SAP Lost & Found

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Inspiration

People lose personal items constantly—phones, wallets, bags, jackets—and in shared spaces, lost-and-found systems are often overwhelmed and inefficient. At the same time, it’s common to hear about people falsely claiming lost items that aren’t theirs. We were inspired to build a solution that tackles both problems at once by making lost-and-found secure by design, rather than relying on trust alone.

What it does

SAP Lost & Found is a secure, internal lost-item matching platform. Users submit a lost item inquiry using a photo or a text description and can track its status in real time. Behind the scenes, the system automatically matches inquiries against a hidden inventory and presents high-confidence results to authorized assistants for verification—nothing is exposed unless a match is approved.

How we built it

We designed the system with a privacy-first architecture, separating user inquiries from the internal inventory. Automated matching narrows down potential results, while a human-in-the-loop review process ensures accuracy and prevents abuse. The platform includes user tracking, assistant-only inventory management tools, and a structured review workflow to safely resolve claims.

Challenges we ran into

One of the biggest challenges was balancing convenience and fraud prevention. We wanted the experience to be simple and intuitive for honest users, while still making it difficult for scammers to exploit the system. Designing meaningful matches without exposing sensitive inventory data required careful thought around permissions, confidence scoring, and review flows.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We’re especially proud of building a system that keeps the inventory completely private while still enabling effective matching. Creating a clean, end-to-end workflow—from inquiry submission to verified resolution—showcased how automation and human review can work together to solve a real-world problem.

What we learned

This project taught us the importance of trust, security, and UX working together. We learned how internal tools can benefit from thoughtful design just as much as consumer-facing apps, and how small architectural decisions can have a big impact on privacy and reliability.

What's next for SAP Lost & Found

Next, we want to improve match accuracy with smarter follow-up questions, add stronger fraud detection mechanisms, and explore advanced image analysis to further reduce false claims—making lost-and-found faster, safer, and more reliable at scale.