SAP signals channel role as AI becomes increasingly embedded

Customers are embedding artificial intelligence (AI) into an increasing number of day-to-day tasks, according to research from SAP, which has lifted the lid on the current market landscape.

Although AI hit the headlines earlier this week for the wrong reasons, with the Hugging Face attack, the technology is spreading ever wider across the channel and its customer base.

The SAP 2026 engagement index found that 79% of senior decision-makers felt that AI assistants had increased productivity, without reducing human control, and more than a third revealed the technology is now embedded into workflows and not a standalone exercise.

Sara Richter, CMO of SAP Engagement Cloud, said the increased user adoption of AI was a chance for its channel to add value and provide services and strategy.

“The real opportunity isn’t simply adopting AI. It’s connecting data, processes and people to help organisations move faster, make better decisions and deliver better customer experiences, with the right governance and human oversight in place,” she said.

“As specialists in driving business transformation, channel partners have a vital role to play. They can help customers move from experimentation to execution, scaling AI from individual use cases to organisation-wide impact.”

Richter added that the awareness of agentic AI had been rising and was now being used proactively, rather than reacting to user prompts, to deliver improved customer experiences.

“Most businesses already know that AI can help them. The question now is where it should be allowed to act, and where people still need to stay in control,” she added. “AI agents can remove a lot of the slow, manual work that obstructs good customer engagement. But they are only successful when the data is connected, the rules are clear and teams trust what the AI is doing.”

The findings also indicated that most customers were gearing up to use AI in a more embedded fashion, with many setting out guardrails to protect data and establish the process for human interaction.

The vendor indicated the report showed there was a shift among customers to increase levels of e engagement to deliver improved customer experiences. The report found that 78% of decision-makers quizzed were making investments in AI-powered customer engagement right now.

SAP has been investing in its ecosystem and alliances, with the likes of Google, to ensure it has the partners and access to tools to provide solutions to users and remined its channel that the AI conversation started with encouraging users to think about their data.

“AI agents are incredibly effective. But if your data is messy or your systems don’t talk to each other, layering AI on top will only make those problems more visible,” added Richter. “The brands that get this right will be those that start with strong foundations: connected data, clear permissions and workflows that improve as they learn. That’s how you move faster with AI without losing control.”

Other across the channel agree that for AI to succeed it must be delivered by channel partners with the ability to help customers design, deploy and maintain systems.

Speaking to MicroScope earlier this week, Ricardo Moreno stepped into the role of vice-president of global partner sales at Everpure, said that the channel had to be involved.

“Every client out there has different data needs. Data is incredibly valuable to them, incredibly private and sensitive, and I believe a fundamental role that partners can have is to advise the customer on how to build their data strategy,” said Moreno.