In 2004, Hasso Plattner, one of SAP’s founders, introduced Design Thinking at SAP and rolled it out globally at the annual SAP Sapphire conference.
Since then, a lot has happened in the software industry in the area of user experience (UX) and design. Design Thinking is a creative process that aims to develop innovative solutions to complex problems through empathic observation, prototyping, and iterative testing. Design Thinking thus enables a user-centered, interactive approach to problem solving. Since its foundation in 2013, the SAP AppHaus team has implemented innovation projects with companies in this area. The experience gained from more than 1,000 projects has been incorporated into the Human-Centered Approach to Innovation (HCAI), which is based on Design Thinking and places people as users of a software solution in the focus of the innovation approach. The stated goal of SAP AppHaus is to put innovation into the hands of people who will then use it successfully and efficiently.
SAP Experience Centers are part of the global SAP Experience Services organization and represent a unified framework for customer engagement, combining technology demonstrations, industry storytelling, innovation workshops, and architectural guidance into standardized, outcome-driven packaged services.
What started as SAP AppHaus has now been fully integrated into the SAP Experience Center model. All SAP AppHaus workshop formats, including design thinking, architecture thinking, and SAP Business AI workshops, are now delivered consistently as SAP Experience Center packaged services through SAP Experience Services. This integration ensures that inspiration, innovation, and implementation readiness are tightly connected and delivered through a single engagement model—globally consistent, repeatable, and measurable. For customers preparing for or executing a migration to SAP S/4HANA, this shift is particularly important: SAP Experience Centers combine business process insights end-to-end, all aligned with SAP’s Business AI vision, in one guided journey.
SAP Experience Center and the SAP AppHaus locations not only provide the creative space for this but also the team that works according to the appropriate design thinking and innovation methodology to best support companies in designing and developing software. Working with end users and other stakeholders, innovation experts focus on collaboration, experimentation, and rapid prototyping to help organizations create user-friendly, intuitive, and efficient software. The approach involves a team of designers, developers, and subject matter experts collaborating to understand customer needs, identify vulnerabilities, and develop solutions that address the needs of end users.
SAP Experience Centers are physical and virtual innovation hubs where customers can experience SAP solutions in realistic, end-to-end business scenarios tailored to their industry, transformation stage, and strategic objectives.
SAP Experience Centers allow customers to do the following:
Interact with live SAP S/4HANA systems
Explore end-to-end business processes
Understand integration across SAP applications
Experience embedded, generative, and agentic SAP Business AI
Align executives, business leads, and IT architects around a shared target vision
Unlike traditional demos, SAP Experience Center engagements are story-driven and business-outcome focused, showing how SAP technology supports real operational decisions rather than isolated features. SAP operates nearly 30 SAP Experience Centers globally, including flagship locations in Walldorf, Munich, Berlin, New York, Newtown Square, and Palo Alto.
The SAP AppHaus methodologies—design thinking, architecture thinking, and the human-centered approach to innovation—continue to play a central role, but are now embedded into SAP Experience Center packaged services. This model ensures that innovation is no longer detached from execution. Instead, it directly supports SAP Activate, RISE with SAP, and SAP S/4HANA migration programs.
The Human-Centered Approach to Innovation (HCAI) of SAP AppHaus focuses on the needs and requirements of people when it comes to developing new solutions with SAP BTP in collaboration with SAP customers. This means taking into account the perspectives and experiences of all stakeholders when developing innovations and ensuring that solutions are user-friendly, practical and useful. SAP’s HCAI consists of five iterative phases to support each phase of your project, as shown in this figure.
The five phases of the HCAI process are defined here:
These phases provide the framework for an iterative development process that constantly incorporates feedback from companies and stakeholders to ensure solutions are user-friendly and valuable.
Design thinking uses insights from psychological, cognitive, social, and anthropological research to solve the right problems for the end user and deliver real business value. Architecture thinking, on the other hand, uses data, processes and system components to assess how a solution can scale from a technical and business perspective. Through this method, business goals can be aligned with the IT architecture in a complex customer environment. The combined method is also used to identify new use cases and involve the right people, stakeholders, and end users. The result is, for example, new missions for SAP Discovery Center.
The interplay between design thinking and architecture thinking makes it possible to find the trade-off between an optimal UX and a high business value. In addition, this interaction prioritizes scalability to future-proof the technologies used. The strength of the combined methodology is that the storyboard defined by design thinking (i.e., what the user does and when) as a scene outline is combined with the backend systems supporting processes and data to make the solution scalable and future-proof and to bring in the entire technology and process experience. This is implemented as a use case blueprint diagram and is part of the Lean Architecture Toolkit, which you can download from the SAP AppHaus website. The combination of design thinking, UX design, and architecture thinking enables efficient innovation for end users.
