Sun City – The business challenges we face today have remained the same, but AI (AI) offers fundamentally different opportunities.
The actual rate of change has changed itself, and AI is now the third biggest wave of technological change since the introduction of personal computers and the Internet.
This was speaking at Saphira 2025, according to Timo Elliott, SAP's vice president and global innovation evangelist.
During Elliott's keynote session, he looked in detail how and why the speed of change increased as AI is increasingly embedded in technology.
“AI is very powerful, but if not used correctly, it can have very strange results,” he pointed out.
“Rapid technological changes and disruptions are coming to your business, and that won't stop.
“AI is needed to accelerate innovation. At SAP, who has been AI for a long time, we want to be the center of your innovation strategy.”
Using the initial hand-crafted analogy, Elliott revealed that today's technology requires AI to move to efficient modern assembly lines.
“Our job at SAP is to provide a way to make proverbs,” Elliott said.
“In this respect, SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) is the foundation of SAP innovation and includes the use of AI.”
SAP BTP is a multi-cloud platform that enhances development, automation, integrated data and analytics powered by generative AI across both SAP and non-SAP applications.
Elliott explained that as the basis of SAP innovation, SAP BTP incorporates transactional systems to create transformation insights, bringing the system of AI agents as follows:
- Transaction System: For 50 years, SAP has connected and optimized core business processes using unparalleled applications and technology platforms that generate semantically rich data that drive the global economy.
- Transformational Insights: By focusing unparalleled data from both SAP and non-SAP sources on a unified semantic layer, SAP unlocks insights, advanced analytics, and AI capabilities to help businesses drive intelligent growth and innovation.
- AI Agent System: With accurate data from both SAP and non-SAP sources, SAP's unparalleled AI agents bring unique benefits with cross-functional collaboration, maximizing integrated data for smarter decisions and transformative results.
Elliot continues. “What keeps us at bay is the time, skills and resources that allow us to utilize this technology.
“For example, SAP builds have tools that bring development and customization of agile applications in everyday languages and dramatically accelerate innovation.
“But SAP builds aren't just about global companies with global problems.”
He went on to explain how SAP Build (Essen Für Alle), a Swiss nonprofit organization, reduces food waste and instead shares the rest of the food with people in need.
The application of SAP builds by Essen Für Alle has enabled the release of 18 tons of food essentials per week, distribution of 85,000 food packages per week, and management of 10,000 volunteer shifts to allow for the required processes.
“Essen Für Alle uses SAP builds to build its own apps and gives hunger hope with a more sustainable approach,” Elliott said.
“This is an example of how the technology used allows them to move faster in producing results, allowing the technology to do most of the heavy lifting.”
Eliott, another example of how much larger companies use, is a power, natural gas and clean energy delivery company operating in the UK and the US, serving over 20 million people and integrating data transformations using SAP BPT.
“National Grid has used SAP technology to understand that information, provide it to the right people and to the right people, and has crossed over 250 interfaces, both in the UK and the US due to our FY26 requirements.
In fiscal year 2027, SAP Technology will be used on more than 400 US interfaces as part of the company's next Generp implementation.
“In addition, while master data updates are distributed to multiple downstream applications, the generated AI allows for technical summaries, knowledge articles, and more,” Elliott said.
“Here, users can talk to Gen AI as if they were talking to experts who understand the deep technology.
“Using SAP BPT can accelerate and optimize the technology itself.”
He said that SAP BTP provides the AI foundation for the generated AI hub.
The hub has everything your customers need to adjust their custom AI, including models, grounding, data masking, filtering, rapid management, lifecycle management and more.
“It's all built into the platform,” Elliott said.
“We will enable people to use AI to improve efficiency and discover and create new products.
“In natural language, you can find the information you need, as if you were talking to a highly knowledgeable sales person or engineer.”
He cited additional examples across industries and applications, such as heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC). Supply Chain Management; Oil and Gas; Drinks also show how SAP technology can reduce the time and costs spent on root cause analysis by up to 90%, saving 3,120 hours of personnel productivity each year.
“That's impossible,” Elliott said.
“AI is so good that we've done impossible methods to optimize volume/margin trade-offs using generated AI.
“It's much more aggressive, it can solve the price elasticity curve, propose as a self-improvement system, and reduce costs by removing outdated systems.
“As manual work is reduced, analysts can become more strategic over time.”
Using the staircase analogy, he explained: “In AI, the questions are the same, but the answers are different.
“AI today is like a manual staircase, but as the future unfolds, it will become like an escalator and the system will automatically help you reach the next level.
“Now is the time to double our powerful business cloud platforms and make use of the next big wave of the future. We want to surf rather than be crushed.”
