What the XXXX? AI can pick out your beer

Sales trick or a fast way to become a beer connoisseur? XXXX brewer Lion has partnered with software titan SAP to develop a new app and catapult it into the AI era.

Lion built the Joey beer picking app with SAP in less than 10 days — normally app development can take months. Picture: Che Chorley

Hold my beer – artificial intelligence can now recommend me a top tipple.

Australia’s second biggest brewer Lion has tapped SAP to accelerate its digital transformation. But not only that, Lion partnered with the German software titan to develop an AI app, dubbed Joey, to allow customers to pick beers they’re more likely to enjoy — in less than 10 days.

Normally apps built from scratch take months. SAP Australia and New Zealand Managing director Angela Colantuono said the company’s new AI agents — which are capable of performing tasks semi-autonomously — had so far delivered productivity gains of up to 30 per cent.

Amid what has been dubbed an agentic AI gold rush, Ms Colantuono said SAP was different to tech juggernauts such as Microsoft and Amazon, given the type of specialised data SAP processes.

It is the world’s biggest vendor of enterprise resource planning — or, business management — software, with its products used to oversee employee expenses and recruitment to complex supply chains and production.

“The business context that we have of running those industries for many years — for example, we’ve been running in manufacturing in Australia for 35 years — all those insights that we have in those organisations are captured in the SAP system,” Ms Colantuono said.

“It enables contextualised insight to be actually actioned, and that’s what I think is different in an SAP perspective because we can harness that data and leverage that real insight about an organisation.”

SAP Australia and New Zealand managing director Angela Colantuono.

Dubbed Joule, SAP’s AI assistant works similar to Atlassian’s Rovo, taking what is called a “knowledge graph” to draw insights from various business functions. (Rovo has a teamwork graph).

SAP has developed 40 new AI agents to assist shop floor supervisors to field service dispatches. Lion chief information officer Ram Kalyanasundaram said SAP’s platform had allowed the brewer to “eliminate technology debt” — a term used when companies develop short-term solutions to mask over problems that can blow up later, causing inefficiencies and more cost.

“We’ve gained the ability to bring new products to market faster, improve customer experiences and empower our teams with real-time insights. We’ve experienced a transformation both technologically and strategically which will ultimately unlock growth for Lion in the future,” Mr Kalyanasundaram said.

“We’ve developed an app that really delivers value for the business. It enables the sales team to quickly see where the closest Lion customers are and what Lion beers our customers have on tap by taking a picture so they can concentrate on selling.

“We also developed Joey, our AI beer connoisseur, which helps buyers select beverages based on their preferences. SAP Build meant we could build our app in less than ten days, a project which would have taken months without the AI technology.”

Originally published as What the XXXX? AI can pick out your beer