The 12th annual SAP Innovation Awards arrive at a crucial moment where change isn’t politely coming in, it’s knocking down doors.
Business leaders worldwide now face some of the toughest challenges: adapting to shifting geopolitical environments, diversifying supply chains, and making the leap to cleaner energy solutions.
As chief sustainability and commercial officer, I’m watching these challenges unfold with urgency as we face the rising waters, raging fires, and heavy storms of today’s reality. It is a sobering reminder that the world around us is changing faster than we can sometimes keep up.
It is also a powerful call to action, one that drives the very spirit of innovation that the SAP Innovation Awards celebrate.
Meet the finalists of the SAP Innovation Awards for 2025
Our finalists are trendsetters, future-proofing their businesses with cutting-edge technology.
By harnessing the power of data, applications, and AI, they are setting new standards in operational efficiency, enhancing employee and customer experiences, fostering sustainability, and driving innovation across the entire value chain. It is the remarkable blend of all these factors paired with ambition and impact that caught the judges’ attention.
The innovation advantage in sustainability
Globally, we are seeing more and more companies waking up to the fact that sustainability is so much more than a trend or compliance duty. It’s the bedrock of stronger, more resilient, and efficient business operations. Put simply: sustainability drives competitive edge.
To leverage this advantage, innovators are capitalizing on intelligent solutions, from carbon capture and storage technologies to smart energy grids and vertical farming.
What is lighting up the business landscape today is the power of AI to seamlessly integrate sustainability data, not only helping leaders automate complex, time-consuming tasks, but also to gather, analyze, and evaluate risks and possible outcomes with greater accuracy.
SAP solutions are the roots that nourish transformative business approaches. In sustainability, for example, we don’t just collect data, we embed it directly into companies’ operational centers. Intelligent business decisions do not happen in the dark — they are driven by high-quality data.
I passionately believe the finalists of the 2025 SAP Innovation Awards will not just respond to challenges. They will shape the future and unlock more efficient, sustainable solutions — the question is how.
Instruments of transformation
By exploring the cloud, businesses can discover a world of AI-powered possibilities that SAP offers. It is just one of many tools available for sparking every kind of innovation. SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP), for example, empowers teams with generative AI-powered development, automation, integration, data, and analytics across SAP applications and beyond.
The day we announce the SAP Innovation Award finalists is always a highlight because we see how these organizations have leveraged the wide spectrum of SAP technologies as instruments of transformation to make a difference across the following 10 categories:
- Industry Leader: Modernizing organizations, and even industries, by offsetting challenges while providing resiliency, transparency, and sustainability across supply chains
- Partner Paragon: Developing a next-generation application by taking advantage of SAP BTP; partners can license the solution via SAP Build, a business application development and automation solution, or the company’s tech adoption program, which improves ability to adopt cloud solutions
- Transformation Titan: Solving business problems while accelerating change
- Business Network Innovator: Future-proofing by transforming supply chains, processes, or networks
- Cloud ERP Champion: Reaping unparalleled benefits from SAP cloud ERP opportunities
- Customer Experience: Enriching customer interactions by streamlining operations and making adaptations in real time
- People Experience: Optimizing SAP cloud resources to improve user enablement and productivity
- AI Excellence: Channeling the power of SAP Business AI to revolutionize business processes while supercharging efficiency and new levels of productivity
- Sustainability Hero: Helping to build an inclusive economy, shape a sustainable future, and positively impact the environment and society (my personal favorite!)
- Services Superstar: Adopting SAP cloud solutions to meet or exceed business goals, optimize IT resources, increase user enablement, and improve productivity or learning
Stay tuned for the winners
Congratulations to our finalists! Winners will be announced on April 23, 2025, and will receive a tribute event, trophy, and the option of choosing either a $1,000 charitable donation voucher or an admission ticket to SAP Sapphire in Orlando, Florida, or Madrid, Spain.
Finalists and winners are selected by our distinguished judges’ panel, made up of industry thought leaders, influencers, community members, and SAP experts. The criteria they use to identify our trailblazers and ultimately the winners are as follows:
- Case creativity: The ways the submission is both compelling and disruptive
- Tangible outcome: The significance of the outcome, as well as its impact on individuals and society
- Intelligent enterprise: The way the submission enables an organization to empower employees, reduce risk, anticipate and respond to client needs, seamlessly achieve desired outcomes, and invent new business models and revenue streams
We will celebrate winners that embody these attributes with the opportunity to be featured in media interviews, blogs, podcasts, speaking engagements, and on other platforms. Just like sustainable business transition, innovation is a continuous journey, one that requires constant reinvention.
As we continue to face the unknowns of today’s reality, let’s stay engaged, stay inspired, and together push the boundaries of what is possible with innovative ideas.
Sophia Mendelsohn is chief sustainability and commercial officer at SAP.
