In the third installment of its recent Rise into the Future webcast series, SAP focused on helping attendees prepare their businesses to fully embrace the power and promise of artificial intelligence (AI).
The discussion—between Paul Saunders, Head of Product Strategy for SAP Cloud ERP at SAP; Martin Wezowski, SAP Chief Futurist; Anubhuti Shah, Head of Cloud ERP AI & SAP Business Technology (BTP) Product Marketing at SAP; and Ritu Jyoti, Group VP of AI and Automation at IDC—provided attendees with practical steps to facilitate effective and efficient AI adoption.
Given AI’s growing importance in the SAP ecosystem, this webcast series resonated with attendees who also recently heard, at this year’s SAP Sapphire & ASUG Annual Conference in Orlando, about incoming AI innovations from SAP. With the software giant unveiling a litany of partnerships, innovations, and announcements all focused on facilitating AI adoption and expanding the footprint of Joule, SAP’s generative AI copilot, to cover more of the SAP suite of solutions, it’s clear that SAP is accelerating toward a comprehensive vision of business AI.
Speaking about growing enthusiasm for AI, Wezowksi noted during the webcast that the technology is not a phase, describing it as a “general purpose technology” akin to electricity. Here are some key highlights from SAP's “Rise into the Future: Harness the Full Potential of Business AI” webcast.
Keys Steps to Developing an AI Strategy
The panelists offered pointers on how SAP users can develop effective AI strategies and enable organizational adoption. One of the first steps any organization hoping to use AI applications must take is to migrate ERP operations to the cloud and focus on data cleaning.
Shah noted that high-quality data is the “foundation” of effective AI. Data accessibility is equally important in empowering AI solutions, like Joule, which effectively rely on an enterprise’s data pool to function.
According to Shah, the “optimal scenario” attendees should strive for is enabling AI applications and algorithms with real-time organizational data in the cloud. After organizations embrace the cloud and optimize data, they can focus on aligning their AI strategy with corporate strategy and realize tangible business benefits.
“AI is going to impact every part of the business,” Jyoti said. Drawing on insights from IDC research, Jyoti encouraged attendees to consider how AI can improve corporate strategies and business objectives by reducing manual tasks and expanding companies’ ability to analyze business data. In the end, AI solutions can create significant stakeholder value by addressing business problems faced by end users, she said.
Jyoti also underlined the importance of embracing AI responsibility and focusing on accountability. Given AI innovation's fluid and ever-advancing state, enterprises must install effective guardrails and ensure oversight of AI-augmented processes wherever they are implemented. In the event of AI hallucinations, incorrect or missing data, or other common issues involving AI, organizations must retain enough visibility of these processes to take corrective actions in a timely and agile fashion.
Set the Groundwork for Future AI Innovation
In the webcast, panelists also discussed how companies can prepare their organizations and IT landscapes for future AI capabilities.
Jyoti noted that investing in areas of the business that AI can most demonstrably improve is a clear, effective place to start. However, stakeholders always look for “tangible ROI” and need “justification to be done before investing,” she said. Based on responses to IDC research, significant areas to consider for AI investment include software development and design, supply chain, finance, and customer engagement.
Wezowski stressed that attendees should consider how AI can impact—and improve—operational functions in the future. “There’s a whole world of opportunities,” he said. “New generations will use this technology differently.”
To that end, Wezowski encouraged enterprises to adopt flexible strategies and strategic foresight in incorporating AI. He also suggested that companies return to basics before moving forward, reviewing corporate culture and standard business processes to identify potential areas for improvement. Wezowski encouraged organizations to look at how individual employees will eventually use AI. Future AI innovation will make “systems hyper-personal,” he said, as AI-enabled solutions are continuously improving by observing user patterns and habits, he said. Equipped with these insights, solutions can positively impact employee operations by suggesting efficient ways to tackle daily tasks.
The webcast also featured insights gained from IDC’s research on AI and a Joule demo showing how the copilot can improve financial operations.