What if you could predict missing business data and take action using natural language? Discover how Joule and SAP Tabular AI bring predictive intelligence into enterprise workflows.
At SAP TechEd 2026, SAP Developer Advocates Sheena M K and Shilpa Shankar demonstrate how AI can help teams work with business data in SAP S/4HANA. Follow a practical scenario involving IT equipment orders with missing prices and supplier information, and see how Joule connects to enterprise systems to identify gaps, generate predictions, and support data updates.
Watch how Tabular AI uses historical business data to predict missing values, while human approval remains part of the workflow when changes need to be made. Explore how Joule can turn natural-language requests into business actions, including updating multiple records and visualizing order information in a chart.
The demonstration also goes behind the scenes, showing how developers configure connectors and tools to link Joule with OData services. Discover how AI-assisted development, Visual Studio Code, and ABAP development tools can help extend business logic in SAP applications.
Whether you’re an SAP developer, enterprise architect, or technology leader, see how predictive AI and developer tools can help make enterprise applications more intelligent and responsive.
Chapters:
00:00 – Introducing Predictive Intelligence with SAP Tabular AI
00:31 – Finding Missing Business Data with Joule
01:52 – Predicting Prices with Tabular AI
02:13 – Human Approval for Business Data Updates
02:40 – Predicting Multiple Missing Values
03:40 – Visualizing Order Data with Joule
04:42 – Configuring Connectors and Prediction Tools
06:18 – AI-Assisted ABAP Development
07:50 – Reviewing AI-Generated Business Logic
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About SAP:
As a global leader in enterprise applications and business AI, SAP stands at the nexus of business and technology. For over 50 years, organizations have trusted SAP to bring out their best by uniting business-critical operations spanning finance, procurement, HR, supply chain, and customer experience. For more information, visit: https://sap.to/6055BG0v3R
When SAP issued a challenge to its partner ecosystem ahead of SAP Sapphire in 2026, it set an ambitious goal: 100 to 200 partner-built AI agents before the event opened its doors. What happened next surprised everyone.
By the time SAP Sapphire kicked off in May, partners had delivered over 680 agents built on SAP Business AI Platform—more than triple the original target.
For SAP Chief Partner Officer Karl Fahrbach, the number was not just a data point. It was a signal. “That talks about the power of the ecosystem,” he said.
That momentum is now being channeled into the next challenge. SAP has since raised the bar, setting a new target of 1,000 partner-built agents ahead of SAP TechEd. This time, building an agent is not enough. The focus is to deploy partner AI agents at SAP customers, providing them real business value with measurable business outcomes.
Redefining what “good” looks like
Behind this fundamental change, SAP is challenging traditional notions of growth and redefining the path to partner success. For years, the dominant metric was transactional: how much did a partner sell, how many projects did they deliver. That model, Fahrbach said, is no longer sufficient: “We need to start measuring the partners on real customer outcomes, not how many projects they deliver, but what the customer has really achieved: cost savings, top-line growth, or process efficiency.”
This reflects a broader change in customer expectations. A year ago, the question customers were asking was: what can AI do? Today, it is: what business outcome can AI deliver? The experimentation phase is over. “That’s what we’re hearing from many customers, and it’s exactly where partners have an important role to play,” Fahrbach said.
The shift also extends to how customer outcomes are delivered. “Customers don’t want large implementations anymore,” he explained. “They are increasingly seeking AI to help them run faster and leaner with their projects so they can get to value much sooner. That’s the perfect foundation for becoming an Autonomous Enterprise.”
The €100 million fund: early traction
A €100 million investment fund SAP announced at SAP Sapphire for partners that build and successfully deploy AI agents is now drawing submissions. The fund is designed to both accelerate customers’ adoption of AI and attract a new generation of AI-native companies into the SAP ecosystem. Demand has been significant, with nearly 1,000 customers expressing interest. As of October 1, more than 500 customers had been confirmed, and more than 400 partners had signed up to participate.
“We’re seeing strong interest from new partners in the fund,” Fahrbach confirmed. “It adds another element of appeal for new partners to join the already strong and thriving ecosystem.”
The evidence for that pull was already visible on the SAP Sapphire show floor, where Fahrbach noted a shift: a new cohort of AI-native startups appeared alongside the established system integrators—companies that were, in his words, “born in the AI world.”
