As SAP fur­thers its strat­e­gy to help every busi­ness run as an intel­li­gent, sus­tain­able enter­prise, there is no short­age of tech­nol­o­gy top­ics for its lead­er­ship to tack­le in today’s fast-evolv­ing landscape. 

From the rapid embrace of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence across indus­tries, and in par­tic­u­lar gen­er­a­tive AI offer­ings such as SAP’s recent­ly announced gen­er­a­tive AI assis­tant Joule, to the ongo­ing migra­tion of its cus­tomers from on-premis­es sys­tems to cloud ERP includ­ing SAP S/4HANA, SAP lead­er­ship is tasked with bal­anc­ing the need to pur­sue inno­va­tion and attract new cus­tomers with the need to ensure sta­bil­i­ty and secu­ri­ty for its exist­ing cus­tomer base.

For Juer­gen Mueller, SAP’s Chief Tech­nol­o­gy Offi­cer, keep­ing these top­ics top of mind is part of his day-to-day busi­ness. Tasked with deliv­er­ing the open­ing keynote for this year’s ASUG Tech Con­nect con­fer­ence in New Orleans (Nov. 7 – 9; reg­is­ter here), Mueller will reflect on the lat­est tech­nol­o­gy achieve­ments as well as the respon­si­bil­i­ty he and all at SAP have for con­tin­ued suc­cess of their customers.

“Besides our own SAP TechEd event in ear­ly Novem­ber,” Mueller tells ASUG, ​“ASUG Tech Con­nect is the most impor­tant cus­tomer event for the SAP ecosys­tem in North Amer­i­ca in the sec­ond half of 2023. We are hop­ing to con­nect with as many cus­tomers and part­ners as possible.”

Below, Mueller expands on what atten­dees can expect from his open­ing keynote at this inau­gur­al event for the North Amer­i­can devel­op­er community.

This email inter­view has been edit­ed and condensed.

ASUG Tech Con­nect will address both tech­nol­o­gy and com­mu­ni­ty. What will you be focused on dur­ing your keynote pre­sen­ta­tion in New Orleans? 

Juer­gen Mueller: I am excit­ed to be joined by Scott Guthrie, Exec­u­tive Vice Pres­i­dent, Cloud + AI Group at Microsoft, and ASUG CEO Geoff Scott on stage. Our keynote will focus on how we trans­late the lat­est tech­nol­o­gy advance­ments, such as gen­er­a­tive AI, to pro­vide our cus­tomers with tools and appli­ca­tions to achieve the best busi­ness out­comes. From me, you will espe­cial­ly hear how it will be applied along the pil­lars of SAP Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Plat­form. Stay tuned for more!

Knowl­edge shar­ing and skills build­ing are crit­i­cal ele­ments of ASUG Tech Con­nect. What top­ics and train­ing do you expect will res­onate with attendees?

Mueller: The event will offer con­tent-rich lec­tures, hands-on ses­sions, and oppor­tu­ni­ties to meet with SAP and ecosys­tem experts — all cen­tered around SAP Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Plat­form [along­side oth­er SAP tech­nolo­gies]. We will also show­case the lat­est end-to-end use cas­es for our plat­form to illus­trate how our cus­tomers and part­ners are using SAP BTP. And of course, you can expect updates about the improve­ments in the gen­er­a­tive AI space.

Your keynote address­es how SAP helps cus­tomers and part­ners dri­ve bet­ter busi­ness out­comes. Give us a pre­view. What are today’s cus­tomers look­ing for when they work toward bet­ter busi­ness out­comes? How does SAP help meet these goals? 

Mueller: What I hear quite often is that our cus­tomers are look­ing for self-learn­ing process­es and sys­tems that are opti­mized for their indi­vid­ual busi­ness needs. 

SAP is well-posi­tioned to make this vision a real­i­ty. With the accel­er­at­ed pow­er of AI, we can pro­vide per­son­al­ized inter­faces and have con­tex­tu­al­ized insights for every user just a prompt away. We offer the broad­est suite of busi­ness appli­ca­tions, all run­ning on and pow­ered by SAP Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Plat­form. Cus­tomers and part­ners ben­e­fit from best prac­tices we deliv­er in our appli­ca­tions while we help them to inno­vate continuously. 

How tight­ly con­nect­ed are your inno­va­tion efforts to your prod­uct roadmaps? In oth­er words, what is the time lapse between the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and/​or devel­op­ment of new capac­i­ties such as gen­er­a­tive AI and its incor­po­ra­tion into SAP offerings?

Mueller: I just men­tioned: It clear­ly is our goal to con­tin­u­ous­ly inno­vate for our cus­tomers. For this pur­pose, we are observ­ing tech­nol­o­gy and busi­ness trends across indus­tries. On some of them, we are already act­ing; oth­ers are in the explo­ration phase. What’s clear: Explo­ration is an impor­tant part of SAP BTP. 

