Customers don’t seek off-the-shelf AI, they seek outcomes. They demand solutions tailored to their industry, aligned with strategic goals, and built to drive real results.
That is where customer-specific AI solutions add depth — not just as a technical enhancement, but as a strategic lever to unlock transformative business value.
According to McKinsey’s State of AI 2024, 72 percent of companies use AI in at least one business function, but only 23 percent report a significant impact on their bottom line. Why? Because many AI projects lack the contextual depth to solve the real industry-specific challenges businesses face.
Similarly, a 2024 IDC study shows that while 80 percent of enterprise leaders plan to increase AI investments, nearly half say the absence of domain-tailored solutions is a barrier to ROI. While foundational AI models provide broad capabilities, true business value comes from solutions tailored to each customer. Innovation is aligned with specific customer needs, operational realities, and regulatory requirements thanks to these targeted applications. These custom solutions leverage proprietary data; they are designed for specific business processes and are co-developed with stakeholders who understand the operational heartbeat of the enterprise. The end result is faster deployment, improved performance, and a measurable impact on the business. At SAP, we see AI’s true potential in enhancing human decisions, simplifying complexity, and transforming customer experiences. But this potential is only realized when AI is deeply grounded in each customer’s business context. That is why our approach to customer-specific AI is built on three core principles:
Context-rich insights: With unmatched access to enterprise data from across industries and business functions, SAP is uniquely positioned to deliver AI that understands how real businesses run.
Trust and transparency: From model explainability to data privacy, AI from SAP is built on a foundation of enterprise-grade governance and responsible AI standards.
Co-innovation on a large scale: SAP collaborates closely with its customers to create distinctive AI solutions that address their specific issues. Real outcomes with real customers
To address the complexity of managing nearly a million annual invoices across more than 40,000 contracts, Accenture partnered with SAP to simplify its fragmented, manual billing process. Using SAP Business Technology Platform and generative AI, the company built an intuitive, compliant application that empowers account executives to use AI for specific rate cards and contract terms, managing invoicing independently, and reducing reliance on specialist teams. Faster, more accurate billing, a better user experience, and significant time savings allowed commercial teams to concentrate on customers. By year-end, billing efficiency is expected to improve by 32 percent, with setup times cut in half and manual work replaced by an intuitive, automated platform.
In a similar vein, a global manufacturer of consumer goods and chemicals recently partnered with SAP to incorporate AI into its dispute management procedure, automating document classification and indexing. This customer-specific AI solution reduced manual effort, sped up resolution times, and boosted user productivity, showing how business-specific AI can streamline workflows and elevate customer experience at scale. The result was efficiency gains of up to 1,000 hours a month, reduced manual effort by over 500 hours/month, and improved accuracy and faster turnaround time for document-driven workflows.
Customers want to co-create AI that is tailored to their needs, not just adopt a one-size-fits-all solution, as demonstrated by these examples. Whether it’s last-mile logistics in retail, claims processing in the insurance industry, or energy optimization in utilities, customer-specific AI solutions give them the ability to incorporate intelligence into the very workflows that define their competitive advantage. In the coming years, enterprises will not differentiate by whether they use AI, but by how effectively they align AI to their business. This alignment is made possible by AI solutions tailored to the customer. They bridge the gap between technology potential and business reality. They transform AI from a common tool into a strategic advantage, allowing businesses to move more quickly, think more intelligently, and lead with purpose. As more organizations navigate the complexities of digital transformation, those that embed AI into the heart of their unique processes will be the ones to redefine what is possible.
Businesses that not only adopt AI but also tailor it to their vision, values, and speed will rule the future.