But the initiative is not only intended to bring new partners into the fold; it also reflects SAP’s commitment to the partners that have helped build the ecosystem over decades. Fahrbach said SAP is committed to helping all its partners enhance their AI capabilities and capitalize on emerging opportunities to thrive in an AI-driven market.
Where partner agents will live
While many SAP partners have already developed agents for SAP, it’s now about making those agents visible and deploying them with customers. To date, over 120 partner-developed agents are published on SAP Discovery Center, and by the end of this year, the number is forecasted to rise to more than 300 partner AI agents, showcasing the power of the SAP ecosystem.
One of the structural changes shaping the ecosystem concerns how customers find and provision partner-built agents. SAP has created a seamless discover-to-operate experience by bringing partner agents directly into the SAP AI Agent Hub, which plays a central role for agent discovery, governance, and lifecycle management alongside SAP’s native agents. SAP AI Agent Hub is free of charge for customers managing up to 500 AI agents, and already governs agents across hundreds of companies.
“SAP AI Agent Hub allows customers to view SAP and partner agents in a single marketplace,” Fahrbach said. “They can browse, select, and provision partner-developed agents as easily as they do SAP’s own. Partner agents are integrated into the experience on equal footing with ours.” Â
The push toward SAP TechEd
To reduce barriers ahead of SAP TechEd, SAP is offering a range of incentives to its partner ecosystem. Qualifying partners can receive complimentary conference passes, enabling developers and consultants to gain hands-on experience with SAP Business AI Platform.
SAP is also providing free access to the new Joule Studio solution for the SAP Early Adopter Care program customers through the end of 2026. More than two dozen partners are currently contributing to the SAP Early Adopter Care program. Joule Studio introduces a new paradigm of intent-based development, enabling users to create applications and solutions by describing what they want to achieve, rather than writing code manually. This significantly lowers the technical barrier to application development and accelerates innovation.
A key attraction at SAP TechEd will be the Agent Lab, where partners can gain hands-on experience building with SAP’s latest technologies, including Joule Studio. The goal is to move beyond product demonstrations and enable participants to build and experiment with real solutions.
“We want developers and consultants to come to SAP TechEd and gain real, hands-on experience with the platform,” Fahrbach said. “Not just to observe, but to build, experiment, and leave with something they can immediately put into practice.”
The push to accelerate partner enablement is supported by an already significant skills investment. The SAP ecosystem now includes more than 200,000 cloud-certified consultants and over 38,000 business AI-certified professionals, creating a deep bench of expertise as the company expands its AI ambitions.
To help partners navigate quality standards, SAP has introduced a partner validation program for SAP Business AI Platform with certification and development requirements, and a review process that agents must pass before they qualify for distribution.
Where the differentiation lies
Increasingly, the value of AI is being strengthened through industry differentiation by partner, with AI that understands not just a function like procurement or finance, but procurement in automotive, finance in pharmaceuticals, or supply chain in retail. Generic AI may drive productivity, but industry differentiation by partner drives competitive advantage. That is where partners, with their deep knowledge of specific sectors and micro-verticals, can create the most differentiation.
An AI strategy built on partners
With the fund now active, a 1,000-agent target on the board, and partner agents embedded directly in the SAP AI Agent Hub, the stage is set. SAP TechEd will be the first major test of how quickly the ecosystem can translate that vision into tangible outcomes. The message from SAP is unambiguous: the future of its AI strategy will be built in partnership.
“SAP cannot do it alone,” Fahrbach says. “Our partners are essential. They provide the speed, scale, and specialized expertise needed to bring AI innovation to SAP customers.”
SAP Chief Partner Officer Karl Fahrbach
Karl Fahrbach has led SAP’s partner ecosystem since 2019, when he became the company’s first chief partner officer. He has grown the SAP ecosystem to nearly 7,000 partners that build, sell, and deploy cloud and AI solutions from SAP.
Before shaping the ecosystem from the top, Fahrbach spent years building it from the ground up: he joined SAP in 2006 as part of the team that created the company’s flagship SAP PartnerEdge program, having previously worked at Microsoft and Oracle. Today, he is focused on mobilizing the SAP partner ecosystem as the force multiplier that will accelerate the Autonomous Enterprise and scale the AI agents at its core.
See how Novartis is piloting SAP’s Joule Sourcing Assistant to help procurement teams work faster, improve consistency, and make better-informed sourcing decisions.
At SAP Connect 2026, Christoph from Novartis shares how procurement teams in highly regulated industries can use AI agents to reduce manual effort while maintaining control, traceability, and auditability. With hundreds of categories and a large supplier base, procurement teams need to create RFPs, analyze bids, and prepare for negotiations quickly and confidently.
