In today’s rapidly changing world, AI is helping to increase user and organizational productivity, improve decision-making, and fundamentally change our business processes.
As we have recently announced at SAP SapphireSince Q4 last year, we have delivered 50 new AI innovations and are on track to deliver over 100 AI use cases across the SAP portfolio in 2024. As part of this effort, we, the SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition team, are excited and proud to showcase the new AI innovations announced at the event.
When we look at use cases, we look at driving business growth and enabling innovation with AI-powered cloud ERP from three perspectives:
- Increase people productivity and efficiency transforming work through automation and simplified user experiences to drive business results.
- Accelerate business processes and optimize decisions by enabling AI-driven processes and data-driven insights and recommendations to make faster, safer decisions.
- Driving financial excellence with AI to optimize working capital and closing functions.
AI Use Cases to Increase Your Workforce Productivity and Efficiency
Joule, the AI-powered co-pilot: Joule enables customers to interact with their business using natural language to get information, navigation assistance, and transactional support. Quickly get advice, information, and ideas by simply asking Joule. Joule helps redefine user interaction, streamline business processes, and improve productivity. It can enable contextual access to content and applications by giving users the ability to simply ask for advice and be pointed in the right direction.
Smart Summary: Customers can now leverage generative AI to seamlessly deliver business context summaries in multiple languages to accelerate collaboration and communication. This helps speed up day-to-day activities, giving users the flexibility to tailor text suggestions to their specific needs. For example, before a meeting with a customer, a sales rep can request a summary of the customer’s contact information, recent interactions, and current issues. The results are summarized and sent via email so the sales rep has the information on hand to read before the meeting.
Easy filter: Our customers can now easily and efficiently Filter SAP Fiori apps based on elements with natural language enabled by generative AI. This can significantly improve the current filtering experience and make it more intuitive for new users. For example, a sales manager can, in natural language, get the sales orders of his VIP customer that are open, have a due date this week, and exceed a certain amount.
Collaborative ERP: Empower end users to eliminate redundant tasks and increase efficiency. By combining the power of SAP and Microsoft, users can receive to-do notifications from SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition directly into Microsoft Teams via the SAP S/4HANA integration for Microsoft Teams. This not only saves end users time, but also reduces media interruptions. When sharing business context with colleagues, users can benefit from the ability to share cards based on adaptive card-based loop components. This allows end users to take direct action and copy seamlessly across the Microsoft ecosystem, for example from Microsoft Teams to Microsoft Outlook.
As announced at SAP SapphireSAP and Microsoft will begin integrating Joule and Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 later this year, combining enterprise data residing in SAP with contextual knowledge from Microsoft 365, including Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Word, and more, helping to deliver richer insights for better decision making.
Let’s take the example of a sales manager who needs help to unblock a sales order for one of his most important customers. He realizes this by checking on the Microsoft side that a sales order is blocked. He contacts one of his team members to ask for help via Microsoft Outlook. The team member resolves the issue directly in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition and returns an updated note with the real-time status from the SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition solution. Finally, the sales order is unblocked and everyone was able to work in the environment they are most used to, efficiently and effectively.
Interested customers can preview the innovations of SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition via our Customer Influencer Program.
AI Use Cases to Accelerate Business Processes and Optimize Decisions
Reinvent customer service with personalized experiences that can quickly respond to customer needs.
Smart recommendations: From finalizing orders to creating customer returns, intelligent recommendations from SAP Fiori apps can significantly reduce the time spent creating business objects by up to 90%. This not only minimizes manual effort, but also speeds up the overall process by improving accuracy and productivity.
Intelligently involve employees in projects: Our customers can now leverage AI innovations to streamline project staffing by efficiently matching the most qualified employees to specific projects. This can reduce the time and effort required to find the right talent, helping ensure projects are staffed with the ideal team members.
Communication Intelligence in Enterprise Service Management: Automating open item clearing and receivables reconciliation has never been easier. Our machine learning solutions can deliver up to a 60% reduction in manual effort, helping automate up to 70% of receivables reconciliation and potentially reduce receivables collection time by up to 5%.
For example, an accounts receivable agent can classify and summarize each incoming mail from a customer and extract all the key information. In addition, the system can guide the agent to help identify financial disputes, resolve them, and generate mail responses to the customer.
Improve financial excellence with AI to optimize working capital and closing functions
Information on financial activities: This can enable customers to achieve optimized profitability through personalized resolutions via personalized prompts. The user can obtain real-time information and detailed analyses for financial decision-making, receive targeted recommendations, and improve teamwork and collaboration across business functions using SAP Enterprise AI.
For example, a general accountant who needs to prepare a high-level expense report summary can gain insight into which cost centers have the highest variance from the previous period through quick actions supported by generative AI.
Guided troubleshooting of errors in the Advanced Financial Close feature: AI-generated recommendations can help users resolve errors identified during financial close processes. This not only helps accelerate financial close, but also reduces manual errors and IT costs, empowering business users like never before.
Assisted configuration for complex processes: From explaining depreciation keys in user-friendly language to intelligently configuring U.S. tax codes, generative AI capabilities can simplify complex configurations, helping to improve the onboarding experience and enhance productivity during critical periods like year-end closes.
Customers can jump in and experience AI first-hand
Our customers now have the opportunity to join our community of innovators, creators and forward-thinkers who are harnessing the power of technology to drive change and make a difference. We have launched a Customer influence a site that empowers our customers to embark on a journey of discovery, growth and endless opportunity.
And there is more to come. Our SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition Roadmap describes features planned for future releases.
As the pace of innovation continues to accelerate, we believe SAP customers are uniquely positioned to take advantage of the opportunities presented by enterprise AI.
Arpan Shah is senior vice president of public cloud ERP product management at SAP.
