SAP Debuts AI Enhancements for Retail Customers

The new offerings were announced in a Thursday (Jan. 8) press release ahead of the NRF 2026: Retail’s Big Show event next week in New York City.

“Retailers face a landscape where AI is no longer optional,” Balaji Balasubramanian, SAP’s chief product officer for customer experience and consumer industries, said in the release. “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.”

Among the new offerings is the Retail Intelligence solution in SAP Business Data Cloud, set to launch in the first half of the year and designed for retailers and direct-to-consumer businesses, according to the release.

The tool “provides accurate demand and inventory planning, leveraging retailers’ data from across SAP software and third-party systems to drive profitable growth through actionable, real-time insights,” the release said.

The company is also rolling out its Order Reliability Agent as part of its larger order management services bundle. Set for release in the second quarter of 2026, the new agent identifies and resolves potential order issues, and helps workers answer common questions about order status, stock availability and fulfillment risks before they affect customers, according to the release.

“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 at scale,” the release said. “And as brand visibility shifts in the age of agentic commerce, reliable and consistent shopping experiences are more important than ever to drive sustained customer loyalty and trust.”

The retail sector is undergoing a shift due to agentic AI, from “assistive to autonomous commerce,” PYMNTS wrote this week. While assistive AI, such as chatbots, recommendation engines and search optimization, supports human decision-making, agentic AI could replace elements of that same decision-making process, all the way to its execution.

Retailers need to be “agent-ready,” PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster wrote this month. PYMNTS Intelligence research found that consumers are already there, with 57% of them reporting that they use AI platforms for personal tasks.

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