ASUG mem­ber orga­ni­za­tion busi­ness and tech­nol­o­gy lead­ers gath­ered for their first Sum­mit in over two years to trade val­ued insights and expe­ri­ences with SAP tech­nol­o­gy, includ­ing SAP Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Plat­form (BTP), SAP S/4HANA, and Sustainability.

The Exec­u­tive Exchange Sum­mit, an ele­ment of ASUG mem­ber exec­u­tive leader pro­gram­ming, fea­tured detailed ses­sions on SAP tech­nolo­gies and cus­tomer-deliv­ered project brief­in­gs. Sum­mit high­lights includ­ed a morn­ing-long dive into enter­prise sus­tain­abil­i­ty chal­lenges and solu­tions, and cre­ative start-up mind­set exercises.

Here are brief recaps of key sessions.

SAP and Cus­tomer Views on BTP

Koshy Vadaketh and Craig Spiel­man, SAP Enter­prise Archi­tects, talked through BTP val­ue and posi­tion­ing for cus­tomers. Not­ing that BTP dri­ves automa­tion and inte­gra­tion, they said BTP is:

• The foun­da­tion of SAP Intel­li­gent Sus­tain­able Enterprise
• A mate­r­i­al com­po­nent for cus­tomers’ and SAP inter­nal appli­ca­tion and ser­vice development
• Deliv­er­ing busi­ness con­tent across the board, with out-of-the-box appli­ca­tions and services
• Plat­form as a service
• One domain model
• Pick-and-choose capa­bil­i­ties and services
• Key to third-par­ty appli­ca­tion sup­port and inte­gra­tion, and
• “A good step for busi­ness­es on the jour­ney from SAP ECC to S/4HANA.”

They ref­er­enced the SAP Cloud Plat­forms Enter­prise Agree­ment (CPEA), a licens­ing alter­na­tive for cus­tomers to com­mit a min­i­mum spend and pay based on ser­vice selec­tion and mea­sured use in ​“cloud cred­its.” The duo also rec­om­mend­ed atten­dees explore BTP-relat­ed user cas­es and ​“mis­sions” avail­able through the SAP Dis­cov­ery Center.

Karthik Nee­lamegam, Flori­da Crys­tals Senior Direc­tor, Enter­prise Archi­tec­ture, deliv­ered views on his organization’s BTP expe­ri­ence to date. Nee­lamegam and team have already real­ized key ben­e­fits that include:

• Cost advan­tages
• Scal­a­bil­i­ty upside
• Rapid appli­ca­tion devel­op­ment and deployment.

“For the same bud­get col­lar, you have more capa­bil­i­ties and ser­vices, because of SAP con­tin­u­ing to add ser­vices and options,” he said.

Yet, he acknowl­edged Flori­da Crys­tals’ BTP chal­lenges, name­ly team and sup­port resources that need train­ing and expe­ri­ence, and inte­gra­tion gaps, par­tic­u­lar­ly with Con­cur. In short, Nee­lamegam said BTP ​“is not an easy walk.”

Enter­pris­es and Sustainability

Japen Hol­list, SAP Head of Sus­tain­abil­i­ty North Amer­i­ca, led off a pan­el ses­sion with a sta­tis­tics-based attendee wake-up call. He told atten­dees of SAP inter­nal research to ​“stress test the hypoth­e­sis” posed in the SAP tagline, ​“The Best Run SAP.” Among the find­ings, in terms of finan­cial, sup­ply chain and sus­tain­abil­i­ty, the best ​“do run” SAP. Oth­er data points includ­ed that 99% of the top 100 glob­al com­pa­nies run SAP and SAP cus­tomers gen­er­ate 87% of total glob­al commerce.

Hol­list not­ed, how­ev­er, that the 87% glob­al com­merce base also reflects busi­ness­es that gen­er­ate 84% of the world’s CO2 emis­sions, which makes for a ​“sus­tain­abil­i­ty gap” where C‑level exec­u­tives ​“con­sis­tent­ly talk about ESG (Envi­ron­men­tal, Social, and Cor­po­rate Gov­er­nance) top­ics but have ter­ri­ble ESG scores.

“The sus­tain­abil­i­ty per­for­mance gap is an ambi­tion-to-action gap,” Hol­list said. ​“Tech­nol­o­gy can help solve these chal­lenges and shrink the per­for­mance gap between ambi­tion and action.”

