Customer engagement is at a breaking point, and the most recent data proves it. Even as organizations accelerate their investment in AI, automation, and analytics, experiences often feel disconnected, impersonal, and reactive.
Connect AI, data, and customer-facing applications to deliver winning experiences
The problem is not the promise of AI. It’s the gap between intelligence in the system and connection in the moment. Customers are increasingly disengaging because intelligence is not being applied where it matters most.
Technology, particularly AI, has fundamentally changed what customers expect. They assume brands can recognize them across channels, understand context in real time, and anticipate their needs. When that doesn’t happen, the miss feels less like oversight and more like indifference. Timing is off. Service lacks continuity, and personalization stops at the surface, despite all the data behind it.
While many enterprises are trapped in siloed systems and disconnected data, consumer expectations are growing. Brands that don’t deliver the expected experiences are quickly abandoned.
In addition, global socioeconomic factors are increasing rapidly and unpredictably, challenging bottom lines and making customer loyalty more critical than ever—at a time when consumers are less loyal than ever.
When economies falter, companies usually take one of two approaches. Some hunker down, cut costs and staff, and hope to survive. Others zero-in on differentiators like CX to drive growth and boost profitability.
The importance of CX for key metrics like churn, retention, loyalty, new sales, and competitive differentiation is well-established, so not investing in customer experience could be considered akin to saying you are willing to let those mission-critical metrics falter.
1. 82% of consumers say a brand has disappointed them
Modern customers do not go quietly into the bad experience night. A whopping 82% of consumers say a brand has disappointed them, even when the product itself meets their needs. The issue isn’t the product or service; it’s the experience of purchasing and post-purchase care.
This is the essence of the “Engagement Divide”: the distance between what customers expect in the moments that matter, and what brands are actually delivering.
2. 60% do not pay attention to brands anymore and 48% care more about experience
Consumer attention in a difficult economy has shifted from logos and taglines to experiences that feel useful, contextual, and personal. So, what’s a brand to do when 60% of consumers say they simply don’t pay attention to brands and 48% care more about the experience than the product?
This is where CX outcomes become clear: engagement is no longer about shouting louder; it’s about showing up better and building experiences powered by unified data and intelligent orchestration.
3. Left unread: only 16% of customers skim email headlines, while 29% read one or two sentences
Consumer behavior in the inbox shows just how fragile engagement is:
Most consumers only read the subject line
Others will read one to two sentences before deciding whether to delete or engage further
Combined with the fact that 58% of consumers think most marketing emails they receive aren’t relevant, brands are staring down a massive relevancy problem. Sending more emails into the engagement abyss doesn’t solve this problem, but gaining a holistic understanding of your customers as individuals does.
4. 37% do not think brands personalize to their needs
For well over a decade we’ve been talking about the importance of personalization, but today 37% of consumers believe brands don’t personalize engagements to their needs. Surface-level personalization—names in subject lines, basic segmentation—is no longer enough.
This aligns with our assessment that 79% of companies have low or moderate CEM scores, meaning teams can access portions of shared data and deliver basic personalization, but coordination across marketing, sales, service, commerce, and product teams remains limited. Experiences often feel disconnected, forcing brands to rely on short-term tactics rather than building deeper relationships.
Consumers expect real-time, behavior-driven personalization based on context, intent, and history, not just boiler-plate persona buckets. Customers can see and feel investments in personalization and it matters.
5. 46% say customer service feels too impersonal, while 41% believe brands do not understand them as a person
Considering how much data brands collect, it’s striking that nearly half of consumers (46%) say customer service feels too impersonal.
Customers are asking a simple, and valid, question: “If you have all this information about me, why isn’t my experience better?” When data doesn’t translate into empathy and action, it starts to feel like surveillance, not service.
With 46% of consumers saying service isn’t personal, it should be no surprise that a nearly equal amount (41%) believe that brands don’t understand them as a person. However, 34% agree that AI can help brands better understand them and what matters most to them.
This presents brands with a real-time opportunity: use AI and data to close the perception gap. Instead of just predicting purchases, enterprises should also be anticipating customer needs and reducing friction.
6. 78% of brands say they deliver seamless cross-channel engagement, consumers disagree
Seventy-eight percent of brands say their engagement strategies offer seamless multichannel experiences with glowing outcomes like increased CLV, retention, and advocacy, but consumers are simultaneously reporting little emotional connection and frequent disappointment. In fact, 44% say that brand interactions feel less personal and more generic than ever before.
The takeaway: internal dashboards can create a false sense of success if not tied directly to real customer sentiment and behavioral signals across channels.
7. 54% of enterprises cannot access and use real-time data, and 66% still rely on third-party data
Fifty-four percent of enterprises can’t access and use real-time data. On top of that, 60% suffer from “dark data,” which is information that’s collected but not used throughout the customer journey.
Without real-time, connected data, brands are mostly flying blind. AI, personalization, and omnichannel orchestration don’t fail because the ideas or execution are wrong; they fail because the foundations are.
Although privacy regulations and legislation are increasing while third-party cookies decline, a majority (66%) of enterprises are still heavily reliant on third-party data. Simultaneously, 55% say their data is too unstructured to use effectively.
The lethal combination of overreliance on external data plus underutilized internal data keeps brands from building strong, first-party relationships rooted in trust and value.
8. 78% of brands say AI is essential for customer retention in 2026
AI is everywhere, and 78% of brands view AI as critical to retaining customers in 2026. However, 66% report they can’t use AI to optimize campaign performance in practice, while many also note they can’t utilize real‑time AI optimization in day‑to‑day campaigns.
A quick translation of the above stats: an AI strategy is crucial, but execution is lagging because of fragmented systems, poor data quality, and integration issues.
9. Only 30% share engagement data with a CX or CRM platform
Despite the collective agreement that a comprehensive customer profile is important, only 30% of brands share their customer engagement data within a CX or CRM platform. This means that most brands are attempting to deliver personalized experiences without having a unified engagement core.
If engagement data lives in campaign tools, service systems, commerce platforms, and ERP, but never gets connected via CX or CRM, customers will feel every fracture along their journey.
10. 30% of consumers have used AI agents that act on their behalf
AI is not just an enterprise capability; it’s also a customer behavior. Thirty percent of consumers say they’ve used AI agents to make decisions and act on their behalf when buying from brands.
This is a game-changer when it comes to engagement. Brands are now engaging not only with humans, but also with AI buyers that ruthlessly and continuously optimize for relevance and value. If your systems can’t keep pace, AI will select your competitor whose systems are operationalized for success.
11. When it comes to customer engagement maturity, 79% of brands have yet to integrate data, systems, and teams across their business; only two in five decision-makers see their departments as actually coordinated
The Customer Engagement Maturity (CEM) scoring model assesses how well brands align people, processes, and technology to deliver cohesive, intelligent experiences. Looking at the SAP Engagement Maturity Index:
16% of brands reside at low maturity
63% sit in the moderate middle
21% have high maturity
Despite year-over-year progress, most organizations are stuck in developing or evolving mode, able to execute campaigns but not orchestrate truly connected, enterprise-wide engagement. And leaders agree, with only two in five decision makers believing there is effective collaboration across departments.
12. Just 21% of brands are high-maturity, and they are gaining ground against their competition
High-maturity brands rise above the competition because they connect data and intelligence across marketing, service, sales, commerce, and operations. They use AI and automation to deliver personalized, omnichannel engagement in real-time, at scale.
And the maturity gap is becoming a performance gap. As top performers turn real-time intelligence into growth, the cost of competing with them rises for everyone else.
13. Personalized means personal: 58% of consumers respond positively to localized content
Personalization is more than a word or industry term. It means actually understanding and empathizing with your customer, including their regional traditions and social norms.
When engagement is done right, consumers respond:
63% say their favorite brand delivers seamless, connected experiences across mobile, web, and in-store
58% value localized content and product recommendations
55% appreciate highly personalized content
50% believe their favorite brand uses data to make interactions better
Customers aren’t against data or AI at heart. However, they are opposed to wasted data collection and bad experiences. It’s the job of brands to provide a great CX. If that job isn’t taken seriously, you can bet that other brands are willing to roll up their sleeves to fill the gap.
14. 77% of businesses plan to invest in AI-powered engagement in 2026
When it comes to the future state, 77% of businesses plan to invest in AI-powered customer engagement in 2026, and 76% are investing in omnichannel engagement technologies. At the same time, 29% say their top priority is connecting customer and stakeholder data across marketing, sales, service, commerce, and ERP systems.
The signal is clear: investment alone won’t close the Engagement Divide. The winners will be the brands that invest in connection—of data, teams, and systems—not just in tools.
