you can change the theme, there are different options. the one from the screenshot is the SAP Signature Theme which is outdated. This has a good overview of which themes are available and which one fits best for who :)
This is an amazing piece that everyone needs to read, transformation leaders have know this all along. You cannot Claude your way out of core applications that run the enterprises. Go buy back the SAAS stock you sold (not an investment advice).
I have been forced to use it at 3 separate Silicon Valley companies and it each instance it has been a terrible experience.
I knew it was going to be the worst thing I ever encountered when the implementor of the first SAP system I was forced to use introduced it to us with the preamble: "SAP does not fit your business process, you make your business process fit SAP"
This gets at the real AI shift. Most companies are not replacing old core systems overnight. They are building a smarter layer on top, where AI handles the messy interface while SAP stays underneath as the system of record. The winning products may be the ones that make old software finally usable, not the ones pretending legacy systems will disappear. 
One of the most painful aspects of ERP/SAP implementations for customers is Integration - connecting the ERP to everything else inside and outside the enterprise. Integration is complex, fussy, brittle and inflexible. I am hopeful that AI can be used to help manage and maintain integration so that they are more self-healing and less debilitating when they inevitably fail.
Great read. The technical moat of these legacy systems isn’t that defensible (enterprise app on top of relational database…). Yes, there's the ecosystems, the organizational inertia, that all play in their favour. But you could make a convincing case that very soon AI (meaning, AI startups) might remove the switching costs moat the article mentions.
The golden egg here may lie in actually designing, de-risking, compressing that switching journey from end-to-end, from migration to usage to maintenance. And earning the trust of CFOs.
OR the incumbents preempt this by reinventing themselves through a combo of radical API openness and usage-based pricing…
Exciting times — makes you wonder where to place your chips.
Yes, but I am not sure about the "very soon". It will take some time to fully replace: there's inertia, high costs, risk-aversion, and a need for strict auditability.
Also, on your last point, incumbents are reinventing themselves to some degree, but they are also protecting themselves through concepts like indirect licensing:
This typically means that any third-party system (or AI layer) that creates, updates, or even reads data in real time via APIs/events requires additional named-user or Digital Access document licenses. The new AI layers built on top of legacy ERPs will have to deal with this constraint.
Insightful and high‑quality article offering a compelling perspective on how AI agents may complement SAP, Salesforce, and ServiceNow user interfaces. Thank you!
2 comments:
- The SAP UI example shown in the article comes from the classic thick‑client SAP GUI of the early 2000s. While some customers still use this interface today, SAP Fiori — a thin‑client, web‑based UI — has been available since 2013 and offers a significantly more user‑friendly experience.
- SAP is also actively positioning its embedded AI agent, Joule, to serve as the kind of agentic layer described in the article. From an implementation perspective, Joule for Consultants (J4C, more of an LLM) already plays a key role in streamlining implementations and accelerating access to critical project artefacts (OSS notes, knowledge articles, blogs, help.sap.com, etc...).
I worked at SAP for 15 years, I loved the company and still do. The complexity it manages is unfathomable - it makes you sometimes wonder how is that less valuable than any new age startup claiming it will change the world but thats another topic.
SAP's complexity is real and earns its place. What it encodes - the business rules, the org structures, the decades of process decisions - is genuinely valuable.
The problem isn't the complexity. It's that the only people who can navigate it today are the ones who've spent years inside it. Everyone else - the plant engineer, the procurement lead, the ops manager who needs an answer at 6am - hits a wall. Not because they don't have access rights. Because the interface assumes expertise they don't have.
What we're building at trybeai.app is the layer that lets those people ask their question and get an answer - through the same authorization that already governs their Fiori access. SAP decides what they can see. We just make it reachable.
I’m skeptic that a layer of “system of actions” over a “system of records” is enough, it might be useful in the short term but it will degrade org’s capability over long term. If you cannot take an action reliably from this layer and you don't know anymore how to use and debug the underlying system, how do you even work?
To me the answer is a rebuild but now on a platform that has the ability to customise and extend the product as it’s getting used, continuously learning from user behavior and logs. The AI layer works embedded in the app but taking over it; not limited to a copilot that just tells you what to do but also not taking over by abstracting away the underlying layer. It’ll be worth the rebuild soon because the alternative will be 100x better. Sure, the implementation will happen in phases over years.
The key difference is that the AI layer will be somewhere in middle: it will shape feature requests from users learning from their intent, let designers refine the user flow and schemas for consistent UX and engineers ensure system integrity and performance. Not just human in the loop, but humans in-charge, and not in silos as different copilots for different departments, but as unified layer with shared memory and specialised skills that are invoked per usecase. Maybe SAP will catchup and Joule will evolve to play this role efficiently or maybe someone else will.
Doesn't this end up being "lipstick on a pig"? The moat for modernizing the company becomes a real danger to it's very existence with it's long term inability to evolve.
What you describe is a new software category called “Agentic Resource Planning”, defined at shakegraph.com/manifesto
thanks, i just checked it out
Why would you not use a snapshot of a current SAP UI? That example is easily 20 years old.
Because that screenshot is exactly what SAP is today 2026 March 20 -- I just used it today at work.
Because your version is 10+ years old :)
No, they just implemented it a year or two ago.
you can change the theme, there are different options. the one from the screenshot is the SAP Signature Theme which is outdated. This has a good overview of which themes are available and which one fits best for who :)
https://www.munich-enterprise.com/en/sap-gui-themes
This is an amazing piece that everyone needs to read, transformation leaders have know this all along. You cannot Claude your way out of core applications that run the enterprises. Go buy back the SAAS stock you sold (not an investment advice).
I absolutely hate SAP.
I have been forced to use it at 3 separate Silicon Valley companies and it each instance it has been a terrible experience.
