SAP today announced the release of several new products aimed at repositioning AI as an execution system and redefining how enterprise software is used for the next decade.
The announcement, announced at SAP Sapphire 2026, aims to replace fragmented co-pilots with managed autonomous systems that run real business processes, including customer experience.
For CX leaders, this move signals a shift away from channels.‑Specific automation for AI‑Drive orchestration across marketing, commerce, sales, and service.
Jessica Keene, SAP CMOtold CX Today that SAP intentionally shields end users from the complexities of AI by managing agent coordination behind a unified data foundation.
“The brand’s goal is not to bring in more agents, but to connect the right agents around a shared source of truth, enabling teams to act faster and with less friction,” she explained.
“The complexity is supposed to be behind the scenes, so the user experience feels simple.
“They should be able to express their desired results and have the appropriate assistants coordinate their work.”
From support to implementation
Purposeful migration away from disaggregated roles in SAP‑Specific AI co-pilots towards tailored outcomes‑AI-driven systems that operate across the entire customer lifecycle enable businesses to execute the customer journey.‑to‑end.
Until recently, many CX platforms introduced AI in stages, providing individualized assistance to each department, but these approaches ultimately increase complexity.
These tools often work on disparate datasets, are optimized for narrow tasks, and require users to manage handoffs themselves, resulting in more interfaces, more decisions, and more friction for CX teams.
“That complexity should be done behind the scenes, so the user experience feels simple,” Keene continued.
“Marketers don’t need to know which agents can identify key audiences, check inventory, generate content, adapt campaigns, or trigger the next best action. Service teams don’t need to explore the entire system to understand ordering, entitlement, or billing issues.
“They should be able to express their desired results and have the appropriate assistants coordinate their work.
Instead of optimizing each touchpoint individually, teams now need a consistent, real-time experience that connects the customer journey. It builds on AI on a unified data foundation and hides adjustment logic from users, allowing CX teams to focus on outcomes.
This allows CX teams to go beyond traditional omnichannel engagement to respond to changing customer expectations, which Keehn argues is no longer important in and of itself.
“Traditional omnichannel experiences require presence and consistency across channels such as web, mobile, in-store, call center, email, and social. While that is still important, it is not enough,” she explained.
“Continuous experiences require continuity across touchpoints, contexts, and operations. Every interaction must reflect the same view of who the customer is, what they need, what they are already doing, and what the business can deliver in that moment.”
SAP’s product releases are designed to move AI from individual assistance to collaborative execution across the customer lifecycle, introducing a layered architecture that combines data, orchestration, and user experience.
SAP Business AI Platform
As a foundational layer for enterprise AI, the platform aims to address the lack of business context where 95% of enterprise AI projects fail because AI systems are disconnected from actual business processes, data, and rules.
This approach integrates SAP Business Technology Platform, SAP Business Data Cloud, and SAP’s Business AI capabilities into a single managed environment, ensuring that AI models are trained, deployed, and executed within the same operational context as the business itself.
Enabling AI to operate within a company’s operational systems allows tools to see real business data, understand business rules, audit actions, and manage decisions.
The platform includes SAP Knowledge Graph, a tool that gives AI agents a clear understanding of processes and relationships across the enterprise.
From here, AI agents can use the shared map to reason and detail how the organization operates to achieve safer, more reliable autonomy.
Additionally, the Business AI Platform also includes Joule Studio for developers, designed to build, deploy, and manage AI agents to improve access to enterprise-grade AI development while maintaining governance.
behavioral system
SAP Autonomous Suite reflects a redesign of core applications, moving toward autonomous process execution within key business systems.
Within the system, the suite deploys over 50 domains‑Specific Joule assistants from different business areas are designed to work within a broader process, rather than in isolation.
The Autonomous Close Assistant can compile entries, perform adjustments, and resolve errors, reducing the financial close process from weeks to days while actively performing work and maintaining auditability and control.
The suite also includes SAP’s plans to expand its industry AI solution portfolio with eight new industry-specific products that use logic, data models, and regulatory requirements to execute processes from start to finish.
For one customer, one of our products, Autonomous Asset Management, was able to reduce unplanned downtime by up to 30% without manual adjustments.
User experience redesign
SAP also offers Joule Work, an AI-first user experience aimed at replacing traditional application-driven workflows.
Joule allows users to describe and interact directly with the results they want to achieve, without having to navigate multiple applications or enter data across numerous systems. The system coordinates the necessary workflows, data, and AI agents behind the scenes.
This enables businesses to go beyond conversational interfaces to proactively surface insights and automate mundane tasks. This means that the workflow runs continuously, even when the user is not actively involved.
This experience is intended to provide consistency across desktop, mobile, and voice interfaces and extend beyond SAP systems to other systems.‑SAP environment.
We aim to enable AI by handling complexity behind the scenes through orchestration and governance.‑Driven execution feels simple to users.
“For the customer, the experience feels seamless,” Keene said.
“For businesses, this means engagement is no longer based on disconnected snapshots, but on living business signals.”
Transformation through reengineering
SAP also introduced agents‑We aim to lead transformation tools and reduce ERP migration effort by approximately 35%.
These tools can automate system analysis, code repair, configuration, and testing to make large-scale transformations faster and more predictable.
Once published, the same tools continue to optimize code, improve data quality, and manage changes, extending the role of AI beyond deployment to continuous improvement.
SAP also announced updates to RISE with SAP and SAP GROW to incorporate AI implementation from day one to enhance customer experience.
A new foundation for customer teams
SAP’s move to orchestrated, results-driven AI reflects a broader effort to remove complexity from CX technology while driving operational value.
This approach aims to put this complexity behind the scenes and allow users to focus on the outcomes they want to achieve, working through the entire customer lifecycle and empowering CX teams to move beyond siled interaction management to execute connected, real-time customer journeys informed by live business signals.
For CX teams, this changes the way work is performed, with AI uncovering insights, recommending next actions, and taking responsibility for executing day-to-day operational tasks.
“Over time, the role of the CX professional will evolve to become more strategic, human, experiential and empathetic,” Keene continued.
“It doesn’t replace the role of humans; it enhances them.”
For CX leaders, this approach signals a structural shift in the way customer organizations operate. Because success depends less on managing channels and deploying standalone AI tools than on building a connected operating model where customer data, operational systems, and AI orchestration work together.
The result is a competitive advantage as organizations effectively combine automation and human judgment, using AI to handle complexity while empowering teams to deliver a more consistent, proactive, and emotionally intelligent CX.
