If you’re still looking for best-in-class or best-of-breed when it comes to your enterprise management systems, it might be time to raise your expectations.

According to Stephan de Barse, president of the global Business Suite for SAP, a new gold standard has emerged — a superlative he calls “best of suite.”

In de Barse’s view, the competitive arena for enterprise management now exists within an integrated framework of AI, data, and core applications. That elevates it from a narrower proving ground, where being a “best of breed” provider checks only one or two of those boxes.

And while being “best of suite” isn’t all about AI, the rapid acceleration of AI-centered workflows meant that SAP needed to think differently about the role of AI in enterprise management. This outcome — a clear path and proximity for AI to easily navigate between divisions and functions — is one of the ways the SAP Business Suite lives up to the new designation.

“Many companies treat AI like a separate layer somewhere in the technology stack,” said de Barse. “That way, it’s disconnected from your end-to-end business processes and disconnected from your data strategy. The moment AI doesn’t make it back to the end-to-end business-process context it’s very, very difficult to drive value.”

AI with suite-wide sweep

According to McKinsey’s on-going tracking of enterprise AI from the C-Suite perspective — captured in regular releases of its State of AI reports — the percentage of organizations that report using AI in three or more divisions more than doubled between 2021 and 2025. Use of AI in four or more company divisions tripled across that time period. Companies using AI across five or more divisions — while starting smaller at 4% of those surveyed in 2021 — posted quadruple growth, forecasting near enterprise-wide ubiquity for AI use.

This trajectory toward AI native enterprises is significant. Where the AI ROI conversation was once centered around generalized productivity powered by LLMs, de Barse has watched it reach hard improvements in both the P&L (e.g. improvement of topline revenue) and the Balance Sheet (e.g. improvement of working capital).

He cited the example of an AI agent on the commercial side of an enterprise forecasting deals likely to close. This would send a signal to manufacturing to increase capacity and procurement to line up raw materials.

“If you think about the entire value chain, from sourcing components to getting a product in the hands of customers, that has to be orchestrated by a series of agents that can help organizations reach better decisions and improve business results,” de Barse said. “Customers want to work with us to get there, because they understand this must be across business processes.”

Best in suite meets best in orchestration

SAP’s own proprietary AI interface is known as Joule, which de Barse described as a “superorchestrator” — a single, accessible entry point to all business applications that, in aggregate, determine how an enterprise runs and employees work, as well as the customer experience.

With Joule, “you ask questions, but you also give instructions,” de Barse said. “You don’t have to log into five different applications to do something — it’s all being orchestrated by Joule. So the way we think about interacting with software becomes different.”

For manufacturers, that can mean an easy conversational prompt to forecast potential supply-chain disruptions and arrive at a solve. In the finance context, it means instant insight into the cash conversion cycle relative to working capital.

“At the enterprise level, this is happening at an unprecedented pace,” he said.

In de Barse’s view, these capabilities also call for cultural shifts within organizations — leaning away from optimizing current processes to rethinking how entire functions should be done, so that what becomes automated and tasked to agents is operating in “best-of-suite” condition.

“It’s pretty exciting. This,” he said, “is the opportunity.”

• Spotify Wrapped has added a new feature, and it’s humiliating some of us!
• Young people who listen to classic rock or ’90s music are shocked to be called old.
• A colleague who’s in his 30s and listens to a lot of jazz got an age of 86. I got 59 — and I’m 44.

Every December, Spotify Wrapped manages to disappoint parents of young children by reminding them that their identity as fully fledged humans has been erased, leaving just a husk of a vessel that exists only to hit the repeat button on “Wheels on the Bus” or the “Encanto” soundtrack.

But, oh, how the tables have finally turned. Now, young people in their teens and 20s are getting a dose of Spotify’s cruel and merciless wrath.

Spotify Wrapped just added a new metric to its year-end personalized wrap-up: “listening age.” In addition to telling you which songs and artists you listened to the most, it will give you an estimated age based on your listening tastes.

And for some people, it’s waaaay off. And Gen Z — and even some of us in the older set — is getting offended.

Gharieth Edries is only 23, but Spotify just told him his listening age is 50. Edries told me that he isn’t totally surprised.

