Partners take ABAP to the cloud: Hack2Build in Americas SAP S/4HANA Cloud Extensions with SAP BTP, ABAP Environment 

From April 20th to 27th another successful Hack2Build event took place in Americas. Themed on the ABAP Environment that’s available on the SAP Business Technology Platform, SAP partners hacked their way to create innovative S/4HANA Cloud Extensions. 

As a continuation of the SAP BTP ABAP Environment, Developer Bootcamps series delivered by Partner Solution Adoption teams all around the world, partners were enabled and made ready to join Hack2Build at full speed. 

We were also thrilled to have the very own SAP ABAP product team for technical support during the event. 

Hack2Build initiative from SAP is a rapid prototyping initiative to drive early-stage inspiration, use case exploration and technology adoption for SAP partners. In this opportunity, partners validate their ideas, get coaching and support during the build of the prototype, and get hands-on experience with SAP Technologies. After the hackathon, they also explore how to package the solution and get ready for go-to-market. 

The participants brought inspiration, hard work, curiosity, and delivered compelling solutions in just a week. 

 The Participating Companies  

Hack2Build Americas April 2022 Participants

We were glad to welcome in this edition of the Hack2Build six SAP partner companies with around 30 experts. They were: Convergentis, Crave Infotech,  Neoris, SAT Infotech, VASPP and Wipro.  

By harnessing the power of the ABAP Environment running on top of SAP Business Technology Platform, the participants extended the Intelligent Sustainable Enterprise’s core, the S/4HANA Cloud. This way, they managed to target customer essential needs or to alleviate customer’s pain points with intelligent solutions. 

 At first, the SAP teams worked to review the business use cases and prototype architecture along with each partner. Then, within just a week’s time, the partners worked hard to materialize their innovations onto working software running on SAP BTP, all with the support of the SAP teams, either operational issues with the SAP Hack2Build team or with technical questions with the SAP ABAP team. Finally, they showcased the prototypes for the critical eyes of the judges. Although all participating teams had the potential to win, the jury had to determine the winners based on key criteria. 

It was interesting to see that some partners were developing new solutions from scratch, and some partners were kickstarting the migration of their existing on-premises applications to the Cloud. SAP BTP could effectively support both scenarios, add value, and speed up partner’s development efforts. 

Demo Jam and the Panel of Judges  

All participants made it to the final Demo Jam and showcased their inspiring innovative solutions to the audience. They had 15 minutes to present the Business Case, the functioning Prototype running on SAP BTP, ABAP Environment, and answer both business and technical questions. It was an intense morning aiming to impress the Jury.  

The Panel of Judges came from a diverse perspective and consisted of three SAP Leaders:   

The Panel of Judges

  The judges were amazed by the showcases, given the constraints of such short time and high quality of the partner prototypes. They also had the chance to provide insights and feedback to each partner. 

 We also had the honor of welcoming again Carolina Bastos, Sr. VP, LAC GPO Partner Innovation and Transformation Head, as the award presenter to announce the winners among the finalists. 

Carolina Bastos

The Winners  

Winner: Wipro    

Wipro created the winning solution IDoc Monitoring Application. For long time, SAP (On Premise or Cloud) systems interface with other 3rd party SAP/non-SAP systems using IDoc. Knowing when there’s a failure and what’s the reason is valuable information, especially for a production system with a pending transaction.​ This SaaS solution provides insights on the integration problems much before the whole process fails, greatly reducing the reaction time to resolve potential IDoc integration issues. 

First Runner-up: VASPP  

Vaspp showcased the Customer Management Rule Engine solution. This is an automated Fiori based Customer Management system with a more intuitive workflow, easy role-based navigation and business function access. It also includes a live status tracking and notification service deployed in SAP BTP integrated with SAP BTP Workflow application for Approval process. Finally, it also uses the SAP BTP ABAP Environment and Document management service for secure data storage and retrieval.​ All these components enable transparent Customer Management by simplifying the process with minimal human intervention, starting from creation, management to monitoring and routing. 

The Voice from the Winners  

Wipro: 

Vaspp:

Beyond a Hackathon  

 As the intent of Hack2Build event is to help our partners to build their solution, the move to the next BUILD phase is critical for the partners to drive successful outcome with their innovations. Most of the partners are continuing with their development and aim to bring their solutions to customers as soon as possible.  

Acknowledgment  

We would like to thank all finalist teams, in no order, and the use cases they prototyped in SAP BTP ABAP Environment during this Hack2Build:  

• Convergentis: Data driven approach to Custom code Migration from ECC to S/4HANA​, as an extension to SAP’s Custom Code Migration app. 

• Crave Infotech: Monitor Purchase Order Items Extension. 
• Neoris: Cryptocurrency Trader Bot that operates according to stock prices fluctuations​. 
• SAT Infotech: SAT EarlyPay: negotiation platform for buyers to pay early in exchange to agreed incentives.  

To award the excellent work results presented, all the participant partner teams received digital badges by cred.ly from SAP.  

Virtual Selfie during the Demo Jam

 We also would like to thank all the SAP teams and colleagues for their passionate and tireless commitment and the tremendous support they offered, which made this event possible! Kudos and special thanks to: 

• Carolina Bastos, Renato Gandara, Rudi Held, Thomas Jung and Wesley Honorato for the executive support and for acting as judges and contributing with live feedback to the partners. 
• Chandresh Panchal, Louenas Hamdi, Dirk Wenzel, Pascale Croteau, Jay Shroff, Idit Saguey, Ben Hamel, Fábio Traldi, João Cavalcanti, Miguel Bermudez, Pavel Penaz and all for the help in recruiting. 
• Alessandro Biagi, Andre Fischer, Edward Neveux, Gianluigi Bagnoli, Jens Weiler, Quintus Smith, Rich Heilman and Thiago de Castro Mendes for the technical support. 

• Karl Kessler, Harish Bokkasam, Lea Dvir, Mordechai Moshin, Natalia Rodriguez, Rodrigo Riveros for showing partners the routes forward, from creating solutions and out to the market. 
• All colleagues from SAP Partner Ecosystem Success and SAP Co-Innovation Lab for helping and supporting this event.   

Thank you for your excellent support during all phases of the event. We couldn’t have it done without your leadership, domain expertise, and dedication to the success of SAP and our Ecosystem.  

SAP Hack2Build Americas Team 

Authors: Jiayi Wang, Lucas Rigo and Ronildo Santos