BEYOND ESSENTIALS
Core insight: An AI assistant named after a Norse god now lets Brazilian maintenance workers get SAP-based repair guidance in Portuguese, on or offline. Two UNITED VARS members – SOA People Denmark and Cast in Brazil – deployed it together.
Consequence: The alliance framework let two independent companies on different continents combine SAP and AI expertise with deep local knowledge fast, with shared standards already in place.
Mid-market angle: A mid-market manufacturer with frontline workers spread across a few plants faces the same language and connectivity gap at smaller scale, usually without the internal resources to build a custom AI tool to close it.
Not every proof of an alliance model appears in a governance document. Sometimes it shows up on a factory floor: a Brazilian maintenance worker, multilingual instruction manuals, and an AI-powered assistant named after a Norse god. The story is one of the case studies in our Mid-Market Playbook for Global SAP Transformations.
A customer headquartered in Japan operated manufacturing facilities in Brazil. Maintenance procedures were documented in multiple languages, Japanese among them, and workers in Brazil had no reliable way to access or apply them in the field. Connectivity made it worse: maintenance tasks often ran in environments with no live system connection. The result was a recurring operational risk that no single fix – a translation pass, a better manual, a faster connection – would have resolved on its own.
Solving this meant combining SAP and AI expertise with deep local knowledge of Brazil's language and operational environment, inside a framework that let two independent members build something together. SOA People Denmark, a member specializing in AI and SAP-based mobility solutions, and Cast, a Brazilian member with deep knowledge of local operations and language, were already working within the same alliance framework. Shared delivery standards and mutual trust meant they could align around the customer's problem fast, without starting from zero on how to work with each other.
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Together they deployed Ask Odin, SOA People Denmark's AI-powered maintenance assistant built on SAP technology. Brazilian maintenance workers speak to it in natural Portuguese. Ask Odin processes multilingual instruction manuals, translates the relevant content, and delivers step-by-step guidance on the spot, in Portuguese. It also works offline, so workers get what they need regardless of connectivity.
Ask Odin runs on SAP Plant Maintenance and works with SAP ECC as well as SAP S/4HANA private and public cloud. How Ask Odin saves maintenance teams from time-consuming admin covers the product in more detail.
Based on typical outcomes from SOA People Denmark's clients, plant throughput increased through higher Overall Equipment Effectiveness. Time-to-repair and manual data entry hours dropped measurably. Workers resolved issues faster, with repair guidance available the moment they needed it, online or off.
Lars Bork Dylander, CEO & Partner at SOA People Denmark, described what makes the model repeatable: "We can roll this out to plants anywhere in the world in the local languages, and tailored to how each plant runs, while keeping the overall approach consistent. That's a major strength of the UNITED VARS alliance."
This project ran across three continents – a customer headquartered in Japan, an AI and mobility specialist in Denmark, an operations and language specialist in Brazil – and it worked because two UNITED VARS members shared a delivery framework and enough mutual trust to build something neither could have built alone. Workers in Brazil now follow multilingual technical instructions in their own language, offline, on the factory floor. The alliance made it possible. AI made it work.
For a mid-market manufacturer weighing whether an AI-powered tool like this is realistic on their budget, the answer sits in how the project came together: two specialist members combined capability they already had, inside a framework built for exactly this kind of collaboration. For more on where AI pays off, see SAP AI use cases that work for mid-market companies.
Ask Odin is one example of what happens when UNITED VARS members combine specialist capability across borders. The same pattern runs through every case in the Mid-Market Playbook series, from statutory validation to joint delivery teams. More projects are collected in our references.
Facing a language or connectivity gap on your own factory floor? Talk to us.
Mid-sized companies should go global without losing speed or local identity. UNITED VARS brings together hand-picked local market leaders with real people on the ground in 100+ countries to remove legal, cultural, and language barriers. As a strategic alliance, UNITED VARS provides clear accountability from start to finish. UNITED VARS is the world's only SAP Platinum Partner alliance, delivering end-to-end SAP services for the mid-market.
stronger than one.
Ask Odin is an AI-powered maintenance assistant from UNITED VARS member SOA People Denmark, built on SAP Plant Maintenance. Factory workers talk to it by voice in their own language and get step-by-step repair guidance, including in environments with no live system connection. For a manufacturer with plants in Brazil, SOA People Denmark deployed it together with Cast, a Brazilian UNITED VARS member.
UNITED VARS member SOA People Denmark built Ask Odin, an AI maintenance assistant on SAP Plant Maintenance that technicians use by voice, in their own language, online or offline. In the Brazil project, SOA People Denmark deployed it with Cast, a Brazilian member who brought deep knowledge of local operations and language.
No. The underlying problem – workers who need guidance in their own language and can't always rely on a live connection – exists at a single plant as much as at a multinational operation. For most mid-market manufacturers, the real barrier is missing in-house AI and SAP mobility expertise to build a tool like this alone.
They were already working inside the same alliance framework, with shared delivery standards and existing mutual trust. That let SOA People Denmark's AI and mobility expertise combine quickly with Cast's knowledge of Brazil's operational and language environment, since how to work together was settled before the project began.
Yes. It's built to work offline, which was one of the two problems it had to solve alongside the language barrier. Workers get repair guidance on the spot regardless of whether the plant floor has a live system connection at that moment.