AFSUG announced PwC South Africa as the overall winner of its first SAP Business Technology Platform [BTP] Hackathon, which concluded live on stage at the SAPHILA 2025 user conference. The eight-week challenge invited AFSUG customers and partners to build practical solutions with SAP BTP services such as SAP Build, SAP HANA Cloud, SAP Integration Suite, and ABAP Cloud.
Eighteen teams entered; three were shortlisted to present to the conference audience, who selected the champion by real-time vote. The finalists were PwC South Africa, Debswana Diamond Company and Bell Equipment. The programme began with a virtual ideation phase, followed by onboarding workshops and weekly checkpoints supported by ten coaches.
PwC South Africa simplifies legal document processing and understanding with AI
PwC’s proof-of-concept, the solution is a software-as-a-service platform that scans, summarises and translates contracts, and answers user questions in plain language. Built with retrieval-augmented generation and knowledge graphs on SAP BTP. The tool helps users spot unexpected charges, misleading clauses and cancellation hurdles. Future applications include onboarding employees and validating contractual scope.
Debswana solution tackles overtime risk and streamlines HR processes
Debswana’s overtime assistant uses SAP BTP AI to generate schedules informed by historical working hours for the mine’s 4 400-plus workforce. The system flags employees nearing fatigue thresholds. It reduces manual spreadsheet handling and supports governance by recording decisions in a single source of truth.
Bell Equipment streamlines shipment tracking process with automation
Bell Equipment automated the creation and updating of inbound shipment records. An SAP Build Process Automation bot monitors an email inbox, captures freight documents via optical character recognition, and feeds accurate estimated times of arrival into the materials planning system, allowing proactive action on potential stock shortages.
“The hackathon was designed to give our community a hands-on path to explore SAP BTP.” Said Olaf Winkler, SAP BTP product management. “Seeing customers turn ideas into working prototypes in eight weeks proves the platform’s flexibility.” Amanda Gibbs, AFSUG CEO congratulated PwC South Africa and thank you to every team and the coaches who guided them. The creativity on display shows the depth of talent in the African SAP ecosystem.”
AFSUG plans to repeat the hackathon in 2026 and encourages organisations to experiment early with SAP BTP’s AI, integration and automation services.
