Please welcome to the stage, Thomas.
Hey. Good morning, Orlando. How are you doing this morning? I see we need to wake up a little bit more, but actually, when you woke up this morning, did you think about whether the world still runs? Did you think about whether the lights turn up when you flip the switch? You probably, I guess, will have more wondered why you've actually chosen the extra gin and tonic at the Howl at the Moon yesterday night. But here's the point. Every day, billions of people wake up trusting that the world simply runs, that phone chains and planes land. And this morning when you woke up, you got ready, came here actually without thinking what had to happen to make all of this possible. But behind the scenes, utility companies balanced whether demand supply in real time, so you could just flip the switch. You got dressed up; the clothes you wear passed through global supply chains, warehouses, ports, and even your morning coffee is a global orchestration. Does anybody actually know how many companies are in this coffee supply chain, which you see here live in Orlando? 29 for coffee. Maybe it was moved by logistics company who delivered trillions linking ports, factories, and communities at continental scale. You ordered a ride, but thousands of components, suppliers, and production steps had to align before that car ever reached the street. You then paid for it using an online final solution that executed the payment across operating systems with zero tolerance for delay. And then you arrived here at the convention center expecting that everything runs smoothly.
So life feels simple. It may seem simple, but if you zoom out at the scale, what you deliver and enable becomes staggering. Last month we all watched in awe as Artemis II completed the first crew lunar flyby since 1972. That's also coincidentally our birthday. We all saw the rocket and the mission, not the complexity behind it. Every single prime contractor of Artemis II runs on SAP. So because we don't stop on this planet, we actually fly to the moon. But kidding aside, these examples are not systems you can pause, not processes you can get wrong, not industries where failure is an option. You can be so proud of what you make possible every single day. What you deliver is what keeps the world moving and often without anyone noticing. And we are so proud to be your partner on that journey. And we are also aware of the responsibility we carry, and that's the reason why we are fully committed to operational excellence with an actual achievement of 99.998%, and we do not compromise on security and compliance. Just as an example, we reduce the mean time to detect by 75%. But transformation at this scale doesn't happen alone with technology. It's also about the people who make it happen. And that's the reason why I'm excited to welcome on stage the Global President, Customer Success in America, and a member of the extended board. Welcome, Jan Gil.
Good morning, Orlando. How are you? Good to see you. Yeah, yeah. I love what you said about Artemis II. Actually, it's kind of a perfect metaphor of what we do as SAP here, because watching this capsule against the moon out there, it was quite graceful, effortless. But behind it, if you think about it, there's some deep engineering, some extreme complexity that has to be managed. And that is kind of almost like operations. You know, that is a huge undertaking. And the same is true for enterprise. The run side is something that's often super underestimated, but also underappreciated. It is the run that actually makes everything that we've just talked about, what you just talked about, possible. It is what keeps a world of highest complexity operating reliably, continuously, and at scale. And SAP is that invisible hand helping you all to turn complexity into productivity so that trains actually run, payments clear, and parcels arrive. And for that, to all of you here in the room and actually to our 440,000 customers out there, a big, big thank you. So give you a hand of applause. Fantastic.
And I mean, in your role you're talking daily with customers. What do you hear from our customers?
Yeah, it's quite a mixed picture. There's a lot of excitement on the one hand, but there's also pressure and the expectation to deliver now measurable results. It's real. And customers, they are focused on how fast they can actually put it to work across the enterprise, and how to scale it and connect it to real-time business processes, because that is the only way to capture tangible results. But the pressure of the board is also real. I think we all feel it: do more with less. We probably hear it every day. And the elephant in the room: AI in the enterprise is complex. It is complex. And that's because the challenge isn't AI itself. It's the disconnected apps and the fragmented data everywhere. So there is this need for trusted, seamless integration that led us to our vision of the autonomous enterprise. And you heard about it yesterday. So we are moving beyond just tools to a system that understands your business, anticipates your needs, and acts with precision, turning complexity into your greatest competitive advantage.
It's a world where businesses must operate smarter, respond faster, and free up capacity for what matters most, and where AI doesn't just generate insights but also drives execution end to end. And agents act in a reliable and responsible way using a trusted framework of governance and with people that are providing the oversight. And this is where AI becomes truly operational across the enterprise. So your business doesn't just react; it runs even better. And Thomas, when I think about what you just talked about—planes that land, supply chains that deliver on the promise, and systems people trust without even thinking about it—that is pretty much the essence of what the autonomous enterprise is all about.
