This conversation digs into the transformative impact of AI on human relationships - particularly within the workplace - featuring insights from Sonia Nash, a Principal Solutions Consultant at SAP Concur.

Sonia discusses how AI is not only reshaping job roles but also enhancing productivity by automating mundane tasks, allowing employees to focus on more meaningful work.

With a recent Gartner study highlighting that 80% of technology products will be developed by non-technical individuals by 2024, the conversation explores the rise of business technologists and the democratisation of tech innovation.

Sonia shares her personal journey from finance to AI and emphasises the importance of fostering curiosity and inclusivity in tech, particularly for underrepresented groups.

The chat culminates in a discussion on the future of AI in improving workplace relationships and the necessity of addressing concerns surrounding data privacy and trust in AI technologies.

Takeaways:

• Gartner's study indicates that by the end of 2024, 80% of technology products will be created by non-technical people.
• The emergence of roles like Chief AI Officer signifies the increasing importance of AI strategy in businesses.
• Sonia emphasises the importance of having meaningful human connections outside the digital realm.
• The integration of AI in various sectors, including healthcare, is revolutionising how we approach diagnostics.

Resource links:

The rise of the business technologists https://www.gartner.com/en/articles/the-rise-of-business-technologists 

Stemettes https://stemettes.org/

And Gartner, funny enough, recently released a study that said that 80% of technology products will be built by non-technical people by the end of this year.

Hi everyone, and welcome to Relationships WithAI™. I'm your host, Iyabo Oba. This podcast explores the real-world impact of AI on human relationships, work, romance, family, politics and more.

We'll hear from thought leaders and disruptors in AI as they share their insights on how AI is shaping society through the lens of human connection. Let's get into this week's episode.

You're listening to WithAI FM™.

Hello and welcome to Relationships WithAI™, and welcome to my next guest. We have Sonia Nash, who's from SAP Concur, and if you'd like to introduce yourself and tell us, tell the listeners about what it is you do and how you got involved in the AI space.

Thank you for having me. First of all, I feel honoured to be here and having this chat with you.

I am a Principal Solutions Consultant at SAP Concur, which means absolutely nothing to most people in terms of a title, principal solution consultant. But essentially, my role is about finding solutions to some of customers' challenges right within finance, within procurement particularly.

And my role is to, is to talk with these people, you know, finance managers, CFOs, CPOs, and listen to what, what challenges they have within their processes and try to find solutions. Um, and I've had a journey that is quite different from most people, I would say.

I, you know, I started in, in finance about 12, 12, 13 years ago, something like that. And I was doing data entry so I didn't have at the time any qualification or anything like that.

And the catalyst for me to move into where I am now is a funny story in the sense that I fell asleep on the job.

Oh, and what does that mean, you fell asleep on the job? I'm intrigued.

So I was so bored, and my job was so repetitive. You know, type what you see on one screen into a box in another. It was so mind-numbing that I fell asleep in an open-plan office.

I actually fell asleep on my chair, and I went over, right? And this prompted, if you like the the question, is it what I want to do with my life, my professional life?

Surely, there's a better way to be doing this job. Like I'm looking at one screen and typing what I seen on other screen. This is, you know, I'm not using three brain cells, and I'm sure you.

Have many more than three brain cells, Sonia. I'm sure you do.

I'm hoping so. But this was really the catalyst for me to change direction.

And I wanted to understand how technology could help with these kinds of jobs, right, the mundane manual, boring stuff so that I could actually use my brain cells into doing, you know, something stimulating and something that mattered to a company.

Yes, yes.

And I started obviously going into the direction of IT, IT finance back in the day and implementing tools that would help digitisation, automation, and the natural progression with that is, is now AI.

Technology has now evolved as few years to to incorporate AI, and this is how I had yet another shift in my career from you know, specialising in finance to specialising in AI and AI in procurement specifically.

Wow. I mean, that is just such a wealth of knowledge. And starting from what many might consider sort of, sort of humble beginnings as it were.

And also a sort of a juncture, a very distinct juncture of actually in and thinking about it in the context of this particular show's context of Relationships WithAI™. Your relationship with straightforward, dull data forced you to make a change and actually change.

And it was a clear fork in the road to say, hold on a minute, there must be something more to life than this. And that's really exciting. That's, that's just very inspiring for any person wanting to move into this space.

