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SAP offered 300 AI agents. Workday's product chief, a former SAP executive, called the autonomous enterprise idea "cold and soulless".

Gerrit Kazmaier, president of product and technology at Workday, made the remark at Workday Rising, a week after SAP Connect in the same city, iTWire reported.

ERP LEADERS news desk · · First reported by iTWire · Edition no. 59
Photo: Coolcaesar/Wikimedia, CC BY-SA 4.0 · original

"Some companies dream of an autonomous enterprise. We think that's a very cold and soulless way to think about an enterprise," he told journalists. He did not name SAP.

SAP counted 200 agents at Connect and 300 by TechEd, with 400 promised by the end of the year. Its HCM president Rebecca Carr told the keynote: "People remain responsible for the decisions, the operation, and its results." That was not a reply to Workday.

The argument is about who holds the decision once agents do the work. Workday's own AI agents reach general availability in early 2027.

SAP's own SuccessFactors marketing chief showed figures that 65% of executives say their firms are not redeploying the HR time automation frees up.

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Companies in this story
WorkdaySAP

Our file on SAP

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    SAP says its network handles over $8 trillion of trade a year. Its AI agent post names no customer.

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  3. 5 NovFiled later

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  4. 4 Nov

    SAP won a Dutch military cloud deal of up to ten years. The ministry says it does not end its SAP dependence.

  5. 3 Nov

    SAP will run Cohere's AI agents for clients with strict rules on where data is kept. Its launch post gives no price.

All 101 SAP stories

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Questions for your own programme. They are not findings about any company in this story.

  1. 1Ask which AI tools already touch your ERP or finance data, including the ones nobody approved.
  2. 2Ask what each tool is allowed to change, and who reviews what it changed.
  3. 3Ask how the result is measured, and who decides to switch a tool off.

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