Generative AI is the number one driver of transformation today. While it may not be the only or final technological breakthrough, embracing generative AI requires both a multi-year change agenda and a continuous transformation program.

And it all starts with value and elevating IT for the AI era with a strong and secure digital core. This includes emphasis on adopting ready-to-scale AI models, a modern data foundation, and a flexible AI architecture that supports the use of multiple foundation models to future-proof organizations from the evolution of technology and model changes.  

According to Accenture research, 40% of C-suite leaders believe their organization will fully scale generative AI enterprise-wide in six to 12 months. Currently organizations are scaling generative AI in select business areas either extensively (56%) or in a limited way (nearly 30%). Only 10% say they have scaled generative AI with extensive adoption across their entire enterprise, and just 13% are “extremely confident” they have the right data strategy and core digital capabilities in place to effectively leverage generative AI.  

That’s why organizations are increasingly turning to SAP and its partners to help them completely transform their business, and why SAP and Accenture are working together to help their customers make SAP Business AI and data their number one competitive advantage.

Accenture Embraces SAP Business AI to Advance Business Outcomes

By Marc-Oliver Klein and Stephanie Guimbellot

SAP and Accenture have been collaborating and working with customers on technology evolution for over 40 years, using their unique strengths to help industries transform and lead in the market.

As AI is integrated into business applications, it is unleashing new levels of productivity and creativity while forging a path to the future that is different and faster than any previous technology wave.

For many clients, 2023 was a year of experimentation with generative AI. In 2024, we’re focusing on helping clients realize value at scale by going after the business potential in enterprise data with AI, strengthening digital core with embedded AI capabilities, enhancing business functions with AI insights, and accelerating revenue growth with SAP Business AI offerings like Joule, generative AI hub, SAP Datasphere, and SAP HANA Cloud vector engine.

“In partnership with SAP and its customers, we’re emphasizing must-dos for the C-suite,” said Lan Guan, chief AI officer at Accenture. “That includes leading with value, investing in a digital core, nurturing talent, practicing responsible AI, and committing to continuous reinvention. This is how you capitalize on AI’s inflection moment strategically.”

And with Joule, business process reinvention and change adoption in cloud ERP just got easier through new capabilities to boost IT and business user experiences. Accenture plans to embrace the consulting capability for Joule and ABAP code generation in compressed cloud ERP transformations and will collaborate on the consulting capability for Joule with a team of AI experts and prompt designers to facilitate relevant user responses aligned with SAP industry best practices and clean core strategies.

“Our ecosystem plays a critical role in helping our customers adopt SAP Business AI to get immediate value from these exciting new technologies and solutions,” said SAP Chief AI Officer Philipp Herzig. “We very much value our long-standing partnership with Accenture. They have long been an important partner in the industry for bringing innovation to our joint customers, now also by activating SAP’s embedded AI capabilities, including Joule, and building customer use cases on SAP Business Technology Platform with SAP AI Core and generative AI hub. I look forward to our continued collaboration and the outcomes that generative AI will deliver in both business transformations and operations for our customers.”

Accenture is already working on various use cases that leverage SAP Business AI offerings, and the company continues to take an early leadership position in SAP Business AI.

• Accenture’s financial advisor, an SAP 2024 Innovation award winner, uses SAP AI core and large language models (LLMs) to deliver untapped financial value in financial ledgers and transactions. It is helping Accenture business and finance leaders reduce decision-making time by 15%, reduce financial narrative efforts by 60%, and mitigate risks with real-time financial data insights, including 13,000+ user alerts per month.
• Accenture’s supply chain nerve center uses AI models to enable intelligent, responsive, and risk-resilient supply chains to help clients manage disruptions, identify improvements, and resolve issues. The nerve center uses SAP’s generative AI hub and SAP Business Technology Platform, which connects to an LLM fully integrated with SAP S/4HANA Cloud, SAP Integrated Business Planning, and SAP Intelligent Asset Management.

Accenture is also evolving its assets and platforms including GenWizard, SynOpps, and AI Navigator for Enterprise to help clients move to cloud ERP faster and achieve earlier business outcomes.

