Understanding the Value Provided by Joule

Research from BCG’s 2025 study reveals that only 5% of companies qualify as future-built for AI, systematically building capabilities across functions and generating substantial value. The remaining 60% report minimal gains despite significant investment.

What separates the leaders? According to McKinsey, 55% of high-performing companies have fundamentally redesigned workflows when deploying AI, almost three times the rate of other firms. 75% are scaling AI across the business, twice the rate of their peers.

The financial impact is clear. Future-built companies achieve 5 times the revenue increases and 3 times the cost reductions of their peers, with 1.7 times revenue growth and 3.6 times higher shareholder returns over three years.

Embedded directly into the flow of work across SAP and non-SAP systems, Joule transforms transactional tasks into intelligent, connected workflows that inform sharper decisions and accelerate business processes. Grounded in SAP’s harmonized data and trusted architecture, Joule delivers unmatched contextual performance without compromising on compliance, security, or scale.

Joule changes how people work with AI by grounding every interaction in role, process, and business context. Users interact through role-based AI assistants that understand their responsibilities and guide them through tasks, decisions, and questions in a single, consistent experience. Instead of juggling multiple tools or bots, each person has one intelligent entry point into AI.

Behind the scenes, multiple Joule Agents collaborate across business functions to reason through complex scenarios and execute multi-step workflows. Because these agents are built on SAP business processes and enterprise data, Joule can reliably answer high-impact business questions and support advanced capabilities such as search, reasoning, and deep research.

The result is faster decisions, clearer actions, and less manual effort for employees.

Joule is intended to extend the influence of AI throughout the entire organization, rather than limiting its benefits to specific teams or individual applications.

AI agents are embedded across core business functions, where they automate routine tasks, orchestrate workflows, and support continuous decision-making in the flow of work. This allows organizations to move from isolated automation to connected, end to end processes.

When additional capabilities are needed, Joule can be extended using SAP Build and Joule Studio. Organizations can create custom skills and agents that connect SAP and non SAP systems while preserving a unified AI experience.

Joule also supports interoperability across tools and environments, enabling users to access SAP insights from non SAP applications and trigger SAP actions without switching context.

Scaling AI only works when trust is built in. Joule is designed for enterprise environments where security, compliance, and governance are essential.

All interactions operate within SAP’s strict data protection and privacy standards. Customer data is not used to train third-party models, and all actions follow existing authorization and policy controls.

Responsible AI principles are embedded into Joule’s design and aligned with global standards. For organizations building custom or third party agents, Joule provides centralized governance and visibility, enabling innovation while maintaining control.

• Ready-to-use Agentic AI for every core business function, with built-in SAP process expertise and out-of-the-box grounding in customers’ business context
• Transforms isolated data and tasks into intelligent, connected workflows that inform sharper decisions and accelerate business processes
• Built into the flow of work across SAP and non-SAP systems
• Governed by SAP’s security, compliance, and access controls
• Designed to scale from everyday assistance to autonomous, cross-functional automation

SAP Value Bench-marking demonstrates productivity improvements of up to 75% in core business processes across functions.

Finance: Up to 80% less time on accruals, half the time for financial summaries, 5% reduction in cash float, and up to 30% reduction in dispute management handling costs.

Operations: Field service dispatcher productivity up 50%, maintenance planner productivity up 40%, and order-to-delivery time cut in half.

HR and Procurement: Performance discussion time reduced 50%, policy questions reduced 70%, RFP creation time reduced 70%, and expense report time reduced 30%.

Sales and Sustainability: 50% faster information searches, 70% boost in staff productivity, and ESG reporting time reduced by 98%.

Let’s look at an example of how Joule’s ready-to-use agentic capabilities can transform workflows.

Today’s CFOs operate in an environment defined by volatility, regulation and complexity. Many are drowning in manual close, compliance stress, and liquidity concerns.

Joule helps finance teams to steer the business with agility, speed, and confidence in their processes with embedded AI (from Optimizing financials all the way to analyzing and improving). Let’s dig into a few examples of how SAP Business AI supports finance:

• In, ’Record to Report’, finance leaders can cut manual effort dramatically, with up to 80% less time on accruals and half the time for financial summaries using AI in Accruals Agent and Financial Business Insights in SAP Cloud ERP. (SAP Value Bench-marking)
• In ‘Treasury & Working Capital Management’, finance leaders can optimize cash operations and liquidity, improving cash efficiency with up to 5% reduction in cash float and freeing up to 5 million euros in additional payables leveraging AI in Cash Agent and SAP Working Capital in SAP Cloud ERP. (SAP Value Bench-marking)

When it comes to Sustainability Requirements and ESG, you can cut reporting time by up to 98% with embedded AI in SAP ERP and SAP Analytics. (SAP Value Benchmarking)

Learn how an SAP customer uses Joule to rethink, redesign, and transform business workflows.

Bosch Power Tools, a leading global supplier of power tools, serves customers in more than 40 countries and manages over 1.5 million annual service tickets. Facing mounting complexity in its customer service operations, Bosch needed a way to modernize support and deliver faster, more accurate responses.

The challenge was clear: static workflow rules and manual routing caused up to 40% of tickets to be mis-routed, driving delays, high IT maintenance costs, and reduced service quality. Customer service employees spent excessive time searching for information and caused delays, while customer satisfaction was impacted.

Bosch transformed its customer service workflows using generative AI in SAP Sales and Service Cloud and Joule AI assistant embedded in agent desktop. By replacing hundreds of static workflow rules with a single generative AI-powered intelligent agent, Bosch achieved more accurate ticket routing, faster resolutions, and a modern, scalable AI-driven CRM foundation. AI-driven insights, summaries, and self-service capabilities empower agents to deliver higher-quality support while freeing IT from the maintenance burden:

• Boosted ticket classification accuracy by 35%, reducing manual dispatch and optimizing workflow processes
• 80 man-days were saved in IT efforts each year, through reduction of configuration efforts and less trouble-shooting workflow rules
• Automated ticket responses, routing, and knowledge-base documentation, saved an additional 2,500+ hours annually per contact center

Read the full SAP Innovation Award Story.

• Only 5% of companies are future-built for AI; leaders who redesign workflows achieve 5 times the revenue increases of peers
• Joule delivers value through three pillars: a new human advantage, performance that scales, and agility without compromise
• SAP Value Benchmarking demonstrates productivity improvements of up to 75% across finance, operations, HR, procurement, sales, and sustainability