SAP is agreesively embedding AI into its software. No doubt, it will help sap acquire more nunber of customers and generate more revenues. Sap recently accounced that it has surpassed it's revenue target of Q3 2026 and it's Q3 revenue stood at 10 billion euros. Out of this 7 billing euros is coming from cloud services. No doubt businesses will adopt AI servies but dependency on consultant's help is not going to go away anytime soon. Let me try to explain why I say this.
Business users will be able to do lot more using AI services, but still dependency on sap consultants will continue to exist.
From customer's perspective, more AI in sap means better software and greater productivity. Businesses want solutions which are simple and yet powerful, AI will certaily help doing that. Using AI business users will themselve will be able to do a lot more than they are currently doing. Their dependency on external help will reduce. Hence demand for number of consultants will eventually reduce. But this transition from external help to AI help is not going to be so straight forward as it looks. In my opinion, for businesses to shift away from consultant's help to AI help is going to be very difficult and time taking.
Businesses will still need sap consultant's help even after AI in sap.
Consultant's job is to integract with business and undersand business requriment. Lot of discussion happens to finalize the requiremnet it self and then comes solution design. Consultant has to propse possile solutions and work with business to choose most optimal solution. This solution desining and refining takes many number of meetings due to cross module integration and impact. After solution design is approved by each stakeholder, then comes build in sap. Almost every solution needs some sort of customization which is not a standard functinoality provided by sap. Hence code changes are done. Code changes are very critical becuase it can make or break a solution. Then comes SIT (System Integration Testing) where testing is done for all involved systems. It consumes huge time. Then finally comes UAT (User Acceptance Test) where business user executes test scripts and test variosu business scenarios before approving the solution for deployement in production. Consultant needs to fix all UAT defects identified during testing.
Now imagine the same scenario with AI being embedded in sap.
May be business can use AI to refine their requiment and explain their requirement in more stuctured way. This may reduce the time taken by consultants to understand the requirement since requirement is already well refined. Now consultnat can use AI to design solutions better and faster. Duration to get solution design approved by business will go down. But proof testing of solution still needs to be done before proposing solution to business. Solutin build time frame may also reduce due to automation. But Unit testing, System integration testing and UAT still needs to be done. But time duration to comlete these testing may reduce significantly. Time spend on documentation will reduce significantly.
In short, all activities still needs to be done. But with AI time taken to complete each task will reduce significantly.
Conclusoin
Let the answer the main question, will the number of sap jobs increase or decrease due to AI. In my opinion, number of jobs will increase for high skilled candidates becuase they are the ones who will lead the AI adoption. At the same time, those who are average skill will struggle to survie the market transition.
AI is boom for those who are learing and upgrading their skills but challenge for those who are not upskilling.
