Rear view of male and female mountaineers celebrating victory on top of mountain at sunset.
As a business leader, trust matters when you make business decisions based on new technology models such as cloud computing or implement new technologies such as generative AI.
Paul Saunders, head of product strategy and chief evangelist for cloud ERP for SAP S/4HANA, said in a recent interview: “Trust is not engine oil, it is the essence of business.”
In the interview, Sanders also discusses other aspects of the changing relationship between people. The former Gartner analyst believes this changed relationship has pushed trust to the top of the corporate agenda, making his SAP commitment to relevant, trustworthy, and responsible business AI even more important. I am.
“SAP’s relationship with our customers has long been transactional,” he says. However, things have changed with the move to the cloud. From a customer’s perspective, a cloud environment requires a whole new level of trust as the SaaS vendor is running their business efficiently.
Saunders said: “When a data center goes down, customers can’t just say, “Hey, Bob, go to the computer lab and restart the box.” AI now provides more than just data; and recommendations. And some of those recommendations challenge what the person thinks intuitively.”
For example, when Sanders was CIO of a Georgia golf cart manufacturer that shipped carts across the country, he was an early adopter of an AI-based route planning package designed to optimize cart deliveries to customers across the country. Did.
But despite the potential efficiency gains promised by this technology, the CEO, who had run a company for 40 years and was used to relying on his own judgment, ignored the software and decided not to let drivers choose their preferred delivery route. insisted on following.
This resistance to change reflects a widespread reluctance to embrace data-based decision-making, and individuals often seek ways to reinforce existing beliefs rather than challenge them. to interpret the data.
When faced with a suggestion from a machine to do something different, most people will only follow the advice if they have firm confidence in the accuracy of the underlying data and can monitor the process.
Saunders says that’s an advantage for SAP. He acknowledges that while SAP is sometimes considered “a little outdated,” it is also considered “incredibly reliable and dependable.”
In this rapidly changing and unpredictable environment, many experts, including Sanders, predict that at least one major brand will make the news for doing something terrible with AI. . In this context, relevant, reliable, and responsible business AI is key to his SAP commitment to providing trusted solutions.
For Sanders, the importance of fostering trust and confidence in both the technology itself and the organizations implementing it cannot be overstated, especially in an industry where risk aversion and conservatism are prevalent. .
However, he recognized that while AI streamlines processes and improves efficiency, human judgment and oversight will still be essential to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the insights AI generates, and organizations will He also believes there needs to be a balance between automation and human intervention.
At the end of the day, what really matters to customers is not the technology itself, but the business value it creates. “If you talk to a CEO or CFO, they’ll tell you he only cares about three things: revenue, costs, and risk. That’s it.”
Ultimately, “everything we do has to demonstrate business value,” he says.
