The fast-approach­ing ASUG & SAP Appli­ca­tion Life­cy­cle Man­age­ment (ALM) Vir­tu­al Sum­mit North Amer­i­ca will deliv­er con­tent to atten­dees with var­ied expe­ri­ence — from IT new­com­ers to expe­ri­enced pros — and offer unpar­al­leled access to experts such as SAP cus­tomers, SAP part­ners, and SAP cor­po­rate leadership.

These are some of the com­mit­ments the ALM Sum­mit plan­ners — ASUG mem­bers and SAP lead­ers — are mak­ing in the run-up to the ear­ly 2022 event. In a recent ASUG inter­view, SAP VP of ALM Tim Steuer pre­viewed the Summit’s dis­tinct ele­ments, which will include unique access to Q&A ses­sions with experts across the board.

Here are edit­ed excerpts from that conversation.

Q. What are you hear­ing from cus­tomers about cur­rent busi­ness and tech­nol­o­gy chal­lenges relat­ed to ALM?

A. When we talk to cus­tomers, they don’t imme­di­ate­ly start with ALM. They are busy mov­ing their com­pa­nies for­ward and address­ing their over­all IT and busi­ness chal­lenges. These days, what I hear a lot from cus­tomers in Europe and in North Amer­i­ca relates to sup­ply chain break­downs, sup­plies not going where they need to be, and extreme wait­ing times for goods. We also hear of cus­tomers’ needs to dig­i­tal­ize their busi­ness­es, to go through with trans­for­ma­tion, with the expec­ta­tion that trans­for­ma­tion to a more dig­i­tized orga­ni­za­tion will over­come some of those [sup­ply chain] issues. 

Suc­cess­ful busi­ness trans­for­ma­tion is at the heart of RISE with SAP. We’ve learned from ASUG how big of an appetite our cus­tomers have for RISE and how far along on the jour­ney they are. Once you pur­sue a trans­for­ma­tion jour­ney, it needs to start from the top, from the busi­ness, where deci­sions are made that deter­mine the future direc­tion of your com­pa­ny. Then, you define your tar­get oper­at­ing mod­el. At a lat­er point, you begin to make IT deci­sions, and that’s when ALM enters the picture. 

Our ALM mis­sion is to help cus­tomers imple­ment solu­tions faster and oper­ate them with­out dis­rup­tion. Imple­men­ta­tion is dif­fer­ent in the cloud — it’s a lot faster to use a cloud prod­uct com­pared to a stan­dard­ized one. Yet this requires a true trans­for­ma­tion. It’s impor­tant that the cus­tomer rein­vents busi­ness process­es and lever­ages indus­try best prac­tices. We also see cus­tomers that move to the cloud with­out busi­ness trans­for­ma­tion. These cus­tomers lever­age their exist­ing process­es and just move the tech­nol­o­gy stack to the cloud. No mat­ter which way is right for the cus­tomer, the impor­tant mes­sage is that we have an ALM solu­tion for each cus­tomer situation.

Q. What are the gen­er­al com­pelling fac­tors for ASUG mem­bers and cus­tomers to attend the Summit?

A. We try to serve and reach dif­fer­ent cus­tomer groups. Some know quite a bit about ALM. Some know very lit­tle about how ALM sup­ports their jour­ney. Cus­tomers that come from the cloud world may not even know the term ​‘ALM.’ Feed­back from ASUG sug­gest­ed we offer foun­da­tion­al jump­start ses­sions. For cus­tomers new to the top­ic, the Sum­mit offers two [Jan­u­ary] sem­i­nars to gain an over­all under­stand­ing of the ALM top­ic and to put it into per­spec­tive. The Sum­mit itself is tar­get­ed for an audi­ence that under­stands SAP ALM gen­er­al­ly and knows why it is impor­tant to have a plat­form like SAP Solu­tion Man­ag­er, SAP Cloud ALM, or SAP Focused Run.

This is the one and only event in the Amer­i­c­as where all ALM experts come togeth­er. This is a one-stop oppor­tu­ni­ty not only to learn, but [also] to be able to ask ques­tions focus­ing on both imple­ment­ing and oper­at­ing SAP solu­tions. You get the ben­e­fit not only to lis­ten, but [also] to engage and talk with the experts and get all ques­tions answered. This will be done for each and every ses­sion, and [will] also include senior man­age­ment stake­hold­ers and chief prod­uct own­ers direct­ly from Ger­many. This event is focused exclu­sive­ly on the [ALM] top­ic, with the per­fect menu of ALM ses­sions, and the best com­ple­ment of top­ic experts available. 

Q. How about a short pre­view of your fire­side chat session?

A. We will talk about the key chal­lenges that we hear from cus­tomers and how ALM can address them. I will talk about how SAP Solu­tion Man­ag­er helps with trans­for­ma­tion, and the impor­tance of RISE with SAP. We will share news and announce­ments of what we plan for 2022, espe­cial­ly on sup­port beyond SAP S/4HANA, going more into SAP Suc­cess­Fac­tors and oth­er SAP Cloud prod­ucts. We plan to broad­en the scope beyond our exist­ing sup­port for SAP Suc­cess­Fac­tors and the first mon­i­tor­ing sup­port for SAP Ariba.

There are two ques­tions cus­tomers fre­quent­ly ask in ongo­ing con­ver­sa­tions: ​‘What is the right ALM solu­tion? Which of the solu­tions will lead me into the future?’ For valid rea­sons, it is not one-size-fits-all. Dur­ing this event, we will give clear guid­ance on which ALM offer­ing is the right solu­tion for which cus­tomer case. 

It’s also impor­tant to know we have a very engaged and col­lab­o­ra­tive part­ner ecosys­tem around our ALM offer­ings. Part­ners are very involved in the top­ic not only by offer­ing ser­vices, but also by adding capa­bil­i­ties on top of the ALM offer­ings. So, if there is some­thing cus­tomers are miss­ing in ALM, it is very like­ly that there is a part­ner that has been through their sit­u­a­tion and that has com­ple­men­tary offerings. 

Reg­is­ter for the ASUG and SAP ALM Vir­tu­al Sum­mit here.