Added value at the touch of a button

Pandemic, Ukraine war, energy costs, inflation - the economy has been in crisis mode for years. Added to this are the challenges that have become almost normal. Digitization, the move to the cloud, and changing customer behavior are just a few of the keywords. And SAP's end-of-support announcement regarding ERP Central Component is finally turning the current specifications of companies into a tour de force. And how are the decision-makers in the companies reacting? Many fear the expense of large-scale transformation projects and are content with quick interim solutions. This is a risky gamble - and one that involves the future of their companies.

In many places, this reluctance also applies to the use of new technologies. According to a recent Bitkom study, the vast majority of German companies see artificial intelligence as a promising technology of the future, but only a few are actually using it. They lack specialists and internal company data. What can be done?

AI is not an end in itself

First of all, like any technology, AI is not an end in itself. When it comes to implementation, the measurable added value that can be achieved for the company is always the decisive factor. It is important to think carefully about which AI solutions are suitable for your own company from a strategic and business management point of view. These should then be prioritized and then tackled consistently in order to quickly achieve results and gain experience. Whether in the transport of goods, in invoice verification or on the production line. Everywhere, the use of data and its further utilization within the framework of intelligent systems can ensure that resources are used optimally and the efficiency of processes increases significantly.

The basis for the successful use of AI is the quality of the data. No matter how good the software component of an AI application may be, insufficient, incorrect or poorly structured data can cause many a project to fail at an early stage. Here, SAP users have the great advantage of having both sufficient data and good data management that is directly integrated into their business processes.

Another advantage for SAP users: With the Business Technology Platform (BTB), SAP offers them an open cloud platform to bring intelligence into their business processes. On the one hand, they can use BTB to access SAP's own solutions and AI services that are natively embedded in SAP applications, such as the process optimization of goods receipt and invoice receipt reconciliations in SAP S/4 Hana. On the other hand, SAP is increasingly opening up to the outside world and thus now also enables the integration of intelligent solutions from third-party providers. Thus, in principle, any other system, platform or application can now be integrated to map end-to-end processes. This includes, in particular, solutions from the area of Artificial Intelligence as a Service (AIaaS).

AIaaS solutions are ready-made AI tools for various use cases - from processing customer feedback to automated email categorization to forecasting solutions. Until recently, AI development was more like custom programming, often requiring AI experts to be found or trained. Thanks to AIaaS, companies can now get to the point where they really benefit from AI much more quickly, and without having to set up an AI themselves at great expense. The starting point is the specific situation of the company and a focus on concrete business cases. In this way, customized AI solutions are created almost "at the push of a button".