“I dabbled in a bit of Duran Duran this year, due to my parents, unknowingly realizing that I would become overly obsessed with their artwork and that it would appear in my top 5 artists (their music is just sooooo good),” he said. Duran Duran opened a door to more.

“Depeche Mode, Wham, Pet Shop Boys, New Order. These are some of my mother’s favorite bands, and I completely understand her now.”

Charlotte Ward, 22 in real life, is a big Fleetwood Mac fan, and Spotify pegged her as 68 — “unc” status in Gen Z slang.

I have also been a victim of Spotify’s mis-aging me. I’m a spry and youthful 44, but apparently my listening habits are those of a 59-year-old. (I also like ’80s music, although I would have assumed the dominance of the “K-Pop Demon Hunters” soundtrack would have dragged down my average.)

A few of my colleagues here at Business Insider also got some surprising ages: Economy editor Bartie Scott, who’s 36, got 72, and media editor Nathan McAlone, who’s also 36, got a whopping 86 years old. (He thinks that’s because he listens to a lot of classic jazz while reading at home, which sounds very cozy and also exactly what an 86-year-old would do.)

Spotify also suggested some people were younger than they actually are. “I got 23 and tbh I think that’s more offensive somehow,” an unnamed 39-year-old reporter who’s too embarrassed to use her real name said in one of our Slacks. And my editor is 47, but Spotify told him he’s got the musical tastes of someone who’s 30.

The exact formula for calculating the listening age is unclear, but my guess is that it involves assuming a listener is 18 to 20 years old at the year a song is released. The assumption is that if you listen to a ton of the Beatles, your listening age is going to be around 75. If you listen to mainly Taylor Swift, you’re probably 34. I asked Spotify for its secret sauce, but it didn’t immediately respond.

Is it cringe to listen to music that’s way older than you actually are? Well, maybe. Being young and listening to old music is a sign you’re developing a deep and varied musical palate, right? The really humiliating thing would be to be 44 and have it accurately peg you for listening to the same stuff that came out when you were in college. Is having the musical tastes of a much younger person cool or not cool? I truly don’t know!

What does it all mean? It’s all part of the weird fascination of Spotify Wrapped. Music is so uniquely personal; we feel it says so much about who we are, and we can feel proud or embarrassed by this.

As someone who has ceded control of Spotify to my kids’ whims for the last decade, I am delighted to see others join my pain. Maybe when I’m actually 59, I’ll have the time to get back into new music on my own.

• Citi named 276 new managing directors on Wednesday, the bank’s highest rank below the C-suite.
• This year’s class is about 20% smaller than 2024’s 344 promotions.
• Business Insider has the full list of newly promoted managing directors.

Citi has a new group of senior leaders joining its highest ranks.

On Wednesday, the bank announced 276 managing directors, elevating the class of leaders to its highest rank below the C-suite.

This year’s class includes 55 promotions in markets, 45 in banking, 40 in wealth, and 33 in services, the bank’s unit that helps clients manage and move money globally. The promotions reflect the firm’s strong year in the markets and its push to drive more growth from banking, wealth, and its unique services business — all three of which have undergone major revamps in recent years.

The class is about 20% smaller than Citi’s last cohort of promotes — the 344 employees it elevated to MD in 2024, the largest class since Jane Fraser became CEO. That group leaned heavily toward markets, wealth, and tech roles. But the drop-off makes this the smallest MD class since 2020, when the bank promoted 241 people. In 2023, it announced 304 new MDs; in 2022, 331; and in 2021, 306.

“Their promotions arrive after a year that asked a lot from all of us as we raised our performance and pushed ahead on the work that will define Citi’s next chapter,” the executive management team members — including CEO Jane Fraser — wrote in an internal memo viewed by Business Insider.

“Each of these new MDs played a meaningful role in that progress. They led teams through a fast-moving environment, keep focus on what matters most and help turn strategy into action,” the memo continued, citing their contributions as helping to accelerate Citi’s “steps toward becoming an AI-enabled bank with smarter operations and a clearer foundation for growth.”

A Citi spokesperson told Business Insider that the number of promotions varies each year, “taking into account the firm’s skill and leadership needs, attrition, external hiring, and other relevant considerations.”

