Empowering Public Sector Users of SAP S/4HANA Cloud with SAP Business AI

[sally_liong]

For many governments around the world, driving efficiency and leveraging technological advances to increase workforce productivity are high on their list of priorities. At SAP, we harness the right AI tools working within the context of your data, to offer you real-world results that make a difference to your business. This is what we refer to as SAP Business AI and SAP Joule is your business AI assistant, grounded in SAP data. 

After the 2408 release of SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, government agencies in Australia, Canada, Germany, The Netherlands, United Kingdom and the United States of America, can look forward to AI innovations that SAP is planning to introduce next in Public Sector Management (PSM). The PSM scope bundle consists of Grants Management, Budget Management and Funds Accounting. Specifically, SAP will be adding budget and grant management context to SAP Joule. With context awareness, SAP Joule is designed to streamline and improve the user experience, allowing users to efficiently navigate their financial systems and retrieve information to make better strategic decisions. New users typically require extensive training, SAP Joule can quickly provide definitions, summaries, and how-to guidance, saving time and reducing enquiries to IT departments.

The SAP Road Map Explorer provides information on what and when the innovations are planned, and the SAP Process Navigator provides information on where these innovations will be available. Let us have a look at what these planned changes in PSM entail.

The User Experience - Reimagined

Interactions with SAP Joule are carried out using natural language, just like how you communicate with your friendly colleagues each day! No learning curve to overcome before you get the answers you need. 

Use SAP Joule to get quick answers to your questions and save time searching through lengthy documentation. No question is too basic for Joule and Joule can even make sense of your shorthand!
  

Efficient Navigation and Task Execution

Today, SAP supports many customers across the globe who run highly complex business processes. Users often utilize different functions and screens to perform multiple transactions. SAP Joule can help users quickly and efficiently navigate to relevant applications to complete their tasks. In our Early Adopter program, participants have reported time savings of up to 90% when performing navigational and transactional tasks. With Joule’s help, a task that used to require 5 minutes was reduced to 30 seconds. This can potentially lead to significant cost savings for public sector organizations. Let’s estimate the potential savings an agency with 10,000 employees could realize: 

Joule can help reduce the time to perform routine tasks by quickly bringing you to the relevant application screen. Instead of navigating through menu options, simply enter a short query such as “Show Funds”. You will be provided with options to access the relevant screen directly or to read related documentation. 

Click on the “Open” button and SAP Joule directly brings you to the “Manage Funds” screen where you can search and display information about various funds. You can create or delete funds, or access individual funds to make changes.

A new user can quickly learn about the “Manage Funds” application by clicking on the SAP Help link provided by Joule.

Here’s another example of how you can easily navigate the application and perform your tasks more quickly with the help of SAP Joule:

To make changes to a grant, simply say what you want to do and SAP Joule will guide you.

When you click on the “Open” button to manage grants, SAP Joule brings you directly to the screen where you can view or amend details of the grant.

A user who is unfamiliar with Grants Management can learn more by clicking on the SAP Help link provided by Joule. Joule ensures that the most relevant content is presented to you right from the start, saving you time scrolling through multiple pages of less important information.

We are just starting our journey with SAP Joule, and our customers can expect more AI innovations to be added across SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition. Information on these plans can be found on the SAP Road Map Explorer. To find out more about AI and its potential to serve your needs in the public sector, please read our whitepaper, “AI in the Public Sector”.

[dante_ricci]

Thanks for providing an update Sally.  This insight is helpful.  

Dante 

[RyanVanLeent]

Looking forward to hearing about the efficiencies that our government customers achieve with Joule navigational assistance for budget and grants management!

[RobJonkers]

Great blog Sally! 

[Uday-B]

Thank you, @sally_liong. This was insightful.

320K Euro efficiency savings just with the existing use cases via Joule alone; this sounds phenomenal. It would also be great to understand other/additional quantified improvements or benefits, either cross-industry or Public Sector-specific, with S/4HANA

[JAEUK]

Thank you.

This blog provides great information.

Using Joule for efficient navigation and accurate task execution is excellent. However, if there are custom apps in S/4HANA, is there a way for Joule to learn these custom apps? If custom apps are excluded, there is a risk of providing inaccurate information.

[ekaterina_ivanova]

Thanks for the great blog, Sally! Looking forward to Joule Navigational coming to help public sector financial users!

[sally_liong]

Thanks to everyone for taking time to read my blog, greatly appreciate your responses and comments!

Hi @JAEUK, thank you for your query.
Joule is embedded only in our cloud portfolio, hence it does not learn (on-premise) custom applications. The planned enhancements described in the blog will be available in SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition.