Top News

MCP Is Becoming the Plumbing of Agentic ERP—ERP Leaders Need to Understand It

MCP is emerging as the protocol layer that lets AI agents discover and call enterprise tools, data sources, and workflows. For ERP leaders, the opportunity is lower integration friction. The risk is that access control, auditability, and cost discipline move closer to the agent boundary.

ERP Strategy and Planning

Winding Down Support: The Other 2027 Deadline ERP Teams Can’t Afford to Miss

SAP ECC is not the only 2027 deadline ERP teams need to manage. SAP Solution Manager—the tool most SAP organizations rely on for change control, ITSM, monitoring, and audit trails—is also winding down its support in 2027. With SAP Cloud ALM not offering a direct like-for-like replacement for SolMan's ChaRM functionality in on-premise scenarios, ERP teams face a hidden compliance and governance gap that requires urgent planning.

Workday AI agents enterprise governance system of record architecture

ERP Strategy and Planning

Workday Says AI Agents Belong Closer to the Systems They Could Break

Workday is drawing a clear line in the enterprise AI agent debate: for high-stakes workflows in HR, payroll, and finance, the safest place for AI inference and orchestration is inside the system of record, not on neutral third-party platforms. Through its controlled openness model—open APIs and MCP for developers, proprietary governance within Workday—the company argues that context, business logic, and security controls are a competitive moat that cannot be safely externalized.

Financial Management

BlackLine Is Giving CFOs a Control Room for Finance AI

BlackLine’s Finance Control Console preview turns its Agentic Financial Operations Platform into a control room for AI agents, giving CFOs visibility, policy enforcement, and audit‑ready evidence across record‑to‑report, invoice‑to‑cash, and other finance workflows.

Automation

NTT DATA Bets Cursor Can Speed the Messy Work of Legacy Modernization

NTT DATA’s partnership with Cursor brings AI coding agents directly into its global software engineering model, aiming to speed legacy modernization while strengthening governance and aligning modernization with enterprise‑wide AI strategy.

ERP AI readiness gap after S/4HANA migration - digital brain with question mark on enterprise data dashboard

Analytics and AI

ERP AI Readiness FAQ: Why SAP S/4HANA Migration Alone Will Not Get You There

Most ERP teams treat S/4HANA go-live as the finish line for transformation—but it is only the starting line for AI readiness. This FAQ explores why migration alone is not enough, what data and cloud foundations are missing, and how ERP leaders can build the architecture required to move AI from pilot to production.

INPEX energy transformation SAP Cloud ERP Private modernization for energy transition

Cloud Platform and Technology

INPEX Rebuilds Its SAP Core for a More Volatile Energy Market

Japanese energy company INPEX has gone live on SAP Cloud ERP Private, replacing its 2008-era IBOS system as part of INPEX Vision 2035—a strategy to build a more agile, data-driven management foundation capable of supporting energy transition into hydrogen, ammonia, carbon capture, and renewables. Partnering with ABeam Consulting and using a fit-to-standard SAP approach, INPEX is laying the groundwork for AI-driven operational efficiency across its global operations.

Applied Materials finance transformation using SAP Taulia Dynamic Discounting for supplier payments

Business Process Management and Automation

Applied Materials Is Finding Finance Transformation in Faster Supplier Payments

Applied Materials is using SAP Taulia Dynamic Discounting as part of its Agile Finance program to accelerate supplier payments, improve supplier liquidity, and build a scalable, AI-first finance operating model. The initiative shows how enterprise working capital programs can evolve from transactional efficiency tools into strategic platforms that deliver both supplier value and measurable financial returns for large manufacturers.

Application Development and Integration

Cognizant and Domyn Take Sovereign AI From Policy Debate to Enterprise Build

Cognizant and Domyn have formed a strategic partnership to offer sovereign AI solutions tailored for regulated enterprises in EMEA, enabling secure AI deployment while ensuring data control and compliance with European regulations.

Analytics and AI

Honeywell Pushes Industrial AI into Control Rooms and OT Cybersecurity

Honeywell launched Experion Cognition, an AI-driven control system to enhance autonomous operations in industrial control rooms, while simultaneously expanding its OT Cybersecurity Suite to bolster defenses against advanced cyber threats, illustrating a strategic focus on integrating AI with operational resilience and security.

ERP Strategy and Planning

Why Unit4 Keeps Showing Up on the ERP Shortlist

Unit4’s latest ERPx moves show why the vendor keeps appearing in shortlists for service-centric organizations. Success4U, DataHub, and FIX sharpen its pitch around deployment predictability, governed analytics, and ERP built for people- and project-driven operations.

Governance, Risk, and Compliance

AI Made Code Faster—Tricentis Says Quality Teams Are Falling Behind

Tricentis’ 2026 Quality Transformation Report shows that AI has accelerated software creation faster than many organizations can validate it, turning quality engineering into a boardroom issue for ERP and enterprise application leaders.

Analytics and AI

Gatekeeping Enterprise AI? Workday Redraws the Build-vs-Buy Line for AI Agents

Workday’s DevCon 2026 announcements show how enterprise AI agent strategy is moving beyond build-versus-buy and toward governed access to HR, finance, business process, and audit controls.

Analytics and AI

ERP’s AI Skills Gap Is Becoming the Real Transformation Bottleneck

ERP vendors like SAP are shipping AI features faster than teams can absorb them. The SAP AI skills gap—with 91% of organizations using AI but only 17% embedding it in core workflows—is now the defining bottleneck to real ERP transformation.

