Create real business results with an AI-powered ERP system

To learn what AI can do for your ERP system, join the AI for GROW moment with SAP on 16 October at 11 AM SGT, CEST, and EDT. Sign up here . This is in partnership with SAP S/4HANA Cloud ERP .

Is your business keeping up with the rapid pace of innovation? Companies must adapt quickly to stay competitive in today's fast-paced business landscape. One way to achieve this is by leveraging the power of AI within your Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system to increase business efficiency and productivity. Using AI, businesses can automate processes, make more informed decisions, and create tangible results.

But how exactly can AI benefit your ERP system? Let’s explore how an AI-powered ERP can revolutionize your business.

How to utilize AI for your business processes

AI brings intelligence to the heart of your ERP, enhancing the ability to handle complex data, predict trends, and automate repetitive tasks. Traditional ERP systems have driven extensive business transformation in the past two decades, but now it’s time to take the next step. AI is the next step because it allows the system to:

1.?Make intelligent recommendations: Based on past events and customer and supplier behaviors, you can now receive intelligent and automated recommendations to run and execute your business.

2.?Offer better resource management: Whether physical goods or human resources, you can now, for example, assign your team members to projects based on their recorded capabilities, ensuring you always put your best teams and products forward.

3.?Increase efficient communication: It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by information when interacting with your ERP system, but with AI, you can now get short and quick summaries about customers, suppliers, or internal events. This helps you quickly prepare for meetings or interact with colleagues in multiple languages.

AI transforms the ERP system and helps businesses make smarter decisions, optimize team and asset allocation, and provide concise summaries to reduce information overload. These innovations enhance efficiency and collaboration across the board.

Ensuring reliability with broad datasets

The key to making AI in ERP systems truly effective is training it on broad, comprehensive datasets. The larger and more diverse the dataset, the better AI can learn to handle different scenarios and make accurate predictions.

For example, a finance department using an AI-enabled ERP for cash flow forecasting can benefit from a system trained on datasets from various industries and regions. This ensures that the AI isn’t limited by biases or gaps in the data, leading to more reliable outputs.

Additionally, Cloud-based AI systems benefit from continuous learning, which can improve over time as they process more data. This ongoing learning enhances the reliability of your ERP, making it more adaptive to changing business environments.

Responsible AI: Ethics and data privacy

While AI offers powerful advantages, it’s essential to implement it responsibly. A trustworthy AI-powered ERP system should have built-in mechanisms to ensure ethical decision-making and robust data privacy protocols.

• Built-in ethics: AI systems must be designed to avoid bias and ensure fairness in automated decisions. This is particularly crucial in hiring, vendor selection, and financial approvals.
• Data privacy: With the rise of privacy regulations like GDPR, safeguarding sensitive data is a top priority. An AI-powered ERP system should have robust encryption, data masking, and access control features to protect your company’s and clients’ data.

By integrating these ethical guidelines and data privacy measures, businesses can use AI responsibly and build trust with their clients and employees.

Practical examples in finance processes

AI can be transformative in finance processes typically run in an ERP system. It delivers business insights at a level never seen before, which is bound to improve decision-making significantly. Here are a few practical examples:

• Accounts payable automation: AI can automatically match invoices with purchase orders, flag discrepancies, and even initiate payment, drastically reducing the time and effort required for manual input. Query the ERP for which suppliers create the most discrepancies and get automated recommendations for addressing the issues.
• Advanced financial close: This is the most draining process for finance and accounting professionals. However, with AI as your co-pilot, you can now easily query to identify and solve your most persistent errors.
• Invoice management: AI can analyze employee expense claims and flag anomalies, ensuring compliance with company policies and identifying potential fraud before it happens. With co-pilot capabilities, accountants can also get an overview of the most relevant actions.

These examples highlight how AI can significantly streamline financial processes, enabling finance teams to focus on strategic activities rather than administrative tasks.

Faster, more accurate decisions with AI-enabled Cloud ERP

By adopting an AI-powered ERP system, businesses can drive efficiency, accuracy, and speed in their operations. Leveraging AI's ability to process vast amounts of data, make predictions, and automate processes helps businesses stay ahead in today’s competitive market. Furthermore, with the proper safeguards for ethics and data privacy, companies can ensure that their AI systems are reliable and responsible.

Investing in a Cloud ERP powered by AI technology enables your business to make faster and more informed decisions, ultimately creating measurable business results. Are you already leveraging AI in your ERP systems or finance processes in general? Share your examples below and help others gain the confidence to get started, too!

Join the GROW with SAP virtual event on October 16th at 11 AM SGT, CEST, and EDT to learn how AI powers SAP’s Cloud ERP applications. Register Here .