Novartis is co-developing and piloting SAP’s Joule Sourcing Assistant on SAP Business AI Platform, with a focus on bid analysis and negotiation support. The vision is for autonomous sourcing agents to handle the analytical heavy lifting, from comparing offers to identifying negotiation levers, while sourcing professionals stay focused on strategy, supplier relationships, and final decisions.
The discussion also highlights the outcomes Novartis is working toward, including faster cycle times, stronger analytical foundations, improved compliance, and a better experience for procurement teams. Christoph closes with practical advice for organizations starting with autonomous agents: get your data in order, begin with a recoverable process, involve the people doing the work, and plan for change management from the start.
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Chapters:
00:00 – Procurement challenges in a regulated industry
00:18 – Manual work across RFPs, bids, and negotiations
00:51 – Why context, controls, and traceability matter
01:13 – Piloting SAP’s Joule Sourcing Assistant
01:24 – Bid analysis and negotiation support
01:36 – Agents handling the analytical heavy lifting
01:57 – Expected cycle time and productivity improvements
02:18 – Measuring sourcing success
02:41 – Advice for starting with autonomous agents
03:01 – Getting data ready first
03:15 – Starting with recoverable processes
03:24 – Involving users and managing change
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About SAP:
As a global leader in enterprise applications and business AI, SAP stands at the nexus of business and technology. For over 50 years, organizations have trusted SAP to bring out their best by uniting business-critical operations spanning finance, procurement, HR, supply chain, and customer experience. For more information, visit: https://sap.to/6055BG0v3R
At SAP Connect, we announced new and enhanced Joule Assistants for SAP Customer Experience, expanded SAP Order Management Services for complex B2B environments, and the general availability of SAP Commerce Cloud, cloud ERP edition.
SAP Connect in 2026: Advancing the Autonomous Enterprise
These announcements build on the Autonomous Customer Experience strategy we introduced at SAP Sapphire. That premise is straightforward: AI must understand customer intent, make context-aware decisions, and execute within business guardrails. Following through on a customer commitment requires AI grounded in real-time, enterprise-wide business data, with a deep understanding of the processes needed to orchestrate work from intent to outcome.
A quote needs accurate pricing and terms. An order depends on inventory, credit, payment, and fulfillment. A service interaction requires information about the customer, the product, and the commitments the company has already made.
Customers generally do not see this operational complexity. They experience whether the company followed through.
Joule Assistants move from providing answers to driving business outcomes
Many AI tools can reason about what should happen next and recommend actions. But executing complex enterprise processes requires more than that.
AI needs to understand the live state of the business, including customer commitments, products, pricing, agreements, orders, payments, policies, and operational constraints. It must then navigate the approvals, exceptions, and cross-application steps required to act. Without that grounding, proposed actions may appear reasonable but can be inappropriate, infeasible, or break down in execution.
This is the direction behind the latest Joule Assistant innovations. New and enhanced Joule Assistants for SAP Customer Experience combine role-specific intelligence with business and process context across marketing, commerce, sales, service, finance, operations, and compensation, helping users move from understanding what should happen to getting the work done.
The innovations apply this approach to moments where fragmented context, manual steps, and handoffs can slow the customer experience.
CampaignAssistant and ContentAssistant help teams move from campaign ideas to execution faster by reducing the effort required to plan, create, refine, and activate marketing campaigns.
ShoppingAssistant makes product discovery easier and more relevant to what the customer is trying to accomplish.
QuotingAssistant brings customer, pricing, and commercial context together so sellers can prepare quotes faster and spend less time assembling information across systems.
ServicePlanningandOperationsAssistant translates service demand into coordinated plans, reducing the manual work required to align people, resources, and customer commitments.
IncentiveCompensationAssistant and Recurring Receivables Assistant bring the same intelligence to critical processes behind the customer experience, helping resolve questions, reduce administrative work, and keep compensation and payment workflows moving.
The goal is not to add another conversational interface. It is to move work forward by bringing together the business context, process knowledge, and controls required to act.
Human judgment remains important where decisions require approval, oversight, or exception handling. Within defined guardrails, AI can assemble context, determine and execute appropriate actions, and escalate when human intervention is needed.
Campaign Assistant brings campaign performance, business context, and recommended actions together to help marketers move from insight to execution.