Make Decisions Easier with SAP Business Transformation Solutions and Large Process Models

By Hartmut Poppinga and José Morán Moya

SAP and Accenture are teaming on SAP Signavio and SAP LeanIX solutions to help customers with the quantitative insights they need to get alignment and buy-in on cloud ERP and the foundation to tap into the full value of generative AI.

The combined power of SAP and Accenture is helping customers examine business processes at every level of the organization, establish what works, discard what doesn’t and use their own data to create a business case and measure success and value over time. SAP is helping with foundational implementation and Accenture teams are providing analysis, insights, advisory and process modeling. This collaboration is significantly reducing the time it takes clients to complete current state and gap analysis to get to value faster.

“The long-standing partnership between Accenture and SAP is characterized by delivering successful transformation outcomes to our mutual customers,” said Mani Pirouz, chief business officer of SAP Signavio and LeanIX. “Through our joint offerings we help companies become agile, resilient, and intelligent enterprises. SAP Signavio plays a crucial role in transformations by providing insights, collaboration, governance, and execution capabilities for continuous process improvements. These allow companies to unlock business value above and beyond their technical road maps.”

SAP and Accenture’s focus is grounded in a value-led method, cloud ERP business case, and road map that takes a holistic approach to an organization’s full value chain and helps customers:

• Understand the potential to reinvent the value chain and develop end-to-end capabilities powered by generative AI and new ways of working
• Be value-led in every business capability chosen to reinvent with generative AI
• Identify strategic bets where the technology creates differentiated sources of value that cannot be easily captured by competitors
• Reorient the organization from siloed functions to end-to-end business capabilities and decision-making through a unified data architecture and cross-functional teams

“Combining Accenture’s deep industry expertise with SAP solutions helps clients define and realize value in a systematic way,” said Caspar Borggreve, senior managing director and lead of Accenture SAP Business Group. “This is about shifting the focus from siloed use cases to a holistic look at industry value chains to prioritize investments, achieve efficiencies, benefit from generative AI, and scale competitiveness.”

Learn more about Accenture + SAP. 

As part of its business AI strategy, SAP provides access to AI models through the generative AI hub in SAP AI Core on SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP). By integrating advanced AI capabilities into the business context of organizations, customers benefit from solutions that are relevant, reliable, and responsible.

Grounded in an AI ethics framework, SAP collaborates with partners to create insights from industry-specific data and deep process knowledge, driving exponential value for businesses. By fostering a multi-partner approach, SAP ensures flexibility and prevents vendor lock-in, empowering customers and partners to navigate the AI landscape effectively. 

As a next step in that journey, SAP is integrating the Meta Llama 2 and Meta Llama 3 models into the generative AI hub to enable customers to create dashboards based on rich content with Llama qualitative conversational outputs, and to explore use cases built with Meta Llama 3.  

The SAP Business AI white paper provides an overview of SAP’s business AI strategy, highlighting the unparalleled opportunity for the SAP ecosystem to build an array of solutions with generative AI capabilities and extensions on SAP BTP. 

SAP Analytics Cloud AI Portfolio Expansion 

SAP will make Joule available in SAP Analytics Cloud to let planning and analytics users get work done faster and drive better business outcomes in a secure and compliant way. The wide range of capabilities offered by Meta Llama 3 will enable Joule users to get assistance with key activities, including the auto-generation of custom scripts to extend dashboards, as well as delivery of the most accurate scripts directly in SAP Analytics Cloud.  

The goal is to integrate generative AI into major workflows of SAP Analytics Cloud. Transforming these workflows will unlock innovative possibilities for distinct planning and analytics roles that are common in organizations globally. More information on how SAP Analytics Cloud with Joule will help planning and analytics users get work done more efficiently is available here. 

Availability of Meta Llama 3 on Generative AI Hub 

SAP will make Llama 3 available in Q2 2024 in the generative AI hub in SAP AI Core given customer interest in Llama 3. The generative AI hub makes it simple to build generative AI use cases for SAP applications, thanks to its value-adding features around SAP integration and the ability to orchestrate language model interactions.

