The big keynote topic was expanding on this week’s announcement of a batch of new Illuminate Agents, Workday’s term for its agentic AI solutions, and the theme it wishes to push for its next 20 years as a business. These new tools include agents designed for Contingent Sourcing, Contract Intelligence & Negotiation, Document-Driven Accounting, Self-Service and Supplier Contracts. The contract agents in particular got a little extra ‘bump’ on stage from the presence of Jerry Ting, Founder/CEO of Evisort and VP at Workday.

This is because Evisort is a leading AI-native document intelligence platform which Workday acquired last fall as a potential SAP Ariba slayer on the Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) front. As of March, Evisort’s tools became available through Workday Contract Intelligence and Workday CLM, and as of this month, Ting is now the Workday VP in charge of all things agentic AI across the Workday organization.

“Agents is the next generation of workers,” Ting declared on stage at the O2 InterContinental London venue, very much convinced that by 2045 Workday will be the ERP tool you use to manage both human and artificial employees. This was a view echoed by Daniel Pell, VP and UKI Country Leader on stage as part of his keynote, and later in a private panel at Workday Elevate London.

Talking to ERP Today, Pell stressed the difference between generative AI and agentic AI, saying that while both have a place in organizations, the agent edge comes from the “immediate reactions” possible with agents.

“[An agent] starts to understand what’s important,” he explained. “Say you’re creating a job description for a very senior executive […] it’s going to keep it confidential and it knows that because of the parameter.”

But with some potential businesses still unsure what agents exactly are as they continue to get their heads around the very notion of AI from a beginner POV, it begs the question of where agents fit into the concept of AI copilots, standalone products that remain available on the GenAI market from some vendors.

Workday Elevate and AI

Last fall, president & chief product officer of Workday rival SAP SuccessFactors, Dan Beck, told ERP Today that you won’t see SAP or its flagship HCM product “marketing a host of different AI agents”, pointing out that AI agents are by nature simply a day-to-day element of what defines an AI copilot.

At the same panel, Prasun Shah, Global CTO & AI Lead, Workforce Consulting for PwC, admitted that some clients using copilots are confused, asking “I’ve got [Microsoft] Copilot – isn’t that agentic?”

“There’s a good and a bad about what Copilot has done. It’s created the buzz around generative AI […] But the big difference between generative AI and agentic is that [the latter] is actually doing work for you inside the enterprise model.”

With one client, Shah cleared the confusion by discussing the ‘pyramid’ of human workers in their company, with those at the bottom level having a lower level of skills but developing their way ‘higher’ through the pyramid.

“The model in future will be interacting with a pyramid of agents […] As you move up the value chain of agents, you have agents with specialisms […] and some higher-order agents I loosely call the ‘headless Hydras’ who are managing a network of agents [which] they’ll orchestrate to run a particular job.”

‘Headless Hydras’ will be managing a network of agents in the pyramid

This goes back to Jerry Ting’s prediction for both the future of Workday and the workforce, especially as IT and HR functions merge ever closer on the business front. It also underlines that in the Workday view, GenAI and copilots are human-led, offering portals for ad hoc creation and app journeys using AI technology. Agentic AI meanwhile is not centered around the spontaneous or the start-up of a system, as it is instead more task-led. The difference in comparison to SAP is that companies like Workday and Salesforce are announcing each new agent on its own terms, rather than as facets of a batch update. Each one gets its moment in the spotlight  – and, handily, helps to highlight a new feature of the expanding Workday family as with the Evisort example from earlier.

At the same panel ERP Today was a Salesforce SVP, in a good reminder of the partnership between WDAY and SFDC. With Salesforce on its side, Workforce has the power to integrate its HCM/financial nature with the huge swathes of CRM data that comes with Salesforce’s formidable market strength.

It’s a canny move that will help Workday and its AI evolve ever further over the next few decades. In addition, the vendor would be wise to consider two other considerations for a fruitful and continued existence. Firstly, concentrating further on the SME sector with its recently announced Workday Go offering. Details have been limited regarding the offering, and at Workday Elevate London it was represented by a quick slide and little else.

Secondly, the HCM side of things was positioned stronger than the financial one in this year’s Elevate keynote. And yet, the most intriguing part of a presentation from AI VP Kathy Pham was a display of Workday’s AI-driven prowess in keeping up with all the latest tariff turbulence, a bread-and-butter-meets-AI financial tool that is vital to businesses now and likely to be for the next 20 years should the world become more turbulent.

This is how Workday should elevate next.

What this means for ERP Insiders

Agentic AI and Strategic Vision: At Workday Elevate London 2025, Workday emphasized its 20th anniversary by outlining its forward-looking strategy centered on agentic AI. The unveiling of new Illuminate Agents — including solutions for contingent sourcing, contract negotiation, and document-driven accounting — signals Workday’s ambition to redefine enterprise automation.

