SAP users: AI offering is important, benefits still unclear

According to the latest investment report from the German-speaking SAP user group, or DSAG for short, the Walldorf-based software company's AI efforts still seem to be met with a rather cautious response from customers. Specifically, 29 percent rate SAP's AI strategy as good or very good this year. Compared to 2024, this is a positive signal, as no one wanted to give it a "very good" and only ten percent wanted to give it a "good". Six percent gave it a "poor" rating (2024: eleven percent) and 23 percent a "satisfactory". However, the fact that 30% (2024: 47%) still do not allow themselves to make a judgment points to a high level of lack of transparency with regard to roadmaps and practical support from the manufacturer.

For many companies, it is unclear how they can profitably integrate AI into their existing SAP landscape at this point, says DSAG boss Hungershausen, assessing the mixed situation. Artificial intelligence (AI) in general is now considered to be highly or moderately relevant by 68% of the companies surveyed (2024: 28%). Consequently, 45% want to include AI in their IT investments this year and 48% expect at least a high potential benefit from AI solutions.

SAP customers are warming to the cloud

The DSAG report also shows a clear shift towards cloud operating models regarding the ERP generation changeover to S/4Hana. S/4HANA Cloud is also gaining ground in the DACH region in terms of planned investments. The changed survey structure of this year's report, for which significantly more larger companies were surveyed than in previous years, certainly contributed to this result. According to observations made by DSAG CEO Jens Hungershausen, it is often large companies whose digital transformation strategy is essentially leading to migration to the cloud.

This is reflected in the high popularity of SAP's Business Technology Platform (BTP). This year, 40 percent of respondents (2024: 33 percent) intend to make high and medium investments in the PaaS environment. At the top of the agenda is its use as a basis for analytics solutions at 46% (2024: 34%), followed by integration solutions at 40% (2024: 27%) and application development and automation at 36% (2024: 17%). The increasing willingness to invest in application development and automation at BTP speaks to companies' need for customized solutions beyond standard ERP functions.

Business Data Cloud still has to prove itself

From DSAG's perspective, the question of what influence the recently introduced SAP Business Data Cloud (BDC) will have on the popularity of the Business Transformation Center (BTC) is exciting. SAP is positioning BDC as an offering for the cross-system harmonization of SAP data management and is bundling already familiar data management and analysis products, among other things. However, seamless data processing and harmonization is also a focus of BTC deployment, as evidenced by the high willingness to invest in analysis and integration solutions.

Whether and how SAP can create additional added value here with BDC remains to be seen. "Particularly considering the increasing importance of AI and data-driven business models, the question arises as to how well SAP can ensure the integration of data from different systems – beyond the SAP world –," says Hungershausen.

(olb)