By Alice Chambers |
Across more than two decades, the digital landscape for businesses has grown exponentially in both size and complexity. In the early wave of enterprise resource planning (ERP) from 1995 to 2005, the integration of core business systems spurred a productivity boom with global output rising by 2.6 per cent annually, according to Jan Gilg, SAP’s chief revenue officer for the Americas, who spoke at the firm’s annual Sapphire event in June 2025.
But that momentum has slowed. Despite the explosion of software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions and cloud-based tools, productivity growth between 2005 and 2025 fell to just 1.5 per cent, said Gilg. Why? Because more technology doesn’t always mean better outcomes. The abundance of business platforms, solutions and applications has led to fragmentation, especially for small and mid-sized enterprises (SMEs), which often lack the resources to integrate complex IT ecosystems. The result? Broken processes, inefficiencies and missed opportunities with cloud and AI.
“Businesses are leaking value as employees lose close to five working weeks per year and experience cognitive fatigue faster due to disconnected workflows and switching between tools,” said Santina Franchi, president of SAP’s Corporate and GROW business. “Being able to integrate business processes and personal productivity tools helps users collapse the distance between insight and action, bringing business transformative value.”
According to Microsoft, SMEs, the backbone of the global economy, generate over half of national income in high-income countries and account for more than 70 per cent of job growth.
That’s why SAP and Microsoft have launched a joint initiative, the SAP Business Suite Acceleration Program with Microsoft Cloud, to help businesses, especially SMEs, move faster and work smarter with cloud and AI. While SAP is better known for serving large enterprises, the company also offers powerful solutions specifically designed to help mid-sized businesses scale with confidence and clarity, and 80 per cent of SAP’s customers are SMEs.
At the heart of the new Acceleration Program is a promise to deliver faster time to value by empowering customers to harness the benefits of integrated AI tools like Joule and Microsoft Copilot. It makes it easier for companies to upgrade to cloud-based SAP software by combining SAP’s business tools with Microsoft 365, Azure and Copilot. This enables smoother data flow between systems so users can access insights from SAP’s generative AI solution Joule directly from Microsoft tools like Teams and Outlook.
“The integration between SAP Business Suite and Microsoft Cloud marks a significant milestone in innovation, where agentic AI is transforming the way businesses operate,” said Ralph Haupter, president of global small, medium enterprises and channel at Microsoft. “Together, we are unlocking unparalleled possibilities for organisations of all sizes to drive efficiency, foster collaboration, and achieve groundbreaking advancements in their digital transformation journey.”
The SAP Business Suite Acceleration Program builds on the momentum of earlier milestones including the 2024 integration of SAP Joule and Copilot – and this advancement is already reshaping how SAP customers experience productivity and collaboration.
SAP and Microsoft’s shared vision for partner-led growth and innovation lies at the heart of this new initiative. Partners bring deep transformation expertise and industry insights that deliver faster time to value for customers eager to derive measurable business outcomes from their investments. They are more critical than ever to accelerating cloud and AI adoption for lasting customer success.
“At SAP, we are deeply committed to empowering our partner ecosystem through collaboration with Microsoft, our longtime partner,” said Karl Fahrbach, chief partner officer of SAP. “By combining forces, we provide partners with proven frameworks, shared resources and scalable tools that address complex challenges. Together, we simplify operations, accelerate digital transformation and unlock new growth opportunities, helping ensure our partners can thrive in a competitive and ever-evolving landscape.”
This collaborative approach is not only enabling partners to deliver more value, but also ensuring customers experience the benefits of seamless integration across both platforms, and it is further strengthened by SAP and Microsoft’s expansive partner ecosystem, which plays a crucial role in delivering regional expertise and industry-specific support.
By embedding AI into everyday tools and workflows, SAP and Microsoft are enabling organisations of all sizes to surface actionable insights and drive smarter decision-making across all areas of business.
The ability to unify data, simplify systems and make AI work in the flow of everyday tasks could be the key to restoring productivity growth. And for SMEs, that shift may be the difference between surviving disruption and building stronger, more resilient operations for the future.
Discover more insights like this in the Summer 2025 issue of Technology Record. Don’t miss out – subscribe for free today and get future issues delivered straight to your inbox.