The world’s leading companies reveal how artificial intelligence is moving beyond experimentation and into core business operations to improve decision-making, increase productivity, and deliver measurable operational impact.
JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA, May 21, 2026 – /African Media Agency (AMA)/ – At this year’s SAP SAPPHIRE in Madrid from May 19 to 21, leading organizations in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa are revealing how business AI has moved from experimentation to business value realization.
The event will demonstrate two different but related approaches to AI implementation by Ericsson and Matur Phonepack International, with Ericsson building the controlled data infrastructure needed to scale AI across the enterprise, and Matur Phonepack International embedding AI directly into physical manufacturing operations to transform shop floor execution.
“The next stage of AI adoption is execution,” said Nadia Pillay, SAP’s Managing Director for Southern Africa. “Organizations are looking for a trusted data foundation, strong governance, and practical business use cases that can deliver measurable value. By embedding AI into the systems and workflows that enterprises already use, SAP is helping customers scale AI responsibly and turn their ambitions into real-world impact.”
Ericsson builds the foundation for trusted AI at scale
Ericsson is moving from experimenting with AI to running it across the enterprise by building an integrated business data fabric with SAP Business Data Cloud. This approach allows the company to extend AI use cases across the business, accelerate decision-making, and deliver measurable operational impact.
Ericsson, which celebrates its 150th anniversary this year, provides mobile network infrastructure in 180 countries and more than 40% of the world’s mobile traffic passes through its networks. As AI becomes central to the company’s technology roadmap and the way it operates its business, Ericsson has prioritized building a strong, managed data foundation to support scalable and reliable AI.
“When you scale AI, it stops being an AI problem and becomes a data problem,” said Esra Kokatürk-Norrell, vice president of customer experience for enterprise IT at Ericsson. “That’s why we invested early in Business Data Fabric. With SAP Business Data Cloud, you can define the meaning of your data once and apply it consistently across your enterprise, from revenue to market structure to access rules. This enables you to scale AI in a way that is reliable, repeatable, and delivers real business value.”
At the core of Ericsson’s approach is a federated data architecture that allows you to maintain data in place while centrally managing business semantics, governance, and lifecycle policies. Ericsson moved beyond pilots to large-scale implementation by focusing on high-impact use cases and organizing around end-to-end business processes rather than individual solutions. Today, more than 85,000 users are using the integrated Joule, backed by strong executive sponsorship and governance.
SAP and Ericsson are also collaborating on AI co-innovation efforts, including intelligent goal recommendation capabilities developed within SAP SuccessFactors. The solution generates contextual and business-aligned employee goals, improving execution and reducing administrative effort.
Mathur Phonepak brings AI to physical manufacturing operations
Martur Fompak International, a global leader in automotive seating and interior systems, has implemented an autonomous internal logistics model enabled by the embodied AI capabilities of Joule and SAP, marking a significant milestone in its journey towards intelligent AI-driven manufacturing operations.
As the industry rapidly shifts to AI-powered operations, Martur Fompak International saw an opportunity to rethink material flow. Building on the efficient, human-driven processes it already has in place, the company partnered with SAP and Humanoid, a UK-based robotics and AI company, to explore how embodied, AI-powered robotics can redefine material flow across automotive manufacturing environments.
Martur Fompak International is using SAP’s Joule and embodied AI capabilities to directly connect production signals and business context to autonomous execution, building a context-aware automation system that prioritizes, selects, and delivers materials while adapting to changing business conditions in real time.
Built on SAP S/4HANA and enabled by SAP Extended Warehouse Management, the solution powers humanoid robots with real-time knowledge of tasks, attributes, and exception handling. Humanoid robots execute material flow throughout a real-world automotive manufacturing environment based on material data, storage locations, sequencing, and production priorities, identifying, transporting, and delivering materials to the line with continuous checking to the SAP solution.
The company has partnered with autonomous mobile robots to create a fully automated and scalable material flow that increases throughput, improves accuracy, and reduces reliance on manual adjustments. Mathur Phonepac International assigns repetitive, non-value-added, physically demanding tasks to robots, allowing employees to focus on safer, meaningful, and high-value work.
“Our humanoid robots work with digital production systems to ensure seamless coordination across order management, logistics and production, enabling scalable AI implementation and increasing efficiency, consistency and operational resilience,” said Ozlem Altunushuk, Group Intelligent Technology Director at Martur Fompak International.
Initial results show increased throughput, reduced errors, and a scalable AI-driven intralogistics model. Mathur Phonepac International has already implemented 400 daily production line feeds and 100% SAP software-driven decision-making, advancing beyond traditional automation and pioneering a scalable and intelligent factory model.
Pillay added: “Ericsson and Mathur Fonpac International have shown that AI delivers its greatest value when it is rooted in the business context and embedded in core processes. From enterprise data foundations to intelligent robotics on the factory floor, these examples show how organizations can responsibly scale AI to improve productivity and create measurable business impact.”
Distributed by African Media Agency (AMA) on behalf of SAP
About SAP
As a global leader in enterprise applications and business AI, SAP (NYSE:SAP) stands at the nexus of business and technology. For more than 50 years, organizations have trusted SAP to maximize results by integrating business-critical operations across finance, procurement, human resources, supply chain, and customer experience. For more information, please visit www.sap.com.
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