SAP Sapphire event in Orlando, Florida, kicked off with exciting announcements around the introduction of Joule, a generative AI assistant, and SAP AI Core, where customers can access a variety of LLMs and foundational models to drive innovation. Customer testimonials from some of the biggest names in technology, including AWS, NVIDIA, Apple, and Microsoft squarely position SAP as the software solution of innovation across the enterprise.
The event was filled with live demonstrations that worked in real time and didn’t suggest the use of glue to keep the cheese on their pizza, as Muhammed Alam quipped, in reference to Google’s recent generative AI fail. Audience members saw Joule and Microsoft Copilot working together seamlessly to automate otherwise time-consuming tasks.
But to access this productivity boost, companies must commit to digital transformation and clean core practices in the Business Technology Platform, like those EPI-USE employs within a SHIP migration. And with the announcement of the acquisition of WalkMe in the morning of day two, SAP provided an answer to the question of feature adoption, which will drive companies toward SAP’s lofty customer growth goals.
Joule: SAP-driven AI assistant
The big news at Sapphire was Joule, what CEO of SAP Christian Klein called a “digital assistant across all solutions.” First publicly announced September 2023, the embedded generative AI tool Joule is trained on SAP data from over 300 million end users and is already embedded in many of the SAP business modules. The AI copilot understands the most common SAP processes and can suggest the best practices within SAP applications. Klein said that over 80% of the most-used tasks in SAP will be managed by Joule, driving productivity across the organization.
The afternoon Innovation keynote, hosted by Muhammed Alam, SAP Product Engineering, Executive Board member, showed in detailed demonstrations how Joule can reduce workloads across the organization. The presentations across finance, HR, and supply chain showed how the tool produces actionable artifacts from reports and analysis to customer emails and performance goals.
Microsoft Copilot integration
Another boost to productivity was announced during the Innovation keynote: The partnership between SAP and Microsoft Copilot expected to go live at the end of 2024. The integration of Joule with Copilot means that the two tools can communicate with one another and automatically perform generative AI tasks that cross software boundaries.
The first demonstration showed a user generating customer quotes with Joule and directing Copilot to send an Outlook email with the quote directly from SAP workflows. Another showed Joule and Copilot planning a team offsite: Copilot found the best dates for the team meeting and blocked off calendars while Joule found the flights and accommodations with the best prices.
A guide to RISE: SAP Enterprise Architect
Klein chose to highlight the CIO’s role as the first customer persona that would benefit from the newest iteration of SAP by discussing the pressures on the CIO to improve productivity across the organization. As Klein said, “it’s wishful thinking that tech equals efficiency,” and he emphasized the importance of change management with any technology change or upgrade. And SAP will guide organizations in digital transformation and navigating the RISE with SAP program with an SAP Enterprise Architect.
SAP showed the importance of its AWS partnership by showcasing CEO of AWS, Matt Garman, as the first on-stage guest during the opening keynote. During this discussion, Garman talked about the general availability of the new high-memory EC2 instances with 32 TB of memory, built with Joule and other generative AI hub workloads in mind. He also announced that BTP and HANA cloud will run on the custom-produced AWS Graviton processors. Both high-powered AWS computing options are available to EPI-USE clients looking to modernize their SAP landscapes.
Clean Core: the foundation of innovation
Juergen Miller, CTO at SAP
If the excitement of the first day’s announcements was Joule and generative AI within SAP landscapes, the undertone was the importance of a clean core. Because the first iterations of ERPs were designed to optimize the processes needed for each unique business case, many SAP landscapes have grown massively complicated. But for generative AI, Joule, and even regular update cadences to work as intended, SAP wants customers to return to a standardized Business Technology Platform.
Juergen Miller, CTO SAP, emphasized the need for a clean core BTP to allow for iterative innovations, driven by the greater SAP universe, and that instead of direct edits to the business processes, developers should rely on unique extensions through BTP. Cecilia Huergo, SAP, then demonstrated how through the combination of Signavio, ABAP Cloud, and Joule, developers can rely on industry best practices to build automations and process adaptations that extend the abilities of the clean core BTP.
EPI-USE Event at Sapphire
The EPI-USE team hosted an amazing evening of networking and celebration on Tuesday at The Oceanaire in Orlando, right after the SAP Sapphire conference. The turnout was fantastic, and new connections and collaborations took shape, paving the way for future opportunities to connect. Thanks to everyone who joined us.
Pictures of guests are featured on our LinkedIn post, we’d love to hear about your connections and experience.
SAP will acquire WalkMe
Early on June 5, SAP announced that it would acquire WalkMe, the digital adoption platform for $1.5 billion. The addition of WalkMe to the SAP landscape will ease the adoption of new and new-to-users features for business users. While Joule will guide the user to the tasks required in a business process, WalkMe will teach users to perform those tasks. The purchase shows SAP’s intention to move from highly technical ERP software that is restricted to specialized users to software that enables productivity growth for every business user, regardless of their specialization.
Sapphire: Gen AI is the key to innovation and customer growth
Scott Russell, CRO Customer Success & SAP Executive Board
The event aimed to show a holistic view of the impact SAP will have on its customers’ organizations. In the CS Keynote on day two, Scott Russell, CRO Customer Success & SAP Executive Board, unveiled SAP’s commitments to combined customer growth:
- $2.4 trillion in economic savings.
- $5.4 trillion in increased revenue.
- ~10% increase in resilience of supply chains.
- Double digit increase in employee satisfaction.
By setting high goals against the growth of the businesses they serve, SAP backs up their promise of business innovations. They are not likely to reach these goals through customer acquisition alone, although Russel did point out that RISE customers have outperformed their competitors by 7%. The increase in productivity brought on by Joule and generative AI partnerships plus increased adoption of those innovative tools via WalkMe work together to spur business innovation so together organizations and SAP can achieve their high goals.
EPI-USE is here to help your organization achieve your digital transformation and modernization goals. To learn more about RISE with SAP on AWS or our Cloud Ready SAP Assessment and Trial (SHIP) programs, reach out to one of our experts here.