SAP SE, a top provider of cloud-based enterprise resource planning software, said today it’s expanding its generative artificial intelligence push with a host of new capabilities available now within its portfolio of customer experience tools.

The new capabilities are delivered via an upgrade to SAP’s natural language generative AI copilot Joule. They’re designed to automate time-consuming tasks while providing actionable insights that will allow companies to create more intelligent, personal experiences for customers, SAP said.

The company first revealed its ambitions for generative AI in May when it announced a suite of AI tools for its main ERP software suite at its Sapphire Now conference. It followed up by announcing its AI copilot Joule last month, saying it can be thought of as an assistant that can generate proactive and contextualized insights by rapidly sorting through the tons of data held in both SAP’s systems and also third-party sources. This is a key differentiator, SAP says, because most other generative AI models can only draw on the data found in a single, siloed system.

President and Chief Product Officer Ritu Bhargava said the newest updates announced today build on those earlier services, and are all about putting customers at the center of business transformation to deliver superior, personalized experiences. “These new AI capabilities within the SAP CX portfolio will allow businesses to unlock their full potential, improve customer loyalty, solidify themselves as industry leaders and reap the benefits of generative AI with intelligent CX solutions that have a tangible impact on businesses,” she said.

The new capabilities include more than 10 CX role-based tools that aim to boost the productivity of customer service teams by automating routine tasks. For instance, when a customer issue arises, Joule will be able to summarize the problem and align the correct team, provide an overview of the customer’s sentiment, suggest solutions and track how fast everything is resolved, SAP said.

Catalog management and product discovery are another area of improvement. The company explained that product catalog management is one of the most arduous tasks for commerce managers, yet it’s also very important. If items aren’t tagged properly, they won’t show up when customers search for them. With the new capabilities, SAP said, commerce managers can now ensure superior product visibility and discoverability by reviewing product tags and catalogs, generating descriptions and pointing customers in the right direction to help them find what they’re looking for.

SAP also detailed a new Intelligent Q&A feature that can help to identify and answer customer questions. For example, if a salesperson receives an email from a customer asking about products, Intelligent Q&A can identify the key questions immediately and suggest responses that provide the answers the customer is looking for.

Moreover, the SAP Customer Data Platform can now generate profiles that provide a more complete, 360-degree view of each customer. So whenever the customer makes contact, the customer service representative will be able to provide a more personalized service and get to the root of their issue more quickly, SAP said.

Elsewhere, there are new AI-powered risk-based authentication functions designed to secure customer’s identity data and increase trust, plus content generation capabilities within SAP Emarysys Customer Engagement platform. The latter function will help customer teams to send compelling and targeted emails to each customer contact, informing them of relevant new products and promotions they might be interested in, for example. Finally, the SAP Sales Cloud and SAP Service Cloud offerings gain new, AI-powered email summaries and response features to speed up and enhance customer interactions and improve the overall level of service given to each one, SAP said.

International Data Corp. analyst Alan Webber said today’s updates are likely to resonate with SAP’s customers, as many are keen to find a trusted AI partner. With SAP, he said, they may well have found one.

“SAP’s approach to connecting data across the enterprise, both in SAP systems and beyond, provides a foundation that customers can build on in the long-term,” he said. “SAP’s decade-long experience designing business processes from AI can also be leveraged to reduce time to value.”

Photo: SAP SE