Powered by a global team of 218,000 diverse people across 60 countries, HCLTech delivers smarter, better ways for all of its stakeholders to benefit from technology.
With 10,000 customers using its software and products, over 210 delivery centers, 60 innovation labs, and 2,000 patents driving innovation, this global technology company delivers industry-leading capabilities centered around digital, engineering, cloud, and AI, powered by a broad portfolio of technology services and products. At the heart of it all is HCLTech’s commitment to supercharge progress for its customers.
In his role as Global Executive Vice President for HCLTech’s digital business, overseeing software as a service (SaaS) and enterprise applications, Praveen Bhat leads the company’s commercial application business globally.
Focused on serving and empowering businesses of all sizes to not only remain competitive but also achieve strategic and operational excellence, Bhat is dedicated to leveraging SaaS and enterprise applications to help HCLTech’s customers streamline end-to-end functions, from digital experience and customer relationship management to supply chain management and human capital management. The consulting and services under Bhat’s watch are focused on a spectrum of products, including SAP.
In an exclusive ASUG interview, Bhat reflects on the evolution of the ERP landscape amid the accelerating development of artificial intelligence (AI), the emergence of agentic AI, and the surging interest from enterprise customers in how they can harness the transformative potential of AI for business.
This interview, which you can download, has been edited and condensed.
Q: How do you see business transformation enabled by SAP ERP solutions changing with the accelerating development of AI?
AI is a major focus for everyone in the ERP ecosystem—both in terms of the solutions we implement to help customers transform and the way we use AI to transform how we implement. SAP and its competitors are investing heavily in developing their AI solutions, and the technology has advanced significantly in the last year. We are in early access and planning to showcase this technology with a pop-up lab at SAP Sapphire & ASUG Annual Conference.
Traditionally, ERP transformations were primarily focused on implementing a suite of integrated business processes across an ERP-centric architecture, underpinned with quality data and integration into operational systems such as HCLTech Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) to plan and manage all aspects of an enterprise’s business. With the rise of AI, the focus is now on applying the technology to drive more efficiency, automation, and business agility. It’s the next stage in the evolution of ERP and business applications in general.
Many of our customers are exploring what AI can do for them. We’ve also found they are very interested in how AI solutions drive major changes in the way we execute SAP implementation projects, accelerating (and automating) delivery across a range of tasks from generating plans, and automating migration tasks or generating bespoke cloud applications in the SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP).
Q: How can generative AI drive digital transformation and competitive advantage for SAP-centric enterprises?
This needs to be broken down into the different types of AI:
- SAP’s constantly growing list of embedded AI-enabled scenarios
- Business AI services
- Joule user support agents
- The upcoming SAP agentic AI framework
Each of these solutions brings something different to the future of SAP ERP. Generative AI solutions are particularly helpful with unstructured data. Whenever there is unstructured data flowing into an SAP system—or you need to generate readable communications and outputs—generative AI solutions can add significant value for enterprises.
For example, generative AI can interpret vast amounts of data and provide insights to support decision-making that was not possible even just a few years ago. In this area, we see many use cases involving document and image processing, along with data extraction and using this to integrate with SAP processes. Many of the embedded SAP AI solutions use these services and can be leveraged out of the box. We are investing in training for our consultants to ensure they are aware of the many new AI-powered capabilities, so these are an integral part of the SAP solution design.
The use of natural language to communicate with IT systems enabled by generative AI is also going to transform the way people interact and communicate with them. When using a virtual assistant like Joule, you can have a conversation with your SAP system. For example, you can ask questions or request a complete transaction rather than working through transactional screens. This is especially important for engaging with the Gen Z workforce. We will be able to increase the level of automated processing, which means that the human workforce will need to interact with SAP in a different way to solve problems, prioritize, analyze, and strategize.
This innovation changes the way we manage change during the deployment of the SAP solution, since the user has a virtual assistant that explains and executes processes. This greatly reduces the need for traditional training approaches. We advocate for a fast start guide to help users access the system and understand the high-level process, and then other detailed how-to questions can be handled by Joule. SAP’s generative AI copilot is only available as a standard tool, but the Joule development studio will soon be released to partners, and our intention is to develop custom Joule skills, including skills for our industry cloud solutions.
I think the biggest change will come with the forthcoming Agentic AI framework. I have already seen the shift from Salesforce to “Agentforce” and so we are excited about the potential that agents will bring to SAP. We are already seeing requests from customers looking at growing business capacity using agents as a digital workforce.
Q: How will the rise of agentic AI disrupt business going forward?
Since SAP announced its agentic AI framework at SAP Sapphire & ASUG Annual Conference in 2024, we’ve seen a lot of focus on the development of agentic AI by SAP. This is where automation can occur, with a business role filled by an AI agent running in SAP, and operating targets and boundaries defined by human managers.
Much of HCLTech’s focus has been on human-centric AI, which is using AI to augment and support human operators. For example, we developed a service bulletin assistant for our add-on maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) solution that uses generative AI to analyze original equipment manufacturer (OEM) service notifications, as well as inspection and service requirements on aircraft and components. The tool then proposes the key tasks and materials needed to an operator who reviews, updates, and confirms them in the system. Our solution then creates the required tasks in the SAP iMRO solution, saving operators time and reducing manual errors.
