The introduction of agentic AI into the enterprise resource planning (ERP) space is set to underpin the era of the autonomous enterprise, according to Nazia Pillay, MD of SAP Southern Africa.
Pillay spoke to ITWeb TV recently about AI-infused ERP, the autonomous enterprise concept – which relies on an army of AI agents at its core – and how organisations need to adapt to benefit from the opportunity.
“Autonomous ERP is not just about using AI to engage with end-users, to assist with navigation and pull data back; it is also about seeing agents as co-workers – systems that are working and performing tasks from end to end with human oversight,” she said.
Pillay added that this fundamental shift requires change management for both human employees and business processes.
“You are adopting a technology that fundamentally needs to be embedded, and your business processes need to be adapted for how you want to use this in your business," she said. "That’s the main thing that our customers are facing – they need to look at this as a transformation and not just as a plug-and-play technology.”
Pillay cautioned that curiosity about AI does not necessarily indicate organisational readiness. Success, she said, comes down to understanding business objectives and getting data foundations in place.
“Most of our customers are trying to figure out how to navigate this technology – how do I introduce it and how do I do it in a way that is adding value," she said. "What we’ve found is that when they use AI as a proof of concept or an experiment, they are not leveraging the full value of the technology.”
Beyond experimentation, governance frameworks are essential, Pillay said.
“Most of the organisations that we are speaking to need to look at how they are deploying it at an enterprise level, because when you are just deploying it as a proof of concept, you don’t necessarily need to have all those frameworks in place.”
Pillay said the wealth of data that clients have generated through SAP installations provides a good foundation for companies shifting towards the autonomous enterprise.
“What we know about AI is that it requires context – so you need to understand where the data is and how it is being used, and this we already have based on our knowledge graphs within SAP," she said.
“The second part is governance – what SAP puts into place to ensure that we have security. We have invested because we have the context and the governance to support our customers in having agents run in a responsible, reliable way.”
With AI agents being deployed across end-to-end business processes, getting governance right will be key, she concluded.
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