Strategic foresight is crucial in navigating and shaping the future. By anticipating trends and understanding emerging technologies, we can better prepare and adapt to the evolving landscape. In our study that we’ll talk about below, we employed strategic foresight to identify how AI could revolutionize enterprise software. Through our research, we were able to envision potential futures and craft strategies that align with the evolving needs and behaviors of our customers. With foresight, we are not only able to predict changes but also influence them, ensuring that our solutions are not just reactive but proactive and innovative.

The Strategic Foresight team within the Chief Design Office at SAP had the privilege of dedicating two years to a longitudinal study with a stable participant group of our customers. Our focus was to understand the enterprise software user’s state of mind and behavioral approach to integrating AI into their future working methods. We partnered with a diverse group of participants including Computacenter, Sanctuary Housing Association, Southern California Edison, Tennet, the University of Zurich, and Unicredit. This diversity allowed us to gather a wide range of insights, opinions, and expectations, shaping our educated perspective.

Learnings

Through our extensive evaluative research, we had many conversations with people who each use workforce software in different ways. One of our main goals was to gather as many pain points from users around their current tools and ways of work. Overwhelmingly, we heard users struggle with an abundance of tools and apps, collaborating with teammates across the globe, workflows and processes, and a lack of customization. These learnings helped us to craft a vision for how AI could be used to not just optimize parts of the workflow for users, but overhaul and transform workforce software into a more dynamic experience for all.

Augmented systems: the future of enterprise software

Based on our research, we believe that the future of enterprise software lies in AI-powered systems that offer hyper-personalized experiences, effectively bridging the gap between workers and their tasks. These augmented systems will not only streamline workflows but also enhance decision-making by providing real-time insights and proactive assistance.

Key features of augmented systems:

• Thought gesture interaction: Enabling intuitive and natural user interactions through advanced AI.

• Fluid operating system: Seamlessly integrating various tools and applications into one cohesive system.

• Proactive project & planning: Offering AI-driven project management and planning features.

• Actionable business intelligence: Providing real-time data analysis and insights for informed decision-making.

• Co-creation editing: Facilitating collaborative work environments with integrated editing tools.

• Live collaboration: Supporting real-time teamwork with synchronous editing and communication.

• Generative data visualizations: Automatically generating insightful and customizable visual representations of data.

Our vision for augmented systems

With the right design approach, we can create a fully integrated system that provides a unified view across tools, eliminating lags, gaps, and lack of standardization. This could revolutionize not just the ERP software industry, but the global workforce. Automating processes will empower employees to focus on priority tasks rather than mundane ones. Enterprise software that is accessible and responsive on any hardware offers workers more flexibility and growth potential. Finally, hyper-personalization will help workers maximize their efficiency, creativity, and productivity.

The future of work awaits us

The integration of AI into enterprise workforce systems is not something to fear. Rather, we should be anticipating all the ways in which we can use this powerful tool to super-charge our methods. There are considerations to keep in mind as we move ahead, such as balancing how tool integration comes together to avoid information overload or cramped interface design. In addition, this new approach is sure to challenge established work patterns, which can pose a threat of rejection before acceptance. But the reality is that AI is already permeating so many parts of our daily lives. We must have the foresight to design the right tools in order to maximize our potential for innovation.