A few weeks removed from ASUGFOR­WARD, we sat down with Geoff Scott, CEO of ASUG (and one of the conference’s MCs!) to dis­cuss his high­lights and key take­aways from the con­fer­ence. Geoff talked about some of his favorite ses­sions and his thoughts on some of the main themes we heard through­out the conference. 

ASUG: While we would all love to be at ASUG­FOR­WARD in per­son, what do you think is a pos­i­tive that has come out of the ASUG­FOR­WARD vir­tu­al experience? 

Geoff: One of my absolute favorite parts of any ASUG event is meet­ing up with our mem­bers and part­ners to net­work. Regard­less, it has been such a joy watch­ing the ASUG team spring into action to lever­age the lat­est tech­nol­o­gy to reach our mem­bers, no mat­ter where they are. I am a firm believ­er that any time we can get togeth­er — vir­tu­al­ly or in per­son — to net­work is a pos­i­tive expe­ri­ence. Look­ing back over the con­fer­ence, we kept the needs and wants of our mem­bers at the fore­front as we select­ed the very best speakers. 

There is one more thing I do want to point out. While we are hop­ing to return to some in-per­son events in the near future, ASUG does host a lot of great vir­tu­al con­tent: web­casts, Think Tanks, and Exec­u­tive Exchanges are just a few exam­ples. ASUG mem­bers not only have access to these events, but they can also access them on-demand. This is one of the hid­den advan­tages of vir­tu­al: we are build­ing out a great on-demand con­tent library. 

ASUG: I real­ly enjoyed your con­ver­sa­tion with actor and writer Kumail Nan­jiani. I’ve got to ask, what is your favorite work of his? 

Geoff: First off, I thought Kumail was such a great guest, and I real­ly appre­ci­at­ed the oppor­tu­ni­ty to speak with him. One of my favorite parts of that con­ver­sa­tion was right at the begin­ning when we were dis­cussing Kumail’s back­ground. He actu­al­ly dou­ble-majored in com­put­er sci­ence and phi­los­o­phy at Grin­nell Col­lege. Kumail made the inter­est­ing point that even though com­e­dy, com­put­er sci­ence, and phi­los­o­phy are all dif­fer­ent skill sets and knowl­edge bases, all three voca­tions are cen­tered around prob­lem solv­ing and using a cer­tain set of rules to make some­thing hap­pen or prove a par­tic­u­lar point. I thought that was such a great insight because so much of our world on the tech­nol­o­gy and IT sides of things is all about prob­lem solv­ing. If you haven’t seen the full con­ver­sa­tion, you should absolute­ly check it out, along with the mem­ber-exclu­sive Q&A Kumail did with Sarah Ahmad. 

I love so many things Kumail has done over the years. My all-time favorite role of Kumail’s has to be Dinesh Chug­tai in ​“Sil­i­con Val­ley.” Dinesh always cracks me up, and I think the rela­tion­ship between Dinesh and Gil­foyle is one of the show’s high­lights. ​“Sil­i­con Val­ley” is one of my favorite TV come­dies from the past decade. It did such a great job of min­ing the pecu­liar­i­ties of the tech­nol­o­gy and soft­ware devel­op­ment fields for comedy. 

ASUG: In your mind, what was the biggest accom­plish­ment to come out of this year’s ASUGFORWARD? 

Geoff: So many things. I touched on the amaz­ing work the ASUG team did in plan­ning the con­fer­ence. It real­ly was a group effort, and I’m proud of the team. Besides that, we recent­ly estab­lished the ASUG Stu­dio in the same build­ing as our office. This is a project that we’ve been work­ing on for some time. The stu­dio is now com­plete­ly up and run­ning, and we filmed a lot of ASUGFOR­WARD in it. After so many months of work­ing remote­ly, it was great to be in the stu­dio with mem­bers of the ASUG team. A per­fect exam­ple of this was the 30^th Anniver­sary Cel­e­bra­tion, which I host­ed with Julieus Thomas, the prod­uct man­ag­er of Vol­un­teer and Lead­er­ship Devel­op­ment at ASUG. I so enjoyed cel­e­brat­ing ASUG with all our atten­dees and some mem­bers of the ASUG team. 

