SAP Reimagines How Enterprises Run With Business AI

Rhea-AI Summary

At its annual Sapphire conference, SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) unveiled major AI innovations centered around its Joule AI assistant, projecting potential productivity gains of up to 30%. The company announced key partnerships with Perplexity and Palantir to enhance its Business AI capabilities. Key developments include: • An expanded Joule AI assistant that works across systems with new ubiquitous presence • Enhanced Joule Agents for autonomous business process management • New AI Foundation operating system for enterprise AI development • Introduction of SAP Business Data Cloud with intelligent applications • New SAP Business Suite packages for simplified cloud adoption • A cloud transition solution promising up to 35% faster time to value The Perplexity partnership enhances Joule's data analysis capabilities, while Palantir collaboration aims to streamline cloud migration and data harmonization for enterprise customers.

Positive

• Projected productivity gains of up to 30% through Business AI innovations
• Strategic partnerships with Perplexity and Palantir to enhance AI capabilities
• New cloud transition solution promising 35% faster time to value
• Introduction of AI Foundation operating system for scalable enterprise AI development
• Expanded Joule AI assistant capabilities across systems and business processes

Negative

• None.

Insights

Enterprise Software Analyst

SAP's sweeping Business AI innovations could transform enterprise productivity through expanded Joule assistant capabilities and strategic partnerships with Perplexity and Palantir.

SAP's latest announcements represent a significant shift in how the company is positioning itself in the competitive enterprise AI landscape. The expanded capabilities of Joule—now designed to be virtually omnipresent across both SAP and non-SAP applications—signals a strategic evolution from siloed business applications toward an integrated AI-assistant approach that follows users throughout their workflows.

The partnership with Perplexity is particularly noteworthy as it addresses one of the fundamental challenges in enterprise AI: combining structured internal data with unstructured external information. By integrating Perplexity's answer engine with SAP's Knowledge Graph, Joule can now provide contextual insights that blend company-specific metrics with relevant external factors—a capability that dramatically enhances decision-making processes.

The introduction of Joule Agents represents SAP's answer to the emerging agent-based AI architecture trend. Unlike basic chatbots, these autonomous agents can execute complex workflows across organizational boundaries, potentially reducing process friction that typically occurs when crossing departmental lines. This approach could significantly improve operational efficiency, particularly for large enterprises with complex, multi-system environments.

The new AI Foundation development platform signals SAP's recognition that customers increasingly want to build custom AI solutions tailored to their specific business needs. By providing what they're calling "the first real operating system for Business AI," SAP is attempting to position itself as the foundation layer for enterprise AI development—a strategically valuable position as companies increasingly compete on AI capabilities.

The Palantir partnership is equally strategic, targeting enterprise data integration challenges that have traditionally complicated digital transformation efforts. This collaboration could accelerate cloud migration for joint customers by creating more seamless pathways between legacy systems and modern cloud architectures.

Business Technology Strategist

SAP's comprehensive Business AI strategy addresses three critical enterprise technology challenges: user experience friction, cross-system data integration, and the productivity gap in business processes. The claim of up to 30% productivity improvements is ambitious but aligns with emerging research on generative AI's impact on knowledge worker efficiency.

The WalkMe-powered action bar that studies user behavior introduces an important advancement: proactive AI assistance rather than merely reactive tools. This shift from traditional query-response AI to anticipatory intelligence represents a significant evolution in enterprise software design, potentially reducing the cognitive load on employees navigating complex business systems.

SAP's Business Data Cloud applications demonstrate a sophisticated understanding of how AI needs to be vertically integrated into specific business functions to deliver value. The People Intelligence application, for example, targets the increasingly critical challenge of skills mapping and workforce optimization—a pressing concern as organizations struggle with talent shortages and rapidly evolving skill requirements.

The introduction of SAP Business Suite packages reveals a strategic response to a persistent customer pain point: complex, lengthy cloud migration journeys. By embedding SAP Build and offering a claimed 35% faster time to value, SAP is tackling implementation challenges that have historically slowed cloud adoption and digital transformation efforts.

The collaboration with Not Diamond on prompt optimization acknowledges a frequently overlooked challenge in enterprise AI adoption: the considerable expertise required to effectively design AI prompts for complex business scenarios. By reducing this work from days to minutes, SAP could significantly lower the barrier to entry for organizations looking to implement sophisticated AI use cases without extensive specialized talent.

AI Innovations Aim to Boost Business Productivity by Up to 30 Percent; Partnerships with Perplexity and Palantir Bring out Customers' Best

ORLANDO, Fla., May 20, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- At its annual SAP Sapphire conference, SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) unveiled innovations and partnerships that put the power of Business AI in every user's hands, revolutionizing the way work gets done. From a virtually omnipresent Joule assistant to an expanded network of Joule Agents that work across systems and lines of business, SAP heralds a new era that democratizes access to Business AI and can drive productivity gains of up to 30 percent.

"SAP combines the world's most powerful suite of business applications with uniquely rich data and the latest AI innovations to create a flywheel of customer value," said SAP CEO Christian Klein. "With the expansion of Joule, our partnerships with leading AI pioneers, and advancements in SAP Business Data Cloud, we're delivering on the promise of Business AI as we drive digital transformations that help customers thrive in an increasingly unpredictable world."

