SAP Appoints AI Leader to Drive Innovation

In a strategic move to accelerate artificial intelligence adoption across Australia and New Zealand, SAP has strengthened its regional leadership by naming Lee Marshall as Head of AI for ANZ. This appointment signals SAP’s commitment to helping organizations harness AI to boost productivity and maintain competitive advantage in challenging economic climates.

Bringing more than thirty-five years of digital transformation expertise, Marshall possesses substantial experience in AI-driven business change. His background will help companies determine the most effective ways to deploy Business AI and leverage SAP’s intelligent digital assistant, Joule.

Angela Colantuono, President and Managing Director of SAP ANZ, emphasized the importance of this leadership addition. She noted that during periods of economic uncertainty, AI stands out as a critical tool for enhancing productivity and securing long-term competitiveness. At SAP, the focus remains on a practical and responsible approach to AI, building on trusted data sources and embedding intelligence directly into daily workflows, all supported by robust governance frameworks. Colantuono expressed confidence that Marshall’s extensive network across both private and public sectors, combined with his experience, will guide customers from initial AI experimentation to full-scale production, delivering measurable outcomes and unlocking organizational potential.

Marshall has established a strong reputation for advising enterprises on technology-driven transformation, with particular emphasis on generative AI business applications over the past two and a half years. His expertise spans financial services, government, telecommunications, transport, and logistics. Nearly twenty years in solutions engineering and pre-sales roles, including senior leadership positions at Microsoft, Salesforce, and PwC, equip him to drive AI-enabled efficiency and growth for a wide range of organizations.

Expressing enthusiasm for his new role, Marshall stated that joining SAP represents a tremendous opportunity. He described SAP as the company that essentially runs other companies and organizations. By utilizing SAP’s Business AI, which is embedded within essential business processes, they can help clients extract maximum value with minimal disruption. Marshall highlighted that he sees no other player with such a compelling business value proposition in the AI space, making this an exciting time to join as innovation accelerates. The potential to deliver transformative, measurable results that reshape business and industry landscapes is enormous.

SAP is integrating Business AI directly into its enterprise cloud portfolio, bringing intelligent automation to the world’s most critical business processes. By combining SAP Business Suite, SAP Data Cloud, and SAP Business AI, customers benefit from seamless end-to-end integration. This creates a powerful cycle where applications generate data, that data trains AI models, and AI continuously refines and improves the applications, establishing a flywheel effect that compounds business value over time.

Currently, more than 34,000 customers are actively using SAP Business AI, developing over 130 generative AI applications across SAP’s cloud offerings. With Joule integrated into 80% of the most frequently performed tasks and equipped with more than 1,300 embedded skills, SAP is enabling organizations to achieve significant impact in their most vital operations.

(Source: ITWire Australia)