Insiders Connection CEO Series showcases senior executives and influential thinkers in the SAP ecosystem.

Hosted by SAPinsider’s Chairman & Global CEO, Jamie Bedard, each episode reflects on the current market, tomorrow’s innovations and the guest’s perspective on some of the biggest challenges facing SAPinsider members and SAP end users.

Expect expert insight and opinion plus career advice and ideas that are as applicable to an SAP newbie as a 20-year veteran.

Jamie Bedard

Your host – Jamie Bedard

Jamie is the Chairman and Global CEO of Wellesley Information Services and its family of brands, SAPinsider, Mastering SAP and ERP Today.

Jamie has over 30 years of market leading expertise in founding, leading turnarounds and ramping growth for numerous companies in the domestic and international marketplace. He is a serial entrepreneur, business builder of content driven, technology enabled businesses.

 

 

From Robot Dogs to Voice-First ERP:
SAP’s Yaad Oren on What Comes Next for the Enterprise


Episode Guest: Yaad Oren, Global Head of Research & Innovation at SAP and Managing Director of SAP Labs US

In this episode of Insiders Connection, CEO Series, Jamie Bedard talks with Yaad Oren, Global Head of Research & Innovation at SAP and Managing Director of SAP Labs US. Oren explains how his team moves new technology from experiment to global product, and shares how customers are using robotics for warehouse work and asset inspection. He also explains why trusting AI agents starts with clear business value and a secure, governed platform.

Looking ahead, Oren shares the two questions every CEO should ask their CIO this quarter. He explains why voice and AI-native users will change how people use business software, and previews his sessions at SAPinsider EMEA in Copenhagen. He closes with career advice: be curious, find mentors, and hire people smarter than you.

Watch for all the details

 

Video highlights

Jamie Bedard: What do you see has to happen so that people can truly start to embrace the autonomous enterprise and allow AI agent orchestration to happen in real time on a continuous basis?
Yaad Oren: For customers to be comfortable with the autonomous enterprise, they need to define the business value they have. We shouldn’t do AI for the sake of AI. If I need to pick one critical element for the autonomous enterprise, it’s having the right platform. It’s very important to make sure you run it in a secure and governed manner. Just like I want to know where my kids are after 8:00 PM, nobody knows where the agents are. With SAP, you have the Agent Hub and registry.

Jamie Bedard: How do you help our leaders think about what the next three to five years should look like for them?
Yaad Oren: It’s top of mind, at least among the top three questions I get from our customers, which is cost. Cost optimization is super important. AI is becoming more and more expensive if you use models without any boundaries. AI experiments can be very expensive or reasonably priced depending on whether you make the right architectural choices.

Jamie Bedard: Are there any specific customers you’ve worked with recently that have really made strides forward with innovation?
Yaad Oren: One of my favorite topics in my research and innovation unit, and one that’s moving very fast, is physical AI, which is robotics. SAP doesn’t build robots, but we build the algorithms. We’re doing asset inspection using robot dogs from Boston Dynamics to check walls and see where leaks might be coming up. It’s a paradigm shift when we take AI into the physical world.

Jamie Bedard: What is the one question every CEO should be asking their CIO today, this quarter?
Yaad Oren: I think the CEO needs to naively ask the CIO, “Are you getting clear business value from the line of business? Do they believe they can get three-times optimization in manufacturing, increase the pipeline five-fold or reduce marketing campaign costs by sixty percent?” I think the CEO needs to continue with the question, “Do you feel set up for success with the right platform and the right infrastructure to start building AI for the enterprise at scale?”

Jamie Bedard: As the next generation of SAP users emerges into executive and business roles, what aspects of SAP’s application capabilities today will they simply refuse to use?
Yaad Oren: Voice has moved faster than I imagined. Last week at SAP Connect, we announced voice-enabled Joule for sales, because we found that salespeople and service people would like to communicate more with voice. Generation Alpha’s expectations for how to interact with enterprise software are much more disruptive than voice simply replacing the keyboard. It’s the first generation born AI native. They won’t appreciate complexity. They won’t appreciate a long time to value. They’ll appreciate an immediate reaction much more, and they can’t tolerate bad performance.

 

 

Upcoming Episodes:

Past Episodes: