SAP Dedicates New End-to-End Growth Area Focused on AI

⇨ SAP has carved out a comprehensive growth domain dedicated to AI, appointing Dr. Philipp Herzig as the Chief AI Officer (CAIO).

⇨ This effort is poised to accelerate the introduction of innovative AI-enabled solutions and services for SAP's clients, emphasizing the crucial role of business AI in SAP's future growth and strategic vision.

⇨ Key components of this unit include dedicated teams for everything that brings innovation to customers as quickly as possible, including go-to-market strategies, product and partner management, user experience enhancement, and customer implementation support.

SAP’s enhanced dedication to business AI signifies the start of a new era in enterprise innovation, pushing the boundaries of development and delivery of high-impact, reliable, and ethical AI solutions that transform the core of business operations. This strategic pivot towards business AI introduces a groundbreaking period of transformation within the industry.

Under this initiative, SAP has carved out a comprehensive growth domain dedicated to AI, appointing Dr. Philipp Herzig as the Chief AI Officer (CAIO). This move is designed to lead the forefront in the crafting and implementing of powerful, ethical AI solutions that revolutionize essential business functions. The establishment of this division marks a comprehensive strategy for SAP’s Business AI, covering the entire spectrum from product innovation and scientific research to the deployment for customers. This effort is poised to accelerate the introduction of innovative AI-enabled solutions and services for SAP’s clients, emphasizing the crucial role of business AI in SAP’s future growth and strategic vision.

AI – Not a New Concept for SAP

Overall, it is deemed crucial to grasp that AI is not a novel concept for SAP. Over the years, SAP has developed AI functionalities, constantly adapting its strategies to align with evolving market dynamics and customer needs. Herzig highlights, “The decision to combine AI in one dedicated area stemmed from the recognition that solely focusing on product perspectives was too narrow in such a rapidly changing environment. Thus, an end-to-end unit was established to holistically address AI integration across SAP’s vast array of applications. This unit integrates various corporate functions and lines of business to ensure a cohesive approach.”

Key components of this unit include dedicated teams for everything that brings innovation to customers as quickly as possible, including go-to-market strategies, product and partner management, user experience enhancement, and customer implementation support. This multifaceted approach aims to accelerate AI adoption while gathering valuable feedback for iterative improvements. In addition, Herzig emphasizes, “The end-to-end unit serves as a nucleus, housing all essential components under one umbrella, including marketing, commercial aspects, product management, design, engineering, and research. Collaboration with other board areas ensures scalability and alignment with regional requirements. This strategic setup reflects SAP’s commitment to harnessing AI’s transformative potential while catering to the diverse needs of its global customer base.”

Empowering Users to Derive Value from AI

SAP’s AI offerings are witnessing a remarkable uptake. This surge underscores SAP’s growing influence in the AI domain. Herzig highlights, “A notable part of these engagements, specifically 130 use cases, involves classical or narrow AI, tailored for precise tasks. Meanwhile we have embedded more than 30 new generative AI use cases across SAP solutions with more to come this year.”

The generative AI capabilities span diverse areas, including Human Capital Management, Customer Experience, Intelligent Spend Management & Business Network – and of course SAP’s cloud ERP suite and digital supply chain solutions. This community post provides SAPinsiders with a very good  overview of innovation highlights from the past two quarters.

SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) is the backbone of SAP’s generative AI combining generative technology with business data and context to infuse AI into products and enable customers and partners to create AI-powered extensions and applications. For example, the Generative AI Hub is the gateway to access and utilize large language models securely to build AI functionality with SAP’s AI Core and AI Launchpad. SAP HANA Cloud vector engine helps infuse AI applications with insights from unstructured data. Last but not least, SAP BTP offers services such as Document Information Extraction, which is for example embedded in SAP Transportation Management, and the new Document Grounding Service.

A standout development is Joule, a generative AI copilot and unified interface set to transform user engagement with SAP applications. Joule elevates the user experience but also simplifies the transition across various tasks and functionalities, fostering a more intuitive interaction with SAP’s applications.

