During his keynote at SAP Spend Connect Live in Vienna, Muhammad Alam, President and Chief Product Officer of SAP Intelligent Spend and Business Network, appeared eager to share long-held secrets. The audience, comprised of SAP customers, partners, and industry experts, was highly anticipating his revelations. Over the past year, Alam and his team have engaged in discussions with SAP customers to gain a deep understanding of their spend management challenges and develop solutions to address them. This involved carefully evaluating the hype surrounding artificial intelligence (AI) and distinguishing it from its true potential. Additionally, their team of spend management-focused developers worked tirelessly to deliver innovative solutions, which Alam was about to introduce to the audience. He emphasized that SAP delivers more spend management innovation than any other company, thanks to its extensive resources dedicated to this field. With a significant number of engineers and a strong commitment from top-level management, SAP remains focused on helping businesses overcome their most pressing spend-related obstacles, whether practical or existential. Alam highlighted that the common thread in all of this is the crucial role of spend in achieving desired business outcomes. As SAP Spend Connect Live progresses, there will be significant discussions about generative AI and its ability to address urgent and critical business needs. In his keynote, Alam stressed that we are witnessing a substantial transformation in AI, not only in terms of technology but also in customers' willingness to embrace AI for strategic transformation across various business functions and processes. Alam defined the fundamental promise and purpose of AI as the ability to leverage data for insights and decision-making. He stated that this promise is what fuels the momentum and excitement surrounding AI. According to Alam, it is no longer a question of whether businesses will adopt AI, but when and how quickly they can do so and experience its impact. SAP, with its intelligent spend management solutions, has made it a mission to enable businesses to unlock the power of generative AI by leveraging data for enhanced insights and decision-making.

This leads us to the two significant innovations that Alam announced during his keynote: SAP Spend Control Tower and 12 new generative AI scenarios across the spend management portfolio. Based on the hundreds of conversations he's had with customers over the past year, the primary request Alam received was the ability to visualize and analyze spend across all categories, which includes financials as well as carbon emissions impact. To address this, Alam unveiled SAP Spend Control Tower, a solution that incorporates advanced AI features to provide a comprehensive view of spend across SAP's cloud ERP solutions, SAP Ariba solutions, SAP Fieldglass solutions, SAP Concur solutions, and SAP Business Network. This tool aims to uncover cost-saving opportunities and enhance processes starting in the first quarter of 2024. Alam also expressed excitement about AI's potential in driving scope 3 carbon emissions reporting within SAP Spend Control Tower. All spend data is standardized within a unified data model, forming part of the next-generation data lake known as the supplier data platform. This platform, three years in the making, serves as the foundation for spend analytics, empowering SAP Spend Control Tower, embedded spend insights in applications, and generative AI innovations. Alam emphasized the amount of time individuals spend on mundane tasks, diverting focus and effort away from more strategic and valuable ones. He believes that generative AI has the power to eliminate these mundane tasks. He announced 12 generative AI scenarios designed to drive efficiency, quality, and insights across spend management processes. These scenarios have the potential to unlock long-awaited productivity gains. For more details on the new generative AI scenarios, visit the provided link. If you were unable to attend SAP Spend Connect Live in Vienna, you can still participate in the virtual experience on October 24 by visiting the provided website. Mike Conners, a communications specialist for the SAP Spend Management Communications team, contributed to this article.