SAP to add generative AI, industry smarts to CX tools

Every software developer is looking at how to incorporate generative AI in its products, even SAP.

The ERP vendor, which turned 50 last year, is developing a companion app for its software, to be called SAP Digital Assistant, which will use generative AI to help SAP users provide a better experience to their customers.

SAP is also looking to improve its customer experience tools in other ways, providing industry-specific accelerators to help some enterprises roll the software out faster, and helping online retailers reduce waste by offering tools to support the resale of refurbished or returned products.

Although SAP Digital Assistant will be accessible from SAP’s Sales, Service, Marketing and Commerce Cloud products, one of the areas its generative AI capabilities could be most useful is in customer experience management, helping sales staff and contact center agents respond to customer requests or identify their needs and draft pitches.

But it could also draw on the detailed information SAP’s enterprise applications hold about orders and inventory, for instance, to identify which products to promote or help field service engineers optimize repairs, said Ritu Bhargava, SAP’s chief product officer for industries and customer experience.

The assistant has little in common with the category-defining generative AI application, ChatGPT, according to Bhargava. “It’s not a reactive chatbot,” she said. “It’s a contextual prompt in the app.” SAP isn’t using GPT in its assistant, nor IBM’s Watson, which it recently said it will use across all other areas of its business. “This is our own in-house custom-built engine,” she added.