SAP names Rachel Hunter ANZ Head of AI amid growing adoption

SAP has appointed Rachel Hunter as Head of AI for Australia and New Zealand and outlined the AI applications most widely used across its regional customer base.

Hunter will lead AI Customer Advisory across Australia and New Zealand, helping organisations move from AI planning to operational use. She joins from Davidson, where she was General Manager, Cloud, Data and AI. She previously founded DataSeeds Consulting and held senior roles at Databricks and Oracle.

The appointment was announced alongside customer presentations in Sydney from more than 20 organisations, including Queensland's Department of Transport and Main Roads, Fortescue, SA Power Networks, Woolworths, Zespri, TAFE NSW, Toyota Finance, Taronga Conservation Society Australia, Metcash, Linfox, Rheem and Suntory Oceania.

SAP's review of customer deployments across the 12 months to mid-year 2026 found AI use had become concentrated in routine business processes rather than isolated pilot projects. The findings point to finance and marketing as two of the clearest areas of adoption across its customer base in Australia and New Zealand.

Personalising marketing email content ranked as the most widely deployed use case across sectors. Tools that capture receipt images and generate expense entries came second, while automated invoice data extraction ranked third.

Other common uses included reviewing expense data for compliance and audit purposes, indexing company knowledge so service teams can find answers more quickly, and monitoring business activity for anomalies. SAP also listed systems that support the building and running of AI applications, document-based tools that ground AI responses in company information, predictive customer scoring and email timing optimisation.

Three of the top five use cases identified by SAP were tied to finance work, including expense processing, invoice handling and compliance review. Sector patterns were also visible, with invoice automation cited most in medical and retail, anomaly monitoring in beverage and agriculture, and predictive scoring in retail.

Operational focus

Regional management used the announcement to argue that AI adoption is now shaped less by headline spending and more by data quality and process discipline. That framing reflects a broader shift among large software suppliers as customers look for measurable returns from AI spending inside core business systems.

"We've moved past asking whether AI matters," said Angela Colantuono, President and Managing Director, SAP Australia and New Zealand. "The question now is whether it's making the difference that actually matters - and the organisations here today have answered that. They are not waiting for perfect conditions. They are acting now, and that is what sets them apart. Rachel's appointment reflects our commitment to helping our customers make that same shift."

Hunter said the strongest examples of AI use in the market were already embedded in day-to-day work. Her comments focused on practical tasks rather than large-scale transformation claims.

"AI has already found its place in Australian and New Zealand business; not in the strategy deck, but in the day-to-day," said Rachel Hunter, Head of AI, Australia and New Zealand, SAP. "The most widely used applications are helping finance teams process invoices faster, helping marketers personalise connections with customers and helping operations teams catch problems before they escalate. This is not experimental AI. It is already working."

Sector trends

The customer examples presented in Sydney covered government, retail, education, logistics, manufacturing, utilities, agriculture and resources. That spread suggests AI use in the region is no longer confined to technology-led sectors, although the ranking shows adoption still clusters around functions where software can replace repetitive manual tasks or improve existing decision-making.

SAP's list also indicates that some customers are investing in the underlying systems needed to connect AI with company data and documents. In the ranking, foundational AI platforms were most used in government and consultancies, while document-grounded response tools appeared most in agriculture and energy.

Many companies have struggled to move AI systems from trials into wider use when internal data is fragmented or governance is weak. By highlighting infrastructure and business-context tools alongside end-user applications, SAP is signalling that regional customers are looking beyond front-end automation towards integration with established finance, procurement, service and operational systems.

SAP also repeated its view that AI will increasingly sit inside standard business software, with routine tasks handled by AI agents under human oversight across functions such as finance, procurement, supply chain and human resources. For now, the clearest evidence from its regional customer base remains more immediate: invoice capture, expense checks, targeted marketing and anomaly detection are among the tools businesses in Australia and New Zealand are already using at scale.