Explaining the Role of Generative AI in SAP LeanIX

SAP LeanIX shows you the full scope of your software estate — bought, planned, or built. That means customers can get a complete picture of their transformation initiatives, showing the as-is and charting the to-be. SAP LeanIX provides a single source of truth for everyone in an organization, with a myriad of capabilities that enable engagement with stakeholders and sharing of analyses, reports, and architectural diagrams. It gives organizations tools to build their technology roadmap from strategy to execution.

This helps accelerate every transformation. Change and transformation are no longer an obstacle, it’s an opportunity. SAP LeanIX provides businesses with a common language and a single source of truth to make transformations happen better, faster, and with greater impact.

Application Portfolio Management is the foundation of SAP LeanIX addressing the use cases application portfolio assessment, application rationalization, and AI adoption and governance. Customers can add Technology Risk and Compliance for obsolescence risk management and technology standards management use cases. Finally, SAP LeanIX Architecture and Road Map Planning provides capabilities to help customers with application modernization and ERP transformation.

At the core, SAP LeanIX’s success is based on a proven, easy-to-understand meta model. The pre-defined, yet highly configurable, meta model covers all layers of an organization's enterprise architecture. Building on this meta model and leveraging automatically generated reports that highlight different facets of the architecture layers, customers gain insights faster than with any other enterprise architecture tool. Customers can enhance and modify the meta model according to their needs to better match their organization’s IT landscape.

See the following video to learn more about the use of SAP Signavio and SAP LeanIX for RISE transformation according to SAPs Activate method.

So how does artificial intelligence support increased efficiencies and productivity in SAP LeanIX ?

SAP LeanIX leverages AI under two models:

• AI in the SAP LeanIX meta model – supporting an enterprise architect’s goal of providing visibility into and managing AI usage within the organization
• AI capabilities embedded across the SAP LeanIX solution – AI functionality supporting enterprise architects in a variety of tasks

SAP LeanIX provides AI-supported capabilities designed to enhance productivity and further democratize the solution to all users. From leveraging AI to accelerate and facilitate more complete data within SAP LeanIX to providing AI-derived context and translations, the first batch of AI capabilities demonstrated the potential benefits of the technology when applied to enterprise architecture use cases.

Inventory AI prompt combines the information in your inventory with the power of generative AI to make enterprise architecture information more accessible and actionable. It provides a natural language interface for interacting with your enterprise architecture repository, allowing you to ask questions, query data, and receive insights using everyday language. You can use predefined requests or your own prompts to get assistance in various tasks.

• Enhanced decision making based on more complete data

Business Value

• Up to 60% reduced time to generate architecture insights
• More than 40% higher fact sheet data completion rate

Watch the following video for more information about Inventory AI prompt to query AI based on fact sheet data.

The AI-assisted text allows you to effortlessly create or enhance various types of text content by analyzing the context and providing options to improve it through rewriting or summarizing existing text. For example, AI-assisted text analyzes the content and context of the fact sheet and generates a concise and accurate description for it.

Benefits:

• Streamline the process of creating informative descriptions, saving users time and effort
• Improved application owner productivity

• Up to 90% reduction in time required to fill application descriptions
• More than 40% higher fact sheet data completion rate

Watch the following video to learn more about Efficient documentation with AI-assisted text.

AI-generated context provides additional information and insights by analyzing existing data and context, helping users better understand tasks or requests and make informed decisions.

Benefits:

• Increased to-do assignee productivity

• Up to 30% reduction in time required complete to-dos
• 20% increased to-do completion rate

The AI-supported translation allows administrators to add and translate labels and help texts for both newly created and existing attributes in the meta model configuration. This enables you to ensure that labels and help texts for fact sheet attributes are accessible in multiple languages, facilitating a more inclusive and comprehensible user experience for all users, regardless of language preference.

Image of AI-support translations

Benefits:

• Save time and effort while also ensuring consistency across the translated content
• Expanded product accessibility

• More than 70% reduction in time required to translate necessary information
• Up to 30% improved translation accuracy of enterprise architecture terms

Inventory Builder uses AI to analyze diagrams and images, automatically extracting architectural elements and relationships to simplify and accelerate inventory creation. By uploading visual assets—like system diagrams or flow charts—users can generate fact sheets and connections, which are then reviewed and refined through an intuitive inbox experience. With additional prompts and customization options, the tool provides even more accurate and actionable data.

Benefits

• Automates conversion of unstructured artifacts (e.g., value stream charts, architecture images) into structured fact sheets

• Streamlines stakeholder onboarding and ongoing inventory maintenance

• Enhances data quality with editable AI-suggested relationships and fact sheet types

Business Value:

• Significantly reduces manual effort and time in inventory setup

• Supports faster enterprise architecture adoption with automated discovery

• Maintains a high level of accuracy through user-guided review and bulk creation tools

Joule in SAP LeanIXImage of SAP LeanIX with Joule

Joule is a generative AI assistant embedded in SAP LeanIX that enables conversational interactions to streamline information discovery and task completion. Acting as a smart access point across the SAP ecosystem, Joule allows users to search for fact sheets, diagrams, reports, and documentation directly through natural language queries—eliminating the need for manual navigation.

Benefits

• Quickly locate and preview diagrams, reports, and fact sheets within SAP LeanIX

• Interact using everyday language for faster answers and less time spent searching

• Summarized responses pulled from documentation with source links when available

Business Value

• Accelerates decision-making by reducing the time spent locating architectural information

• Improves user productivity through intuitive, chat-based workflows

• Offers early access integration into the SAP ecosystem, extending beyond LeanIX to other connected tools

Next, let’s have a quick look at SAP LeanIX and its AI features in the context of Cloud ERP Transformation. SAP LeanIX helps you monitor and understand your IT landscape. The AI features on top that to mention are first Inventory Builder. So, this is an upcoming feature that will come up later this year. It will help you accelerate building your IT landscape inventory. You can imagine an image, an architecture diagram that you've quickly mocked up, a text document, an architecture overview PDF, any of those items will be able to be turned into the inventory items that appear in the uploaded media. The other one, the existing feature, the inventory AI prompt.

This one gives you several out-of-the-box prompts that you can query the LLM with, such as asking for five possible replacements for an application or IT component or filling the description of an application or related integration. The prompts can help architects be more productive, reducing the time spent on manual tasks and data entry. Last one is on the roadmap is an AI copilot that leverages Joule in SAP LeanIX With Joule, architects will find it easier to find and navigate to the inventory item, report, or diagram through natural language queries from anywhere within the solution.

Watch the following video to learn more about Efficient documentation with AI-assisted text.