Artificial intelligence has entered a new phase. The conversation is no longer about whether organizations should adopt AI.

Across industries, businesses are already experimenting with AI to automate tasks, improve productivity, and create better customer experiences. The real question now is how do we move from experimentation to enterprise-wide transformation that delivers meaningful business outcomes?

At SAP, our answer is clear: the next wave of transformation will be driven by Industry AI. This belief is also reflected in the evolution of our own organization, as Customer Innovation Services evolves into Customer Industry Solutions. This is more than a name change; it represents an expanded mission and a recognition that the future of enterprise AI will be shaped by the combination of technology, deep industry expertise, engineering excellence, and customer-centric innovation.

The opportunity ahead is immense. Analysts estimate that generative AI alone could create between $2.6 trillion and $4.4 trillion in annual economic value globally, while global spending on AI is projected to exceed $630 billion by 2028. Yet, realizing this value will require enterprises to move beyond experimentation and deploy AI in ways that are deeply relevant to their industries.

For years, enterprises have pursued digital transformation through broad platforms and horizontal capabilities that could be applied across functions and sectors. AI has followed a similar trajectory. Large language models (LLMs) and general-purpose AI tools have demonstrated remarkable capabilities and unlocked entirely new possibilities. However, as organizations move beyond pilots and proofs of concept, one thing is becoming increasingly clear: generic AI can only take us so far.

“In the enterprise world, context is everything. The future of AI lies not in generic intelligence but in intelligence that understands industries, business processes, and how enterprises create value,” said Dominik Metzger, Global Head of Industry AI. “This is where Customer Industry Solutions plays a pivotal role, bringing together deep industry expertise, customer insights, and engineering excellence to bridge the gap between innovation and real-world business impact.”

A manufacturer seeking to optimize its supply chain faces challenges that are fundamentally different from those of a retailer personalizing customer experiences. A bank navigating regulatory requirements operates in a vastly different environment than a life sciences company accelerating research and development. Every industry has its own processes, data models, regulations, and ways of creating value.

This is precisely why Industry AI represents the next frontier of enterprise transformation. The Industry AI portfolio combines the power of AI with deep domain expertise and business context. It understands not only language, but also the nuances of industries and the realities of how businesses operate. It can address industry-specific challenges and deliver outcomes that are measurable, scalable, and relevant to the enterprise.

Building on our strong foundation of customer co-innovation, the Customer Industry Solutions organization brings together deep industry expertise, customer insights, and engineering excellence to accelerate Industry AI at scale. Importantly, we are also bringing together the strengths of customer innovation and forward-deployed engineering.

This combination is powerful. Customer innovation teams bring a deep understanding of business challenges, industry processes, and customer outcomes. Forward-deployed engineering brings the ability to rapidly build, deploy, and operationalize solutions in complex enterprise environments. Together, these capabilities enable us to bridge the gap between breakthrough innovation and real-world business impact.

Our role is not simply to help customers adopt new technologies. It is to work alongside them to address complex business challenges, rapidly translate ideas into solutions, and help move organizations from AI experimentation to enterprise-wide transformation.

Industry AI also changes the way innovation itself happens. The most valuable insights often emerge from solving real customer challenges. They come from understanding pain points on the ground, identifying opportunities to simplify complexity, and applying AI in ways that create tangible business value. This requires closer collaboration among customers, industry experts, engineers, and product teams than ever before.

This is another critical role that the Customer Industry Solutions organization will play. By working closely with customers across industries and regions, and by systematically capturing insights from the field, we can help inform future product development and accelerate the adoption of industry-specific AI capabilities at scale.

Every customer engagement becomes an opportunity to learn, refine, and build solutions that can benefit entire industries.

Sindhu Gangadharan is head of Customer Industry Solutions at SAP.

Organizations often look at AI, automation, or new service tools as the starting point for service-led growth. In reality, service-led growth starts with a business model. Technology can help scale a service business, but it does not define how value is created, delivered, or monetized.

Service-led growth is one of the seven macro trends within Autonomous CX, SAP’s vision introduced at SAP Sapphire in 2026. At its core is a simple principle: every customer promise must be backed by the operational reality needed to deliver it.

Recent SAP research highlights a growing gap between customer expectations and the operational reality of service delivery. Disconnected handoffs, fragmented information, and pressure to adopt AI make service a business-model question, not just a technology one.

A practitioner’s perspective

More than twenty years ago, I was part of a global service organization that wanted to move beyond viewing service as a cost of doing business.

At the time, our primary objective was cost recovery. Service was necessary to support the product business, but it was not really seen as a business in its own right.

We started changing that by introducing new professional services and finding ways to monetize expertise we already had. Remote device monitoring, for example, allowed us to organize support across time zones and offer profitable after-hours services to customers who depended on continuous operations.

A few years later, I was asked a more fundamental question: could the service organization survive as an independent business?

To explore that question, we used an early version of what later became widely known as the business model canvas. We looked beyond service operations and examined the complete picture: our value proposition, customer segments, channels, activities, resources, costs, and revenue streams.

Looking back, that exercise taught me something that is still relevant today.

Service as a revenue driver is not a new idea. And it does not start with technology. It starts with a business model.

What do we mean by service-led revenue?

“Service as a revenue driver” is often used as if it means one thing. In reality, service can contribute to revenue in several different ways.

First, it can protect revenue. A customer whose issue is resolved quickly and professionally is more likely to renew, continue buying, and remain loyal.

Second, it can influence revenue. Service professionals often understand a customer’s operational reality better than anyone else. They may identify a need for additional services, training, upgrades, or new solutions, creating opportunities for commercial teams.