This is also exactly where our commitment as a company comes in. We actively want to support you, and we also continuously invest into you to address this elephant in the room, as mentioned, to get AI really live and adopted in the enterprise. So our goal is to help you become an autonomous enterprise step by step. And continuous innovation is actually at the core of what we want to do together, which is, by the way, embodied in RISE with SAP. So we want to help you make AI value real today. And that's also what you heard yesterday with RISE with AI. We want to activate free assistants for you to make you successful, and we want to take one step further to really ensure that all relevant systems get productively live in your environment. And that's something that also turns the entire notion around that basically value is created while you transform. So we don't need to wait till the transformation is finished. So when you are committed to RISE with SAP to go with us into this innovation journey, we are committed to support you every step of the way, also in complex hybrid landscapes, including that we connect with on-premise systems for selected assistants as well. And what is also super important for me, and I mentioned that a couple of times: we don't want to leave any customer behind.
That's also a reason why we continuously invest, for instance, into sovereign cloud and sovereign AI capabilities, so that also our customers in highly regulated industries benefit from these innovations at scale. And also, I want to use that moment to say thank you for all of your feedback. Your feedback makes us better. So also saying thanks to all the user groups actually, which bring that to us, because one thing is absolutely clear for us as a company: listening to our customers is what drives everything that we do. And that's actually why we're here today. Today you will hear from customers who actually make it happen, who make transformation happen every single day. So instead of slides, the real stories will be brought onto this couch. Here, our customers will share how they are transforming their businesses in the real world. So no theory, no abstraction, just firsthand experiences on how we actually bring these systems to life. So I would suggest we start right away with our first customer. And this company is supporting the most advanced aerospace and defense missions on this planet. So it's my pleasure to welcome the SVP and CIO, Enterprise Business & Digital Transformation at Lockheed Martin, Maria.
Maria, I think it's fair to say that you absolutely operate in high-stakes settings, without a doubt. But how do you think about transformations differently than potentially other companies?
Yes. So thank you, first of all, for having me. I'm proud to be here with you both today representing Lockheed Martin. And we definitely do operate in a high-stakes environment. But I think what's important for us to talk about is that transformation is not the goal; readiness is for us. And in this environment, readiness really is important for our workforce, our systems, but most importantly for the men and women that serve our nation and our allies and protect our freedoms. So for us, you know, I can tell you, I have over 30 years' experience working with Lockheed Martin and with our customers shoulder to shoulder in their missions. And when you think about mission success, it really changes how you think about tech and data. And the real question becomes not, 'What do we do this week?'—although my team that's here today will tell you that I ask them that regularly—but really it's about, are we getting the customer what they need when it really matters, that readiness? Because for us the stakes are high, and they are human.
Oh, absolutely. And you mentioned about readiness quite often. Tell us a little bit what readiness means for you in your environment.
Sure. So for us, readiness is really the ability to move with speed and clarity and confidence across the enterprise. For us, that's engineering, manufacturing, supply chain—every part of how we design, build, and sustain the products that we build. And for us, we're on a journey right now. We call it 1LMX. It's the largest transformational investment that our company has made in history. And that is not a small lift for us to do this transformation. It makes SAP one of our most important partners. The challenge for us is not so much the effort, but the complexity of what we're trying to do. We're a 120,000-person company. We're over 100 years old. We have disconnected systems and fragmented processes as we looked back. And right now, our customers need exponential speed and throughput. So we know, as you said, we operate in a highly regulated environment as well. Really strict security requirements and data requirements for us. So several years ago now, we made the deliberate shift to redesign our processes end to end. We are using AI, we're using the SAP platform, and we're embracing a model-based enterprise to really connect the digital thread as we look at design, build, and sustain lifecycle. And with that, our real goal is to reduce our cycle times and improve the responsiveness, because in our environment, readiness really depends on continuous, reliable performance. And that's where the true digital integration really becomes critical for us.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, once you recognized the need, what did it take you to move Lockheed Martin forward as a more connected or responsive enterprise?
Yes. You know, responsiveness is the word that really comes to mind. So as we had the gap, we really shifted from what do we need to do to how do we do this at scale. So our focus really became on that connected enterprise and making sure that our systems and our data and our processes are operating together as a whole. And I can tell you, SAP has been a huge part of this journey with us. You've really moved from a vendor relationship to a true and trusted partner. And that shift really happened when we moved from talking about technology to talking about mission outcomes. And I feel that SAP has really invested in understanding our business, our customers, and the environment that we work in. And a way that I describe SAP often is, you know, when something's happening and I call you, Thomas, or one of my team calls their counterpart that works with us, we'll have a problem on a Friday and I'll say, 'We need this. This is urgent.' And you'll say, 'We'll have it to you by Thursday,' and you'll deliver it on Tuesday. And that relationship, that trust, and that ability for you to commit to me enables me to commit to those people that have really important missions to deliver. And so that's super critical to us, without a doubt.