Companies often face the challenge that, although there’s a strong desire for AI, concrete and value-adding use cases are difficult to identify. This makes it clear that AI isn’t just a buzzword, but a strategic success factor that can optimize processes, increase efficiency, and open up new business opportunities. A good AI use case is characterized by the fact that it provides clear business value—significant cost savings, improved customer experiences, or innovative process improvements—while also achieving a high return on investment (ROI).
The complexity lies in finding the right application that is both technically feasible and economically viable. Many ideas often arise, but without a systematic approach, it’s rarely possible to filter out the use cases that secure a decisive competitive advantage in the long term. Especially in a dynamic market environment where technological innovations are advancing rapidly, the precise selection of the best AI use cases can determine market success.
The following section presents the three SAP Business AI workshop formats that help identify and specify the most promising AI use cases in a structured and practical approach. These workshops are offered by SAP Experience Center as part of the packaged services.
During the SAP Business AI Explore workshop, participants gain practical insight into the potential of SAP Business AI, including generative and traditional AI (machine learning). The workshop follows a structured approach that helps identify three to five prioritized use cases based on the capabilities of SAP BTP. Business, technical, and ethical aspects are examined so that strategic decision makers and IT experts can derive concrete subsequent steps for implementation. The workshop is designed as a full-day on-site event or as two half-day virtual sessions and is customized to the specific customer context. Further information is available here.
The SAP Business AI Design workshop serves to develop a feasible solution concept from an existing customer idea in the field of AI. In this interactive workshop, customers and project teams collaborate to define a future target situation that addresses all identified weak points in the current business process. The process first involves analyzing the current situation, followed by generating ideas using AI idea cards, and finally developing the target scenario, which also includes the necessary user and data requirements. The workshop is preferably held as a one-day on-site event or, alternatively, in two half-day virtual sessions, whereby prior agreement on the specific use case is required. Further information is available here.
The Joule Agent Design workshop focuses on defining and designing an intelligent agent based on LLMs that efficiently supports existing business processes. In this hands-on workshop, the SAP team collaborates with customers to determine the tasks and goals the agent should fulfill, including identifying the necessary tools, data sources, and expected behavior.
In the Joule Agent Design workshop, specific interaction flows for such agents are defined, for example, by creating a detailed job description for an agent so that it can be optimally integrated into existing processes. The workshop is planned as a one-day on-site event or, alternatively, as two half-day virtual sessions and builds on a preceding scoping meeting to define an agentic use case. Further details are available here.
SAP Experience Center also offer a co-innovation space where innovations are implemented together with customers, end users, and partners. This is a creative environment to unleash the creative potential that lies within each person. End users and customers are involved from the beginning in an iterative way to quickly respond to changing needs in the business world. It’s about empowering employees to come up with their own ideas. After all, the creativity of each individual is needed to implement innovation.
In summary, SAP AppHaus can be described as a global network of innovation spaces, a unified methodology based on design thinking, and a place where teams can come together to create innovation with SAP experts and customers. The physical locations are designed to foster creativity and collaboration, as well as to experiment with new technologies, methods, and tools.
The SAP AppHaus approach is based on four important pillars:
SAP Experience Centers—and the SAP AppHaus packaged services embedded within them—represent a major evolution in how SAP supports customers on their journey to SAP S/4HANA and RISE with SAP. RISE with SAP bundles SAP S/4HANA Cloud, SAP BTP, transformation tools, and managed services into a single contract and operating model. While this simplifies commercial and technical aspects, it also requires clear architectural and operational alignment early in the project. By combining human-centered innovation, enterprise architecture, live systems, and SAP Business AI, SAP Experience Centers turn transformation from an abstract plan into a concrete, actionable experience—and thus play a critical role in successful SAP S/4HANA data migration projects.
Editor’s note: This post has been adapted from a section of the book Migrating to SAP S/4HANA: Operating Models, Migration Scenarios, Tools, and Implementation by Frank Densborn, Frank Finkbohner, Martina Höft, Petra Klöß, Kim Mathäß, and Boris Rubarth. Frank Densborn has been an expert in data migration at SAP since 2004 and is the author of numerous SAP PRESS titles in German and English. Frank Finkbohner worked for SAP since 1999, including 13 years in SAP consulting, where he supported customers in numerous projects, including data migration and the development and extension of ABAP applications. Martina works in product management for SAP S/4HANA in the area of data migration and data transformation with a focus on the SAP S/4HANA migration cockpit. Dr. Klöß is a senior director in SAP Central Business Configuration, managing customer success for SAP Central Business Configuration for the Americas and greater China. Kim has worked at SAP since 2006 and is currently senior development manager in SAP S/4HANA Globalization. Dr. Rubarth worked at SAP from 1999 until the end of 2024, most recently as product manager in the Software Logistics division.
This post was originally published 11/2019 and updated 7/2026.