SAP Israel head: If there’s value, deals happen despite war

Speaking at the Globes Israel Business Conference, Orna Kleinman, Managing Director of SAP Labs Israel and Senior Vice President of Technology and Innovation at the SAP Cloud Platform Foundation, commented on the challenges the war has posed to international high-tech companies in Israel. She said: “60% of advanced technology in Israel depends on international organizations.” “War presents us with challenges that go beyond the reservists and the difficult situation we all face. Some companies store entire products or services in the cloud. If our service goes down, if we don’t have a network even for just an hour, the entire control service goes down.”

Despite the challenges, Kleinman made SAP’s twelfth acquisition in Israel, which took place during the war. “The WalkMe acquisition was done across the US. This shows that when there is business and value, the deal happens despite the war.”

“The new way of managing companies”

Kleinman presented the company’s vision for artificial intelligence in business. “We enable companies to upload all their business data and get a language model that works for it.” I demonstrated how managers can now communicate with their data in natural language and receive accurate business forecasts.

“This will be the new way of running companies,” Kleinman stressed. “Although we are a long way from self-managing companies, managers will get a great deal of help in basing their decisions on data.” Referring to female representation in the high-tech industry, Kleinman said: “The mission is to show how much it matters and how possible it is. I’m happy to see so many women on stage at the Globes. Technology is our future, and women should be part of it.”

Kleinman spoke in detail about SAP’s business, which has about 110,000 employees around the world and revenues of $30 billion. In Israel, the company has 1,200 employees. It also stated that the vast majority of the world’s 500 largest companies work with SAP. The company has made twelve acquisitions in Israel, and Israel was the first country in which it acquired a technology company. Kleinman ran SAP Labs Israel for 11 years.

While many companies faced a plethora of problems under the war, while trying to adhere to the doctrine of “deliver no matter what,” SAP was among the few companies that used this period to make big moves. Last June, the company announced the purchase of the Israeli WalkMe device for about $1.5 billion. This is SAP’s 12th and largest acquisition in Israel, as well as the second largest acquisition by an Israeli company of 2024.

Kleinman noted that business AI will replace searching for data in complex dashboards or asking development teams to provide capabilities or build tools to provide specific answers. Instead, generative AI will be able to receive a question in English and instantly provide the required data, relevant analysis, and reliable information.

“We all already know how easy and convenient it is to use a language model like ChatGPT, but companies can’t really use it because it doesn’t contain any information related to their operations. What companies do, what we do for our customers, is take a language model, load in all the data The company’s work is done to it, and then you get a language model that precisely adapts to your business,” explains Kleinman.

“From that moment on, you can ‘play’ with the data endlessly. I can perform analytics, improve the way I manage operations, predict things in a better way, and most importantly, I can talk to my data in natural language. I simply ask the model to generate graphs “Graphs, tables or anything else, which would take hours or even days.”

After presenting AI for business development, Kleinman added: “This will be the new way of running companies: making business decisions based on data. Although we are not quite there yet in terms of companies running themselves, it is already a huge challenge.” . Managers can actually use the language model and make more accurate decisions based on their data.”

Kleinman also gave an indication of which company SAP might acquire next, saying it would be a company that implements business applications integrated with artificial intelligence.

The Globes Business Conference in Israel is held in cooperation with Bank Hapoalim and Phoenix Holdings, and is sponsored by El Al, Bezeq, Nespresso, Walt, Dell, the Israel Medical Association, Energean, the Jewish National Fund, BlackRock, Playtica, Meta, Strauss Group, Bazin Group, Inc. MSCI, with the participation of Mekorot, the Port of Ashdod, and the Israel Innovation Authority.

Published by Globes, Israel Business News – en.globes.co.il – on December 9, 2024.

© Copyright Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd., 2024.