But also, if you think about now this transformation that you have, Lockheed Martin entirely responded, I mean, fascinating to see all the outcomes. If there's one shift in thinking you would love to leave this audience a little bit with, what would that be?
I would say the shift really for us is that transformation doesn't start with technology. You have to do the work of rethinking your processes, how your decisions are made, how your operating model is going to work end to end. And AI can be a powerful enabler, but to really create value, it's got to be embedded into the foundation, and it has to be owned by the process owners. It's not something you can ask the CIO to bolt on and expect it to scale, although many of us CIOs here are asked to do that. You have to do the hard work. It's necessary. And with SAP, this for us is how we operate today. There is no shortcut. You have to do the work. But thanks to our partnership, it's not a future state for us; it's how we are operating.
And I mean, what you said—it's really a business transformation. It's really with the processes embedded in the change management. I think that's what is really about a holistic view on this transformational journey. I mean, this is amazing. I think also just here, what I mentioned earlier, I want to really reiterate that for us, sovereign cloud is absolutely strategic. That's the reason why we committed more than 20 billion in investment to really ensure that all of the portfolio, also what you've seen yesterday with the autonomous enterprise, will be available in the cloud, and for sure also specifically with FedRAMP in the US to make that happen. And here our commitment is clear: we deliver full-stack sovereignty, which means data sovereignty, operational sovereignty, technical sovereignty, and legal sovereignty, because we truly believe there should not be any tradeoff between innovation and sovereignty. And with our more than 60,000 critical infrastructure customers, that's absolutely critical for us to bring them on this journey to the autonomous enterprise together. But Jan, I mean, if you listen to the journey of Maria and Lockheed Martin, what are your takeaways?
Yeah, I mean, we talked about complexity earlier. I think this is complexity in a highly regulated environment. And still there's so much innovation that you're driving. So I think if that's possible in such an environment, it is possible anywhere.
Good. Before we bring out our next customer, a quick show of hands here in the audience: who has ever been stuck on an airplane because the runway was icy? Show of hands. See? A lot of hands. I know it's unimaginable here in Orlando with the temperatures, but think back to the winter. I think pretty much everybody. Our next customer has been actually doing something about exactly that. So please welcome Gustavo Sabato, the CTO of Aeropuertos Argentina.
Did you hear there's a lot of Latin America? Yeah. You saw that? Yeah. It's so terrible.
But the first time a Latin America customer's on stage. Yeah, that's amazing. So tell us a little bit about your company, Aeropuertos Argentina. What are they doing?
First of all, good morning and thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to share our experience. Aeropuertos Argentina is a company that started 27 years ago. We move around 90% of the commercial flights. We moved 43 million passengers in one year, and we have 300,000 flights in a year. We are 2,700 people, and we love to say that we connect people, cargo, and cultures. We are part of Corporación América Airports, that is the largest operator in amount of airports around the world. And we have operations in six countries: Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Armenia, and Italy. If we talk about the experience or the things that we are doing, first of all, it's important to mention what does weather condition mean for the airport. It's one of the main concerns that we have because, as you know, we can close the airport because of the weather. In the case of Argentina, we have winter disruptions, and this winter affects eight airports, 14,000 flights, and 1.4 million people. Historically, the processes were manual or fragmented, and we had an impact in the high cost in the operations, and also in safety—probably safety risk—but also in environmental because of the use of the chemicals to clean the ice or the snow. Because of that, it's clear that we try to do this main agent to minimize this problem that we call SNOW.
So that's basically when you build a solution that you call the SNOW Agent.
And so tell us a little bit about that, and what about the impact?
Yeah. Let me tell you that SNOW means Smart Network Operative Winter. We try to basically orchestrate weather information, runway sensors, and also operational procedures and maintenance processes. The system generates alerts in some conditions, releases work orders, creates work orders, and also tracks execution, checks availability of resources, and maintains the communication between the control tower and the people that are working in the operation. Basically, this is the main thing that the system does. Benefits: we expect to have a 16% decrease in cost; we will try to minimize the use of CO2 by 45 tons. But the main thing is that we pass from a reactive model to a proactive model, that it's clear that we will have less interventions on the runway and will impact the customer satisfaction in a positive way.
Less people get stuck on the runway.
I mean, one of the big topics is also how quickly can you get time to value, how quickly go from idea to impact? How long will it take you?
First of all, I want to mention that initially we started talking with people that report to me, and they told me, 'We want to participate in this tournament.' And I said, 'No, I have no time.' And then I said, 'Okay, I reconsider, go ahead.' And we took the winter operation as the most important area to work. In February, we started talking with SAP. In March, we started operating; we started an MVP. And now in two weeks, we will start the implementation of two airports, and in the next winter, we will do the next six.