But also, just hearing about how you began to make those steps and just to give some context, I wanted to mention that we met at a really fun book launch that was held at SAP Concur celebrating Andrew Grill's latest book release called Digitally Curious.

And you were one of the panel speakers, and when I first saw you speak and just with the dynamism and the excitement about AI and how it can enhance to sort of relationships in all aspects of business within SAP Concur and the wider business context and the spaces that you were going into to help advise.

I was like, I have to meet with you and have you on the show and just to, you know, have, have everyone hear about the, hear your gems that you've got to share about this about sort of your journey with AI and then how you've seen it in the business context but also in the wider setting about how it impacts the, helps improve, you know, the general well being of the environment, of your work environment as well as many other things that you'll be helping us to unpack in our conversation today. So it's going to be very, it's exciting indeed.

I just wanted to ask, just thinking about sort of relationships in the context of and the future of relationships as technology evolves, do you see AI reshaping our Relationships of work. And how do you see that happening between teams and clients or industries? And how should we be prepared to adapt to this?

Right, so this is a very big question, and I think there's two sides to that question or two different answers. I think that the elephant in the room when we talk about AI and the future of work is you've got two categories of people.

You're going to have people who fear the emergence of AI. AI is going to take away my job. And then you have people who see it as an opportunity. Right.

And if we unpack, if you like both views, we have to address the elephant in the room, that AI has the potential of replacing certain jobs, not all jobs. And we'll talk about it in a minute. In the context of role, for example.

Yes.

So, it has the power to replace some jobs, but in most cases, it's about enhancing a job. So think about finance, for instance. Where I started finance 12 years ago, most companies were in the process of digitising, Right?

Computers have been around for 70 years, but they were just starting to automate certain things. Right. And some of them were just only digitising.

Digitising essentially means you are; instead of writing with your hand on a piece of paper, you're typing the same information but in an online form. From a productivity perspective, there isn't a great benefit.

There's other benefits, like, you know, improved visibility, having everything under one roof. But from a user experience, from an employee productivity kind of thing, digitisation, that isn't really a game changer.

AI is a game changer because where you've got people who fall asleep on a job and leave jobs, I left that job the week after because I thought, oh God, I can't do this. And I was embarrassed that I fell asleep on a job. You know, it's, it's funny now, but at the time I was really embarrassed.

And I remember having this conversation with the CFO, and he wanted me to stay, and he said, look, you're one of the fastest, you putting information into the system, you know, and, and I said to him, I said, this is, this is not the best use of my capabilities.

Right, right.

And when we look at it in the context of the new generation that's coming into the workforce, more and more people from the, you know, the, the new generation, I can't remember what they are.

All the millennials and Gen Zs.

And this is a generation that was practically born with a mobile phone in their hands. Right? There was no phones no computers in my generation.

When I grew up, I had my first mobile, you know, the big Nokia phone when, when I was 15, I think 14 on screen. So, zero computer.

Yeah, exactly.

But now that there's an expectation from this generation to have things happening fast, to get to where they need to go quickly, but also to have meaningful interactions with people, with work, with the world around them. And these expectations that they've got in their private life is being transposed into work.

So for companies, if you want to attract the best talent that's coming into play, you're going to have to implement tools like AI to remove what I call the boring, mundane stuff and really make use of the creative juices of that workforce, you know, what you're really paying them for. So that's if you like my take on it. And I was reading a study from Gartner recently talking about the rise of the business technologist.

And when you look at the workforce before, so, you know, roll back 10 years, we had two very separate teams, right? You had business professionals, so that was going to be finance people, your procurement people.

And then you had the IT people, right, the techies, they are the ones who are dealing with tools and all of that. Two very separate teams. The IT guy is not a business professional. He's never done finance; he doesn't understand accounting.

The business professional doesn't understand it. They didn't do computer, you know, computer science studies and things like that.

So that was the dynamic at work and these two teams were often communicating, clashing on certain things. Right. And this is where in my career was sort of bridging the gap because I wasn't your average, an average person in a box.

I started bridging from the business user into it. I wanted to know how these systems worked and could be improved. Could make my life easier.

And Gartner, funny enough, recently released a study that said that 80% of technology products will be built by non-technical people by the end of the year.

80%. So it's people that's astonishing. Yeah, it's people who don't come from IT while building applications. They're innovating with technology.

Right. And that's a massive shift in the workforce.

So it's a very long-winded answer, but to the question of, you know, the elephant in the room, AI is going to be, you know, making or creating job losses. Not necessarily because we're seeing a new kind of professional that wasn't there before. And the onus is going to be on each of us, too.