15. 15% say seamless integration will be the biggest driver of success
Lastly, and possibly most importantly, 15% of businesses believe seamless integration of engagement systems will be the single biggest driver of success. While that may sound like a small number, it captures a critical strategic shift: engagement is no longer a marketing problem or a channel problem. It’s an enterprise discipline that depends on unified data, coordinated teams, and embedded AI.
Artificial intelligence provides an evolving service for businesses. Employing cloud-based systems that can store, analyze, and route data will be the differentiator for brands in the marketplace.
Loyalty is transactional, and driven by great CX and a connected enterprise
Digital engagement has raised the bar when it comes to customer expectations, with more demands and a plethora of competitive choices if a brand doesn’t deliver.
It’s not a big leap to state that better customer experiences increase customer loyalty, which in turn leads to more purchases, augmented product utilization, and increased brand affinity and sentiment. And let’s not forget that an enhanced CLV lowers customer acquisition costs.
After all, loyalty is transactional and forged by the experiences customers encounter. In my conversations with customers across the globe, it’s clear that only the brands with CX truly at the heart of their operations will retain and grow their customer bases in the enterprises of the future.
That ambition relies on a technology foundation that can consistently deliver those experiences at scale. For British-founded luxury fragrance brand Molton Brown, moving from legacy systems to SAP Commerce Cloud provided a high‑performance platform built for peak‑season resilience and continuous innovation. The impact was immediate: 100% uptime during peak trading, even as volumes surged to one order every three seconds during major events.
This kind of reliability is increasingly critical as the moments that shape experience and loyalty expand beyond owned channels. As product discovery shifts to social platforms and AI‑powered assistants, consistent content and availability help the brand remain visible and trusted wherever customers engage. SAP’s evolving agentic commerce innovations are designed for this reality, keeping products discoverable, credible, and actionable across both human and AI interactions.
Ultimately, technology and AI are not the goal—the experience is. The brands that succeed will be the ones that use AI to show up more human, not less, turning insight into relevance and automation into trust.
The future of CX is for companies that operationalize intelligence across the enterprise—connecting data, systems, and teams so AI can orchestrate experiences, not just analyze them.
Manos Raptopoulos is global president of Customer Success Europe, APAC, Middle East & Africa, and a member of the Extended Board SAP SE.
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Manufacturing is entering a decisive moment. Rising costs, intensifying global competition, expanding regulatory requirements, and the rapid acceleration of agentic artificial intelligence are reshaping how products are designed, planned, produced, delivered, and serviced. Volatility is no longer an exception; it is the operating environment.
To succeed, manufacturers need more than incremental improvements or siloed optimizations. They need to orchestrate their operations end to end with connected processes and trusted data, so they can respond faster to change, operate more efficiently, remain compliant, and continue to grow—even as disruption is constant.
At Hannover Messe 2026, the world’s leading stage for industrial transformation, SAP will introduce a new set of AI‑powered manufacturing and supply chain innovations. These innovations help companies ensure business continuity by orchestrating people, processes, and technology across their extended enterprise, turning volatility into an opportunity for resilience, efficiency, and customer impact.
Build a more agile, resilient, and customer-centric supply chain with AI
For years, manufacturers have invested in analytics and dashboards to improve visibility. But visibility alone does not prevent disruption. What’s required now is AI embedded directly into core business processes, where intelligence can analyze alerts, reason over business impact, and provide real-time solutions to resolve issues. With agentic AI, companies are now able to go a step further: automating the right actions for the best outcomes, with humans remaining in the loop wherever critical decisions are required.
SAP is operationalizing AI at industrial scale by embedding AI agents directly into supply chain and manufacturing workflows and contextualizing them with trusted enterprise and network data. Built on harmonized industrial, transactional, and network data, these agents can move beyond analysis to real‑time prediction and execution, working to deliver resilience, regulatory readiness, and measurable customer impact from day one. Creating tangible ROI is what matters most—whether by reducing unplanned downtimes, scrap, and rework, or by increasing quality and ultimately production output.
SAP helps manufacturers connect processes and data not only across internal teams, but also across company boundaries—with suppliers, logistics partners, and service providers. By using AI agents to connect design, planning, procurement, manufacturing, logistics, service, and asset management—and by integrating seamlessly with ERP and line-of-business systems—SAP helps break down silos that slow decision-making and increase operational risk.
This new agentic orchestration is powered and governed by a portfolio of intelligent applications that act, not just analyze, enabling faster, more coordinated responses without sacrificing quality, control, or growth.
New AI agents redefining planning, service, and operations
At Hannover Messe 2026, SAP will showcase AI agents that help manufacturers and operators reduce time to value, stabilize operations, and improve service levels amid ongoing disruption. As a precursor to broader announcements planned for SAP Sapphire, these agents demonstrate how agentic AI delivers practical benefits across all supply chain domains. Here are a few examples:
Manufacturing
Production Master Data Agent helps automate and optimize the creation and maintenance of production master data. By leveraging the bill of materials, the agent can generate production routings—including operations and work centers—and help ensure components are correctly assigned across the production process. This helps reduce manual effort, accelerate production setup, and keep production data accurate as requirements change. General availability is planned for Q2 2026.
Production Planning and Operations Agent enables planners to release production orders using natural language while automatically validating material availability, capacity, and scheduling constraints. Joule provides recommendations—such as alternative components or rescheduling options—that planners can review and approve, reducing manual work and keeping production aligned with real‑world conditions. General availability is planned for Q2 2026.
Assets & services
Field Service Dispatcher Agent can improve service responsiveness and asset uptime by dispatching the right technician based on skills, location, asset condition, and priority—driving faster resolution and better workforce utilization. General availability is planned for Q2 2026.
Alert Processing Agent can enrich operational alerts using past incidents, resolutions, and contextual signals and recommend clear, data‑driven actions to help teams resolve issues faster and improve operational reliability. General availability is planned for Q3 2026.
Asset Health Agent analyzes time‑series health indicators to assess and summarize the current and projected health of individual and multiple technical objects. By forecasting when assets are likely to become critical and alerting users in real time, the agent supports condition‑based maintenance and helps minimize downtime while ensuring asset availability. General availability is planned for Q3 2026.
AI agents advancing logistics execution
Material Reservation Agent helps ensure materials are available when and where needed by automating reservation creation and maintenance based on business rules—reducing delays, improving inventory accuracy, and optimizing working capital. General availability is planned for Q2 2026.
Outbound Task Orchestration Agent can protect customer service levels by detecting and resolving picking and packing issues in real time, orchestrating corrective actions to support on‑time, accurate delivery. General availability is planned for Q2 2026.
Aligning workforce, logistics, and assets in real time
Operational resilience also depends on synchronizing people with all other resources as conditions change.
With SAP SuccessFactors Workforce Scheduling, skills, certifications, availability, and labor rules are aligned with real-time operational demand so workforce plans can adjust automatically as production changes.
In logistics, SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, AI‑assisted backorder processing, together with the new SAP Logistics Management solution, helps organizations reduce transportation costs, accelerate warehouse execution, and improve delivery performance. Using conversational interaction with Joule, order managers can prioritize fulfillment while automatically accounting for availability and scheduling constraints.
Asset and quality operations also benefit from embedded intelligence. AI-assisted anomaly detection and alert processing in SAP Asset Performance Management helps teams identify risks earlier, prioritize actions, and reduce unplanned downtime. In parallel, SAP Document AI can automate the processing of incoming quality certificates, improving throughput, data quality, and compliance at scale.
Regulatory readiness and what’s next
As regulatory requirements tighten, SAP is expanding support for Digital Product Passports as part of SAP Business Network, aligned with the EU’s Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR). These capabilities help manufacturers create ESPR‑ready product records capturing environmental impact, material composition, repairability, and recyclability data. General availability is planned for Q2 2026.
Expanded SAP Business Network capabilities also deliver built‑in e‑invoicing compliance and data-residency support, enabling secure partner collaboration, synchronized logistics, and improved delivery performance across global networks.
See it live at Hannover Messe 2026
Taken together, these innovations reflect a shift from reactive management to intelligent execution—where AI is embedded directly into the processes that keep manufacturing and supply chains running today while laying the foundation for the next wave of innovation that will be unveiled at SAP Sapphire.
Visit SAP at booth F08 in Hall 15 at Hannover Messe 2026, April 20–24, to see how AI-infused orchestration, embedded AI agents, and end‑to‑end supply chain applications are redefining manufacturing.
Dominik Metzger is president and chief product officer for SAP Supply Chain Management.
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SAP is excited to announce that two-time Formula One World Champion Mika Häkkinen will be a special guest at SAP Sapphire 2026, appearing at both the Orlando and Madrid events. Visitors will have the opportunity to experience Häkkinen live at the Services and Support Center, where performance, precision, and innovation come together.
