The Emergence of the Chief AI Officer Role: A New Perspective for SAP

In recent years, SAP has established a new role that takes a 360-degree approach to Artificial Intelligence (AI) across all functions within the company. This newly created position is often referred to as the Chief AI Officer (CAIO), and it marks an important shift in how organizations think about AI adoption and integration. At the heart of this role is the need for a unified perspective on AI, one that considers not only internal processes but also product strategy, commercial aspects, legal considerations, and regulatory compliance.

The CAIO's primary responsibility is to take an end-to-end view of AI adoption across the organization. This involves assessing new opportunities and risks daily and ensuring that all teams are aligned with the company's AI strategy. The role requires a deep understanding of the technical, business, and market implications of AI adoption, as well as the ability to communicate effectively with various stakeholders.

As part of this role, the CAIO works closely with multiple teams across the organization, including product engineering, technology department, CTO, CIO for internal adoption, sales and marketing teams, and implementation adoption team. This cross-functional collaboration enables SAP to adopt AI innovations quickly and efficiently while also ensuring that all aspects of the business are aligned with the company's AI strategy.

One of the key areas of focus for the CAIO is product development. The role involves assessing new products and services to determine their potential for AI adoption and integration. This includes evaluating the user experience, process integration, and technology platforms required to support AI-powered solutions. The CAIO also works closely with the CEO and Engineering team to develop platform services that enable seamless integration of large language models or foundational models with real-time data stored within SAP and non-SAP systems.

Another critical aspect of the CAIO's role is partner management. This involves working with external partners to develop and implement AI-powered solutions for customers. The CAIO also collaborates with marketing teams to ensure that AI innovations are effectively communicated to stakeholders, both internally and externally.

Sales and implementation adoption teams play a crucial role in bringing AI-powered solutions to customers quickly and efficiently. The CAIO works closely with these teams to ensure that all aspects of the business are aligned with the company's AI strategy, including product development, marketing, and sales approaches.

A typical day for the CAIO involves reviewing new developments on the product side of the house, assessing how they can be brought directly to customers, and enabling the field with those innovations. The role requires a deep understanding of customer expectations and feedback mechanisms to ensure that AI-powered solutions meet their needs quickly and efficiently.

The CAIO's daily tasks include:

* Reviewing all new developments on the product side of the house

* Assessing how these products can be brought directly to customers

* Enabling the field with those innovations

* Reviewing customer expectations and feedback mechanisms

To achieve its goals, the CAIO works closely with multiple teams across the organization. This includes working with:

* Product engineering: to develop platform services that enable seamless integration of large language models or foundational models with real-time data stored within SAP and non-SAP systems.

* Technology department: to ensure that all technical aspects of AI adoption are considered.

* CTO and CIO for internal adoption: to align internal processes with the company's AI strategy.

* Sales and marketing teams: to communicate AI innovations effectively to stakeholders, both internally and externally.

* Implementation adoption team: to bring AI-powered solutions to customers quickly and efficiently.