To not wait for the train to have passed by, which is what, you know, what I've done personally. I. I thought two years, about two years ago, I was, you know, on a personal level, monitoring what was going on with AI and thinking, you know what?

I think this is going somewhere. This is going to be, you know, not just generating photos of cats and, you know, stupid. Yeah, it's. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's.

I think it's got potential in the business world.

So I took it upon myself to retrain to learn more, officially go back to university, do courses, start looking at it so that if, you know, the. The big terminator comes around and says, oh, you're going to be losing your job. I'll be like, well, no, because I can speak.

Yeah, there you go.

Yeah. So there's an onus on each of us to. To get up to date with that kind of stuff, I think.

Yeah, there's definitely. I just. I certainly hear what you say about the fact that just in. On an individual journey.

So that's why I'm involved in this and the relation in the whole sort of WithAI FM family and particularly that.

That's why I'm always interested in the nature of sort of how technology can help enhance human productivity and help enhance human connection in this space. I understand from what you've just said, the value of being proactive.

It's just so essential not to be caught on the back foot at all and just, you know, I've heard many people say that it's important for us to get on. There's this wave coming, and it's important for us to acquire our surfboards and get on this wave and ride it in our own way and not. Not be.

Have it dumped on us and yeah, just be left sort of drowning or floundering as a result and being bewildered. It's just. It makes so much sense. I. Your.

The reference to the Gartner report that you were talking about will certainly be in the show notes as well because that clearly a very important thing, an important document to absorb and read and particularly talking about the future of work. I think that'd be really helpful for our listeners to have a read. I'm curious the emphasis.

Curious about your curiosity about working, about curiosity in the workplace and how cultivating that curiosity can help Individuals build a stronger sort of AI-enhanced relationship is. Do you see that? How do you, you've mentioned some of the ways that that can be done in person professionally.

How have you seen that evolve personally and can use, obviously using you, your, your personal experience and also what you see in the space of, within SAP Concur and your connections with other companies that you go and help a little bit.

Absolutely. I mean, I think for the listeners, SAP Concur is part of the large SAP group, and it's a software company. Right.

SAP provides ERP software of all sizes and flavours if you like all industries. I think it's 75% of the Fortune 100 companies use an SAP system. So it's quite a large company.

And, of course, you don't become one of the largest companies in the world without innovation, without trying to understand what's the next best thing that's going to improve the life of your users, your customers, your future customers. And if you like. When I joined Concur, we had been using AI in Concur specifically. So it's a branch of SAP for about 10 years. Over 10 years.

So there was machine learning, optical character recognition, working alongside machine learning to identify data off a receipt of an invoice, that kind of stuff. But where we're seeing a lot of innovation now is going beyond the data capture.

AI has moved on so much, and it was a lot about making sure that you can capture data. Now, it's about making sure you analyse the data and provide real insights to your customers because we, as a company, are having the same challenge.

Right. When we look inward, we've got 55,000 customers. I think it's about 49% market share in that industry, you know, the travel and expense industry.

So we've got the most data on the travel, you know, travel and expense processes in the world. And it's all nice and well if you've got all of that data. But what if you can't make sense of it?

Imagine the thousands and millions of data points I can talk about. The human eye is not capable of making sense of it.

I don't know by looking at endless spreadsheets what my customers want, what are their problems, where can we improve? So AI is currently helping us making sense of our own data to make sure that we can provide the best service that we know where to focus innovation.

So that's one of the areas where we are currently employing AI at work. But then he's also invested a lot in giving us the Workers AI tools to see where we make our day-to-day easier, be more productive.

And we, I mean, there's been an emergence of tools. Every, every day there's a new tool that you could use, you know, that uses a. Yeah, yeah.

But at my end, you know, there was entire days spent doing recordings, for example, recording videos and then putting them into another program to stitch it and play with the sound.

And I had to come up with my own script for that video, and I would write it down, and then I start recording, and then English is not my first language, and I would go, and I'd have to start all over again.

Can I just say, you're doing phenomenally in comparison to many English people.

So you know, it's that kind of stuff where doing one video for one customer could take me an entire day.

Now we've got tools where, you know, with avatars, you know, I can load the script to something that looks and sounds scarily like me, who can just, you know, read a script in perfect English with no weird accent and can also create a video out of what I'm asking. And it's hours of work that is being saved.

