Thought Leadership
Small teams of so-called Forward Deployed Engineers are tasked with building operational AI agents at corporations like Bayer and H&M within a few weeks. SAP later intends to sell what is created to all customers.
Instead of developing AI capabilities in its own lab and subsequently rolling them out to clients, SAP is taking a different approach: The Walldorf-based software group is dispatching developer teams directly into the IT departments of major corporate clients. There, they are to design AI agents and integrate them into the existing system landscape. Manager Magazin was the first to report on the strategy. An SAP spokesperson partially confirmed the report to Golem.de.
Three to Ten Developers, Six to Nine Weeks
According to the report, the units consist of three to ten experienced programmers, supplemented by external consultants. They are deployed at a customer site for several months each, with Bayer, H&M, Toyota, and Bosch cited among others. Within six to nine weeks, initial productively usable agents are expected to be up and running, accessing the respective customer’s corporate data and integrated into its IT.
Two projects are specifically described. At Bayer, a four-person SAP team built a tool that automates and noticeably speeds up the collection of outstanding receivables, such as those from farmers in Latin America. At Swedish fashion retailer H&M, the developers are working on AI systems for returns: During an exchange, these systems are intended to determine in advance whether a suitable replacement item is in stock at the store in question.
Customer Expertise In, SAP Product Out
According to SAP spokesperson Björn Emde, these are co-innovation projects in which SAP works with real customers on real problems in order to test and advance industry-specific AI more rapidly. The domain and process expertise of customers is indispensable in this context. The teams are deployed purposefully at selected companies for industry tasks for which no standard solution yet exists. The spatial proximity is intended to ensure that development is aligned with actual requirements.
According to Manager Magazin, the rights to the results belong entirely to SAP. According to Emde, solutions that prove successful will subsequently flow into SAP products and be made available to a broader customer base as standardized, scalable offerings.
Over 50 Joule Assistants Planned by End of Year
When asked about newly developed AI features to date, the spokesperson pointed to an overarching goal. By the end of the year, SAP aims to offer more than 50 Joule Assistants. These are intended to draw on a network of over 200 specialized AI agents—currently still under construction—and automate business processes across departments. Emde left open what specific tasks the individual agents will handle.
(Editorial Team)
