Gen­er­a­tive arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI) rep­re­sents the lat­est dis­rup­tive inno­va­tion SAP has har­nessed as it con­tin­ues to sup­port the evolv­ing needs of the glob­al busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, said Chris­t­ian Klein, CEO and mem­ber of the Exec­u­tive Board of SAP SE, dur­ing keynote remarks on the open­ing day of SAP­PHIRE 2023. 

The SAP com­mu­ni­ty last week gath­ered in Orlan­do for its annu­al assess­ment of new fea­tures, func­tions, and inno­v­a­tive busi­ness prac­tices enabled by cur­rent and emerg­ing enter­prise appli­ca­tions. But while oth­er sig­nif­i­cant devel­op­ments were unveiled relat­ed to the com­pa­ny’s exist­ing suite of solu­tions, the new fron­tier of AI took cen­ter stage with the launch of SAP Busi­ness AI. 

Fur­ther embed­ding respon­si­ble AI with­in busi­ness solu­tions, this suite of AI tools and improve­ments aims to per­son­al­ize cus­tomer engage­ment and enhance the sales process, aid­ing with pro­cure­ment and order auto-completion. 

To put this lat­est tech­no­log­i­cal tsuna­mi into con­text, Klein offered a com­pressed time­line of events that trans­formed the indus­try and defined SAP’s role in it. He not­ed how SAP rev­o­lu­tion­ized finan­cial account­ing through pio­neer­ing work 50 years ago, fol­lowed by mak­ing real-time data ana­lyt­ics a real­i­ty 20 years lat­er. He then remind­ed the audi­ence of the rapid progress the com­pa­ny has made in bring­ing its offer­ings to the cloud. 

Today, he said, SAP is har­ness­ing AI to rede­fine enter­prise appli­ca­tions’ role in trans­form­ing the oper­a­tions of all ver­ti­cals while leav­ing an indeli­ble mark on hor­i­zon­tal busi­ness dis­ci­plines. The emer­gence of gen­er­a­tive AI, observed Klein, advances SAP’s long-stat­ed objec­tive to democ­ra­tize access to insights by enabling intu­itive data-dri­ven decision-making. 

“Embed­ding gen­er­a­tive AI and intel­li­gent chat­bots into our prod­ucts is about two things,” he said. ​“First, increas­ing the pro­duc­tiv­i­ty for the bil­lions of end users work­ing with SAP’s soft­ware, and sec­ond, open­ing up new game-chang­ing capa­bil­i­ties for all busi­ness functions.” 

Klein report­ed that AI has already been embed­ded in SAP appli­ca­tions used by more than 20,000 cus­tomers. Mean­while, the com­pa­ny has devel­oped more than 130 embed­ded use cas­es of AI, accord­ing to Thomas Sauer­es­sig, head of SAP prod­uct engi­neer­ing and a mem­ber of the SAP exec­u­tive board, who spoke in the after­noon keynote. 

“Last year, we processed 40 mil­lion invoic­es auto­mat­i­cal­ly and gen­er­at­ed sav­ings of more than $366 mil­lion for our cus­tomers,” Sauer­es­sig said. ​“SAP is an AI com­pa­ny and SAP’s AI is built into our sys­tems, which pow­er your business.” 

AI SAP Part­ner­ships Dom­i­nate Head­lines

A flur­ry of joint announce­ments with major play­ers — includ­ing IBM and Google Cloud — pre­saged AI’s high pro­file at this year’s con­fer­ence, with open­ing day unveil­ing yet anoth­er gen­er­a­tive AI-relat­ed rela­tion­ship, this one with Microsoft. 

The com­pa­nies out­lined the inte­gra­tion of SAP Suc­cess­Fac­tors solu­tions with Microsoft 365 Copi­lot and Copi­lot in Viva Learn­ing, as well as with Microsoft­’s Azure Ope­nAI Service. 

“We have an incred­i­ble oppor­tu­ni­ty to deliv­er next-gen­er­a­tion AI that will unlock pro­duc­tiv­i­ty growth for every indi­vid­ual, orga­ni­za­tion, and indus­try, includ­ing the human resource func­tion,” Satya Nadel­la, Chair­man and CEO of Microsoft, said in a statement. 

The inte­grat­ed offer­ings, he added, will access pow­er­ful lan­guage mod­els that ana­lyze and gen­er­ate nat­ur­al lan­guage, enabling new expe­ri­ences that improve how orga­ni­za­tions attract, retain, and skill their people. 

Dur­ing a joint ses­sion on the main stage, in which Nadel­la par­tic­i­pat­ed vir­tu­al­ly, the two exec­u­tives explored AI’s prac­ti­cal impli­ca­tions for human-machine interactions. 

“With gen­er­a­tive AI, we will increase the pro­duc­tiv­i­ty of every end user by chang­ing how peo­ple work with our soft­ware,” Klein said. ​“For exam­ple, our soft­ware will be able to answer any busi­ness-relat­ed ques­tion and rec­om­mend actions to improve your com­pa­ny’s performance.” 

Nadel­la con­curred, adding that gen­er­a­tive AI will serve as a force mul­ti­pli­er to build new lay­ers of val­ue into enter­prise cloud ini­tia­tives, enhanc­ing the cat­e­gories in which SAP and Microsoft are inno­vat­ing. He high­light­ed spe­cif­ic oppor­tu­ni­ties in human resource (HR) management. 

“It’s the con­text of the busi­ness process and the data mixed with AI that cre­ates the mag­ic for any pro­fes­sion­al at work,” Nadel­la said. ​“In the con­text of HR, it’s about recruit­ing and it’s about skilling.” Inte­grat­ing Microsoft 365 Copi­lot with what SAP is doing in human expe­ri­ence man­age­ment brings data togeth­er, and adding AI capa­bil­i­ties will com­plete­ly change how human cap­i­tal and human expe­ri­ence man­age­ment oper­ate, he added.