Your Guide to Getting the Most Out of SAP Sapphire 2025

SAP’s upcoming Sapphire conference is far more than just a break from daily routines and responsibilities; it is a valuable opportunity to evaluate emerging innovations, establish new relationships and pressure test your SAP roadmap.

Don’t let SAP dictate your agenda and distract you with their latest AI offerings, partnership announcements or even an appearance from SAP superuser Jessica Alba. Instead, follow these three steps to ensure a successful event if you are planning on making the trek to Orlando later this month:

• Arrive with Strategic Intent
• Stay Sharp on SAP’s Latest Announcements
• Listen Intently to Executive Signals and Changing Dynamics

Arrive with Strategic Intent – Don’t Let SAP Set Your Agenda

To maximize the value of SAP Sapphire, it’s essential to plan ahead and enter with a clear understanding of your strategic priorities so you can engage purposefully, filter through the noise, and focus on insights that directly impact your roadmap.

Use the following considerations as a helpful reference to anchor your planning and drive meaningful outcomes.

1. Understand your current SAP position: Enter the event with a plan that reflects the unique context of your SAP environment and broader IT strategy. As examples:
   • If you are an ECC customer seeking additional flexibility beyond the 2030 end of support deadline, focus on uncovering details around SAP’s ‘ERP Transition Option’.
   • If you are an S/4 On Premise customer approaching end of mainstream maintenance, explore SAP’s extended support options and understand how SAP is incentivizing similarly positioned customers to migrate to RISE.
   • If you are an early RISE adopter, look for updates on how SAP has evolved their model since your deal was signed, including the introduction of new product bundles, commercial models, services and SLA offerings.
2. Determine your priorities at Sapphire across three key areas:
   • What key announcements will be most impactful for your organization? Identify your key topics of interest and match them to SAP’s session catalog to focus your time on the most relevant content.
   • What sessions are the most relevant for your business objectives? For example, SAP loves to dedicate time highlighting customer success stories, but you may be better served focusing on sessions that highlight SAP’s strategy, roadmap and product demos.
   • What new relationships are you looking to form, and what existing relationships are you looking to leverage and/or enhance?
3. Plan the right meetings: If securing additional advocacy from a more senior SAP executive is a priority for you, Sapphire is the perfect opportunity you’ve been waiting for. Similarly, if you’ve been looking to pressure test your experience with SAP and exchange ideas with your industry peers, this event offers the ideal environment to engage in candid and productive conversations. For both scenarios, put your account team to work today to set the wheels in motion and ensure the right conversations are lined up before your arrival.
4. Bring the right internal team: Almost as important as who you’re meeting with at Sapphire is who you’re bringing with you. Ensure your team is equipped appropriately by including a well-rounded delegation that can speak to the day-to-day realities of your SAP landscape, any ongoing or planned engagements with SAP and the broader strategic vision for your technical roadmap.

Stay Sharp on SAP’s Latest Announcements

Understanding what SAP plans to showcase will help you assess how it aligns with your current and future investments and pinpoint the areas that deserve deeper exploration to make your time at Sapphire both focused and productive.

To help you stay informed, we’ve outlined the key themes and updates you can expect SAP to highlight during the event.

1. Strong Sales Momentum and Outlook: As we recently noted, SAP continues to demonstrate growth in key areas such as cloud adoption, revenue and backlog, and operating profit. Looking forward, not only does SAP tout a robust pipeline, they also believe their solution portfolio is uniquely positioned to thrive in today’s reality of new regulations, tariffs, and business uncertainty.
2. Continued AI Advancements: For those who attended Sapphire last year, you’ll undoubtedly recall that SAP’s AI emphasis was extensive, and at times even a bit exhausting. Based on the pre-released session catalog and SAP’s unwavering focus on AI, it’s clear that AI will once again take center stage at Sapphire 2025. SAP will highlight progress against their AI roadmap via embedded AI and Joule advancements, their new partnership with Databricks and, of course, a heavy emphasis on AI adoption and early customer success stories.
3. New Business Strategy & Offerings: Beyond AI, expect SAP to spotlight new advancements in process optimization and data innovation, rounding out the other two pillars of their ‘Business Unleashed’ strategy. SAP will underscore the importance of their new Business Data Cloud (BDC) offering as they believe this will become the #1 offering in the data analytics market and represents their strongest market opportunity since RISE. To highlight their process optimization improvements, SAP will hype their refreshed Business Suite offering, which is expected to provide a modular set of solutions where process chains are completely covered for customers who have been hesitant to move their business-critical apps to the cloud.

