SAP has introduced a series of AI-powered innovations and strategic partnerships at its annual SAP Sapphire conference, aiming to transform the way businesses operate. The company claims these developments could boost productivity by up to 30 percent, making Business AI more accessible and impactful across industries.
Expanding the reach of Joule and AI agents
SAP’s generative AI assistant, Joule, now features greater integration across work environments. With a new action bar powered by WalkMe, Joule becomes a more proactive assistant, learning from user behaviour to provide timely insights and automate tasks. According to SAP, this turns Joule into an “always-available, proactive AI” that supports users both within and outside SAP’s applications, all while adhering to strict ethical AI standards.
A key part of Joule’s new capabilities comes from its integration with Perplexity, an AI-powered answer engine. This allows Joule to pull insights from both structured and unstructured data, helping users solve complex business challenges. Now, users can ask how external events might impact their business and receive visual forecasts based on live business data, such as charts and graphs.
SAP also announced a broader range of Joule Agents—AI-powered tools that can perform tasks across different systems and departments. These agents operate autonomously and adapt to changes, helping companies maintain agility in a fast-changing environment. They are designed for areas such as customer experience, supply chain, finance, spend management, and HR, with interoperability across systems.
To support developers, SAP has introduced AI Foundation—what it calls the first real operating system for Business AI. This platform allows developers to build, customise and deploy AI solutions at scale. A prompt optimiser, created with AI lab Not Diamond, helps streamline the creation of effective AI prompts, reducing development time from days to minutes.
Smarter decisions through SAP Business Data Cloud
SAP is extending the capabilities of its Business Data Cloud with new intelligent applications tailored to individual business functions. These apps use business-critical data to detect shifts, simulate outcomes, and suggest actions in real time. For example, the People Intelligence application turns workforce data into actionable insights that can improve team performance and decision-making.
A new partnership with Palantir will help joint customers simplify cloud migrations and modernisation efforts. The integration between Palantir and SAP Business Data Cloud is expected to enable a unified data foundation across an organisation, supporting smarter decisions and better resilience to disruptions. This collaboration also includes supporting sensitive clients, including the U.S. government.
Simplifying cloud transformation
SAP also introduced new Business Suite packages to streamline cloud adoption. These packages include SAP Build, which enables businesses to customise applications for specific challenges.
In addition, a new transition solution puts Joule at the centre of the cloud migration experience. Drawing on insights from SAP Signavio and SAP LeanIX, the solution offers personalised recommendations based on an organisation’s goals. SAP says this approach can help companies reach value 35 percent faster during their transformation process.
Speaking at the conference, SAP CEO Christian Klein said, “SAP combines the world’s most powerful suite of business applications with uniquely rich data and the latest AI innovations to create a flywheel of customer value. With the expansion of Joule, our partnerships with leading AI pioneers, and advancements in SAP Business Data Cloud, we’re delivering on the promise of Business AI as we drive digital transformations that help customers thrive in an increasingly unpredictable world.”
