SAP SE has announced a new generation of AI-enhanced retail innovations. The global technology company continues to infuse AI into the DNA of every part of its retail solutions, reinforcing its suite-first strategy and helping retailers operate with greater intelligence, resilience and trust while delivering better experiences for customers everywhere.
“Retailers face a landscape where AI is no longer optional. SAP provides one closed-loop, AI-enhanced retail operating system that ties planning, execution and engagement together. We put data and AI at the heart of retail, delivering speed, personalization and growth across every channel and segment,” stated Balaji Balasubramanian, President and Chief Product Officer, Customer Experience and Consumer Industries, SAP SE.
The Retail Intelligence solution in SAP Business Data Cloud provides accurate demand and inventory planning, leveraging retailers’ data from SAP software and third-party systems to drive profitable growth through actionable, real-time insights. Purpose-built for retailers and direct-to-consumer businesses, it will be generally available in H1-2026.
Embedded AI solutions
“Retailers are seeking built-in, embedded AI solutions to help balance daily operations, future planning and agility to manage a dynamic market,” said Ananda Chakravarty, Vice President, IDC Retail Insights.
“What sets SAP apart is the holistic nature of its approach, offering an agentic operating system that works in the background, connects data and orchestrates agents. SAP makes it an easy lift for retailers to achieve enterprise-wide intelligence, avoiding the complexity of many point solutions,” her added.
Retailers must make fast, confident decisions across assortments, pricing and planning. To meet that need, SAP announced new AI-assisted assortment management capabilities, allowing planners to create, modify or retire assortments using natural language through the Joule copilot. This reduces the bottleneck on expert users, enabling faster responses to market shifts and freeing time for higher-value merchandising decisions.
Omnichannel sales promotions
SAP has also introduced omnichannel sales promotions in sales orders, integrating the SAP Omnichannel Promotion Pricing solution with the SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, retail, fashion and vertical business solution.
In addition, SAP is delivering deeper merchandising, segmentation and manufacturing support in the solutions, tailored to fashion wholesalers and manufacturers. These enhancements provide the data and process foundation needed for AI-assisted fashion operations across the business.
AI assistants
As shopping journeys increasingly begin with AI assistants rather than storefronts or search engines, retailers need new ways to be present wherever buying decisions are made. SAP helps retailers connect products, pricing, inventory and promotions directly to AI-enabled discovery and shopping experiences, unlocking agentic commerce with its new storefront MCP server, part of the SAP Commerce Cloud solution.
Retailers can now make their storefronts intelligible to AI, driving shopping experiences not only on their storefronts but also on platforms such as ChatGPT. This creates a truly channel-less commerce experience, one where engagement, discovery and transaction happen more seamlessly across human and AI-assisted touch points.
As customer expectations rise and fulfillment networks grow more complex, retailers need confidence that every order will be delivered as promised, using AI solutions that provide proactive visibility and guidance to help keep operations running smoothly and on scale.
Order Reliability Agent
SAP also announced the Order Reliability Agent as part of the SAP Order Management Services bundle, planned for release in the second quarter of 2026. The new agent proactively identifies and resolves potential order issues, helping associates answer common questions about order status, stock availability and fulfillment risks before they impact customers.
By combining agentic autonomy with human oversight where judgment matters, these innovations from SAP drive insightful planning and improve operational efficiency, both enhancing the customer experience and driving profitable growth.