SAP Order Management Services coordinates execution across ERP landscapes
Order management becomes more difficult when an order crosses ERP systems, legal entities, plants, distribution centers, and business units.
Each transition can introduce different information about pricing, inventory, credit, fulfillment status, or ownership of the next action. Consolidating every ERP system before improving order execution is not always a practical starting point.
SAP is expanding SAPOrderManagementServices to provide highly scalable, resilient, real-time omnichannel order orchestration across SAP S/4HANA and other ERP systems.
Built on a cloud-native, event-driven architecture, SAP Order Management Services coordinates order execution across channels, systems, business units, and third-party partners without requiring organizations to consolidate their ERP landscapes first.
The expanded capabilities provide a common layer for validating orders, checking inventory across locations, coordinating transactions between business units, and monitoring progress through fulfillment.
This gives organizations greater flexibility to add, remove, and experiment across channels, while enabling the order management layer to detect disruptions, trigger exception workflows, and keep execution aligned with the original customer commitment.
In complex enterprise landscapes, this combination of scale, flexibility, and reliable integration helps businesses deliver consistent omnichannel experiences while improving operational efficiency.
SAP Order Management Services helps teams monitor orders, identify disruptions, and manage exceptions across complex fulfillment environments.
Complete business context across the customer journey
Customer intent enters the business long before an order reaches a fulfillment system. It begins when a customer discovers a product, engages with a campaign, requests a quote, or starts a purchase journey.
To deliver on that intent, customer-facing interactions must remain connected to the pricing, inventory, ordering, fulfillment, and financial systems that support them.
SAP Commerce Cloud, cloud ERP edition, is now generally available. First introduced at SAP Sapphire, the edition allows midsize and growing companies to extend SAP Cloud ERP with commerce capabilities that use ERP data for pricing, availability, orders, invoices, and other transactional processes.
For more than a decade, SAP Commerce Cloud has supported some of the world’s largest and most complex digital commerce environments. With SAP Commerce Cloud, cloud ERP edition, we are extending that approach to companies that want a more standardized, SAP-managed path to ERP-connected commerce.
By using SAP Cloud ERP as the system of record, organizations can connect digital commerce with pricing, ordering, fulfillment, and financial processes without building and maintaining those connections independently. The result is a faster path to value, lower operational complexity, and an ERP-aligned commerce model designed to scale as the business grows.
SAP Commerce Cloud, cloud ERP edition, provides ERP-connected commerce with trusted pricing, availability, and ordering.
The same principle applies as customer interactions move across teams. A new native connection between SAP Engagement Cloud, enterprise edition, and SAP Sales Cloud synchronizes contact and company information while bringing relevant engagement signals directly into sales workflows. Instead of reconstructing customer context, sellers can continue conversations with a clearer understanding of prior engagement.
Customer experience depends on execution
AI can understand customer intent, make context-aware decisions, and act within defined guardrails. The harder question is whether the business can carry that action across the systems, teams, and processes responsible for delivery.
The innovations announced at SAP Connect address different parts of that challenge. Joule Assistants bring business and process context into the flow of work and help execute the next step. SAP Order Management Services orchestrates orders across complex ERP landscapes. SAP Commerce Cloud, cloud ERP edition, connects digital commerce directly with ERP pricing, availability, ordering, fulfillment, and financial processes.
Together, they advance a common principle: Autonomous Customer Experience depends on connecting customer-facing intelligence with the operational context and processes required to act.
Customers ultimately do not experience recommendations, models, or workflows. They experience whether the business followed through and delivered.
As AI begins to act on behalf of the business, the quality of that follow-through will depend on the business context, process knowledge, and operational reality behind every action.
Additional information on the SAP Connect announcements, including availability details and product-specific innovations, is available in the SAP Connect Innovation News Guide.
Balaji Balasubramanian is president and chief product officer of SAP CX.
SAP Connect: Read the latest news, stories, and coverage from the event
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Since SAP Sapphire in May, SAP CEO Christian Klein has positioned the Autonomous Enterprise as the operating model for organizations that will lead the decade ahead, a model in which AI agents reason, decide, and execute inside the workflows that run the business.
For many enterprise leaders, however, the gap between strategic ambition and operational reality has remained frustratingly wide. That gap is exactly what the Autonomous Enterprise podcast set out to close.
See how Edgewell Personal Care uses SAP SuccessFactors, SAP Cloud ERP, and SAP Concur to improve people data, support better decisions, and prepare for AI.
