SAP reveals updates to AI copilot Joule

SAP’s TechEd conference event in October revealed SAP is rapidly expanding its copilot features with Joule, the collaborative agent that can accomplish complex workflows.

Launched in September 2023, Joule was created to serve as a cloud-native artificial intelligence assistant within SAP Business Technology Platform. Embedded across SAP’s ecosystem, Joule has an understanding and appreciation of existing business contexts, and leverages data from across business units to produce precise insights at speed and scale, via its advanced natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning (ML) capacities.
 

Jesper Schleimann, head of business AI for SAP in EMEA, said:
“We’re really taking AI to the next level, and the transformative part is AI agents that are now in true business form. It also means our developers and our customers can accelerate their journeys to the cloud. We cannot forget that data is an important part in making all this happen.”

Integrated with apps, extensions, and SAP modules, Joule is the AI feature intended to incentivise the faster adoption of S/4HANA cloud software amongst the SAP customer base. SAP has announced the end of support for its legacy systems ECC, with a deadline for users to transition to S/4HANA at the end of 2027. 

Joule will be available in SAP Ariba, Analytics Cloud, and the majority of Supply Chain Management solutions before the end of 2024. In practicality, Joule can be instructed to investigate and present a detailed analysis of customer data to - for example - find the reasons for delayed orders – potentially hugely beneficial to techno-functional users working in logistics and managing supply chains. Joule will also encompass SAP SuccessFactors, human resources applications, and FI-CO modules. To demonstrate a real-world business example, Joule can be tasked with producing a profitability summary of a specific project, even identifying areas for improvement or further development. Experts in SAP Fiori can engage Joule to create new data insights and produce visualisations.


Schleimann continued: “You can do things in a low code no code way and you tell Joule how to think of it like a mini workflow. So, if a user alters a part of a travel booking or purchase order process, for example, and you have your own way of doing it, you can simply tell Joule what steps it should take, and then you can use its reasoning engine and the underlying tools to make that a reality.”


Philipp Herzig, Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer at SAP, said:
“Collaborative AI agents from SAP represent a new era in enterprise productivity. Our ability to integrate multiple specialized AI agents into Joule allows businesses to automate intricate workflows and focus on tasks that truly require human ingenuity.”


Read the full announcement from SAP here.


David Freeman, Managing Consultant at Energize SAP, said:
"This significant evolution of SAP Joule copilot software will undoubtedly prove an exciting new tool for SAP users in the cloud. As talent parters to both SAP customers throughout Europe, we know firsthand that the very best SAP professionals desire most the S/4HANA environment where the newest product releases and functionalities are available for their workflows. While SAP users will welcome these new features to increase productivity and reduce their time working on labour-intensive or repetitive tasks, even he most expert techno-functional SAP professionals recognise the need for human intervention and oversight has not given way to AI just yet! And to ensure the best person is assigned to build, manage and run SAP in your IT department, an SAP-specialist recruitment supplier remains vital to the success of your business."


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    David Freeman
    Managing Consultant
    Energize SAP