Dive Brief:
- SAP is expanding capabilities within its copilot Joule, adding multiple collaborative AI agents, the enterprise technology vendor announced at a showcase Tuesday.
- The agents can analyze and resolve disputes, such as incorrect and missing invoices or duplicate payments, and streamline financial processes, like automating bill payments and ledger updates.
- “Collaborative multi-agent systems deploy specialized AI agents to tackle specific tasks and enable them to collaborate on intricate business workflows, adapting their strategies to meet shared objectives,” SAP said in the announcement.
Dive Insight:
Technology vendors are incorporating AI agents into their product portfolios. Designed to boost productivity and shift human focus to high-impact work, the features could increase the value of adopting the technology.
More than 4 in 5 executives plan to add AI agents within employee workflows in the next three years to generate work emails, code and analyze data, according to a Capgemini survey published in July.
Salesforce unveiled its Agentforce platform in August, enabling autonomous generative AI agents to ease handoffs between chatbots and humans. The software vendor has leaned into its vision of bolstering collaboration between agents and workers, with plans to launch the platform later this month. Slack is also introducing a new user interface for easier agent integration.
Meta threw its hat in the agent ring earlier this year, too. Organizations will eventually deploy one or more business agents to complete tasks for employees, CEO Mark Zuckerberg predicted in a July earnings call.
At the same time, AI tools face a trust problem, making enterprises wary of autonomous capabilities.
Enterprises across sectors, from Discover to Procter & Gamble, have emphasized the importance of worker control to validate and review the performance of generative AI tools. A human-in-the-loop approach can help mitigate risks.
As IT leaders ramp up AI adoption and spending, they’re looking to bridge the trust gap and raise confidence, but reliability and accuracy inconsistencies cause concerns. CIOs believe more clarity around regulations and improved compliance tools would ease some of the worry, according to an ABBYY survey published in August.
Training employees on best practices is also key, analysts and executives have told CIO Dive. SAP said it completed its pledge to train 2 million people globally in digital skills, ahead of its 2025 goal.
