SAP has introduced a natural-language, generative AI copilot called “Joule”, which will be embedded across SAP’s cloud enterprise portfolio.
Joule will provide contextualised insights across all SAP solutions and third-party sources.
It helps to expedite working tasks, improve business outcomes, and “transform” business operations, while also being secure and compliant.
Christian Klein, CEO and member of the Executive Board of SAP SE, commented on its new AI copilot: “With almost 300 million enterprise users around the world working regularly with cloud solutions from SAP, Joule has the power to redefine the way businesses – and the people who power them – work.
“Joule draws on SAP’s unique position at the nexus of business and technology and builds on our relevant, reliable, responsible approach to Business AI. Joule will know what you mean, not just what you say.”
Joule will be integrated into SAP applications from businesses across multiple industries, including finance, supply chain, procurement, and customer experience, as well as its SAP Business Technology Platform.
By simply asking questions in natural language, employees can receive intelligent answers, which retain their context, based on business data from SAP’s portfolio and third-party sources.
If a manufacturer wants to find out more about its sales performance, Joule will be able to identify low-performing areas, link to data sets that elucidate supply chain issues, and connect to the supply chain system to suggest possible fixes for the manufacturer to review.
It will continuously offer new scenarios for all SAP solutions. In HR, for example, it will create unbiased job descriptions and relevant interview questions.
Availability & Events
Joule will be available, along with SAP SucessFactors solutions and the SAP Start site, later this year. The public edition of SAP S/4HANA Cloud will be available in early 2024, with SAP Customer Experience, SAP Ariba, and SAP Business Technology Platform following soon after.
SAP has also said it will announce many more updates across its portfolio at SuccessConnect, which takes place on October 2 – 4, SAP Spend Connect Live on October 9 – 11, SAP Customer Experience LIVE on October 25, and SAP Tech Ed on November 2 – 3.
Phil Carter, Group Vice President, Worldwide Thought Leadership Research, IDC, gave his assessment: “As generative AI moves on from the initial hype, the work to ensure a measurable return on investment begins.
“SAP understands that generative AI will eventually become part of the fabric of everyday life and work and is taking the time to build a business copilot that focuses on generating responses based on real-world scenarios – and to put in place the necessary guardrails to ensure it’s also responsible.”
Joule adds to SAP’s current AI offering, which 26,000 SAP cloud customers have access to.
SAP’s strategy of building an enterprise AI ecosystem includes investments of $1 billion into Aleph Alpha, Anthropic, and Cohere, via the company’s investment arm, Sapphire Ventures LLC.
SAP has formed third-party partnerships with Google Cloud and IBM. It also partnered with Microsoft and stakeholders in OpenAI to leverage the tech giant’s AI solutions.
The Microsoft partnership enables SAP to integrate SuccessFactors into Microsoft365 Copilot and Copilot for Viva Learning, and combines SAP solutions with Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI Service to give SAP clients a powerful language model.