ASUG: SAP is putting a lot of empha­sis on sus­tain­abil­i­ty. What do you make of this, and why is it impor­tant for a soft­ware com­pa­ny like SAP to place such a high lev­el of impor­tance on this topic?

Geoff: It is so encour­ag­ing that SAP is mak­ing sus­tain­abil­i­ty such a key part of its ecosys­tem. In my opin­ion, this is one of the most impor­tant top­ics in the busi­ness world. We all want to cre­ate a bet­ter world for our chil­dren and grand­chil­dren, and we all want to make sure we take care of this plan­et. SAP is real­ly lead­ing the charge by pro­vid­ing its cus­tomers with the tools to have more sus­tain­able oper­a­tions. But it goes beyond just devel­op­ing solu­tions for cus­tomers to use. This was incred­i­bly appar­ent dur­ing the SAP­PHIRE NOW 2021 keynote address that Chris­t­ian Klein, CEO of SAP, and Julia White, chief mar­ket­ing and solu­tions offi­cer at SAP, gave at the begin­ning of June. Sus­tain­abil­i­ty was such a sig­nif­i­cant part of that keynote. SAP is obvi­ous­ly com­mit­ted to this top­ic and is tak­ing great strides to pro­vide its cus­tomers with the tools they need to mea­sure things like their car­bon foot­print and grow into sus­tain­able, envi­ron­men­tal­ly-con­scious oper­a­tions. It’s so impor­tant for soft­ware com­pa­nies like SAP to pro­vide cus­tomers with the tools to do these things. I’m look­ing for­ward to see­ing how SAP con­tin­ues to expand its focus on sus­tain­abil­i­ty in the future. 

ASUG: Let’s talk about RISE with SAP, which was announced ear­li­er this year. What are your thoughts on the new ser­vice and how can it help customers? 

Geoff: Fun­da­men­tal­ly, RISE with SAP is a ser­vice to help cus­tomers along their jour­ney of adopt­ing SAP S/4HANA and mov­ing to the cloud. This is a key part of the SAP notion of the intel­li­gent enter­prise. So many SAP cus­tomers — and ASUG mem­bers — are still try­ing to fig­ure out how they begin this process, which can be chal­leng­ing and time-con­sum­ing. I actu­al­ly mod­er­at­ed a ses­sion at SAP­PHIRE NOW 2021 titled ​“Hear Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion Chal­lenges and Tri­umphs of ASUG Board Mem­bers,” where Tara Gam­bill, senior direc­tor of enter­prise sys­tems at MOD Piz­za, and Rajeev Kapur, vice pres­i­dent of com­mer­cial trans­for­ma­tion at Kim­ber­ly-Clark Cor­po­ra­tion, dis­cussed the ups and downs of their dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion journeys. 

What’s so great about RISE with SAP is that it guides cus­tomers through this jour­ney. I love how the ser­vice begins by exam­in­ing an organization’s busi­ness process­es, which is real­ly one of the first things you need to tack­le before migrat­ing. Anoth­er one of the aspects of RISE with SAP that sticks out to me is the inclu­sion of your hyper­scaler of choice in the offer­ing. It makes this process so much eas­i­er for the cus­tomer to have that con­tract­ed along with the rest of RISE with SAP.

ASUG: What do you make of the RISE with SAP for Indus­tries com­po­nent that SAP unveiled at SAP­PHIRE NOW 2021?

