SAP exec­u­tives and indus­try experts gath­ered last week to dis­cuss the com­pa­ny’s cloud ERP strat­e­gy, the evo­lu­tion of RISE with SAP, and what’s next for arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence dur­ing ​“Rise into the Future,” a one-hour vir­tu­al broad­cast that zeroed in on the lat­est cloud, AI, and ERP innovations. 

ASUG attend­ed the event, which fea­tured sev­er­al updates and announce­ments around SAP S/4HANA Cloud, pri­vate edi­tion, as well as the com­pa­ny’s lat­est use of gen­er­a­tive AI. Below, our top take­aways for members:

1. SAP’s intro­duc­tion of Joule, its new dig­i­tal assis­tant, was the high­light of the event, and indica­tive of SAP’s com­mit­ment to lever­ag­ing arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence to enhanc­ing its solutions. 

Through Joule, cus­tomers will be able to work ​“across busi­ness sys­tems and get work done faster, using nat­ur­al lan­guage,” said Julia White, SAP Chief Mar­ket­ing & Solu­tions Offi­cer and a mem­ber of the Exec­u­tive Board of SAP SE.

White added that ​“Joule will also work with­in your busi­ness appli­ca­tion and pro­vide con­tex­tu­al assis­tance in the flow of your work, help­ing you nav­i­gate, under­stand and deliv­er out­comes faster.”

SAP announced plans to first embed Joule with­in SAP Suc­cess­Fac­tors solu­tions and SAP Start lat­er this year, also embed­ding Joule with­in SAP S/4HANA Cloud, pub­lic edi­tion ear­ly next year. SAP Cus­tomer Expe­ri­ence, SAP Ari­ba solu­tions, and SAP BTP will fol­low, with SAP plan­ning to even­tu­al­ly embed the ​“nat­ur­al lan­guage, gen­er­a­tive AI copi­lot” across its entire cloud portfolio.

Joule marks a sig­nif­i­cant step in SAP’s jour­ney toward inte­grat­ing arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence across its offer­ings. While spe­cif­ic details of Joule’s capa­bil­i­ties are forth­com­ing, we expect to hear more in the com­ing weeks. 

For now, this announce­ment demon­strates SAP’s recog­ni­tion of the impor­tance of AI in dri­ving inno­va­tion, improv­ing busi­ness process­es, and meet­ing the evolv­ing needs of its users. SAP is expect­ed to announce fur­ther AI inno­va­tions in the com­ing weeks, mean­ing Joule can be under­stood as just a taste of things to come. 

2. As SAP moves to a two-year S/4HANA Cloud major release cycle, RISE with SAP con­tin­ues to play a piv­otal role.

White also announced updates to RISE with SAP, relat­ed to this year’s release of SAP S/4HANA Cloud, pri­vate edi­tion; SAP S/4HANA 2023 is set to be released Oct. 11. Accord­ing to White, ​“as part of RISE with SAP, SAP S/4HANA Cloud, pri­vate edi­tion, will now fol­low a two-year release cycle,” with inno­va­tions and enhance­ments com­ing via fea­ture packs every six months, with sev­en-year maintenance.

White said that main­te­nance for each release will be guar­an­teed for sev­en years, as opposed to the pre­vi­ous five, in order to pro­vide cus­tomers with more val­ue in their exist­ing and future investments. 

Rucha Nana­vati, Chief Infor­ma­tion Offi­cer of the Mahin­dra Group, shared on the broad­cast how RISE with SAP has been essen­tial to trans­form­ing her busi­ness. Among the val­ue unlocked: faster time-to-mar­ket, enhanced cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, improved employ­ee expe­ri­ence, and a mod­ern­ized and more scal­able tech stack, as well as improved ESG capability. 

Ajit Kumar, CIO of HCL Tech­nolo­gies, also shared that HCL’s RISE with SAP migra­tion has not only enabled them to deliv­er a more scal­able archi­tec­ture to the busi­ness, but has also improved resilience from a cyber per­spec­tive. ​“The sin­gle biggest change for me,” added Kumar, ​“has been the time and the abil­i­ty to focus more on the chal­lenges that face the busi­ness and how tech­nol­o­gy can address it, as opposed to hav­ing to focus on typ­i­cal, every­day tech­nol­o­gy issues.”

SAP deliv­ered updates along­side real-world exam­ples of how busi­ness­es have ben­e­fit­ed from adopt­ing RISE with SAP, under­scor­ing its com­mit­ment to this solu­tion. Cus­tomers still have ques­tions about RISE, recent announce­ments, and how they can apply these with­in their own busi­ness­es, but the key take­away from this event was that SAP’s com­mit­ment to the solu­tion means that it’s still seen as a foun­da­tion­al piece of the com­pa­ny’s cloud ERP strategy.

