From Data to Decision: What We Took Away from Our Visit to SAP in Walldorf

“Welcome back, THAB!” — seeing our university’s name on the main stage set the tone immediately. Together with a group of students from TH Aschaffenburg, we spent a day at SAP’s headquarters in Walldorf. Here are the insights that stayed with us.

Engagement beats lecturing. Sebastian, who organized and hosted the day, opened not with a slide deck but with an interactive game about SAP. A simple move with a big effect: it broke the ice and signaled that the day would be built on exchange, not one-way input.

Data only matters once it drives decisions. In his talk “From Data to Decision,” Max showed how SAP turns data into action. Walking through the SAP Business Suite — from the Business Technology Platform and Business Data Cloud as the foundation up to Cloud ERP and the AI agents now orchestrating entire business processes — made one thing tangible: the value isn’t in the data itself, but in the decisions it enables. A concept we teach at TH-AB, seen from inside a global company.

AI needs more than one perspective. The highlight was a panel on artificial intelligence, moderated by Sebastian, that deliberately mixed viewpoints: Dominic and Sandra from HR, a sales lead from the commercial side, and the research perspective from TH Aschaffenburg. The takeaway wasn’t a single answer, but the realization that the most useful insights emerge where practice and research meet.

A shared lunch and a campus tour rounded off the day — and offered the kind of conversations a lecture hall rarely allows.

Theory from the classroom, experienced live. That is exactly why we run excursions. A warm thank-you to Sebastian, Max, and the entire SAP team for their hospitality.