Edgewell Personal Care is focused on making useful things joyful, with consumer products people use every day. To support 7,000 global teammates and stay agile in a competitive market, the company needed to simplify its systems, processes, and data foundation.
By moving from legacy systems to an integrated SAP cloud landscape, Edgewell brought people data into the same connected environment across SAP SuccessFactors, SAP Cloud ERP, and SAP Concur. The company also established an HR data steward program, improving data accuracy from 29% at the start of the process to an average score of 96%.
That clean data is helping Edgewell make better people and business decisions. With predictive insights, leaders can identify employees who may be at risk of leaving and have meaningful stay conversations earlier. It also creates a stronger foundation for automation and AI, including Joule embedded across the SAP suite. For Edgewell, data-driven HR is helping the business move with more agility, react to customer needs, and bring tomorrow closer.
See how Edgewell Personal Care is building a foundation of joy and agility with a data-driven HR strategy:
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About SAP:
As a global leader in enterprise applications and business AI, SAP stands at the nexus of business and technology. For over 50 years, organizations have trusted SAP to bring out their best by uniting business-critical operations spanning finance, procurement, HR, supply chain, and customer experience. For more information, visit: https://sap.to/6050B1IvPK
Discover the top 5 new SAP Analytics Cloud features in the Q3 2026 release and what they mean for analytics, planning, and financial reporting teams who need faster insight, more intuitive workflows, and more flexible analysis.
In this short expert overview, Orla Cullen (Product Marketing Manager – Data & Analytics) walks through the biggest innovations in the quarterly release cycle, starting with new out-of-the-box visualizations. You’ll see how teams can quickly transform existing charts into Gauge, Funnel, and Sankey visualizations to monitor KPIs, identify pipeline drop-off points, and understand financial flows at a glance.
Here’s what’s new this quarter:
• New Out-of-the-Box Visualizations: Transform existing charts into Gauge, Funnel, and Sankey visualizations, with QuickBuilder support to help teams choose the right chart faster.
• New AI-Assisted Features: Generate concise AI prompt insights and use natural language to create SAP Analytics Cloud story scripts without writing code manually.
• Compass Updates: Use smart boundaries and new Compass story widgets to run simulations, compare scenarios, and view actuals, plans, and probable outcomes in one place.
• Excel-Like Search: Use familiar search, replace, update, and preview capabilities in SAP Analytics Cloud tables across major filter contexts.
• Data Action Data Filters: Pass multiple input controls and story filters into a single data filter parameter, including date ranges, custom current date, attribute-based filters, and explicit excludes.
Chapters:
00:00 – Intro
00:45 – New Visualizations: Gauge, Funnel, and Sankey
03:03 – AI Prompt Insights and Story Code Generation
05:59 – Compass Smart Boundaries and Story Widgets
08:12 – Excel-Like Search in Tables
09:46 – Data Action Data Filter Parameters
10:59 – Wrap-Up
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About SAP:
As a global leader in enterprise applications and business AI, SAP stands at the nexus of business and technology. For over 50 years, organizations have trusted SAP to bring out their best by uniting business-critical operations spanning finance, procurement, HR, supply chain, and customer experience. For more information, visit: https://sap.to/6053B1aEm1
See how Churchill Downs Incorporated uses SAP Cloud ERP to support the scale, speed, and complexity behind Kentucky Derby week.
For Churchill Downs, “the best two minutes in sports” is a year-round operation. As the business expanded beyond the track into regional gaming and historical horse racing, the organization needed a technology foundation that could support growth, standardize operations, and help teams make faster decisions.
With SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition and SAP Business Suite, Churchill Downs has connected core processes across finance, HR, expenses, and procurement. By moving away from customized systems and manual processes, the organization can drive greater consistency, efficiency, and visibility across business units, including newly acquired operations.
The team also partnered with the SAP Mission Control Center to support a successful go-live, helping reduce disruption and build confidence in the platform. Looking ahead, Churchill Downs sees AI as an important part of its future, helping teams make more data-driven decisions, improve efficiency, and continue creating memorable guest experiences.
See how Churchill Downs brings Kentucky Derby week together with SAP GROW:
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About SAP:
As a global leader in enterprise applications and business AI, SAP stands at the nexus of business and technology. For over 50 years, organizations have trusted SAP to bring out their best by uniting business-critical operations spanning finance, procurement, HR, supply chain, and customer experience. For more information, visit: https://sap.to/6056BEDBMA
