SAP – these are the three key things you need to tick off for effective AI

Businesses looking to implement AI tools in their workflows need to ensure they are making sure the technology is conforming to several key points, SAP has said.

Speaking ahead of its SAP TechEd conference in India this week, company chief marketing and solutions officer Julia White outlined her thoughts on the role AI will play in not just SAP’s future, but that of its customers as well.

“AI must always be relevant, reliable and always responsible,” she told a media roundtable, noting that the company was now fully implementing its “next generation of AI.”

“Relevant, reliable and always responsible”

SAP recently revealed its own AI-powered copilot tool, with Joule set to be embedded across its full application portfolio, covering HR, finance, supply chain, procurement and customer experience to name but a few, as well as the SAP Business Technology Platform.

With this in mind, White was keen to outline the principles behind SAP’s AI strategy. When it comes to relevance, she noted that AI has to be, “working within the context of your business…it’s part of the workflow you do every day, whether it’s your HR processes, your finance, your accounting, your supply chain, your customer engagement – that’s where AI will deliver.”

Elsewhere, the need for AI to be reliable was described as, “super-important – we’re dealing with mission-critical information – these aren’t just nice to have systems, these are how companies run in the world,” and the need for responsible was emphasised by the “highest concern” SAP has for privacy, security and ethics.

“If you go back a few years ago, (businesses were) transitioning from systems of record, which of course SAP invented, to then transitioning as the cloud emerged, to systems of engagement – and now we’re on the precipice of systems of intelligence, where systems truly understand and are working on behalf of the company and the user,” White noted.

“We have an incredible portfolio of applications, the broadest of any technology company on the planet, and we now therefore have the ability to infuse that AI across all of it,” she concluded, highlighting how generative AI can only accelerate this ability even further.