Well-known companies developed custom-tailored GenAI solutions
Munich, January 06, 2025: From hype to reality. At the SAP AI Hackathon in mid-January at SAP Labs in Garching near Munich, the digital solutions, consulting, and software company valantic and the leading provider of business software SAP offered five well-known companies in the retail and consumer goods industries a framework for the development of their own GenAI applications. Coop, dmTECH, Hugo Boss, Marc O’Polo, and Rutronik seized the opportunity and competed with one another to program apps using the SAP Business Technology Platform and SAP AI Foundation. Team Coop narrowly won this tight race for the best solution with its intelligent certificate management.
The impressive results of the SAP AI Hackathon prove that with SAP’s GenAI portfolio, it is possible to reap clear business benefits with comparatively little effort. In just a few days, all participants in the event developed AI solutions to perform specific tasks at their companies. For the jury, consisting of Alexander Schweitz, Head of Presales Retail & Consumer Industries Germany at SAP; Guido Schlief, CCO at valantic; and Matthias Uflacker, Location Lead BTP Innovation Munich at SAP, selecting the best solution was not easy. After long consultations, they voted Team Coop from Switzerland the overall winner of the Hackathon. The assessment included the usability of the AI app developed, its integration into the existing IT architecture, and the added business value generated for the company.
Hackathon’s best AI app: Intelligent certificate management
The Coop team quickly developed an intelligent, automated data extraction from supplier certificates, which can help guarantee the highest product quality. The app replaces the previous manual process, which involved a great deal of coordination and numerous media gaps. The solution extracts information from supplier certificates and stores it in a database that can then be integrated into different processes.
Currently, employees have to enter each certificate manually. Coop expects significant annual cost savings if the app is deployed productively. Assuming a conservative estimate of a time expenditure of one minute per certificate, the app could save about 600 hours in the NH/QM and procurement departments.
More efficient assembly of suspected cases
The dmTECH team developed an innovative, AI-assisted solution that makes the assembly of case files in suspected cases much more efficient. This app accelerates the collection of relevant information, minimizes errors, and makes employees’ work easier.
AI-assisted order proposals for B2B customers
Team Hugo Boss developed a chatbot that helps employees prepare for and conduct a sales conversation and enables them to present their customers with the best collection suggestions. To do this, an individual shopping cart is compiled based on previous purchasing behavior. Generative AI can interact with this portfolio to adjust sizes, styles, or colors. The targeted offers optimize the shopping experience and increase sales volume.
Digital key user for incoming invoice verification for 800 users
Marc O’Polo’s GenAI project is a digital assistant for incoming invoice verification; it significantly accelerates error analysis. One-click integration into the SAP Fiori app and chat-based support make this AI application particularly user-friendly. About 800 users at Marc O’Polo, who, in addition to their main tasks, only occasionally deal with incoming invoices, receive high-quality, contextual support from the AI assistant built into an SAP add-on. If the AI cannot help, it helps users create a service ticket that includes all the information collected.
Huge time savings and greater data consistency
The team from Rutronik, a wholesaler of electronic components, used AI to optimize its “excavator database”, which is based on SAP article master data, various manufacturers’ current price lists, and detailed specification sheets. Rutronik receives price lists from around 180 manufacturers; almost all of these are in different formats. The AI app analyzes the structure, generates a mapping into a uniform in-house format, and then adds attributes from product data sheets to create a structured article pool that systems such as SAP can use. In December 2024 and January 2025, a total of about 550,000 new articles were added to the database. The manual work per price list, which the AI solution eliminates, is about eight hours. In addition, the quality and consistency of the data is significantly better.
Hackathon sets standards
All applications developed during the hackathon are supposed to be deployed at the companies as quickly as possible. Timo Rüb, Head of Innovation at valantic, emphasizes: “Our event was a complete success. The results are impressive and clearly show what added business value GenAI can generate even today. The participating companies’ teams created excellent AI solutions in a short time. Congratulations!”
Technological development will continue to accelerate, and the benefits companies can reap from AI and GenAI will also increase, says Timo Rüb, who adds: “Our AI experts at valantic are technologically up to date. We provide advice to our customers and work with them to identify use cases with high business value that give them a greater competitive edge and ensure long-term viability.”
