The fol­low­ing part­ner insight is brought to you by Wipro. 

As arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence reshapes busi­ness oper­a­tions, com­pa­nies inte­grat­ing AI into their SAP mod­ern­iza­tion strate­gies are gain­ing a com­pet­i­tive edge. How­ev­er, as AI adop­tion increas­es, con­cerns over oper­a­tional chal­lenges, insuf­fi­cient lev­els of exper­tise, and gov­er­nance con­tin­ue to com­pli­cate enter­prise-wide implementation.

Recent find­ings from the Amer­i­c­as’ SAP Users’ Group (ASUG) 2025 Pulse of the SAP Cus­tomer Research high­light the grow­ing role of AI with­in SAP envi­ron­ments. The per­cent­age of orga­ni­za­tions cit­ing AI and machine learn­ing (ML) as great­ly affect­ing their organization’s dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion efforts over the next two years rose to 46 per­cent, up from 38 per­cent in 2024. Despite this, research from WalkMe reveals that many orga­ni­za­tions strug­gle to trans­late invest­ment into results. Though 79 per­cent of exec­u­tives sur­veyed are con­fi­dent in reach­ing AI trans­for­ma­tion goals, only 28 per­cent of employ­ees feel prop­er­ly trained and just 25 per­cent can lever­age AI to work more effi­cient­ly. That said, impend­ing dead­lines for SAP ECC sup­port, which start to take effect in 2027, are putting pres­sure on busi­ness­es to accel­er­ate their tran­si­tion to SAP S/4HANA to ben­e­fit from embed­ded AI fea­tures and also AI-pow­ered solu­tions on SAP Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Plat­form (BTP).

Indus­try experts warn that com­pa­nies fail­ing to inte­grate AI into their ERP mod­ern­iza­tion strate­gies risk inef­fi­cien­cies, increased oper­a­tional costs, and a grow­ing com­pet­i­tive dis­ad­van­tage. Glob­al IT ser­vices providers such as Wipro, a Glob­al Strate­gic Ser­vices Part­ner (GSSP) for SAP, play a key role in help­ing enter­pris­es inte­grate AI secure­ly into their SAP sys­tems while main­tain­ing gov­er­nance, com­pli­ance, and oper­a­tional efficiency.

Oper­a­tional Chal­lenges: Peo­ple, Process, and Technology

While AI can poten­tial­ly trans­form SAP envi­ron­ments, enter­pris­es face oper­a­tional chal­lenges that span work­force readi­ness, process inte­gra­tion, and tech­nol­o­gy adoption.

The skills gap remains a pri­ma­ry hur­dle, as many employ­ees lack exper­tise in AI-dri­ven SAP envi­ron­ments. Resis­tance to change is anoth­er major fac­tor, with employ­ees express­ing con­cerns over AI automat­ing pre­vi­ous­ly human-dri­ven roles. Experts sug­gest that AI trans­for­ma­tion is about upgrad­ing tech­nol­o­gy and enabling the work­force to adapt to AI-pow­ered tools. Invest­ing in train­ing and change man­age­ment pro­grams has become essen­tial for orga­ni­za­tions seek­ing to max­i­mize AI’s value.

Process inef­fi­cien­cies also pose a sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenge, par­tic­u­lar­ly for enter­pris­es still rely­ing on lega­cy SAP work­flows that were not designed for AI automa­tion. Many busi­ness­es must rethink their data gov­er­nance frame­works to ensure AI mod­els process only rel­e­vant and autho­rized data. Addi­tion­al­ly, role-based access con­trols must be redesigned to extend gov­er­nance to AI-pow­ered deci­sion-mak­ing process­es. SAP’s Busi­ness AI solu­tions, such as Joule, SAP’s gen­er­a­tive AI copi­lot, pro­vide an alter­na­tive path for­ward by allow­ing orga­ni­za­tions to inte­grate AI with­in SAP’s secure gov­er­nance frame­work. In addi­tion, to incor­po­rate AI hygiene prac­tices, the project exe­cu­tion frame­work and soft­ware devel­op­ment life cycle (SDLC) need to embed var­i­ous AI tools dur­ing var­i­ous stages of the project and appli­ca­tion man­age­ment ser­vices (AMS).

AI Invest­ment and ROI in SAP Modernization

While tran­si­tion­ing to AI-dri­ven SAP envi­ron­ments requires sig­nif­i­cant invest­ment, research sug­gests that com­pa­nies mak­ing the leap achieve sub­stan­tial cost sav­ings and oper­a­tional effi­cien­cies. Costs asso­ci­at­ed with AI-pow­ered SAP mod­ern­iza­tion typ­i­cal­ly include migrat­ing to SAP S/4HANA or any SAP LOB solu­tions, licens­ing AI tools, and effec­tive­ly train­ing employ­ees to lever­age AI-dri­ven insights.

