Its second name is “innovation” and there is no company on this planet that has not heard about this German brand that was born as a project between friends back in 1972. SAP is the standard bearer of technological solutions that companies once dreamed of. have and that today became something palpable.

This is why addressing the great challenges that global firms must go through, such as business transformation in the cloud, intelligent automation or the need to build resilient supply chains, awakened something in the founders: the eagerness to develop products that facilitate the effective processing of data - economic, social and environmental - within organizations.

Now, to start off on the right foot, we are going to say that SAP is not actually an acronym nor is it a word, which is why it is not literally pronounced in the form "sap", but rather since it is an acronym, the correct way to name it would be the following: "S A P" -letter by letter-.

The SAP gene

With active operations in countries around the world, SAP brings together a map of 400,000 customers in more than 25 sectors, being a world leader in the provision of software for the management of business processes. As? Through the creation of technological solutions that provide agility and dynamism to the information flows that circulate between organizations and their sectors.

As a bit of color we can add that SAP is an acronym that refers to the original name, ´Systemanalyse Programmentwicklung´ -from the German “development of systems analysis programs”-.
The innovative quality keeps SAP always one step ahead when it comes to competition, since its approaches aim to be constantly in search of intelligent improvements that promote the opportunity for sustainable growth and transformation for its clients.

It is no small fact that SAP constitutes the largest B2B network in the cloud, with more than 7 million companies connected from 190 countries in real time through supply chains. In fact, the company maintains that around 87% of global e-commerce is mobilized by its own customers.

SAP designs IT solutions for organizations of all sizes, which is why it acts as a facilitator of intelligent processes in most areas that make up a company. Among its specialties we can highlight: ERP and Finance, CRM and user experience, network and expense management, digital supply chain, HR, experience management, business technology platform, digital transformation and industrial solutions.

On his journey through the mini tech city of Silicon Valley, Alejandro Jatib -CEO of Lab9- was visiting the offices on the west coast, getting to know SAP's facilities firsthand and being able to admire - why not - how far a dream can go if it is realized in an effective and accurate way. The need existed and they knew how to detect it.

That same day the company invited our Lab9 founder to watch an ice hockey game at the SAP Arena in San José - a stadium sponsored by themselves.

The rest is history.

Throwback Thursday SAP

Since its beginnings in 1972, SAP was born with the purpose of digitally connecting companies, improving people's lives. For this reason, Dietmar Hopp, Klaus Tschira, Hans-Werner Hector, Hasso Plattner and Claus Wellenreuther gave substance to this idea through a private company in 1972, launching their first commercial product the following year. To this day, the German corporation - whose headquarters are located in Walldorf, Germany - has not stopped growing, increasing its human resources and its range of service provision throughout the globe.

With the introduction of its original software SAP R/2 and SAP R/3, the company managed to establish a global standard for enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, which is why SAP S/4HANA is able to take ERP to the next level, using computer magic to process large amounts of data and support the latest technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning.

How it works

The company's integrated applications dynamically connect all parts of a business within one intelligent suite. The starting point involves starting the migration process with the help of tools that facilitate the transition of companies to the cloud from any of the three most traditional hyperscalers such as Microsoft, Google Cloud and AWS.
The result? Accompanied by SAP small, medium and large corporations can accelerate workflows, improve operational efficiency, increase productivity, improve customer experiences and increase profits. All this from a single platform that allows you to review data - check for duplication and failures - in real time. Incredible, right?

SAP in numbers

• 230 million users in the cloud
• More than 100 digital solutions for all areas
• More than 105 collaborators globally
• 80% of its clients are SMEs
• 99 of the 100 largest companies in the world are clients
• It has been 20 years since SAP has offered technological solutions in the cloud
• In 2021 the company had a turnover of more than 27,000 million euros
• 7 million companies connected
• Occupies the number 1 position as an IT leader in enterprise data management