Sapphire 2025 Wrap-up: A New Era of Intelligent Change Management

It’s that time again when we look back on SAP’s flagship annual event, this year taking place in Orlando from May 19-21 and Madrid from May 26-28. But this year, the Basis Technologies team took SAP Sapphire by storm in a whole new way. Our center-stage involvement contributed to what we’d consider to be the clear takeaway from this year’s event: a new age of intelligent, technology-enabled change management has arrived.

Transformation Like Never Before

Once an ambition, now a foundation, AI unsurprisingly made a prominent appearance at this year’s Sapphire event. SAP’s AI-powered assistant, Joule, and its surrounding ecosystem showed that Agentic AI and the ability for systems to act autonomously and intelligently is no longer aspirational.

As SAP CEO Christian Klein said on stage, “SAP is making business AI real.”

Where AI truly showed its true, tangible value was in discussions around the new age of business transformation.

Previously, where transformation evoked concepts of lengthy, complex and expensive undertakings, today this model is shifting.

We’re witnessing first-hand as transformation-as-a-service (RISE with SAP) becomes a reality. This is where third-party providers help organizations manage transformation initiatives – enabling intelligent transformation without the need for extensive internal resources.

Rather than release another set of tools to an already saturated market, SAP announced their updated Integrated Toolchain – a strategic combination of SAP tools and SAP Partner solutions to support every phase of transformation.

The toolchain demo at Sapphire Orlando showed end-to-end smart transformation automation that was unthinkable just 12 months ago.

Thomas Saueressig explained that the new updates to the integrated toolchain – including Klario, Joule, Signavio, LeanIX, and Walk Me – will accelerate time-to-value, lower transformation costs, and increase business agility.

Klario Announcement

SAP’s integrated toolchain demo included Klario – our new Intelligent Change Management (ICM) solution for companies using SAP Cloud ALM.

Klario uses AI to surface insights and build blueprints based on the real-world implementations of the SAP community – so you never have to start from a blank page again.

What Is Intelligent Change Management? Learn about the new, smart approach to managing SAP change that unlocks continuous competitive advantage.

Basis Technologies CEO, Martin Metcalf, celebrates this landmark announcement: “Klario marks a new era in how SAP change is run – intelligently, confidently and at scale.”

As the pace of innovation accelerates and more enterprises move to the cloud, Klario helps organizations accelerate change, gain expertise and drive more transparent decision making.

Other SAP Announcements

We’ve included a few other exciting announcements to come out of Sapphire this year – which is by no means an exhaustive list.

Expansion of Joule Agents

SAP’s new Joule Studio is a hub of AI agents that can anticipate, adapt, and act across core business functions – including supply chain, finance, and customer experience. Some examples of the agents are the quote creation agent that turns email inquiries into ready-to-send business quotes, and a catalog optimization agent that automates product data management to help improve merchandising.

Learn more

SAP’s AI Foundation

As the first operating system for Business AI, SAP’s AI Foundation is made up of three main components:

1. Joule Studio for building custom agents via low-code, no-code tools

2. Knowledge Graph, a new multi-model engine for SAP HANA Cloud platform that allows businesses to connect and analyze information more effectively

3. AI Hub which centralizes oversight and governance of AI use cases

Learn more

Cloud success plans

As part of SAP’s drive to encourage customers to migrate to Cloud ALM, the company launched a new customer engagement model with three Success Plans:

1. Foundational – extends the support that comes with every cloud license subscription

2. Advanced – offers greater ongoing guidance, services and solution access, with a pledge to help customers move to the cloud with a Clean Core

3. Max – tailors its approach to each business, guiding complex enterprise-wide transformations with all the benefits of the other packages

Learn more

AI-led support tools

SAP also introduced AI-led support tools to help businesses maximize existing investments. This includes:

• An AI-enhanced SAP MaxAttention service
• A Joule activation service for faster AI deployment
• A forthcoming AI management system certification

SAP also plans to launch an AI Customer Center of Expertise by July 2025 to foster ongoing adoption.

The Importance of a Clean Core

This functionality comes at an all-important time, as Basis Technologies CTO, David Lees, reflects on Clean Core being a prominent topic of conversation in both Orlando and Madrid.

“Clean Core isn’t theory anymore, it’s urgent. Companies that get Clean Core right have one thing in common: they start small, they measure everything and they learn fast.”

Many enterprises now understand the need for Clean Core, but most don’t know where to start. To learn how to build a Clean Core strategy in 7 steps, read our latest eBook here.

There’s Still Work to Be Done

It’s clear there are still foundational challenges that can hold back progress for organizations across change management. These include dual maintenance strategies, global template decisions, and target landscape design.

Three priorities came up in our conversations at Sapphire to help resolve these challenges:

1. Audit your custom code – some of it adds no value and may delay transformation

2. Establish change governance early before it’s urgent

3. Build your business case on business outcomes, not technical specs