Utilities Agenda

Get ready for three days of insights, live opportunities to connect, and real-world experience straight from the ASUG network of SAP customers. View the agenda below to plan your experience.

Join Live

Monday, Sept. 21 Tuesday, Sept. 22 Wednesday, Sept. 23

Tuesday, Sept. 22

10:30 a.m. CT/11:30 a.m. ET

Kick-off the day with a message from your emcee and join us as we announce this year’s winning organizations within the following categories: The Purpose-Driven Award, Excellence in Operations Award, Pioneer of the Year Award, and Excellence in Customer Service Award.

The SAP Industry Innovation Awards honor organizations that are intentionally using technology to transform their businesses, employees, and communities.

10:40 a.m. CT/11:40 a.m. ET

Stephen Clemons – CIO, SMUD
Jermayne Adamson – VP Utilities, SAP

The utility industry is facing pressure to meet expectations for digital interactions and customer service, especially now as the customer demand has increased and the industrial demand has declined. Join this session to hear how Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) is approaching its digital transformation to remain competitive. This fireside-chat-style discussion will provide insights into how the organization is leveraging SAP to embrace new industry norms.

11:05 a.m. CT/12:05 p.m. ET – Track 1

Deepak Sood – CEO, Auritas
Paul Woods – Program Manager, OpenText
Dharmesh Gandhi – Director, SAP Solutions and Enterprise Analytics, SaskPower

Discover how SaskPower prepared its environment for moving to Suite on SAP HANA and how it is planning to upgrade to SAP S/4HANA with Data Volume Management. SaskPower migrated its legacy application Lotus notes to an enterprise content management (ECM) solution from OpenText called Extended ECM. Learn what components were implemented, the benefits gained, and how it has consumed in different divisions. Plus, hear how vendor invoice management (VIM) provided SaskPower with a strong ROI for accounts payable and procure-to-pay functions.

11:05 a.m. CT/12:05 p.m. ET – Track 2

Ron Gray – Solution Engineer, NA Utilities, SAP
Mark Christian – Business Development Manager, Enterprise Data Management Solution, Intel

Drones can help keep people safe by collecting data that’s analyzed in a cloud platform and connects back to daily business processes like equipment inspection, scheduling, and maintenance. Attend this session to hear how this could be the future of automated crisis management. Experience the intelligent enterprise in action as it helps utility employees from maintenance, capital project improvements, the environment, and vegetation management make important business decisions to keep the lights on.

11:15 a.m. CT/12:15 p.m. ET – Track 1

Jonathan Boswell – SAP Product Marketing, Tricentis
Debbie Smith – Senior IT Manager Customer Connect Testing, Duke Energy

Duke Energy is in the middle of a five-year customer experience transformation. Its award-winning Customer Connect platform runs on a broad stack of SAP applications, including SAP S/4HANA, SAP Marketing, SAP Commerce Cloud, and SAP for Utilities. How is Duke Energy delivering the best results during this period of transformation? Join this session to learn how testing automation is helping the utility deliver more efficiently, minimize business risk, and achieve business outcomes.

11:15 a.m. CT/12:15 p.m. ET – Track 2

Dominic Brennan – Senior Specialist, Utilities IBU, SAP

Discover insights into SAP Field Service Management solution to support scheduling and dispatch, and hear the SAP road map for this solution. Learn how using SAP Field Service Management platform for both asset maintenance and field service management tasks from any SAP or non-SAP platform can be seamlessly scheduled from a single solution. Also hear how the robust, scalable, and flexible SAP Field Service Management can support organizations with true centralized scheduling and dispatch needs, including those with a dispersed structure through a multi-tenant cloud solution.

11:40 a.m. CT/12:40 p.m. ET – Track 1

Kurt Sweetser – Director of IT, Southern California Edison
Joshua Biggins – Partner, Business Consulting, Infosys Limited

Southern California Edison is the largest power utility in Southern California, servicing a 13 million population. Hear how the company, which was in the middle of a multi-year SAP customer information system transformation, responded to COVID-19 by going from fully onsite to fully remote at a switch of a button.

11:40 a.m. CT/12:40 p.m. ET – Track 2

Dawn Philaya – Director of Innovation and Transformation, Xcel Energy
Andy Prier – Director of Solutions, Western USA, Mindset

Discover how Xcel Energy turned the corner on improving its SAP user experience for employees. Learn how Xcel targeted field services first, and focused on managing time cards, communications, and responding to customer outages for both Electric and Natural Gas. Xcel is partnered with Mindset to design and build products that are more engaging for field users. Starting with Design Thinking and Agile product development, Xcel has provided value to its users using SAP Cloud Platform, SAP Fiori, and Google Flutter. Join us for tips and tricks used to overcome challenges that accompany change in a largely traditional IT environment.

12:05 p.m. CT/1:05 p.m. ET

Programming will be paused for a short break.

12:10 p.m. CT/1:10 p.m. ET – Track 1

Russell Boyer – Global Energy Field Director, Dell Technology

Utilities are facing challenges to meet new sustainability goals, while maintaining reliability, keeping costs affordable, and meeting customers' rising expectations. Having a modern, powerful, and agile infrastructure platform is important to achieving new business models and business results. This session will explore how Dell and SAP can enable utilities to quickly migrate to a modern SAP S/4HANA platform. We will also discuss how leveraging certified edge, core, and cloud platforms rapidly drives organizations forward in achieving the goal of the intelligent enterprise, fully utilizing data and analytics to drive better business decisions.