And the question that is being brought with increasing productivity at work is what do you do with this newfound time that you'll give back to your employees? And this is where the fear comes in where people are saying, okay, because now your employees are more productive.

You can get rid of X number of a headcount, for example. But it's not about that. It's about the time I used to spend a full day doing a video, for example, for a client.

Now I can do in two hours with the rest of my day; I can start working on another client. So I can do double the amount of work if you like, without having the crazy hours without the stress.

And for me as an employee, the, the benefit that AI is bringing as well is breathing space.

Is I, yeah, that's so vital.

I can afford to take a half hour walk, you know, when we are lucky enough to have half hour of sunshine.

In the good old UK.

But yes, absolutely, the fact that it gives expansion to your day to come away from your desk and just go and be creative in nature or outside, away from the intensity of the actual project that you're working on is just so vital.

Yeah. And it increases productivity.

It's proven that of studies that show that allowing, you know, half an hour breathing space, whether it's a 20-minute power nap or half-hour little walk boost helps boosting productivity. So there's always this element of guilt.

I think a lot of people worry about taking that half hour or you know, during working hours but no actually need it. You need it and you'll be an employee actually if you take that half hour when you need it.

Yeah, I, I just that, I mean that is just very sort of a great. An excellent snapshot into the sort of the life and times as it were of Sonia Nash and the sort of SAP concur team of.

And SAP as a whole organisation or company as to how it. It is focused on using this particular tool to enhance the lives of the people within.

Ultimately, that does increase the bottom line, which is, you know, companies are focused on that predominantly and that. But, then, they're also.

It's a demonstration of commitment to the well-being of the individuals within the company because if you have happier workers, then you're going to get like as you, as you quite rightly said, increased levels of productivity and, you know, and a better sort of all-round sense of you know, you're achieving together and contributing to the overall success of the company that you work for. I wonder if you could just. And that just is a really great way of just highlighting how you.

We talked about sort of how you use AI in your day-to-day and then thinking about sort of how it might AI as what you see or if you could speak to sort of can you tell us what you think about sort of.

You've already touched on some of the innovations, but sort of how do you see AI being used in the space of relationships and work and, in that context, in the next sort of five to 10 years? What, what things have you seen?

I think we, it will change the dynamics and we'll see the emergence of new roles like the business technologist. I see it, we're seeing, I'm engaging more and more with CAIs. So AI officers, this is a role that.

And could you for those who are uninitiated, what do those CAI roles mean?

So the CAIO, the Chief AI Officer, is a role that was created probably about three, three years ago, three, four years ago in some companies, and it's the C level; the C suite are people who usually at board level, and they're taking essentially the big decisions around the strategy and the direction of the company. And usually, you've got someone from revenue, someone from technology, someone from all different sides of the business.

Chief Operation Officers, for example.

Yes.

And now we're having a Chief AI Officer, and it's just bringing to your attention the fact that AI is getting a seat at the big table. There's a need for a strategy on AI. That's what this role is.

You in the world of business, they are now getting a seat at the strategy definition of a company.

This is the key decision-makers, correct?

Yes.

So AI is becoming the, the, it's becoming prevalent because you need it internally for, for you to, to optimise your processes, for you to develop your products. So we are using AI not just for our own productivity, but also to design faster, to bring products faster onto the market.

You've got that internal side of things, but then you also have AI that is customer-facing, whatever you're going to be putting inside your products that you're selling to customers. So it's not just a tiny cog in the machine, it's a cog, an internal cog, an external cog. It's, it's everywhere.

So we're seeing the emergence of these new roles like this one, the emergence of what we talked about earlier, the business technologists.

So people who are, they're not it, they're not financed, they sit a little bit in between, and they are the ones who are bringing innovation to the table, and we're going to see more and more of that. Where technology is heading, I think in the next five years, is looking at how it's going to enhance the lives of people. We've got.

What does that look like in your thoughts?

So, a lot of the AI that you see today has been for commercial purposes, I want to say, to build products. We see it a lot in advertising, with product recommendations, etc. So there's, there's, the potential is proven there.

Where I think it's going to be more prevalent is looking at tangible solutions that going to improve people's lives, whether it's their work, their personal life. There's a lot being done in healthcare.

For example, the use of AI in healthcare, which you may not necessarily hear about, but for instance, there's some hospitals that are pioneering at the moment the diagnosis of certain diseases using AI. Because if you look at MRI scans, radiology, thousands of images, right.