Herzig stresses the belief in delivering AI solutions as a service, readily accessible without extensive setup requirements. He highlights “The true value of AI is revealed when it can be activated without bigger effort, resulting in immediate benefits for the user. By prioritizing simplicity and efficiency, we aim to empower our business users to derive value from AI in a quick and seamless fashion.”

Advanced AI Integration – SAP HANA Cloud Vector Engine

Soon, Joule is set to undergo a transformative upgrade with the integration of Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), leveraging SAP HANA Cloud vector engine for the first time in a pioneering use case. This integration represents a leap forward in how users interact with and harness information, enabling the efficient access and use of a variety of documents, from HR policies to travel guidelines.

With this advancement, Joule will index and store documents as vectors within the SAP HANA Cloud vector engine, making both structured data from applications like SAP SuccessFactors and unstructured data more accessible and actionable. This capability significantly enhances Joule’s utility in HR and other domains by facilitating the intelligent retrieval and usage of information. Herzig explains with an example, “Most often companies have HR-related policies that are not listed in SuccessFactors but are stored in documents on SharePoint, Google Workspace, or other document storage solutions. New functionality based on RAG capabilities of Joule will allow these documents to be indexed and connected. This not only utilizes the capabilities of Large Language Models (LLM) and the structured data from SAP SuccessFactors but also integrates all unstructured data into the system. This comprehensive approach enables the LLM to process and understand HR-related information, representing one of the company’s first internal use cases more effectively.”

The capability has been extended to the company’s first partners, who are starting to develop solutions using the Generative AI Hub on SAP BTP and SAP HANA Cloud vector engine. A major benefit of this strategy is the seamless integration with documents long stored in SAP systems, now predominantly powered by SAP HANA Cloud. This allows for the conversion of stored documents into embeddings within the same database, enhancing capabilities without necessitating data migration.

SAP’s partners have now access to the Generative AI Hub and SAP HANA Cloud vector engine within the SAP HANA Cloud offering. This empowers them to unlock the potential of innovative use cases that make use of both structured and unstructured data, enabling the realization of generative AI patterns such as RAG.

Role of Partners in Accelerating AI Deployment across SAP Portfolio

The partner ecosystem plays a pivotal role in the rapid development and deployment of AI technologies within the SAP portfolio, highlighting a dynamic collaboration between SAP and its vast network of partners. This collaboration is particularly vibrant as the SAP customers and partners gear up for Sapphire, where numerous AI-driven initiatives are set to take center stage.

At the heart of this synergy is the critical role partners play in not just delivering solutions but also in tailoring these AI technologies to specific customer needs, starting with SAP’s comprehensive suite as a foundational platform. This approach is especially significant in scenarios where AI solutions are embedded directly within SAP products.

The engagement with partners extends beyond mere integration, venturing into active co-creation of applications. The establishment of the Generative AI Hub on SAP BTP stands as a testament to this collaborative spirit.

What Does it Mean for SAPinsiders?

Embrace AI Experimentation: Companies maintaining a cautious stance on AI should actively engage with and experiment with AI technologies. This hands-on approach is vital for gaining valuable insights into AI’s practical applications and benefits.

Explore SAP BTP and Utilize the Generative AI Hub: Developers should dive into the technologies offered on SAP BTP. Staying informed about the latest developments within the SAP ecosystem is crucial for harnessing the full potential of AI advancements. This includes, for example, using the Generative AI Hub to access and utilize large language models securely to build AI functionality with SAP’s AI Core and AI Launchpad, gaining insights from unstructured data with SAP HANA Cloud vector engine, and benefitting from services such as Document Information Extraction or the brand new Document Grounding Service.

Maintain a Clean Core Infrastructure: Prioritize the maintenance of a clean core IT infrastructure. This involves, for example, adhering to standardized data models. Such practices are essential for facilitating a smoother and more efficient AI adoption process within organizations.