12:10 p.m. CT/1:10 p.m. ET – Track 2

Dr. Dimitrios Lyras – Data Scientist, SAP

Demystify and democratize machine learning on SAP HANA to unlock the value of your advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) data. See how using SAP HANA mahcine learning to perform load profiling will aid you in understanding your customers' consumption behaviors and in designing time-of-use (TOU) rate structures, usage-based customer segments, and demand-response programs.

12:20 p.m. CT/1:20 p.m. ET – Track 1

Lucy Curtin – Front-Office Manager, San Diego Gas & Electric
Ben McCarthy – Senior Manager, Accenture

In this session, SDG&E will share its journey to the cloud, including key lessons learned, success factors, and capabilities that are foundational to the success of implementing SAP C/4HANA. SDG&E will also showcase how continued partnership with SAP to co-innovate can further elevate the enablement of critical business capabilities to drive an enhanced customer experience and how shaping the future SAP road map can create prolonged success past project implementation.

12:20 p.m. CT/1:20 p.m. ET – Track 2

Jeff Chronister – VP of Finance, Tampa Electric and TECO Energy

In this session, learn how Tampa Electric Company optimizes assets to help ensure tax and financial compliance within highly regulated environments. By using the SAP S/4HANA business data platform integrated with PowerPlan, the company can maximize operational efficiency and effectively meet the demands of safety inspectors, auditors, investors, as well as government and financial regulators.

12:45 p.m. CT/1:45 p.m. ET

Chris Moyer – Senior Director of Content and Research, Zpryme
Matus Marusak – VP of Utilities, SAP

Midsize utilities have faced financial, cultural, and regulatory constraints that have slowed their efforts to adjust to industry trends including electrification, renewable energy generation, and a faster deployment of digital tools that improve operational and customer delivery. Join this session to hear the digital solution opportunities midsize utilities can take advantage of to make data-driven decisions and improve operational excellence.

12:55 p.m. CT/1:55 p.m. ET

Jennifer Baldwin – Industry Executive Advisor- Utilities, SAP

Tune in for a recap of the day.

1:00 p.m. CT/2:00 p.m. ET

Robyn Tweedy - VP and CIO, Nebraska Public Power District (NPPD)
Jackie Grunwald - CIO, Advansix
Kristin Lampka - Account Executive, SAP EMEA, Intel
Moderator: Kelly Dowling - Senior Manager, Enterprise Content, ASUG

ASUG Women Connect exists to help women in SAP technology visualize and inspire success. We are excited to bring together female leaders from different industries to share their unique insights and perspectives on leading through a crisis. Join us for a panel discussion on building and relying on a network of other women, mentorship, and more. Key topics include effective leadership and how it allows direct reports to contribute to the organization, valuable lessons learned and how to apply them going forward, and how we can support our network of women during this pandemic.

Tuesday, Sept. 22

10:30 a.m. CT/11:30 a.m. ET Opening Remarks and SAP Industry Innovation Awards

10:40 a.m. CT/11:40 a.m. ET Ahead of the Curve: SMUD’s Modern CX Provides New Channels of Real-Time Customer Engagement

11:05 a.m. CT/12:05 p.m. ET – Track 1 Transforming ERP Environments at SaskPower to Implement SAP S/4HANA and ECM with OpenText

11:05 a.m. CT/12:05 p.m. ET – Track 2 Drones with Data Intelligence Take Crisis Management to New Heights

11:15 a.m. CT/12:15 p.m. ET – Track 1 How AI-Driven Testing Helps Duke Energy Deliver Business Outcomes

11:15 a.m. CT/12:15 p.m. ET – Track 2 SAP Scheduling for Utilities

11:40 a.m. CT/12:40 p.m. ET – Track 1 Executing a Customer Information System Transformation Program During COVID-19

11:40 a.m. CT/12:40 p.m. ET – Track 2 Transforming Xcel Energy's Employee Experience and Why It Matters

12:05 p.m. CT/1:05 p.m. ET Break

12:10 p.m. CT/1:10 p.m. ET – Track 1 Powering Utilities Intelligent Enterprise with a Modern Platform

12:10 p.m. CT/1:10 p.m. ET – Track 2 Harness the Power of Your AMI Data Using HANA Machine Learning with Jupyter and RStudio

12:20 p.m. CT/1:20 p.m. ET – Track 1 SDG&E’s Cloud Journey: Transforming Customer Information Systems with SAP C/4HANA

12:20 p.m. CT/1:20 p.m. ET – Track 2 Manage Strategic Financial Compliance in an Evolving Global Economy with SAP S/4HANA Finance

12:45 p.m. CT/1:45 p.m. ET The Future of Midsize Utilities and Energy Service Providers

12:55 p.m. CT/1:55 p.m. ET Closing Remarks

1:00 p.m. CT/2:00 p.m. ET ASUG Women Connect Presents: Leading Through a Crisis