SAP’s BTP Innovation Days Bring Emerging AI Capabilities Into Sharp Focus
With SAP’s BTP Innovation Days currently under way, ANZSAP deep-dives into key themes emerging from these sessions to unpack issues that present opportunities or threats to businesses looking to roll out or upgrade scalable business operating systems such as SAP BTP.
Everyone is talking about how Generative AI may disrupt and transform daily business operations and systems; so SAP’s series of BTP Innovation Days across Australia could scarcely have been better timed.
The rolling series of events, with ANZSAP Magazine as its Digital Partner, drew sizeable attendances during stops in Sydney, Brisbane, Auckland and Melbourne. Forthcoming events will be held in Perth and Wellington in May.
Whilst the event is framed around the Business Technology Platform (BTP) created by SAP as a solution for data management, analytics, and integration, it was the opportunities – and risks – of pairing BTP’s out-of-the-box capabilities with emerging AI functionality that underpinned many sessions throughout the days.
At the Melbourne event, attendees kicked off with a keynote on “AI: Beyond the Hype”, presented by SAP’s Global Head of BTP AI and Automation, Pavlos Panagiotidis.
“We live in an era where technology is moving faster than any of us can absorb, and our companies can consume. We are very excited but at the same time, very scared of the unknown,” Panagiotidis told a packed auditorium at the Ritz Carlton hotel.
“What type of use cases should you, or should you not, invest in? You all need to make that decision. Your board is asking you, let’s do something with generative AI. What will that be?”
He warned Generative AI was not as far advanced as many assume, and counselled a cautious approach. “It is a perfect association machine, but it doesn’t know the reason why things happen,” he said.
One key to embracing the new wave of Generative AI capabilities will be data management, said Susan Tasic-Clark, the Senior Manager of Solutions Consulting for OpenText.
“Better data drives better AI results,” she said. “The information that underpins the data has to be correct in order for us to be able to get a decent result out of the AI tools that we’re all planning or have started to implement.”
Potential benefits, but also dangers, lurk in the “dark”, or unstructured data that most organisations keep in digital archives. “In Australia, 62% of data across organisations is dark, and that means you don’t know the value of it, but you also don’t know the risk,” Susan said.
The BTP Innovation Days also outlined opportunities emerging to harness advances in SAP technologies that are continuing to be developed in tandem with AI’s burgeoning capabilities.
Phil Scanlon, the Senior Vice President of Global Solution Engineering for SAP Partner Solace, hosted another keynote session outlining the ways an SAP BTP solution, Advanced Event Mesh, is already helping to drive faster and better-informed real-time business decisions.
“Traditional ways of moving information around the enterprise are not providing the experience that people want to give to their customers,” he said.
He described “event-driven thinking” as an opportunity for businesses to gain instantaneous control of their operations and inventory. Real-time data exchange and analysis offers cost reductions and operational efficiencies, such as the “virtual ocean control tower” that was created by global manufacturer Unilever to monitor shipping and port movements around the world.
In 2021, this system alerted Unilever in real time to an obstruction to the Suez Canal. The company was able to reroute ships carrying its inventory in hours, preventing them from being immobilised for days or weeks.
The benefits of BTP, and some pitfalls to avoid, came into sharp focus in a customer panel hosted by Fair Consulting Group, in which key IT leaders from retailer Coles, pharmaceutical wholesaler Sigma Healthcare and Cairns-based support services firm My Pathway reflected on their experiences with the platform.
“Go and have a look at what’s out there, it’s a key part of SAP’s roadmap going forward,” advised Sigma Head of Technology Ashley Gresswell. “You can either have (change) forced on you, or you can plan for it.”
To cater for specific interest areas, the BTP Innovation Days broke into three separate tracks, with a rolling schedule of sessions allowing participants to choose between topics grouped under “Building Innovation That Delivers Business Outcomes”; “Business Data Fabric for Better Data Management, Analytics and AI Outcomes”; and “Realising Continuous Business Transformation”.
Topics included the value of a clean core strategy, the case for cloud-led business transformation, and establishing a BTP Centre of Excellence.
In a concluding session on “Generative AI Strategy and Vision”, SAP ANZ Innovation Architect Liam Mischewski said many tools already exist within BTP to help businesses unlock the emerging power of Generative AI.
“Generative AI is so different (to other technologies) because it’s something we can all play with,” he said. “It’s not out there in the distance, I can ask it to build an application or make an image or a video for me. I don’t need someone else to do it. It ties into our innate desire as people to create.”
Rather than seeing Gen AI as a paradigm shift, businesses should regard it as “just another tool in our toolkit,” Liam told attendees. “It’s a tool that give us accessibility to create new things, to access a large dataset for the purpose of creation,” he said.
“The opportunity is not a specific use case, the opportunity is, in your use cases, in your daily lives, where are you creating, what are you creating and how can we bring logic to that application?”
At the conclusion of a day comprising a total of 22 sessions, participants gathered for complimentary drinks to discuss their takeaways from the wide-ranging spread of topics.