Artificial intelligence (AI) is currently transforming the world of work. Investments are enormous and the technology is evolving rapidly—as we’re currently seeing with agentic AI.

Beyond the technologies being deployed, the ability to use them meaningfully in daily work is becoming central. This is also seen as the major challenge of AI adoption. Developing AI skills has thus become a strategic priority.

For SAP customers and partners, the question is how to upskill their teams effectively. Because without the right skills and abilities, the best software is useless.

Here you’ll find seven tips for developing AI skills specifically for the SAP context.

1. Learn the fundamentals of AI

There are many learning resources for the basics in the form of e-learning courses or webinars. Some are even free, such as many courses from SAP. We’ve compiled key AI learning offerings here: on AI in general, Joule, and SAP Business AI, as well as the important topic of ethics and responsible AI.

2. Self-assessment: Where do I stand?

Everyone should understand the fundamentals of AI; after that, you can deepen your knowledge in targeted areas. The SAP Business AI self assessment can help with this self-reflection. Here you can rate yourself in the areas of awareness, m, knowledge, and application skills. The topic areas include Joule, including copilot and agents; embedded AI; machine learning services on SAP Business Technology Platform; SAP Build and Joule Studio; responsible AI; and implementation of SAP Business AI. First results show that many respondents show a high motivation, while technical application skills still need more improvement. 

3. Deepening by topic and role: Which AI skills are still needed?

Once you’ve assessed yourself as a team or individual, the various SAP learning offerings—information also available here on the SAP AI Training page—can help you create your own learning plan. Looking at the relevant topic areas, your own role, and preferred learning formats makes orientation and selection easier.

4. Set learning goals and document successes

Many people find it helpful to set concrete learning goals and schedule specific learning times; for example, in their own calendar. Documenting and reflecting on learning progress and “aha” moments also helps you and others, whether through blogs on SAP Community, a personal learning journal in digital notes, or simply verbally within your team. AI certification like for generatice AI developers might also be a more formal way to check and document your skills.

5. Learn from and with others

In peer learning, you learn through barcamps, workshops, discussion rounds, communities, study groups, networking meetups, or promptathons, a type of hackathon where small groups solve challenges from their daily work using AI tools. Along with SAP, companies like Deutsche Telekom and Continental are already using this format.

Learning through exchange in communities—such as the SAP Community on SAP Business AI with its many blogs and discussions—is another format for learning with peers. SAP Learning Hub also offers numerous AI live sessions led by SAP experts where you can ask questions.

6. Learn through experience and doing

With such generic technologies as AI, it’s important for everyone to explore for themselves where AI can help them and to try things hands-on. Whether in learning projects where you experiment with and reflect on new AI tools, or in team workshops. For workshops, the SAP AppHaus innovation toolkit with templates can help—including for Joule agent discovery, AI agent design, SAP Business AI design, and SAP Business AI exploration. Discovery and exploration should happen at the strategic level, but it’s also very helpful at the team level. The practice systems in SAP Learning Hub can also assist with hands-on practice as you see Joule and embedded AI features in many training systems.

7. Regularly review and update your AI skills: How can I keep up to date?

The field of AI is evolving rapidly, so regular learning, updating, and trying out new tools is essential. Podcasts, the resources mentioned in this article, SAP’s AI newsletter, and the diverse array of SAP events can help with this. Or why not build your own news-update agent for your own context?

Summary and outlook

AI learning in the SAP ecosystem is a business-critical, continuous task. You only understand AI by applying it and actively engaging with it. Additionally, it’s important to adapt to these new technologies—or even to completely rethink tasks and processes. Complete a self-assessment, create a learning plan by yourself and with your peers, and book the learning offerings relevant to you today.

Thomas Jenewein is a business development manager at SAP.

The SAP Social Sabbatical for global engagement program is SAP Corporate Social Responsibility’s (SAP CSR) flagship pro-bono consulting initiative, where SAP employees offer pro-bono consulting to impact businesses like non-profits, social enterprises, and startups around the world. In July, the program took place in its 59^th location: Vilnius, Lithuania.

Indeed, Lithuania is fertile ground for social enterprises and impact businesses. At the end of 2024, Lithuania participated in the European Social Enterprise Monitor (ESEM) for the first time. The resulting report provided a comprehensive assessment of the current social enterprise environment in Lithuania and allowed for comparison with the 30 other European countries assessed. According to the ESEM report, there are about 200 social businesses in Lithuania currently, but the potential is 10 times that number.

“According to a study done by LISVA (Lithuanian social business association) in 2022, each euro invested into social enterprises yields a net benefit of €0.63, with positive effects,” Kristina Balčiauskaitė, local project manager for Pyxera Global, explained. “Approximately 60% of social enterprises in Lithuania operate outside major cities, being active in smaller towns and rural areas. This contributes directly to strengthening local economies, creates new jobs for underserved populations, and helps reduce regional disparities in economic development and access to services.”

