Salvatore Lombardo’s Post

Back in Germany and super inspired after 3 amazing days at the World Procurement Congress in London.  Tuesday, we hit the ground running with the AI Forum, co-hosted with our valued partner, scoutbee. It was a day filled with engaging discussions with customers and partners, and I had a blast with Jim Ridgwick, Robin Zhang, and Gregor Stühler on stage for the keynote panel discussion. Next up on Wednesday, I joined Elena Parker and Nikolaus Kirner for a CPO roundtable discussion on the impact of supplier partnerships on the procurement function. Thanks to you both so much, as well as to all participants, for this exciting exchange. But I have to say that my personal highlight was Thursday. It was an absolute honor to discuss resiliency in procurement with Carol Danoff and Rajat Sarna on the headline stage and then take the discussion to the Broadcast Center for a recap with Gordon Donovan. And we wrapped up this amazing event with the WPC Awards Dinner 2024. A huge congratulations to all award winners and nominees, especially, Marcos Eloi Lima, winner of the SAP Ariba Ariba CPO of the Year Award! 🏆 This event is so incredibly important for the procurement profession and how incredibly honored I am to take part. The insights gained are invaluable. 💡 A huge thank you to Procurement Leaders | A World 50 Group Community for hosting this incredible event. Nandini Basuthakur Ceyda Djemal Palmer Niko Nurmi David Rae Ian Lawless. And of course, my immense gratitude to the entire #SAPAribaDreamTeam for making our presence at the event so great.  🙏 Linda Löffler Jessica Hagen Andrea Heine Corinna Schumacher Anita Weber Baber Farooq Jeff Collier Ramkumar Jeyachandran Ellen Förster Martyn Rose Peta Duncan Ryan Semmel Hildie Smart Mo Ahmad Lisa Harding Kathryn Ferguson Stephan Tremel   Already looking forward to next year! #SAPAriba #EasierThanEver #ProcurementLeaders #WPC2024

What better way to kick off #WPC2024 than with engaging discussions, exciting presentations, and extremely valuable insights! It was an absolute honor to co-host the WPC AI Forum with our super valued partner scoutbee!   After a few opening words to set the stage, we were off and running with a fantastic keynote panel discussion with Jim Ridgwick, Robin Zhang, Gregor Stühler (CEO and Co-Founder of Scoutbee), and myself. We shared hands-on ideas for organizations that are looking to get started with #GenAI across various industries, as well as how to get the most value out of a variety of use cases.   A series of roundtable discussions followed, where we had a blast meeting with some of our customers to discuss their daily challenges and what it's like to work with SAP. Some key takeaways from the day: ✅ Find the use case you want to solve first and then see if there is a solution out there to solve it. ✅ Pilot as many AI solutions as you have capacity for to determine which ones provide the greatest benefit. ✅If you have not yet identified your use cases, you are almost too late.    Can hardly wait to see what the World Procurement Congress has in store for us over the next few days. Thank you again to Scoutbee, Save the Children International, Unilever, and everyone who made this incredible day possible! Linda Löffler Corinna Schumacher Hildie Smart Niko Nurmi Roger Blumberg Paul Hopton Cinda Amyx, MBA/Pre-Doc Norbert Wessendorf    #SAP #SAPAriba #GenAI #PLWPC

The key to achieving strategic sourcing excellence? 🔑 A strong sourcing strategy to help you stay competitive with #SAPAriba! 💡  With the guided sourcing capability for #SAPAriba we are making it #EasierThanEver for you to streamline and automate sourcing processes to help you stay one step ahead in today’s highly volatile business environment. The improved user interface, embedded analytics, cross-product integrations, and enhanced capabilities via integration with partner applications are just a few of the main benefits.   Leveraging the power of guided sourcing can help your organization experience greater control and transparency in procurement operations, which can lead to increased profitability and better business outcomes.   Find out more in my blog below!   #SAP #SAPAriba #ProcurementLeaders #EasierThanEver

Customer feedback is a major catalyst for driving innovation forward in #SAPAriba 🚀   Feeling super inspired after two back-to-back trips filled with engaging conversations with some of our most strategic customers.   First stop: #ISBN Customer Advisory Board. What a fantastic nearly two full days dedicated to intense product discussions, sharing the stage with our future board member for SAP Product Engineering, Muhammad Alam, Jeff Collier, Etosha Thurman, Joern Keller Fred Fredericks Deanna Freise Andy Wright III and with our customers from all over the world! It was great to see a few familiar faces, as well as getting to know some new ones. Was so, so great getting dedicated feedback on #SAPAriba innovations as well as on our overall #ISBN strategy and #GenAI topics.   After a brief stop back in Walldorf, it was off to London for #SAPSpendConnectInnovationDay UKI. First, we kicked things off with a super engaging CPO Dinner. And on the next day, it was absolutely my pleasure to share the stage with Etosha, Ellie Lamey, Mo Ahmad, and Ian Ronayne to share insights on our #SAPAriba Product Innovation Roadmap and strategy with the customers in the region, as well as holding discussions in smaller rounds with CPOs and partners from the region, including RWS Group, EcoVadis, and Accenture. Also enjoyed so much hearing Dame Kelly Holmes closing keynote, “The Olympic Mindset.”   A huge, huge thank you to all of our customers and partners who took part in both of these amazing events! Can’t wait to share the insights with the #SAPAribaDreamTeam as we continue to develop and improve our solutions. Looking forward to seeing you at our next events and sharing updates and progress!   And a mega shout out to the orga teams for both events for making these valuable face-to-face meetings with our customers possible!   Linda Löffler Jessica Hagen Tahir Virk Amy Terry Camilla Lindgren Peta Duncan Rob Hall Mandeep Pangali Alice Johnson Matt Jarvis Gerard Orrock Beroe Inc excelerateds2p Keelvar scoutbee RapidRatings apsolut Group SapienceS2P Zip

Mega excited hearing all the latest buzz 🐝around the partnership between SAP and scoutbee! Scoutbee Discovery is Now an SAP Endorsed App available on the SAP Store.   This is a huge step forward when it comes to embedding #AI in #procurement processes and to supporting our customers in making data-driven decisions and improve efficiency. Congratulations to Gregor Stühler, Vikram Pathak, and teams for this great achievement! Really looking forward to our continued partnership and teamwork!   #SAPAriba #EasierThanEver #ProcurementLeaders #BusinessAI  

Easier Than Ever. Three small words. One big promise.   Regardless of industry or geography, we are all facing the same challenges – increase time to value, changing governmental regulations, socio-political events, and digitalization, just to name few. To overcome these challenges, organizations need solid source-to-pay processes and a strong experienced partner who understands their requirements and offers the tools and actionable data that support their teams to be successful in today’s volatile business environment.   This is where SAP Ariba comes in. #SAPAriba is the future of #procurement, and everything procurement at SAP is now SAP Ariba. And it is our pledge to make our customers’ business lives #EasierThanEver. How? With a full suite of enterprise-level functionality spanning the entire source-to-pay process. With GenAI and embedded analytics. With an even more intuitive user interface.   For 2024 and beyond, our strategy is simple: Continue to deliver solutions and innovations that outpace the competition across the entire source-to-pay process and that support our customers to overcome their most important business challenges. I am so excited to be on this journey with all of you.   Read more about where we’re headed in my latest article, co-authored by my outstanding colleague and friend Baber Farooq. Etosha Thurman Jeff Collier Muhammad Alam #SAPAriba #S4HANA #EasierThanEver #ProcurementLeaders