Despite the upfront costs, the return on invest­ment (ROI) for AI-dri­ven SAP trans­for­ma­tion is already com­pelling, enabling busi­ness pro­fes­sion­als to work faster and smarter. Last year, SAP infused Joule into over 80 per­cent of the most-used tasks across the SAP port­fo­lio; in SAP S/4HANA Cloud, pub­lic edi­tion, infor­ma­tion search­es are up to 95 per­cent faster, and nav­i­ga­tion and trans­ac­tion­al tasks are up to 90 per­cent faster, based on aver­age indus­try bench­marks from a recent SAP analy­sis. The sto­ry’s sim­i­lar for sales teams nav­i­gat­ing a Joule-infused SAP Sales Cloud Ver­sion 2, which allows them to access data up to 50 per­cent faster, boost­ing their pro­duc­tiv­i­ty by enhanc­ing workflows.

Wipro’s Role in AI-Dri­ven SAP Modernization

As orga­ni­za­tions seek expe­ri­enced part­ners to guide them through SAP mod­ern­iza­tion, Wipro has emerged as a leader in AI-pow­ered ERP trans­for­ma­tion. With a deep under­stand­ing of AI-dri­ven process automa­tion and enter­prise secu­ri­ty, the com­pa­ny deliv­ers a com­pre­hen­sive suite of AI-pow­ered SAP trans­for­ma­tion ser­vices that enable busi­ness­es to accel­er­ate dig­i­tal mod­ern­iza­tion while ensur­ing com­pli­ance and efficiency.

Pro­vid­ing end-to-end sup­port for AI-pow­ered SAP S/4HANA migra­tions, Wipro helps busi­ness­es tran­si­tion from SAP ECC while embed­ding AI automa­tion into their work­flows. The com­pa­ny also spe­cial­izes in AI-enabled busi­ness process opti­miza­tion, lever­ag­ing intel­li­gent ana­lyt­ics and ML to auto­mate SAP-dri­ven operations.

“We have a rich lega­cy with AI, under­pinned by robust exper­tise in data ana­lyt­ics. We have sev­er­al patents in AI and ML, SAP qual­i­fied solu­tions, and our advanced knowl­edge gives us an edge when work­ing with clients who want to accel­er­ate their use of AI,” said Srini­vas Sai Nidad­havolu, Vice Pres­i­dent & Glob­al Prac­tice Head — SAP at Wipro. ​“Wipro’s dif­fer­en­tia­tor is our abil­i­ty to uti­lize all the com­po­nents we have already devel­oped — and which are already in use by SAP cus­tomers — to cre­ate new solu­tions that extend AI to SAP environments.”

Intel­li­gent Sce­nario Life­cy­cle Man­age­ment (ISLM) is a self-ser­vice frame­work that allows cus­tomers to per­form life­cy­cle man­age­ment oper­a­tions on ML sce­nar­ios to make intel­li­gent pre­dic­tions, fore­casts, and oth­er pre­dic­tive mod­el­ing process­es. There are ISLM algo­rithms for spe­cif­ic use cas­es already avail­able in S/4HANA. Part­ners like Wipro can also add to the use cas­es or even build new ones not yet avail­able from SAP. Wipro offers indus­try-spe­cif­ic eSym­pho­ny S/4HANA tem­plates, with numer­ous ISLM sce­nar­ios embed­ded with­in the busi­ness process for man­u­fac­tur­ing, con­sumer goods, real estate, util­i­ties and med­ical devices Indus­tries. Wipro is cur­rent­ly work­ing on a pilot project with an inter­na­tion­al ener­gy com­pa­ny based in Eng­land that lever­ages algo­rithms in ISLM.

Wipro also offers a tem­plate built on SAP Sales & Ser­vice Cloud Ver­sion 2, a next-gen cus­tomer expe­ri­ence (CX) plat­form that uses AI, ML, and Gen­er­a­tive AI to auto­mate repet­i­tive tasks and cus­tomer com­mu­ni­ca­tions, ana­lyze cus­tomer data, pre­dict the like­li­hood of con­ver­sions using lead scor­ing, and much more. The com­pa­ny has a busi­ness AI pack with use cas­es for var­i­ous busi­ness process­es such as sup­ply chain, CX, pro­cure­ment, and more.

Wipro’s Clients Put AI to Work

Wipro reg­u­lar­ly works with clients who have estab­lished AI strate­gies but are look­ing for a part­ner to bridge gaps and assist them in set­ting up an AI cen­ter of excel­lence (COE) to define process­es and ground rules. 