And if you can plug all that data into a tool that is able to recognise, looking at your X-ray or your MRI scan, can identify within seconds that there's an anomaly, potential tumour or something like. So healthcare is a big one, but in other aspects or. Carry on, carry on.

No, no, no. I was going to say, to add to that, one of my previous guests mentioned about, specifically about health care. One guest.

Mm, Rita Usanga, and she talked about being able to specify, go down to sort of really niche areas of healthcare and identify key things that might impact particular ethnic groups. So it's just sort of, just to add to what you were saying. It's very, it's really fascinating what's happening in that space so, as you were saying.

I didn't mean to interrupt. No, no, you were mentioning.

It's okay. And I think this is where we're heading. You're at. When ChatGPT first came out, when the tools for creating images started, it was all fun.

It was all, it's fun. Stupid questions. Oh, it was fun to, yeah, yeah, yeah, stupid image. But now we're seeing the capabilities. We're moving past the fun elements.

We're moving past I think the, the uses for, for marketing, for advertising, for commercial uses. And I think where personally where this is going to go is improving people's lives.

And at concur we, I'm quite passionate about it because at concur we're looking at it that way with the AI developments that we're doing. And if you think about it, I do present a lot to customers on AI at the moment.

And most technology providers want you to use their tool as much as possible. Right, as much as possible. And with AI, we are rethinking completely our tool.

At concur in the sense that the least time you're going to be spending using our tool, the more sessions we will be because no matter what bells and whistles we put in the app, it's still tedious. It's still, nobody's waking up in the morning thinking, oh yay, I have to do my expenses today. What a job.

Exactly.

Nobody got to do that. We have to come to with the fact that we're dealing with a process that is an obligation we have to do it. It's never going to be, you know, fun.

So if we can't make it fun, let's make it the least painful we can make it, and therefore, we've completely tilted it on its hedge.

And we are using AI to to improve this process, to make it as shorter as painless as possible and essentially making the life of the worker better because you don't have to spend time doing your expenses on a Saturday afternoon instead of being with your kids.

With your family.

So, absolutely, I think for me this is the next step. This is the five to ten years we've seen. The fund is the commercial uses. Now, we'll be going into well-being.

How is it going to be changing our life as workers and individuals? I think.

Yeah, no, that is good.

That is, that is just, it's, it's not, it makes pure sense to make sure that, that businesses are thinking about that and particularly like how that really goes to it. As I said at the start, I'm interested in how AI can enhance human connectivity.

So if it can, if these different technologies that are being created by SAP concur and your competitors, then how is it that. It's just, it's another example of just sort of how it can increase productivity for the individual, but also, as you say, take away stress.

Make it more frictionless. That's the word I'm trying to look for. Make things more frictionless so that they can just move on and get on with what needs to be done.

I'm interested as well, sort of.

When we've spoken before, you talked about some of the work that you're doing about how AI and the development of IT is expanding access to different groups of people to be able to use it. And I'm intrigued and really amazed about some of the work that you're doing with different organisations outside of SAP. Concur.

Would you like to speak to that?

Yeah, absolutely.

Share a bit more about those.

And I think when we started the conversation, we were talking about my journey, and I'm not a technologist, I haven't studied computer science, I don't come from it. And when you used to hear about AI, it was like it's for the mega big brains that have science.

You do complex, mathematic, you know, you have to, you're like in University for 10 years.

Yeah, minimum. Yeah.

And, and I came to find out that actually it's, it's not the case.

When you think about what I told you earlier about the fact that 80% of innovation is going to be coming from people who don't think, come from it. It's going to come from, come from the business. AI is giving us the ability to expand our horizons and our careers. I hate math.

I've never been good at it, I never will be good at it. I am not kidding myself into thinking that I'm going to learn programming and I'm going to enjoy it.

I know it's not, I know it's not me, but what you can do now with AI is write code without being a programmer because AI is going to assist you with that.

So where I'm getting at with this, again, long-winded answer, is that it's going to Give people who perhaps didn't have access to certain areas to university, perhaps given it's opening doors to professions that were perhaps traditionally more male orientated.

Tech, in general, is still very male-dominated and also helping with giving access to perhaps ethnic minorities who didn't think that tech was an option because whatever, for whatever reason.

