![\"Nazia](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/1SPNbpvJccqmpmNdTF4tp3RZgk_1ijI0dQPsaT21CSszgSrL6XNZzd3AFb5rkHjJ0r5AktyGRRtOfneyt8mc9YBByNnRkUjjiNmd.jpeg\")
<\/p>\nAI agents are moving from assistants that fetch data to co-workers that run tasks end to end. SAP says that shift \u2014 the autonomous enterprise \u2014 rests on two things most companies underestimate: context and governance. And with mainstream ECC support ending in 2027, South African businesses are running out of room to decide. Chris Tredger speaks to Nazia Pillay, Managing Director of SAP Southern Africa #SAP #AI #ECC<\/p>\n
The introduction of agentic AI into the enterprise resource planning (ERP) space is set to underpin the era of the autonomous enterprise, according to Nazia Pillay, MD of SAP Southern Africa.<\/p>\n
Pillay spoke to ITWeb TV recently about AI-infused ERP, the autonomous enterprise concept \u2013 which relies on an army of AI agents at its core \u2013 and how organisations need to adapt to benefit from the opportunity. <\/p>\n
\u201cAutonomous ERP is not just about using AI to engage with end-users, to assist with navigation and pull data back; it is also about seeing agents as co-workers \u2013 systems that are working and performing tasks from end to end with human oversight,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Pillay added that this fundamental shift requires change management for both human employees and business processes. <\/p>\n
\u201cYou are adopting a technology that fundamentally needs to be embedded, and your business processes need to be adapted for how you want to use this in your business,” she said. “That\u2019s the main thing that our customers are facing \u2013 they need to look at this as a transformation and not just as a plug-and-play technology.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pillay cautioned that curiosity about AI does not necessarily indicate organisational readiness. Success, she said, comes down to understanding business objectives and getting data foundations in place. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Nazia Pillay, MD, SAP Southern Africa. <\/p>\n
\u201cMost of our customers are trying to figure out how to navigate this technology \u2013 how do I introduce it and how do I do it in a way that is adding value,” she said. “What we\u2019ve found is that when they use AI as a proof of concept or an experiment, they are not leveraging the full value of the technology.\u201d<\/p>\n
Beyond experimentation, governance frameworks are essential, Pillay said.<\/p>\n
\u201cMost of the organisations that we are speaking to need to look at how they are deploying it at an enterprise level, because when you are just deploying it as a proof of concept, you don\u2019t necessarily need to have all those frameworks in place.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pillay said the wealth of data that clients have generated through SAP installations provides a good foundation for companies shifting towards the autonomous enterprise. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we know about AI is that it requires context \u2013 so you need to understand where the data is and how it is being used, and this we already have based on our knowledge graphs within SAP,” she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe second part is governance \u2013 what SAP puts into place to ensure that we have security. We have invested because we have the context and the governance to support our customers in having agents run in a responsible, reliable way.\u201d<\/p>\n
With AI agents being deployed across end-to-end business processes, getting governance right will be key, she concluded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AI agents are moving from assistants that fetch data to co-workers that run tasks end to end. SAP…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":68335,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21036],"tags":[9693,6409,22696,27590,9695,51005],"class_list":["post-68334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sap","tag-agentic-ai","tag-ai","tag-erp","tag-nazia-pillay","tag-sap","tag-sap-southern-africa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68334"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68334\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}