However, agentic AI is really going to transform business further by creating a digital workforce that can operate processes within a framework to provide additional capacity whenever needed. It will be possible to have agents run processes that would not be efficient with human operators, and this will enable agents to drive revenue growth, offer new services and products, and run back-office processes with more efficiency.
What is clear is that agentic AI requires a new way of approaching solution design. For example, an agent is not simply automating a set of business rules— this can be achieved with traditional RPA. An agent AI specification should be thought of as a digital job specification with a clear objective and skills that enable it to achieve that objective. We have developed an agentic AI design framework to guide our customers through this process and are using a micro-version of this for our SAP Sapphire pop-up lab.
Connect with Praveen Bhat on LinkedIn
Q: What is HCLTech doing to embrace AI in your SAP consulting services?
HCLTech is a great AI innovator, having developed our own AI solutions over the last decade. We believe this has given us a great start in using AI to transform the way we implement SAP and other packaged applications.
We are approaching this topic in four key ways:
- Establishing labs to ideate and develop customer user cases, whether it’s deploying SAP’s increasing number of standard AI-powered scenarios or developing custom solutions using our ideaX framework
- Showing the art of the possible by adding AI capabilities to our industry cloud products, such as the Service Bulletin workbench in HCLTech’s iMRO
- Using AI capabilities in the proprietary tools we build to automate implementation and migration tasks such as our ABAP Coder workbench, CDS View migration tool, and configuration copy automation for multi-country deployments
- AI Force is our development and engineering platform that enables organizations to develop AI solutions. We are also looking at how we can leverage our expertise in this area to partner with SAP to develop the next generation of AI solutions
Q: What steps should organizations take now to ensure their SAP landscape is ready to embrace AI solutions?
This is quite simple. To leverage SAP Business AI solutions and the software company’s catalog of standard AI capabilities, enterprises must be on SAP S/4HANA Cloud. You can also leverage SAP BTP to build AI solutions to use in SAP ECC; however, users may find there are limitations.
We developed a migration factory specifically to enable customers to move from SAP ECC to SAP S/4HANA quickly—so that they can then start benefiting from the latest SAP innovations, including AI services.
The other aspect is the extent to which the SAP system is customized. If customers want to leverage the standard SAP AI content, then they really need to be aligned with SAP best practices. However, there are many options for applying AI services in more customized landscapes also using the BTP Business AI solutions.
Q: As enterprises begin embracing generative AI, what are some ways leaders can obtain cross-organizational buy-in?
Many of our customers have already initiated AI projects, although in many cases, these are quite open initiatives. For those that haven’t started obtaining cross-organizational buy-in for generative AI, it can be a complex process, but there are several strategies leaders can employ to facilitate this transition:
- Communicate a Clear Vision: Leaders should articulate a compelling vision for how generative AI can transform their organizations. This includes explaining the potential benefits, such as increased efficiency, innovation, and competitive advantage. This resource, Envisioning GenAI-powered Workplaces, highlights how generative AI can stimulate creativity, foster curiosity, and enhance employee productivity, aligning with the strategic shift toward immediate value generation.
- Showcase Quick Wins and Success Stories: Sharing examples of successful AI implementations within the organization or industry can help build confidence and demonstrate the tangible benefits of generative AI. We recommend that customers start by addressing some specific business challenges as this can be delivered quickly and proves the business value. Many organizations have concerns about security and ethics associated with using AI solutions and large language models. To address this issue, it’s important to define your company’s policy and approach up front; this is something we can help with as part of a pilot engagement.
- Engage Key Stakeholders: Involving key stakeholders from different departments early in the process can help ensure their support and address any concerns they may have. We suggest bringing together business and IT to collaborate; in our experience, this is the most effective way of identifying impactful and technically viable solutions.
- Provide Training and Resources: Offering training sessions and resources to employees can help them understand and feel comfortable with the new technology.
- Foster a Culture of Innovation: Encouraging a culture that embraces innovation and experimentation can help employees feel more comfortable with adopting new technologies.
Q: This is a very interesting time. There is a lot of uncertainty in the global economy, and AI has the potential to radically transform ERP solutions that have been relatively stable for many years. Do you have any final words of advice for SAP customers?
AI and Agentic AI, if deployed well in an integrated ERP environment, can bring efficiency and agility to an enterprise to help adapt to challenges in the global economy like those we have seen in the last few months.
Customers that are best positioned to exploit AI technologies are those that have already invested in regional or global integrated ERP solutions with good quality data. Organizations in this position can develop AI solutions and deploy them quickly. I recommend that organizations start an agentic AI initiative and begin examining use cases that will generate value and new revenue streams, enable new markets, and be ready to embrace the technology quickly.
For those that are not quite ready with an SAP S/4HANA landscape, I urge a rapid migration to the ERP platform and start an AI readiness initiative. We provide an SAP innovation lab service to help customers understand the possibility that SAP AI offers, inspire customers with ideas on how AI can transform business, and then deliver rapid POCs to bring these solutions to life. This will help customer supercharge their journey to an intelligent ERP powered by SAP AI.
Visit the HCLTech Website