Lau­ra Tibodeau, ASUG Board Direc­tor, attend­ed exec­u­tive lead­er­ship meet­ings at the DSAG (SAP Ger­man-Speak­ing User Group) annu­al con­fer­ence and at SAP Head­quar­ters in Wall­dorf, Ger­many. She was among the trav­el­ing group that includ­ed cur­rent ASUG board mem­bers and ASUG staff senior lead­ers. Tibodeau, Glob­al Dig­i­tal & Trans­for­ma­tion Inno­va­tion Leader for Ascend Per­for­mance Mate­ri­als, agreed to recap her expe­ri­ences and impres­sions from the jour­ney for the ASUG com­mu­ni­ty in the fol­low­ing commentary. 

This was my first trip to Ger­many rep­re­sent­ing ASUG. I depart­ed Hous­ton for Leipzig, Ger­many, the loca­tion of the 2022 DSAG User Group Con­fer­ence and the first stop on a whirl­wind trip focused on col­lab­o­ra­tion and shar­ing with DSAG lead­ers, SAP lead­ers, and across the ASUG group itself. 

Giv­en Euro­pean social dis­tanc­ing prac­tices, this was the first DSAG con­fer­ence held since ear­ly 2020. We ini­tial­ly met the DSAG lead­er­ship team over din­ner on Mon­day evening and learned that their issues and con­cerns strong­ly aligned with their North Amer­i­can coun­ter­parts. The list of chal­lenges dis­cussed includ­ed: increas­ing main­te­nance fees; the loom­ing 2027 SAP S/4HANA date; ever-increas­ing skill short­ages of SAP tal­ent to exe­cute immi­nent S/4HANA tran­si­tions; under­stand­ing the val­ue of RISE with SAP; and inte­gra­tion chal­lenges with third-par­ty enter­prise soft­ware suppliers.

On Tues­day, we attend­ed the DSAG 2022 JahresKongress at the Leipzig Con­gress Cen­ter, a large con­fer­ence cen­ter to sup­port the 3,500 atten­dees. The day was packed with con­tent deliv­ered in Ger­man. Jens Hunger­shausen, DSAG Board Chair, deliv­ered the keynote, fol­lowed by remarks from oth­er DSAG Board Mem­bers, Chris­t­ian Klein, SAP CEO, and Thomas Sauer­es­sig, SAP Exec­u­tive Board Mem­ber, Prod­uct Engi­neer­ing. Atten­dees also had a chance to vis­it with SAP part­ner com­pa­nies at booths in the exhib­it space.

Notes and Google Translate

To under­stand the pro­ceed­ings, some ASUG atten­dees used Google Trans­late for real-time trans­la­tions. Oth­ers relied on trans­la­tions from local Ger­man speak­ing pro­fes­sion­als. I tru­ly appre­ci­at­ed the per­son­al insights pro­vid­ed by Nor­bert Nowak from SAP, who serves as ASUG liai­son. At day’s end, the group dined at the Ratskeller Leipzig, a home-style Ger­man­ic restau­rant near the his­toric city hall.

Tak­en togeth­er, the meet­ings and con­fer­ence atten­dance pro­mot­ed col­lab­o­ra­tion with DSAG and will undoubt­ed­ly help both orga­ni­za­tions solve cur­rent, com­mon challenges.

Wednes­day was a trav­el day to Hei­del­berg and includ­ed after­noon prepa­ra­tion ses­sions for Thurs­day meet­ings. In that action-packed day, the ASUG group met indi­vid­u­al­ly with sev­er­al SAP lead­ers, includ­ing Sebas­t­ian Stein­haeuser, Chief Strat­e­gy Offi­cer; Juer­gen Mueller, Exec­u­tive Board Mem­ber and Chief Tech­nol­o­gy Offi­cer; Peter Maier, Pres­i­dent, Indus­tries & Cus­tomer Advi­so­ry Board; Karl Fahrbach, Chief Part­ner Offi­cer and Mem­ber of the Senior Exec­u­tive Team; and Sauer­es­sig. The SAP Lead­ers can­did­ly shared their thoughts, views, and perspectives. 

SAP lead­er­ship gen­uine­ly want­ed to under­stand SAP strengths and oppor­tu­ni­ties from the Voice of the Cus­tomer – ASUG. The dis­cus­sion top­ics were many and var­ied dom­i­nant themes includ­ing Cloud adop­tion strate­gies; impor­tance of inte­gra­tion; a com­mit­ment to return SAP Sap­phire to a 2019-style event; the strate­gic val­ue and impor­tance of SAP Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Plat­form; sus­tain­abil­i­ty; play­ing to win in strate­gic soft­ware seg­ments; and cus­tomer chal­lenges in adopt­ing SAP S/4HANA.

Time with Chris­t­ian Klein

On Fri­day morn­ing, our ASUG del­e­ga­tion met with CEO Chris­t­ian Klein. Klein clear­ly artic­u­lat­ed the SAP vision and goals; dis­cussed how SAP intends to sup­port world­wide sus­tain­abil­i­ty pur­suits; and shared how SAP will fur­ther enhance cus­tomer val­ue. It was clear he is keen­ly inter­est­ed in SAP cus­tomer suc­cess, strength­en­ing SAP cor­po­rate cul­ture, and advanc­ing inno­va­tion to sup­port the dig­i­tal rev­o­lu­tion. We also learned that Klein meets with world lead­ers and pol­i­cy­mak­ers on dig­i­tal gov­ern­ment, inter­na­tion­al trade, and sustainability.

Klein intent­ly lis­tened to inputs from the ASUG Board Mem­bers, assigned action items, and com­mit­ted to a fol­low-on ses­sion to review progress on key initiatives.

We con­clud­ed Fri­day with vis­its to the SAP Expe­ri­ence (Inno­va­tion) Cen­ters to see how SAP Cloud solu­tions can be uti­lized to holis­ti­cal­ly run dig­i­tal enterprise. 

Focus on Rise with SAP, BTP

This trip unique­ly allowed ASUG the oppor­tu­ni­ty to share key obser­va­tions and sug­ges­tions with top SAP lead­er­ship to advance SAP from a prod­uct and cus­tomer expe­ri­ence per­spec­tive. Sig­nif­i­cant focus was giv­en to RISE with SAP and SAP BTP offer­ings. In return, SAP lead­ers vet­ted their vision and strate­gies with some of their most strate­gic cus­tomers. The con­ver­sa­tions were col­lab­o­ra­tive, pos­i­tive, and high­ly pro­duc­tive. I am tru­ly appre­cia­tive and grate­ful for the oppor­tu­ni­ty extend­ed to rep­re­sent our ASUG mem­ber­ship on this trip.