You Might Choke Gorging on the TACO Trade
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Every so often an idea goes truly viral. A four-letter acronym always helps — think of Fear of Missing Out (FOMO), There Is No Alternative (TINA), or the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India and China). Now it's TACO — Trump Always Chickens Out — trade.
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Forbes
11 minutes ago
- Forbes
How SAP Is Managing AI And Data To Meet ERP Customers Where They Are
SAP CEO Christian Klein opened SAP Sapphire 2025 by highlighting today's business uncertainty and ... More emphasizing SAP's focus on helping customers adapt to new trade rules, regulations and technologies. The discussions at SAP's Sapphire 2025 event in Orlando were different than in previous years — focused, grounded and more customer-centric. SAP's key message was clear: ERP transformation doesn't need to be disruptive, nor is it one-size-fits-all. This is so important — and welcome — because many customers are still operating in hybrid computing environments, managing legacy on-premises systems while also moving some functions to the cloud, and they're navigating complex change cycles. Instead of urging them to leap into the unknown, SAP presented a more modular path centered on embedded AI, flexible data platforms and tools built to meet organizations where they are. I think this pragmatic messaging is a smart approach for SAP, and it was backed up by the announcements from the company throughout the conference. (Note: SAP is an advisory client of my firm, Moor Insights & Strategy.) One of the core architectural shifts discussed was SAP's effort to unify its platform. This is realized through tighter integration of the Business Technology Platform, SAP Business Suite and the Business Data Cloud, which entered controlled general availability earlier this year. BDC, which I wrote about in an earlier Forbes piece, consolidates services including SAP Datasphere, HANA Cloud, SAP Analytics Cloud and BW/4HANA into a single managed environment. It supports both SAP and non-SAP data and is built to reduce fragmentation, simplify access and support analytics, AI models and simulations without data duplication. BDC also includes extended support for older SAP BW systems, offering customers a bridge to modern cloud analytics with less disruption. Meanwhile, the Business Technology Platform (which you'll hear the company call BTP) continues to serve as SAP's foundation for extensibility and automation. On top of that, SAP Build — a tool for creating apps with little to no coding — now includes AI features to help generate code, design user interfaces and automate business logic. These improvements should help both technical and business teams build applications more efficiently and manage workflows with less effort. Integrating Joule — the company's generative AI assistant — across SAP Build, Analytics Cloud and key business applications reflects SAP's intention to make AI a daily utility, not a separate layer or some special extra feature. Among other functions, Joule can now generate and automate processes, surface contextual insights, launch prebuilt AI agents tailored to specific functions, answer natural-language questions and recommend actions based on real-time business data. SAP's AI assistant, Joule, helps orchestrate processes across key business areas such as finance, ... More supply chain, HR and customer experience. SAP's AI strategy is now rooted in an AI-first approach, with AI embedded across the portfolio, and its updated platform reflects this shift. At the center of this is the 'Business AI flywheel,' SAP's framework for linking applications, real-time data and AI — including agents — to support continuous improvement. This 'flywheel' concept includes the Business Data Cloud and Joule. Indeed, Joule plays a central role in this strategy. It's no longer just a task-based assistant — it's becoming an interface that works across products. With integrations for WalkMe (which SAP acquired in 2024) for in-app guidance and Perplexity AI for contextual search, Joule can provide real-time support based on company data. At Sapphire 2025, SAP also introduced AI Foundation, a centralized environment for building, managing and deploying AI agents. To keep those agents working properly, tools like Joule Studio and governance features powered by SAP LeanIX allow organizations to track how AI agents align with business capabilities. Looking ahead, SAP plans to embed AI into 400 business use cases by the end of 2025, reflecting its commitment to making AI part of the everyday experience rather than a standalone function. At the conference, SAP also introduced new intelligent applications built on the Business Data Cloud. These apps address specific needs — People Intelligence for workforce planning, Green Ledger for sustainability reporting, Spend Control Tower for managing procurement and supplier risk, 360 Customer for enhancing customer insights and engagement and the Sustainability Tower for tracking and improving ESG performance. Rather than offering broad, unfocused capabilities, each of these apps is designed to use AI and simulation to support targeted business scenarios. Support for ERP transformation projects remains a priority. SAP has repositioned its RISE with SAP and GROW with SAP programs to reflect the distinct needs of existing and new ERP customers. RISE with SAP is a comprehensive transformation framework for current on-premises SAP ERP customers that are moving to S/4HANA in the cloud. Meanwhile, GROW with SAP focuses on net-new customers adopting SAP cloud-based ERP and includes community-based support and best practices. Both programs are backed by SAP's Integrated Toolchain, which enables architectural modeling, scenario simulation, governance and user adoption planning. The Business Transformation Center, which comes with SAP support licenses, is another potentially helpful