SAP announced at TechEd in Berlin that it wants to train 12 million people worldwide in AI skills by 2030. During the opening keynote, Muhammad Alam, member of the SAP Executive Board, stated that SAP has trained 4 million people since 2022. It now wants to accelerate AI training, but also deepen it.
SAP will expand its training offerings through its strategic partnership with Coursera. Coursera has already trained more than 100,000 students. In addition to the existing SAP Technology Consultant certificate, SAP is launching a second certificate, the SAP Business Analyst Professional certificate.
Both certificates offer accessible entry points into the SAP ecosystem for different career paths and provide hands-on experience with SAP Signavio, SAP Analytics Cloud, and other SAP solutions. Coursera uses AI to automatically dub and translate training videos, making them accessible in 20+ languages.
Exams with AI assistance
The most interesting aspect of this announcement is the new certification approach. SAP is switching to hands-on assessments. Candidates are now also allowed to use AI tools during the exam, including SAP Joule for Consultants.
The entire industry now believes that AI agents and AI assistance will become part of people’s daily work. That is why AI assistance may also be part of the exams, because it is part of how professionals work. You no longer test whether someone knows things by heart, but whether they can solve problems in a realistic environment with the tools they use in practice.
New certifications for developers and IT administrators
In addition to AI training, SAP is also introducing new certifications specifically aimed at IT professionals.
- Solution architects for SAP Business Technology Platform
- BTP system administrators
- Generative AI developers
- SAP Build developers
These training courses are available in the SAP Learning Hub. The emphasis is on practical skills that can be directly applied in modern SAP environments where AI assistance is increasingly becoming the norm. All these training courses help IT professionals to make better use of AI or to make it available to business users.
SAP Architecture Center
SAP Learning Hub has been expanded with a new SAP Architecture Center website. This website offers architects and developers practical resources for designing, integrating, and optimizing SAP and cloud solutions.
The company has made more than 20 new reference architectures available on GitHub.
Is this feasible?
The question is whether these training ambitions are realistic. Twelve million people over five years means 2.4 million per year, or about 6,500 per day. SAP can focus on users of the SAP platform to train people quickly, but with a target of 12 million, other people will also need to be trained. That may prove more difficult. It is also not entirely clear whether this refers purely to AI training or also to the in-depth training courses in the SAP Learning Hub.
The challenge seems to lie mainly in motivating people to take and complete these courses. The workload is already high in many organizations, and online learning is not always popular. Employers also need to motivate their staff, so SAP will have to encourage organizations and customers to motivate their employees to take the courses.
The revamped certification approach, on the other hand, is concrete and directly applicable. The fact that AI assistance is explicitly permitted during exams is a fundamental decision that indicates how SAP views the future of work. It is no longer a question of whether you know something, but whether you know how to find and apply the right answer.
Also read: How SAP upskills 100,000 employees for the AI era