The end of SAP user training as we know it

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is no longer a buzzword. Many of us have already adopted it in our daily lives – think personal assistants, smart homes and personalized recommendations - and in some cases, have even become dependent on it. In parallel, AI has gained a firm foothold in business. Customer support assistants, sales and marketing analysis, demand forecasting, logistics optimization and HR processes like recruitment are all common use cases for embedded AI.

Generative AI’s newer automations in conversational idea exchanges and creating empathetic content with insights, however, bring even more transformative potential.  In the context of SAP delivery and transformation, one powerful use case emerges with change management and training. 

Generative AI’s combination of contextual content creation with self-learning capabilities has greatly expanded automation scenarios.  In fact, it’s ability to create contextual responses from information extracted from documents is already evolving change management by largely automating user training.

It’s easy to think of a scenario where an AI conversational bot executes the end user training, or at the very least is always on standby to give business users contextual help with their daily transactions and applications usage.   The rest of this blog explores how generative AI is transforming change management and user training in an SAP context with Joule.

Meet SAP Joule

SAP has infused AI capabilities within its entire SAP Business Suite of products.  Joule, their generative AI-enabled, unified AI assistant for the entire SAP portfolio of products, is already redefining the user experience of interacting with SAP products.

Today, Joule can do daily work on behalf of a business user with appropriate prompts and guidance. Infused with agents and grounded in your business data, Joule can also predict a business situation and recommend remediation as needed. Joule can also create optimal code snippets and technical project templates to accelerate SAP developments.

The future is not far off where Joule will act as a true co-pilot in all SAP products.  One that understands natural languages and can create user roles and give context-specific responses – along with the capability to self-learn from user interactions

And this is why Joule is going to bring a paradigm shift to the SAP user training experience.

Evolving the SAP user training experience with Joule

User training for change management in SAP implementations is very important – and complex. Traditional SAP trainings involve detailed planning, time-consuming learning sessions and high-cost trainers and materials.  Moreover, these trainings are often found non-relevant for business users with very specific roles and responsibilities.

These limitations are compounded by the very nature of SAP implementations.  The pre-fixed timeline of SAP implementations – and the unavoidable fact that implementation consultants are transitioned out of projects post-go live support – creates a real knowledge gap between the SAP experts and the end users. This gap tends to get wider once the end user (inevitably) forgets the learnings from their initial training. The result? An initial dip in overall efficiency and reduced productivity, making the business doubt the success of the implementation – and lengthening the return on investment timeline for the organization.

Joule can be a lifesaver here by enabling on-demand contextual user training. Below are just some of the ways that Joule can transform end-user training and change management for organizations:

• Define user persona-specific learning journeys

  Joule can be used to plan, design and recommend the learning paths for different roles in an organization, like suggesting finance training for SAP S/4HANA finance users or SAP Integrated Business Planning (IBP) training for a supply chain user

• Interactive training sessions

  Joule, being integrated with SAP applications, can be helpful for on-demand, application-specific and contextual user assistance. Joule can help users with appropriate and instant tips, step guidance or provide references to the relevant resources.

• Application navigation guidance

  As Joule is integrated within an application, it can assist users with contextual assistance in navigating the application.

• Multi-language & gamification

  Users can interact with Joule in any language for assistance and Joule can train users with gamification elements on the context.

• Track training and performance with notifications and feedback

  Joule can track the required training and its progress. It can also notify users about new, updated training content availability. This is especially appropriate for training renewals.

  If configured, it can also collect feedback on the training to suggest potential improvements.

• Scalable training

  Joule is being deployed from a cloud platform; it can thus be scaled up for large numbers of user training, reducing the dependency on professional trainers.

• SAP Learning Hub integration

  Joule can be integrated with SAP Learning Hub, the official SAP learning platform, to answer any queries on the learning contents, paths and certifications.

• Knowledge retention

  Unlike physical trainers or consultants, who can leave organizations and risk knowledge loss, Joule with its self-learning capabilities can retain learnings and share them with new participants.

Limitations and risks

Despite all these advantages, AI does come with some hidden risks and challenges. Joule is not an exception.

Take Data Privacy. Organizations will need to ensure that all Interactions with Joule comply with the organization's policies and any geo regulations. The accuracy of Joule’s responses will also need to be validated. AI hallucinates, which impacts accuracy and Joule’s responses will need to be validated for critical trainings.

Finally, the cultural adoption of Joule as a training tool – and its benefits – will need to be explained to the end users so that they will adopt Joule as their unified training platform.  Accepting AI as a copilot and building trust with that tool in the context of training and assistance is something organizations need to be assured of before adopting it.

Use case:  Joule for SuccessFactors at the UK's largest utility company

A recent activation of Joule for SuccessFactors with document grounding functionality helped enable instant assistance with HR policies-related queries. The contextual response curated with reference to the policy documents stored in the SharePoint repository enabled the end users to have contextual and appropriate responses without going through the documents.

A more engaging, efficient and scalable learning experience with Joule

By leveraging SAP Joule in end-user training, organizations can create a more engaging, efficient and scalable learning experience, ultimately driving faster adoption and better utilization of SAP systems. The Generative AI capabilities of Joule can be well utilized for end-user training and to optimize organization change management, but it still must co-exist with professional trainers. While AI can automate the majority of training tasks, it still needs human intervention to monitor its performance and accuracy.

Joule activation for end-user training, combined with information about complex SAP processes and cross-functional relationships, will result in an optimal automated training infrastructure. The gradual maturity of AI assistants with self-learning will no doubt lead to a future of a completely independent AI-based training infrastructure.