For much of the past decade, AI has lived in labs, pilots and PowerPoint decks. The next phase is different. AI is moving into the operational core of organisations, reshaping how decisions are made, work is executed and value is created.

AI is becoming the most significant technology shift enterprise leaders will face in this generation. Not because the algorithms are new, but because the operating model required to make AI work at scale is fundamentally different.

One of the clearest changes heading into 2026 is the move from AI that assists humans, to AI that acts on their behalf.

Early enterprise AI tools functioned as copilots: surfacing information, generating insights or suggesting next steps. Increasingly, organisations are deploying autonomous AI agents that recommend actions – and take them – executing multi-step business processes within defined roles and controls.

This transition matters because it forces leaders to confront new questions of trust, accountability and governance. Autonomous AI can deliver significant productivity gains, but only if organisations are prepared to define where machines can act independently, where human approval is required, and how exceptions are handled.

In practice, this means treating AI agents less like software features and more like a digital workforce: assigned roles, clear permissions, monitored performance and escalation paths when things go wrong. Without this discipline, autonomy becomes risk rather than advantage.

Intelligence must be built in, not bolted on

Another defining trend is the move toward AI-native systems. Many organisations still treat AI as an add-on: a layer of intelligence bolted onto processes designed decades ago. That approach is reaching its limits.

AI-native architecture embeds intelligence directly into core workflows, allowing systems to understand intent rather than simply execute transactions. Instead of navigating complex menus and dashboards, users express what they want to achieve, and systems orchestrate the necessary steps across functions.

For leadership teams, this is not a user-interface upgrade, but a shift in how work gets done. Ideally, decision-making accelerates, organisational friction reduces, and the boundary between analysis and execution begins to disappear.

However, this only works when underlying systems are clean, standardised and integrated. Which leads to a harder truth many organisations are discovering.

Data quality is the real AI constraint

The biggest barrier to AI success is not model sophistication, but data reality. AI systems amplify whatever foundations they are given. Clean, consistent data produces reliable outcomes, while fragmented, poorly governed data produces confident nonsense.

This is why data has become the strategic nervous system of the modern enterprise. AI depends on shared definitions of customers, products, suppliers and processes. It requires transactional integrity, accessible historical context and the ability to combine internal and external information in real time.

Organisations that have postponed data discipline are finding that AI exposes weaknesses instantly, often in ways that affect customers, regulators or financial performance. In the year ahead, leaders will increasingly be judged on whether they treated data as a strategic asset early enough, rather than as an IT hygiene issue.

Closely linked to data readiness is a simple but central principle: keeping core enterprise systems clean.

Years of excessive customisation have left many organisations with fragile ERP environments that are difficult to upgrade and harder to integrate with modern AI capabilities.

The shift toward standardised cores with extensions built outside the core system creates an environment where innovation doesn’t break operations.

For boards and executive teams, this requires a mindset shift. Standardisation is not a loss of competitive differentiation, but the price of adaptability. The differentiation moves to how organisations use data, design experiences and make decisions, not how many lines of custom code they maintain.

Technology alone will not deliver results

Perhaps the most underestimated factor in AI success is change management, which consistently accounts for a larger share of AI outcomes than technology itself.

AI changes roles, not just tools. Finance teams move from processing transactions to managing exceptions. HR shifts from administrative workflows to skills intelligence.

Operations leaders rely more on forecasts and simulations than static reports. These changes demand new skills, new incentives, and new ways of measuring performance.

This year, leaders must invest in adoption with the same commitment and focus as they invest in new capabilities. AI literacy should be a core leadership competency not just a specialist function.

As AI initiatives multiply, so does the risk of fragmentation. Different business units experimenting independently can create inconsistent standards, duplicated effort and unmanaged risk.

This is why many organisations are establishing AI centres of excellence that coordinate AI innovation. Effective governance frameworks address five questions: how AI systems are approved and retired, how decisions are logged and audited, how policies are enforced, where human oversight is required, and how performance is measured.

In 2026, AI governance will be viewed much like financial governance: a prerequisite for trust, not a brake on progress.

From pilots to production or paralysis

A final challenge looms large: scaling. Many organisations are stuck in what has become known as “pilot purgatory”, where successful experiments never reach enterprise impact.

The reasons are consistent: poor integration with core systems, unclear ownership, lack of user trust, weak data foundations and vague ROI metrics. Moving from pilot to production requires deliberate planning, phased rollout and visible executive sponsorship.

Leaders who expect AI to scale itself will be disappointed, while those who design for scale from day one will pull ahead quickly.

As we accelerate into 2026, AI is an operational reality. The real strategic question for leaders is whether their organisations are structurally ready for AI, with clean systems, trusted data, skilled people and disciplined governance. With these foundations, AI becomes a durable source of advantage.

In a volatile global environment, leadership is increasingly defined by the ability to move forward without perfect certainty. Business AI, deployed responsibly and at scale, is becoming one of the most powerful tools leaders have to do precisely that.

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From managing customer support workflows to orchestrating complex supply chains, agentic AI is redefining how businesses operate, respond, and grow. These intelligent digital co-workers act with autonomy, context, and speed, with growing capabilities for reasoning, making decisions, and working alongside humans to execute multi-step processes across departments.