On Wednesday morning, Citi marked the annoucements with “roll call” gatherings across its business units — some in person, others remote — a tradition the bank has expanded in recent years. Members of the executive management team led a call with the newly promoted group to share advice, then held their own roll calls within their divisions to read the names aloud.

The promotions come as Citi continues a multiyear effort to simplify its structure, strengthen risk and control functions, and invest in a large-scale tech turnaround.

The bank’s strategy

The overhaul has reshaped its leadership and reorganized significant parts of the bank. In recent years, Fraser brought on star executives like former JPMorgan dealmaker Viswas Raghavan, as executive vice chair, to turn the firm’s investment banking operations around.

The firm has made significant gains in the past 12 months in sectors like investment banking — which saw a 23% year-over-year bump in fees to $1.15 billion in the third quarter — and its markets unit, which handles trading, experienced a 15% bump.

The new 2025 managing directors come from 21 countries and represent 32 nationalities, the bank said. Two-thirds are multi-lingual, and 30% have worked in at least two countries for Citi. They have a median of 16 years of experience at the firm, and 20 years in financial services overall. Twenty-three percent joined Citi through an early-career program, the bank added.

Nearly half — 134, or almost 49% of the class — are based in North America; 18% in the UK; followed by nearly 10% in Japan, north Asia, and Australia. The rest are dispersed in other regions.

Below is the full list of Citi’s newly promoted managing directors.

Banking (45)

Ram Anand

Siddharth Bansal

Irina Berg

Aaron Bloch

Thomas Brancourt

Sarah Briddon

Matteo Casadei

Ricardo Celayeta

Varun Chokhani

Alexios Coscoros

Nick J Dragisic

Samuel H Eisner

Sascha Hahn

Thomas Holsten Leren

Jun Hong

Keng Huat Koay

Terry Koizou

Brian Krieger

Piotr Krupa

Jonathan Laycock

Minha Lee

Ryan Li

Menzi Lukhele

Christopher Marino

David Moreno

Koyu Mori

Victor Mourad

Janusz Nelson

Milan Ninkov

Daniel O’Czerny

Vineet Puri

Ifti Qurashi

Shirley Riches

Raimund Riedl

Alfonso Saturno

Michael Seidenfeld

Dhruv Sethi

Pei Pei Sim

Sam Sun

Steven Thompson

Nisheeth Ranjan Tripathi

Mimi Tse

Vineet Vetts

Stephen White

Saad Zaman

Chief Operating Office (7)

Babar Ahmed

Traci Brooks

Sheetal Chanderkar

David Noyce

Scott L Phillips

Brett Russo

Sana Sayed

Client (18)

Eugene Belostotsky

Vanessa Bernardino

Yogesh Bhatt

Tom Cerasoli

Nedra Nichelle Collins

Alexander Guffanti

Jeffrey Kurges

Eric O Ligan

Beata Manthey

Andre Mazini

Jyothi Narayanan

Caio Patricio

Monique Pollard

Vibhor Rastogi

Arthur Smith

Hana Uddin

David M Wollin

Kyna Wong

Enterprise Services and Public Affairs (1)

Rula Dajani

Finance (12)

Tristan Clark

Eric Haugk

Jai Maxwell

Diego Miyake dos Santos

Ney Peralta

Robert Sabochick

Watcharee Thitibordin

Ben Vance

Sharan Wadhwa

Hua Wang

Jon Warren

Matt Welsh

Global Legal Affairs & Compliance (17)

Maitane Arozena

Jonathan Barkey

Sandra Behar

Soumyajyoti Bose

Jessica Britton

Mark DeAngelis

Robert Ehrlich

Rick Gambs

Omar Garduño Chavero

Lindsay Gatto

Justin Marc Irwin

Bruno Kumi

Fiona Mahon

Valerie Nezianya

Abhimanyu Singh Poonia

Rahul Dev Sharma

Ann-Katrin Wilczek

Human Resources (3)

Victoria Hooker

Jacqueline Lucas

Marc Polinsky

Internal Audit (2)

Cedrick Parize

Amine Trifi

International (2)

Jay Jhala

Malcolm Munoz

Legacy Franchises (7)