Photo credit: Marco Canoniero/Alamy Live News
As an F1 Ambassador, Häkkinen represents the values that define both elite motorsport and modern enterprise technology: speed, resilience, teamwork, and continuous improvement. His presence at SAP Sapphire highlights the strong connection between high-performance racing and the intelligent, data-driven world SAP helps its customers navigate every day.
Performance meets innovation
During his career in Formula One, Häkkinen became known for his focus, strategic thinking, and ability to perform under pressure—qualities that closely align with SAP’s Services and Support organization. At the Services and Support Center, attendees can experience how these same principles help businesses run faster, adapt with confidence, and stay ahead in an increasingly complex environment.
Häkkinen will share personal insights from his time at the pinnacle of motorsport, offering perspectives on decision-making in high-stakes situations, the importance of teamwork, and the role data and technology play in driving performance.
Event highlights
Visitors to the Services and Support Center can look forward to several exclusive opportunities:
Experience Häkkinen live in the Formula One Racing Simulator at the Race of Legends.
May 13 in Orlando at 1:00 p.m.
May 20 in Madrid at 11:30 a.m. and 1:30 p.m.
Join theater sessions featuring voices from the Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS Formula One Team.
May 13 in Orlando with Michael Taylor at 11:30 a.m. (SER1257)
May 20 in Madrid with Laura Goodrick at 11:00 a.m. (SER1342)
The Services and Support Center at SAP Sapphire is designed as a hub for inspiration and interaction. With Häkkinen on-site, visitors can expect engaging sessions, real-world insights, and hands-on experiences that connect motorsport excellence with business innovation brought to life by SAP’s Services and Support organization.
Join us in Orlando and Madrid
Whether attending SAP Sapphire in Orlando or Madrid, this is a unique opportunity to experience one of Formula One’s legends up close—and to explore how SAP helps organizations achieve peak performance.
Don’t miss the chance to meet Häkkinen at the Services and Support Center and discover how the mindset of a world champion can inspire your business transformation journey.
HANOVER — SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) and machine and plant manufacturer Uhlmann today announced an integrated approach that embeds digital production environments, open data ecosystems and SAP Business AI directly into operational processes.
The announcement was made at HANNOVER MESSE 2026, where they showcased PacXplorer, a high-tech packaging machine from Uhlmann that serves as both an industrial demonstrator and a development platform.
PacXplorer: Connected Production in Industrial Practice
Developed through collaboration within Factory‑X, the PacXplorer brings together digital twins, condition monitoring, smart services and interoperable production solutions within a collaborative data ecosystem. Factory‑X is a lighthouse project funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy as part of the Manufacturing‑X initiative. Its objective is to establish a decentralized data space for the capital goods industry, enabling secure and interoperable data exchange across companies and industries for equipment manufacturers and operators alike.
The machine is integrated into SAP system landscapes and operated live. It demonstrates how industrial data can be used in a sovereign, interoperable and cross‑company manner not as a theoretical model, but in real production operations. This creates transparency regarding asset condition, utilization and performance while laying the foundation for new data‑driven services.
Service as a Key to Resilience
The value of this approach becomes particularly clear in service operations. Where production, data, and operations are tightly interconnected, service plays a decisive role in ensuring asset availability, productivity, and stable customer relationships. One often underestimated lever is spare parts service: delays lead directly to downtime and economic losses, especially in volatile market and supply situations. At the same time, these processes remain heavily manual in many industrial companies.
SAP and Uhlmann are deliberately advancing the further development of this area. An AI‑supported process assists throughout the entire workflow from handling incoming inquiries and clarifying missing information to identifying the correct spare part and generating quotations. The approach integrates into existing SAP service and sales processes and is closely aligned with real‑world business operations. The objective is fast, reliable and scalable customer service.
“Today, industry is less concerned with cost optimization than with decision‑making under uncertainty,” says Dominik Metzger, President and Chief Product Officer for SAP Supply Chain Management at SAP. “With SAP Business AI and integrated production and service solutions, we move decision‑making directly into business processes. This allows companies to identify risks early, respond with greater flexibility and remain operational even under unstable conditions.”
Rethinking Value Creation Together
The collaboration between SAP and Uhlmann illustrates a fundamental shift in industry: resilience is not achieved through additional buffers, but through better, faster and more-connected decisions across the entire value chain. Companies that manage their production and service processes in a data‑driven way can respond more flexibly to change and secure their competitiveness over the long term.
Beyond HANNOVER MESSE, SAP and Uhlmann will continue their innovation partnership. Following the event, the PacXplorer will be operated at the SAP S.Factory in Walldorf, serving as a platform for customers, partners and co‑innovation to continuously advancing industrial transformation.
AI alone is no longer a differentiator: What matters is where intelligence operates inside of a business. As demand volatility increases, fulfillment windows tighten, and customer expectations rise, organizations need more than insights or task assistance. They need intelligence inside quotes, product content, service interactions, and campaigns, guiding decisions as they happen and continuously adapting as conditions change.
This shift lays the foundation for a new generation of executional AI, where capabilities evolve from supporting users to actively monitoring flows, anticipating risk, and over time acting as intelligent agents within core customer-facing processes.
With the Q1 2026 release of SAP Customer Experience solutions, SAP advances this shift by bringing AI closer to day-to-day customer-facing execution across sales, service, commerce, and engagement. Intelligence now operates closer to where outcomes are realized—helping organizations protect revenue, reduce friction, and deliver consistent, trusted experiences at scale.
Optimize revenue streams with confidence
Revenue becomes more reliable when customer intent is captured early and executed consistently across sales and commerce workflows. The execution depends on speed and accuracy: accurate product information, relevant content, and seamless handoffs from inquiry to quote creation. When these are disconnected, teams face delays, manual rework, and missed revenue opportunities.
From customer inquiry to executable quote
Email to quote with AI: Automatically add SKUs from a deal using opportunity and email data with the Microsoft Outlook add-in for SAP Sales Cloud. Users can choose to generate a quote, and the quote is quickly created in SAP Sales Cloud in just a few clicks. After review, sellers can hit send; it is that easy.
Deep research: Accelerate account planning and reviews by synthesizing SAP Sales Cloud and SAP Service Cloud data with external market intelligence. For example, the deep research capability can deliver a detailed brief that can be used to better understand the account, their industry, and other crucial information like news and SWOT. Sellers will be able to engage prospects and buyers more effectively while customers will have more relevant and personalized information delivered.
Media attachments for product descriptions: Use AI to extract details from product documents, such as manuals, spec sheets, and PDFs, and automatically generate or enrich product descriptions in SAP Commerce Cloud. This accelerates catalog updates and improves product data quality so that shoppers, search engines, and agentic commerce are rich with the most accurate product descriptions—ensuring product descriptions are detailed, differentiated, and discovered.
Delivering reliable service at scale
Digital Service Agent handoff for case creation: Connect every step of the service journey from conversational AI self-service to field resolution so service teams can resolve customer issues faster and provide personalized service engagements that build trust. Using conversational cues, Digital Service Agent summarizes intent identification for ticket creation while capturing essential information required for handoff to underlying solutions like SAP Service Cloud.
Agent inbox: Give service teams a single, real-time command center in SAP Service Cloud, consolidating cases, tasks, and service orders into one view with visual workload insights so agents can prioritize faster, stay on top of commitments, and resolve more issues per day.
Retail Intelligence (SAP Early Adopter Care): Announced at NRF, Retail Intelligence provides one closed-loop, AI-enhanced retail supply chain planning environment that ties together planning, execution, and engagement. The result: human and agentic teams that don’t just execute tasks but reshape strategies, reimagine retail supply chain planning, and master autonomous growth and lasting differentiation. Learn more at the SAP Sapphire session.
Orchestrating engagement across the customer life cycle
Customer engagement spans browsing, purchasing, fulfillment, and service across multiple channels. SAP CX connects engagement directly to operational context.
SAP Engagement Cloud delivers personalized, AI-personalized communications and interactions across every channel powered by connected customer and operational data all fully integrated across SAP. Teams can deliver consistent, intelligent engagement that builds loyalty and drives business impact.
SAP Engagement Cloud
AI-assisted report builder (SMS channel support): Extend conversational analytics to SMS campaigns. A new data context model narrows analysis to the right dataset, returning faster, more precise answers to natural language questions, such as “What was SMS revenue last month?”
AI-Assisted Report Builder for SMS
AI segments for mobile push: Predictively identify contacts who are likely in the next 30 days to engage, become inactive, or remain inactive, so marketers can target outreach where it will deliver the strongest results.
AI Segmentation for Mobile Push
Accelerate transformation with the advanced success plan for SAP CX
To assist customers on their transformation journeys, SAP launched the new Advanced Success Plan in the SAP Services and Support portfolio. This will help customers increase the value of individual applications, accelerate cloud transformation across SAP Business Suite, and enable consistent adoption of new innovations and SAP Business AI.