Ěý, agent-driven applications are rapidly becoming the standard for enterprise management. Global estimates suggest AI agents could contribute trillions to the world economy by 2030 through productivity gains, faster decisions, and cost reductions.

Transformative impact

Despite pervasive AI skills shortages, South African companies are moving quickly from experimentation to execution. Financial institutions are embedding AI agents into ERP systems to reroute inventory and manage disputes. Healthcare providers use AI meeting agents to generate follow-ups and automate patient admin. Legal firms use AI to prepare case files and speed up settlements.

This shift is being driven by a combination of pressure and potential. Faced with economic headwinds, skills shortages, and rising customer expectations, South African companies are looking to AI agents to unlock productivity, streamline operations, and free up human talent for higher-value work.

But deploying AI agents effectively requires more than buying the latest tool. The success of AI agents depends on deep integration of data, processes, and applications through a suite-first approach.

Leading with a suite

According to an IDC Spotlight Report, companies that adopt AI-powered suites like SAP’s see measurable gains:

• 37%Ěýreport improved process productivity
• 39%Ěýachieve greater cost efficiency
• 36%Ěýboost workforce productivity
• 35%Ěýaccelerate speed to market

By leveraging an AI-powered suite integrated to a core business technology platform, companies can empower their AI agents to act with full business context. Unlike siloed tools, a suite-first approach supports real-time collaboration between agents, humans, and systems, making AI agents not just smarter, but more impactful on the overall performance of the business.

SAP’s Joule, an AI agent framework embedded into the 51ˇçÁ÷Business Suite, offers companies a system of intelligent agents that collaborate across business functions, from finance and procurement to HR and supply chain, to execute complex workflows and drive better decisions at scale.

These agents leverage knowledge centres and data cloud to ground actions in real-time, contextual business data. Working alongside teams, the agents augment human decision-making, accelerate task completion and minimise manual errors. In finance functions, agents can optimise working capital by accelerating accounts receivable matching, while in procurement they can surface the most relevant suppliers based on business rules and past performance.

AI agent readiness check

Before companies deploy AI agents like Joule, they need the right digital foundation. 51ˇçÁ÷recommends a four-part readiness framework:

1 Data quality and accessibility –ĚýAgents are only as good as the data they use. Clean, structured, and real-time data from across the enterprise is critical for effective agent decision-making. Silos, outdated data, or missing context will slow adoption and risk poor outcomes.

2 Process maturity –ĚýAI agents thrive on well-defined workflows. Before automation, companies must ensure their business processes are standardised, documented, and ready for orchestration. Automating chaos just creates faster chaos.

3 Organisational clarity –ĚýWho will use these agents? For what tasks? How will they hand off to human employees? Clear role definitions and communication are essential for adoption and trust.

4 Governance and guardrails –ĚýJust like human employees, AI agents need rules. Define permissions, escalation paths, ethical boundaries, and auditing practices. Agents should act autonomously but within the boundaries of the businesses in which they operate.

AI agents are more than just another layer of automation. They represent a new model of work, one that is collaborative, contextual, and continuous. The true value of AI agents is unlocked only when companies are ready. And the companies that unlock the greatest value the quickest are those deploying their AI agents through an AI-powered suite integrated to a core business technology platform.

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, Managing Director for Southern Africa at SAP, says the role of partners has never been more critical. “Organisations across the continent are redesigning processes, embedding intelligence into core systems, and reimagining how value is created. Success requires deep industry expertise, AI capabilities and the ability to translate innovation into measurable business outcomes. As a partner-led organisation, 51ˇçÁ÷is proud to work alongside a thriving ecosystem of expert partners who help bring Business AI, clean core ERP and intelligent automation to life, enabling our customers to become more resilient, more profitable and better prepared for the future.”

The 51ˇçÁ÷Africa Partner Awards recognise excellence within SAP’s partner ecosystem across eight distinct categories. Winners are evaluated according to strict criteria, with a focus on partner organisations that help clients throughout Africa transform their capabilities and smooth the way to the adoption of powerful new technologies such as AI.

According to , Chief Partner Officer for MEA South at SAP, the winners at this year’s 51ˇçÁ÷Africa Partner Award represent the highest standards of excellence, innovation and commitment in advancing the technology ambitions of organisations across the continent. “Our partners play a vital role in translating strategy into execution and innovation into measurable business value. We are proud to work alongside such a strong and trusted ecosystem as we collectively support Africa’s ongoing digital transformation journey.”

The winning companies at the 2026 51ˇçÁ÷Africa Partner Awards include:

• and, winners of the Customer Transformation: Corporate category, which recognises sales excellence in the corporate segment that fosters ambitious business planning, in their respective regions.
• , winner of the Customer Transformation: Large Enterprise category for its excellence in amplifying SAP’s large enterprise strategy by offering 51ˇçÁ÷Business Suite and helping deliver large-scale transformation.
• Tano Digital Solutions (Southern Africa) and, winners in the Customer Transformation: Partner-Led Territories category which recognises partners that actively invests and creates value by focusing on customer lifetime value across the customer value journey.
• , winner in the Customer Success Management category, for partners that exceed in consistently delivering value to customers and helping ensure customers achieved the desired outcomes while using 51ˇçÁ÷products and services.
• and (Emerging Africa), winners in the 51ˇçÁ÷Cloud ERP: New Customer Acquisition category which recognises partners that have successfully brought in net-new-name customers to begin an innovation journey with 51ˇçÁ÷Cloud ERP solutions.
• , winner in the 51ˇçÁ÷Business AI: Customer Adoption category which recognises leaders in SAP’s partner ecosystem based on the activation and consumption of embedded AI features in cloud solutions from 51ˇçÁ÷in their customer base.
• , winner in the Managed Service Provider: Top Performance category, awarded to top-performing managed service providers based on deals closed and growth in annual contract value.
• in the Partner Solution Success category, which recognises a partner solution that successfully delivers ongoing customer value by extending the 51ˇçÁ÷solution portfolio, as evidenced by customer demand and solution sales.

ĚýPillay adds: “In an era defined by embedded AI and autonomous enterprise architectures, no organisation can transform in isolation. We look forward to continuing our vital work with our partner ecosystem as African organisations build the capabilities they’ll need to compete and succeed in the years ahead.”

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The good news, says , Managing Director: Southern Africa at SAP, is that real-world AI value is already becoming clear. “Across critical business functions like finance, HR, procurement, sales and service, and marketing, embedded AI is driving efficiency, accuracy, and smarter decisions at scale. From automating repetitive processes to delivering real-time insights and predictive recommendations, South African companies are unlocking unprecedented gains in productivity and efficiency.”

Analysts suggest African countries could unlock as much as $100-billion in economic value per yearĚý, while a PwC study estimatesĚýĚýif Africa can claim a 10% share of the global AI market.

“To unlock this vast economic potential, organisations must integrate AI into core business processes and achieve measurable outcomes for clear use cases. A clean core strategy further allows businesses to respond faster to market changes and adopt new technologies like AI and advanced analytics more easily, creating clear pathways to significant ROI and business impact.”

Of critical importance too is defining and implementing a comprehensive AI framework that prioritises governance at the outset. “An effective framework should include a clear AI vision, business-aligned goals, an operating model, and, critically, establishment of AI governance to ensure ethical, secure, and compliant scaling of AI across the organisation.”

Pillay highlights high-impact use cases across five key business functions that South African organisations can implement to boost productivity and drive growth.

1 Smarter financial insights & automationĚý

Finance departments are under increasing pressure to speed up reporting cycles, reduce operational costs, and strengthen cash flow visibility. “In South Africa, financial institutions are leveraging AI for everything from fraud detection to multilingual support, but practical automation is where the biggest gains are currently being made,” says Pillay.

Automated receivables matching is one such win. By applying machine learning to past payment behaviours, companies can automatically match and clear bank statement items,ĚýĚýand accelerating payment cycles.

Another high-impact tool is AI-assisted cost centre analysis. “Instead of manually wading through complex reports, finance teams can use generative AI to instantly summarise data, highlight KPIs, and recommend next steps,ĚýĚýand freeing up analysts to focus on strategic insights,” says Pillay.

2 Smarter hiring and better talent fit

AI is transforming HR from a reactive cost centre into a strategic function. Nearly 70% of South African HR teamsĚýĚýto streamline recruitment, performance reviews, and workforce planning, delivering up to 35% process efficiency gains.

“One practical use case gaining widespread adoption is AI-powered applicant screening, where machine learning scans CVs to match applicant skills with job requirements. ThisĚýĚýand speeds up hiring for hard-to-fill roles.”

Pillay points to AI-generated job descriptions as another time-saving tool. “HR professionals input a few keywords and receive polished, bias-reducing job listings in seconds, helping improve candidate fit andĚý.”

3 Scaling service and sales excellence

South African telecoms, ecommerce platforms and financial institutions are seeing measurable gains from AI-powered customer service.

“Tools like chatbots and virtual assistants now handle routine queries with 24/7 availability, cutting service costs and improving customer satisfaction,” explains Pillay. “Where a human touch is still needed, AI is helping agents generate case summaries, allowing them to respond faster by compiling email threads and communications into a single, easy-to-read brief. This canĚýĚýand improve first-contact resolution by 10%.”

In field service, AI-driven equipment insights give technicians a clear picture of past service activity, parts used, and common failure patterns, resulting in 65% higher productivity and a 5% bump in first-time fix rates,Ěý.

4 Streamlined sourcing and planning

Procurement teams face mounting complexity as they juggle supply risk, regulatory compliance, and shifting market dynamics. According to Pillay, AI is easing this burden by automating strategic sourcing tasks and offering real-time decision support.

“AI tools have become indispensable to category planning efforts,Ěý. This is helping managers move 90% faster and make more informed and proactive decisions.”

Another valuable application is automated statement-of-work (SOW) generation. With minimal inputs,Ěý, slashing processing time by 71% and improving project alignment by providing clearer briefs to suppliers.

