SAP's vision for the autonomous enterprise centres on growing its partner ecosystem and deploying AI-enabled tools, including its generative AI copilot Joule, Business AI Platform and Autonomous Suite.
The company outlined its strategy at SAP Connect Day 2026, held this week in Kyalami, Johannesburg.
Nazia Pillay, MD for southern Africa at SAP, said the company's role is to support organisations in implementing and scaling agentic AI across end-to-end systems as they transition towards autonomous operations.
Addressing the complexity and cost that continue to challenge organisations migrating systems and platforms, Marc Nolla, VP of customer advisory for EMEA at SAP, said the company's new agent-led transformation approach could reduce the effort required for multi-year ERP migrations by 35%.
Agentic AI assistants
SAP has introduced several migration and modernisation AI assistants, including data management, custom code, configuration, test management and change management assistants. According to the company, these are governed by Joule for both developers and consultants and are designed to execute complex business scenarios by reasoning iteratively and interacting with their environment to achieve defined goals.
Nolla cited SAP research indicating that the highest-ranked strategy for maximising ROI from AI is aligning initiatives with clear business goals.
SAP said AI currently supports about 30% of tasks in the average business, with that figure projected to reach 48% within two years.
Stanley Dube, head of solution advisory at SAP, said a major challenge in AI-driven digital transformation is what the company describes as the "enterprise paradox" – the expectation of instant enterprise AI clashing with the operational reality of complexity, manual processes and human behaviour.
Standard Bank's transformation journey
Vanessa Padiachee, executive group CIO for corporate functions at Standard Bank, outlined the bank's use of SAP technology to address operational challenges, including end-of-life systems, expiring vendor support and the need for a modern cloud ERP platform to support future innovation.
The bank completed a large-scale ERP migration and implementation programme. Modernising core enterprise systems required careful planning, strong governance and close collaboration between business and technology teams. The programme established a platform capable of supporting growth, operational resilience and ongoing innovation.
Padiachee said one of the biggest challenges was the pace of technological change.
"Organisations are required to continuously adapt while maintaining stability across critical business operations. Change management is just as important as the technology implementation itself," she said.
Modernisation, she added, should improve agility without creating unnecessary disruption to business operations.
She also highlighted the human factor. "It's really about keeping people calm during turbulence," she said, adding that AI is fundamentally changing how businesses operate. "The focus should move beyond experimentation towards delivering measurable value."
According to Padiachee, AI initiatives should align with clear business outcomes rather than be driven by the technology's popularity.
She said one of the most significant lessons from the transformation programme was the complexity of Unicode conversion.
"In hindsight, this work should have started much earlier in the programme. Unicode conversion proved more complex than anticipated and became a critical dependency for implementation. Investing time in foundational technical readiness significantly reduces downstream project risk."
Padiachee also stressed the importance of high-quality enterprise data that is accurate, trusted, well-governed and accessible.
She advised organisations planning system and platform migrations, as well as AI integration, to begin with a clearly defined use case, establish strong partnerships and maintain robust governance and guardrails.
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