As we all learn to take a seat for vir­tu­al con­fer­ences, ASUG was quick to set the stage for the first ever ASUGFOR­WARD. Dur­ing this mul­ti­track and mul­ti­day vir­tu­al event, day one kicked off with the high­ly antic­i­pat­ed and attend­ed Sup­ply Chain and Man­u­fac­tur­ing agenda. 

“Sup­ply chains have been upend­ed at a speed, scale, and veloc­i­ty that has nev­er been expe­ri­enced before,” said track emcee Tom Wail­gum, who also is the ASUG com­mu­ni­ca­tions direc­tor. ​“And the demands on man­u­fac­tur­ing in so many indus­tries are with­out his­tor­i­cal comparison.” 

Atten­dees tuned in to learn not only how the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic has affect­ed the sup­ply chain line of busi­ness, but also how oth­er orga­ni­za­tions are piv­ot­ing and scal­ing dur­ing these uncer­tain times. They heard from var­i­ous cus­tomers as well as experts across indus­tries on best prac­tices, inno­v­a­tive tech­nolo­gies, and cre­ative tac­tics that have helped keep sup­ply chains mov­ing now and evolv­ing for the future. 

How SAP Tech­nol­o­gy Pre­pares Orga­ni­za­tions to Fight COVID-19 

On both days of the Sup­ply Chain and Man­u­fac­tur­ing ses­sions, ASUG CEO Geoff Scott spoke to a top-lev­el exec­u­tive on issues rang­ing from how the pan­dem­ic has affect­ed their busi­ness oper­a­tions to how each busi­ness leader will move for­ward in a post-COVID-19 landscape. 

On the first day, Scott spoke to Mar­cel­lo Dami­ani, chief dig­i­tal and oper­a­tions excel­lence offi­cer at Mod­er­na, a biotech com­pa­ny that is cur­rent­ly work­ing to devel­op a COVID-19 vac­cine. They dis­cussed how tech­nol­o­gy is sup­port­ing the company’s efforts. Dami­ani shared how the com­pa­ny is work­ing to scale up its oper­a­tions and how it’s grap­pling with the dif­fi­cult sup­ply ver­sus demand equa­tion. ​“We built a dig­i­tal land­scape across Mod­er­na and we cap­tured lots of data,” Dami­ani said. ​“The data has helped us improve our learn­ing as well as with scal­ing. It helped us dras­ti­cal­ly improve the qual­i­ty of our sci­ence and what we are doing.” He added, ​“Tech­nol­o­gy in its truest form is work­ing to allow us to work quick­er to get a vaccine.”

On the sec­ond day, Scott spoke to New Eng­land Bio­labs CIO Sharon Kaiser, who is also an ASUG board mem­ber. They touched on how being agile is the key to keep­ing oper­a­tions run­ning. New Eng­land Bio­labs makes reagents that are essen­tial in COVID-19 research and test­ing. In light of social dis­tanc­ing, the com­pa­ny need­ed to act quick­ly to make sure its sci­en­tists and researchers had the space and tools they need­ed to keep on track. ​“We’re find­ing cre­ative ways to get our researchers back into labs,” Kaiser said. ​“We’ve been fol­low­ing a cloud-first phi­los­o­phy for more than five years, and so our soft­ware can be accessed any­where.” She not­ed that the com­pa­ny is leas­ing lab space from uni­ver­si­ties that aren’t using them at this time. Because it has the tech­nol­o­gy to work from any lab, its researchers don’t have to skip a beat in the work they are doing. 

SAP Cus­tomers Man­age Sup­ply Chains in the Cloud Dur­ing Uncertainty 

Over the course of two days, atten­dees heard from var­i­ous SAP cus­tomers on how tech­nol­o­gy has helped them over­come chal­lenges — both on the man­u­fac­tur­ing side of oper­a­tions, as well as on man­ag­ing sup­ply and demand dis­crep­an­cies. As orga­ni­za­tions learn to adapt to social dis­tanc­ing require­ments, they’ve had to reimag­ine not only busi­ness process­es, but also work­force and cus­tomer expectations. 

