SAP Unveils AI Enhancements to Transform Enterprise Productivity
AI Innovations Aim to Boost Business Productivity by up to 30 Percent. Collaborations with Perplexity and Palantir Aim to Enhance Customer Capabilities.
At the SAP Sapphire conference, SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) introduced new artificial intelligence capabilities and strategic partnerships that aim to bring Business AI into daily workflows across enterprises. The updates signal a significant move to reimagine how companies run by embedding AI throughout their operations.
Central to the announcements is the expansion of Joule, SAP’s generative AI assistant, and a broadened ecosystem of Joule Agents that operate across different functions and applications. SAP claims these developments are positioned to make Business AI more accessible and drive efficiency improvements of up to 30 percent.
Sharing insights on the significance of these updates for the local market, Angela Colantuono, President and Managing Director, SAP Australia and New Zealand, said:
“Across both nations we are at a tipping point with AI. While investment is booming and some businesses are already making big moves, there are still gaps in trust, literacy and around governance. The news from Sapphire should be seen as being a game-changer. We're combining top-tier business apps with real-time data and the latest AI innovations. This isn't just an incremental update; it's about making AI accessible and usable for everyone. These aren't just tools, they're strategic levers to help businesses lead confidently in the AI era. Now's the time to be bold not bashful, to embrace these innovations and drive real productivity and efficiency gains."
SAP CEO Christian Klein added:
“SAP combines the world’s most powerful suite of business applications with uniquely rich data and the latest AI innovations to create a flywheel of customer value. With the expansion of Joule, our partnerships with leading AI pioneers, and advancements in SAP Business Data Cloud, we’re delivering on the promise of Business AI as we drive digital transformations that help customers thrive in an increasingly unpredictable world.”
AI Driving Productivity Gains
Joule, SAP’s generative AI assistant, has been further integrated into business workflows to support common tasks. It provides context-specific responses and can be accessed within SAP applications as well as through external tools. A new action bar, powered by WalkMe, enhances this functionality by analysing user behaviour to offer real-time, context-aware support. This feature is designed to operate in accordance with SAP’s strict ethical AI guidelines.
SAP has also partnered with Perplexity, a startup focused on AI-powered search and answers, to expand the assistant’s capabilities. Joule can now access and interpret both structured and unstructured information, and provide clear, data-rich answers within user workflows.
“Powered by Perplexity and the SAP Knowledge Graph, Joule now instantly answers questions with structured, visual answers, such as charts and graphs, grounded in real-time business data within SAP workflows. For example, a user could ask the tool how recent external events might impact their business and get a forecast based on both current events and the company’s own business data.” - SAP Press release
SAP also unveiled a broader library of Joule Agents. These AI-driven tools are designed to automate tasks and reshape processes across business areas like finance, supply chain, human resources, procurement, and customer experience.
“Fuelled by the world’s most powerful real-time business data and orchestrated by Joule, these AI agents work across systems and lines of business to anticipate, adapt and act autonomously so organisations can stay agile in a rapidly changing world.” - SAP Press release
In support of AI development, SAP introduced AI Foundation, a new platform to help developers build and manage AI solutions at scale. The platform serves as a central hub for AI projects and offers a newly developed prompt optimiser co-created with Not Diamond, which reduces the complexity and time needed to create effective AI use cases.
“A new prompt optimiser, designed collaboratively with the frontier AI lab Not Diamond, also helps developers create more effective AI prompts quickly, reducing work on complex use cases from days to minutes.” - SAP Press release
Harnessing Data for Intelligent Choices
SAP has also released a new generation of intelligent applications in SAP Business Data Cloud. These tools are built to help departments act faster using live business data and intelligent learning. They adapt based on changing conditions, providing simulations, insights, and recommendations.
SAP claims these apps are designed to support collaboration between human and machine intelligence. The People Intelligence application, for example, helps leaders understand how workforce dynamics affect business outcomes.
“These applications can continuously learn, simulate outcomes and guide actions using business-critical data, detecting changes to optimise processes, anticipate needs, and collaborate with both human and artificial thinkers to drive meaningful impact. The People Intelligence application, for instance, optimises team performance by transforming people and skills data into workforce insights and AI-driven recommendations.” - SAP Press release
SAP is also expanding its relationship with Palantir Technologies to support organisations undergoing digital transformation. By connecting SAP Business Data Cloud with Palantir’s systems, the partnership will allow companies to build harmonised, enterprise-wide data environments.
“Seamless connectivity between Palantir and SAP Business Data Cloud will enable customers to build a harmonised data foundation across their enterprise landscape. Together the companies will responsibly deliver essential outcomes and support customers, including the U.S. government, to quickly adapt to changes and disruptions.” - SAP Press release
Solutions that speed up cloud adoption
In a move to simplify cloud transformation, SAP has launched new Business Suite packages designed to help companies adopt cloud solutions tailored to their specific needs. These packages include SAP Build tools, enabling customisation of applications to fit different business requirements.
SAP also announced a solution designed to accelerate cloud transitions. Using Joule as the central access point, the tool integrates data and insights from platforms such as SAP Signavio and SAP LeanIX to deliver tailored recommendations and clearer migration paths.
“Finally, SAP unveiled a new solution that helps customers transition to the cloud faster. With Joule as the entry point and drawing on insights from SAP solutions including SAP Signavio and SAP LeanIX, the solution delivers personalised guidance and actionable recommendations tailored to an organisation’s transformation objectives and can help deliver up to 35 percent faster time to value.” - SAP Press release