With SAP Customer Experience, AI moves beyond isolated assistance to operate directly within business execution flows. Intelligence is embedded where work happens—inside quotes, product content, service interactions, and campaigns—helping organizations respond in real time and deliver consistent customer outcomes at scale.
Learn more about SAP CX in Q1 2026
Read the SAP Help documentation to get started with these new capabilities.
Security and sovereignty have become operational prerequisites for digital technologies. Organizations in the public sector and regulated industries expect not only innovation and scalability, but verifiable proof that security controls align with national standards.
SAP Sovereign Cloud: Embrace the cloud without compromise
IT-Grundschutz confirms secure operation of SAP’s German data center facilities
IT-Grundschutz is the German Federal Office for Information Security’s (BSI) structured security methodology, and serves as a reference framework in public tenders and supplier assessments.
The certification on the basis of IT-Grundschutz confirms that the secure operation of the physical infrastructure of SAP’s German data centers has been positively assessed against Germany’s defined security requirements. It validates that physical protections, environmental safeguards, and facility-level operational processes meet BSI expectations.
In short: The secure facility operation of SAP-owned data centers in Walldorf/St. Leon-Rot, Germany, has been independently audited and confirmed against Germany’s national security methodology.
Strengthening one of SAP’s key sovereign delivery options: SAP Cloud Infrastructure
The IT-Grundschutz certification strengthens one of SAP’s key sovereign delivery options in Germany: SAP Cloud Infrastructure.
SAP Cloud Infrastructure is an Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) platform, operated in SAP-owned data centers and co-locations worldwide. In the Walldorf/St. Leon-Rot region in Germany, these data centers are owned by SAP, a German company, operated by approved personnel with the required security clearance, and designed for high availability, scalability, and stringent security requirements.
These data centers are designed to support GDPR-compliant data processing and to meet heightened regulatory and security requirements in Europe and Germany, including standards relevant to critical infrastructure and the processing of sensitive and classified workloads.
In three independent availability zones across separate data centers, interconnected via SAP-owned fibre infrastructure and using BSI-authorized German security hardware components approved for processing information classified VS-NfD, this foundation is complemented by certifications such as C5 Type II, KRITIS/NIS 2, TSI Level 3 (extended), ISO 22301, SOC 1 Type 2 and SOC 2 Type 2, SOX, EN 50600 and ISO/IEC 22237 (AC 3), and the German federal data center requirement catalogue.
On top of this, SAP Cloud Infrastructure provides:
An open‑source‑based, API‑first IaaS platform: Offering self‑service provisioning, automation, and consistent resource management across deployment models
A Kubernetes‑based cloud environment: Enabling cloud‑native workloads, container orchestration, and modern development patterns
Open standards and proven open source technologies: Leveraging components used, developed, and refined for more than a decade in sensitive, large‑scale environments
Optimization for SAP cloud services: Supporting aligned operations, integrated security, and efficient execution of SAP workloads
Support for SAP and third‑party applications: Allowing SAP and customer-specific workloads to run on one coherent, secure, and compliant infrastructure
SAP Cloud Infrastructure is an SAP-developed and SAP-operated IaaS platform for SAP workloads and customer applications, ranging from global cloud scenarios to environments with high sovereignty and regulatory requirements, including an offering for the processing of classified information up to VS-NfD level in Germany. With the SAP Sovereign Cloud portfolio, it enables both sovereign SAP cloud services as well as the operation of customer workloads in a sovereign environment. At its core, it combines secure application operations with SAP Cloud Infrastructure, which is designed for regulatory and operational control.
Sovereignty through choice and control with SAP Sovereign Cloud
Digital sovereignty is frequently framed as a question solely of vendor origin, data residency, or the reduction of technical dependency. In practice, though, it is about demonstrable control. At SAP, we frame sovereignty across four interconnected capabilities:
Data sovereignty: SAP stores data in local data centers or approved countries, avoiding unauthorized cross-border transfers and meeting critical infrastructure requirements.
Operational sovereignty: Sensitive operations stay local. Administration and maintenance are performed only by authorized personnel — either nationally approved personnel or nationals of an approved country — with the required security clearance.
Technical sovereignty: Control planes are hosted locally, with strict separation enforced through encryption or dedicated infrastructure.
Legal sovereignty: Governance stays aligned. Cloud providers must be based locally or in approved countries, and foreign authorities must mitigate ownership, control, and influence risks.
SAP Cloud Infrastructure meets these requirements. On this basis, data, operations, architecture, and legal control are brought together under clearly defined requirements.
Importantly, SAP Cloud Infrastructure is embedded in SAP’s broader approach to offering customers choice in sovereign cloud. Different customers face different regulatory, operational, and transformation realities. Sovereign requirements cannot be met with a single model.
SAP Sovereign Cloud offers a range of delivery options to address different customer needs. Depending on specific requirements, customers can choose between the following options:
SAP Cloud Infrastructure: SAP’s IaaS platform is based on open-source technologies and is operated in SAP data centers worldwide. Depending on the selected operating model, customer data processing and storage can be restricted to defined regions, for example, within the EU or exclusively in Germany, to meet specific data protection and compliance requirements.
SAP Sovereign Cloud On-Site: With SAP Sovereign Cloud On-Site, SAP provides and manages the full SAP technology stack in a customer-designated data center, from hardware to SAP Cloud Infrastructure and the SAP Sovereign Cloud portfolio. It combines physical control on site with our operational expertise, for full autonomy while maintaining SAP’s support and compliance standards.
Sovereign hyperscaler-based delivery models: SAP partners with premium hyperscalers in specific markets to provide customers the ability to swiftly scale their resources based on their needs. This flexibility, paired with seamless integration, enables customers to innovate faster while maintaining operational efficiency.
National sovereign cloud platforms such as Delos Cloud: For public sector customers in Germany, Delos Cloud combines hyperscaler technology with sovereign ownership and a nationally defined operating model, helping ensure regulatory alignment and clearly structured operational control.
SAP enables customers to select the model that aligns with their regulatory requirements, risk profile, and operational strategy.
Sovereignty is built, not declared
For customers, digital sovereignty is not a theoretical aspiration; it is an operational requirement that must function under real-world conditions. The IT-Grundschutz certification of SAP-owned data centers in Germany marks an important step in that direction.
As regulatory expectations evolve and sovereign requirements become more differentiated, SAP continues to enable customers to choose the sovereign setup that aligns with their obligations and risk profile.
Sovereignty is ultimately measured by the ability to operate systems securely and reliably. With SAP Cloud Infrastructure, that capability is deliberately embedded into the operating model.
Martin Merz is president of SAP Sovereign Cloud. Jonathan Bletscher is head of Global Cloud Infrastructure & Delivery for Global Cloud Operations at SAP.
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According to the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report, analytical thinking ranks as the top sought-after skill in the job market. Yet traditional teaching often struggles to connect theory with practice in a way that truly engages students.
It’s not a shortage of content or tools; rather, it is a gap in relevance and inspiration that leaves students disengaged from the very skills that could define their careers. Learning needs to be anchored in real-world data, meaningful contexts, and hands-on experience that sparks curiosity and excitement. The best learning doesn’t come from memorizing concepts, it comes from doing, especially when theory is tied to a topic that learners care about.
This is where Business Builders, in collaboration with the NHL, comes in.
We have created a new Business Builders game that brings hockey into the classroom—not just as a sport, but as a rich, real-world data environment for teaching analytics and critical thinking.
In this latest edition of games under the Business Builders umbrella, students take on the role of a hockey analyst responsible for identifying the factors that drive goal scoring using real NHL Game data.
“Hockey is fast, dynamic, and full of rich data, a perfect environment for teaching critical thinking,” said Brant Berglund, senior director of Coaching and GM Technology at the NHL. “Leveraging a strategic partnership with NHL, SAP, and HEC Montréal, we’ve created a pathway for universities to access approved NHL.com data for academic initiatives, without compromising the integrity of the League‘s data.”
Through our collaboration with the NHL, we provide a learning platform for educators that is full of authentic data students can relate to. The NHL generates just under 1.5 million data points per game, including about 120 shot attempts, 1,000 passes, and 5,000 puck touches—raw material for deep, practical analysis.
Business Builders can ignite an interest in STEM and help students build real data skills. The hockey-focused game was developed by the team at ERPsim Lab at HEC Montréal led by Prof. Pierre-Majorique Léger, as well as the support of academics from other universities. This reinforces a core principle of Business Builders: It is created by educators, for educators.
“When the question feels meaningful, learners lean in, stay focused, and keep pushing forward,” Léger explained. “For students in sport management or business management, real sport data can also elevate the learning experience. It adds context, complexity, and constraints that traditional teaching methods cannot provide. Students learn to judge what truly matters, justify their decisions, and manage trade-offs. This develops professional judgment, confidence in analytics, and the ability to communicate strategy and decisions clearly. These skills translate directly to real careers in sport management and business.”
