At SAP Sap­phire & ASUG Annu­al Con­fer­ence 2026, one mes­sage echoed across keynotes, demon­stra­tions, and cus­tomer con­ver­sa­tions: AI is no longer an exper­i­ment; it’s becom­ing a foun­da­tion­al lay­er of enter­prise trans­for­ma­tion, enabling SAP’s vision of the Autonomous Enter­prise. But as the con­fer­ence end­ed, the ulti­mate ques­tion for orga­ni­za­tions became, ​“What’s next?”

As ASUG mem­bers unpack these announce­ments dur­ing sub­se­quent ASUG Com­mu­ni­ty Con­ver­sa­tions, vir­tu­al post-con­fer­ence recaps, and chap­ter meet­ings, the over­all sen­ti­ment has become clear that cus­tomers want to explore the pos­si­bil­i­ties of the Autonomous Enter­prise, but they are active­ly nav­i­gat­ing the path from vision to exe­cu­tion, won­der­ing how to actu­al­ly make it real in their own tech­nol­o­gy land­scapes. Dur­ing the recent ASUG Com­mu­ni­ty Con­ver­sa­tion, SAP Sap­phire & ASUG Annu­al Con­fer­ence High­lights: AI, Roadmaps, and What’s Next, SAP experts explained these announce­ments and exact­ly what SAP is build­ing, begin­ning with:

The Autonomous Enter­prise: A strate­gic anchor com­bin­ing the oper­a­tional core (SAP Autonomous Suite) and Indus­try AI with a uni­fied fron­tend and foun­da­tion. The core phi­los­o­phy is sim­ple: peo­ple set the strate­gic direc­tion, while AI han­dles end-to-end exe­cu­tion with built-in governance. 

Think of it like a self-dri­ving car for busi­ness. The human sets the des­ti­na­tion (strat­e­gy), and the AI han­dles the dri­ving, steer­ing, and brak­ing (exe­cu­tion), while auto­mat­i­cal­ly fol­low­ing the rules of the road.

Joule, Joule Work, and Spaces: Mov­ing beyond a basic chat­bot, Joule is matur­ing through knowl­edge graph inte­gra­tion to pro­vide deep busi­ness con­text. Launch­ing in the sec­ond half of 2026, Joule Work intro­duces an intent-dri­ven work­space with a gen­er­a­tive UI (dynam­i­cal­ly built screens) where users state a goal and the sys­tem orches­trates tasks across SAP and non-SAP systems. 

Essen­tial­ly, it’s a smart assis­tant that trans­lates your goals in plain lan­guage into a cus­tom screen in front of you, while han­dling all the behind-the-scenes processes.

AI Agents and Agen­tic Work­flows: SAP announced 50-plus Joule assis­tants and 200-plus spe­cial­ized, ready-made agents across finance, sup­ply chain, pro­cure­ment, and HR. Inter­op­er­a­ble work­flows allow these agents to coor­di­nate in real time to solve com­plex cross-silo prob­lems, work­ing togeth­er in real time to solve busi­ness chal­lenges. It works much like a pro­fes­sion­al sports team, where each AI agent plays a spe­cif­ic posi­tion, finance, sup­ply chain, pro­cure­ment, or HR, focused on exe­cut­ing its own part of the game. Inter­op­er­a­ble work­flows func­tion as the coach and play­book, coor­di­nat­ing these agents in real time and adjust­ing strat­e­gy as con­di­tions change. Togeth­er, they respond dynam­i­cal­ly on the field to solve com­plex, cross-silo busi­ness chal­lenges and dri­ve the orga­ni­za­tion toward its goal.

Busi­ness Data Cloud and Tab­u­lar Pre­dic­tion: To super­charge AI deci­sion-mak­ing, SAP high­light­ed a uni­fied data foun­da­tion inte­grat­ed with third-par­ty data lakes. This includes the acqui­si­tion of Pri­or Labs to advance Tab­u­lar Foun­da­tion Mod­els, infus­ing next-gen­er­a­tion pre­dic­tive capa­bil­i­ties like RPT 1.5 across core busi­ness process­es. The aim is to have AI ana­lyze all your data to pre­dict issues before they occur.

How Do We Get There? The Path from Exper­i­ment to Execution

Since Sap­phire, ASUG mem­bers have been work­ing togeth­er to syn­the­size this infor­ma­tion. While the poten­tial of AI, Busi­ness Data Cloud, Joule, intel­li­gent appli­ca­tions, and agen­tic work­flows is unde­ni­able, SAP cus­tomers are won­der­ing how to get there.

“The tran­si­tion from tra­di­tion­al task forces to a sin­gle, dynam­ic expe­ri­ence has proven to be an imme­di­ate suc­cess, but mem­bers are active­ly try­ing to con­nect the vision SAP pre­sent­ed with the prac­ti­cal real­i­ty of what is avail­able today.” — ASUG Member

For many ASUG mem­bers, AI is increas­ing­ly becom­ing part of larg­er trans­for­ma­tion efforts, includ­ing cloud migra­tion, process mod­ern­iza­tion, and enter­prise archi­tec­ture plan­ning. The nar­ra­tive has rapid­ly shift­ed from ​“What is AI and will it mat­ter?” to ​“How do we oper­a­tional­ize, gov­ern, and scale AI respon­si­bly to dri­ve busi­ness value?”