Differentiating Agentic AI from Generative AI: At Elevate, executives from Workday, PwC, and Salesforce drew a clear line between generative AI and agentic AI. The latter focuses on autonomous, context-aware task execution within enterprise systems, positioned by Workday as core functional assets. The vendor highlighted a future where human and artificial, agentic employees are managed within the same ERP framework.

Growth Levers and Market Positioning: Workday continues to invest in its SME footprint with the so-far under-publicized Workday Go and is enhancing its financial tools, such as tariff management capabilities, to match the strength of its HCM offerings. The company’s strategic alliance with Salesforce also boosts its ability to connect HCM and finance functions with CRM data, strengthening its appeal across broader business ecosystems as it looks to scale over the next two decades.

The post Workday turns 20. What now for the HCM giant? appeared first on ERP Today.

The collaboration brings Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat OpenShift support to a wider array of deployment options on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), encompassing government, sovereign, and distributed cloud services. This expansion is particularly pertinent as organizations increasingly seek flexible and secure cloud solutions to meet diverse operational requirements.

Red Hat OpenShift is now certified to run on OCI Roving Edge Infrastructure, Oracle Compute Cloud@Customer, and Oracle Private Cloud Appliance. This certification enables customers to deploy workloads on Red Hat OpenShift across various OCI environments with confidence, knowing they are tested, certified, and supported by both Oracle and Red Hat.

Recognizing the growing importance of AI in enterprise operations, the collaboration extends support for Red Hat OpenShift AI on OCI. This includes validation on OCI’s NVIDIA A100 and H100 GPU shapes, facilitating high-performance model training and inference for demanding AI and machine learning workloads.

Oracle is actively validating key applications and software, such as Oracle WebLogic Server, to run seamlessly on Red Hat OpenShift containers. This initiative delivers a jointly supported, premium customer experience, empowering users to leverage the full potential of Oracle software on the flexibility and scalability of Red Hat OpenShift, whether on-premises or in the cloud.

Furthermore, the Oracle Cloud Scale Monetization portfolio has been validated on Red Hat OpenShift, offering communications service providers enhanced infrastructure flexibility for comprehensive, unified business support systems.

The collaboration maintains the certification of Oracle Database, including Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC), on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Additionally, Red Hat has initiated a validation effort for Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization to better support Oracle Database customers on this evolving platform.

What this means for ERP Insiders

Strategic hybrid cloud adoption. For tech leaders, this collaboration underscores the importance of adopting a strategic hybrid cloud approach. By leveraging the combined strengths of Red Hat and Oracle, organizations can achieve greater flexibility and scalability in their IT operations. The certification of Red Hat OpenShift on various OCI environments ensures that enterprises can deploy applications across different infrastructures with consistent performance and support.

Accelerated AI integration. The enhanced support for AI workloads, including validation on NVIDIA GPU shapes, provides enterprises with the necessary tools to accelerate AI integration into their operations. This development is crucial for organizations aiming to harness AI for improved decision-making and operational efficiency. By utilizing Red Hat OpenShift AI on OCI, businesses can streamline the development and deployment of AI models, leading to faster time-to-value.

Optimized enterprise applications. The validation of Oracle applications on Red Hat OpenShift offers tech leaders the opportunity to optimize their enterprise applications for cloud-native environments. This move facilitates the modernization of legacy systems, enabling smoother transitions to the cloud and improved application performance. By adopting this integrated approach, organizations can enhance their agility and responsiveness to market changes.

The post Red Hat and Oracle Expand Collaboration to Accelerate Hybrid Cloud Transformation appeared first on ERP Today.

Thomas Saueressig, SAP Board Member for Product Engineering, opened the keynote by reminding the crowd that “the pace of change has never been this fast—and yet it will never be this slow again.” He emphasized that transformation today is the foundation for tomorrow’s resilience. “We shipped, we delivered, but we cannot stop here,” he stated, citing customers’ demand for “faster time-to-value, innovation cycles, and cost control.”

But this keynote was different. Less monologue, more dialogue. Throughout, live audience polling was used to surface concerns, with one striking result: 40% of the world’s GDP is now touched by customers using Rise with SAP. SAP Sapphire 2025 showcased a confident, customer-aligned SAP—one that understands its own complexity and is willing to rewire itself alongside its users. “The best is yet to come,” promised SAP’s new Chief Customer Officer. But for enterprise leaders, the time is now. Transform not because it’s trendy—but because today’s decisions, like SAP says, “will shape tomorrow’s resilience.”

From Legacy to Lift-Off: Mercedes-Benz, Mars, Phoenix Global

Mercedes-Benz, a symbol of precision engineering and innovation, shared how it’s tackling complexity head-on. With over 10,000 enterprise applications—1,200 of them SAP-related—CIO Cathey Lehman turned to Rise with SAP to rationalize and modernize the company’s digital core. “We grouped and tackled systems using the TIME method—transform, invest, migrate, eliminate,” she explained. More than just cloud migration, this strategy underpins Mercedes’ AI ambition, from engineering (via GitHub Copilot) to a natural-language interface for shop-floor problem solving.

