While artificial intelligence (AI) dominated much of the spotlight at SAP Sapphire & ASUG Annual Conference last week, the event also featured a slew of announcements and updates impacting (and improving) the experiences of SAP utilities customers. Here are some of the key takeaways from the conference impacting utilities.
- Moving forward, SAP will assign all current and new RISE with SAP customers with a dedicated enterprise architect to guide their cloud transformation projects. During his keynote address, SAP Chief Executive Officer Christian Klein said these resources will provide customers with a “guide to implementation” and leverage the RISE with SAP methodology as they move to the cloud. As utilities migrate to the cloud these EA assets will help them find the best ways to manage their digital transformation projects.
- SAP further padded out its business transformation portfolio—including the recent additions of SAP Signavio and LeaxIX—by announcing its intention to acquire WalkMe, a digital adoption platform provider. “Applications, processes, data, and people are the four key elements of a successful business transformation,” Christian Klein, CEO and member of the Executive Board of SAP SE, said in a statement. “By acquiring WalkMe, we are doubling down on the support we provide our end users, helping them to quickly adopt new solutions and features to get the maximum value out of their IT investments.” Scott Russell, SAP Chief Revenue Officer, noted the solution is aimed at providing support to “your people, the business user that wakes up every morning and is us the SAP applications” as enterprises embark on their “digital adoption journey.” This addition further enables all SAP customers embarking on enterprise-wide digital transformation projects—especially those to the cloud. This addition’s focus on end users further compliments the suite of solutions and SAP investments aimed and facilitating successful cloud adoption.
- SAP showed off business AI innovations in its portfolio, including innovations to customer experience (CX) solutions. For example, SAP Sales Cloud now sports predictive forecasting capabilities. Additionally, the CX AI Toolkit now features a generative AI tool builder that allows users to construct custom AI tools for business users leveraging data from SAP Commerce Cloud, SAP Sales Cloud, and SAP Service Cloud. New AI capabilities were also unveiled for SAP Asset Performance Management, which will help technicians, inspectors, and managers as they visually inspect asset conditions. Images gathered by these employees can now be easily annotated and compiled into inspection alerts.
- New SAP Build low-code and pro-code tools were announced. Aimed at helping customers adopt a clean core strategy, these capabilities included ABAP Developer functions in Joule, SAP’s AI co-pilot. One feature, set to be released later this year, will enable users to develop ABAP business objects using generative AI in the SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) ABAP Environment.
- Finally, SAP announced widespread integrations of Joule throughout the software company’s portfolio of cloud platforms and business applications. In addition to the current Joule integrations with SAP SuccessFactors and SAP Start, SAP S/4HANA Private Cloud, SAP Customer Data Platform, SAP BTP Cockpit, SAP Build, SAP Build Code, and SAP Integration Suite, the generative AI copilot will integrate with SAP Ariba and SAP Analytics Cloud later this year.