Mindset has been accepted as one of the first partners into SAP’s new Business AI Partner-Led Adoption program. In my 20+ years of SAP work, I haven’t seen SAP put this kind of a fund into action for partners to help customers adopt SAP technology. I think it’s one of the very best reasons to start your Business AI work this year. Below I’ll walk through what it is, how it works, and how we’d actually get your organization into it, including where it has limits.
What the program is
SAP built this program to accelerate adoption of the SAP Business AI Platform. The mechanism: SAP funds partner-delivered engagements that take you from “we’re curious about AI” to a real, running first use case. It runs through December 31, 2026, and SAP’s target is initial deployment within about 90 days of approval. This is built for speed and to test your first AI uses cases, not a multi-year roadmap (although we sure will help with that along the way!).
The funded work has to produce one of three things:
- An SAP Assistant or Agent you adopt and activate (SAP Standard AI features/Agents)
- A custom agent we build in SAP Joule Studio and deploy in your environment for business use
- An SAP Build MVP or initial use case deployed in your own BTP environment alongside multiple Joule agents.
Whatever we build has to be real, deployed, and measurable. SAP validates actual usage through the AI Agent Hub or its metering service. A slide deck of the solution doesn’t count.
How the funding works
This funding doesn’t land in your account as a discount or rebate. It pays for the partner work within the approved scope, discovery, development, testing, and enablement. For a well-scoped first use case, that covers most of what it takes to get live; anything beyond the approved scope you’d contract with us separately to continue. We expect to be able to get you into productive business AI usage with the initial funding of this program. That means no funding from you as a customer to get your first MVP/PoC live in SAP Business AI Platform.
The program is organized into scoped packages, ranging from adopting a single SAP assistant, to building a custom agent or pro-code app, up to a full enterprise engagement that includes standing up a Center of Excellence. Each package follows the same types of deliverables: a discovery workshop, a statement of work, the development itself, user acceptance testing, knowledge enablement for your team, and a small amount of post-deployment hypercare support. We help you match the scope to the use case, not the other way around.
Who’s eligible
Two paths qualify:
- You’re an existing SAP Business AI Platform customer with an active subscription, or
- You’re net new and start an eligible SAP Business AI subscription during the program period, with a minimum three-year term.
Public sector organizations are excluded, and the program is available globally.
How you actually get in
SAP controls entry. SAP identifies and approves the customers who participate, and an internal SAP steering group signs off. We can nominate your organization and build the case for it, but the decision is SAP’s, and I won’t pretend otherwise. I also can’t commit funding to you before SAP has approved it. Anyone who tells you the money is guaranteed up front is getting ahead of the rules.
So the path looks like this:
- We talk. Start with a use case design conversation, no commitment.
- We run a discovery workshop to surface and prioritize candidate use cases, and gauge how well they fit the program.
- We nominate your organization to SAP and build the submission together.
- SAP reviews and approves at its discretion.
- On approval, we sign a scoped statement of work and begin delivery, targeting deployment inside that 90-day window.
The statement of work is a direct agreement between you and Mindset, and it has to be signed before any funded work begins. That’s why the discovery and scoping come first.
Where we start
None of this matters without the right use case, so that’s the first thing we work on.
We’ve seen early interest around supply chain and finance, but the right answer is one that’s grounded in pain points you see in your data and your processes. Mindset does have a catalog of Joule Agents that can be used as templates and deployments of this program if they fit the needs/pain points in your environment.
Out of the discovery workshop you get a prioritized view of candidate use cases, a read on feasibility, and a clear picture of what a funded engagement would look like, whether or not you decide to proceed.
Let’s talk
If you’ve been waiting for a lower-risk way to move Business AI from conversation to production, this is a good one, with eyes open about how it works. What would it be worth to test a real Business AI use case in production, on largely funded delivery, before the window closes at the end of the year?
Reach out and let’s talk possible use cases and the process of getting you into the funded program. I’d rather spend an afternoon finding your best use case than have you read another article talking about it.
Let’s go use these funds together! 🙂
See how the SAP Business AI funding works and whether your use case qualifies →
