In today’s interconnected business space, disruptions rarely remain confined. A supply chain issue, for example, can quickly ripple through finance, HR and customer operations. To navigate such complexities, enterprises need more than isolated solutions; they need connected intelligence. Systems that align every business function are essential for making collective and responsible decisions.
Varun Thamba, regional head of AI at SAP Asia Pacific, believes that the answer lies in combining AI with business process integrity. In an exclusive interaction with AIM, he explained how SAP’s approach to responsible AI, powered by HANA and Joule, is redefining how enterprises balance automation with accountability.
“The key is not just in building AI, but in building AI that can be trusted, monitored and refined by humans,” Thamba said.
For SAP, responsible AI means ensuring that every automation and insight remains grounded in human oversight and ethical governance.
Building Trust Through Technology
At the heart of SAP’s AI transformation is the SAP S/4HANA Cloud, an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. It integrates capabilities such as AI-assisted journal creation, predictive labour demand planning and in-house service automation, helping businesses improve productivity and decision-making.
Yet, as Thamba pointed out, these tools are designed to enhance—not replace—human judgement.
Developers play a central role in this vision. SAP Build offers AI-powered, low-code and code-first tools that speed up application creation without compromising control.
According to Thamba, thousands of customers are already experiencing up to three times faster development speeds with SAP Build. The idea is to give developers autonomy while maintaining a secure and ethical backbone.
SAP Joule, the company’s generative AI copilot, furthers this objective. Joule for Developers and Consultants can generate code, summarise workflows and automate testing using natural language prompts. Yet, the engineer remains in charge.
“Joule is a coder and consultant’s best friend, but the lead is still very much the engineer,” Thamba said, emphasising SAP’s “human-in-the-loop” philosophy.
Responsible AI as a Business Imperative
Responsible AI is not merely a compliance metric for SAP. The company claims that SAP Business AI was ranked by the World Benchmarking Alliance as one of only six companies globally to meet all the ethical AI criteria. Its framework prioritises security, transparency and human accountability.
This philosophy is embedded in how SAP builds and integrates its ecosystem. SAP Business Data Cloud and Business AI come preloaded with trusted business content and analytical models based on five decades of enterprise experience.
The company’s open approach allows seamless integration with external technologies, supporting more than 30 open-source and general-purpose models.
“Just one day after ChatGPT 5 was launched, it was supported on the SAP platform,” Thamba said, underscoring the company’s commitment to openness while maintaining ethical standards.
Through partnerships with firms like Databricks, SAP enables harmonised data management without sacrificing governance or trust.
The Flywheel of Responsible Innovation
Looking ahead, SAP’s approach to AI rests on what Thamba describes as the “flywheel effect”. The cycle begins with applications running mission-critical processes, which generate semantically rich data. This data then powers AI models, which are infused back into applications, driving smarter decisions and greater efficiency.
“No other tech company has more access to semantically rich business data,” Thamba observed. This data, when governed responsibly, becomes the foundation for truly intelligent enterprises. The loop strengthens with every cycle, reinforcing SAP’s belief that AI’s true value emerges only when aligned with ethical frameworks and human intent.
As organisations race towards AI-driven transformation, SAP’s model offers a crucial reminder: intelligence without integrity can be risky.
Responsible AI may not be about slowing innovation; it could be about ensuring that innovation serves people, processes and principles equally. And that may be the most valuable lesson enterprises can take from SAP’s playbook.
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