In this BSA series – “Why AI?” – enterprise software leaders explain in their own words how artificial intelligence (AI) is having a positive impact on individuals, businesses, and organizations worldwide. In this submission, SAP Chief Marketing & Solutions Officer, Intelligent Spend and Business Network Etosha Thurman writes about how SAP is integrating AI solutions into every aspect of their business, allowing companies to focus on high-value work.
1. Why AI?
SAP believes that real business results require AI solutions that are relevant to our customers, work reliably and are built on trustworthy data, and most importantly are implemented in a responsible fashion. We’ve built AI with security, privacy, compliance, ethics, and accuracy in mind. Our customers trust us with their most critical data, and processes because we know how to build and run powerful and trustworthy solutions, including AI that touches their most vital data and systems.
As a leader in spend management, SAP wants to rethink the way procurement, travel and expense, and external workforce management are performed. SAP looks to automate processes, mitigate risk, and gain prescriptive insights to address spend management challenges. Business AI solutions from SAP deliver recommended actions, streamline processes, and provide guidance in key tasks. SAP enables your company to focus on high-value work by removing repetitive tasks.
2. Can you give an example?
SAP has a number of examples of how AI can be a powerful tool in spend management. An example from SAP Ariba would be our integration of a large language model into SAP Ariba Category Management. This allows a category manager to quickly populate market data. Removing hours of searching for relevant content means they can understand the category landscape very quickly and make well-informed decisions. SAP believes this will deliver as much as a 56 percent reduction in onboarding time for category managers by accelerating development processes for category strategies across several hundred categories.
Another example is how Concur is revolutionizing the Travel and Expense management experience by leveraging the transformative power of AI. Our aim is not just to lead the market but to redefine it, providing our customers with a seamless, intuitive interface that simplifies their journey from planning to reimbursement. In 2021, we launched Verify and Intelligent Audit, two pioneering AI-driven products that showcase our commitment to innovation. These sophisticated tools streamline expense data evaluation, significantly enhancing auditors’ efficiency and precision. But this is just the starting point of our journey towards a more interconnected and intelligent future. We are advancing towards seamlessly integrating all the advantages and functionalities of our audit solutions into the core Expense product in real-time, enabling customers to benefit from the latest AI advancements, capitalize on real-time payment data, and enjoy an enhanced mobile experience to further amplify customer value in the market.
3. Where can we learn more?
You can begin your AI journey with SAP at Artificial Intelligence | SAP Business AI.
About the author:
Etosha Thurman is Chief Marketing & Solutions Officer, Intelligent Spend and Business Network at SAP, where she works on strengthening SAP’s go-to-market approach, driving product marketing and solution management across our intelligent spend solutions and the SAP Business Network.