5 Improved customer engagement and inventory management

AI’s value in marketing is growing fast, especially in segmenting audiences and triggering personalised campaigns. South African firms are tapping into predictive tools to boost engagement and pre-empt churn.

“With AI-powered audience segmentation, marketers can automatically group customers based on predicted behaviours such as likelihood to convert or churn, driving higher rates of engagement and more relevant, timely outreach,” says Pillay.

In back-office support, AI-generated sales orders nowĚý, cutting manual effort, speeding up processing, and reducing errors by 25%.

“As embedded AI matures and business systems become more intelligent, these use cases will continue to expand, driving a new era of productivity, insight, and competitive advantage across every function,” says Pillay.

This article first appeared here:

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51ˇçÁ÷was founded in 1972 by five former IBM employees. In a publicity shot from the time, they’re posed around a table in a nondescript office, all holding pens and hunched over a large blueprint. The hair is bouffant, the suits dark, and no one is smiling. These are clearly men who take their jobs very seriously.

As the story goes, Xerox wanted its systems migrated to IBM, and the latter firm put five engineers on the project, who all worked in Mannheim, Germany. The project ground to a halt for reasons unclear, but the five had seen the gap in the market, and left to form their company, which they called Systemanalyse und Programmentwicklung, or System Analysis and Programme Development. It has been a long haul since the ‘70s, with the company constantly tinkering with its solutions while persuading many of the world’s largest firms that they can run their businesses better with its suite of solutions.

At the core of this suite is . This is an in-memory database, andĚýdataĚýis stored in RAM instead of disk. These databases can handle spikes in traffic, such as at telcos orĚýbanks, and allow for real-time analytics. Customers can have the platform installed in their own server room, or in the public or private cloud, or both. And with each passing year, more features are added, such as GenAI assistant ; its sparkly icon now appears on seemingly every page of the platform. Joule, on which 51ˇçÁ÷partnered with , can run queries on all kinds of data, produce forecasts, book meetings, and make graphs and charts on the fly.

There was still an impression in the market that 51ˇçÁ÷was extremely expensive, very complicated, and not very pretty.

Garth Ridgway, NTT

All this work has borne fruit, and in March 2025, the company overtook Danish drugmaker Novo Nordisk to become the EU’s most valuable company, with a market cap of €313bn. It reported strong results for its third quarter in October 2025, seeing revenue rise by 7% to €9.08bn. Cloud revenue saw growth of 22%. But there are challenges ahead, not least of which is convincing customers that it’s now past the time to migrate their workloads from the old system called ECC, which is usually run on-prem, to S4. The company would like nothing better than for all its customers to move to S4, but many are proving to be recalcitrant. Support for ECC, introduced in 2015, is meant to come to an end in 2027, but customers can buy extended support until 2030, which will cost them an extra 2% in addition to their annual maintenance costs. Many companies contend that the current systems seem to be working just fine, and many are also cognisant, and terrified, of the upheaval theĚýmigrationĚýis going to cause. To this, the company dangles the prospect of new features with S4, along with the constant refrain that support for the old systems is, at some point, going to grind to a halt.

An estimated 40% of 51ˇçÁ÷customers in North America are yet to start migrating, according to a survey run by the Americas’ 51ˇçÁ÷User Group. About 60% of the 173 members are already live on S4, or are in the process of moving over, according to the research in November. Gartner said in March 2025 that most ECC customers had still not bought S4 licences. It said that in Q4 in 2024, 29% of 35 000 ECC customers had bought or subscribed to S4 licences.

Christian Hestermann, Gartner senior director and analyst for business applications, believes this is likely to remain the status quo. Speaking toĚýThe Register, he said that since September 2023, the company’s messaging had been about AI and Joule. “The message now is, ‘You have to have AI, or you’ll not be able to survive’. So far, that did not have a major influence. So none of those big events or big announcements has made a massive change up to now; the [migration] progress has remained fairly steady.”

No such third-party survey has been run in South Africa, and the company doesn’t make public either its customer numbers or how many have migrated.

I asked , CTO, SAP; , MD of 51ˇçÁ÷South Africa; and , senior director, SAP, at NTT, for their views on how this migration conversation is progressing, and they spoke as one voice. Pillay says 51ˇçÁ÷had “made a clear line in the sand” with the date past which it won’t continue with maintenance. “Customers are aware of that and are making their plans to transform.”

Pillay was appointed to the top job in August 2025, and says she’s going to ensure the local operation is well equipped to have these conversations with its customers, as well as partners.

Why haven’t they moved yet?

It’s a matter of context, she says. “We have customers who have been with us for 20, 30 years, and that’s a godsend. But they bring a lot of legacy with them, and not just technical legacy. They have unarchived environments, non-optimised processes, or a lot of custom-built systems. They may have implemented ERP back in the day, and, in most cases, it was a project with a long duration, with a lot of blood and sweat going into it. Most companies understand they need to take that technology transformation journey, but they’re trying to balance the timing and effort required to bring a legacy system across [to S/4HANA]. There’s hesitation, because in the back of their minds, they remember that when they did it [last], it was really very difficult.”