Live polling dur­ing the recap ses­sion showed a com­mu­ni­ty even­ly divid­ed by the prac­ti­cal fric­tion of adop­tion. Audi­ence sen­ti­ment was split almost equal­ly between under­stand­ing the high-lev­el AI vision but not know­ing where to start, feel­ing pres­sure to keep pace with inno­va­tion, and search­ing for a clear path from stand­alone pilots to inte­grat­ed workflows.

ASUG mem­bers cit­ed a per­sis­tent knowl­edge gap that cre­ates hes­i­ta­tion to scale AI. When asked what they want to explore fur­ther with ASUG, mem­bers over­whelm­ing­ly pri­or­i­tized AI strat­e­gy and gov­er­nance, fol­lowed by data readi­ness, process trans­for­ma­tion, and ERP modernization.

Polling data and mem­ber feed­back point to a clear bot­tle­neck. The com­mu­ni­ty is ask­ing a few crit­i­cal questions:

Data Readi­ness: ​“If our under­ly­ing enter­prise data is a mess, won’t an autonomous sys­tem just make bad deci­sions faster? What are the base­line stan­dards we need to hit before we even think about turn­ing this on?”

Work­force Capac­i­ty: ​“Man­ag­ing AI is being treat­ed like a ​‘sec­ond job’ for teams already maxed out fin­ish­ing cloud migra­tions. How do we bud­get time and train peo­ple to actu­al­ly work along­side these agents?”

Gov­er­nance and Safe­ty: ​“A lot of us feel like we have ​‘zero gov­er­nance,’ with teams ran­dom­ly exper­i­ment­ing. What guardrails — like an AI Agent Hub or ver­i­fi­ca­tion seals — keep IT from los­ing con­trol once hun­dreds of agents start exe­cut­ing tasks?”

Prac­ti­cal Proof: ​“Stop show­ing us high-lev­el slides. Can you show us step-by-step case stud­ies of ordi­nary process­es that have suc­cess­ful­ly gone autonomous, along with the safe­ty guides they used?”

The Road Ahead: A 30, 60, and 90-Day Roadmap to Execution

Dur­ing the Sap­phire Recap Com­mu­ni­ty Con­ver­sa­tion, SAP experts, includ­ing Cloud Trans­for­ma­tion Leader Anurag Barua, AI Archi­tec­ture Advi­sor John Astill, Chief Enter­prise Archi­tect Mar­tin Mysyk, AI Prod­uct Man­age­ment lead Matt Horenkamp, Glob­al VP Was­sil­ios Lolas, and Senior Direc­tor of Cus­tomer Advo­ca­cy Rich Huhn, addressed these burn­ing ques­tions with con­crete frame­works, bal­anc­ing long-term strat­e­gy with imme­di­ate, action­able advice and a prac­ti­cal, phased timeline.

Days 1 – 30: Build the Foun­da­tion — Iden­ti­fy Quick Wins

Core Ques­tions Answered: What does true data readi­ness look like, and how do we build it? How do we oper­a­tional­ize AI with­out dis­rupt­ing day-to-day operations? 

The con­sen­sus for the first month is clear: move past inter­nal com­mit­tees and focus on low-hang­ing fruit with prov­able ROI.

“The best AI is bor­ing — because you don’t see it. It’s just solv­ing prob­lems. Look at what’s achiev­able now and show lead­er­ship the val­ue, rather than chas­ing vis­i­bil­i­ty.” — John Astill, AI Archi­tec­ture Advi­sor, SAP

Your Imme­di­ate 30-Day Action Items:

• Run a Joule Readi­ness Check: Uti­lize this offi­cial SAP ser­vice to clear foun­da­tion­al tech­ni­cal bar­ri­ers before acti­vat­ing capabilities.
• Adopt Joule for Con­sul­tants: Fol­low Horenkamp’s advice and start lever­ag­ing Joule for Con­sul­tants imme­di­ate­ly as a fast, low-lift entry point. Cus­tomers note they’re already using it to get thor­ough answers faster than going through tra­di­tion­al account teams.
• Request the Dis­cov­ery Edi­tion: Go to www​.s4hana​.com and request SAP Sig­navio Process Insights, dis­cov­ery edi­tion to run an auto­mat­ed assess­ment against your exist­ing sys­tems and build a data-backed val­ue case.
• Ini­ti­ate Data Focus Area 1 and 2 (Busi­ness Con­text and Con­nec­tiv­i­ty): Begin your data assess­ment by ensur­ing your data reflects actu­al busi­ness process­es and rela­tion­ships (seman­tic mean­ing, not just raw tables). Uni­fy data across both SAP and non-SAP sys­tems to elim­i­nate silos.

Days 31 – 60: Stand Up Gov­er­nance and Estab­lish Accountability

Core Ques­tions Answered: How do we gov­ern an entire ​“zoo” of auto­mat­ed AI agents? How do we han­dle change man­age­ment and support?

