SAP and sovanta have opened a new AppHaus location in Newtown Square, Pennsylvania, designed around hands-on co-innovation with enterprise customers. The format is deliberately factory-style: customers come in, work alongside SAP specialists, and build solutions together rather than receiving finished deliverables.
This model keeps appearing. The AppHaus network now spans multiple locations globally, each built on the same premise: that large organisations want to be inside the development process, shaping outcomes as they emerge. A logistics company we spoke with last quarter described their AppHaus engagement as the point where their SAP implementation shifted from vendor-led to genuinely collaborative. Their internal team came out of it with skills they had not budgeted for.
For hiring managers in the DACH region, the pattern raises a question about team composition. These co-innovation formats put a premium on consultants who can facilitate as much as they can configure. The ability to run a room, translate between business stakeholders and developers, and make decisions under ambiguity has become a core requirement. A senior SAP consultant we placed in Munich earlier this year had exactly that profile: deep Fiori experience paired with genuine workshop facilitation skills. Her previous employer had never asked her to use both together.
Organisations building internal capacity around co-creation will need people comfortable operating in sessions where the outcome is not predetermined. Interviews will probe for facilitation instincts alongside technical depth, shortlists will favour candidates who have run cross-functional workshops, and senior roles on SAP teams will carry expectations they did not carry before.
Prompted by reporting from SAP News Centre.