SAP will embed IBM Watson into its solutions to deliver new AI-driven insights and automation to create more efficient and effective user experiences across the SAP solution portfolio.
SAP will use IBM Watson capabilities to power its digital assistant in SAP Start, which provides a unified entry point for cloud solutions from SAP. With SAP Start, users can search for, launch and interactively engage with apps provided in cloud solutions from SAP and SAP S/4HANA Cloud.
New AI capabilities in SAP Start will be designed to help users boost productivity with both natural language capabilities and predictive insights using IBM Watson AI solutions.
“This milestone collaboration with IBM aims to provide SAP customers a better user experience, faster decision-making and greater insights to help transform their business processes,” said Christian Klein, CEO and member of the executive board of SAP SE.
“Working together to incorporate additional AI, machine learning and other intelligent technologies into SAP solutions can lead to better business outcomes for our joint customers.”
Christian Klein, SAP
New digital assistant capabilities in SAP Start will be extended across SAP solutions to help answer diverse questions for managers and employees. By automating and speeding up common tasks, the capabilities are designed to help unlock employee productivity to focus on more strategic work.
SAP Start will allow customers to benefit from intelligence at the point of decision-making with the ability to use AI and machine learning to extract information from a variety of data sources and answer user questions across lines of business.
Currently, IBM technology available in the TripIt mobile app from SAP Concur is helping nearly 13 million users easily access AI-derived weather insights to make more sustainable travel choices before and during their trips.
SAP and IBM joint AI solutions
IBM delivers AI capabilities with Watson products deployed by more than 100 million users across 20 industries.
SAP and IBM Consulting are currently supporting customers with 25 joint intelligent industry solutions that use IBM Watson capabilities underpinned by SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP). These industry solutions help customers across industries such as retail, manufacturing and utilities accelerate their business transformation and use data to make more informed decisions.
“IBM and SAP are joining forces to give businesses new and exciting ways to harness the transformative power of AI and use it as a source of competitive advantage,” said Arvind Krishna, chairman and CEO, IBM.
“With this announcement, we are infusing IBM Watson’s powerful, enterprise-grade AI capabilities into SAP’s leading ERP platform to help businesses reimagine customer experiences, boost productivity and fuel growth.”
Arvind Krishna, IBM
In addition to natively embedding IBM Watson AI capabilities into SAP solutions, SAP and IBM are collaborating on generative AI and large language models aimed to deliver consistent continuous learning and automation based on SAP’s mission-critical application suite.
