The fol­low­ing Util­i­ty Voice was authored by Marc Rosson, Com­mu­ni­ty Con­nec­tor at Utility.Community

For those of us who start­ed our careers 20 years ago, we remem­ber what report­ing used to be like. You had a data source, a report­ing tool, and relied on pro­pri­etary soft­ware to orga­nize that data so you could cre­ate reports that visu­al­ized infor­ma­tion in a way that made sense to you. Over the years, the tech­nol­o­gy changed, and we changed with it, learn­ing new tools but still build­ing reports much the same way.

In the SAP Labs build­ing in Van­cou­ver, BC, there is a glass case con­tain­ing a box of soft­ware called Win/​QL. You know you’re get­ting old when the tools you once used end up in a dis­play case. That was the report­ing soft­ware I start­ed with, which became Crys­tal Reports, lat­er merged into Busi­nes­sOb­jects, then evolved into BOBJ, and final­ly moved to the cloud with SAP Ana­lyt­ics Cloud (SAC).

On the data side, we start­ed with our core ERP sys­tem, which fed into BW (Busi­ness Ware­house). This archi­tec­ture worked well for many years. Then, about 15 years ago, anoth­er rev­o­lu­tion arrived: SAP HANA. HANA trans­formed the data land­scape by enabling real-time sum­ma­riza­tion with­out need­ing a sep­a­rate ware­house. From there, we evolved again to the cloud, gain­ing access to more pow­er­ful com­pute resources for rich­er ana­lyt­ics, more tools, and bet­ter user experiences.

The Next Rev­o­lu­tion: SAP Busi­ness Data Cloud + Joule (Gen­er­a­tive AI)

Today, our jour­ney con­tin­ues with anoth­er major shift: SAP Busi­ness Data Cloud (BDC).

This time, the rev­o­lu­tion is not sim­ply about how data is stored or accessed; many util­i­ties have been build­ing cloud-based data lakes for years. Instead, the break­through comes from com­bin­ing enter­prise data with LLMs (large lan­guage mod­els) — gen­er­a­tive AI capa­ble of cre­at­ing a far more inter­ac­tive, insight­ful, and intu­itive way of work­ing with information.

SAP Joule is the user inter­face lay­er that brings this AI capa­bil­i­ty to life. Although Joule is still in its ear­ly stages, its poten­tial for automa­tion, effi­cien­cy gains, and enhanced col­lab­o­ra­tion — built on top of busi­ness data stored in SAP Busi­ness Data Cloud — is the foun­da­tion for the rev­o­lu­tion ahead.

Chal­lenges Ahead

When we read infor­ma­tion pro­duced by AI, we instinc­tive­ly apply our own knowl­edge to spot where it might be wrong. We can also ver­i­fy its ref­er­enced sources. But SAP sys­tems, our sys­tem of record and source of truth, can­not guess about a cus­tomer bal­ance or how long equip­ment has gone with­out a work order. Accu­ra­cy is nonnegotiable.

In addi­tion, ques­tions asked in nat­ur­al lan­guage must be cor­rect­ly trans­lat­ed into data­base queries. For exam­ple, if I ask about cus­tomer con­sump­tion, SAP Joule must under­stand that this refers to meter reads, know where they are stored, under­stand the relat­ed data struc­tures, and know how to cal­cu­late con­sump­tion correctly.

Expand­ing the Data Landscape

Anoth­er real­i­ty is that gen­er­a­tive AI improves with more data, and not all our data lives in SAP. SAP Busi­ness Data Cloud address­es this by enabling access to exter­nal data sources with­out mov­ing the data. This is essen­tial for real-time sce­nar­ios, as tra­di­tion­al ETL and data move­ment, like we used to do with BW, take too long.

SAP’s indus­try busi­ness unit for util­i­ties is expect­ed to release its first set of util­i­ty-spe­cif­ic data prod­ucts through BDC, help­ing accel­er­ate adop­tion and val­ue realization. 

Data Prod­ucts devel­oped by SAP for ERP/EAM use cas­es, SAP IBU for util­i­ty use cas­es, third-par­ty providers, and the util­i­ties them­selves can pro­vide a rich data resource that can then be used in mul­ti­ple use cas­es, as well as be lever­aged by Intel­li­gent appli­ca­tions built on top of the Data Prod­ucts. I would encour­age all the util­i­ties that are mov­ing for­ward with Busi­ness Data Cloud to col­lab­o­rate on ideas and then share those ideas with our com­mu­ni­ty and with our SAP IBU through con­tin­u­al influence.

What Comes Next

Next will be intel­li­gent appli­ca­tions pow­ered by Joule, built on top of these new BDC data prod­ucts. These appli­ca­tions will pro­vide insights and effi­cien­cies that build on every evo­lu­tion, rev­o­lu­tion, and inno­va­tion we have seen over the years.

None of us knows exact­ly what the future holds or which of today’s tools may one day end up in a glass case. But we are com­mit­ted to con­tin­u­ing the jour­ney. One thing is cer­tain: more evo­lu­tion, more rev­o­lu­tion, and more inno­va­tion are on the way, each help­ing our busi­ness lead­ers make more informed, insight­ful decisions.

To get involved and keep up with the lat­est, join ASUG’s Util­i­ties Com­mu­ni­ty.