“We’re leveraging AI across our entire value chain,” Lehman emphasized. “We’ve deployed our internal ChatGPT-like solution, and we’re excited to expand with SAP’s Joule and Business AI stack.”

At Phoenix Global, a metals and mining company, the transformation story was existential. After explosive growth led them into bankruptcy, new CIO Jeff Salentros spearheaded a radical reboot: eight sites replatformed in 8 months using SAP Public Cloud ERP. “We ripped out everything—paper and pen, fragmented systems—and replaced it with best-practice SAP,” said Salentros. “We’ve already returned millions through better equipment maintenance, utilization, and embedded AI.” It’s a textbook example of cloud ERP enabling not just operational agility, but financial recovery.

Mars Inc. highlighted the scaling power of SAP’s three-tier ERP strategy. The confectionery giant runs flagship brands like M\&M’s and Snickers—but it’s their newer acquisitions (True Fruit, Kind Snacks, Nature’s Bakery) that demanded a flexible ERP backbone. CIO Bill discussed how Mars deploys SAP Public Cloud for agile startups, a Rise instance for retail, and a customized S/4HANA template for its core operations. “It allows small businesses to plug in fast and scale,” he said. VP Praveen Muthuraj added, “With model-driven architecture and embedded analytics, we’ve seen huge productivity gains—especially from Joule and real-time automation.”

The Age of Agentic ERP: SAP’s Response to AI Uncertainty

Amid enthusiasm for AI, the audience revealed a common concern: data remains the biggest barrier to value realization. SAP responded with a clear direction—business-ready AI, embedded natively, governed responsibly.

With the SAP AI Foundation and Joule, SAP aims to democratize AI across finance, HR, procurement, and operations. Embedded copilots will become ubiquitous, from quality issue detection on factory floors to onboarding via natural language prompts. “This isn’t just AI—it’s agentic AI,” said Thomas, referring to SAP’s vision of interconnected, autonomous agents coordinating tasks, governance, and outcomes across the enterprise.

SAP also unveiled a new partnership with AWS, offering a “dedicated AI co-innovation fund” to accelerate industry-specific AI applications built on SAP BTP using AWS models and infrastructure. This move signals SAP’s commitment to unlocking verticalized, customer-defined AI without the technical sprawl or cost typically associated with custom builds.

Complexity: The Silent Killer of Productivity

A striking revelation came during a poll about enterprise application growth. In 2000, the average $10B company ran just 10 core applications. In 2025? Over 600. The cloud has enabled rapid adoption—but at the cost of fragmentation.

Christian Klein’s message was clear: “More technology doesn’t equal better business outcomes. In fact, global productivity growth has declined—despite SaaS explosion.” From 1995–2005, productivity grew 2.6%. From 2005–2025? Just 1.5%. SAP’s proposed antidote: an integrated, harmonized enterprise foundation, powered by Business Technology Platform (BTP), unified data models, and embedded AI.

Saueressig reinforced the point with use cases:

• BHP created $500M in value by using Signavio to orchestrate process redesign and shared services reinvention.
• Nestlé reclaimed 105M work hours by leveraging SAP Enable Now across 200+ applications.
• First Abu Dhabi Bank reduced its application landscape by 25%—streamlining cost and complexity.

What this means for ERP Insiders

Reinvent your core with fit-to-suite, not fit-to-standard. SAP’s evolution of Rise with SAP—from “fit to standard” to “fit to suite”—is more than marketing lingo. It reflects a new model of cloud ERP implementation: one that embraces tailored lifecycle orchestration, custom dashboards, and embedded AI for transformation readiness. CIOs should evaluate SAP’s new transformation prep services and explore toolchains that cut project costs by 30%—critical at a time when many SAP S/4HANA programs still run in the $100M+ range. For example, Mercedes-Benz’s use of AI-guided migration is a leading model worth emulating.

Use AI as a business lever, not a side project. SAP’s embedded Joule copilot and BTP-based agentic AI framework are designed to operationalize AI at scale, from procurement to HR. But successful adoption depends on unified data models and strong governance. Mars’ model-driven architecture and tiered ERP rollout show how to scale AI across M&A-heavy portfolios. Tech leaders should build AI competency centers and partner with SAP on use-case co-creation—particularly via the new AWS/SAP AI fund. Start with low-lift, high-impact scenarios like maintenance scheduling or finance forecasting to prove value.

Tame application sprawl—focus on integrated outcomes. The statistic that productivity has dropped despite a 60x increase in application count is a wake-up call. Instead of expanding toolsets, CIOs should consolidate workflows around unified platforms. SAP’s BTP, Signavio, and Business Data Cloud (BDC) provide foundational capabilities to align business processes, enable reuse, and simplify integration. Start by auditing your application portfolio and building a business capability map to drive rationalization. As Phoenix Global’s turnaround showed, even a complete rip-and-replace can be profitable if guided by simplicity and standardization.