So you built a SNOW Agent on top of your existing core. You built it on the platform, but on top of your existing core. How critical was that?
I think we upgraded SAP from R/3 to S/4 in 2023, and it's clear that it was a big advantage for us because we reviewed many processes across the company. On top of that, we implemented specifically the BTP architecture and then the AI model on top of that. But for me, it's clear that it will be faster and easier if you have a clean core.
And how easy was it? You mentioned there's multiple data sources, obviously, that you had to connect. How easy was that?
It's not so easy because you have a lot of databases, a lot of information, not standardized. And also you have a lot of knowledge in the minds of the administrators of the airports. We put all together—not so easy. We put this in SAP. And then at this point, we have a minimum human intervention. But the reality is we have only one version of the truth at this time, and this is so good. Something that we speak is, with more and more information, try to be more efficient in the system and try to obtain more benefits for the future. The next step for us is not only move to the airports in Argentina, but try to move to Armenia that has the same condition in some cases. But for me, it's more important to move to other processes, and that is, for me, very, very good to do.
Yeah. Well, thanks so much for sharing the story. Next time we're stuck on the runway, I hope the airport runs your SNOW Agent. Congratulations again to the whole team. Thank you so much.
This is a fan club. So tell us, what do you think? Main impact?
First of all, I think you should sell that app actually to all airports. But kidding aside, I think what is striking for me when you talked about it: people are always busy so they don't have time, but you gave them time. It's a leadership choice to go into this innovation. And then quite frankly, 12 weeks and it's there. So it's absolutely doable today. And that's, I think, super, super exciting for everybody. So give room for this innovation. Make use of the people and the technology which is at hand today. Thank you.
Good. But even for customers who aren't keeping an airport running in a blizzard, we see a consistent pattern here. Regardless of size and industry, solid technical fundamentals are the key to moving past the hype and really unleashing the outcome from AI. And this is where our partner ecosystem comes in as well. And let me do a quick shout out here. Our partners are here to help you transform with RISE, leveraging the RISE with SAP methodology. And they are already also building agents on our Business AI platform. Over 700 have been built in Joule Studio 1.0, and yesterday you saw the next version. And we are backing them up with a $100 million investment, ensuring that when you transition to an autonomous enterprise, you have the specialized expertise and the power available to lead in your industry.
But what do you say? Should we switch gears? And no pun intended, a quick question to the audience: just think about what was your first car, and maybe what was the color of your first car, and how did it feel when you went to the gas station for the first time to fill it up? Just think about that. Maybe, Thomas, question to you: what was your first car?
A BMW. What should I say? A good RISE with SAP customer, for sure.
All right. Mine was a Daihatsu. All right. So our next customer literally provides the fuel for so many of those stories and memories, but also the energy that powers really our daily lives. And they are on a transformational journey that's setting a new standard for their industry. And to tell us more, please welcome on stage now the Vice President of ExxonMobil Global Services, Bill Keeler.
It's getting more and more. So ExxonMobil operates at extraordinary scale. And what was happening in the business that made it clear the company needed to rethink its operating model? And how did simplifying processes and aligning technologies enable that?
Yeah, it's a really great question, and you're absolutely right about the scale we operate in. Everybody thinks about the gas station. My first car was a Renault, by the way. Not many people will know what that was in this room. But we do so much more—truly global company. Not only do we have the oil and gas business, we have the plastics business. We have a lot of innovation in our products. And what we have been seeing over the last several years is our industry is one that is seeing a lot more change in its future than it's had in its past. So we've been around 150 years essentially doing the same thing very, very reliably, very efficiently. But, you know, as the energy transition takes place, we're looking to different business models, different decisions that have to be made. And when we stepped back as a corporation and thought about how we would actually operate in that environment, we realized that we needed a fundamental strategic shift.
to become a much more nimble organization, simplify the organizational structure within the corporation that had grown up over the years. And then once you do that, to aid the decision-making, we also had to do something with our processes and absolutely with our data, which was fragmented and difficult to get. And every question was a science project, as I'm sure some of us have shared here on the couch. And so that was kind of the rationale. We want to be able to get to decisions faster so we can react to the market faster, and so we can pivot as we see the world evolve around us. And that is really why we started this transformation—business-led transformation to fundamentally revisit our processes and revisit our data. Now, we've been around a long time, 150 years, and we had been really good at building IT systems. And we have a long partnership with SAP. And so we had a very large installed base of SAP, which we had improved significantly with customizations. And I discovered earlier this week, actually, Jan is responsible for some of those customizations in—
