SAP Adds Capabilities to AI Copilot Joule

Enterprise application software firm SAP has added new capabilities to its AI copilot Joule.

The new offerings, announced Tuesday (Oct. 8) at the company’s annual SAP TechEd conference, include collaborative artificial intelligence (AI) agents “imbued with custom skills to complete complex cross-disciplinary tasks.”

“On the eve of its first birthday, Joule marks a watershed in how business gets done,” SAP said in a press release. “SAP introduces collaborative AI agents to a copilot that truly speaks the language of business, expands Joule’s capabilities to support 80% of SAP’s most-used business tasks and embeds Joule more deeply within the company’s portfolio.”

At the conference, the company showcases two applications for the AI agents. One is a dispute management tool that uses autonomous AI agents to analyze and resolve issues such as incorrect and missing invoices, unapplied credits and denied or duplicate payments.

There is also a “financial accounting use case” which uses these agents to streamline financial processes by automating bill payments, invoice processing, and ledger updates while addressing inconsistencies or errors.

As PYMNTS wrote last week, AI agents are emerging as “a potentially transformative force in global commerce,” with major tech companies investing billions on their ability to transform business processes.

For example, Accenture and Nvidia recently announced an expanded partnership to accelerate enterprise AI adoption, including agents. The move comes as Accenture reported $3 billion in generative AI-related bookings in its recent fiscal year.

These agents are sophisticated software programs created to perform tasks or services autonomously for users or other programs. They can analyze data, make decisions and carry out actions within specified parameters, often learning and adapting over time. In the commerce world, AI agents could perform tasks ranging from customer service inquiries to complex supply chain optimizations, bringing greater efficiency and reducing human workload.

“AI agents are not just a supporting function of an enterprise’s AI capabilities,” Sunil Rao, CEO and co-founder of AI company Tribble, told PYMNTS. “It’s a technology that can become an organization’s digital assistant and proactive collaborator.”

Industry veterans offer a variety of views on AI agents’ transformative potential. Some spotlight the technology’s ability to handle complex tasks and improve efficiency across a range of business functions.

Daz Williams, chief AI officer at InFlux Technologies, told PYMNTS a good example of the technology is Amazon’s use of AI for inventory management, which reportedly lowered errors by 15% and boosted efficiency by 25%. Williams cited a McKinsey study projecting that by 2025, AI will power as many as 95% of customer interactions.

SAP introduced Joule last September, integrating the copilot into its cloud enterprise portfolio, and saying it had applications for fields such as human resources (HR), finance, supply chain, procurement and customer experience.