Financial services is one vertical where customers have realised the imperative of the move, she says. The move was a “no-brainer” for Pillay, and offered data analysis, AI, agentic AI, and GenAI capabilities. She says if a customer isn’t speaking to 51ˇçÁ÷about the move, it may well be too late to get a system installed before the cut-off date.

“We’re prioritising helping those who are speaking to us to make that decision. We have to work with every customer individually to understand how they can do that transformation. There are different routes, based on capacity, budget and risk appetite. If you delay a decision, it’s going to be too late.”

The slow movers are also going to bring pressure to bear on system integrator partners, as Pillay envisages them being at capacity, or overcapacity, doing 51ˇçÁ÷implementations as the deadline draws ever closer.

“Then you’ll pay for skills, either locally, or you’ll have to look abroad. There’s going to be a material impact if a business takes this decision later on, and that’s what we’re trying to discuss with our customers and help them plan properly, so they don’t get into a position where they say, ‘Wow, we’ve left this too late, and now this is a monster’.”

51ˇçÁ÷NTT’s Ridgway says he’s spent the better part of three decades implementing 51ˇçÁ÷at customers, during which time the ERP landscape has changed dramatically. In the past, it was a two-horse race, the other being Oracle, and both companies served the large enterprise almost exclusively, he says. Large implementations took a lot longer than they do nowadays, two to four years, on average. He says 51ˇçÁ÷now comes more pre-configured, or more off-the-shelf than in the past. He and his team will do a quick discovery at a customer, and will then do what he calls a “vanilla” implementation to get the system up and running. Any innovation can come later, post the go-live date.

Another change in the market is that 51ˇçÁ÷is now competing for business with companies such as Microsoft and Sage.ĚýRidgway says he’s seen a shift in the attitude and sales pitch from SAP.Ěý“In South Africa, there was a time when 51ˇçÁ÷owned 60%, 65% of the large enterprise ERP market, and Oracle was lagging behind. Every single large enterprise in South Africa has some form of ERP. There was still an impression in the market that 51ˇçÁ÷was extremely expensive, very complicated, and not very pretty.”

As for looks, he says the new interface is more user-friendly, and “much nicer to play with”. The company has also realised that there aren’t any R100mn projects out there anymore, which has meant its gone looking for customers among medium-sized businesses. “These aren’t small businesses, but they’re just not the $1bn organisations. I don’t think 51ˇçÁ÷wants to play in the small space, because that’s where Sage and QuickBooks are playing. But there’s a massive market in the mid-tier, which wasn’t untapped, but which 51ˇçÁ÷wasn’t focused on,” he says.

Customers have also become “smarter than they used to be”. “In the old days, we would go and sell 51ˇçÁ÷to them, explaining what it did. Today, the CIO knows everything about 51ˇçÁ÷and what it can do for them. It’s less about consulting around the roadmap, and more about, ‘This is what I want. Can you get me there?’ CIOs are m ore well-read, and they know what they want. It’s no longer about selling the technology; maybe it wasn’t ever about selling the technology. It’s more about selling the business solution. Once it’s implemented, what are the benefits that they’re going to realise? What is the innovation that we can bring to it, and what will be the ease of integration?”

Ridgway says the biggest part of its business is its application managed service (AMS) offering, and it’s serving around 100 clients on that platform.

As for the transition to S4, he thinks SAP, “tried to use a stick to force people to move. It realised that there weren’t enough consultants and capacity worldwide to move every single 51ˇçÁ÷customer from ECC to S4. It found a lot of resistance from clients, and it had a couple of clients that left them because they felt irritated by the stick and the threat of having support cut off. Coca-Cola Beverages Africa moved off 51ˇçÁ÷and went onto [Microsoft] Dynamics, which I think it found quite difficult. It’s a massive change and huge investment to start all over again. So 51ˇçÁ÷did lose some clients, but it eventually moved the date out to 2027. It also changed the sales approach from a stick to more of a carrot.”

The carrot appears to involve talking up the benefits and exciting new features of S4. Ridgway says 51ˇçÁ÷has dramatically changed the way it does business. “In the past, I think 51ˇçÁ÷was seen as very arrogant, very expensive and very complex. Today, it seems less arrogant and is playing in a different market.”

The company is now far more flexible with its pricing and subscription models. “It’s also not as complex as it used to be. I’ve been involved in projects that took 24 months from start to go-live. We’ve just completed a project that was five weeks from start to go-live.”

Do you still have customers who are on ECC? “Lots,” he says. “The biggest part of our consulting business is trying to convince customers who are on ECC that we get to the cloud, and we can get them to S4, with all the innovations and advantages.

“Some customers will say, ‘if it’s not broken, I don’t need to fix it. It’s giving me what I need’,” he says, but he believes this will add business risk because if something does go wrong, “come January 1 2028, you have no support from SAP”.

This conversation with customers reminds him of those held when the cloud model was nascent around a decade ago, and “everybody said they had to move to the cloud”, which he says is similar to where AI is at the moment. “Nobody actually knows what it means. A lot of clients did rush to the cloud, and realised two years later that it was quite expensive, and it’s more complicated. But we’re a lot more mature now, 10 years in. There are a lot of clients who are hybrid. I think the way 51ˇçÁ÷designed its solution allows for that.”