Eduardo Allegre Marquez

Robert Baltazares

Alejandro Díaz Romo

Larissa Garduño

Sreekanth Malisetti

Xavier Villalobos

Carlos Zamudio

Markets (55)

Omar Ahmed

Eric Bakkensen

Miles Patrick Bartholomew

Thomas Baud

Kanika Berry

Thomas Beviss

Stefania Calabretta

Alex Chiew

Sangini Chopra

Dominique de Peyrecave

Lindsay DeChiaro

Gaurav Dhingra

Matthew Doyle

Ryan Ellis

Michael Fielder

Troy Fraser

Brian Fugazy

Tom Gallagher

Ben Gardiner

Sean Garvey

Ting Guo

Tom Heslop

Kyle Higgs

Vito Hinora

Stuart Kaiser

Ryutaro Katano

Christina Keeler

Kemal Keskin

Ray King

Giovanni Laureri

Dessislava Lazarova

Hyungjoo Albert Lee

Sunny Li

Noah Mao

Liam McShane

Deepak Mehra

Loubna Moutai

Hooi Wan Ng

Truong Nguyen

Andrea Olivari

Sebastian Palacio

Jennifer Podurgiel

Yash (Shreyash) Priyank

Diana Ribeiro

Bryant Schlichting

Nagaraja Shenoy

Byungnoh Sohn

Zhengyuan Sun

Thomas Szelestey

Michael Tamburrino

Henrique Utrini

Mandakini Vadher

Sean Walsh

Tadeusz Wysocki

Timothy Young En

Risk Management (11)

Ritesh Bansal

Shivani Datadin

Matt Fleet

Christian James

Lauren Karfonta

Elizabeth McAlpine

Shilpa Saroha

Charles Tao

Shantanu Upadhyay

Natalia Villazan

Yoyo (Xiaotong) Yan

Services (33)

Leena Aich

Lorna Ballard

David Bartlett

Ignacio Capparelli

Valentina Chuang

Patricia Corregiari

Rubin Kiran Dave

Arpit Desai

Virginie Dhouibi

Katie Dilaj

Katherine Earl

Meng Wei Feng

Brian Gauvain

Ganas Govender

Ilyas Khan

Nimit Khare

Xin Lin

Aneesh Kumar Mahajan

Jared Mecham

John Murphy

Mick Murray

Tony Nanez

Caitlyn Oster

Christopher Piparo

Andrew Quan

Christopher Ravn

Christoph Rosemeyer

Ernesto Sarria

Shalin Shroff

Rufus Southwood

Rodrigo Takaku

Will Thorne

Tanya McKnight Williams

Technology & Business Enablement (15)

Zak Bahri

Katie Fontana

Rama Gontla

Shantharam Iyer

Prashant Jain

Daniel Jepp

Alina Kamat

Konstantine Kos

Rajiv Mirjankar

Viral Patel

Kevin Peel

Namita Saran

Bhagavathi Satchithanantham

Nikhil Shah

Elvis Veliz

U.S. Personal Banking (8)

Matthew DiPisa

Rohan D’Souza

Promiti Dutta

Patrick Gallagher

Paul Gawlik

Jess Lucas

Neri Neri

Dani Paul

Wealth (40)

Manuel Alvarez

Patricia Avallone

Zakir Banatwala

Duygu Baydur

Julie Bennett

Gunjan Bhatt

Boyko Botev

Analicia Gil Brocchetto

Asaad Chaudry

Benjamin Dx Choo

Angie Clardy

Vishal Desai

Jose Huerta

Ahmad Jamaleddine

Richard Jiang

Stephan Lanz

Jeanne Lee

Andrew Li

Sherlock Lou

Billal Malik

Megan Malone

Vikram Manik

Peter Manno

Morgan Morris

Sarah Wee Hian O

Stephen Pak

Avanee Vasant Patel

Darlene Yuting Patterson

Deborah Querub

Sebastian Rubano

Thomas Schlaus

Ash Shandilya

Vibhor Singh

Michael Squillante

Priya Sriskantharajah

Luca Vodini

Ivo Voynov

Richard Weintraub

John Whitelaw

RuiRui Zhu

• Paramount owners Larry and David Ellison want to buy Warner Bros. Discovery.
• They are reportedly getting help from the governments of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Abu Dhabi.
• Foreign investors have put money into American media companies before. But this seems meaningfully different.

