Enterprise software giant SAP SE is building on this year’s launch of its Business AI tools with the availability of a new generative artificial intelligence copilot that it says will be embedded throughout its cloud enterprise portfolio.

It’s called Joule, and it will provide proactive and contextualized insights from across its entire suite of cloud services, as well as third-party systems, SAP said. Announced today, Joule can rapidly sort through and contextualize complex webs of siloed enterprise data to surface clear insights, the company explained. That way, it can enhance productivity for large numbers of workers and ensure better business outcomes.

SAP said Joule will be embedded into its entire range of cloud applications across human resources, finance, supply chain, procurement and customer experience. It’s also going to work with the SAP Business Technology Platform, which brings together data and analytics, AI, application development, automation and integration workloads under one unified environment.

“We’re rapidly moving past the hype cycle to meaningful use of generative AI,” Julia White, SAP’s chief marketing and solutions officer, said in a press briefing today. “AI will be the engine powering every aspect of our technology.”

With Joule, employees will be able to ask questions of the copilot in simple, natural language and receive intelligent answers based on the wealth of business data that sits inside their SAP environments. To get these answers, it will scour enterprise databases, text documents, images and more to generate insights across the entire SAP portfolio, as well as integrated third-party systems.

In addition, SAP said Joule will also be able to handle certain tasks entirely, such as writing job descriptions for HR teams that are both unbiased and compliant with known competencies and skills required. It can also help to develop relevant interview questions, SAP said, freeing up employees to make higher-level contributions.

Joule is expected to make a big impact, as SAP counts more than 300 million enterprise employees who are using its software on a daily basis. SAP Chief Executive Christian Klein said Joule benefits from SAP’s unique position, where it sits at the nexus of business and technology. “It builds on the relevant, reliable, responsible approach to Business AI we’ve pioneered to continue helping our customers solve their most pressing problems,” Klein said. “Joule will know what you mean, not just what you say.”

SAP said Joule will be integrated with all of its most popular tools, including SAP SuccessFactors, SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud Edition and SAP Start when it becomes available in November. It will also launch on SAP CX, SAP Ariba and the SAP Business Technology Platform a few weeks later, before coming to other applications in its portfolio later.

The company really needed to launch Joule, because generative AI-powered copilots are all the rage now, with almost every provider offering one to their customers, said Andy Thurai, vice president and principal analyst of Constellation Research Inc. The good news is that SAP appears to have done its homework before making Joule available to users, carefully embedding it into all of its vertical solutions.

“As with many enterprise tools, be it ERP, CRM, HR or supply solutions, SAP’s tools can be quite heavy and clunky for employees to use,” Thurai said. “With Joule and its natural language capabilities, this can bring text-based search to the forefront and make life simpler for users. It can work because SAP’s large language models will be trained on SAP’s knowledge base. This means users will be able to select process models and key performance indicators based on LLM’s that are trained on SAP’s and their own best practices.”

The launch of Joule builds on the earlier release of SAP’s Business AI tools last May. SAP Business AI helps to automate numerous business functions across its enterprise resource planning software, for example helping finance teams to control costs and reduce risk, and sales teams to automate manual functions. SAP said more than 26,000 enterprise customers are now using SAP Business AI everyday across numerous business scenarios.

Also in May, SAP announced new generative AI tools within SAP Signavio Process Manager, claiming a 50% efficiency gain for process owners and analysts by quickly identifying the best-suited, ready-to-consume business process models and key performance indicators.

SAP said Joule is just a small part of its plans to build out a comprehensive AI ecosystem within its software portfolio. Pursuing this strategy, SAP has made multiple investments in AI startups this year, such as Cohere Inc., Aleph Alpha GmbH and Anthropic. In addition, it’s also partnering with public cloud providers such as IBM Corp. and Google LLC to ensure customers can access the data they need to fuel more advanced AI technologies.

International Data Corp. analyst Phil Carter said SAP is fully aware that generative AI is set to become a part of the fabric of everyday life and work. “It’s taking the time to build a true business copilot that focuses on generating responses based on real-world scenarios,” he said. “And it’s taking the time to put in place the necessary guardrails to ensure it’s also responsible.”

Photo: SAP