In conclusion, the Chief AI Officer role marks an important shift in how organizations think about AI adoption and integration. By taking a 360-degree approach to AI, SAP is well-positioned to drive innovation and growth across its portfolio of Enterprise applications. The CAIO's unique perspective and collaboration with multiple teams enable the company to adapt quickly to changing market conditions while ensuring that all aspects of the business are aligned with the company's AI strategy.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthere are a lot of uh technical seep positions you got Chief data officer Chief technical officer Chief Information officer how's the chief AI officer role differ from these that's a great question so I mean first of all it's a new kind of role right um that we that we also at sa we have established at the beginning 2024 and um at Le I mean there are different interpretations right on on what that role entails the way or why we have set it up U specifically in sap is um to really take a 360 perspective on AI um with for all the functions I mean as one of the largest um Enterprise application vendors right uh specifically out of Europe um we have to take not of course only the adoption internally right for our processes and for our people into account but obviously um how we you know think about the products how we bring AI all into our products we can spend a little bit more time I think about our product strategy in a minute uh and then really uh think this end to end through right how do we do legal aspects the commercial aspects and as we all know right who also regularly listening to this podcast there's so many things that happen all every day every every week new models come around the corner there's something happening on the regulatory side of the house so the question is really like what is the center of excellence or like the the nucleus in the company that takes all those signals all those cont Concepts into account and you know fit them together like differently or every single day right and there's a every day there are new opportunities new risks and in this role the way how we interpret it is really take an endtoend view right but at the same time it's also just a relatively small Department because at the end of the day and that's part of our strategy as we embed AI uh specifically all in our our our Enterprise applications is then to work with all the connected uh board areas right product and engineering technology department the CTO the CIO for internal adoption um our sales and marketing teams uh closely together right to then scale the entire approach uh across the entire portfolio that we have today okay so that sounds like you're working with a lot of different teams there you mentioned uh prod commercial team okay so uh can you go into any more depth like what do your day-to-day responsibilities look like so first of all as part of this Chief AI officer mandate um we have uh basically all the roles in there right so we have for example part of my team that was the team also before right so AI is not a new thing I was before that I was on the engineering side of the organization right this is also why this cross collaboration and and and this work is so natural to us as a team because I was actually part of the product engineering board area within sap right where all the applications like our Erp HR applications Finance supply chain procurement applications like conquer field glass arba success factor some of them you may know are located and and I was I was always the cross engineering guy if you will right looking top to bottom looking at our user experience looking at our process integration our technology adoption with respect to our technology platforms and AI we also did in the in the last couple of years there as well and we moved it out uh directly on our CEO uh Christian Klein and Engineering is still with us where we build platform services like for example Jewel our generative AI co-pilot which all of the applications are adopting where we build what we call the generative AI Hub which is kind of the glue if you will uh where we bring the best of large language models or foundational models together with the real-time data that is stored within sap and nonsp systems a couple of other reuse services for document information extraction data attribut recommendation recommend other recommendation Services uh that are kind of you know reuse services that you can embed uh in multiple uh different applications so we build those that that's part of our engineering um um layer that we provide as a as a service platform service to our own applications but then of course we have a dedicated product the partner management team we have a dedicated marketing team we have a dedicated goto market and sales team we have a dedicated implementation adoption team that helps customers uh then all the innovations that we are building to adopt them very quickly but also funel the feedback from those customers back very quickly and as you can imagine what does my daily job look like like all of those things now so every day we look at what's what's new on the product side of the house right how can we bring that directly to the customers how can we enable our field with that how can we turn first customers right really to adopt also our latest Innovations with that how how how does this what is the impact on our marketing approach and we are reviewing all of the all of these days every all of these things every single day uh in order really to move really really quickly and in alignment with our customers expectationsthere are a lot of uh technical seep positions you got Chief data officer Chief technical officer Chief Information officer how's the chief AI officer role differ from these that's a great question so I mean first of all it's a new kind of role right um that we that we also at sa we have established at the beginning 2024 and um at Le I mean there are different interpretations right on on what that role entails the way or why we have set it up U specifically in sap is um to really take a 360 perspective on AI um with for all the functions I mean as one of the largest um Enterprise application vendors right uh specifically out of Europe um we have to take not of course only the adoption internally right for our processes and for our people into account but obviously um how we you know think about the products how we bring AI all into our products we can spend a little bit more time I think about our product strategy in a minute uh and then really uh think this end to end through right how do we do legal aspects the commercial aspects and as we all know right who also regularly listening to this podcast there's so many things that happen all every day every every week new models come around the corner there's something happening on the regulatory side of the house so the question is really like what is the center of excellence or like the the nucleus in the company that takes all those signals all those cont Concepts into account and you know fit them together like differently or every single day right and there's a every day there are new opportunities new risks and in this role the way how we interpret it is really take an endtoend view right but at the same time it's also just a relatively small Department because at the end of the day and that's part of our strategy as we embed AI uh specifically all in our our our Enterprise applications is then to work with all the connected uh board areas right product and engineering technology department the CTO the CIO for internal adoption um our sales and marketing teams uh closely together right to then scale the entire approach uh across the entire portfolio that we have today okay so that sounds like you're working with a lot of different teams there you mentioned uh prod commercial team okay so uh can you go into any more depth like what do your day-to-day responsibilities look like so first of all as part of this Chief AI officer mandate um we have uh basically all the roles in there right so we have for example part of my team that was the team also before right so AI is not a new thing I was before that I was on the engineering side of the organization right this is also why this cross collaboration and and and this work is so natural to us as a team because I was actually part of the product engineering board area within sap right where all the applications like our Erp HR applications Finance supply chain procurement applications like conquer field glass arba success factor some of them you may know are located and and I was I was always the cross engineering guy if you will right looking top to bottom looking at our user experience looking at our process integration our technology adoption with respect to our technology platforms and AI we also did in the in the last couple of years there as well and we moved it out uh directly on our CEO uh Christian Klein and Engineering is still with us where we build platform services like for example Jewel our generative AI co-pilot which all of the applications are adopting where we build what we call the generative AI Hub which is kind of the glue if you will uh where we bring the best of large language models or foundational models together with the real-time data that is stored within sap and nonsp systems a couple of other reuse services for document information extraction data attribut recommendation recommend other recommendation Services uh that are kind of you know reuse services that you can embed uh in multiple uh different applications so we build those that that's part of our engineering um um layer that we provide as a as a service platform service to our own applications but then of course we have a dedicated product the partner management team we have a dedicated marketing team we have a dedicated goto market and sales team we have a dedicated implementation adoption team that helps customers uh then all the innovations that we are building to adopt them very quickly but also funel the feedback from those customers back very quickly and as you can imagine what does my daily job look like like all of those things now so every day we look at what's what's new on the product side of the house right how can we bring that directly to the customers how can we enable our field with that how can we turn first customers right really to adopt also our latest Innovations with that how how how does this what is the impact on our marketing approach and we are reviewing all of the all of these days every all of these things every single day uh in order really to move really really quickly and in alignment with our customers expectations\n"