This week SAP explained its new Joule Work and Autonomous Enterprise strategy at its SAP Connect conference. As you’ll hear, SAP is building a solid set of AI agents to compliment and automate many of its business processes and it’s now all live.

What does this mean for HR? Well SAP customers now have lots to think about – including how Joule may interact with other agents, what agents and assistants to use, and how to interconnect the SAP Knowledge Graph with non-SAP data. It’s a solid strategy for automating existing business processes, and it’s now up to SAP customers and consultants to learn how to use all these agents for business transformation.

Moving to this second topic, I discuss our new research on “Managing a system of agents,” and how you should think through, architect, train, and manage your new family of AI workers. I talk about how specialist agents and Superagents fit together, and I encourage you to read my in-depth article on this important issue. Our new HR 2030 guidebook is available this week.

The future of business and HR is not just about what tools you buy, it’s now up to you (all of us) to decide how we stitch our new self-learning agents together to create scale and growth, not just small productivity gains. SAP is in a good place to help with this transformation, but so is Workday, HiBob, and many others.

Join our HR 2030 program for all the details, license Galileo, or enroll in our new Global HR Excellence Certification to learn all the details.

Additional Information

Building A Safe Multi-Agent AI Operating System: Lessons from HR and Ferrari

• (00:00:00) - Introduction and Week Overview
• (00:00:27) - SAP Connect: The Autonomous Enterprise Vision
• (00:01:18) - Joule Work and Agent Infrastructure
• (00:03:00) - SAP's Missing Vision for Future Business Processes
• (00:03:54) - Agent Governance and Safety Tools
• (00:04:39) - SuccessFactors Agent Stacks and Integration
• (00:05:15) - SAP as a Software Company vs Problem Solver
• (00:07:07) - SAP's HR History and SuccessFactors Acquisition
• (00:08:17) - Acquisitions and Legacy Naming at SAP
• (00:09:07) - Overall Impressions of SAP Connect
• (00:10:12) - Workday Rising Preview
• (00:10:39) - Multi-Agent Architecture and Alignment Risks
• (00:11:22) - Pharma Example: Agent Overreach and Legal Risk
• (00:13:22) - Protecting Against Agent Misbehavior
• (00:14:24) - Human Parallel: Specialization and Ethics
• (00:15:37) - Why Specialization Matters More Than Ever
• (00:17:02) - Designing Networks of Specialized Agents
• (00:17:42) - HR 2030 as an Agent Operating System
• (00:19:46) - Multi-Agent Research and Market Landscape
• (00:20:54) - Reflections on Tech History and Survivorship
• (00:21:51) - The J Curve of New Technology Adoption
• (00:23:02) - Closing Remarks and Next Steps