AI's Finance Challenge: Managing Token Spend Without Slowing Innovation
SAP, Tuesday, September 8th, 2026
SAP's own experience allocating token costs to business units suggests visibility matters more than unit price.
SAP describes its internal experience treating AI token consumption as a managed enterprise resource, allocating costs to the business units that generate them.
The central argument is that visibility and accountability matter more than optimizing cost per token, because the waste comes from usage nobody owns rather than from paying too much per unit.
The recommended governance approach targets eliminating waste rather than restricting productive use, which is an important distinction given how quickly blanket limits push teams toward unmanaged personal accounts.