As part of SAP CSR’s mission of powering equitable access to economic opportunity, education and employment, and the circular economy, the pro bono portfolio works with social impact businesses that are pursuing innovative solutions to societal issues. The impact businesses gain access to private-sector professional expertise, the opportunity to address critical strategic challenges, advance their service provision, and facilitate transfer of skills and know-how to their staff.

For the SAP Social Sabbatical program, SAP employees are placed in highly diverse teams to apply their skills and professional expertise in a unique, short-term assignment, solving concrete strategic challenges for client organizations, developing leadership skills, and advancing SAP’s purpose to help the world run better and improve people’s lives. The program has been running since 2012, and in that time worked with 619 client organizations across 61 host countries impacting 7 million lives.

Lithuanian impact businesses

For one month, 11 SAP employees worked with four Lithuanian impact businesses to help address unique challenges.

Looptex

Looptex is a circular fashion solutions platform on a mission to drive sustainable solutions and inspire the world to rethink, re-love, and recycle textiles. The startup gathers used clothing and other textiles in Lithuania and prepares them for resale and upcycling to give them a second life, managing the entire process from collection to recycling. The re-loved pieces are available for sale through an online store and brick-and-mortar locations. The SAP Social Sabbatical team helped optimize Looptex’s business model and processes, enabling it to grow and drive sustainability and social impact.

“Participating in the SAP Social Sabbatical program was transformative for Looptex. We’re usually immersed in doing and building, but this program gave us the rare chance to pause, get outside expertise, map our processes, analyze stakeholders and flows, and strengthen our resilience,” Erikas Marcinkevičius, innovation project manager at Looptex, said. “For an organization like ours, bringing something new to the market as a circular fashion platform, it was a huge boost to structure ourselves better at this early stage of the startup.”

OSMOS

OSMOS is a non-profit think-and-do tank that aims to become the leading hub for mutually-beneficial international partnerships in the Baltic States. Its Digital Explorers program fosters ICT talent exchange and cooperation activities between the Baltics and like-minded countries. Founded in 2015 as an Africa-oriented non-profit, OSMOS is now looking to bring its exchange expertise to other continents and countries. Working with the SAP Social Sabbatical team, OSMOS was able to explore its options to scale its positive impact.

“Working together with [the SAP Social Sabbatical team], we found the time to sit down and sketch out our future service portfolio aimed at the private sector,” Žilvinas Švedkauskas, managing director at OSMOS, said. “As a non-profit, we are used to complex grant writing and implementing projects with competing objectives. The SAP Social Sabbatical pushed us to think in a stricter way and clarify what are the main private sector demands we ought to target transitioning to a social venture, diversifying our revenue streams, and continuing connecting IT companies and talents from emerging markets at a greater scale.”

Ukreate Hub

Ukreate Hub is a Vilnius-based initiative dedicated to displaced Ukrainians in Lithuania, equipping them with the knowledge, skills, networks, and tools they need to unlock their potential for the future of sovereign, democratic Ukraine. The community strengthens the concept that Ukrainians abroad are not passive recipients of aid, rather agents of change who are building communities, strengthening resilience, and shaping democratic futures even while displaced. After two years of functioning under and being funded by a larger NGO (Open Lithuania Foundation), Ukreate Hub is on a journey to become a fully independent, community-based NGO and scale its vital work for the Ukrainian community in Lithuania. The SAP Social Sabbatical team helped Ukreate Hub develop a road map to accomplish just that.

“The SAP Social Sabbatical gave us the time and support to deeply rethink our mission and strategic direction. Over the course of four weeks, the program became not only a period of transformation for Ukreate Hub, but also a powerful experience of personal growth. It allowed us to pause, reflect, find new sources of inspiration, and develop a clear plan for transforming Ukreate Hub into an independent organization—a step that will strengthen our capacity and long-term impact in Lithuania,” Oleksandra Cherednichenko, project manager at Ukreate Hub, said. “We also found wonderful friends and like-minded partners within the SAP team. It was inspiring to combine business tools and approaches with the mindset of the non-profit sector—a true synergy of two worlds that opened new perspectives for collaboration and learning. We believe this experience will help us better support and empower the Ukrainian community in Lithuania, creating more opportunities for their growth and integration.”

Women Go Tech

What began in 2017 as a mentorship program for women in Lithuania has grown into a non-profit organization on a mission to help women in the CEE region navigate towards careers in tech. Women Go Tech offers courses and mentorship opportunities to its community of 29,000 women—which only continues to grow. With the guidance provided by the pro-bono consultants as part of the SAP Social Sabbatical initiative, Women Go Tech audited all its internal processes to identify opportunities for simplification and automation.

