Everything Wrong With AI In and For SAP

In most cases it can reasonably be called AI in some way…but this is the best meme for this rant.

This is a rant laundry list with a twist: each mini-rant has a prescribed fix. The blame for each item belongs to different parties, but the state of the AI-in-and-for-SAP game remains the same: weird and hard for people to navigate.

• Problem: No two people agree on a definition of "agent" but holy hell everybody wants to be building (and more importantly $ELLING) them. Yes, I am the king of hypocrites on this one, because agents are exactly how we do what we do at Nova.

  • Fix: Make vendors prove to you that they can do what they say, and make them do it with your scenarios.

• Problem: An AI Thing can be announced and hyped for TWO YEARS before an appreciable amount of people get their hands on it. I'm looking at you, Joule - announced officially September 2023, and I am quite certain that far less than half of SAP users have touched it. Or understand it.

  • Fix: Mercilessly roast the vendor on social media and score some internet points. But seriously - complain and gripe to your account executive about the situation. Salespeople seeing money slip through their fingers makes things move faster than the speed of light.

• Problem: SAP Business AI isn't a clear thing. I've already complained about it so I won't go too deep.

  • Fix: Don't use "AI" as the key criterion for whether something will work for you. If you want to find ways you can improve your business processes, start by looking at the product pages for those business suite applications. If you hit on something "AI" - great!

• Problem: The pace of change of AI is such that only those people who work directly with it can even have a prayer of keeping up. (Actually, I don't think they can, either.)

  • Fix: The only winning move is not to play.

My spicy hot take is that the real problem is the term "artificial intelligence". Nobody agrees on what "intelligence" means. A murky definition and capabilities that change by the hour lead to a situation where only those with deep interest and time can hope to stay afloat. PM