A deal to combine Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery would create a media behemoth.

And that behemoth could be partially owned by the governments of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Abu Dhabi.

So says Variety, reporting that David and Larry Ellison, who own Paramount and are bidding to buy WBD, are using money from those countries’ sovereign wealth funds to finance their proposed deal.

If that story sounds familiar, there’s a good reason: In November, Variety reported more or less the same thing — which prompted Paramount to call the story “categorically inaccurate”.

But even at the time, it didn’t seem implausible that Middle Eastern oil money would be used to help the Ellisons buy WBD. And other outlets had suggested the Ellisons might partner with the Saudis, among others.

Now Variety is doubling down on its initial report. Bloomberg also reports that “Middle East funds” are involved in the Ellisons’ bid. A Paramount rep declined to comment; I’ve also reached out to the sovereign wealth funds.

But as I noted before, the fact that it’s even possible that Middle Eastern petrostates could have ownership stakes in a giant American media conglomerate — one that would control major movie studios, streaming networks, and news outlets — tells us a lot about 2025. A few years ago, this would have seemed like a non-starter; now it seems quite close to happening.

That’s because Paramount, which is competing with Netflix and Comcast in the WBD bidding, still seems like the most likely WBD owner when all of this is done. That’s partially because Paramount is offering to buy all of WBD, while Comcast and Netflix only want part of it. And partially because the Ellisons — Larry Ellison in particular — are close to Donald Trump, and we live in a world where people close to Donald Trump often get what they want.

In the absence of anyone involved in the deal talking to me on the record, I can imagine some arguments why a petrostate-backed mega-media conglomerate makes sense:

• The funds would presumably have minority stakes in a combined Paramount/WBD, and it would presumably remain controlled by Americans.
• Foreign investors have frequently owned some or all of big, American-based media companies: See, for instance, Japan’s Sony, which owns a major movie studio and music label. And Saudi investor Prince Alwaleed bin Talal was a longtime minority investor in Rupert Murdoch’s Fox empire; now he has a stake in the company formerly known as Twitter.
• The Saudi sovereign wealth fund is already set to own almost all of video game giant Electronic Arts, and no one seems to have an issue with that.

A Middle East-financed deal for WBD could raise some eyebrows

All true! But I still think that there are differences that will certainly raise eyebrows, and maybe more forceful pushback, if a combined Ellison/Middle East deal goes forward.

One obvious point: It’s one thing to have a private company or investor from another company taking a stake in an American media giant; it’s another to have one that’s directly controlled by a foreign government.

Another one: As media companies continue to consolidate, the power of the remaining ones gets amplified. On their own for instance, CBS News and CNN have dwindling influence and financial power; a company that combines the two, though, might have more meaningful sway. You can argue that the Saudis owning one of the world’s biggest video game companies is also meaningful, but the video game industry never gets the attention it deserves, and that seems likely to continue in this case.

And last: It’s possible that Middle Eastern countries are investing in an American media conglomerate solely for a financial return, and would have zero interest in the content that conglomerate makes and distributes. But that’s an assertion that many folks would have a hard time taking at face value. And while lots of American companies have sought Middle Eastern funding for years, there was a pause after 2018, following the murder and dismemberment of Washington Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi — a shocking act the CIA concluded was ordered by Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman himself. (He has denied involvement.)

Now bin Salman might end up owning a piece of major American news outlets and other media arms. How’s that going to go over?

• AI is a powerful tool to use to analyze the large troves of HR data within companies.
• Companies can use AI analysis to identify workforce talent and skills gaps.
• This article is part of “How AI is Changing Talent“, a series exploring how AI is reshaping hiring, development, and retention.

As technology continues to advance and companies look to remain competitive in meeting market demand, the skills that employees will need are also evolving. A growing number of companies are exploring how to address these skills and workforce gaps with artificial intelligence.

HR can use AI to reveal “patterns and gaps” and benchmark “current workforce skills against evolving business needs or industry trends,” said Lauren Winans, CEO and principal human resources consultant at Next Level Benefits.