Geoff: Any pro­gram or ser­vice that eas­es the cus­tomers’ tran­si­tion to the cloud is a good thing in my mind. The cloud is where we are going. I think COVID-19 only served to under­line this trend. What’s great about RISE with SAP for Indus­tries is that it helps ease this tran­si­tion, all while giv­ing cus­tomers access to part­ner solu­tions and indus­try-spe­cif­ic solu­tions. This is such a huge draw­ing point because it only makes the solu­tion more use­ful for SAP customers. 

ASUG: One of the main focus­es through­out ASUG­FOR­WARD was on employ­ee expe­ri­ence, some­thing you’ve been keen­ly focused on as CEO of ASUG for the last 18 months. Why do you think it’s vital for orga­ni­za­tions to be focus­ing on this now, and what advice do you have for oth­er leaders?

Geoff: Tony Bond, exec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent and chief diver­si­ty and inno­va­tion offi­cer at Great Place to Work, gave an excel­lent ASUGFOR­WARD pre­sen­ta­tion focused on employ­ee expe­ri­ence. I don’t want to give too much away, because Tony’s address was so insight­ful (you can watch on-demand) but he under­lined three things an organization’s lead­er­ship needs: cred­i­bil­i­ty, respect, and fair­ness. Those are three traits I think all lead­ers should strive for. 

Employ­ee expe­ri­ence has real­ly tak­en a front seat across the entire world over the last 18 months. This was a health cri­sis, so lead­ers had to place a high amount of atten­tion on the health, safe­ty, and well-being of our employ­ees so that they could per­form the best job pos­si­ble. In addi­tion to that, the U.S. obvi­ous­ly has had a tumul­tuous year. The mur­der of George Floyd and the ensu­ing unrest result­ed in renewed and expan­sive con­ver­sa­tions on diver­si­ty and inclu­sion in the work­place along with dis­cus­sions on race rela­tions in this coun­try. As a leader, I want­ed to make sure that every sin­gle ASUG employ­ee had a safe space to express their feel­ings and emo­tions on these top­ics. It’s impor­tant to have these kinds of dia­logue, and I want­ed to pro­vide oppor­tu­ni­ties for our employ­ees to have those con­ver­sa­tions and learn more about the expe­ri­ences of their peers. 

We actu­al­ly imple­ment­ed a Diver­si­ty, Equi­ty, and Inclu­sion (DEI) Coun­cil to con­tin­ue this work and make sure we keep hav­ing these con­ver­sa­tions. The Cul­ture Chats we’ve had over the past few months, includ­ing those recent ones focused on June­teenth and Pride Month, have real­ly pro­duced great, open dia­logue among ASUG employ­ees. I’m so proud of the work the DEI Coun­cil team is doing and I’m look­ing for­ward to watch­ing this ini­tia­tive con­tin­ue to grow. 

ASUG: For those read­ers who might have missed ASUG­FOR­WARD or were only able to catch up with a few of the ses­sions, what were some par­tic­u­lar ses­sions you enjoyed or found helpful?

Geoff: There were so, so many great ses­sions, and I don’t think you can go wrong with any ses­sions. I obvi­ous­ly dis­cussed Kumail and Tony’s keynote address­es, which I thor­ough­ly enjoyed. Pro­fes­sion­al race­car dri­ver Julia Lan­dauer also gave an excep­tion­al pre­sen­ta­tion on diver­si­ty in the work­place. From there, I would encour­age atten­dees watch­ing on-demand to seek out my inter­view with Chris­t­ian Klein, where we cov­ered a vari­ety of top­ics from across the SAP ecosys­tem. Final­ly, I real­ly loved a few of the cus­tomer sto­ries we fea­tured at ASUGFOR­WARD. One of my favorite parts of any ASUG event is hear­ing about how SAP cus­tomers have imple­ment­ed and lever­aged SAP solu­tions. There were ses­sions with MOD Piz­za and Mrs. T’s Per­o­gies which I would also recommend. 

Missed out on ASUG­FOR­WARD? You can still reg­is­ter and watch all the ses­sions on-demand. Reg­is­ter here and begin watch­ing.