Adding Meta Llama 3 to the generative AI hub allows developers in the SAP ecosystem to leverage its value-adding features. The 70B variant of Meta Llama 3 will be the largest open-source model available on the generative AI hub. 

SAP SuccessFactors Text-to-Image Generation Requirements 

SAP customers are exploring ways to enhance the visual appeal and relevance of images within the SAP SuccessFactors HCM suite. The current process of curating and uploading images can be time-consuming and costly, often resulting in generic images that only partially cater to specific scenarios while also incurring expenses associated with stock image licensing.

Integrating the latest iteration of Meta’s open-source large language model (LLM) offers numerous benefits. Creative features from models such as Llama 3 come into play in a scenario like this, empowering users to generate custom images that better meet their needs within SAP SuccessFactors software. Whether it is customizable course content thumbnails and banners for learning, tailored images for assignments in SAP SuccessFactors Opportunity Marketplace, unique images for different themes on the home page, or personalized profile and banner images on people profile, the impact will be far reaching. 

By streamlining the image creation process, reducing costs, and ensuring that every image is suited to its context, this feature will undoubtedly improve user engagement and the overall platform experience. SAP customers should get ready to explore a new world of custom imagery tailored to their exact specifications, sparkling excitement and intrigue among stakeholders.

Walter Sun is senior vice president and global head of AI at SAP SE.

In a significant move towards digital transformation, Qatari Investors Group Q.P.S.C. (QIG), a diversified conglomerate listed on the Qatar Stock Exchange, has entered into a partnership agreement with global technology company SAP SE. This collaboration will enable QIG to leverage the benefits of SAP’s cloud ERP solution, SAP S/4HANA Cloud, with data securely hosted in […]

The post Qatari Investors Group Accelerates SAP Transition to Cloud appeared first on InsideSAP.

Intelliwave Technologies has announced the availability of its SiteSense Mobile Materials Management solution on the SAP Store, offering customers a powerful tool for managing construction materials and inventory. The integration with SAP S/4HANA enables seamless synchronization of procurement data and goods movement transactions, empowering field teams to efficiently handle materials, inventory, and warehouse management tasks […]

The post Intelliwave Announces SiteSense Integration with SAP S/4HANA appeared first on InsideSAP.

In March 2023, SAP, a global leader in enterprise software, launched its “Source from Ukraine” initiative as part of its Corporate Social Responsibility (SAP CSR) program. This initiative aims to support the economic reconstruction of Ukraine by increasing procurement spend with Ukrainian companies while simultaneously promoting sustainability and innovation. SAP CSR demonstrates the company’s unwavering […]

The post SAP CSR Initiative Empowers Ukraine’s Economic Reconstruction appeared first on InsideSAP.

In the face of economic headwinds and unpredictability, SAP in Africa is empowering businesses to shift from stagnation to innovation-driven growth. At the recent SAP Innovation Day in Johannesburg, technology and business leaders gathered to discuss how African enterprises can leverage cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud computing to optimize processes, gain […]

The post Enterprises Drive Sustainable Business Growth with SAP in Africa appeared first on InsideSAP.

In a significant development for the world of commercial real estate financing, SAP Fioneer, a leading software specialist for the financial services industry, has joined forces with Deutsche Pfandbriefbank AG (pbb) to launch the Digital Credit Workplace.  The commercial real estate financing sector has long been plagued by inefficiencies and challenges that hinder the realization […]

The post SAP Fioneer, pbb Revolutionize Commercial Real Estate Financing appeared first on InsideSAP.

SAP Insights has revealed a growing trend among Australian businesses to prioritize sustainability as a strategic imperative, driven by the recognition that it directly impacts their competitiveness and profitability. The recent study, which surveyed 4,750 respondents across 21 nations and 29 industries, found that 68% of Australian organizations see a moderate to strong correlation between […]

The post SAP Insights Shows Increased Aussie Sustainability Investments appeared first on InsideSAP.