4 Key Ways Generative AI from SAP Labs Improves Your Business

“Generative AI is not just a technology advancement. It is a revolution that enables businesses to transform data into actionable insights and drive unprecedented innovation and efficiency,” Yaard Oren, managing director of SAP Labs US and global head of SAP BTP innovation, told the audience during his VB Transform 2024 keynote.

Oren’s keynote began with a strategic look at how SAP Labs is helping integrate Generation AI across the enterprise software giant’s broad software portfolio, before the conversation moved on to describe the work SAP is delivering to Gibson, the famous guitar manufacturer, and Team Liquid, a leading esports organization known for its competitiveness and innovation in gaming.

SAP's goal is to rapidly scale AI across the enterprise.

Oren emphasized that insights gained from one customer adopting AI can be directly transferred to other customers, accelerating scale and adoption in the process. Oren compared the complex landscape of Team Liquid’s app to the many challenges of improving supply chain performance and overcoming constraints, explaining that the impact on companies of solving complex problems contributes to improved learning of AL and machine learning (ML) models.

More than 24,000 SAP customers are currently using the company's AI solutions. Through SAP Integration Advisor, SAP is also integrating AI into more than 10,000 public interfaces and more than 5,000 scenario-based interfaces and messages to further support customers' diverse enterprise requirements.

Founded in 1972, SAP's enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems and related applications are used by a wide range of businesses around the world. SAP's move fully into AI-based applications is delivering results for long-standing customers who have implemented ERP systems.

One example is AI in SAP's Concur Invoice Management, which will automate the processing of 40 million invoices in 2022, saving customers a total of €440 million ($484 million at current exchange rates). AI in SAP SuccessFactors provides personalized learning recommendations to an average of 4.2 million learners each month.

Oren's keynote provided an overview of the SAP AI framework, which is focused on extending built-in AI capabilities across functional areas of the enterprise. One of the framework's implied goals is to provide a unified AI framework that extends finance, supply chain, human resources, procurement, marketing and commerce, sales and service, and IT. Joule, SAP's copilot, provides access to built-in AI capabilities.

4 ways gen AI improves SAP's business

Applying lessons learned from solving one customer challenge with Gen AI at scale across multiple industries is inherent to the work we do at SAP Labs. Oren's example and explanation highlight how important customer knowledge sharing is in the SAP innovation workflow.

Oren shared four ways genAI improves business for SAP customers.

Applying lessons learned from other industries to enhance esports game analytics

SAP regularly analyzes more than 320 million data points to help Team Liquid optimize strategy and performance in competitive games. Oren drew parallels between the gaming industry and solving procurement, supply chain and logistics challenges, which is at the core of how SAP is looking to scale AI across its diverse global customer base. Team Liquid relies on SAP's real-time data platform to provide a holistic view of its applications. It combines multiple data sources and tools to create a siloed, distributed data collection system. Team Liquid's SAP platform stores 2.5 million hours of competitive data in SAP HANA Cloud, saving the team more than 300 hours of match preparation work per year.

Optimizing marketing campaigns at scale

Oren explained that Gibson uses SAP's automated campaign management tools to analyze customer preferences and behaviors to create personalized marketing campaigns. He gave the example of how this approach has increased engagement and revenue for Gibson, reporting that within a year, the company saw a 50% increase in email revenue and a 10% increase in total revenue.

Improving supply chain and logistics performance

Oren emphasized that SAP is focused on aggregating supply chain and logistics-related use cases across its customer base and learning quickly. Citing allegorical references such as Team Liquid, Oren explained how the supply chain, logistics and inventory challenges customers face can help generational AI models learn faster and address more complex problems, both of which are key goals to achieve with any scaling model.

“In today's rapidly changing business environment, the ability to predict and mitigate supply chain issues is critical,” said Oren. “Our AI solutions provide the insights companies need to stay ahead.”

Enhanced customer engagement

Gibson uses Gen AI-based apps and tools to gain real-time, data-driven insights to tailor its communications and marketing strategies to the unique preferences of its fans, from beginner guitar players to professional musicians. With one of the most loyal customer bases in the music industry, Gibson uses Gen AI to continually deliver new interactive experiences to its loyal fanbase. Gen AI helps improve the quality of recommendations and inform fans of the latest news that is most relevant to the music genres they follow, Oren explained.

Conclusion

Oren's keynote interwoven the diversity of SAP's evolving business, which started with ERP dominance and is now moving to an AI-centric future. The presence of SAP Labs leaders at VB Transform underscored how SAP sees its future as defined by AI as it seeks to transition its large customer base away from a long history of enterprise applications powered by ERP data. Having learned lessons from managing vast data sets across its customer base, SAP has demonstrated that it understands the need to make AI accessible across its broad application portfolio.

“The future belongs to those who can harness the power of data, and SAP is committed to helping our customers realize that future,” Oren concluded.