On day one, atten­dees heard a pan­el dis­cus­sion led by Alan Manuel from Pro­tera, along with Carl Bachor from AWS. The two talked to Lee John­son, CIO of Tide­wa­ter Marine, about embrac­ing tech­nol­o­gy and improv­ing prof­itabil­i­ty dur­ing a project where John­son had to find $45 mil­lion in merg­er syn­er­gies between Gulf­mark and Tide­wa­ter. ​“There was a lot of com­plex­i­ty asso­ci­at­ed with man­ag­ing this project,” John­son said. ​“We had to have an agile and bold project plan in order to meet the mile­stones.” John­son was tasked with sim­pli­fy­ing the busi­ness by lever­ag­ing best prac­tices and tools. ​“In the end,” he said, ​“the com­pa­ny met its goals by elim­i­nat­ing 40 man­u­al process­es across 13 func­tion­al areas, In addi­tion, we had 100% of our onshore work­force tele­work­ing dur­ing the cri­sis, we now have 45TB of data in AWS, and we have an 80% reduc­tion in final closings.” 

On day two, Thomas McK­ee, CIO of Ken­namet­al explained how the com­pa­ny backs its ​“smart fac­to­ries” on Microsoft Azure. He touched on employ­ing a mod­ern work­force by giv­ing work­ers real-time access to insights; enabling an intel­li­gent sup­ply chain by gain­ing end-to-end vis­i­bil­i­ty; and design­ing a fac­to­ry of the future by mod­ern­iz­ing plant oper­a­tions with Microsoft Azure IoT to gain per­for­mance insights and increase pro­duc­tion effi­cien­cy. ​“The insights that data pro­vides us makes us able to quick­ly piv­ot and find a root cause, and make deci­sions that not only improve the man­u­fac­tur­ing oper­a­tions,” McK­ee said, ​“but also serve our cus­tomers better.” 

Check­ing the Pulse of the SAP Ecosystem 

The vir­tu­al event went on with­out a glitch, and atten­dees remained engaged over the course of two days. Den Howlett of dig­i­nom­i­ca wrote, ​“ASUGFOR­WARD will go down as one of the best of the Spring 2020 events sea­son, well ahead of oth­ers so far.” 

The plat­form allowed both ASUG and speak­ers to inter­act with atten­dees and ask ques­tions through­out var­i­ous pre­sen­ta­tions. Ques­tions asked includ­ed, ​“In what areas would using your SAP data to man­age change be the most help­ful to your orga­ni­za­tion?” It’s no sur­prise that this ques­tion received some of the most engage­ment through­out the two days, con­sid­er­ing data was rec­og­nized as a key play­er in keep­ing the sup­ply chain mov­ing dur­ing times of uncer­tain­ty. More than half the respon­dents said that using SAP data to man­age change in pro­duc­tion and non-pro­duc­tion envi­ron­ments to enable or improve test­ing process­es would be most useful. 

Anoth­er ques­tion asked was, ​“How has COVID-19 affect­ed your organization’s plans to migrate SAP work­loads to the cloud?” Almost half of the respon­dents indi­cat­ed that migra­tion plans have stayed the same, while only 3% said their plans have accelerated. 

It’s still too ear­ly to tell when and how SAP cus­tomers will come out of this pan­dem­ic. What we do know, how­ev­er, is that the orga­ni­za­tions that have a cloud-first strat­e­gy in place or have already con­struct­ed many of the ele­ments of an intel­li­gent enter­prise have an advan­tage in remain­ing both oper­a­tional and prof­itable dur­ing times of cri­sis like this one or what­ev­er may be next on the horizon. 

ASUG­FOR­WARD 2021 is just around the cor­ner. Join us June 21 – 24 for dis­cus­sions on how you can lever­age SAP soft­ware to fur­ther improve your busi­ness. Hear from cus­tomers and experts about the ways SAP can help improve your busi­ness. Reg­is­ter to attend the event.