we provide a tool designed for agile application development and customization that, simply put, significantly enhances innovation.

“However, SAP Build is not exclusively for multinational companies facing global challenges.”

He shared how Swiss non-profit organization Essen für Alle (Food for All) utilized SAP Build to combat food waste by redistributing surplus food to those in need.

Thanks to SAP Build, Essen für Alle managed to release 18 tons of food essentials weekly, distribute 85,000 food packages each week, and coordinate volunteer shifts for 10,000 individuals to ensure efficient processes.

“Essen für Alle leveraged SAP Build to create their own application and offer hope to the hungry through a more sustainable approach,” Elliott noted.

“This underscores how effectively leveraging technology allowed them to expedite results by having the tech manage much of the workload.”

Elliott then presented another case from a larger corporation—National Grid Group, which delivers electricity, natural gas, and clean energy across the UK and the US, serving over 20 million customers. They utilized SAP BTP to streamline their data transformation.

“National Grid implemented SAP technology to understand their data, ensuring it reaches the appropriate stakeholders promptly across more than 250 interfaces in both the UK and the US, all in alignment with the company’s FY26 objectives.

By FY27, SAP technology will be integrated across over 400 interfaces in the US as part of their Next GenERP initiative.

“Moreover, master data updates will be forwarded to multiple downstream applications while generative AI will assist with technical summaries, knowledge articles, and much more,” Elliott emphasized.

“This enables users to interact with Generative AI as if conversing with a highly knowledgeable expert in technology.

“The SAP BTP enhances and optimizes the technology itself.”

He asserted that SAP BTP establishes the AI foundation for a generative AI hub.

This hub encompasses everything a customer needs for orchestrating custom AI, including a wide range of models, grounding, data masking, filtering, prompt management, and lifecycle management—all seamlessly integrated within the platform.

“Everything is embedded within the platform,” asserted Elliott.

“This empowers users to leverage AI for enhancing efficiency and discovering or developing new products.

“I can seek the information I need as though I’m engaging with a highly informed salesperson or engineer using natural language.”

He cited more examples from various sectors, including HVAC, supply chain management, oil and gas, and beverages, demonstrating how SAP technology can cut the time and costs associated with root cause analysis by up to 90%, resulting in an annual productivity savings of 3,120 hours.

“This is making the impossible possible,” Elliott proclaimed.

“Thanks to AI’s capabilities, we are achieving results that were previously unreachable, such as using generative AI to optimize volume/margin trade-offs.

“It’s becoming increasingly proactive, able to identify price-elasticity curves and provide recommendations as a self-improving system, thus reducing costs by eliminating redundant systems.

“By diminishing manual tasks, you enable your analysts to concentrate on strategic activities.”

“Today, AI is like a manual staircase; however, in the future, it will evolve into an escalator, aiding you seamlessly in reaching the next level.

“It’s essential to invest in a robust business cloud platform to fully harness the forthcoming major wave of innovation—you want to ride it rather than be swept away.”