So I think I'm really, really passionate about this because it's my own experience of someone who's totally non-technical from, from a background who managed into AI and you know, I managed to write a, a recommender tool, you know, like Netflix when they recommend you, you know, the next film. Yeah, you'll watch one.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I built a little tool like that using Microsoft Azure, and I've got zero coding experience, and this has given me, you know, the passion to talk to people to say, hey, if you're really non, not really technical, you're like me, you like books and philosophy and vinyls, but you would like to be able to do certain things that involve technology. Don't be put off because now there's a path to, to be doing tech without having to go necessarily through 10 years of computing science.

And I've been working with Stemet, which is a charity that helps girls primarily, but not necessarily but primarily girls and people who identify as women develop in the area of technology.

That's amazing.

It's that they're doing a lot of work in a lot of schools across the country and really sitting down with, with girls and letting them know that hey, there's an array of jobs within what we call tech engineering that you could be part of. And it's, it's, it's not scary. It's not like you have to have you know, an A level in math on everything.

So it's giving them the options and showing them that actually there isn't just one path anymore to become an engineer or to work in tech or to develop an app.

And I think this is going to give minorities, and if you consider female as a minority within tech, I think it's going to help give that boost that we need.

Yeah. To increase the level playing.

Certainly, just the fact that you've got various organisations like Stemettes and others that sort of help raise the sort of profile of underrepresented groups is just so encouraging to see and exciting that you're, you know, you being quite senior in a technology company, being able to bring that, to bring in the new generation of people and new generation of thinkers and as you've quite rightly Said, you know, the whole point of the innovation being that will come from non-traditional, non-sort of engineering backgrounds is this is an exciting time. So it's just, it's encouraging to hear.

As well one of the things that when I was growing up, so I'm 36 today, but when I was school, there was nobody telling us about tech, about the variety of roles.

So having the opportunity to speak to people who are, you know, the, the group I was, I was speaking to was between, I think, the ages of 11 and 16, where you still won't know what you want to do in life. You don't know what a solution consultant is. I mean, I urge that phrase, that role of solution consultant.

The day that a recruitment agency phoned me for the job and I was, oh, what? So you know, I was 30, 31 when I first heard about this job that I'm in right now.

So I think the more we can show the new generations early that there's a variety of roles and that AI is also opening roles and a path that is perhaps non-typical into tech.

And you can be successful, squiggly careers are the way forward.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's it. I think it's going to give them the confidence to, to go for it.

Yeah. I'm particularly like with you, and having visible women as you're like yourself and many others at the helm championing these opportunities.

Like you say that it will help sort of transform the sort of the inflow of people coming in and taking up space in these places and doing it with just as much sort of expertise and flair and courage as any other grouping that would traditionally come into this space.

So that is just very encouraging to hear, I suppose, sort of as we come into land, it's been such a fascinating discussion about all these different aspects about how, you know, AI has helped enhance sort of, as we said, the productivity for the, for and SAP and then SAP concur and then also just in the wider context, what are some of the things that you see in the future, sort of like the future innovations that you've seen? You've mentioned some of them with regard to how you used to do videos and things.

But what's one, What's a particular project that you're working on now that's really exciting that you're allowed to talk about that you just see as a future innovation or the future of this space in general? Am I allowed to talk about why isn't the context?

Yeah, there's a couple of things I think we touched on it earlier on the data.

The fact that Concur is sitting on a giant mass of data and it's how do you, how do you work on that data to understand what your customers want in the future? So, how do you get that from your data? And also how do you partner with other technology providers that are the best in their field?

And I think that when you think about Conquer, we deal in travel and expense. We are not a travel company, we are not an airline, we're not a taxi company.

There's no sense in us spending time and money, and investment trying to launch a taxi company, right? So what we do is that we partner with the likes of Uber.

So you've got three components, if you like, in what is making you successful is making sense of your own data. Integrations with other areas of your business or other partners that do what they do best, right?

As I said, we're not going to suddenly become a travel company, right? We're going to be partnering with the best travel companies in the world so that we can obviously harness their power as well.

And only after that, you're plugging AI because you've got the foundational data, you've got the best integrations, and this is where AI can really consolidate the whole into bringing a solution that, that makes sense. One of the things that we are quite excited about at SAP is a tool called Jewel, which is a copilot.

And you're probably thinking, well, you know, copilot is a chatbot. Everybody's got a chatbot. And it's, it's not exactly a chatbot at all.

It's a tool that will sit on all of your SAP tools because we've got loads of tools and will help you with certain tasks. So we've got a typical example that we're working on where you might be looking at you. You've got a. A calendar invite.

