Alice Chambers |
How many copilots does a business need to be successful? That’s one question that Philipp Herzig is asked a lot in his role as chief artificial intelligence officer at SAP.
“The answer is very simple,” he says. “The answer is not about how many, but which you use when.”
The transformative power of AI solutions, in particular Joule and Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365, was front and centre at SAP’s annual Sapphire event in June. Here, the company announced that Joule and Copilot will be integrated to improve the flow of work for joint customers.
Similar to Copilot, Joule takes information from a company’s business data and delivers intelligent responses to users. It can help to manage tasks like cashflow, checking compliance needs, creating reports and providing strategic recommendations via data analysis and machine learning.
SAP’s partnership with Microsoft plays a significant role in amplifying the impact of both copilots to enhance productivity and efficiency for users and organisations alike.
“The deep bidirectional integration will allow employees to get more done in the flow of their work through seamless access to information from interactions with business applications in SAP, as well as Microsoft 365,” says Herzig. “We’re designing AI applications and tools with one fundamental principle in mind – to unleash more business value than ever before.”
For AI to be valuable to end users, SAP says it must seamlessly integrate into the natural workflow, eliminating the need to switch between platforms and apps, and to produce meaningful results. For example, a user can book a flight using travel and expense management services platform SAP Concur and Joule could then block their calendar in Microsoft Outlook. Communication can be enhanced too. Joule can leverage Copilot to add team members to Microsoft Teams channels so everyone can stay up to date on the latest information.
By integrating Joule and Copilot, users can use the capabilities of both simultaneously to get work done. And future plans for two-way integration will allow users to benefit from one consistent experience, no matter which copilot they use.
“Unlocking the massive potential AI has to offer requires capabilities that are high value, reliable and available in-context in the apps that people use today,” says Muhammad Alam, member of the executive board and head of product engineering at SAP. “The integration of Joule and Microsoft Copilot will enable employees to get more done through seamless access to information from business apps in SAP as well as in Microsoft 365.”
By combining the strengths of SAP and Microsoft, the collaboration aims to drive significant advancements in productivity and innovation.
“Microsoft and SAP are committed to providing world-class solutions to help our customers solve their most fundamental business challenges,” says Scott Guthrie, executive vice president of cloud and AI at Microsoft. “The integration of Microsoft Copilot and Joule brings together the power of generative AI to unlock greater employee productivity and will enable enterprises to accelerate customer-centric innovation in a unified experience.”
The two firms will start integrating Joule and Copilot later in 2024, combining enterprise data residing in SAP with contextual knowledge from Microsoft 365, including Microsoft Teams, Outlook and Word.
Learn more on the SAP website
This article was originally published in the Summer 2024 issue of Technology Record. To get future issues delivered directly to your inbox, sign up for a free subscription.