Time to Celebrate: SAP AppHaus New York Turned Three Years Old
New York is in a state of emergency. The city that never sleeps is now marked by empty streets, bars, restaurants and cultural institutions. Nevertheless, there is something to celebrate: It is mid of October. A letter carrier is on his way to hand over a souvenir to five special people. Its recipients Laura, Mina, Niz, Andrew and George have one thing in common. They represent SAP’s Customer Innovation organization in New York and form the local SAP AppHaus team that celebrated its birthday on October 15, 2020. They all receive a team-branded leather key chain. A charming gesture, which brings them together symbolically in times of crisis and social distancing.
“Thanks to the entire SAP AppHaus New York team for your engagement of the past three years. You are a small but highly performing team that always puts the customer and end user first and has taken co-innovation with customers to the next level. Congratulations on this special day. Looking forward to more great days ahead.” — Andreas Hauser, SVP SAP AppHaus Network
SAP AppHaus New York started in 2017
The idea to establish customer facing SAP AppHaus locations started back in 2013 with the first AppHaus space in Heidelberg. Several other locations opened across the globe, and in 2017 New York became part of the network. Embedded in the SAP Customer Innovation organization led by Anja Schneider, New York’s SAP AppHaus supports and helps to shape SAP’s innovation agenda. The promising concept and the clear vision to leverage the SAP Business Technology Platform to drive business value for customers and partners turned the location into an essential innovation driver. In the first place, customers located on the east coast are supported in their innovation efforts.
The AppHaus New York’s interactive workshop space is located on the 48th floor of the SAP office in Hudson Yards. On the same floor you will also find the Hasso Plattner Institute (HPI), which is known for groundbreaking innovation research and projects and the SAP.iO Foundry New York, where the next generation of enterprise software startups find access to mentorship and accelerator programs.
In line with the global vision to make innovation real, the New York AppHaus team applies SAP’s Human-Centered Approach to Innovation to everything they do. Through the different innovation projects they drive, they help to humanize SAP software for end users.
“Happy Anniversary, AppHaus! Thank you for being the best design mentors to our startups over the last three years, showing them how to quickly improve their user experience and adjusting their value propositions to be more human-centric (even in the midst of a pandemic!). Founders cite the insights from your team as some of the most impactful they get from SAP, and we can’t think of better neighbors.” — Vanessa Liu, Vice President SAP.iO Foundries North America
The New York AppHaus team is an important contributor to SAP’s Innovation Toolkit through the chatbot design methodology they developed, “Dot Dot Bot”. The fun and collaborative tool is free and guides users to design chatbots without technical knowledge. In 2019, Fast Company recognized SAP’s Dot Dot Bot methodology with an honorable mention in the “Innovation by Design Awards”.
An integral puzzle piece of SAP’s purpose-driven strategy
SAP’s mission to “help the world run better and improve people’s lives” puts purpose and sustainability at the core of its business. “Driving change by taking action” is an essential part of the DNA of every SAP AppHaus New York team member, putting a focus on seeking out and driving non-profit projects. The Customer Innovation team including the SAP AppHaus New York piloted a project with a non-profit organization that aims at assisting Americans gain access to benefits that they are eligible to receive. The vision consisted in leveraging SAP Machine Learning and SAP Intelligent Robotic Process Automation, both of which are part of the SAP Business Technology Platform, to empower the organization to use data science and scale their service offerings nationally.
In another social engagement project the New York team supported Get Schooled, a non-profit organization focused on getting minority and low-income high-school students into higher education; an initiative that is also supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. “I was particularly excited about the project with Get Schooled.”, says design strategist and design engagement lead George Stafford. “We believe that education is key to successful long-term social change.” In the project the team created a platform that provides students with a comprehensive and accurate view of the costs of attending college. The solution helps increase financial preparedness and decrease finance-related college dropouts.
A project that the team did for a logistics and transportation company in 2019 around maintaining food-supply-chain integrity helped to validate their contribution when COVID-19 reached the USA earlier this year. Automated document imaging processes and embedded machine learning algorithms, for example, helped the logistics and transport company become substantially more resilient in times of crisis. The company was able to cope with the tremendous increases in volume and frequency of load pickups and deliveries that helped avoid out-of-stock situations in food stores across the nation.
Fostering innovation with a clear strategy in times of crisis
“Looking back, the past three years were simply brilliant. The pandemic is, of course, the greatest challenge of this period. But virtualizing our methodology was an amazing move that made us resilient enough to continue co-innovating with our customers.”, team lead Laura states. By applying SAP’s Human-Centered Approach to Innovation virtually, the team continues to leverage the technological potential of the SAP Business Technology Platform. Customer projects therefore continue to run uninterrupted.
Even though the five team members celebrated the SAP AppHaus New York’s anniversary in social distance, it strengthened their bond even more. As Niz Safrudin, Design Engagement Lead at the SAP AppHaus New York puts it: “We all hope that a physical collaboration setup will soon become the norm again. Until then, we continue to drive innovation for our customers remotely. Together with our customers, we are all making our contribution in navigating this crisis.”