Students explore questions such as:
What sets top NHL scorers apart?
Does shot angle affect scoring?
Which NHL players lead in goals scored, and from what distances?
Which shot speeds and shot types yield the highest goal conversion rates?
By analyzing these scenarios with SAP Analytics Cloud, students learn to interpret visualizations, tell compelling data stories, and sharpen their data-driven decision-making and critical-thinking skills.
For professors, the platform is equally powerful. Business Builders supports active learning at scale by enabling educators to manage and evaluate larger groups more efficiently while gaining visibility into student engagement. This makes grading easier, supports discussion-based learning, and helps instructors understand how students interact with data.
By introducing a modern, meaningful learning experience—far more dynamic than slides alone—professors bring real-world relevance into their classroom and elevate the impact of teaching.
SAP’s role in this collaboration reflects its broader commitment to education, skills development, and preparing students for the future workforce. In a rapidly changing world shaped by AI, data, and digital transformation, access to practical learning tools that build real competencies is essential. Through the SAP University Alliances program, SAP works with educational institutions around the world to help bridge the gap between academic theory and real-world practice.
“Access to business software and real data is essential for preparing students for the future,” said Dr. Katharina Schaefer, head of Academic Partnerships at SAP. “With free learning platforms like Business Builders, we empower educators to bring enterprise analytics into the classroom and help students develop the skills that are increasingly in demand across industries, and in a world where data and AI define the competitive advantage. Today’s learners need more than conceptual understanding; they need practical experience with real software and real data to build confidence and readiness for work life.”
One of the educators closely involved in shaping this new game is Prof. Olivier Caya from the University of Sherbrooke, who contributed his perspective as both a faculty member and practitioner.
“What makes this experience so powerful is that it all happens in SAP Analytics Cloud, the same solution used by thousands of organizations worldwide,” Caya said. “This creates a strong connection between what students do in the classroom and what they will encounter in professional practice. Students are not working with software detached from reality; they are developing skills with the same software used in real business environments.”
The result is a learning experience that is fun, interactive, and relevant. Educators can stand out with a state-of-the-art platform that connects passion with pedagogy, while students gain highly sought-after skills using real software from a global technology leader.
Business Builders is provided free of charge to educators and students and includes access to SAP Analytics Cloud. It is designed from beginner-friendly introductions to more advanced analytical challenges optimized for master’s-level courses.
After using Business Builders, students can deepen their analytical knowledge through access to SAP Learning Hub, student edition, a free learning platform that offers guided learning content, practice systems, and up to two SAP certification exam attempts per year, helping them to boost their career opportunities even further.
Business Builders is about connecting passion with education. Together with academic and industry partners, SAP is making analytical thinking tangible and memorable—empowering the workforce of tomorrow with the skills that matter most today.
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Across industries and geographies, organizations are operating in an environment defined by uncertainty. Geopolitical volatility, supply chain disruption, regulatory complexity, and accelerating technological change are no longer exceptional circumstances. They are the new baseline.
In this context, innovation is not about experimentation on the sidelines. It is about building the operational foundation required to remain effective, trustworthy, and competitive under pressure.
For many years, enterprise technology focused primarily on optimization, improving efficiency, reducing cost, and increasing speed. These goals still matter, but they are no longer sufficient for business success. Today, leaders must ensure that their organizations can adapt in real time, integrate seamlessly across ecosystems, and maintain control over their most critical data and processes.
Recognizing organizations innovating with purpose and achieving meaningful outcomes with SAP technologies
This shift, from readiness for known scenarios to resilience in the face of the unknown, is what unites the 19 winners of the 2026 SAP Innovation Awards.
From technology adoption to institutional capability
Earlier this month, we announced the finalists for this year’s awards. Today, it is my privilege to recognize the winners, organizations that have moved decisively from ambition to execution.
What distinguishes these companies, public institutions, and organizations is not the novelty of the technologies they use, but the way they apply them. They treat business processes as strategic assets. They design for interoperability, transparency, and trust. And they understand that digital transformation is ultimately about strengthening institutional capability, not simply deploying software.
Across hundreds of submissions, the winning projects consistently demonstrated three priorities that are increasingly inseparable:
Operational effectiveness, where strategic intent is translated into measurable outcomes
Control and sovereignty, ensuring compliance, security, and ownership of data while operating at global scale
Ecosystem orchestration, connecting partners, suppliers, and stakeholders to reduce fragmentation and increase responsiveness
By leveraging the depth and breadth of the SAP portfolio, from cloud ERP and business AI to industry solutions and SAP Business Technology Platform, these organizations have shown that stability and innovation are no longer mutually exclusive.
The 2026 SAP Innovation Award winners
The following organizations represent the action side of transformation. Each demonstrates how disciplined execution and a clear architectural vision can deliver tangible value for customers, employees, and society.
AI Excellence
Harnessing SAP Business AI to fundamentally improve productivity and decision-making:
Martur Fompak International
Cloud ERP Champion
Embracing cloud ERP as the backbone for long-term agility and scalability:
PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC)
Vedanta Limited
Customer Experience Innovator
Redefining customer engagement through integrated, cloud-based business processes:
IBM
Financial Futurist
Modernizing financial operations to increase transparency, resilience, and trust:
Ministry of Defence of Ukraine
Industry Leader
Applying multiple SAP solutions to transform business models, collaborate across ecosystems, and generate societal or environmental impact:
Accenture (Service and Financial Services Industries)
People Experience Pioneer
Reimagining the employee experience through data-driven and human-centric transformation:
Capgemini
Procurement Visionary
Using automation and insight to strengthen spend control and supplier collaboration:
TASNEE (National Industrialization Company)
Services Superstar
Accelerating business outcomes through the effective use of SAP services:
Federal Tax Authority, United Arab Emirates
Supply Chain Catalyst
Building resilient, compliant, and transparent supply chains:
Sasol
Ericsson
Sustainability Hero
Leveraging data to enable responsible decision-making and support a more sustainable economy:
ArcelorMittal SA
Technology Pathfinder
Solving complex business challenges with measurable impact using SAP Business Technology Platform:
Promocean The Netherlands BV
Land O’Lakes, Inc.
Transformation Impact
Driving enterprise-wide change and strengthening long-term transformation capability:
KPMG International
Recognition and responsibility
All of our winners have set a clear benchmark for what resilient, future-ready organizations look like in practice.
We look forward to recognizing their achievements at SAP Sapphire, where customers and partners from around the world will come together to share insights, compare experiences, and continue shaping the ecosystems that underpin global business.
Looking ahead
The SAP Innovation Awards are more than just a moment of recognition. They signal that digital sovereignty, operational resilience, and responsible innovation are achievable across industries, sectors, and regions. The organizations recognized this year demonstrate what is possible when technology choices are guided by clear priorities and long-term thinking.
May these examples encourage others to take the next step, moving with confidence from readiness to resilience.
Welcome to the SAP Business AI product updates for Q1 2026. I’m new in the chief AI officer role, but the mission hasn’t changed: helping our customers get real value from AI.
Joule is now live across 35 solutions and will continue to meet our customers where they are: across the applications they use, with a firm understanding of their business context and data. That’s why in Q1 we are embedding Joule into more applications—from SAP Datasphere, where it can now execute tasks or explain specific functionalities, to SAP Intelligent Clinical Supply Management, where users can use natural language to retrieve critical data and navigate to relevant applications.
Achieve company-wide ROI and transform how work gets done with agents grounded in your business data
Joule Agents, such as the Tender Analysis Agent, are boosting customer revenue growth by extracting critical requirements and flagging risks in complex documents. While project managers in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition are saving time setting up projects with the new Project Setup Agent. Plus, there are many more agents to discover below.
Agents are becoming a key new user—and enabler—of enterprise software, joining humans as the only other non-deterministic operators while simultaneously expanding enterprise software’s scope and usefulness. Our agents will continue to deliver trustworthy, repeatable, and auditable results every time.
We now have over 40 specialized agents and more than 2,400 Joule Skills. The agent-to-agent protocol means our agents work across SAP and non-SAP systems. As the number of agents grows across both, SAP AI Agent Hub already today provides customers with the essential infrastructure and guardrails to manage, govern, and discover agents in this new ecosystem.
Some highlights from Q1 2026:
SAP Joule for Consultants is a conversational AI solution that provides expert guidance on cloud transformations, drawing on SAP’s knowledge base. To improve trust and traceability, citations are now displayed in a dedicated side panel and can be grouped for clarity. Administrators can enable web search, allowing Joule to draw from public content while maintaining clear source attribution. For tailored answers to problems where the system may not have customer-specific documentation, consultants can now upload up to 10 PDF or text files directly into the chat. This is further enhanced by the inclusion of content from the SAP Enterprise Architecture Reference Library, which provides more complete and accurate answers to complex queries. Get started here.
