During the opening keynote of the first SAP Connect event in Las Vegas, SAP executives led by SAP board member Muhammad Alam, responsible for SAP Product & Engineering, announced several AI innovations for enterprises, including role-specific Joule assistants.
Against the backdrop of the event theme “Connect everything, achieve everything: agents, data and the business suite,” they explained SAP’s vision. They explained how SAP Business Suite, which combines AI, data and applications, can transform businesses and create unprecedented value for customers despite global macroeconomic uncertainties.
Special times
“We live in very special times,” said Alam at the beginning of the keynote. “Particularly given the unpredictability we face geopolitically and macroeconomically. And also especially given the advances in AI and the potential this brings for all of us.”
“Even the biggest challenges can be faced, overcome and – if approached correctly – turned into opportunities,” he added. “And that’s where SAP comes in. Because the best way to deal with uncertainty is to be sure that you can see what’s going on in your company and in your network.”
The view of the Chief Financial Officer (CFO)
CFO and board member Dominik Asam also agreed with this view. In a panel discussion with economist and Berkeley professor Ulrike Malmendier, the two compared the CFO’s role in dealing with today’s uncertainties to that of a co-pilot in a modern jet.
“AI is the next supercycle and ticks all the boxes to create an effective cockpit for the CFO. This includes recommendations on truly actionable options all the way up to autopilot for less critical tasks,” said Asam. He also warned against not keeping up with technological progress. Because this inevitably leads to “falling behind the competition.”
“As with previous technology supercycles, the entire competitive landscape will be turned on its head,” he said.
New products
Alam continued on this theme and explained that while uncertainty is real, it will not go away. But you can deal with it successfully and turn it into opportunities. To support customers in this regard, he announced several new SAP products and product enhancements.
The innovations include SAP Supply Chain Orchestration. The native AI application uses a network knowledge graph to analyze real-time signals across a company’s multi-tiered supply chain to identify risks and issues, such as extreme weather conditions or tariffs. It assesses the impact of these risks and suggests alternatives to minimize disruptions. In this way, it helps customers to keep disruptions as low as possible. “Think of it like a GPS in your car that selects an alternative route to avoid traffic or tolls,” Alam explained. He also announced a comprehensive update to SAP Ariba solutions for the Source-to-Pay suite. The update makes SAP Ariba the most modern platform in the industry and the only truly AI-native source-to-pay solution. Everything is based on the SAP Business Technology Platform.
The opportunity a partnership between humans and AI
Addressing the topic of uncertainty surrounding the future of work, SAP Chief People Officer and Board Member Gina Vargiu-Breuer, who is leading SAP workforce transformation, along with Ian Beacraft, Founder and Chief Futurist of Signal and Cipher.
“At SAP, we know firsthand that AI is present everywhere, upending norms and transforming the world of work,” said Vargiu-Breuer. “And we as SAP are tackling this change boldly because the demands on our workforce are changing very quickly.”
Vargiu-Breuer emphasized that the success of an AI business strategy also depends on leveraging AI in addition to human expertise and promoting what she described as “joint use of humans and AI rather than just automation.” “By combining the capabilities of AI with human creativity, empathy and human judgment, we go beyond pure automation and create true human-AI power pairs,” she said. “Ultimately, those who are open to orchestration, delegation and creative problem solving will prevail in the future.”
Role-specific AI assistants
Alam also underscored this human-centered approach, explaining, “Everyone’s talking about agents – billions of agents – and how agents are doing everything. We want to talk about people, the roles they play, and the tried-and-tested organizational constructs in use today in complex companies across a wide range of industries.”
That’s why SAP-Joule is thoroughly familiar with the working style of the person they work with, their role and the context of the business process in which they work. “Today we are introducing various AI assistants, including an accounts receivable assistant for your accounts receivable employees, a controlling assistant for your controlling team, a scheduling assistant for your requirements planning employees and an AI assistant for each role.” Each assistant has agents and AI tools to make the person they work with smarter and more efficient, Alam explained.
As an example, he cited the accounts receivable assistant, which can already take over the collection of claims and the clarification of disputes. He will soon also be able to provide support in detecting cases of fraud, processing invoices and planning payments. “Over time, we will add even more agents and features to this assistant, making it even smarter – all with the goal of further increasing the efficiency of the person in this role.”
Comprehensive research and new intelligent applications
“Efficiency and automation have the potential to create great value for the business. However, AI’s greatest strength is that, unlike humans, it can conduct extensive research on vast amounts of internal and external data and derive insights and recommendations from it,” said Alam. To address this challenge, SAP is introducing the Deep Research feature in Joule, which can investigate and analyze complex problems and deliver results quickly and efficiently.
Asam also introduced other innovations, including a comprehensive set of intelligent applications in the SAP Business Data Cloud and an enterprise-wide solution for orchestrating relationship management in the SAP Engagement Cloud. He concluded his remarks by saying, “To create exponential value and reach the global maximum for your business, everything matters. And that’s exactly what we’re focused on: providing you with best-in-class applications that are seamlessly and natively integrated into finance, spend, supply chain, HCM and customer experience.”
SAP Business Suite offers unprecedented added value
The unmatched value of SAP Business Suite is that it combines the power of best-in-class applications with a semantically rich, harmonized data layer to enable high-quality AI in a unified, seamless environment. It helps you navigate uncertainty, develop your workforce and break down silos – creating unprecedented value for your customers.