He says with the application managed services part of the business, NTT will provide support for customers, many of which will sign up for a 36-month contract that will give them access to a call centre with certified, senior agents. As for what the customers are struggling with, he says the majority of the calls are related to password resets and authorisations.

Herzig, 51ˇçÁ÷CTO, speaking at this year’s Saphire conference in Madrid, said the company doesn’t disclose the official numbers, but it has around 10 000 customers worldwide that are on the cloud path. “The majority of customers are now making the cloud decision, specifically because the maintenance will definitely be over in 2028. And with all the innovation, there’s a very clear reason why they need to move.”

Why don’t they want to move?

“It depends on the customer,” he says. “Their systems have grown, historically, and they’ve been heavily customised. Back in the day, you could code left and right, because the code was open. Every table and every function module, and the systems integrators added their part to it. They did a lot of custom code. Maybe they were adding functionality, but they didn’t know [what effect it would have]. You’d start off with a very clean version of what 51ˇçÁ÷delivered, and then we innovated with the product. We built capabilities, and we changed the technology, and the customer did the same. And the longer this branching took, the harder it is to reconcile.”

* Article first published onĚý

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With mainstream support for legacy 51ˇçÁ÷ECC systems ending in 2027, IBM guided Toyota through a Brownfield upgrade strategy, enabling a seamless transition to 51ˇçÁ÷S/4HANA while preserving existing business process investments. This approach minimized disruption, accelerated deployment timelines, and ensured continuity for critical operations.

Driving Transformation Across Core Business Functions

Vehicle Management Modernization

IBM led the upgrade of Toyota’s national Vehicle Management System—a mission-critical platform for managing orders, inventory, sales, and financial reporting across manufacturing and dealerships. By migrating to 51ˇçÁ÷S/4HANA, Toyota now benefits from real-time data visibility, improved inventory optimization, and faster responsiveness to customer demand.

Human Capital Management Enhancement

The second phase focused on modernizing Toyota’s HR systems, including payroll and personnel administration. IBM delivered a streamlined 51ˇçÁ÷S/4HANA-based HCM platform that simplifies workforce processes and lays the foundation for enhanced talent management and employee engagement.

Speed, Continuity, and Risk Reduction

Both upgrades were delivered on schedule and without operational disruption, ensuring Toyota maintained business continuity while modernizing its core systems. IBM’s proven methodologies and deep 51ˇçÁ÷expertise enabled a risk-mitigated transformation aligned with Toyota’s strategic objectives.

“We are proud to support Toyota South Africa Motors in their digital transformation journey by delivering technology solutions that accelerate innovation and strengthen business resilience,” said , Managing Partner, IBM Consulting South Africa. “At IBM, we call this the Science of Consulting – combining human expertise, AI, and technology to deliver scalable, data-driven transformations. By improving data visibility and governance, we help organizations like Toyota achieve their goals with speed and confidence.”

, Managing Director, Southern Africa at SAP, says: “The best companies run on trusted data, optimised business processes and real-time intelligence into every part of the business. By upgrading to 51ˇçÁ÷S/4HANA, companies like Toyota unlock a suite of intelligent technologies that help transform business processes with intelligent automation. We commend Toyota and IBM on this powerful business transformation initiative and wish them well as they continue their rollout.”

A Partnership Built for the Future

Building on these successes, IBM is collaborating with Toyota on the next phase of its 51ˇçÁ÷modernization program, focusing on parts management systems. IBM and SAP’s long-standing partnership brings together hybrid cloud infrastructure, automation, and generative AI innovations powered by IBM watsonx™, enabling clients to unlock new value and drive industry-specific transformation.

With over 18,000 certified 51ˇçÁ÷consultants and 300+ 51ˇçÁ÷S/4HANA implementations in the past five years, IBM helps organizations define transformation roadmaps, co-innovate solutions, and deploy modernization strategies with speed, scale, and AI-driven outcomes.

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, Managing Director: Southern Africa at SAP, said South African organisations are facing a turning point. “The convergence of data, cloud, and AI technologies presents an extraordinary opportunity to rethink how we operate, innovate, and grow. By combining new thinking with AI-enabled skills the latest technologies, companies across the region can unlock a new era of accelerated growth and innovation.”

Tech skills development has received renewed attention in recent times as companies rush to attract skilled workers that can unlock the potential of AI and other technologies in their businesses. found that nine in ten African organisations are already experiencing negative impacts from a lack of AI skills, with consequences ranging from failed innovation initiatives and delayed implementations to an inability to take on new work. “This digital shift is empowering organisations to make faster, data-driven decisions, close the skills gap, and build more resilient, future-ready enterprises. We must equip our workforce with the right skills to fully harness the potential of these emerging technologies” added , 51ˇçÁ÷Solution Architect at Nedbank.