SAP Business AI for supply chain minimizes disruptions and simplifies planning. The Project Setup Agent allows project managers to rapidly establish new projects by drawing on data from past initiatives. SAP Integrated Business Planning users can now generate complex formulas in Microsoft Excel with natural language. SAP Digital Manufacturing can distill complex manufacturing issues into clear descriptions. Joule is also helping SAP Integrated Product Development users create problem reports and requirement models with simple, natural-language commands. Explore more below.
SAP Business AI for finance offers greater efficiency and insight across critical processes. Joule now translates complex e-invoicing errors into plain language. The Dispute Resolution Agent automates root-cause analysis for invoice disputes, while payment advice processing significantly reduces document processing time. Unstructured data, such as PDFs, can now be automatically transformed into sales orders, and accountants can access natural language explanations for complex fixed asset calculations. Users can personalize their home page and easily understand system errors using natural language across SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition. Learn more below.
SAP Business AI for procurement and customer experience enhances the entire commercial journey with new capabilities. In procurement, automated statement of work (SOW) creation in SAP Fieldglass reduces the time to define deliverables. The Catalog Optimization Agent means e-commerce managers can continuously improve product data quality. In retail, managers can get instant, conversational answers from Joule on order management data. There’s so much more to learn below.
SAP Business AI for IT and developers puts the latest tools and greater control directly into the hands of developers and data professionals. Joule is now generally available in SAP Datasphere, enabling users to navigate the platform, get answers, and execute tasks using simple conversational language. The generative AI hub in AI Foundation continues to expand, offering developers access to the newest models, including OpenAI GPT 5.2, Gemini 3.0 Pro, Anthropic Claude Opus 4.6, and Claude Sonnet 4.6. Developers also gain greater power through enhancements such as advanced prompt optimization, metadata filtering, and declarative orchestration configurations in the prompt registry. Additionally, SAP Document AI now offers more granular control with custom confidence thresholds and expanded document support. Dive into everything below.
SAP Business AI for industries delivers specialized intelligence to solve unique business challenges. Sales teams can accelerate their response process with the new Tender Analysis Agent, which automates the review of complex RFQ documents to improve win rates. Joule now works with SAP Commodity Management to turn verbal or written negotiations directly into detailed draft deals. In life sciences, clinical supply professionals can use predictive analytics to reduce inventory waste costs, and Joule dramatically cuts information search time. SAP Self-Billing Cockpit automates invoice data extraction from any format, significantly reducing manual processing time. Discover more for industries below.
SAP Business AI for business transformation management provides the critical insights needed to navigate and accelerate organizational change. Joule is now in SAP Signavio, enabling natural-language searches that cut information discovery time. Business process model and notation simulations in SAP Signavio provide clear, actionable summaries directly within process diagrams. Meanwhile, enterprise architects can leverage guidance in SAP LeanIX to surface actionable insights directly from their architecture inventory, accelerating transformation execution and reducing the time to uncover them. Read more about transformation management below.
Joule
Joule, enhancements
User experience is improved by streamlining startup times and introducing cross-thread search functionality that lets end users find information across all conversation threads without manually checking individual histories. The document grounding capability has also seen a substantial upgrade, now supporting seamless integration with Google Drive.
Furthermore, scalability has been greatly improved, as the system now supports up to 8,000 documents per pipeline, enabling large-scale data repositories to be processed and utilized efficiently.
Enhanced Citation Visibility SAP Joule for Consultants has improved how citations are displayed for all identified sources returned by the product. Citations have been relocated to the right side in a dedicated panel for clearer visibility, and now also include public web search results when applicable (see below).
A new grouping feature has also been added, allowing citations to be grouped. This update provides users with a more transparent view of where information originates, strengthens trust, and improves traceability across all responses.
To see the sources and panel, click the sources button below each message; the panel will open on the right, showing all grouped sources.
Enable Web Search Administrators can now enable/disable web search via the control panel for all assigned end users in SAP Joule for Consultants.
When enabled, SAP Joule for Consultants will consider public web content in its reasoning and cite relevant public sources in responses when they contribute to the answer. This enhancement gives organizations greater flexibility and transparency by enabling broader coverage of information while maintaining clear source citations for all sources used.
File Uploads in the Joule Message Input End-users can now upload up to 10 files directly from the conversational message input box and reference them throughout the entire conversation.
Supported file types include PDF and TXT. Each file should be no more than 10 MB/600K characters; for PDFs, an approximation. A 100-page limit applies; if your file is larger, split it into multiple documents. Image files are currently not processed and will be ignored. We are working diligently to make this feature even more useful to end users. This enhancement enables richer, context-aware interactions by allowing you to incorporate your uploaded documents into its conversational responses throughout the session. Please be aware that the standard data privacy terms apply. See also the help documentation for additional information on the free user quota.
Content: SAP Enterprise Architecture Reference Library SAP Enterprise Architecture Reference Library data has been ingested and is now available for use in conversations. As more data is added, relevant portions may be included in SAP Joule for Consultants’ responses, enabling more complete, accurate, and context-rich answers to user queries. Since SAP Enterprise Architecture Reference Library content cannot be link-referenced, you won’t see the additional content listed under sources, even though it will be referenced.
Project managers can now rapidly establish new projects by drawing on data from similar past initiatives. The agent bypasses complex interfaces and reduces reliance on the project management office (PMO) to facilitate the swift allocation of key resources needed to launch projects effectively. With a 10% reduction in project creation time, 16% faster resource allocation, and 30% less time spent reworking projects due to incorrect templates, teams can shift focus from operational coordination to improving project profitability and driving efficiency.
SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition, AI-assisted retrieval of equipment information in service management General availability
Service managers using the AI-assisted retrieval feature in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition gain a complete 360-degree view of customer equipment. The feature provides instant access to warranty information and a full history of service transactions, complemented by an AI summary and actionable recommendations. This allows service managers to more efficiently oversee service schedules, reduce potential downtime, and ensure customer equipment operates at peak performance.
SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, AI-assisted input recommendations for returns order creation General availability
Returns clerks can accelerate the creation of customer returns with data field recommendations powered by historical data. This feature analyzes past return documents with similar process variants to automatically suggest the most common input values and return reasons, minimizing manual data entry and reducing errors. Organizations benefit from a one percent reduction in data management costs and a five percent decrease in business and operations analysis expenses, enabling returns teams to process orders more efficiently while maintaining accuracy.
SAP Integrated Business Planning, AI-assisted MRO inventory analysis General availability
Inventory planners get a new analytical assistant in the MRO inventory analysis feature for SAP Integrated Business Planning. The feature accelerates root cause analysis by generating clear, natural-language summaries that explain the key drivers behind recommended safety stock and reorder points. By translating complex calculations into understandable insights, this capability enables planners to reduce time spent analyzing inventory runs by 30%, leading to faster adoption of outputs and ensuring that inventory parameters align with strategic business goals.
SAP Integrated Business Planning, add-in for Microsoft Excel, AI-assisted planning General availability
Supply chain planners can now simplify their work with a new AI-assisted planning add-in for Microsoft Excel. Instead of manually creating complex formulas or formatting rules, which often require technical expertise, they can simply describe their needs in natural language, and the system automatically generates the correct syntax. This intuitive way of interacting with the system removes technical barriers and improves a planner’s efficiency by 10%, freeing them to focus on strategic analysis rather than implementation details.
SAP Integrated Business Planning, AI-assisted system security check General availability
Supply chain planners and security analysts gain a robust way to assess system configurations against established security recommendations. The feature evaluates compliance states and provides clear guidance on required adjustments, helping administrators identify and address potential gaps while aligning configurations with SAP best practices. Organizations can expect a 27% increase in compliance with hardening guidelines and a 32% reduction in the effort required to meet security recommendations. This feature strengthens the protection of sensitive data and reduces the risk of security breaches.
SAP Integrated Product Development, AI-assisted problem report creation General availability
Maintenance engineers can simplify the creation of formal problem reports by leveraging AI capabilities in SAP Integrated Product Development. By describing an issue in their own words to Joule, it intelligently extracts key details like the problem name, tags, and priority, and then automatically generates a structured report. This streamlined process dramatically reduces manual data entry and ensures all reports are consistent and compliant with organizational standards, improving overall efficiency.
SAP Integrated Product Development, AI-assisted requirements model creation General availability
Requirements managers now have a more direct path to creating requirement models within SAP Integrated Product Development by using natural language commands with Joule. This feature allows them to initiate new models, specify names, and apply templates in a single step, completely bypassing the need to navigate through complex folder structures. This streamlined approach provides a much faster starting point for new projects and empowers users to begin their work immediately without requiring deep knowledge of the repository layout.