“This program gave us a much needed outside perspective that helped us see how we could work better together, share knowledge more openly, and solve problems faster,” Liucija Pažarauskė, operations manager at Women Go Tech, said. “The experts confirmed things we already knew but also brought fresh, actionable recommendations with practical tools we can actually use. We realize it won’t be a quick fix—it will take 6 to 12 months to fully implement—but we’re starting with small wins and building from there.”

Cross-cultural exchange via skills-based volunteering

The SAP Social Sabbatical program not only has clear benefits for the impact businesses, but for the SAP employees involved as well. Long-term career impact, influence on personal life, growth of skills and knowledge, increased community engagement, and an improved sense of purpose are all reported consequences participants have shared.

According to the SAP Social Sabbatical 2024 Annual Report, 99% of participants agree that the program helped them learn valuable things about themselves personally, and 92% agree that the program prompted them to search for other ways to get engaged in local or international communities.

“Participating in the SAP Social Sabbatical program was a transformative experience that challenged me to step outside my comfort zone and realize the power of collaboration and unlocking people’s hidden potential,” reflected Anita Fava, part of the Lithuania team and a senior product learning specialist at SAP. “This journey taught me that real growth comes when we dare to embrace uncertainty and lift each other up. It’s not just about helping or giving back—it’s about active listening, learning, growing together, and discovering new perspectives that shape not only our careers but our lives. By setting aside our egos, we open doors to possibilities far greater than ourselves, creating a wave of impact that reaches beyond what we could have imagined. I am deeply inspired and grateful for the privilege of being alive and contributing to something truly meaningful.”

Gillian Hixson is an integrated communications specialist for SAP News.

Top photo courtesy of Gillian Hixson

Leadership knows, and the frustration is real: Though the organizations take on different digital initiatives, manual tasks still slow down many processes. Across industries, organizations are still dealing with scanning manual documents, such as invoices, contracts, and forms.

According to a Gartner report, 70 to 80 percent of enterprise information lacks structure. This poses challenges for organizations that must unlock the potential and mitigate the risks of content to ensure data-driven decisions.

Take a simple, one-document example: It can cost up to $30 to process a single purchase order by hand. While this number seems small at first, it grows significantly when thousands of documents are processed every month over the years. And it doesn’t stop there—each manual processing increases the risk of errors and potential loss of hours on the mundane job, hence missed opportunities. This leads to a high cost of running “business as usual” and a drag on innovation.

SAP Document AI: rescue business process

Manually processing documents is not just error-prone; it is also slowing down the response to market shifts, dragging down the creativity of skilled workers, and posing real threats to businesses.

SAP Document AI enables efficient and agile paperless business processes. AI-powered solutions can speed up business document processing by up to 70 percent through automating the extraction, classification, and processing of data—imagine the boost in productivity, agility, and resilience.

This is not only theory. SAP Document AI is enabling leaders to deliver reliable answers because it is grounded in the comprehensive and up-to-date training data of actual quality certificates:

• More than 180,000 annotated document pages
• Over 105 million annotated characters
• 28 countries in the data set
• More than half a billion unstructured documents processed each year

That is equivalent to approximately 8.5 years of manual information extraction and auditing, now available as a standard SAP cloud product.

Take De Agostini Publishing as an example. With SAP Document AI, the company is now saving around 500 hours per month, and more than 91 percent of purchase order-referred invoices are automatically processed. Read more about De Agostini here.

FRoSTA AG is one of the largest manufacturers of frozen foods in Europe. The company leveraged SAP Build Process Automation together with SAP Document AI, and it takes less than a minute to process an invoice from arrival to posting. Seventy percent of the invoices processed through automation are booked without any touch. What is even more interesting to note is that it took three months from project ideation to the go-live event. Read more about FRoSTA here.

More than 34,000 customers are already using SAP Business AI to transform the way they work.

From procurement and finance to HR and supply chain, SAP Document AI is changing how work gets done. It is natively embedded in SAP’s key platforms, making it easier for leaders to orchestrate truly intelligent workflows.

The road ahead: leading with certainty

Leaders know that change is the only constant. Digitizing more paper is not the future of document management. It’s about using unstructured data to our advantage. Looking at the road map, SAP Document AI will soon be able to handle even more types of documents. Enhancements such as vision-enabled information extraction, custom large language models (LLMs), and prompting are not too far off either.

Executive takeaway

Winning organizations do have one thing in common, and it is not the use of technology. They recognize that people drive business forward. By removing the manual burden, teams can be empowered to focus on what matters most: customers, strategy, and growth.

Leaders owe it to their teams to let them do what they do best, spending their time coming up with new ideas, making plans, and talking to customers. If employees are still buried in paperwork, it’s time to find out how much it really costs to wait. With SAP Document AI, companies can develop the kind of flexibility and strength that today’s markets need.

Learn more about the benefits and new possibilities for business with SAP Document AI.

Rashmi Kumari is a principal solution advisor at SAP.