The post SAP Sapphire 2025 Customer Keynote: “Bring Out Your Best” and Reinvent the Future of Enterprise ERP appeared first on ERP Today.

There’s a lot to unpack here. First, let’s get the obvious out of the way and point out how times have changed between the two German enterprises. Founded in 2011, Celonis began as a spin-off from the Technical University of Munich, the brainchild of Alex Rinke, Bastian Nominacher and Martin Klenk. By 2012, Celonis joined the SAP Startup Focus program. Come 2015, Celonis became the first company from the program to sign a global reseller agreement with SAP, with the former’s process mining tools integrated into SAP environments. According to an archived webpage from the Celonis website, the relationship resulted in over 220 joint implementations across more than 30 countries, including high-profile customers such as 3M, Airbus, and Coca-Cola. On its own, Celonis boasts a prestigious client base, becoming the go-to name in process mining for the likes of PepsiCo, Lufthansa, Jaguar Land Rover, IKEA/Ingka and more.

The shift in affairs arguably occurred in 2021 when SAP acquired Signavio, a Berlin-based business process modeling (BPM) company. The enterprise shares a similar university incubator backstory with Celonis, but with Signavio designed for end users to collaboratively model and redesign processes. The added twist came later when Signavio Process Intelligence was added to the suite, a tool which analyzes logs to uncover process behavior. But with the offering more of a complementary addition, we have to track SAP Signavio’s developments in the last year or so to understand how it may have become a business process kingmaker of sorts between SAP and other vendors in the market.

The Evolution of SAP Signavio

Since SAP’s 2021 acquisition, news on SAP Signavio’s developments in the SAP suite had been somewhat understated. This isn’t remarkable in itself  –  one can make a comparison now in the developments of LeanIX and WalkMe, more recent additions to the SAP stable which require integration at the right pace. But perhaps the key difference is LeanIX and WalkMe have had the spotlight remain on them, with recent announcements such as those of SAP SuccessFactors/WalkMe integration, and LeanIX winning various awards last year, alongside availability through the UK Government G-Cloud.

SAP Signavio news had been a little muted post-acquisition, especially when comparing LeanIX and WalkMe’s first years as parts of the SAP family. But the irony perhaps is that SAP Signavio’s slow and steady development has led to a little disharmony in Germany  –  and, more significantly, put an emphasis on the AI-fueled dominion of data currently being pursued by vendors.

The changing market positioning and customer base for SAP Signavio are two such examples. Its recent availability on platforms like AWS Marketplace no doubt augmented Signavio’s visibility and market reach, while the enhanced accessibility and functionality enabled by AI-driven updates aims for a broader customer base, with the potential to encroach on markets traditionally served by competitors. That said, Celonis arguably stands stronger on the AI front since the release of its AgentC agentic AI tools in 2024, to the extent that when thinking of AI in process management, you’re perhaps more likely to picture Celonis than its rivals. Celonis also boasts EMS with AI at its core, using machine learning in its analysis engine (e.g. to cluster variants, predict delays) and in its Action Engine for recommendations.

Going back to the SAP corporate family, we can just take one look at LeanIX’s role with regards to Signavio’s broadening reach, in which AI is not a paramount factor. By combining LeanIX and Signavio, SAP aims to give organizations an all-encompassing view into their processes alongside their IT landscape, the latter courtesy of LeanIX.

“The synergy between process transparency – enabled by SAP Signavio – and application landscape visibility – powered by SAP LeanIX – offers organizations a clear, end-to-end path from strategy to execution,” according to Johannes Strasser, Global SAP Signavio lead for Westernacher Consulting (pictured). He tells ERP Today that for SAP-centric customers, this can translate into faster insights, stronger alignment between business and IT, and reduced dependence on fragmented third-party tools.

“While some customers still leverage third-party process mining tools for specific use cases, we’re increasingly seeing a shift toward consolidation within the SAP ecosystem for holistic, end-to-end transformation.”

The LeanIX compatibility further bolsters the status of one of Signavio’s tools in SAP Signavio Process Transformation Suite. While originally built around process modeling, the years since the SAP buyout has seen the suite expand to include a process intelligence tool for mining and visualizing real process flows, collaborative BPMN-based design management, a customer experience journey modeler, and process insights for real-time SAP S/4HANA analysis with benchmarks. As a quick comparison, Celonis Process Management also supports BPMN 2.0 (with extended BPMN e.g. requirements, risks, RASCI, auto-layout, etc.) alongside a “Customer Journey” object in its process repository.

According to Strasser, Signavio’s developments reflect how companies today are facing increasingly complex challenges and rapid change across all areas.