We have many cas­es where explo­ration has led to solu­tions that are more cur­rent than ever. A recent exam­ple is our han­dling of gen­er­a­tive AI. When the poten­tial of gen­er­a­tive AI start­ed to accel­er­ate, we engaged with our most strate­gic cus­tomers to co-inno­vate in that field to ensure rel­e­vant use cas­es make it onto our roadmap. This col­lab­o­ra­tion helped us to put togeth­er a list of great inno­va­tions [to be] ready for SAP TechEd in a short time. You will hear more in my keynote. 

Giv­en how rapid­ly new tech­nolo­gies evolved and matured in recent years, how can you ensure that you have the right tal­ent and skill sets to har­ness new capabilities? 

Mueller: Also in this case, gen­er­a­tive AI is a great exam­ple. Every employ­ee at SAP, regard­less of their role, needs to under­stand gen­er­a­tive AI, learn how to put it into prac­tice, and help to infuse it into all our solu­tions. The chal­lenge is: This needs to hap­pen fast because the com­pe­ti­tion is tough.

In addi­tion to a broad offer­ing of inter­nal train­ing and ded­i­cat­ed learn­ing time, we pro­vide a so-called ​“AI play­ground” where our devel­op­ers have secure access to Large Lan­guage Mod­els (LLMs). This AI play­ground already had 29,000 unique vis­i­tors who entered 630,000 prompts to get expe­ri­ence and sharp­en their skills on this top­ic. So, it is always a mat­ter of pro­vid­ing train­ing [and] — at least equal­ly as impor­tant — the oppor­tu­ni­ty to get hands-on experience.

How does SAP man­age the ten­sion between yesterday’s inno­va­tion, which have matured, and the incor­po­ra­tion of emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies such as AI? What rec­om­men­da­tions can you give your cus­tomers in this area? 

Mueller: For me, the key to accep­tance is good com­mu­ni­ca­tion at eye-lev­el, as well as demon­strat­ing ben­e­fits, while acknowl­edg­ing con­cerns. AI has the poten­tial to cre­ate new­er, bet­ter jobs. The trick is to use tech­nol­o­gy in a way that lets peo­ple do what they do best and turn it into an advantage. 

One exam­ple: LLMs are a great sup­port for cre­at­ing job post­ings. Let’s assume 6 – 10 mil­lion job post­ings are cre­at­ed per year with the help of SAP soft­ware, and AI can get the cre­ation time down from 2 hours to 15 min­utes per post­ing. We end up spar­ing more than 2 mil­lion work­days per year, cre­at­ing job post­ings only for SAP users. 

This is time employ­ees can spend by invest­ing more into iden­ti­fy­ing the most tal­ent­ed can­di­date for a role. That is the beau­ty of tech­nol­o­gy. It offers us con­stant improve­ments that make our lives eas­i­er and, at the same time, allow us to build bridges: for exam­ple, with dif­fer­ent inte­gra­tion sce­nar­ios that enable our cus­tomers to take advan­tage of both worlds, on-premis­es and cloud.

What lessons have you learned from SAP cus­tomers who strug­gle with tech­ni­cal debt in the con­text of tech­nol­o­gy modernization?

Mueller: No doubt: New tech­nolo­gies must inte­grate into exist­ing busi­ness process­es and IT land­scapes. I meet with cus­tomers every day, and we usu­al­ly agree that get­ting the most out of tech inno­va­tions requires a com­bi­na­tion of busi­ness and tech­nol­o­gy exper­tise. When both sides work togeth­er, we can achieve great things.

If cus­tomers lack this knowl­edge, SAP can help! That is why SAP BTP pro­vides our cus­tomers with the lat­est tech­nolo­gies out-of-the box by inte­grat­ing them innate­ly into our tools and appli­ca­tions. Addi­tion­al­ly, our ​“clean core” strat­e­gy helps cus­tomers adopt new releas­es and new tech­nolo­gies faster by avoid­ing sys­tems mod­i­fi­ca­tions as much as pos­si­ble. Over time, this reduces tech­ni­cal debt and sup­ports a faster path to new inno­va­tions. We part­ner with our cus­tomers all the way, from iden­ti­fy­ing their real mod­ern­iza­tion needs to the actu­al imple­men­ta­tion of new solu­tions — and beyond!

Hear more from Juer­gen Mueller at ASUG Tech Connect (Nov. 7 – 9, in New Orleans; reg­is­ter here), as the SAP and ASUG com­mu­ni­ty comes togeth­er to cov­er the tech­nolo­gies and chal­lenges most crit­i­cal to you today.