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.