Let's imagine you invite me to a show tomorrow in Copenhagen, and I have this landing in my Outlook, right? Outlook is not SAP, right? It's Microsoft. It's a different company, different tool, but we use multiple tools at every company.

Imagine a world where when I receive that invite, there's artificial intelligence in the background that says, okay, you need, obviously, you need to be in that particular location in Copenhagen. You live in London. Therefore, let's how you find accommodation, right? And a flight, and it starts suggesting flights for you.

Accommodation recommendations based on where your colleagues have stayed in the past, you know, so eliminates the guesswork. That's the sort of stuff that we're looking at in the future. And then you press a button and all of it is booked for you.

And, and that's like the ultimate concierge service as well, because you know, you've got something super tailored, as you say, Alice, sort of Netflix analysis of what your choices have been and then they'll just know how to deliver something that is of high-quality service, enable you to function brilliantly as a SAP Concur employee and then analyse and then move on to the next thing. So you're not even thinking about it.

Exactly.

And it's also making sure that you ground all of this within the company policy because I'm not allowed to fly first class or business class to go to Copenhagen because it's next door. So it's, it's putting all of the safeguards in place as well to make sure that your employees will automatically follow the company policy.

There's no other way. Yeah, it's fun, it's easy, it's compliant.

I don't have to mess about for half an hour and message people: where are you staying, where you, which flight you're doing? It's, you know, it's all contained and then you can even in, in a future ask.

Well, actually I would like to stay a couple of days to do a bit of tourism, how much holiday I've got left. And it will know because it will link back to your HR system where you're booking your leave.

So it's, it's a lot more than, you know, just a chat bot you ask questions to. We can actually perform tasks, tasks for you, and remove a lot of the mundane things.

Well, that is an incredible set of innovations that SAP Concur and its team are bringing in, and it just.

Yeah, I'm quite excited about seeing how that rolls out and also the feedback that you'll get from your team members about it, obviously at senior level. Sorry, my nose is dribbling. Moments later. Ah, and we're back anyway, after that little short intermission. Thank you so much for your time.

It's just been really interesting hearing about all the different ways that AI has been used to enhance relationships within SAP Concur and all the different projects that you're involved with. Can we talk a bit about sort of the areas of sort of mistrust and where people may be a bit sort of cautious about this?

How have you seen that in the space of business and particularly in relation to some of the products that SAP Kuka have created, but also how that's impacted either positively or negatively, the lives of the, your clients that you're working with? What things have you or what patterns have you observed? I should say.

Yeah, that's a really interesting question. I think the word AI always comes with like a mistrust element. Right.

In our personal lives in the world of work, we get questions and objections on a daily basis. Right. And they stem a lot from a lack of knowledge. And I'm not saying this in a negative way.

It's just a technology that is, it's not new, but it's been, well, I like to say, democratised a lot recently. Right.

So, as I was mentioning before, We've been using AI in the product for about ten years, but we perhaps didn't market it that way to say, hey, we're using AI. We're pioneers in AI, AI, AI. And a lot of people didn't really realise that some of our technology is artificial intelligence.

And now that they're realising it, now that there are regulations around AI, so the EU AI act is coming into force, I think, this December. People are asking a lot more questions.

People are worried about the use of their data and also users, funnily enough, users who perhaps have no issues in using certain apps on their phone and not necessarily question, you know, where is the data residing? What is happening with the data you put in those apps? You know, where is it going?

Some customers are, for example, worried about downloading a work app onto their personal phone. So it's one of the things that I see, you know, we're looking at mobile adoption from our customers.

And one of the great things about Concur and giving time back to employees is that you can take a photo of a receipt, and it will populate all of the information automatically. You can put your phone back in your pocket, carry on about your day. It's, I don't know, 12 seconds, click, put the phone back. And I.

And we see in some customers that they're not using this ability.

And when I have those conversations with them, a lot of them say, oh, it's because we don't give work phones to our employees, and they don't want to use a work app on their personal phone.

And interesting, it's an interesting debate because you don't see the same level of scrutiny with some questionable apparent apps that they're probably using on their paintings. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's, it's again, it, it's a mistrust. You've got two elements to that is the Big Brother effect?

Do you know if I download something that has to do with work on my personal phone? Am I being monitored? Is the company gonna know that? You know, at my lunchtime I was watching, you know, TikTok videos or something like that.