Keynote speaker , Chancellor of the University of the Free State and Chairperson of several large South African companies, believes South Africa’s success in the digital age depends on the country’s ability to lead with clarity and act with urgency. “Innovation is a necessity for national competitiveness. Collectively, we must ensure we’re not just adopting global technologies but adapting them to our unique context to create lasting value for our businesses, our people, and our economy.”

The comments were made at 51ˇçÁ÷Business Suite Innovation Day, part of a global event series that provide an exclusive introduction to SAP’s latest cloud applications and data-driven AI innovations, including 51ˇçÁ÷Business Data Cloud and 51ˇçÁ÷Business AI. The event brought together customers, partners and innovators for wide-ranging discussions around best practices, learnings and insights for how AI can be embedded across businesses, powered by curated, contextual, and connected data.

, Chief Revenue Officer for 51ˇçÁ÷Business Data Cloud & 51ˇçÁ÷Business AI, EMEA at SAP, said new advances in how organisations collect, manage and empower data is unlocking vast opportunities for AI-enabled growth and innovation. “By breaking down data silos and allowing businesses to govern and connect all their data, Ěýour new AI and data solutions provide real-time, context-rich insights to businesses where they need it most. With AI orchestration and seamless integration with platforms like Databricks, organisations can boost productivity, modernise their data landscape, and accelerate the development of intelligent applications that deliver measurable impact.”

According to , Group IT Manager: Solution Delivery & PMO (product management office) at ABF Sugar, “many enterprises are rapidly embracing cloud computing, data analytics, and AI to reimagine how they operate, innovate, and expand. These technologies assist in unlocking new levels of productivity and efficiency but also allow access to entirely new business models and sustainable practices in the long term.”

Pillay adds that companies globally are increasingly adopting a clean core strategy, which 51ˇçÁ÷sees as a critical enabler for long-term innovation, agility, and cost efficiency. “The clean core approach is key to simplifying the enterprise landscape and ensuring companies can rapidly adopt new innovations with minimal disruption. It’s the foundation that allows AI, cloud and data solutions to deliver full value across every line of business.”

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Pillay joined 51ˇçÁ÷as a graduate over 20 years ago, and has worked in roles spanning consulting, support, quality management, customer success and, most recently, as the head of the organisation’s regional partner ecosystem. She fundamentally believes 51ˇçÁ÷has a leading role to play in helping Africa’s public and private sector companies achieve their AI and innovation ambitions.

Sergio Maccotta, senior vice president at 51ˇçÁ÷Middle East and Africa South, says: “Nazia will bring vital expertise and leadership skills to one of SAP’s most important regions as we continue to empower youth, drive innovation within our customers and partners, and build a more inclusive, sustainable future.

“With companies across Southern Africa gearing up for an era of AI- and cloud-led innovation, we are especially excited to see how Nazia’s leadership will guide how organisations adopt technology as a strategic lever for national development and growth.”

Pillay says she will focus on three core areas in her new role, to ensure existing partnerships are strengthened and new ones cultivated, while helping customers prepare for a digital-first, cloud-first world.

“Teaming up with our valued customer and partner ecosystem across the region is mission-critical for our business, especially as we showcase SAP’s latest capabilities as an AI-first, suite first technology partner. As a people-focused leader, I have also made it my longer-term ambition to make our local office the best place to work in South Africa.”

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Technology has seen exponential leaps over the last couple of years, and Pillay points out that 51ˇçÁ÷customers have to negotiate not only the dynamic IT landscape but also the changing needs of their own customer bases. And this can be a challenging proposition.

“When you look at our customer base, we play across many industries,” she points out. “And this means they are facing a variety of challenges.”

With many 51ˇçÁ÷customers being the driving forces in government and industry, they are particularly affected by the economics of the region.

“There is a commonality in Africa, especially around the economics of the situation, with the region having seen lower GDP increases,” she points out. “So many of our conversations with customers are around the pressure that’s putting on their organisations.”

While not everyone is affected by these slowdowns, it is definitely a message that has become more common. And South African customers have their own set of challenges as well.

“What is important to note is how we support them in whatever circumstances they find themselves,” Pillay says.

“Under pressure, many customers are looking to be more prudent in their spending. They are looking to defensive spending, where they can address the cost optimisation they need to, while balancing the flexibility and agility that will keep them from becoming stagnant and irrelevant in the market.

“To help them address these challenges, 51ˇçÁ÷puts forward the case for value, where its solutions can support customers, where our solutions can support them in running efficiently, while unlocking ways to optimise their systems and address new revenue streams,” Pillay explains.

“We need to be in the level of discussion with customers that requires some kind of partnership. We don’t want to talk about a list of our products, but prioritise and address customer pain points and address.

“It needs to go beyond a technology discussion into a business enablement discussion.”

Indeed, Pillay explains that the real transformation at 51ˇçÁ÷has been in moving from being a technology provider to a trusted business adviser.

“We need to be entering the conversation much earlier, because technology cannot be an afterthought when you are talking and transformation.”

At the same time, it’s important to listen carefully to customer requirements to ensure any transformation is relevant and respectful, she adds.

Newer technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud computing are a key part of any IT conversation these days, and 51ˇçÁ÷has fully embraced these within its business applications.

