The challenge facing planning teams

Finance and planning teams spend a significant amount of time pulling numbers together, explaining variances, and producing reports that often arrive too late to influence decisions. Even with modern planning tools in place, moving from business questions to clear answers can still take time.

SAP’s AI copilot, Joule, is changing how this work is done. Early adopters report faster task completion and meaningful time savings by letting AI support documentation, analysis, and data exploration. Instead of waiting on reports or models, users can ask questions and receive immediate, data driven responses grounded in live planning data.

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Why this matters for planning and decision making

AI led planning reduces manual effort and gives teams more time to focus on analysis, judgement, and leadership conversations. Organisations using SAP’s AI capabilities are forecasting and responding faster, testing more scenarios, and making decisions with greater confidence based on trusted, current information.

This shift is especially important as planning becomes broader and more complex. Strategic, Financial, and operational planning requirements increasingly intersect, placing pressure on teams to deliver insight quickly without compromising governance or accuracy.

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What we are seeing in the market

Across industries, organisations using AI to support planning are accelerating insight cycles and adapting more quickly to change. Adoption is expanding beyond financial planning into operational and sustainability use cases, where the ability to identify patterns, anomalies, and impacts early is becoming essential.

AI in planning is no longer experimental. For many organisations, it is becoming a practical capability that supports better decision making at scale.

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SAP Joule in context

SAP Joule is the AI copilot embedded within SAP Analytics Cloud. It allows planning teams to interact with data using natural language, build models and scenarios dynamically, and generate commentary for management reporting in real time.

Because Joule is integrated with SAP Datasphere and SAP Business Data Cloud, responses are based on live, governed business data. This helps ensure insights remain current, consistent, and trusted across stakeholders.

Built in AI capabilities support activities such as variance analysis, anomaly detection, demand forecasting, and scenario evaluation. Tasks that previously took weeks can now be completed in minutes, allowing teams to spend less time preparing information and more time interpreting it.

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The DyFlex perspective

In our work with customers, the most successful AI initiatives start with a focused use case. We guide teams to identify a single planning workflow where AI can remove friction and deliver immediate value.

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