Third, it can generate revenue directly through premium support, professional services, subscriptions, remote monitoring, advisory services, or outcome-based offerings.

These ambitions are related, but they are not the same. Each requires different processes, skills, measures, and sometimes different operating models.

Not every service interaction should become a sales conversation. But every service organization should understand whether it is expected to protect, influence, or directly generate revenue.

Technology creates possibilities, not the business model

Technology has always played an important role in service innovation.

Remote monitoring reduced the need for on-site visits. Connected solutions made global support models possible. Customer and service platforms improved access to account, contract, equipment, and interaction data.

Today, Autonomous CX capabilities can expand these possibilities even further. Joule, embedded AI agents in SAP Service Cloud, and AI-assisted opportunity detection in SAP Sales Cloud can classify and route cases, summarize interactions, surface relevant knowledge, identify patterns, detect revenue opportunities, and increasingly automate routine requests. All within the context of a connected service and sales operating model.

Yet adoption does not equal usage, and usage does not equal value. Technology does not answer the most important questions:

• What value are customers willing to pay for?
• Which customers should we serve?
• How will the service be sold, delivered, and measured?
• Can it be delivered consistently, profitably, and adopted by employees and customers?

Customers are already drawing their own conclusions. In 2026, 81% believe AI in service is deployed primarily to save money, not to improve service. Seventy-nine percent still strongly prefer human support. These perceptions are not only a trust problem, they point to a business model problem. When the technology decision precedes the value decision, customers notice.

From ambition to execution

This is where many service-led growth initiatives struggle.

Ambition may be clear in the boardroom, while the organization underneath continues to operate as before. Service is still measured primarily on cost and case closure. Sales and service pursue different objectives. Customer information remains fragmented. Opportunities identified by service disappear during handovers. Employees are expected to adopt new behaviors without understanding why.

Turning service into a measurable revenue driver therefore requires more than enabling a new feature or deploying a new technology. It requires alignment between business objectives, processes, people, data, and technology.

The Advanced Success Plan version for SAP Customer Experience solutions is an expert-led engagement model that helps translate Autonomous CX into an executable plan. It does not replace business strategy or determine which services should be brought to market. Instead, it helps connect a chosen ambition to the processes, capabilities, and governance needed to make service-led growth measurable and repeatable.

1. Clarify the value intent

The first step is to define what service-led growth actually means for the organization.

Is the priority to improve retention? Increase renewals? Create opportunities through service interactions? Launch paid services? Improve profitability?

Through the value management expert session within the Advanced Success Plan for SAP Customer Experience solutions, stakeholders can align on business priorities, value drivers, and success measures.

The objective is not to create a long list of KPIs, but a shared understanding of the outcomes that matter most.

2. Connect the end-to-end process

Once the ambition is clear, the next question is how value will actually be created.

If a service professional identifies an opportunity, what happens next? Who owns the follow-up? Is the customer experience consistent from the initial interaction through fulfilment and invoicing?

Business process best practices and expert guidance can help identify gaps in ownership, handovers, and process alignment across service, sales, commerce, and supporting operations.

This matters beyond operational efficiency. SAP research shows that 45% of revenue leaders cite improving collaboration and handoffs across marketing, sales, and service as a current priority, and 39% are actively pursuing expansion, cross-selling, and upselling within existing accounts. Service teams often have valuable customer context, but the real question is whether the process exists to act on it.

3. Close capability and adoption gaps

Organizations can then assess which capabilities are needed to support the process. This could involve better access to customer information, improved knowledge management, analytics, automation, AI-supported recommendations, or opportunity management capabilities. Targeted expert services within the Advanced Success Plan for SAP Customer Experience solutions help connect SAP CX capabilities to desired business outcomes.

At the same time, employees need the right enablement, incentives, and confidence to adopt new ways of working. Without that, even the best-designed process remains a PowerPoint slide.

The cost of getting this wrong is real. Employees asked to adopt new behaviors without understanding why, or without the tools to support them, do not persist. When experienced people leave, they take institutional knowledge and customer relationships with them. Enablement is not a training exercise; it is a retention and continuity investment.

4. Measure, learn, and improve

Service-led growth is not delivered through a single project.

Recent research highlights several recurring priorities for service leaders: efficiency and time to resolution (48%), collaboration and handoffs across marketing, sales, and service (46%), first-contact resolution (40%), and AI-driven predictive insights (33%). These figures provide useful context, but the measures that matter for service-led growth depend on the value intent defined at the start. Progress should therefore be tracked against the agreed outcomes, whether these involve retention, renewals, service-generated opportunities, paid-service revenue, or profitability.

Ongoing governance and engagement planning helps organizations review progress, address gaps, and scale successful approaches over time.

Service-led growth is a business-model choice

Moving from cost recovery to service-led growth is not simply a matter of asking service employees to sell more. It is a business-model choice with implications for the value proposition, customer experience, processes, organization, skills, technology, and measures of success.

Twenty years ago, remote monitoring changed what service organizations could deliver. Today, AI is expanding those possibilities again. But the underlying challenge has not changed. Technology changes possibilities. Business models determine how that value is captured.

First, decide where service should create value. Then, build the operating model required to deliver that value consistently and profitably.

The Advanced Success Plan for SAP Customer Experience solutions can support that journey by helping organizations connect business outcomes with the processes, capabilities, adoption, and governance needed to turn ambition into measurable results.

Raf Dille is product manager for the Advanced Success Plan for SAP Customer Experience.
Tara Tracey is global product owner for the Advanced Success Plan for SAP Customer Experience.