SAP at NRF 2024: What Was Announced and What It Means for Commerce

NRF 2024 (January 2024) was where SAP laid out its AI-first commerce strategy. The headline announcements — the CX AI Toolkit, Intelligent Selling Services enhancements, and deeper Emarsys integration — signalled a clear direction: AI isn’t an add-on to commerce, it’s the operating layer.

Two years later, most of what SAP previewed at NRF 2024 has shipped. This guide covers what was announced, what’s materialised, and what it means for Commerce Cloud implementations.

TL;DR: At NRF 2024, SAP showcased the CX AI Toolkit (generative AI for product content), enhanced Intelligent Selling Services (AI personalisation), and deeper Emarsys integration (AI-driven marketing automation). SAP now has over 34,000 AI customers, targeting 100,000 by 2027 (SAP News, 2024). Most NRF 2024 announcements have shipped and are now production-ready.

What Was the CX AI Toolkit?

SAP has over 34,000 AI customers across its portfolio, with plans to reach 100,000 by 2027 (SAP News, 2024). The CX AI Toolkit announced at NRF 2024 was a key part of that growth strategy.

The CX AI Toolkit brought generative AI capabilities directly into Commerce Cloud’s product management workflow:

AI product tagging. Automatically categorise and label products based on images and descriptions. Instead of manual tagging across thousands of SKUs, the AI suggests categories, attributes, and tags. Merchandisers review and approve rather than create from scratch.

AI product descriptions. Generate product descriptions from structured product data. Feed the AI product attributes (material, dimensions, features) and it produces customer-facing descriptions in multiple tones — technical, casual, or luxury. How useful is this? It cuts description creation time from hours to minutes for large catalogues.

Bulk editing. Apply AI-generated content across hundreds or thousands of products simultaneously. Update descriptions, tags, and categories in batch operations rather than one product at a time.

The toolkit uses SAP’s Business AI foundation, which connects to large language models (including partnerships with OpenAI, Google, and Meta) through SAP AI Core. This means the AI capabilities are model-agnostic — SAP can swap underlying models as better ones become available.

What Changed with Intelligent Selling Services?

Global retail e-commerce reached $6.334 trillion in 2024, crossing 20% of all retail sales (eMarketer, 2024). ISS improvements at NRF 2024 targeted converting more of that traffic.

At NRF 2024, SAP demonstrated enhanced Intelligent Selling Services capabilities:

Improved recommendation algorithms. Updated models with better cold-start handling (new customers with no browsing history), improved cross-category recommendations, and faster model training cycles.

Real-time personalisation. Reduced latency between customer actions and personalised responses. When a customer adds a product to their cart, cross-sell recommendations update within the same session — not the next visit.

Merchandiser controls. Better tooling for merchandisers to influence AI recommendations without overriding them completely. Set guardrails (minimum margin, brand priorities) while letting AI optimise within those boundaries.

How Did Emarsys Fit into the NRF 2024 Story?

Ninety-one per cent of organisations increased composable/MACH infrastructure investment in the past year (MACH Alliance, 2025). Emarsys at NRF 2024 showed how AI-driven marketing automation fits into a composable commerce stack.

SAP demonstrated Emarsys as the marketing automation layer that takes ISS personalisation signals and extends them into customer communications:

AI-powered campaign automation. Emarsys uses customer behaviour data (including ISS signals) to trigger personalised email, SMS, and push notification campaigns. Abandoned cart emails include the specific products the customer was considering, with AI-selected alternatives.

Predictive customer segmentation. Rather than manual segment creation, Emarsys identifies customer segments automatically based on purchase patterns, browsing behaviour, and lifecycle stage. Who’s at risk of churning? Who’s ready for an upsell? The AI flags these segments proactively.

Cross-channel orchestration. NRF 2024 emphasised Emarsys’s ability to orchestrate customer communications across email, SMS, push, web personalisation, and social — all driven by the same customer behaviour model that powers ISS.

What Does This Mean for Commerce Cloud Implementations?

Gartner has named SAP a Leader in Digital Commerce for 11 consecutive years (SAP News, 2025). The NRF 2024 announcements reinforced why: SAP is investing heavily in AI-native commerce.

For new implementations: Plan for ISS and the CX AI Toolkit from the start. Don’t treat them as phase-2 additions — the data collection and model training need time, so starting early gives better results.

For existing implementations: The CX AI Toolkit can immediately reduce manual effort in product content management. ISS enhancements are available through Commerce Cloud updates — evaluate whether your current personalisation setup is using the latest capabilities.

For the broader SAP CX strategy: NRF 2024 confirmed that AI touches every part of the customer experience stack — from product discovery (ISS) to content creation (CX AI Toolkit) to marketing (Emarsys). These aren’t isolated tools; they share data and amplify each other.

FAQ

Is the CX AI Toolkit available now?

Yes. The CX AI Toolkit reached general availability in 2024. It’s available to Commerce Cloud customers as part of the platform. Specific features and capabilities depend on your Commerce Cloud edition.

Does using ISS require additional licensing?

ISS is included with SAP Commerce Cloud. Specific ISS features are available depending on your edition and contract. Check with SAP or your implementation partner for exact feature availability in your licence.

Can I use the CX AI Toolkit with my existing product catalogue?

Yes. The toolkit works with your existing Commerce Cloud product catalogue. It reads product attributes and generates descriptions, tags, and categorisations from that data. No catalogue migration or restructuring is required.

How does SAP’s AI approach compare to competitors?

SAP’s approach is embedded — AI capabilities are built into the commerce workflow, not offered as separate add-on tools. Shopify and Salesforce take similar approaches. The differentiator is SAP’s integration across the full enterprise stack (ERP, CRM, supply chain), not just commerce.

What happened at NRF 2025?

NRF 2025 (January 2025) continued the AI theme with deeper Joule integration across SAP CX, expanded CX AI Toolkit capabilities, and agentic AI demonstrations for autonomous commerce operations. The direction set at NRF 2024 has accelerated, not pivoted.