A a few more words presented during TechEd on the AI agents: two examples of these agents capabilities:
• A dispute management system that uses autonomous AI agents to analyze and resolve current scenarios, including incorrect and missing invoices, unused credits, and declined or duplicate payments.
• A finance system that uses autonomous AI agents to streamline key financial processes by automating invoice payments, invoice processing and general ledger updates, while quickly fixing inconsistencies or errors.
With regard to the new SAP Knowledge Graph solution, the company believes that through the ready-made relationships between business units such as purchase orders, invoices and customers, the complexity of manual data modeling is significantly reduced. The SAP Knowledge Graph anchors AI in SAP-specific business semantics, reducing the risk of incorrect or irrelevant results and making it easier for organizations to build intelligent applications and leverage generative AI more effectively.
Users can, SAP claims, ”gain a deeper business understanding as it seamlessly maps relationships and contexts across SAP’s solid data landscape.”
SAP TechEd 2024 news overview from today’s virtual keynote (October 8, 2024).
New tools for developers
At the same time, SAP also launched a series of innovations that empower developers to continue innovating in Business AI. New generative AI development features such as code explanation and documentation search in SAP Build, an enterprise platform for building out solutions, will reduce development time for Java and JavaScript developers. SAP Build also adds an Extensibility Wizard feature that allows developers to access SAP Build directly from SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, simplifying the process. Notably in this context is that ABAP developers and fusion teams will have seamless access to ABAP Cloud development tools from SAP Build.
At TechEd 2024, SAP also shared that it is well on its way to fulfilling its promise to upskill two million people worldwide by 2025. Through guided premium learning with the SAP Learning Hub and free self-study available on the SAP Learning site, the company has reduced the digital skills gap in the world through role-based certifications, free educational materials, hands-on opportunities for developers and much more.
SAP also continues to expand its growing portfolio of AI-related training opportunities, including courses on generative AI, AI ethics, and SAP’s advanced AI tools and platforms.
Reinventing SAP?
An interesting observation regarding SAP and its focus on AI is that the company invests heavily and in this shows signs of reinventing itself in this new era. Lessons learned about usability, the need for a more open, adaptive system architecture, and the need to give customers more flexibility and more simplicity in how they use data are good signs of this.
By providing its generative digital assistant with capabilities such as rapidly sorting through and contextualizing data from multiple systems to generate smarter insights, Joule helps people get work done faster and create better business results in a secure and compliant way. To quote SAP executive director Christian Klein:
“With nearly 300 million business users around the world regularly working with cloud solutions from SAP, Joule has the power to redefine how businesses – and the people who run them – operate,” said Christian Klein, CEO and member of the Executive Board of SAP SE. “Joule builds on SAP’s unique position at the nexus between business and technology and builds on our relevant, reliable and responsible approach to Business AI. Joule will understand what you mean, not just what you say.”
Of course it sounds good, but the unsworn is the best. We will see how the reactions will be when the user collective has had its say.