With the explo­sion of autonomous capa­bil­i­ties, gov­er­nance can­not be an after­thought. Across the Enter­prise Archi­tec­ture and Busi­ness Trans­for­ma­tion com­mu­ni­ty con­ver­sa­tions, par­tic­i­pants were per­fect­ly can­did about where things actu­al­ly stand, with one attendee stat­ing, ​“We have zero gov­er­nance. Legal is say­ing one thing, com­pli­ance anoth­er. Peo­ple are just experimenting.”

Oper­a­tional­iz­ing AI requires a struc­tured human frame­work to pre­vent frag­ment­ed, par­al­lel, or ​“shad­ow” AI ini­tia­tives. Month two focus­es on con­trol­ling it at an enter­prise scale with­out sti­fling inno­va­tion using new­ly intro­duced tools.

Your 60-Day Action Items:

• Estab­lish an AI Cen­ter of Excel­lence (CoE): Cre­ate this gov­er­nance com­mit­tee right away to define accountability.
• Map Your Inven­to­ry via the AI Agent Hub (Built on LeanIX): Work with Lolas’s frame­work to lever­age this cen­tral repos­i­to­ry to dis­cov­er, cat­a­log, and map every agent, LLM, and MCP serv­er in your orga­ni­za­tion to spe­cif­ic busi­ness process­es, avoid­ing dupli­cate work.
• Deploy the Ver­i­fi­ca­tion Seal and Process Atoms: Enforce trust mech­a­nisms man­aged with­in the Agent Hub and exe­cut­ed via the SAP Inte­gra­tion Suite, ensur­ing that ​“no assess­ment, no seal, no iden­ti­ty” applies to any agent. Turn unwrit­ten orga­ni­za­tion­al rules and high­ly gran­u­lar process guide­lines into strict, auditable guardrails that agents must follow.
• Ini­ti­ate Data Focus Area 3 and 4 (Qual­i­ty, Trust, and Con­trol): Clean and har­mo­nize mas­ter data to estab­lish a sin­gle ver­sion of truth so agents don’t hal­lu­ci­nate. Build auditable, secure con­trols to gov­ern exact­ly how AI mod­els access and uti­lize data.

Days 61 – 90-plus: Clean the Core and Scale Process Transformation

Core Ques­tion Answered: How do we oper­a­tional­ize, scale, and real­ize long-term busi­ness value?

By month three, orga­ni­za­tions must bal­ance the human ele­ment with mas­sive tech­ni­cal over­hauls, shift­ing the data mind­set entire­ly from track­ing the past to exe­cut­ing for the future.

Your 90-Day Action Items:

• Clean the Core: Active­ly clean up and retire cus­tom code. Reduc­ing cus­tomiza­tion direct­ly low­ers the risk for upcom­ing AI rollouts.
• Pilot High-Momen­tum Use Cas­es: Pri­or­i­tize fast-ROI use cas­es sur­faced by your ear­li­er process assess­ments, such as automat­ing over­due billing, opti­miz­ing cash col­lec­tion, or man­ag­ing con­tract compliance.
• Acti­vate Process AI Sig­nal: Imple­ment this auto­mat­ed mon­i­tor­ing lay­er to con­tin­u­ous­ly check agent exe­cu­tion and con­firm it is behav­ing exact­ly as intended.
• Exe­cute Data Focus Area 5 (The Mind­set Shift): Com­plete the data readi­ness frame­work by mov­ing your teams from ana­lyt­ics-ready data for dash­boards to agent-ready data for execution.
• Val­i­date with SAP Teams: Con­tin­u­ous­ly engage with your account teams and roadmaps to secure tai­lored rec­om­men­da­tions rather than plan­ning in a vacuum.

Sum­ma­ry: The 5‑Step Data Readi­ness Assess­ment Framework

To sup­port this roadmap, Horenkamp struc­tured the data chal­lenges shared by Jim Loar of BASF Cor­po­ra­tion into a clear, foun­da­tion­al check­list to run across your 30, 60, and 90-day timeline:

SAP Sap­phire & ASUG Annu­al Con­fer­ence raised the vision of the Autonomous Enter­prise; now it’s up to each orga­ni­za­tion to build the data foun­da­tion, gov­er­nance, and work­force readi­ness to turn that vision into some­thing real. Luck­i­ly for the SAP com­mu­ni­ty, ASUG will be there every step of the way.

Con­nect with ASUG for Support:

• Watch the Full Ses­sion: Access the on-demand record­ing of this Sap­phire Recap to share insights direct­ly with your lead­er­ship team.
• Engage with Your Chap­ter: Join upcom­ing local ASUG Chap­ter meet­ings to dis­cuss these exact AI strat­e­gy, archi­tec­ture, and change man­age­ment threads with peers nav­i­gat­ing the same journey.
• Join Us at ASUG Tech Con­nect: Dive deep­er into these archi­tec­tur­al build­ing blocks live. Save the date for ASUG Tech Con­nect: Build What’s Next on SAP BTP — Togeth­er, hap­pen­ing Nov. 2 – 4 in Fort Worth. Keep an eye out for reg­is­tra­tion dead­lines to secure your spot!