Analytics and AI

Anthropic’s Ban Lift and Claude Science Launch Test the New Rules of AI Access

The Trump administration has lifted restrictions on Anthropic's Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models, ending a weekslong export ban tied to cybersecurity concerns—though Mythos 5 remains restricted to approved US organizations. At the same time, Anthropic launched Claude Science, a domain-specific AI research workbench targeting life sciences and pharmaceutical users, signaling a broader shift toward specialized, governed enterprise AI access.

Analytics and AI

Nokia’s ERP Overhaul Shows Why AI Ambitions Are Moving to the Hyperscaler Layer

Nokia has signed a multi-year RISE with SAP agreement to consolidate multiple ERP systems into a unified SAP S/4HANA landscape hosted on Microsoft Azure, using clean-core principles and SAP's transformation methodology to prepare its global business backbone for embedded AI, operational resilience, and continuous cloud innovation.

AI process mining Enterprise AI context layer

Analytics and AI

Celonis Acquires Ikigai, Launches Context Model to Give AI Agents Operational Intelligence

Celonis’ Context Model and Ikigai Labs acquisition position process intelligence as a context layer for enterprise AI agents that need to understand real workflows before they recommend or act.

ERP Strategy and Planning

SAP Announced Product Leadership Reorganizations Around AI and the Autonomous Suite

SAP is reorganizing product and engineering leadership around the SAP Business AI Platform and Autonomous Suite—a structural shift that puts AI delivery accountability at the center of its cloud ERP roadmap and signals the end of siloed product development.

Supply Chain Management

IFS Is Building the Operations Layer Around Industrial AI

IFS’s Softeon acquisition is only one part of a broader push to connect warehouse execution, logistics optimization, MRO, asset management, and ERP around Industrial AI.

Manufacturing Systems and Automation

Why Food ERP Still Needs More Than Generic Dynamics 365

Aptean’s food and beverage ERP footprint on Microsoft Dynamics 365 shows why food, beverage, fresh, and agribusiness companies still need vertical ERP logic for traceability, quality, production, pricing, and compliance.

Financial Management

Why Finance AI Needs Guardrails: Sage Intacct’s Next Test Is Data Control

Sage Intacct 2026 R2 moves the connected finance story into data-control territory, with AI Gateway, intelligent 3-way matching, and construction workflows showing why finance AI needs guardrails before automation can scale.

Analytics and AI

GenAI in ERP Needs a Smaller Starting Point and a Harder Business Proposition

Enterprise leaders, while ambitious in their generative AI strategies, face a significant gap between their AI aspirations and actual production adoption, as illustrated by Mukesh Kumar's insights on targeted automation in ERP systems addressing specific, high-impact problems.

Security

ServiceNow and Accenture Are Going After Cyber Risk’s Legacy Platform Problem

ServiceNow and Accenture have launched a joint AI-powered offering to help enterprises migrate from legacy cybersecurity and risk platforms to integrated managed services on the ServiceNow AI Platform, combining agentic AI with risk management, GRC, third-party risk, and OT security monitoring.

Spend Management and Procurement

SAP Procurement Agents Are Reaching the Front Door of Spend Management

SAP's Joule AI capabilities, set for general availability across Ariba and Fieldglass in June 2026, aim to enhance procurement processes by automating intake, contract creation, and workforce operations while urging spend teams to ensure proper governance and integration before widespread adoption.

Secure enterprise corridor representing Microsoft Power Platform governance and AI agent access

Governance, Risk, and Compliance

Microsoft Power Platform Narrows the Access Gap for ERP Agents

Microsoft's June 2026 Power Platform updates introduce Advanced Connector Policies that govern AI agent access to SAP systems at the action and MCP server level. ERP leaders must understand what the new controls mean for low-code automation, connector visibility, and enterprise AI compliance.

Application Development and Integration

Can AI Break the ERP Change-Order Cycle? Tessera Labs Just Raised $60M to Try

Tessera Labs’ $60 million funding round puts a spotlight on AI-native ERP modernization, raising a new question for CIOs: how much of the migration, data, code, and documentation work that once required large consulting teams can now be automated without weakening governance?

Analytics and AI

Why AI Ambitions Still Depend on IT Modernization: METRO’s Migration Program

International food wholesaler METRO AG has completed a multi-year data center migration program with Wipro, moving legacy IT operations into a modern multi-cloud ecosystem to enable enterprise-scale AI adoption, automation, and cloud-first digital transformation.

ERP Strategy and Planning

IHH Healthcare System Standardization Shows the Hard Part of a Multi-Country ERP Transformation

IHH Healthcare has selected Infosys for a multi-year, enterprise-wide ERP transformation using the Infosys Topaz AI-first platform to standardize business processes across Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Singapore, covering finance, procurement, supply chain, HCM, and enterprise performance management.

Cloud Platform and Technology

Ontario Health Centre Shows Why Nonprofits Are Outgrowing Legacy ERP

An Ontario Community Health Centre migrated from Sage 300 to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central with Dynamics Square Canada, automating vendor invoice capture and employee expense management to free a lean two-person finance team from manual workarounds and improve financial visibility across locations.

Human Capital Management

Oracle Takes On the Federal Government’s HR Patchwork

The US Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has awarded Oracle a $395.8 million Federal HRIT Modernization contract to deliver the federal government's first government-wide HR platform using Oracle Fusion Cloud HCM, designed to replace more than 100 separate agency systems and consolidate workforce management for 2 million civilian employees.

Enterprise Architecture

Who Governs AI Agents When Workflows Cross Platforms?

As AI agents expand across ERP, cloud, and workflow platforms, enterprise leaders face a critical governance challenge: who owns accountability when data, models, and audit trails are fragmented across multiple systems. This analysis explores the control plane problem and what ERP teams must do to prevent agent sprawl.