What AI offers in this realm isn’t exactly new, said Will Howard, practice lead of HR trends and AI at McLean & Company. HR teams have long collected and analyzed workforce data manually, he said, but AI can make the process more “feasible and efficient” through automation.

Here, HR experts share four factors to consider when using AI to identify workforce and skills gaps:

1. Organize your data

Organizations have troves of HR data, such as job advertisements, performance reviews, and employee job histories and training, that can be mined to uncover skills gaps, said Sanmay Das, associate director of AI for Social Impact at Virginia Tech. But this data often lacks “quality and completeness,” Winans said.

Before adopting AI, organizations must embrace “good data hygiene” by ensuring the data they plan to analyze is accurate, current, and consistent, said George Denlinger, operational president of US technology talent solutions at Robert Half.

Otherwise, AI insights will be limited or inaccurate. “The phrase ‘garbage in, garbage out’ rings especially true here,” Howard said.

Companies need a clear and consistent process for collecting, maintaining, and updating workforce data, Howard said. For instance, standardize job descriptions, including specific skills, knowledge, and activities, so that AI can make accurate comparisons.

2. Analyze the insights

Large language models, like ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot, can summarize and report on data, Das said. But, for a deeper analysis, companies often need specialized AI tools designed for HR, including workforce planning and analytics, Howard said. Workday and Disco are some examples.

Ultimately, AI tools can leverage your existing data and identify strengths and weaknesses in your workforce, Denlinger said.

For example, with data on employee performance for a specific project and sales forecasts, AI could suggest the skills or roles necessary to meet the organization’s future demands, Howard said. Examining an employee’s job and training history, AI could quantify their capacity to acquire new skills via upskilling or reskilling, Winans said.

IBM, for example, uses an AI system that analyzes its employees’ digital footprints within the company to identify their skills and predict skill proficiency levels. The company then uses that analysis to offer employees personalized educational opportunities and career coaches, helping them identify job opportunities and new career paths. In 2024, IBM reported that the approach had boosted employee engagement by 20%.

3. Understand AI’s limitations

While AI can analyze data, it may overlook nuances and the human aspects of what makes a role successful, such as small tasks not listed in a job description, soft skills, or the behind-the-scenes efforts employees put in, Das said.

Companies should also focus on data privacy, trust, and employee buy-in, Winans said. Employees may worry about how their data is being used and how it could impact them, such as changes to their roles or responsibilities. She suggested communicating transparently about what data will be used, how it will be used, and why.

Data literacy is another challenge: HR teams must know what to do with the AI results, Howard said. “Even the most advanced AI technology still requires a human to put the results into a business context and communicate and take action on the insights within the organization.”

For instance, the AI analysis on skills gaps should inform decisions about new roles the company needs to create or the training necessary for existing employees, Winans said.

4. Refine your strategy

“Skill requirements evolve rapidly,” Winans said. Using AI to uncover skills gaps should be a “continuous process, not a one-time audit,” she added.

While AI can be useful for tracking ongoing skills gaps, Denlinger said this is still an emerging use of the technology that will likely evolve.

Al also isn’t a “silver bullet that can take you from zero to best in class,” Howard said. “Organizations shouldn’t view AI as a shortcut. It still requires the foundational skills and structures that have always been there,” such as clean data and employees confident in using the technology.

Then, he said, AI “becomes the cherry on top that can take your workforce planning and data analysis to the next level.”

• The 2025 Gotham Awards took place in New York City on Monday.
• Celebrities like Tessa Thompson and Jacob Elordi wore stylish outfits to the awards ceremony.
• Other stars, including Rihanna and Zoey Deutch, wore looks that missed the mark.

It’s the most wonderful time of the year, and no, I don’t mean the holidays. Awards season is officially upon us.

On Monday, the Gotham Film and Media Institute hosted its annual Gotham Awards, which celebrate independent films, at Cipriani Wall Street in New York City.

Stars from some of the biggest movies of the year gathered in lower Manhattan dressed to the nines for the unofficial start to the race for the Academy Awards.

While some celebrities nailed their red carpet looks, others wore outfits that fell flat. Here were some of the best and worst looks of the night.