Artificial Intelligence (AI) enables a fundamental shift in how businesses and users interact with technology. Instead of machines completing pre-defined tasks, AI can now effectively “think” and act in a much more independent manner. At this stage, the exact impact of AI on business practices remains uncertain. However, unlike previous technological innovations, AI (including Generative AI) is expected to influence personnel, user experience and future business solutions directly. Since these changes will affect all operational and business areas, companies need to understand AI's capabilities and opportunities thoroughly to develop an effective strategy.

For companies where SAP software plays a central role in core ERP processing or surrounding areas, understanding SAP’s Business AI is an essential first step. Engaging with HCLTech’s AI & Cloud Native Lab for SAP can help you take the next step towards realizing business value with AI. The Lab, which will also be an SAP AppHaus partner network lab, enables clients to explore industry applications and kickstart and expand AI programs.

To get you started, below are ten initial high-level ways to find and drive value from AI and Generative AI, which can help companies build a business case for investment.

1. Embrace the change – Engaging with HCLTech’s AI Labs is an effective way to better understand what is available in the AI and GenAI space more generally and more specifically, what SAP already delivers and what is in their roadmap. Experiencing what is already available will help inspire you and generate opportunities and allow you to become more open to what will follow.
2. Utilize available AI tools and solutions – Make use of the already available AI tools, Agentic Agents and assistants, including any easily adopted items from SAP’s direct suite of products and solutions. Identifying and making use of these is a simple first step for users to build awareness, experience and benefit from AI.
3. Identify your own AI use cases – Quality potential use cases are crucial for creating an AI solution roadmap that adds business value. Focus on identifying these within specific business or technical areas that address recognized corporate pain points. Engaging with the right business, technical and end-user communities will be essential to uncovering real pain points, grouping them, understanding them in detail, qualifying them and finally, identifying potential solutions.
4. Prioritize your use cases based on business benefit and reach of the use case. These then need to be grouped, clarified and ultimately agreed by the business, also taking into account technical and user value. This organized approach will help you identify both initial initiatives and build a future roadmap for delivery.
5. Drive initial use – Ideally the chosen use cases will have compelling business value, improve user experience and have a wide reach; this will help encourage AI’s use and build momentum for future roadmap items. Securing executive support and ensuring you listen to and resolve real issues will also help drive adoption and build a solid platform for on-going initiatives.
6. Understand the change impacts – It is important to consider the changes to business offerings, user experience and technology interaction, as well as operative use. These changes could have wide and even unexpected impacts; hence early work on change management is as critical in AI areas as it is in any other technical program. This will also be an on-going need, as the opportunities, solutions and capabilities will be expected to evolve rapidly over the coming years.
7. Be ready – Initial use cases will also help build and refine the framework, governance and delivery in the AI area. If rapid change occurs, being ready from a full delivery and management perspective is critical. This includes preparing the people, organization and possibly customers, vendors, suppliers and partners too and taking into account any ethical considerations that need to be addressed.
8. Stay current – AI is fast-moving and SAP has a clear and published roadmap. Keeping up with developments in AI and understanding how other companies utilize these capabilities will help shape your company’s roadmap and maximize benefits and returns.
9. Don’t be constrained – At this stage, it’s challenging to really be sure of the scope and range of change that AI could unleash. It’s thus important for business and individuals not to be constrained by old ways of working or by assumptions about what could (or could not) be possible. AI can work accurately across large data volumes at high speed and provide insights which can open up new opportunities.
10. Include human input – A level of human input, review and control without bias will also be needed. This must be factored in how solutions are delivered and operated. Without review there can be a risk to the quality and consistency of any AI-derived solutions. Grounding solutions and providing feedback are all ways to ensure your AI solution is effective.

In conclusion, this area is rapidly evolving and understanding what is possible and how this could be applied within your own corporate landscape will be key. Being able to invest, gain benefit and ultimately differentiate your business through the effective use of AI will be not just a key way to increase business value, it could also be a requirement to stay competitive against others in your market space.

If you are interested in new innovations around SAP delivery such as Gen AI, then please contact HCLTech to see how we can assist you and specifically if we can help via our GenAI Labs or Innovation Labs.