Orga­ni­za­tions across indus­tries are already ben­e­fit­ing from Wipro’s AI-pow­ered SAP mod­ern­iza­tion ini­tia­tives. Wipro worked with one of the largest util­i­ty com­pa­nies in the Unit­ed King­dom as part of the SAP Light­house pro­gram to adopt and adapt Wipro’s GenAI-enabled ABAP Decon­struc­tor tool to decon­struct and ana­lyze lega­cy SAP ABAP code and cre­ate a tech­ni­cal Spec­i­fi­ca­tion Doc­u­ment. to aid the assess­ment of their ECC to S/4HANA con­ver­sion. The AI-pow­ered chat­bot embed­ded with­in the tool enables users to assess com­plex SAP code struc­tures in real-time, gen­er­ate AI-dri­ven insights to sup­port migra­tion, de-cus­tomiza­tion and back-to-stan­dard deci­sions, and auto­mate aspects of code analy­sis that pre­vi­ous­ly required man­u­al review. A work­ing ver­sion of the tool was adapt­ed in just five weeks, demon­strat­ing the rapid deploy­ment poten­tial of Wipro’s AI-pow­ered SAP opti­miza­tion solutions.

In Aus­tralia, Wipro part­nered with a large util­i­ty to devel­op an AI-pow­ered pro­cure­ment solu­tion on SAP BTP, that enhances ven­dor selec­tion and cost man­age­ment. The AI-dri­ven sys­tem ana­lyzes key sup­ply chain vari­ables, includ­ing pric­ing, deliv­er­abil­i­ty, sus­tain­abil­i­ty, and ven­dor per­for­mance, to rec­om­mend opti­mal sourc­ing strate­gies. By inte­grat­ing real-time cost analy­sis and sup­pli­er rec­om­men­da­tions, the solu­tion aims to improve oper­a­tional effi­cien­cy while reduc­ing pro­cure­ment expens­es. Effec­tive guard rail­ing, prompt engi­neer­ing, document/​content ground­ing, mod­el tun­ing, and con­tent aggre­ga­tion have been imple­ment­ed with­in SAP BTP. This solu­tion was imple­ment­ed by adopt­ing Wipro’s Solu­tion accel­er­a­tors and con­tex­tu­al­iz­ing them to spe­cif­ic needs.

“In addi­tion to devel­op­ing solu­tions from scratch, our approach will be to build on our AI solu­tions and solu­tion com­po­nents, cus­tomize it, and put it into a clien­t’s cloud ten­ant,” said Shiv­anand Hire­math, Head of SAP Inno­va­tion, Incu­ba­tion, and Solu­tions at Wipro. ​“This is what we call an ​‘adopt and adapt’ mode. We also host AI solu­tions pri­vate­ly on our BTP ten­ants for clients. The approach, or mix of approach­es, typ­i­cal­ly depends on a clien­t’s AI matu­ri­ty and invest­ment appetite. We offer var­i­ous options, and each client has their preference.”

Most of Wipro’s clients are large SAP shops with SAP ECC, in which the entire ECC envi­ron­ment is host­ed in their data cen­ter or on a pri­vate cloud infra­struc­ture man­aged by hyper­scalers; many of these clients plan on migrat­ing to S/4HANA, how­ev­er, not delay­ing fur­ther to infuse AI by embrac­ing BTP based Side-by-Side appli­ca­tion devel­op­ment approach. Oth­ers have already made the move.

The Future of AI in SAP Modernization

Indus­try ana­lysts agree that AI-pow­ered SAP trans­for­ma­tion is here to stay, and enter­pris­es that fail to pri­or­i­tize AI adop­tion risk los­ing their com­pet­i­tive edge. As AI evolves, busi­ness­es have mul­ti­ple paths to inte­grate AI into their SAP envi­ron­ments secure­ly, and their AI invest­ments can be strate­gi­cal­ly planned to align with busi­ness concerns. 

For instance, while some orga­ni­za­tions explore proof-of-con­cept deploy­ments to test AI with­in SAP sys­tems before com­mit­ting to full-scale adop­tion, oth­ers invest in cus­tomized AI and SAP solu­tions close­ly aligned with their spe­cif­ic busi­ness needs. For oth­er enter­pris­es pri­or­i­tiz­ing secu­ri­ty and com­pli­ance, pri­vate AI host­ing with­in a con­trolled enter­prise cloud envi­ron­ment offers addi­tion­al protection.

The bot­tom line is that AI is no longer an emerg­ing tech­nol­o­gy for orga­ni­za­tions seek­ing to max­i­mize their SAP mod­ern­iza­tion invest­ments; it is a strate­gic imper­a­tive defin­ing the next gen­er­a­tion of intel­li­gent ERP sys­tems. Com­pa­nies like Wipro are demon­strat­ing how AI can be inte­grat­ed effec­tive­ly with­in SAP envi­ron­ments to opti­mize tomor­row’s busi­ness out­comes today.