Many CIOs and IT professionals are completely aware that they need to invest in artificial intelligence and other similar technologies to ensure they continue to be competitive for the future. Research shows, however, that the transition takes exceptionally longer than expected.

A recent study released at the Gartner Data and Analytics Conference stated that 30% of audience participants were planning to develop AI capabilities themselves. A further 50% of the audience said that planned to use applications with AI capabilities built-in.

At this month’s SAPPHIRE Now event in Florida, SAP confirmed a number of innovations to the SAP s/4HANA ERP platform to make it simpler to integrate artificial intelligence and robotics to transform applications.

SAP explained that the new release which is due to be available this month will incorporate 100 AI and robotic automated process capabilities, supporting the business’s aim to automating half of its manual tasks within its ERP platform by 2021. The new system will include features that will enable SAP shops to stimulate new business and commercial processes, so they can measure factors such as the subscription impacts and usage pricing. SAP states that the changes would enable intelligent product design and quicker go-to-market time as improved personalised products and services. Some of the new AI capabilities SAP has highlighted includes intelligent accruals management, financial journal entry and innovative robotic process automation.

Another ERP major, Oracle confirmed a range of new AI releases within its product range, announced at the Modern Customer Experience event in Las Vegas earlier this year. Oracle states that the AI improvements would include expense reporting assistant, project management digital assistant and enhanced financials controls.

Implementing new AI capabilities to the SAP and Oracle platforms are a vital part of long term plans for these major vendors. Amit Zavery, the executive vice president of Oracle Cloud Platform states that every company is now looking into data science and machine learning as a vital method to create a competitive advantage. Zavery points out that lack of tooling and machine learning capabilities can, however, cause many of these projects to be unsuccessful.

According to research by Gartner, many companies start data science and machine learning projects using free or low-cost software and cloud services but generally tend to move onto commercial systems. Gartner predicts that AI technology will be integrated into nearly every new software products by 2020.