Of course, RISE remains a key pillar in SAP’s go-to-market strategy, so you can certainly expect Christian Klein and his team to spotlight their continued evolution of bundled packages and enhanced commercial flexibility options.

Listen Intently to Executive Signals and Changing Dynamics

Throughout SAP’s presentations and your interactions with both SAP and industry peers, stay alert to insights around potential impacts or opportunities for your SAP roadmap. Additionally, pay close attention to signals from SAP’s leadership that reveal shifts in their go-to-market strategy and evolving commercial practice. This will help you confidently address executive questions while also staying ahead of SAP’s top-down messaging, designed to influence your leadership team directly and shape strategic priorities from the top.

As a useful guide, we’ve compiled common concerns to monitor carefully:

1. Is SAP Consistent in Their Messaging? It’s often said that if you ask the same question to 5 different SAP reps, you’ll likely receive 5 different answers. Sapphire offers a critical opportunity to align on a single source of truth, gather intel and explore the ‘art of the possible’ with industry peers. If there are signs of misalignment, hold your SAP reps accountable to deliver clarity and consistency across their messaging and actions.
2. How Have SAP’s Recent Organizational Changes Affected the Business? SAP has undergone significant organizational changes in 2025, including two new global Chief Revenue Officers, along with other notable changes to their Executive and Extended board. Of particular interest in the Americas, Jan Gilg’s early moves have already led to the departures of the former President of North America, Lloyd Adams, and former Managing Director of Canada, Andy Canham, respectfully.

There will undoubtedly be more ripple effects related to leadership departures as well as SAP’s go to-market strategy as Jan continues to build his direction and influence. Listen intently to the sessions led by SAP’s new Chief Revenue Officers as they may signal relevant shifts in customer engagement, pricing behavior, or regional priorities.

3. How Does SAP’s End of Support Roadmap Impact My Organization? SAP’s upcoming support cliff for ECC is well known. However, many S/4 On Premise customers have recently come to the realization that they are facing similar, near-term challenges related to expiration deadlines for mainstream support. Sapphire offers a valuable opportunity to gain clarity on your go-forward options and to learn which strategic paths your industry peers are choosing to pursue.
4. What Effect do SAP’s New Offerings Have on My Existing Environment? As SAP highlights their new products and updates to existing offerings, begin to evaluate the potential implications of these announcements for your current footprint, both in terms of opportunities and necessary adjustments. As an example, what does the introduction of Business Data Cloud mean if you are an existing Datasphere customer? If you are an early RISE adopter, what ability do you have to benefit from SAP’s recent evolution of the model? If the answers don’t become clear at Sapphire, obtain commitments from your account team to provide the necessary clarity.

Final Thought

Think of Sapphire as a key moment to pressure-test the future SAP wants you to buy into. Show up with a clear agenda, ask the tough questions they might not offer up on their own, and focus on conversations that deliver real insights—not just inspiration.

Stay Connected

Our SAP expert executives will be at SAP Sapphire, ready to discuss how to navigate your roadmap, mitigate risk, and drive long-term value for your SAP contracts and relationships. Let’s connect at the conference to talk about your S/4HANA plans.

For further insights from our expert advisors on how to make the most of your time at the conference, explore our Sapphire Resource Hub. For real time updates from Sapphire, follow UpperEdge on LinkedIn.