SAP TechEd remains the premier global conference for developers and consultants. However, it is also a critical time for all leaders across industries to review and refresh their digital strategy. The announcements made here, particularly regarding AI, architecture, and data, demonstrate the technological capabilities, required resource investment, and assess the future risks in your SAP landscape.
SAP TechEd, hosted from November 4 to 6, 2025, in Berlin, Germany, is also available as a virtual event.
The core message from the opening session, “Welcome to SAP TechEd (OPN102v)”, is expected to set the strategic tone: “AI, clean core, data, and agents are changing enterprise tech.”
I will review some of the key sessions and takeaways to extract the strategic angles businesses should prioritize.
1. AI & UX: The Mandate for Pervasive Productivity and the Agent Economy
The Strategic Question: How quickly can we embed AI into the daily work to drive measurable productivity gains for employees and automate complex workflows?
The fundamental shift in enterprise technology is moving from passive systems to AI-driven execution. Organizations should view this not as a feature update, but as a mandatory new layer of productivity. The keynotes, including “Draft day for developers: Turning new technology into real-world wins (KEY101v)”, confirm that the developer’s role is shifting toward implementing AI for business outcomes.
Gaining Personalized User Experiences (UX)
Companies can expect to gain a critical strategy for modernizing employee experiences. The session “AI and the future of product and user experience on the web and mobile (ST112v)” will offer insights into how the Joule copilot and embedded AI are transforming UX across devices. This transformation is designed to provide employees with personalized, context-aware assistance, leading to reduced training time, fewer errors, and increased user adoption across the SAP suite. Based on the insights, businesses can plan for a transition from Fiori apps to a unified, conversational interface powered by Joule.
Gaining Foundational AI Assurance and Agent Strategy
The session “Power up and accelerate your business with SAP’s AI operating system (ST120v)” will assure organizations of a secure, enterprise-grade AI foundation. Businesses will gain clarity on SAP’s investment in core AI infrastructure, including LLM integration, prompt optimization, and data grounding. This is critical for delivering reliable, responsible AI at scale. Furthermore, this foundation enables Joule Agents based autonomous systems that coordinate across business functions (like Finance and Supply Chain) to execute complex, end-to-end workflows. Companies can then allocate resources to designing and governing these new “intelligent teammates.”
Gaining a Talent Strategy Refresh
Keynotes like “Beyond the hype: How SAP is supercharging developers for what’s next (KEY100v)” directly address the talent crisis. Companies can expect to understand how SAP’s tools, agents, and learning programs enable the current team to adapt to the new AI-driven landscape, mitigating the risks of a technological skills shortage. This signals that investment in reskilling, AI fluency, and the adoption of fusion development models (low-code/pro-code) is a high-priority budget item, as the demand for developers who can build extensions on SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) grows rapidly.
2. BTP & Clean Core: The Engine for Continuous Innovation and TCO Reduction
The Strategic Question: Is our foundational technology platform clearly defined and positioned to integrate AI, data, and extensions, effectively while minimizing technical debt?
The core tenet of SAP’s long-term strategy is the shift to a Composable ERP architecture. The SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) is the designated innovation backbone that secures and enables the future-readiness of technology investments.
Gaining Architectural Clarity
From the “Understanding our strategy for SAP BTP: The big picture (ST126v)” session, companies will gain a strategic view of BTP’s direction to unify application and agent development, automation, AI, integration, and data. This unified platform provides the necessary governance and security controls required for mission-critical innovation, positioning it as the control tower for all extensions, custom apps, and AI solutions. This knowledge is crucial for making smart, long-term architectural decisions and consolidating platform spend.
Gaining a TCO Roadmap
The focus on BTP directly enforces the Clean Core principle of keeping the core SAP S/4HANA system standard and non-customized. Businesses can see how the continuous modernization of tools for the Clean Core, including ABAP Cloud and SAP Build, translates into a drastically reduced Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and greater agility for ERP upgrades. By pushing custom logic and complexity out to BTP, organizations can transform long upgrade projects into simple, low-risk, technical updates, freeing up talent to focus on strategic growth initiatives.
3. Transformation Management: Linking AI to Measurable Business Value
The Strategic Question: How do we ensure AI promises translate into real-world business value and not just technical experimentation?
AI without a clear process strategy is merely an experiment. The strategic imperative is to integrate process intelligence with AI execution to drive and measure real-world business value across the entire enterprise.
Gaining a Value Creation Framework
The session “Cutting through the hype: The future of business transformation (ST110v)” offers businesses a crucial framework. Organizations will gain insight into how to go beyond technical experimentation by leveraging SAP Signavio tools as the necessary foundation for AI-driven value creation. This is essential to ensure that AI and automation efforts are targeted precisely at the process bottlenecks that yield the highest business impact, such as reducing invoice cycle times or improving inventory forecast accuracy. Signavio provides the data-driven evidence to prioritize where the AI investments should land.
Gaining Continuous Improvement Focus
Companies will gain clarity on how to utilize the fully converged tools like SAP Signavio (process mining) and SAP LeanIX (enterprise architecture) to enable continuous monitoring, optimization, and measurement of business change. This means setting up a continuous loop of process discovery, simulation, architecture review, and agile implementation, while moving away from high-risk, one-off transformation projects. This emphasis on continuous change is crucial for building resilience and competitive advantage in a volatile market.
Final Words
The technical breakthroughs presented at SAP TechEd are direct indicators of future IT and business capabilities. By filtering the announcements through this strategic lens, leaders can ensure their organization moves quickly from technical insight to enterprise-wide adoption. The “SAP TechEd closing (KEY103v)” session will provide the final, consolidated roadmap and key takeaways to maintain this critical momentum.