Hol­list argued that ​“no com­pa­ny will make its way to sus­tain­abil­i­ty with­out embed­ding ESG data into busi­ness process­es,” and that ESG data and orga­ni­za­tion­al KPI report­ing be attained by and reflect the four As:

• Automa­tion: data that is not man­u­al­ly gath­ered but is assem­bled and report­ed every quar­ter, every year ​“essen­tial­ly you want it real-time”
• Assur­ance: data ​“needs to be assured,” of integri­ty, with a known origin
• Auditabil­i­ty: in a for­mat that can be audited
• Attes­ta­tion: in a for­mat that can be report­ed and attest­ed to by audi­tors and offi­cers, as well as used by third parties.

SAP solu­tions do sur­face and report key ESG-relat­ed data to help orga­ni­za­tions under­stand and achieve dif­fer­ent sus­tain­abil­i­ty goals, he said. He ref­er­enced SAP Ari­ba, SAP Field­glass, SAP Con­cur and SAP Suc­cess­Fac­tors, and not­ed Envi­ron­men­tal Health and Man­age­ment, Prod­uct Com­pli­ance, Prod­uct Foot­print, and Respon­si­ble Design and Pro­duc­tion solu­tions built on BTP and opti­mized for SAP S/4HANA.

Also, on BTP and SAP Ana­lyt­ics Cloud, SAP late last year released Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Con­trol Tow­er. Hol­list char­ac­ter­ized Con­trol Tow­er as ​“an ear­ly prod­uct” with ​“more com­ing” yet the ​“key­stone” for holis­tic sus­tain­abil­i­ty data assem­bly, analy­sis, and reporting. 

Describ­ing Con­trol Tow­er capa­bil­i­ties, ​“You pick the stan­dards and KPIs you need to track, you estab­lish your base­lines, and then you report to your green­line with data that reflects the four As,” Hol­list said.

SAP S/4HANA

To atten­dees who gen­er­al­ly said they are still on ECC and build­ing their S/4HANA val­ue sto­ries and busi­ness cas­es for S/4HANA, Damien John­son, SAP Glob­al Chief Archi­tect, RISE with SAP, made cross-sum­mit top­ic con­nec­tions including:

• BTP and cloud solu­tions are inte­grat­ed into the S/4HANA engine
• Busi­ness solu­tions’ con­nec­tions — SAP sus­tain­abil­i­ty prod­ucts, Con­cur — are S/4HANA-pre-inte­grat­ed
• Once inside S/4HANA, mas­ter data is dis­trib­uted to all sys­tems, answer­ing a key enter­prise mas­ter data and gov­er­nance consideration
• S/4HANA — one domain mod­el as the ulti­mate driver
• S/4HANA advances clean core.

For busi­ness­es just begin­ning or advanc­ing sus­tain­abil­i­ty ini­tia­tives, John­son said, ​“Cus­tomers do not need S/4HANA to become sus­tain­able enter­pris­es, but it will be much eas­i­er to do so, to help you oper­a­tional­ize sus­tain­abil­i­ty, to mod­el, imple­ment, and to man­age the report­ing aspects.”

Sum­mit Experiences

As they wrapped up day one activ­i­ties and con­sid­ered the day two focus on SAP S/4HANA and on SAP sus­tain­abil­i­ty strat­e­gy and ini­tial tools, atten­dees said they val­ued the expe­ri­ences; learn­ing from oth­ers’ chal­lenges and progress; and cross-indus­try con­nec­tions. When asked for a sin­gu­lar high­light, respons­es included:

• “Con­tin­u­ing to hear the chal­lenges of others.”
• “The chal­lenges with inte­gra­tions that we all have with­in busi­ness and in our orga­ni­za­tions. I’ve real­ized I’m not the only one fac­ing these chal­lenges. We’re not alone.”
• “Just meet­ing peo­ple from dif­fer­ent indus­tries and learn­ing new inno­va­tions. How every­one is using tech­nol­o­gy, and how every­one is using tech­nol­o­gy dif­fer­ent­ly. Exchang­ing the knowl­edge has been very helpful.”
• “All the dif­fer­ent sce­nar­ios for inte­gra­tion. Good group!”
• “The same issues become the same oppor­tu­ni­ties. How do we make the best of this as a group? We’re all a big com­mu­ni­ty with SAP as we con­tin­ue togeth­er down the same path.”
• “It’s the oppor­tu­ni­ty to inter­act and make con­nec­tions. We’re a man­u­fac­tur­er but need to become a tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny. What can I pro­vide to my com­pa­ny to sup­port these new dynam­ics and pro­vide the sup­port we have and need as an orga­ni­za­tion overall?”
• “Hear­ing more about SAP’s offer­ings, I think I’ve learned a lot through my expe­ri­ence with my friends and colleagues.”