ASUG is pleased to share this guest per­spec­tive from Bob Bucy, IS Busi­ness Ana­lyst, Busi­ness Solu­tions Sup­ply Chain at bio­Mérieux, who serves as the ASUG Car­oli­nas Chap­ter Chair and recent­ly attend­ed the ASUG Car­oli­nas Chap­ter Meet­ing — Octo­ber 2023.

Giv­en our long-stand­ing con­nec­tion with the SAP Uni­ver­si­ty Alliances and mem­ber schools in the Car­oli­nas, the ASUG Car­oli­nas Chap­ter was recent­ly hon­ored to be select­ed as one of three pilot chap­ters to intro­duce ASUG Cam­pus Con­nect—a new part­ner­ship between ASUG and SAP Uni­ver­si­ty Alliance insti­tu­tions — to our members. 

Ear­li­er this month, our Chap­ter mem­bers gath­ered to kick off the pro­gram at a his­toric insti­tu­tion: The Citadel, in Charleston, SC, which gra­cious­ly pro­vid­ed their facil­i­ties for our meet­ing, begin­ning Oct. 12 with a Thurs­day evening net­work­ing event at the beau­ti­ful Citadel Beach Club. Our meet­ing on Fri­day was held at the Swain Boat­ing Cen­ter, a pic­turesque loca­tion on the banks of the Ash­ley Riv­er. In addi­tion to enjoy­ing the excel­lent facil­i­ties, our hosts at The Citadel want­ed us to expe­ri­ence some of their insti­tu­tion­al tra­di­tions, begin­ning with a cadet col­or guard on Fri­day morn­ing to open our meeting. 

Edu­ca­tion and the need for con­tin­u­ous learn­ing were our over­rid­ing themes for the day, with stu­dents and fac­ul­ty in atten­dance from The Citadel, Fayet­teville State Uni­ver­si­ty (FSU), and Geor­gia South­ern Uni­ver­si­ty (GSU). ASUG Chief Oper­at­ing Offi­cer Car­olyn Dolezal trav­eled to Charleston to pro­vide an overview of ASUG and to intro­duce ASUG Cam­pus Con­nect. ASUG has a long­stand­ing mis­sion to help peo­ple and orga­ni­za­tions get the most val­ue from their invest­ment in SAP tech­nol­o­gy, and to pro­vide oppor­tu­ni­ties for ASUG mem­bers to learn, con­nect, and grow. ASUG Cam­pus Con­nect extends these oppor­tu­ni­ties to the next gen­er­a­tion of SAP pro­fes­sion­als with a mis­sion to:

• Bridge the gap between SAP Uni­ver­si­ty Alliances and ASUG members
• Pro­vide an oppor­tu­ni­ty for SAP pro­fes­sion­als to inspire the next generation
• Enable real-world appli­ca­tion of SAP tech­nol­o­gy out­side of the classroom

Next, Dr. Murat Adi­var, pro­fes­sor of busi­ness ana­lyt­ics and an SAP-cer­ti­fied con­sul­tant at FSU, pro­vid­ed an overview of the SAP Uni­ver­si­ty Alliances and how the pro­gram has been suc­cess­ful­ly embraced by Fayet­teville State Uni­ver­si­ty. Under his lead­er­ship, FSU joined the SAP UA pro­gram and opened their SAP Next-Gen lab — intend­ed to con­nect stu­dents, researchers, and star­tups with SAP cus­tomers and part­ners to devel­op new tech­nol­o­gy inno­va­tions linked to the 17 UN Glob­al Goals — in 2018. 

FSU stu­dents and fac­ul­ty have been very engaged with the Car­oli­nas Chap­ter since the incep­tion of their SAP pro­gram, and Murat has been a mem­ber of the Car­oli­nas vol­un­teer lead­er­ship team since 2020. A key focus of the pre­sen­ta­tion was the per­sis­tent skills gap in the SAP com­mu­ni­ty — which has exist­ed for as long as Murat has been teach­ing — and how FSU and the SAP Uni­ver­si­ty Alliances are work­ing to address that gap and equip stu­dents with the nec­es­sary skills to succeed.