addition. BTC helps customers move their systems step by step, archiving old ones. This is a big deal for customers who are hesitant to make significant changes. SAP Build has also been improved to support these transformation projects with low-code and pro-code extensions powered by embedded AI. SCM was one of the more practical focus areas at the event. SAP showed how AI agents help with tasks like demand forecasting, supply chain planning and spotting issues in logistics and operations. Some customers shared early results, saying they've seen better visibility, faster cycle times and improved compliance, especially as they deal with today's shifting trade rules and global supply chain uncertainty. SAP connected this to the idea of Industry 5.0, where automation and AI still leave room for human judgment, accountability and transparency. That message seemed to land especially well with customers in healthcare, manufacturing and the public sector, where AI explainability makes a big difference. SAP also highlighted its growing partner ecosystem, which continues to expand the company's AI and data capabilities. Partners include Google Cloud for machine learning and analytics, Microsoft for productivity tools and infrastructure and AWS for industry-specific AI use cases. Accenture is supporting pre-configured cloud solutions to speed up deployment. Palantir contributes to operational modeling, while Cohere, Mistral AI and Deloitte's Zora AI focus on bringing scalable language models into SAP's environment. As touched on earlier, the partnership with Perplexity AI adds real-time, context-aware search directly into Joule. Databricks — already integrated with SAP's Business Data Cloud through a special partnership — is helping accelerate AI model development. Syniti is working with SAP to address data quality and data readiness, which is a key hurdle for many organizations. To its credit, SAP did not downplay the ongoing hurdles that its customers face. 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Customers also need more hands-on help — like clear migration plans, industry-specific examples and partner workshops — to build confidence and move forward faster. SAP Sapphire 2025 made it clear that SAP is focusing on helping customers move forward without forcing big, disruptive changes. This year's updates were about making things easier to manage — like better integration across BTP, the SAP Business Suite and the Business Data Cloud. That kind of unification matters for customers trying to connect data, simplify their systems and get more value from what they already have. SAP also expanded its partner network in useful ways to give customers access to more resources, whether that means getting help with cloud infrastructure, AI model development or real-time search. These are practical ways to expand what SAP can offer without trying to build everything in-house. I think customers still have concerns. Many are cautious about moving to the cloud, and with good reason — data cleanup, change management, pricing clarity and keeping things running during the transition are all real challenges. SAP's tools like the BTC and the reworked RISE with SAP and GROW with SAP programs are built to help with this, but organizations want clear guidance, too. In the end, SAP's message was that transformation doesn't have to mean tearing everything out and starting over. Most customers aren't looking for dramatic change; they want progress they can manage. SAP is starting to reflect that more in its products and messaging, and the shift is noticeable. For the ERP world, it's a reminder that the best path forward might not be the fastest, but the one that actually fits.
Politico
14 minutes ago
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Trump wants a manufacturing boom. The industry is buckling.
President Donald Trump is vowing to spark a manufacturing boom with tariffs to protect American workers and industry. So far, it's manufacturers that have borne the brunt of the pain. The president's surprise decision to raise tariffs on imported steel and aluminum to 50 percent will hit domestic manufacturing just as a new report shows the industry is already contracting. Uncertainty about where tariff rates will ultimately land — or where they'll be applied — has forced businesses to make hard decisions that could cut into both profits and hiring. And a leading trade group on Thursday called on Trump to give the companies a break on the tariffs. 'For a president who is intent on building U.S. manufacturing, the tariff strategy he's laid out is remarkably short-sighted,' said Gordon Hanson, a Harvard Kennedy School professor whose groundbreaking 2016 research work, 'The China Shock,' was among the first to sound the alarm about the threat to American industry. 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Julia Coronado, founder of MacroPolicy Perspectives, also said the flurry of new import duties may prompt some manufacturers to actually move their manufacturing facilities offshore rather than subject their supply chains and production processes to multiple tariffs. 'If I have to assemble a bunch of parts and inputs, why don't I just don't do that on the Canadian or Mexican side of the border and then pay the tariff on the final good?' she said. An even bigger challenge may involve finding and training workers who can staff up any facilities that reshore. Most Americans work in the service sector and, to the extent tariffs lead to reshoring, those facilities will likely rely heavily on automation, according to economists at the Bank of America Institute. Finding qualified workers in the U.S. is either too difficult or too expensive. 'Whatever manufacturing production comes back to the U.S. will require far fewer jobs than 30 or 40 years ago,' Hanson said. 'It's just the way the world has gone.'
Yahoo
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- Yahoo
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