SAP joins the AI agent era — but not all customers may benefit

SAP, which claims to cover business processes end-to-end with its ERP offering, could integrate its agents deeply into the business logic of its enterprise customers’ operations and support them with relevant data — a plus for the Walldorf, Germany-based company. In concrete terms, the success of its agentic AI strategy will depend on how quickly and how many use cases SAP gets up and running. The AI ​​strategy does not focus on the technology, but on the applications, said Philipp Herzig, SAP’s chief artificial intelligence officer.

“AI is an application feature,” he said at TechEd, and he may be right. 

More productivity through AI agents 

Specifically, SAP is expanding its generative AI copilot Joule, introduced last year, to establish “cooperative multi-agent systems,” according to the company. These agents will open up a new era of productivity for SAP customers, said Herzig, highlighting the fact that SAP’s agents will be deeply connected to the company’s systems. This makes it possible to handle more complex tasks in processes and workflows than with conventional stand-alone agents, which are usually trained only for a specific task, Herzig said.