At its annual SAP Sapphire conference, SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) unveiled innovations and partnerships that put the power of Business AI in every user’s hands, revolutionizing the way work gets done. From a virtually omnipresent Joule assistant to an expanded network of Joule Agents that work across systems and lines of business, SAP heralds a new era that democratizes access to Business AI and can drive productivity gains of up to 30 percent.
“SAP combines the world’s most powerful suite of business applications with uniquely rich data and the latest AI innovations to create a flywheel of customer value,” said SAP CEO Christian Klein. “With the expansion of Joule, our partnerships with leading AI pioneers, and advancements in SAP Business Data Cloud, we’re delivering on the promise of Business AI as we drive digital transformations that help customers thrive in an increasingly unpredictable world.”
AI that boosts productivity
SAP’s generative AI assistant Joule can be everywhere you work, delivering personalized answers on everything you need to be more productive.
Joule can accompany business users throughout their day, in and out of the SAP application universe, to find data, surface real-time insights and streamline workflows. Joule’s new ubiquity includes an action bar powered by WalkMe that studies user behavior across applications, turning the assistant into an always-available, proactive AI that can anticipate users’ needs before they arise – always adhering to SAP’s strict ethical AI guidelines.
A collaboration with Perplexity, an AI-powered answer engine company, enhances Joule’s ability to draw on structured and unstructured data to solve complex business problems. Powered by Perplexity and the SAP Knowledge Graph, Joule now instantly answers questions with structured, visual answers – such as charts and graphs – grounded in real-time business data within SAP workflows. For example, a user could ask the tool how recent external events might impact their business and get a forecast based on both current events and the company’s own business data.
SAP also unveiled an expanded library of Joule Agents that reimagine business processes and workflows from the ground up. Fueled by the world’s most powerful real-time business data and orchestrated by Joule, these AI agents work across systems and lines of business to anticipate, adapt and act autonomously so organizations can stay agile in a rapidly changing world. Partnering with industry leaders, SAP offers an ecosystem of interoperable agents that can execute end-to-end processes. The new agents span customer experience, supply chain management, spend management, finance, and human capital management.
Finally, SAP introduced an operating system for AI development that transforms how enterprises build, deploy and scale AI solutions. AI Foundation gives developers a single entry point for building, extending and running custom AI solutions at scale, making it the first real operating system for Business AI. A new prompt optimizer, designed collaboratively with the frontier AI lab Not Diamond, also helps developers create more effective AI prompts quickly, reducing work on complex use cases from days to minutes.
Data that drives smarter decisions
SAP also introduced new intelligent applications in SAP Business Data Cloud, each built for a specific line of business. These applications can continuously learn, simulate outcomes and guide actions using business-critical data, detecting changes to optimize processes, anticipate needs, and collaborate with both human and artificial thinkers to drive meaningful impact. The People Intelligence application, for instance, optimizes team performance by transforming people and skills data into workforce insights and AI-driven recommendations.
Additionally, Palantir and SAP are partnering to facilitate joint customers’ cloud migration journey and modernization programs. Seamless connectivity between Palantir and SAP Business Data Cloud will enable customers to build a harmonized data foundation across their enterprise landscape. Together the companies will responsibly deliver essential outcomes and support customers, including the U.S. government, to quickly adapt to changes and disruptions.
Applications that accelerate cloud adoption
The company also announced SAP Business Suite packages, which are designed for customers to simplify the adoption of SAP cloud solutions that address their specific business challenges. SAP Build is embedded in these packages, so organizations can customize applications to meet their unique needs.
Finally, SAP unveiled a new solution that helps customers transition to the cloud faster. With Joule as the entry point and drawing on insights from SAP solutions including SAP Signavio and SAP LeanIX, the solution delivers personalized guidance and actionable recommendations tailored to an organization’s transformation objectives and can help deliver up to 35 percent faster time to value.