“We’re no longer talking about static process models where polished diagrams are seen as mere hygiene factors,” he tells ERP Today. “Instead, it’s about gaining fact-based insights into the actual performance of business processes – insights that support decision-making, enable scenario simulation, and drive effective change even in uncertain times. SAP Signavio is now deeply invested in end-to-end business transformation management, offering capabilities that support holistic process excellence [and at] Westernacher, we’re seeing strong interest in [the solution].”

In Strasser’s view, this interest is often driven by goals such as operational excellence (OPEX), SAP S/4HANA migration, supply chain optimization, or process integration in the context of mergers and acquisitions. But still, Celonis remains arguably hard to beat when it comes to the nitty gritty, such as handling very large event logs and complex object relations, thanks to its object-centric process mining abilities and a proprietary PQL that is well-regarded for custom analyses. Celonis claims 15+ million automations run daily via its engine, and as a whole Celonis is generally viewed as more mature for end‑to‑end automation orchestration, drilling down into end-to-end cost, quality and sustainability metrics.

It’s also worth remembering that another plus point in Celonis’ favor comes without the SAP “baggage”, designed as it is with a modular approach and available with a Free Plan for the not-necessarily SAP-beholden mid-market to trial.

The Data Question

With what SAP is offering on the table, the Celonis lawsuit can be summed up in its claim that customers are being pushed towards SAP Signavio by what it deems to be anti-competitive behavior. For example, limited APIs or obfuscated data structures that, in the Celonis view, may make it difficult for SAP’s competitors to operate effectively, especially in the cloud.

Celonis itself stands strong as ever in the market; recently it has gained Magic Quadrant plaudits in process mining, while its partnership with Microsoft has expanded to include its platform as a workload in the analytics platform of Microsoft Fabric, bringing Celonis ever closer into the lucrative Teams sphere.

But what’s really at the heart of the SAP/Celonis dispute is more AI than the underlying base of process management. More specifically it’s about data control, with regards to who can access business process data inside SAP systems, under what terms, and with what technical and commercial freedoms. As AI becomes increasingly central to enterprise strategy, the ability to access and act on operational data is now a competitive differentiator. The outcome of the lawsuit could help define whether AI innovation in the enterprise remains open and plural or consolidates around a few data gatekeepers.

What this means for ERP Insiders

Celonis vs. SAP: Antitrust Allegations and Ecosystem Tensions. Celonis has filed a lawsuit against SAP, accusing the ERP giant of leveraging unfair practices to promote its own business process platform, SAP Signavio, at the expense of third-party tools. The dispute centers on claims that SAP restricts data access through limited APIs and complex data structures, making it harder for external process mining vendors to operate within SAP environments. The outcome of this case could reshape competitive dynamics in the BPM and process mining space, particularly around data accessibility.

SAP Signavio’s Strategic Growth and Integration. Since acquiring Signavio in 2021, SAP has methodically built it into a comprehensive process transformation suite. Combined with LeanIX, SAP now offers customers a unified view of their business and IT landscapes, and recent advancements have strengthened Signavio’s role in end-to-end digital transformation, positioning it as a central pillar within SAP’s broader enterprise solutions ecosystem.

The Battle for AI-Driven Process Control and Data Ownership. At the heart of the Celonis-SAP conflict is a broader question of who controls access to enterprise data, an increasingly vital asset in AI-powered process optimization. With both companies doubling down on AI and automation, the ability to harness clean, real-time operational data is a key strategic advantage. Celonis continues to grow through alliances like its deepening partnership with Microsoft, while SAP is consolidating its own ecosystem around Signavio and LeanIX. The resolution of this legal battle could determine whether the future of AI in business process management remains open and competitive or shifts toward a model dominated by integrated platform providers.

The post Unsung Signavio: Business process kingmaker? appeared first on ERP Today.

In a revealing, freewheeling interview with ERP Today, Kask peeled back the curtain on how SAP is building, scaling, and operationalizing AI at enterprise scale—not just as a technology trend, but as a competitive moat. “Even I have trouble keeping track of all the announcements and use cases,” he admitted with a laugh. “But make no mistake—this has been years in the making.”

In a landscape flooded with AI hype, SAP’s strategy stands out for its depth, rigor, and customer-first pragmatism. As Kask summed it up: “You want assets that are hard to replicate, and an organization that can exploit them. That’s how you lead—not just this year, but for the next ten.”

Building a Platform, Not Just a Product

Kask’s 13-year journey with SAP began in cloud transformation and matured through the company’s AI evolution, particularly since joining SAP’s machine learning and AI unit eight years ago. Today, he reports directly under CEO Christian Klein as part of a growth area that behaves more like a startup-within-a-giant.

SAP’s approach to AI is intentionally pluralistic, avoiding the common trap of model monoculture. “We realized early that no ERP company is going to sink $200 million into training foundational models at the pace hyperscalers do,” Kask explained. “These models commoditize fast, and performance improves every few weeks. So our strategy is to partner broadly with curated models—OpenAI, Google Gemini, AWS Nova, Meta, Mistral, NVIDIA, even niche ERP-specialized models like Zora.”

