SAP jumped on the generative AI bandwagon at its annual user conference this week, but questions remain about the demand for AI among customers.
Additionally, SAP has announced a flurry of partnerships with enterprise vendors such as Microsoft to incorporate generative AI into SAP products, though details on the availability of much of the AI integration were unclear.
Nevertheless, SAP is on the right track towards its goal of delivering what it says it will. business-oriented AIaccording to industry observers.
SAP CEO Christian Klein said in his opening keynote at SAP Sapphire on Tuesday that SAP is increasing its internal R&D investment in AI use cases, as well as entering into technical partnerships to extend the AI capabilities of its products. Stated.
One partnership is incorporating Microsoft’s Copilot AI into SuccessFactors, SAP’s HR platform. Two weeks ago, SAP revealed that it was incorporating IBM Watson AI into its SAP cloud products.
SAP’s approach is centered around building AI tools and applications that help businesses, helping customers run their supply chains and HR operations better and close the books faster. and Senior Vice President of Application Development Platforms Bharat Sandhu. at a briefing.
“The world hasn’t changed. AI has changed a lot in the last few months, but the customer hasn’t changed,” Sandu said. “They don’t have a pool of data science teams like he does at Microsoft, AWS and Google. thinking about.”
Interested in generative AI, but still underutilized
Forrester Research analyst Liz Herbert said AI has been of interest to businesses for years, so the discussion of the technology is nothing new.
For example, SAP had already incorporated IBM Watson AI technology into SAP cloud products such as SAP Ariba and SAP Fieldglass, but the story of generative AI changes the game, he said.
“Generative AI stuff is in its infancy, heavily hyped, and subject to challenges like accuracy and ethics,” Herbert said. “We have some customers looking into this, but we haven’t seen it in full-scale use yet because it’s new.”
Joshua Greenbaum, principal and analyst at Enterprise Applications Consulting, said that for now, generative AI is largely a gimmick, but several Sapphire attendees were impressed by the capabilities provided by the integration of digital assistants Microsoft Copilot and SAP SuccessFactors. I said I was interested.
“SuccessFactors’ demo of writing better job descriptions was often talked about as something that customers were genuinely interested in doing, at least in practice,” Greenbaum said. “While this is not a mission-critical feature, it could kick off next-generation capabilities for using generative AI in more critical areas.”
However, for the most part, SAP’s customer base doesn’t seem to have high requirements for AI capabilities, he said.
Separating AI hype from customer priorities
“Customers have other priorities such as integration and data quality, which are much more pressing than the adoption of AI technology,” said Greenbaum. “There is a disconnect between the AI hype and what matters to many customers.”
Customers have other priorities, such as integration and data quality, that are far more urgent than deploying AI technology.
According to him, SAP is using products such as the data integration environment “SAP Datasphere” released in March to help customers deal with issues such as data management. During the conference keynote, Datasphere didn’t have much airtime.
Jon Reed, co-founder of enterprise industry analytics firm Diginomica, also agrees that generative AI isn’t a priority for customers, but it’s a question of customer priorities and what vendors want to emphasize at conferences like SAP Sapphire. There are often gaps between
“The question is how big is that gap and how do we close it,” Reid said.
SAP has been working on AI for years, but the rapid expansion of generative AI in recent months has changed the landscape, he said.
“Generative AI has seen rapid adoption this year, with an unprecedented level of adoption,” Reed said. “So SAP and other vendors should base their announcements on the scenarios they pursue.”
He said Sapphire’s customers are talking more about integration and data silo issues, but these are issues that need to be addressed to really benefit from AI.
There is also a gap between announced AI integrations and their availability, Read said.
Capabilities within SuccessFactors that use Microsoft Copilot to help create more targeted job descriptions will be available soon, but some AI capabilities with complex requirements will take longer There is a possibility.
“For example, an interviewer’s ability to ask better questions based on a candidate’s resume becomes more complicated as it becomes embroiled in data privacy issues,” Reed said. “SAP has to be careful not to release anything until they can definitely release it. [dealt with sensitive issues]. “
SAP CEO Christian Klein touts generative AI partnership with Microsoft at Sapphire 2023.
Exploring AI to improve onboarding
Sapphire attendee Ken Fischer, manufacturing project engineer at Arista Networks, is interested in exploring generative AI, but has no immediate plans to adopt the technology.
Arista Networks, a networking products and software provider in Santa Clara, Calif., recently implemented SAP Integrated Business Planning (IBP) to digitize its supply chain operations, Fisher said.
As more users join, generative AI could help the company support new systems, he said.
“Arista does not have a large support structure for internal users, so having an AI-type chatbot to guide users would enhance the training system.” [as we ramp up use of IBP]“As we grow, we will need to hire more people,” Fisher said. said.
He said this could help as Arista Networks plans to migrate from its current Oracle NetSuite ERP.
“We are looking to migrate to a new ERP system, be it S/4HANA or Oracle. This will be a big step forward for Arista, something no one else knows,” said Fisher. rice field.
Jim O’Donnell is a senior news writer for ERP and other enterprise applications at TechTarget Editorial.
