SAP is a global leader in enterprise applications and business AI. For more than 50 years, organizations have trusted SAP to bring out their best by uniting business-critical operations spanning finance, procurement, HR, supply chain, and customer experience.
As the world increasingly blurs the line between physical and digital, SAP is laser-focused on helping customers find relevant, accurate answers through verified digital channels. And the person carving out their path forward is Michelle Lewis-Miller, Head of Digital Experiences and Voice of Customer for SAP Customer Support.
So, when her pilot program delivered a 30% drop in support cases within six months, something unexpected happened: leaders across SAP started asking how they could replicate her results. What began as one executive’s effort to fix a frustrating search problem became a company-wide transformation that deflected 1.64 million cases and unlocked €186 million in annual capacity.
Here’s how she did it, and why other executives took notice.
This is an executive summary of SAP’s transformation story. For the complete case study with detailed implementation insights, metrics analysis, and strategic recommendations, download the full story.
The Challenge Every Executive Recognizes
Lewis-Miller was facing a problem familiar to many enterprise leaders: customers couldn’t find the answers they needed, self-service targets were falling short, and there was virtually no visibility into what was working.
“We weren’t hitting our self-service targets the way that we wanted to,” Lewis-Miller explained. “We couldn’t measure anything. We couldn’t see what was going on.”
For a veteran enterprise company serving over 300 million cloud subscribers, every support ticket represented both cost and potential customer friction. But ensuring customers could digitally self-serve rather than seek assisted support was a thorny proposition. SAP offers a wide product portfolio, and they served a varied customer base ranging from technical experts to business generalists.
After two to three years of evaluating solutions that could meet SAP’s rigorous third-party integration standards, Lewis-Miller identified an opportunity to test generative answering within SAP Concur, a business unit already using Coveo’s intelligent search capabilities.
The Pilot Results That Got Attention
SAP Concur is the world’s leading brand for integrated travel, expense, and invoice management. Serving 66 million users across thousands of companies around the world (and 5,000 customer service agents behind the scenes), Concur is the largest community in the travel, expense, and accounts payable industry. The goal? Deploy generative answering to improve self-service for both customers and service agents.
And Coveo’s Relevance Generative Answering met those high stakes with results that were hard to ignore.
Within six months of implementation, SAP Concur saw a +30% drop in customers submitting cases after self-service attempts, translating to an €8 million reduction in annual cost-to-serve.
“When we piloted it, it went so well it was shocking,” Lewis-Miller said. “We saw such a huge decrease in case submission that it changed our whole budget strategy for the next year.”
The success wasn’t just about the numbers. For many of SAP’s customers, this was their first experience with generative AI — and it was an immensely positive one, helping them find answers faster than ever before.
Relevant viewing: Listen as Michelle shares the key strategies behind SAP Concur’s success
When Success Creates New Challenges
Word of the pilot’s results spread quickly through SAP. Leaders at various levels approached Lewis-Miller and her IT partners about implementing similar solutions for their teams.
But Lewis-Miller already had another challenge on her hands: scaling the generative answering onto a brand new self service portal spanning all of SAP’s products. Today, that portal — SAP for Me — is a vital hub for millions of customers. It centralizes critical alerts, metrics, and insights related to an organization’s complete SAP product portfolio through a single access point.
But scaling from a successful pilot to enterprise-wide deployment meant navigating a complex ecosystem: hundreds of products, multiple knowledge bases, and users ranging from experienced engineers to small business owners managing multiple responsibilities.
The technical challenges were significant, requiring a solution that could meet SAP’s data privacy standards while delivering exceptional user experience across this diverse landscape.
The Deployment That Almost Looked Like Failure
When Lewis-Miller’s team rolled out Coveo’s enhanced search experience to SAP’s main customer portal, the initial metrics were concerning. Instead of fewer support cases, they were seeing more submissions.
“We initially asked Coveo if something was broken in their backend,” Lewis-Miller recalled.
Rather than abandoning the approach, her team analyzed the data more deeply. What they discovered changed how SAP measures search success and revealed the true impact of their AI implementation.
The full case study reveals the specific insights that turned apparent failure into €186M success and provides a framework other leaders can apply.
The Results That Speak for Themselves
The impact of intelligent search and generative experiences on SAP for Me has exceeded initial expectations:
- Deflecting 1.64 million cases since implementation (across 7 quarters)
- Unlocking €186 million in annual capacity gains
- Expanding adoption across teams far beyond the original scope
Today, SAP’s intelligent search transformation spans multiple touch points like their built-in support application, community, customer support, and even internally — across all use cases, a total of 47 sources and 11.2 million indexed documents.
Even SAP’s most experienced users, who previously preferred direct navigation, have embraced the new search experience. As Lewis-Miller noted, “One SAP-certified engineer with 15 years of experience with our products told me he uses it every time.
“We’ve gone from questioning whether third-party search could even fit at SAP to making [Coveo] a core pillar of our intelligent search strategy,” Lewis-Miller observed.
What Made the Difference
The transformation’s success came down to several key factors:
- starting with a focused pilot,
- measuring the right metrics,
- and maintaining confidence when initial results looked discouraging.
Most importantly, Lewis-Miller’s approach demonstrated that AI implementations require both technical expertise and organizational change management. The solution that worked wasn’t just about technology: it was about understanding user behavior, measuring success appropriately, and building internal support for change.
Customer feedback validated the approach, according to Lewis-Miller: “The most common feedback was: this is cool, this feels like Google, and I don’t have to go to so many places anymore.”
The Blueprint Others Want to Follow
Lewis-Miller’s success offers a practical framework for enterprise leaders facing similar self-service challenges. Her experience shows that significant AI transformations are achievable when approached strategically, with careful attention to pilot design, measurement, and organizational dynamics.
The results speak to a larger opportunity: in an era where customer self-service can significantly impact both costs and satisfaction, leaders who implement effective AI solutions position their organizations for competitive advantage.
Want the full story? Download the SAP case study to see:
- The pilot framework that delivered €8M savings in six months
- How to navigate measurement challenges that initially looked like failure
- Specific tactics for winning over skeptical users and stakeholders
- Technical integration approaches for complex enterprise environments
- Lessons learned that apply to other AI transformation initiatives
Dig Deeper
Meet other successful AI champions like Michelle Lewis-Miller in our Thrive magazine. Not only will you see their amazing results, but you’ll hear all about their challenges, strategies, and more in their own words. Download your copy today!