But SAP doesn’t just “plug and play” with LLMs. The company layers a sophisticated AI foundation atop its Business Technology Platform (BTP), using tools like retrieval augmented generation (RAG), knowledge graphs, output validation, and a new “Prompt Optimizer” developed with a Silicon Valley startup. This optimizer automatically rewrites prompts when switching models—cutting what used to be weeks of effort down to near zero.

“It’s behind-the-scenes magic,” said Kask, “but it’s the kind of infrastructure that allows us to deliver AI that’s not just impressive in the lab, but reliable and explainable in a real-world enterprise.”

Embedded, Ethical, and Explainable

For all its technical firepower, SAP’s AI strategy begins with ethics. “We design for human empowerment, not displacement,” said Kask, referencing SAP’s published AI Ethics Policy—one of only six companies to earn a perfect score in the World Benchmarking Alliance’s ethics evaluation.

This philosophy translates into every product decision. Before AI takes an action in a system, it requires human verification. Outputs are transparent and traceable, showing what data was used, where it was pulled from, and what the system “thought” step-by-step. “Think of our agents like very fast interns,” Kask quipped. “They’re helpful, but you still want to double-check their work.”

Even SAP’s go-to-market approach prioritizes controlled experimentation. Early adopter programs—like the rollout of “Joule” to thousands of internal and partner consultants—enable rigorous feedback loops before mass deployment. And yes, Kask said, adoption is accelerating. “It reminds me of the early days of cloud. There’s a learning curve for legal, compliance, and security teams. But once the first use case lands, the floodgates open.”

Joule, Agentic AI, and the Rise of the Autonomous ERP

Nowhere is this more evident than in Joule, SAP’s AI assistant, which recently surpassed 1,600 “skills” and is moving from task automation toward what Kask calls “native agenticness.”

“Most people think of agents as standalone bots you have to manage. With Joule, it’s different. The system itself becomes the agent,” he said. “If you ask it to ‘give a spot award to my five top-performing employees and send a personalized email,’ it can plan and execute that multi-step process autonomously, because those skills are already natively embedded.”

That’s a far cry from a glorified chatbot—and it’s underpinned by some serious architectural muscle. SAP has constructed a proprietary knowledge graph across its massive ERP landscape—452,000 ABAP tables and over 7 million fields—giving context that generic LLMs can’t hope to replicate. “When you extract ERP data into hyperscaler data lakes, you lose context,” said Kask. “You can try to rebuild it, but you’ll never match the depth we have.”

This knowledge graph now enables foundation models on tabular data—distinct from LLMs—to predict regressions, match invoices, and improve accuracy on narrow AI tasks. It’s a clear example of SAP’s strategy: use general-purpose models where appropriate, but rely on proprietary assets for true differentiation.

Commercializing AI, Carefully

With AI capabilities embedded into its product suite—and often activated via subscription—SAP is seeing strong commercial traction. “Christian [Klein] has said that 40–50% of new deals now have AI attached,” Kask noted. “There’s a commercial model, and yes, the models can be expensive to run. But customers see the value.”

SAP now mandates AI discovery workshops post-sale and tracks adoption closely. “Our success metric is not just building it, but getting it live. That’s why we published the AI feature catalog. That’s why we have dashboards. It’s all about real use.”

Still, the company isn’t inflating its numbers for Wall Street. “Some vendors are touting their AI revenue, but we’re skeptical. There’s a lot of fuzzy math—direct vs. indirect. We’re playing the long game.”

Owning the Integration Layer

As the AI arms race heats up, so too does the question of ecosystem positioning. Where does SAP fit in a world where hyperscalers, competitors like ServiceNow, and even niche ERP players are all building agents and automation?

“We’re not trying to be everything,” Kask clarified. “But we are laser-focused on integration. Our agents don’t just wrap around processes—they live inside them. With tools like Signavio, LeanIX, and WalkMe, we can see, map, and optimize entire process flows across applications.”

That includes embedding AI into transformation tools like enterprise architecture (via LeanIX) and UI-level interactions (via WalkMe). “We want to own the transformation stack. Not just the database. Not just the UI. The intelligence in between.”

What this means for ERP Insiders

AI adoption is the new differentiator—but requires intentional design. CIOs and COOs should treat AI adoption not as a standalone innovation track but as a core KPI. SAP’s Joule, for example, has demonstrated measurable time savings—up to 1.5 hours per day per consultant. By embedding AI in business processes via tools like BTP, enterprises can reduce friction, accelerate time-to-value, and gain strategic advantage. Begin with AI discovery workshops, leverage SAP’s AI feature catalog, and use internal pilot programs to refine before scaling.

Proprietary context beats generic models—invest in knowledge graphs. One of SAP’s most defensible innovations is its domain-specific knowledge graph. For SAP customers, this means far lower hallucination risk, more accurate agent outputs, and better integration between structured and unstructured data. Tech leaders should evaluate vendors on their ability to preserve context—especially for agent-based use cases—and consider building their own knowledge layers on top of vendor platforms to enable AI-powered autonomy with precision.

