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jana_richter
Employee
Employee
1,432
What an amazing SAP TechEd (virtual-only) event it has been this year! It’s been a pleasure to unveil what’s new with artificial intelligence at SAP to all our customers, partners, and developers around the world. Throughout the event, we showed how we are building intelligent enterprises by infusing our AI technologies into applications and business scenarios at scale.

We want to make sure your AI learning journey continues, so let’s briefly recap what we’ve announced this year including some key takeaways from our dedicated AI Channel 1 session and the official SAP TechEd 2021 News Guide.

How SAP makes your business intelligent with Enterprise AI


Best-run businesses are intelligent enterprises - which leverage technologies to optimize, automate and re-imagine business processes. AI is one of these technologies is particularly characterized by its applicability to various business processes across companies. This is primarily possible through the learning ability of machines - but how do they actually learn?

Dr. feiyuxu2021, SVP Global Head of SAP AI, addressed this question in her strategy talk and explained how machines obtain knowledge, using a tangible, real-life example. You'll also get a deeper understanding of the unique selling points of our enterprise AI offering.

bhagat.nainani, SVP Product Development at SAP, explained later in the same strategy talk the value of AI in process automation and the role of AI in the new SAP Process Automation offering by showing a sales order approval scenario in an insightful demo.

Then it was my turn to provide further insights into embedded AI applications, i.e. infusing AI natively into SAP standard solutions. I've emphasized two recent examples with SAP S/4HANA: Intelligent Intercompany Reconciliation and Sales Order Automation.

I've also explained how developers can leverage our AI services available on SAP BTP for their own extensions and I've addressed what challenges can be encountered when implementing AI projects and best practices to better tackle them.

“AI can power SAP solutions and can be delightful for users, with more recommendations and context. We embed this in SAP solutions, but you as a developer can use the same ingredients for your own extensions. Get started within the SAP Discovery Center, SAP Community & learn while you go!”

Watch the interview

Villeroy & Boch experiences hyperautomation


Villeroy & Boch, a multinational ceramic producer, leverages our AI services to automate invoice error handling processes. Dr. Daniel Neuhäuser, Head of ERP Core Solutions at the Villeroy & Boch Group, came on the virtual stage to present how they have successfully combined SAP AI Business Services with SAP Intelligent RPA to improve operational efficiency across the enterprise.

The main business challenge was the time-consuming repetitive task of invoice error handling. They identified automation potential and required a solution that could handle unstructured and unknown data.By using Document Classification, one of SAP AI Business Services, and SAP Intelligent RPA together, they managed to automate the classification of more than 90% of documents, which represents 4,500 documents and 3,000 emails per year.

The combination of both services allowed increasing operational efficiency with streamlined and accelerated workflows and empowered employees to engage in more fulfilling, value-added activities.

Dr. Neuhäuser also gave more detailed information about the success criteria of this hyperautomation project and how each service was used.

Watch the full customer testimonial

Final words


“Our SAP strength is understanding complex business challenges and optimizing business processes.”

One of the insightful answers Dr. Feiyu Xu gave in the final live Q&A, highlighting once again how SAP uses customer data in combination with AI to build intelligent enterprises.

Follow this link if you want to watch the full Q&A session.

Top announcements


In addition to our sessions, we have expanded embedded artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities that make it easier for developers and customers to harness AI and boost productivity.

  1. Additional embedded AI integrations in SAP products and services to automate intercompany document matching, recommend actions in workflows, and the ability to extract and process data from business documents.

  2. New SAP Conversational AI features that simplify building and monitoring intelligent chatbots to deliver world-class user experiences in a low-code manner.

  3. A new Personalized Recommendation service planned to be launched in early 2022, which is a novel neural network-based recommendation engine that delivers highly personalized recommendations across a wide range of business scenarios.

  4. The general availability of SAP AI Core and SAP AI Launchpad for customers and partners on SAP Business Technology Platform.
    SAP AI Launchpad is the central vehicle for teams to manage operations and the lifecycle of AI content across all landscapes and deployment options.
    SAP AI Core provides AI applications and services with an engine for AI runtime capabilities, accelerating the development and productization of AI functions by providing ready integration into SAP solutions.
    Check this dedicated SAP TechEd session to learn more!


For more details, read the official event News Guide.

What’s Next?


SAP TechEd 2021 might be over, but it’s now time to translate your learnings into tangible projects for your business!

Don’t miss season 2 of our “Drive Hyperautomation with SAP Business Technology Platform” webinar series. Learn how our SAP AI Business Services like Document Information Extraction and Service Ticket Intelligence can be easily combined with SAP Process Automation tools to rapidly improve the efficiency of your business processes.

3 Tuesdays in the row (November 30th – December 14th) are dedicated to process automation scenarios in specific line-of-business: Finance, Customer Experience, and Supply Chain Management.

With eleven guided demos, you will learn how to solve your day-to-day business challenges by increasing the level of automation and infusing AI in enterprise applications such as SAP S/4HANA, SAP Business One, SAP Business ByDesign, and SAP Commerce Cloud.

This is just the start of your learning journey…