SAP Field Service Management, AI-assisted automated scheduling analytics General availability
Field service dispatchers and consultants can now access clear, on-demand explanations of auto-scheduling results that demystify complex system logic. The new feature interprets scheduling reports and translates technical scoring details into business-friendly insights, explaining why specific technicians were assigned, why alternatives were passed over, and why certain activities remained unscheduled. This transparency drives a 12.5% increase in dispatcher productivity and a five percent reduction in erroneous resource allocations, strengthening trust in automated decisions while significantly reducing analysis time.
SAP Digital Manufacturing, AI-assisted description enhancement General availability
Quality managers documenting complex manufacturing issues can now generate clear, objective, and structured descriptions with minimal effort. SAP Digital Manufacturing for issue resolution offers description generation that refines rough initial inputs, removes bias and subjective language, and produces balanced, factual problem statements. With support for multilingual translation and enhanced clarity, organizations can achieve up to five percent improvement in quality engineer efficiency during issue handling and up to 10% reduction in errors throughout the problem resolution process.
Dispute Resolution Agent (for SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition) Beta release
When invoice disputes arise, accounts receivable specialists need to act quickly without sacrificing accuracy. SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition introduces an agent that automates root-cause analysis, scanning invoices, sales orders, delivery records, pricing agreements, and tax rules to identify the source of discrepancies. The agent detects incorrect charges and recommends compliant solutions, such as credit memo creation, enabling finance teams to resolve disputes faster, minimize manual investigation, and cultivate stronger vendor relationships through transparent, efficient processes.
SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, AI-assisted smart personalization of my home for applications General availability
SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition users can easily configure their home page with the most relevant applications through AI-assisted smart personalization. By describing their task in natural language, the system identifies the appropriate app, which can then be added to their home screen with a single click. This intuitive capability reduces the cost of personalizing the home page by 33%, shortens the learning curve for new users, and improves satisfaction by keeping frequently needed tools readily accessible.
SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, AI-assisted error explanation General availability
When encountering system errors, SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition users can turn to a new feature that generates clear, natural language explanations and resolution recommendations. This capability transforms cryptic error messages into easy-to-understand guidance, helping users of all experience levels quickly rectify issues and continue with their work. By reducing error resolution time by five percent, organizations benefit from increased productivity, improved data quality, and shorter training cycles for new team members.
SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, AI-assisted sales order creation from unstructured data General availability
Sales representatives benefit from a streamlined order creation process in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition that handles unstructured data like PDF or image-based purchase orders. After uploading a file, SAP Document AI automatically extracts the relevant information and proposes the data for a corresponding sales order request. This automation significantly reduces manual data entry, minimizes errors, and improves overall operational efficiency, allowing teams to process orders faster and enhance customer satisfaction.
SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, AI-assisted processing of payment advices with SAP Document AI General availability
Accounts receivable clerks can accelerate their workflow using the SAP Document AI-powered payment advice processing feature in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition. The system automatically extracts payment amounts, references, and currencies from diverse invoice formats across multiple languages, with a self-learning capability that continuously improves recognition accuracy. Organizations implementing this feature can reduce document processing time by 70%, cut template maintenance time by 83%, and decrease value loss from manual processing delays by 40%.
SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition, AI-assisted fixed asset key figures explanation General availability
Asset accountants gain clarity on complex fixed asset calculations through a new AI feature in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition. The feature generates natural-language explanations that detail the origins of displayed values and how figures such as depreciation are calculated; for example, illustrating the impact of mid-year acquisitions with specific depreciation keys. This transparency reduces the effort required to analyze asset values, enables faster responses to asset-related questions, and helps mitigate compliance risks.
SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition, AI-assisted settlement rule proposal for asset capitalization General availability
Overhead and asset accountants can now streamline the complex process of creating settlement rules for investment measures, eliminating the traditionally time-consuming, error-prone manual configuration. The solution automatically determines receivers, calculates percentages, and proposes feasible rules based on contextual data and user-defined instruction profiles. Organizations reduce the effort required to create full settlement rules by 50% while simultaneously improving accuracy in asset capitalization and enhancing overall operational efficiency across their financial processes.
SAP Document and Reporting Compliance for SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition, AI-assisted electronic document error handling General availability
Tax accountants navigating the growing complexity of e-invoicing mandates across multiple countries gain an easy way to decode technical errors without wading through intricate XML or JSON formats. Joule, integrated with SAP Document and Reporting Compliance, delivers plain-language explanations of electronic document errors, enabling faster root-cause identification and more efficient resolution. Organizations get an 80% reduction in time spent understanding and resolving errors, dropping from 150 minutes to approximately 30 minutes. This results in faster processing cycles, reduced penalty risks, and improved cash flow.
SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, AI-assisted error resolution for cost accounting General availability
Operations managers in retail organizations can now access Joule via SAP Order Management Services, enabling them to query order data and receive real-time, role-specific operational guidance across order processing, orchestration, sourcing, availability, returns, and fulfillment flows. Joule surfaces instant insights and recommended actions directly in the workflow, reducing the need to navigate multiple systems. This enables proactive intervention before issues escalate. The feature offers faster transaction access, improved responsiveness and accuracy, and lower operational risk, which support smarter, quicker decisions across the order lifecycle.
Expense Report Validation Agent General availability
Business travelers can enjoy a smarter, guided approach to expense report completion with an agent that proactively identifies missing items, prompts for necessary details, and clarifies confusing alerts throughout the submission process. By simplifying how users understand and resolve issues, the agent ensures accurate, policy-compliant reports with minimal effort required. This means a 30% reduction in time spent preparing and submitting reports, a 24% increase in first-pass approvals, and a noticeably improved employee experience that removes friction from the expense management process.
Expense Pre-Submit Audit Agent SAP Early Adopter Care
Expense report submitters can now catch receipt accuracy issues and policy breaches before hitting the submit button, avoiding the frustration of rejected reports and delayed reimbursements. This agent automatically reviews expenses during creation, surfacing compliance problems and offering smart suggestions for quick corrections. The agent uses a non-blocking design that keeps users in control of final decisions. Organizations benefit from a 10% decrease in sent-back expense reports, reduced rework for travelers, managers, and auditors alike, and a noticeably smoother reimbursement process that enhances the overall employee experience.
Employees burdened by the administrative chore of creating expense reports can now delegate the heavy lifting to a Joule Agent. This agent automatically builds expense reports by aggregating transactions, populating custom fields based on contextual details and user history, and preparing everything for a quick review before submission. The outcome is up to 30% reduction in time on task for auto-generated expense reports. This offers a modern expense management experience that slashes manual data entry, accelerates the submission process, and frees employees to focus on high-value work rather than paperwork.
Concur Expense, AI-assisted configuration for audit rules General availability
Expense administrators responsible for managing complex audit rule setups can now interact with their configuration environment in plain language, eliminating the need for deep technical expertise or tedious manual adjustments. This AI-assisted feature enables admins to search existing rules, create new ones, and receive real-time explanations simply by asking questions like “What rules apply to meals in France?”, delivering clear, actionable guidance instantly. The outcome is a 40% reduction in audit rule configuration effort, fewer support tickets, and empowered administrators who work with greater independence, accuracy, and confidence in maintaining compliance logic.
Business travelers seeking quick answers to company travel and expense policies no longer need to sift through lengthy documents or wait for admin responses. Policy navigator in Joule allows employees to ask questions in natural language and receive clear, contextual guidance grounded in approved policies, whether planning a trip, in the middle of a journey, or completing an expense report. The result is in-the-moment policy clarity that prevents non-compliant spend before it happens, reduces support tickets, and empowers travelers to make confident, compliant decisions without disrupting their workflow.
SAP Fieldglass Services Procurement, AI-assisted SOW deliverables creation General availability
Procurement specialists can accelerate the development of their statements of work using the deliverables feature in SAP Fieldglass Services Procurement. The feature analyzes the defined project scope and automatically generates precise, relevant deliverables that ensure tight alignment between buyer expectations and supplier commitments. By adopting this capability, organizations can reduce the time required to manually create SOW deliverables by 70% and cut the risk of poor outcomes by 50%, while fostering stronger collaboration during the negotiation process.
E-commerce product managers tasked with maintaining large SAP Commerce Cloud catalogs gain an always-on agent that continuously reviews product descriptions, attributes, and translations against company quality standards. This agent pinpoints merchandising gaps and delivers actionable recommendations to enhance catalog accuracy, ensure consistency across languages, and improve product discoverability. The business impact is a 70% reduction in time to translate catalog data, 65% less time spent adding descriptions per asset, and a five percent reduction in data quality costs, all of which contribute to higher conversion rates and a more agile merchandising operation.
SAP Revenue Growth Management, AI-assisted trade promotion creation General availability
Key account managers in consumer industries can benefit from a streamlined, single-view promotion-creation experience in which simply naming a promotion automatically populates key fields. Drawing on master data, historical promotions, and learned preferences specific to each retailer, the system suggests dates, types, durations, and sell-in periods, then continuously refines its recommendations based on user edits over time. The impact is a 75% reduction in promotion setup time, 30% fewer data-entry errors and rework, and increasingly personalized suggestions that eliminate repetitive manual effort across promotion cycles.
Building on the transformative capabilities of Joule studio low-code, SAP is expanding the Joule studio family with two powerful new offerings designed to meet developers exactly where they work: Joule Studio code editor, a Visual Studio Code IDE extension, and Joule Studio CLI, a versatile command-line interface. Together, these tools deliver a unified, AI-assisted development experience that spans the full spectrum of development personas and preferences on Joule.
Joule Studio code editor brings the intelligence of Joule directly into Visual Studio Code, the world’s most popular development environment, empowering pro-code developers with AI-guided scaffolding, contextual code generation, intelligent recommendations, and seamless integration with Joule, all without leaving their preferred IDE.
Joule Studio CLI extends this same power to the terminal, enabling developers and DevOps teams to automate project creation, manage configurations, execute deployments, and orchestrate CI/CD workflows through scriptable, command-line commands—ideal for headless environments, automation pipelines, and teams that value speed and precision at the command line.
Data professionals working within SAP Datasphere can now accomplish informational, navigational, and transactional tasks through natural conversation with Joule. Whether asking how to use specific functionalities, retrieving details about a SAP Datasphere instance, or switching system settings like language preferences, users receive instant answers with direct references to product documentation. Joule can even execute tasks directly from the conversation without requiring interaction with the standard interface. This direct execution reduces reliance on internal IT support and enables faster, more intuitive navigation throughout the platform.
Document level confidence Customers now set confidence ranges for fields in the Schemas feature. When customers edit field settings, they can define their own thresholds for low, medium, and high confidence. These custom settings are reflected in the extraction results displayed for the relevant fields on the document details screen. See Settings for Fields and View and Edit Documents Needing Review.
Expanded Transportation Management Customers can now use the Transports feature to export and import channels and workflows. See Supported Objects.
Metadata Customers can now manage metadata for documents, collections, and chunks created with the Vector API to enable advanced filtering and organization of their content. For more information, see Metadata.
Retrieval API Customers can merge and rank search results across multiple data repositories using the Retrieval API’s post-processing capabilities. For more information, see Retrieval Search.
Prompt optimizations Custom metrics are supported in prompt optimizations, enabling customers to define and optimize prompts based on their specific evaluation criteria. Only LLM-as-a-judge metrics with numerical or Boolean output types can be used in optimization tasks.For more information, see Create a Custom Metric and Create a Configuration for a Prompt Optimization. Customers can provide separate test and train datasets for prompt optimization. For more information, see Create a Configuration for a Prompt Optimization.
Prompt registry The prompt registry now enables customers to create and manage orchestration configurations declaratively, allowing them to version and track complex AI workflows alongside their prompts for better governance and reproducibility.For more information, see Create an Orchestration Config (Imperative).
Secrets Customers can now enter generic secrets using a form instead of JSON. The form appears in the Add Generic Secret dialog when you activate document grounding. A dropdown menu lets them choose the type of document repository. Depending on their selection, the remaining fields adjust dynamically, allowing them to complete the data. Some fields are already prefilled.If they prefer working directly with JSON, switch to the code view by clicking the icon. For more information, see Add a Secret.
New models available New models are supported, including OpenAI GPT 5.2, Gemini 3.0 Pro, Perplexity Deep Research, and Anthropic Claude Opus 4.6.For more information on new and deprecated models, see the SAP Note.Try generative AI hub for free for 30 days.
SAP Joule for Developers, ABAP AI capabilities, enhancements
New ABAP AI capabilities mean developers can expect a 20% reduction in time and effort to write ABAP/JAVA code, 25% reduction in time and effort to test ABAP/JAVA code, and 4.4% faster time to realized value.
This quarter, developers can now easily generate ABAP Unit tests for:
Public, protected, and private methods of global ABAP classes
Public methods of local classes within global class pools
In addition, the documentation chat allows developers to interact with documentation on the SAP Help Portal, providing context-aware answers and links to relevant documentation. This capability enhances productivity by offering quick access to related documentation directly within the development environment. See Documentation Chat.
Sales teams can elevate their tender response process with the Tender Analysis Agent, which automates the review of complex RFQ documents. The agent extracts critical product requirements, flags potential risks and policy gaps, and suggests optimized configurations tailored to customer needs. By reducing the effort to process incoming tenders by five percent and improving win rates, organizations can achieve measurable revenue growth while accelerating sales cycles and uncovering valuable cross-sell and up-sell opportunities.
SAP Commodity Management, AI-assisted commodity work center General availability
Commodity traders can transform how they capture and manage complex deals using the commodity work center in SAP Commodity Management. Working alongside Joule, the feature converts verbal or written negotiations into detailed draft deals, automatically populating the numerous fields that traditionally require extensive manual entry. This enables traders to redirect their focus toward negotiating better commercial outcomes, while improving data accuracy and driving greater operational efficiency across their trading activities.
SAP Intelligent Clinical Supply Management, AI-assisted predictive subject dynamics General availability
Clinical trial coordinators seeking to boost their supply planning capabilities will find a powerful ally in SAP Intelligent Clinical Supply Management. The predictive subject dynamics feature analyzes historical and real-time data to forecast patient enrollment trends and dropout rates, automatically generating insights that would otherwise require extensive manual analysis. This enables supply chain teams to redirect their focus to strategic decision-making, while reducing clinical inventory waste costs by up to two percent and improving demand forecasting accuracy across their trial operations.
Joule with SAP Intelligent Clinical Supply Management General availability
Clinical supply professionals juggling multiple tasks and complex systems need quick access to information without disrupting their workflow. Together with Joule, SAP Intelligent Clinical Supply Management delivers an intuitive, conversational interface that understands natural-language requests, enabling users to retrieve critical data and navigate to relevant applications effortlessly. This streamlined experience results in an 83% reduction in time spent on information searches, freeing teams to concentrate on higher-value activities and significantly boosting overall productivity.
SAP Self-Billing Cockpit, AI-assisted document processing General availability
Billing clerks managing self-billing workflows frequently encounter invoices arriving in a mix of formats—Excel, PDF, CSV, or text files—often unstructured and spanning multiple languages. SAP Self-Billing Cockpit addresses this challenge by leveraging intelligent document processing to parse and extract invoice data from virtually any format, converting it into structured payloads ready for automated billing. The result is significantly reduced time spent processing invoice line items, fewer customer-specific interfaces for integration specialists to build and maintain, and improved extraction accuracy through minimized manual intervention.
SAP Business AI for business transformation management
Joule with SAP Signavio solutions General availability
Process analysts and optimization specialists working across complex organizational workflows require rapid access to diagrams, documentation, and performance metrics. SAP Signavio solutions integrate with Joule to enable natural-language keyword searches across process diagrams, dictionary items, and help resources. At the same time, best-practice KPI recommenders guide users to the most relevant success measures. This intuitive approach delivers 50% faster information searches and navigation, ensuring teams make data-driven decisions with improved search quality and an enhanced overall user experience.
SAP Signavio solutions, AI-assisted business process model and notation simulation insights General availability
Process analysts leveraging SAP Signavio can now access embedded business process model and notation simulations directly within their process diagrams, eliminating the need for fragmented tools and manual interpretation. Key metrics such as costs, cycle times, and resource utilization are automatically translated into clear, actionable summaries that highlight bottlenecks and opportunities for improvement. This streamlined approach reduces time to access process modeling insights by 50%, empowering teams to compare scenarios effortlessly and communicate findings to stakeholders with greater confidence and clarity.
SAP LeanIX solutions, AI-assisted architecture guidance General availability
Enterprise architects seeking to accelerate transformation initiatives can leverage SAP LeanIX to surface actionable insights directly from their architecture inventory. The feature analyzes enterprise architecture data to identify opportunities and guides users through the workflows and tasks needed to efficiently act on recommendations. Organizations benefit from a 95% reduction in time to discover insights, 80% faster transformation execution, and a five percent reduction in value erosion from delayed action. Overall, this feature drives greater architectural productivity and more agile decision-making.
*Disclaimer: This article provides estimated benefits. All calculations are estimates based on SAP customer case studies, SAP benchmarks, and other research. Actual benefits may vary and may be affected by additional factors not considered by this article. The information is provided “as is” without warranty of any kind, expressor implied, and in no event shall SAP be liable for any damages whatsoever in relation with the use of this article. See Legal Notice on https://www.sap.com/legal-notice for use terms, disclaimers, disclosures, or restrictions related to this material.
