“We’ve been turning empathy into action at SAP,” said Bill McDermott (pictured), chief executive officer of SAP SE during the company’s annual Sapphire Now conference.

Kicked off today in Orlando, Florida, the keynote address emphasized SAP’s latest cloud products for enterprise processes, including new features for the popular S/4Hana platform and a demo of Leonardo as SAP tackles Internet of Things markets. With presentations from its partner ecosystem, including Dell Technologies Inc., Google Inc. and Intel Corp., SAP also used this morning’s keynote to showcase how shared technologies strengthen the user experience and promote innovation within the enterprise.

Proving that it is listening to clients, SAP recently introduced the Cloud Trust Center, providing a new level of transparency for cloud users. “We have been redoubling our focus on the innovation around the customer experience,” said Bernd Leukert, member of the executive board of SAP SE, products and innovation. (* Disclosure below.)

Featured technological developments during the keynote included S/4Hana, providing cloud Enterprise Resource Planning; SAP Digital Boardroom, featuring real-time business intelligence; and SAP Digital HR, simplifying HR processes. A few components of the SAP Leonardo Innovation Portfolio were live-demoed, including examples of how virtual sensors on a windmill, on power tools, and in buildings can help transform business processes.

Demoing Leonardo for IoT

McDermott said that the world has reinvented itself many times, with a couple of the most recent being the industrial revolution and the internet revolution. He explained that data, the new “gold” of the current information revolution, runs through SAP systems — 76 percent of the world’s transactions, of more than $22 trillion in value.

“It is SAP’s job to make you an early adopter of the intelligent enterprise; we want you to win,” McDermott told the keynote audience.

SAP’s latest offering is SAP Leonardo, the company’s brand for its Internet of Things portfolio. Leonardo is a design-thinking methodology that combines data flowing from IoT, applying blockchain technologies, machine learning and business analytics. The idea is that by reinventing everyday business practices, enterprises can accelerate their digital transformations.

One of the capabilities demoed in real-time showed off Leonardo facility management capabilities. Using a Google street-like view of the interior and exterior of the building, facility managers can view in real-time things like deployed sensors or fire extinguishers. There’s no longer a need for them to be there in person; they can monitor remotely as needed.

Another scenario focused on a hypothetic power tool renter, showing a daily dashboard with a list of available tools. With Leonardo, there are digital sensors on the tools so that when someone rents the tool, it goes up on the dashboard. Historically, tool maintenance and rental agreements are scheduled according to a time period, not necessarily taking into account how much or how little a tool is used. Now that sensors track tool usage, both a more efficient maintenance schedule and billing schedule can be devised, explained keynote presenter Ian Kimbell, officer of the COO at SAP Asia Pte.

The final example of Leonardo’s capabilities was a windmill located on a wind farm in Norway. Using Leonardo, a virtual “twin” of the windmill was brought up, showing areas in red that indicated parts of the windmill suffering undue stress. A virtual sensor was placed into the red areas, showing details around what was happening. And the system even brought up a capability to see who was available in the area to perform maintenance on the windmill.

While the future cannot be predicted with any certainty, the digital transformation is expected to impact more enterprise operations in coming years. According to McDermott, SAP is well-situated to help enterprises navigate and take advantage of their own digital data, innovating for the future of business.

Stay tuned for the complete keynote video interview, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s independent editorial coverage of SAP Sapphire Now. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for SAP Sapphire Now. Neither SAP nor other sponsors have editorial influence on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo courtesy of SAP’s Sapphire Now livestream