3. SAP’s com­mit­ment to arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence aligns with the grow­ing impor­tance of AI in the busi­ness world.

Joule builds upon exist­ing SAP invest­ments in arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence; over 26,000 SAP cloud cus­tomers cur­rent­ly have access to SAP Busi­ness AI through var­i­ous sce­nar­ios and part­ner solu­tions. And White assert­ed dur­ing Rise into the Future that cus­tomers’ ERP can become ​“true sys­tems of intel­li­gence” with the intro­duc­tion of SAP Busi­ness AI. 

Accord­ing to Jan Gilg, Pres­i­dent and Chief Prod­uct Offi­cer, Cloud ERP, SAP Busi­ness AI has been designed to allow cus­tomers to ​“stream­line process­es and get results quick­ly, while pro­vid­ing the best cus­tomer service.”

SAP is unique­ly posi­tioned to help busi­ness­es har­ness the poten­tial of this trans­for­ma­tive tech­nol­o­gy. Ritu Jyoti, GVP AI & Automa­tion for the IDC, not­ed that the IDC projects gen­er­a­tive AI adding near­ly 10 tril­lion to glob­al GDP over the next 10 years. By pro­vid­ing AI-pow­ered solu­tions and ser­vices, SAP can help dri­ve inno­va­tion, improve deci­sion-mak­ing, and deliv­er bet­ter busi­ness out­comes for cus­tomers, but the com­pa­ny can also con­tribute to dri­ving sub­stan­tial eco­nom­ic growth.

4. SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2023 is a ​“go-to release” at the cen­ter of SAP’s cloud ERP strategy.

SAP exec­u­tives also touched upon SAP’s over­all strat­e­gy for the future of ERP. Eric van Rossum, Chief Mar­ket­ing and Solu­tions Offi­cer for Cloud ERP at SAP, shared that SAP’s four pil­lars for deliv­er­ing cloud ERP are ​“col­lab­o­ra­tion, intel­li­gence, net­work, and sustainability.” 

Those pil­lars are guid­ing the devel­op­ment of SAP S/4HANA Cloud, pri­vate edi­tion; van Rossum not­ed that the 2023 release can be seen as SAP’s ​“go-to release,” stat­ing that, with this new release and its updat­ed inno­va­tion cycle, cus­tomers should see even more ben­e­fits for mov­ing to the cloud.

5. Sus­tain­abil­i­ty con­tin­ues to be a focal point for SAP.

Gilg detailed SAP Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Foot­print Man­age­ment, which is now avail­able to cus­tomers and leads into the next phase of SAP’s sus­tain­abil­i­ty evo­lu­tion: the green ledger, which brings ledger-based account­ing to car­bon data. ​“With SAP Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Foot­print Man­age­ment, car­bon emis­sions can be cal­cu­lat­ed and man­aged at a very gran­u­lar cor­po­rate process and prod­uct lev­el,” said Gilg, adding that cus­tomers can also ​“inte­grate this infor­ma­tion direct­ly into core SAP S/4HANA busi­ness processes.”

Gilg announced that SAP is work­ing on a way to use this foot­print to post a true emis­sion jour­nal entry through the green ledger. Such a solu­tion would align both finan­cial and envi­ron­men­tal data, allow­ing orga­ni­za­tions to mea­sure and man­age their envi­ron­men­tal impact. Gilg stat­ed that SAP believes this will be ​“a real game-chang­er,” not­ing that this would ​“make sus­tain­abil­i­ty more than just a mat­ter of com­pli­ance, but also of real com­pet­i­tive dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion.” While this fea­ture is still in devel­op­ment, SAP plans to make it avail­able in future releases.

Such enhance­ments under­score SAP’s com­mit­ment to inte­grat­ing sus­tain­abil­i­ty into solu­tions and ser­vices. By enabling orga­ni­za­tions to make a more stat­ed envi­ron­men­tal impact, SAP clear­ly seeks to con­tribute to a more proac­tive, respon­si­ble approach to sus­tain­abil­i­ty in business.

SAP cus­tomers and part­ners must now eval­u­ate how these updates and announce­ments align with their tech­nol­o­gy roadmaps and busi­ness objec­tives. ASUG can play a piv­otal role in help­ing cus­tomers get answers to their ques­tions. Please reach out with your thoughts or ques­tions on the recent announce­ments at news@​asug.​com.