Ethics, transparency, and governance will define winners. AI success isn’t just about speed or scale—it’s about trust. SAP’s top-tier ethics score from the World Benchmarking Alliance underscores a crucial shift: regulatory scrutiny is coming, and enterprises that can demonstrate auditable, human-in-the-loop processes will be favored. ERP buyers should demand full transparency from vendors: where models run, what data they access, how decisions are made, and what governance layers exist. Design for explainability from day one.

The post From SAP Sapphire 2025: Sean Kask, Chief AI Strategy Officer, Opens SAP’s AI Playbook, Covers Agentic Intelligence, Strategic Differentiation, and the Race to Real Adoption appeared first on ERP Today.

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Join ERP Today and NTT DATA Business Solutions on this webinar where we’ll unpack why “RISE to Innovation: Why now is the time” and show you why now is the perfect moment to transition from SAP ECC to SAP S/4HANA and unleash the benefits of cloud, automation, analytics and AI.

What we’ll cover

• Why now? – the case for moving off ECC, from SAP’s rapid cloud innovations to evolving commercial models.
• RISE with SAP, demystified – a tour of the latest Private Cloud offerings, including our “Zero Cost Move” and Signavio-powered Fit4Future process streamling.
• AI meets S/4HANA – practical examples of how to weave AI into your core ERP to unleash unparalleled efficiency and business outcomes.
• Getting the Board on board – tips for framing the business case, securing budget and fast-tracking approval.
• Funding your transformation – a deep dive into how our approach uncovers hidden savings and reallocates them toward innovation.

Why you should join

• A relaxed discussion—no hard sell or jargon, just straight talk and real stories.
• Practical takeaways you can share at your next steering-committee meeting.

Who should attend?
IT and Finance professionals responsible for SAP ERP strategy, migration planning or innovation funding—especially if you’re running ECC and wondering just how to make the move to S/4HANA work for you.

Ready to turn your ERP upgrade into an innovation accelerator? Secure your spot now, and let’s chat through the 2025 RISE roadmap together!

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The post From SAP ECC to S/4HANA: The Journey to Cloud ERP Inspiration appeared first on ERP Today.

Join ERP Today, NTT DATA Business Solutions, and ServiceNow’s Agentic Service Operations for an insight-packed webinar. We’ll walk you through how to turn your worst IT nightmares into major wins, put unlimited intelligence into the hands of your IT teams, and streamline the end-to-end process of IT Service and Operations Management.

What we’ll cover:

• A relatable scenario: it’s 3 am, your website’s down, alarms are blaring, and the Board is demanding answers.
• How “agentic” AI specialists kick in 24×7, combining ITOM and AIOps expertise to pinpoint and resolve issues faster.
• Real-world results: slashing incident resolution times, cutting costs, and protecting customer trust.
• Live demo: see the platform in action, from automated detection through resolution orchestration.

Why you should join:

• Hear from experts in a conversational format—no jargon, just practical insights.
• Walk away with concrete tactics to transform Major Incidents into Massive Wins.

Whether you’re an IT leader, service-desk manager or simply keen to see AI-driven service operations in action, this webinar is for you. Register now and let’s make sleepless nights a thing of the past!

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The post Agentic Service Operations: The only way to run IT services in 2025 and beyond appeared first on ERP Today.

“We needed a platform that could handle global scale, localization, and compliance right out of the box,” said Christensen. SAP provided that foundation early on, enabling Jabil to achieve SOX compliance while supporting lean, highly standardized operations. Over time, SAP’s role has expanded, powering everything from supply chain management to finance and regulatory compliance.

Today, Jabil runs the majority of its operations on just two SAP instances across 135 global sites. That’s an anomaly in the enterprise world, where 20 or more instances are not uncommon. “We’re consolidating even further,” Christensen noted. “And that simplicity is a strategic asset—it’s what gives us the ability to respond to tariffs, chip shortages, or pandemics in real time.”

That ability to respond swiftly and intelligently underpins Jabil’s definition of resilience. SAP, acting as the company’s single system of record for supply chain data, enables real-time analytics and scenario modeling across operations. During the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent supply chain turbulence, this data backbone allowed Jabil to make instant adjustments and reconfigure supply models—without waiting 12 hours for an analyst to re-run reports.

“It may sound simple, but having the right data at the right time changed how we survived disruption,” Christensen said. “That’s what resilience looks like.”

Jabil’s move from ECC to S/4HANA is another example of its pragmatic innovation. Initially, the company piloted a Greenfield implementation. But after assessing organizational impact, they pivoted to a Brownfield approach. That decision, supported by SAP MaxAttention and advisory services, enabled Jabil to migrate 250 accounts to SAP S/4HANA within 18 months—at enterprise scale.