Dr. Michael Weeks, dean and chair of busi­ness admin­is­tra­tion for The Citadel’s school of busi­ness, and Dr. Robert Rig­gle, asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of mar­ket­ing and the mar­ket­ing, sup­ply chain man­age­ment, and eco­nom­ics depart­ment head at The Citadel, took a few min­utes to wel­come ASUG to the cam­pus and to share a bit about his insti­tu­tion’s jour­ney with SAP Uni­ver­si­ty Alliances. This is a jour­ney still in its ear­ly stages, and The Citadel’s fac­ul­ty and stu­dents expressed that they all look for­ward to a grow­ing part­ner­ship with ASUG and oth­er SAP UA schools.

With the focus square­ly on edu­ca­tion, it was only appro­pri­ate for Teo Rodriguez to join us from the SAP Cus­tomer Engage­ment team to share knowl­edge and edu­ca­tion resources that are avail­able to all SAP cus­tomers as part of their enter­prise sup­port. SAP cus­tomer sup­port is a huge top­ic in the ecosys­tem, with many tools avail­able that may not be read­i­ly known to many SAP cus­tomers. The Cus­tomer Engage­ment team is well known in the ASUG com­mu­ni­ty, with Kris­ten Schef­fler, VerNeil Mesech­er, and their team vis­it­ing many of our chap­ters to share this information.

We were for­tu­nate to have Ingevi­ty and But­ter­ball, two of our mem­ber com­pa­nies in the Car­oli­nas, share lessons learned from their jour­neys from SAP ERP Cen­tral Com­po­nent (ECC) 6.0 to SAP S/4HANA. Both of these com­pa­nies came from dif­fer­ent places with their tech­nol­o­gy land­scapes and took dis­tinct approach­es to their trans­for­ma­tions, empha­siz­ing the fact that the jour­ney to S/4 will be unique for each SAP customer.

To wrap up the day, Teo joined me to share a sneak pre­view of one of the Pow­er Peer Group top­ics com­ing up at ASUG Tech Con­nect in New Orleans next month: Why you must make the time for con­tin­u­ous learn­ing, and what’s in it for you. Find­ings from ASUG­’s 2023 Pulse of the SAP Cus­tomer research rein­forced the chal­lenges that SAP cus­tomers face not only in find­ing and retain­ing peo­ple with the right skills, but in ensur­ing their employ­ees are able to keep their skills cur­rent with­in the rapid­ly chang­ing world of technology. 

We shared avail­able learn­ing resources — many of which are free for SAP cus­tomers — and talked about chal­lenges we all face, such as fig­ur­ing out what method of learn­ing works best for us and pri­or­i­tiz­ing our time to devel­op effec­tive habits of learn­ing. We bare­ly scratched the sur­face and are look­ing for­ward to con­tin­u­ing these con­ver­sa­tions at ASUG Tech Con­nect in November.

We had hoped to end the day with the Fri­day parade — anoth­er Citadel tra­di­tion — but the weath­er had oth­er ideas and pre­vent­ed the parade from tak­ing place. But clouds and a lit­tle rain couldn’t damp­en our enthu­si­asm for the event, with cus­tomers, part­ners, stu­dents, and pro­fes­sors alike rel­ish­ing the oppor­tu­ni­ty for con­ver­sa­tion and con­tin­u­ous learn­ing, all the while mak­ing new con­nec­tions and build­ing rela­tion­ships for the future.

Bob Bucy, IS Busi­ness Ana­lyst, Busi­ness Solu­tions Sup­ply Chain at bio­Mérieux, is the ASUG Car­oli­nas Chap­ter Chair. Pic­tured above, from left to right: John Dick­ens, Sergey Pono­marov, Bob Bucy, Gwen­dolyn Glas­ner, Car­olyn Dolezal, Aja Ceder­berg, Murat Adi­var, Bob Rig­gle, and Hee Yoon Kwon.