A recent report found that AI could revolutionise Africa’s economy andĚýĚýto the continent’s economy by the end of this decade.

Ěýfound widespread challenges with access to AI and other tech skills throughout East, West and Southern Africa. According to SAP’s ‘Africa’s AI Skills Readiness Revealed’ report, six in ten African organisations view AI skills as ‘extremely important’ to their success.

However, all companies surveyed expected to experience some AI-related skills gap in 2025, with nine in ten saying a lack of AI skills is already hurting their organisations through failed innovation initiatives, delays in implementations, and an inability to take on new work.

“We are seeing a fundamentally new technology environment, with capabilities that businesses didn’t have even five years ago,” Pillay says. “I avoid buzzwords, but some of the things we see today would have been unfathomable even five or 10 years ago.

“I like to get into the detail of how these capabilities can help our customers.”

However, she cautions that the adoption of new technologies needs to be from a strong foundation.

“You cannot be grasping at aspirational technologies if the backbone isn’t strong. So platforming is a discussion we need to have, in order to create agility for today’s needs and also the needs of tomorrow.”

Pillay adds that many of SAP’s customers form the bedrock of South Africa’s economy. “51ˇçÁ÷might not be the biggest company in South Africa, but we are the backbone of many of the country’s largest organisations.

“This is an extreme privilege, but also a huge responsibility.

“It’s why I think it is super important that we engage customers as strategic partners; so we are helping them to align their strategies so we can grow the South African economy, retain employment and support their success.”

Partnering is a key pillar of SAP’s strategy, Pillay adds, but the organisation is first and foremost customer-centric.

“We always keep the customer at the centre of what we do. We ensure that our executives are getting out their into the customer base, addressing their concerns and ensuring they have a voice.”

The 51ˇçÁ÷partner base continues to be a focus, and 51ˇçÁ÷continues to grow and mature the partnering ecosystem. “One of the pillars of SAP’s global strategy is to support the partner base. So we have global strategies to help and guide partners in implementing end-to-end offerings to customers.”

Internally at SAP, this has required some adjustments too.

“We have gone form on-premises to cloud, and now to business AI,” Pillay points out. “We have to be able to talk around this narrative. Bearing in mind we help to run all of these companies, and all of the granular business data, we need to be able to talk about the value of platforming correctly.

“We have to look at how we strategise, so we are able articulate our solutions and then message the into the business base.”

Partnering with some of the biggest organisations in the South African economy is a challenging – and humbling – position to be in, Pillay adds.

“Together we own the platforms that all the data runs on. And the next level of generative AI (GenAI) is based on that data.”

Skills development

Companies are increasingly investing in upskilling and reskilling their workforce to meet the demands of a rapidly changing business and technology landscape. “Our research found that nearly half (48%) of African organisations consider upskilling their employees a top skills-related challenge this year,” Pillay says.

“As the pressure to build greater skills depth mounts on companies, vendors such as 51ˇçÁ÷can be invaluable partners, providing insight, expertise and technical capabilities that help drive successful innovation and transformation.”

With challenges and opportunities abounding in the South African context, 51ˇçÁ÷is particularly invested in skills development and job creation.

SAP’s Educate to Employ programme, in partnership with Unicef, aims to educate youngsters between the ages of 16 and 24 on soft skills and 51ˇçÁ÷skills, to help kickstart their careers.

helps candidates with a university degree to gain work-ready 51ˇçÁ÷skills and gain employment. They also assist them with placements within the partner ecosystem and 51ˇçÁ÷customers.

In addition, social sabbaticals is a programme where 51ˇçÁ÷employess can work with business to help and share their skills, helping them to build their own skills and develop business plans.

Basic education is the final pillar, with bursaries offered to deserving students. This includes a programme specifically focused on young women.

51ˇçÁ÷also ensures that its own staff members are continually upskilled.

On a personal note

Having achieved the top position at 51ˇçÁ÷Southern Africa, Pillay reflects that it’s not something she thought would happen when she started her career.

“I have been very luck to take over this role, and grateful doe the support of both 51ˇçÁ÷leadership and the team on the ground.

“I am home-grown – 51ˇçÁ÷is the only company I have ever worked for – so I think many of my colleagues see themselves in my journey. I have been very lucky to have the support of company leaders and colleagues.

“At the same time, I feel the burden of responsibility to ensure we do the right things for customers and teams in the organisation.

“There are 280 people and their extended families in South Africa alone that we take care of. That is a good contribution to what is a very challenging employment market at the moment.”

She offers young women who may see themselves in here journey some advice: “The main thing is to be true to yourself. Take on as much information as possible and always look for both formal and informal mentors. They will help you to grow your perspective over time. Mentorship is key to your career growth, so look for the people who can help you grow and cherish what they teach you.”

This article first appeared on .

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What happens when machines and algorithms can complete knowledge work faster and more effective than even the most high-performing teams?

Thanks to the accelerating power, speed and accuracy of artificial intelligence (AI) over the past few years, the arrival of artificial general intelligence (AGI) is no longer a matter of what-if, but of when.

Artificial general intelligence refers to machine intelligence that can perform any intellectual task a human can.

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