SAP’s ongoing innovation in AI has caught Christensen’s attention as well. Jabil was an early adopter of AI and machine learning, using them to improve forecasting and automate processes through RPA and NLP. Now, with the rise of generative and agentic AI, Jabil is evaluating SAP Joule and other emerging tools—but with a healthy dose of skepticism.

“We exist in a hybrid environment—on-premise, cloud, Rise with SAP—and we’re not going to rewrite everything overnight. We need to understand how tools like Joule complement our current stack and where the ROI really is,” he said.

That demand for value realization is a recurring theme. Christensen emphasized the importance of holding partners accountable—not just for delivery, but for outcomes. “I pay SAP a lot,” he said, half-joking. “I want net-new value from what I’m already paying, not just more licenses. That means tangible ROI from the tools we’ve already bought.”

This pragmatic mindset extends to Jabil’s entire innovation strategy. “We don’t invest in the shiniest object,” Christensen said. “We invest in what moves a metric. If we can’t see a business case in a few weeks, we shut it down.” That fail-fast, scale-fast mentality allows Jabil to stay competitive without becoming chaotic.

Jabil also leverages SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP), SAP Integration Suite, and Signavio to drive business architecture maturity, connect legacy systems, and manage compliance across diverse regulatory environments. They’ve prioritized integration layers, document management, and GTM alignment tools to future-proof their SAP investment.

That investment is also about people. As AI agents evolve, Christensen sees the opportunity not as replacing jobs but as augmenting employees—especially in manufacturing and supply chain roles. “Yes, we’re rebalancing the workforce,” he said. “But it’s about removing the menial tasks so employees can do higher-value work. That’s the real power of AI.”

He also believes that workforce transformation will be driven by generation shifts. “More digital natives are entering the workforce, and they expect systems to work like their phones. We have to design for that.”

Ultimately, Jabil’s vision is one of controlled transformation—moving quickly, but never recklessly. “We have a North Star,” Christensen concluded. “And every technology decision—whether it’s SAP, AWS, or GenAI—is about getting us closer to that vision without losing what makes us operationally excellent.”

What this means for ERP Insiders

Prioritize simplicity in global ERP strategy. Jabil runs its global operations with just two SAP instances across 135 sites. For ERP leaders, that’s a compelling argument for consolidation and standardization. By minimizing ERP sprawl, organizations can unlock agility, reduce risk, and improve response times during disruption. SAP customers should evaluate the feasibility of single-instance strategies using SAP S/4HANA, Integration Suite, and BTP to centralize operations.

Embed real-time decision support in supply chain operations. Christensen highlighted that Jabil’s ability to re-run supply models in minutes was critical to their pandemic and tariff resilience. SAP customers should focus on embedding real-time analytics using SAP HANA Cloud and SAP Analytics Cloud to enable instant scenario modeling. Resilience is about responsiveness—and that starts with trustworthy, accessible data.

Invest in AI use cases that augment, not replace. Jabil’s approach to GenAI is rooted in augmentation—freeing up supply chain professionals and analysts to focus on what matters most. SAP customers can replicate this with Joule and SAP AI Core, targeting use cases like invoice reconciliation, contract analysis, and demand forecasting. When AI removes low-value tasks, humans can focus on strategic impact.

The post From SAP Sapphire 2025: How SAP Helps Jabil Achieve Resilience at the Speed of Industry appeared first on ERP Today.

Self-Healing IT: Automating resolution of IT issues, reducing downtime, and enhancing reliability.

Autonomous Operations: Streamlining workflows and processes for increased efficiency and productivity.

“The launch of the Inetum ServiceNow AI Centre of Excellence marks a pivotal moment in our journey towards digital excellence,” said Hemant Lamba, CEO of Inetum Solutions. “This, coupled with the valuable recognition as an ISG Rising Star, underscores the strong momentum in our ServiceNow practice. Our work here is directed towards developing AI solutions that can support the future of business operations and equip organizations with tools for the digital environment.”
“Inetum’s collaboration with ServiceNow is more than a partnership; it’s a convergence of visions to redefine the technology landscape,” said Marin Marinov, SVP ServiceNow Global Practice at Inetum. “Our Agentic AI offering is a testament to this shared vision, where we not only anticipate the needs of IT operations but proactively address them to ensure seamless and efficient service delivery.”

Inetum is a European leader in digital services. Inetum’s team of 27,000 consultants and specialists strive every day to make a digital impact for businesses, public sector entities and society. Inetum’s solutions aim at contributing to its clients’ performance and innovation as well as the common good. Present in 19 countries with a dense network of sites, Inetum partners with major software publishers to meet the challenges of digital transformation with proximity and flexibility. Driven by its ambition for growth and scale, Inetum generated sales of 2.4 billion euros in 2024. For more information: www.inetum.com

The post Inetum strengthens ServiceNow practice with ISG ‘Rising Star’ recognition and launch of Agentic AI Center of Excellence appeared first on ERP Today.