Artificial intelligence (AI) promises a future of unprecedented productivity, faster decisions, and better business outcomes. Yet for many, that promise begs a question:  What's in it for me?

While organizations see limitless potential in AI, the average person is a bit more skeptical. Employees worry about losing autonomy. New graduates question whether AI will limit career opportunities. Finance leaders are increasingly scrutinizing the costs of AI investments and demanding clearer returns.

This creates a critical challenge for businesses: if people don't trust AI, they won't use it, and if they don't use it, organizations will never realize its value.

At SAP, we believe the path to successful AI adoption starts with a simple principle: Design for humans first.

By understanding people's intentions, workflows, and concerns, we create AI experiences that feel less existential and more empowering. The result? Technology that people want to use and whose value businesses can measure.

We are operationalizing this approach through three core principles:

1. Start with intentions, not technology

The market seems to approach AI as an engineering challenge: how do we create more powerful models? At SAP, we approach AI as a human productivity challenge: how do we help a person achieve their goals? This means we focus on what they’re trying to accomplish, what decisions they’re trying to make, and what information they need in that moment of truth. Understanding people’s intentions enables us to design AI experiences that fit naturally into existing workflows rather than forcing people to adapt to technology.

This philosophy is reflected in Joule Work, SAP's generative interaction layer. Instead of requiring users to learn new systems or navigate increasingly complex interfaces, Joule Work interprets intent and delivers relevant information, recommendations, and suggested actions to take. This turns the knowledge worker into an orchestrator of positive outcomes instead of simply an AI user. Further, Joule Agents offers the ability to create and customize AI agents using Joule Studio.

2. Design for confidence, not compliance

Let's be honest: nobody wants to be told they must embrace AI. A person will adopt a solution only if they feel confident in their ability to use and get positive outcomes from it. So, to ensure that people truly embrace AI, we must fold onboarding, education, guidance, and continuous support into the overall experience. That's why SAP focuses on creating smooth on-ramps that help people build understanding and trust over time. With thorough onboarding journeys and in-product guidance powered by WalkMe, SAP helps users discover how AI can enhance their work from day one. When users feel supported rather than pressured, they're more likely to experiment, learn, and ultimately unlock the value of AI for themselves and their organizations.

3. Continuously listen to people’s wants and needs

Building AI that people trust requires insight into people’s evolving preferences and behaviors. SAP has embedded research and continuous feedback into the product development process through initiatives like the User Research Panel, expanded customer engagement at SAP Sapphire, and investments in telemetry and sentiment analysis capabilities. These efforts allow us to understand not only what people say they need but also how they really use our products. The result is a continuous feedback loop that helps teams ensure AI experiences always deliver value to our customers and users.

This only works if we’re in it together

What should be clear is that we believe that facilitating pathways to users embracing AI tools is the only way for businesses to unlock AI’s potential. But we can only do that with the support and collaboration of our customers and partners.

At the heart of this is the level of engagement we get from our customers and partners in providing both direct and indirect feedback. How can you do this?

• Sign up for our User Research Panel. This growing community of SAP software users provides our product teams access to people who can help test current and future SAP products and features. In allowing your employees to participate in this panel, you’ll be ensuring that the specific needs of your organization are reflected in how our product teams understand the market.
• Enable in-product feedback to influence how AI features are prioritized. We’ve embedded surveys into our product experience that ask people to provide feedback on their workflows in the context of using key features. When you enable this capability, you allow us to understand what challenges people have as they’re doing their jobs and the context necessary to make adjustments.
• Share how your organization uses our products. To better understand the direct feedback we get on our products, it’s essential that we understand the steps people take through their specific workflows. By giving us access to telemetry data, you allow us to marry direct feedback with historical usage patterns, letting us precisely target our improvements and innovations to areas where your employees struggle most.

Organizations that unlock the most value from AI will be those that invest as much in people as they do in technology. By continuously listening to user needs, SAP is shaping AI that is trusted, adopted, and impactful at scale.

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