AI that boosts productivity

SAP's generative AI assistant Joule can be everywhere you work, delivering personalized answers on everything you need to be more productive.

Joule can accompany business users throughout their day, in and out of the SAP application universe, to find data, surface real-time insights and streamline workflows. Joule's new ubiquity includes an action bar powered by WalkMe that studies user behavior across applications, turning the assistant into an always-available, proactive AI that can anticipate users' needs before they arise – always adhering to SAP's strict ethical AI guidelines.

A collaboration with Perplexity, an AI-powered answer engine company, enhances Joule's ability to draw on structured and unstructured data to solve complex business problems. Powered by Perplexity and the SAP Knowledge Graph, Joule now instantly answers questions with structured, visual answers - such as charts and graphs - grounded in real-time business data within SAP workflows. For example, a user could ask the tool how recent external events might impact their business and get a forecast based on both current events and the company's own business data.

SAP also unveiled an expanded library of Joule Agents that reimagine business processes and workflows from the ground up. Fueled by the world's most powerful real-time business data and orchestrated by Joule, these AI agents work across systems and lines of business to anticipate, adapt and act autonomously so organizations can stay agile in a rapidly changing world. Partnering with industry leaders, SAP offers an ecosystem of interoperable agents that can execute end-to-end processes. The new agents span customer experience, supply chain management, spend management, finance, and human capital management.

Finally, SAP introduced an operating system for AI development that transforms how enterprises build, deploy and scale AI solutions. AI Foundation gives developers a single entry point for building, extending and running custom AI solutions at scale, making it the first real operating system for Business AI. A new prompt optimizer, designed collaboratively with the frontier AI lab Not Diamond, also helps developers create more effective AI prompts quickly, reducing work on complex use cases from days to minutes.

Data that drives smarter decisions

SAP also introduced new intelligent applications in SAP Business Data Cloud, each built for a specific line of business. These applications can continuously learn, simulate outcomes and guide actions using business-critical data, detecting changes to optimize processes, anticipate needs, and collaborate with both human and artificial thinkers to drive meaningful impact. The People Intelligence application, for instance, optimizes team performance by transforming people and skills data into workforce insights and AI-driven recommendations.

Additionally, Palantir and SAP are partnering to facilitate joint customers' cloud migration journey and modernization programs. Seamless connectivity between Palantir and SAP Business Data Cloud will enable customers to build a harmonized data foundation across their enterprise landscape. Together the companies will responsibly deliver essential outcomes and support customers, including the U.S. government, to quickly adapt to changes and disruptions.

Applications that accelerate cloud adoption

The company also announced SAP Business Suite packages, which are designed for customers to simplify the adoption of SAP cloud solutions that address their specific business challenges. SAP Build is embedded in these packages, so organizations can customize applications to meet their unique needs.

Finally, SAP unveiled a new solution that helps customers transition to the cloud faster. With Joule as the entry point and drawing on insights from SAP solutions including SAP Signavio and SAP LeanIX, the solution delivers personalized guidance and actionable recommendations tailored to an organization's transformation objectives and can help deliver up to 35 percent faster time to value.

Learn more in the 2025 SAP Sapphire Innovation Guide.

Visit the SAP News Center. Get SAP news via LinkedIn and Bluesky.

About SAP
As a global leader in enterprise applications and business AI, SAP (NYSE:SAP) stands at the nexus of business and technology. For over 50 years, organizations have trusted SAP to bring out their best by uniting business-critical operations spanning finance, procurement, HR, supply chain, and customer experience. For more information, visit www.sap.com.

This document contains forward-looking statements, which are predictions, projections, or other statements about future events. These statements are based on current expectations, forecasts, and assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results and outcomes to materially differ. Additional information regarding these risks and uncertainties may be found in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including but not limited to the risk factors section of SAP's 2024 Annual Report on Form 20-F.

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FAQ

What are the main AI innovations announced by SAP at Sapphire 2025?

SAP announced expanded Joule AI assistant capabilities, new Joule Agents for business processes, AI Foundation operating system, and intelligent applications in SAP Business Data Cloud. These innovations aim to boost business productivity by up to 30%.

How will SAP's partnership with Perplexity and Palantir benefit customers?

Perplexity enhances Joule's ability to analyze structured and unstructured data, providing visual answers grounded in real-time business data. Palantir partnership facilitates cloud migration and creates a harmonized data foundation across enterprise landscapes.

What is SAP's new AI Foundation operating system?

AI Foundation is an operating system for AI development that provides developers a single entry point for building, extending, and running custom AI solutions at scale, making it the first real operating system for Business AI.

How much productivity improvement does SAP's new Business AI promise?

SAP's Business AI innovations aim to drive productivity gains of up to 30% through enhanced AI capabilities and automated business processes.

What is SAP Business Data Cloud and what does it offer?

SAP Business Data Cloud offers intelligent applications built for specific business lines that can continuously learn, simulate outcomes, and guide actions using business-critical data to optimize processes and drive meaningful impact.