SAP recently announced a deep bi-directional integration of their generative AI copilot Joule with Copilot for Microsoft 365. Should you be excited about this integration? If you have ever experienced context switching as a challenge hindering your productivity, you should be. There is more potential for this integration to unlock greater productivity, better decision-making, and accelerated innovation.
What is SAP’s Joule?
Almost every tech giant has its own generative AI assistant, like Microsoft’s Copilot and Salesforce’s Einstein. Joule is SAP’s answer to generative AI for enterprises. As part of their business AI solutions, SAP launched Joule as a generative AI assistant integrated with SAP applications such as SuccessFactors, Concur, Ariba, Analytics Cloud, etc. Joule delivers contextualized, proactive insights from across the SAP environment and external sources.
Joule is built on large language models and grounded on SAP data. So, you can interact with the copilot in a more natural manner and get contextual responses. The gen AI assistant helps you navigate through SAP applications smoothly, retrieve accurate information, execute tasks faster, and gain personalized recommendations for better decision-making.
For example, a project manager assembling his team for a new project can ask Joule to find people with the right skill set in the organization. The deep learning AI algorithms in SAP Joule will analyze employee data on SuccessFactors and identify people with the specified skills for the team.
Microsoft pioneered generative AI assistants for enterprises with its Copilot. The gen AI assistant is seamlessly integrated with every suite of products from Microsoft, making it extremely capable of automating tasks and delivering real-time insights. You can read more about Microsoft Copilot here.
Bi-directional integration of SAP Joule with Microsoft Copilot
There’s a copilot for every application. In a business ecosystem, these copilots are working in silos, serving only specific functionalities. To deliver truly unified experiences for its users, SAP leveraged its partnership with Microsoft.
At Sapphire 2024, SAP announced a deep bi-directional integration of Joule with Copilot for Microsoft 365 to help users with faster access to information on their SAP and Microsoft 365 systems without context switching and boost productivity.
An employee using Copilot on Teams can access information on their SAP applications, such as SuccessFactors. Similarly, someone using Joule on an SAP application can interact with data on Microsoft 365 applications, such as Teams. Everything happens without switching between applications.
Let’s see how this works from our previous example:
The project manager can ask SAP Joule to create a Microsoft Teams channel with all the teammates. Using the integration with Copilot for Microsoft 365, Joule can create the channel without requiring you to go to Microsoft Teams. He can ask Joule to schedule a team meeting and block everybody’s Outlook calendar without opening Outlook. The project manager can access project information such as expenses, analytics, and other information from Microsoft Teams using the virtual gen AI assistant, Joule.
How the Joule – Copilot integration helps you
Individually, SAP and Microsoft create powerful enterprise environments that handle huge amounts of data and support critical operations. Integrating these environments and creating a unified ecosystem can be a game-changer for businesses, creating opportunities for unprecedented productivity and innovation. This is where the integration of Joule and Copilot for Microsoft 365 becomes significant.
With this bi-directional integration, both the gen AI assistants can carry out requests no matter where the data is located. Your employees can collaborate better and do more with less effort by combining data from SAP and contextual understanding from M365 apps. Thus, the unified copilot experience provides faster and deeper insights and strengthens your decision making.
Will you need a technology partner for this integration?
As exciting as it seems, successfully integrating SAP Joule and Copilot in your enterprise ecosystem can be challenging. It requires thorough consideration for security, scalability, and reliability. A reliable technology partner can help you uncover the mysteries behind the bidirectional integration of the two gen AI assistants.
As a trusted Microsoft Solutions Partner and SAP partner, we at Saxon AI come with proven expertise. We specialize in extending the capabilities of SAP applications by seamlessly integrating with Azure Cloud and Microsoft products.
Aligning our strategic partnerships with your business objectives, we can help you create unified copilot experiences and drive innovation.
If you want to uncover the potential use case for the Joule and Copilot integration in your business, we are always here for you.
