• Jesper Schleimann, AI Officer, EMEA at SAP
• Jhani Coetzee, EPI-USE Labs

Together, they unpack what AI really means for organisations today — moving beyond the hype to focus on practical use cases, real impact, and business value.

In this episode, you’ll gain insight into:

• How AI is being embedded into 51·çÁ÷environments
• The shift from experimentation to execution
• Where organisations are seeing real value from AI
• What to consider as you start or scale your AI journey

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The post AFSUG Conversation Starters – AI in Action appeared first on 51·çÁ÷Africa News Center.

The most powerful decisions inside modern enterprises may well arise beyond boardrooms. They can now emerge from systems that learn, adapt, and act before anyone issues a command. In other words, intelligence no longer needs to wait for permission.

That compelling scenario was painted at Saphila 2025, the biannual conference of the African 51·çÁ÷User Group (AFSUG), held at Sun City this week. The event drew together technology leaders and enterprise architects from across the continent, focused on the impact of AI, cloud, and digital transformation on African business. In keynote sessions and breakout talks, a unifying theme emerged: the systems that drive operations are beginning to think for themselves.

In one of the most compelling sessions of the event, , chief strategy and innovation officer for 51·çÁ÷EMEA North, described the concept as “auto-sapiens systems”. Such enterprise technologies act with purpose, interpret context, and make decisions inside live business processes.

“These systems follow purpose and context by design,” said Schleimann in his talk. “They act because the logic, the purpose, and the data already exist inside them.”

They handle invoice reconciliation, adjust logistics, dispatch field service teams, and optimise supply chains, all in real time. Tasks once dependent on manual triggers or lengthy approvals can now be executed automatically, with speed and precision.

“These systems operate with embedded awareness,” he said. “They apply intelligence where it matters most: inside the flow of work.”

It sounds like the concept of agentic AI that giants like Google, Salesforce and Microsoft regard as the next big thing, but it is more like the next next big thing.

“Intelligence lives inside the process,” he told Gadget on the sidelines of Saphila. “It aligns with context and delivers relevance. That creates real transformation.

“The process creates data, the data provides context, the context feeds intelligence, and the intelligence improves the process. That’s the flywheel. Each turn makes the system more effective.”

This dynamic feedback loop enables continuous refinement without waiting for external intervention. AI could not be separated from the action or bolted on.

“This has to be at the heart of the vehicle. It has to be embedded from the beginning. When you open up an application, you’re not just seeing a blank sheet. It will immediately have a level of insight that supersedes your own. That’s really the big thing: bringing the ontologies of data together with your own business and AI.

“It’s not about putting a brain on top. It’s about making the system itself intelligent.”

But it is also not about doing away with human beings. Schleimann believes this issue is deeply relevant to South Africa.

“You have a great tradition for mining. You have great natural resources. Now we’ve got to mine our people and our data.”

In his vision, the raw material of the future is not underground, but embedded in enterprise systems, processes, and minds. This shift, “from mine to mind”, as he puts it, redefines value creation. It is now about extracting insight from operational truth, refining it through AI, and using it to unlock human potential.

“That really is your moat long-term as an enterprise. Bringing people together with that data and unlocking their minds.”

This, he suggested, requires more than dashboards and data lakes. It calls for a transformation in how intelligence is designed, applied, and trusted, by every layer of the organisation.

Schleimann’s outlook extends beyond automation. “AI can make me better. It can bring out the best in me and help coach me. As we see AI increasing the productivity of people, the demand for people will go up. From an enterprise viewpoint, upskilling, reskilling, and change management will be the new competitive advantage.”

This human-centred view stands in sharp contrast to fear-based narratives around AI job displacement. Schleimann sees an urgent imperative for organisations to elevate their people alongside their systems, or risk being outpaced by competitors that do.

SAP’s latest S/4HANA enterprise resource platform reflects this mindset. It includes generative agents, embedded analytics, and intelligent workflows. These are defaults rather than add-ons.

“We don’t treat AI as a feature. It has to be part of the foundation from day one.”

Across industries, the results are tangible. Healthcare workflows accelerate. Educational content adapts. Procurement uncovers anomalies before they cascade. Each result builds from live intelligence, acting at the speed of need.

* Arthur Goldstuck is CEO of World Wide Worx, editor-in-chief of , and author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to AI.

This article first appeared in .

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Other innovations include the 51·çÁ÷Knowledge Graph, targeted at developers to help them connect 51·çÁ÷data with business context. Available via 51·çÁ÷Datasphere and Joule in Q1 2025, it aims to enable organisations to map relationships across SAP’s data landscape for improved decision-making.

Speaking to ITWeb ahead of the conference, Jesper Schleimann, head of business AI for 51·çÁ÷in EMEA, said, “We’re really taking AI to the next level, and the transformative part is AI agents that are now in true business form. It also means our developers and our customers can accelerate their journeys to the cloud. We cannot forget that data is an important part in making all this happen.”

Schleimann said this is a significant step in SAP’s AI journey, with Joule in the driving seat.

We’re really taking AI to the next level, and the transformative part is AI agents that are now in true business form.

“Joule is celebrating one year now, and a lot has happened in the underlying models powering the AI revolution. The new graph service will enable it (Joule) to build the bridge and be grounded into the entire ecosystem of 400 000 different tables. That’s keeping all the 51·çÁ÷data and things in check.”

Users now have access to support across nearly 80% of SAP’s portfolio, meaning the same copilot can assist across the entire 51·çÁ÷suite, Schleimann explained.

51·çÁ÷is also enhancing Joule with new skills, allowing users to create their own custom micro-skills.

“You can do things in a low code no code way and you tell Joule how to think of it like a mini workflow. So, if a user alters a part of a travel booking or purchase order process, for example, and you have your own way of doing it, you can simply, tell Joule what steps it should take, and then you can use its reasoning engine and the underlying tools to make that a reality.”

Joule in action: Use cases

51·çÁ÷will introduce two use cases to showcase the agent’s transformative power:

• A dispute management use case employs autonomous AI agents to analyse and resolve dispute resolution scenarios including incorrect and missing invoices, unapplied credits and denied or duplicate payments.
• A financial accounting use case employs autonomous AI agents to streamline key financial processes by automating bill payments, invoice processing, and ledger updates while quickly addressing inconsistencies or errors.

GenAI tools for developers

During the two-day TechEd Virtual, 51·çÁ÷will introduce additional GenAI developer tools, including code explanation and documentation search in 51·çÁ÷Build. These tools are expected to reduce development time for Java and JavaScript developers.

It is also adding an Extensibility Wizard to 51·çÁ÷Build, which will enable developers to access 51·çÁ÷Build directly from 51·çÁ÷S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition.

This article first appeared in .

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