I knew it was going to be the worst thing I ever encountered when the implementor of the first SAP system I was forced to use introduced it to us with the preamble: "SAP does not fit your business process, you make your business process fit SAP"
This gets at the real AI shift. Most companies are not replacing old core systems overnight. They are building a smarter layer on top, where AI handles the messy interface while SAP stays underneath as the system of record. The winning products may be the ones that make old software finally usable, not the ones pretending legacy systems will disappear. 
Super, really enjoyed reading this. I've written up a couple of comments. https://thomasotter.substack.com/p/comments-on-a16zs-why-the-world-still
One of the most painful aspects of ERP/SAP implementations for customers is Integration - connecting the ERP to everything else inside and outside the enterprise. Integration is complex, fussy, brittle and inflexible. I am hopeful that AI can be used to help manage and maintain integration so that they are more self-healing and less debilitating when they inevitably fail.
That's quite a love letter for SAP. :)
...aaand if anyone is interested in SAP, they should totally subscribe to our newsletter. :) (Sorry for a shameless self-promo.)
https://boringenterprisenerds.substack.com/
Great read. The technical moat of these legacy systems isn’t that defensible (enterprise app on top of relational database…). Yes, there's the ecosystems, the organizational inertia, that all play in their favour. But you could make a convincing case that very soon AI (meaning, AI startups) might remove the switching costs moat the article mentions.
The golden egg here may lie in actually designing, de-risking, compressing that switching journey from end-to-end, from migration to usage to maintenance. And earning the trust of CFOs.
OR the incumbents preempt this by reinventing themselves through a combo of radical API openness and usage-based pricing…
Exciting times — makes you wonder where to place your chips.
Yes, but I am not sure about the "very soon". It will take some time to fully replace: there's inertia, high costs, risk-aversion, and a need for strict auditability.
Also, on your last point, incumbents are reinventing themselves to some degree, but they are also protecting themselves through concepts like indirect licensing:
This typically means that any third-party system (or AI layer) that creates, updates, or even reads data in real time via APIs/events requires additional named-user or Digital Access document licenses. The new AI layers built on top of legacy ERPs will have to deal with this constraint.
Exactly. It’s not just the UI, but everything that sits behind it that holds durable value.
That’s why I say the SaaSpocalypse is overblown.
Here’s some deeper thinking:
https://newsletter.beyondthebuild.ai/p/if-saas-value-were-the-ui-salesforce?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Insightful and high‑quality article offering a compelling perspective on how AI agents may complement SAP, Salesforce, and ServiceNow user interfaces. Thank you!
2 comments:
- The SAP UI example shown in the article comes from the classic thick‑client SAP GUI of the early 2000s. While some customers still use this interface today, SAP Fiori — a thin‑client, web‑based UI — has been available since 2013 and offers a significantly more user‑friendly experience.
- SAP is also actively positioning its embedded AI agent, Joule, to serve as the kind of agentic layer described in the article. From an implementation perspective, Joule for Consultants (J4C, more of an LLM) already plays a key role in streamlining implementations and accelerating access to critical project artefacts (OSS notes, knowledge articles, blogs, help.sap.com, etc...).
I worked at SAP for 15 years, I loved the company and still do. The complexity it manages is unfathomable - it makes you sometimes wonder how is that less valuable than any new age startup claiming it will change the world but thats another topic.
SAP's complexity is real and earns its place. What it encodes - the business rules, the org structures, the decades of process decisions - is genuinely valuable.
The problem isn't the complexity. It's that the only people who can navigate it today are the ones who've spent years inside it. Everyone else - the plant engineer, the procurement lead, the ops manager who needs an answer at 6am - hits a wall. Not because they don't have access rights. Because the interface assumes expertise they don't have.
What we're building at trybeai.app is the layer that lets those people ask their question and get an answer - through the same authorization that already governs their Fiori access. SAP decides what they can see. We just make it reachable.
Narrative that you don't hear that often:
> AI will make things less risky.
I love this because it's so counter to the FUD that exists around AI. But, what if the usage of these new tools can help manage and even reduce it?
What a novel thought.
I can recommend this app for your business: https://www.binnacle.com.mx/
I’m skeptic that a layer of “system of actions” over a “system of records” is enough, it might be useful in the short term but it will degrade org’s capability over long term. If you cannot take an action reliably from this layer and you don't know anymore how to use and debug the underlying system, how do you even work?
To me the answer is a rebuild but now on a platform that has the ability to customise and extend the product as it’s getting used, continuously learning from user behavior and logs. The AI layer works embedded in the app but taking over it; not limited to a copilot that just tells you what to do but also not taking over by abstracting away the underlying layer. It’ll be worth the rebuild soon because the alternative will be 100x better. Sure, the implementation will happen in phases over years.
The key difference is that the AI layer will be somewhere in middle: it will shape feature requests from users learning from their intent, let designers refine the user flow and schemas for consistent UX and engineers ensure system integrity and performance. Not just human in the loop, but humans in-charge, and not in silos as different copilots for different departments, but as unified layer with shared memory and specialised skills that are invoked per usecase. Maybe SAP will catchup and Joule will evolve to play this role efficiently or maybe someone else will.
The SaaSpocalypse is totally overblown. If it were just about the UI, SAP would have died years ago.
https://newsletter.beyondthebuild.ai/p/if-saas-value-were-the-ui-salesforce?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
If this replaces Fiori, I'm all for it. ALV Grid in SAP is still far superior to Fiori
Doesn't this end up being "lipstick on a pig"? The moat for modernizing the company becomes a real danger to it's very existence with it's long term inability to evolve.
No, it states that what SaaS companies sell is not just the UI. It’s everything behind it that has value.
https://newsletter.beyondthebuild.ai/p/if-saas-value-were-the-ui-salesforce?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web