Learning the new Wicked dance routine.

I still need to go and see it. Yeah.

Thank you. Film.

But yeah, and again, it comes from a lack of knowledge and, and I'm not saying this, you know, in a negative way at all, is that this technology is evolving rapidly, and it's becoming more and more pervasive in our personal life, work life, and it's difficult for companies for users to know what's what and also to know what real threats are and what to look out for.

So the area around data privacy and making sure that data you put in, anything to do with AI stays within a certain boundary and it's not shared with third parties, for example, that's something that is very important that we take very seriously at SAP. But yeah, there's a lot of mistrust, and we need that mistrust.

I'm part of the diversity and inclusion group at SAP, and when we got our first corporate chat GPT, I mean, it's, it's a miracle AHR didn't knock on my door because I, I started to ask absolutely horrible questions to the tool because I wanted to make sure there was no bias in it, that there was no racism, no sexism, nothing that was questionable. So I was asking questions that were a tad, a tad racist, a tad sexist, just to see what kind of responses it was going to bring me.

And what did you find?

Nothing. Nothing. I'm, I'm happy to report that there was nothing questionable in the results. But that mistrust is what ultimately is going to help us.

Making sure we get rid of bias, making sure that we have tools that are purpose built, that they're used for good, that they're not used for, you know, questionable purposes. So, I think it's a mistrust is a good thing. It's definitely a good thing.

It's what's guiding in the industry towards better regulation, better data and better safeguarding of that data.

Yeah, no, I mean, that is definitely. That whole area is such a huge growth area.

I was speaking with a previous guest, Joanne Boyce, who's the founder and CEO of Include AI, that looks specifically at data that analyses anything that's sort of prejudicial in any way with regard to campaigns, regard to wider sort of structures within a company as well, and has had great success in that space. So I will definitely. I. I'll connect you to. With. With her because the work that her company is doing is pretty groundbreaking in this.

In this very space that you mention. I.

But outside of the world of AI, how do you enjoy sort of, as we're coming into land, it's sort of be interesting just to see sort of the rounded pitch of what makes up Sondheim Ash in her enthusiasm and for AI and seeing it implemented in relationships. What relationships does she get involved with outside of the work? Tell me about that.

Right, well, I'm. I'm a bit of an oddity in the same. In the sense that you probably see it in. In my background.

I've got a shelf here full of books because I spend a lot of time on screens at work. I try to not have any screens whatsoever outside of work.

I do watch a bit of telly like everybody else, but, you know, I'm trying to stay away from that.

I, I recently moved away from the sort of the London commuter belt to rural Shropshire because, you know, could buy a house with a little garden and I'm growing my own vegetables. You have chickens? Yeah.

Amazing.

It's such a joy and so fun to have chickens. I have to say. They are the funniest animals. And you get eggs, you know, anything. Well, everything organic, which is. Which is really good.

So I do, I do a lot of, A lot of that, A lot of outdoors at the moment, building, building all of that, because I think it's about, you know, finding that. That balance between technology and, to your point, around relationships.

I think we see, or we hear a lot at the moment in the news about the negative impacts of, you know, social media and the fact that we're communicating through screens, through text, through Snapchat, things like that, as opposed to creating media, meaningful connections.

So that's what I'm trying to do outside of, you know, outside of work is to have those meaningful connections with my neighbors, with people around the village, with obviously my. My husband, friends. So trying to. To actually spend time with people and have a good laugh, you know, that's super important.

Well, thank you so much for taking the time to come and speak with me and share your insight and wisdom with our listeners. It's just been a fascinating sort of journey.

And through your perspective of how AI has helped enhance human relationships and connection within the world of SAP, concur and the wider business setting and particularly the companies that you're involved with and also the future of work. So it's been a real pleasure having you on. And before we go, how can people connect with you, and are there any sort of things?

So yeah, are there any big things coming up in your world that you'd like to share and shout about? This is the opportunity to shine for yourself.

It's been a pleasure.

It's an absolute pleasure talking to you and just explore this topic because I think it's new and you're asking important questions around the technology side. Yes. That we all hear about, but also how does this affect relationship at work, outside of work?

And these are important questions that need to come with the tech side. So it's really important work, and I'm really happy and privileged to be part of it.

So thank you, and thank you so much for coming on the show. And this is the end of this episode for Relationships with AI, part of the WithAI FM network. Thank you for listening to this week's.

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