The companies of the future won’t just use AI to analyze the business, but to coordinate, recommend, and in some cases even autonomously drive work forward. That was one of the key messages at this year’s SAP Sapphire in Madrid, where SAP laid out its vision of “The Autonomous Enterprise.” At the same time, SAP CEO Christian Klein’s message was clear: rumors of the death of ERP are greatly exaggerated. On the contrary, ERP is the brain that makes enterprise AI work in practice. Implema’s Patrik Sundeborn was one of many on site in Madrid to follow the developments.
Hi Patrik Sundeborn—what was the most important takeaway from this year’s SAP Sapphire?
– My biggest takeaway is that SAP is taking a clear step toward next-generation ERP, where AI is integrated directly into business processes and drives the vision of “The Autonomous Enterprise.”
This became especially clear through SAP’s new strategic partnerships and investments in AI, workflow automation, and agent-based processes directly in mission-critical applications, with companies such as n8n, Anthropic, NVIDIA, and Palantir Technologies.
It’s no longer just about AI as support for the user, but about AI agents that can understand, reason, and in some cases independently run processes in areas like finance, supply chain, and operations. To me, it feels like a clear shift in how the business systems of the future will work.
SAP also talked a lot about “The Autonomous Enterprise”—what does that mean?
– At its core, the vision of “The Autonomous Enterprise” is about AI helping coordinate and drive work—and ultimately the business—forward more independently. In other words, not just answering questions or analyzing data, but actually supporting the business in real time through recommendations, automation, and AI agents that can support and act directly within business processes.
For that to work, powerful language models aren’t enough. AI also needs to understand the business context and business logic—that is, how processes, data, roles, and business events connect.
That’s why SAP’s investment in Knowledge Graph is very interesting. It’s essentially a way to give AI more business context and a better understanding of the relationships between data, processes, and business logic.
That’s also why ERP suddenly becomes so central again. Without that data foundation, context, and governance, AI risks becoming very intelligent—but fairly irrelevant to the business.
A lot of people are talking about AI agents right now—is it hype or real change?
– A bit of both, I’d say. There’s definitely a lot of hype right now. At the same time, it feels like we’re clearly closer to real business value than before.
The difference now is that AI is no longer presented as standalone tools, but as something that should be integrated into business processes. In Madrid, there was a lot of talk about how, for example, Joule, Business Data Cloud, and SAP’s Business AI Platform together will make business systems more proactive, context-aware, and self-orchestrated.
In other words, it’s less about clicks and manual transactions and more about governance, decisions, and business outcomes.
What do you think many companies need to start focusing more on right now?
– I think many companies need to start testing AI more practically in their business processes and ERP environments right now. It’s no longer just about discussing the potential, but about starting to understand what actually works in their own business.
At the same time, I think many will need to speed up work on structure, data quality, and process understanding. Because the closer AI gets to business processes, the more important it becomes that systems actually understand how the business works and which data can be trusted.
What do you think this will mean for companies in the coming years?
– Above all, I think we’ll see a fairly major shift in how companies view business systems and business governance. The focus moves from system support and transactions to intelligent and more autonomous businesses.
More and more work in the systems will be carried out by AI agents that users direct and interact with. That, in turn, will also place new demands on companies—around data and processes, but also around skills, security, and change management as AI becomes a more integrated part of the business.
At its core, it’s probably a fairly major shift in how companies will work going forward, and I think that shift will be at least as much about people and ways of working as it is about the technology itself.
Feel free to read more here:
SAP Sapphire 2026 – here are the most important news and key messages – Implema
AI doesn’t make ERP systems redundant – it makes them even more business-critical – Implema
