Ear­li­er this week, ASUG and SAP host­ed the ASUG Next-Gen­er­a­tion SAP Cen­ter of Excel­lence vir­tu­al con­fer­ence. Across three days, this event not only focused on help­ing atten­dees estab­lish their own SAP-cen­tric cen­ter of excel­lence (CoE) to help mar­shal and main­tain solu­tions, but also offered prac­ti­cal advice on how orga­ni­za­tions should approach the imple­men­ta­tion and main­te­nance of SAP solu­tions such as SAP S/4HANA.

This is a top­ic of par­tic­u­lar inter­est to SAP cus­tomers. Accord­ing to the ASUG 2021 Pulse of the SAP Cus­tomer sur­vey, 46% of respon­dents are mak­ing more invest­ments into SAP, while anoth­er 49% are keep­ing the lev­el of SAP invest­ments the same. To make the most of exist­ing SAP tech­nol­o­gy, it’s vital to estab­lish an SAP-cen­tric CoE to make sure you are get­ting the most out of the solution. 

“It is time to rethink, ren­o­vate, and renew your SAP cus­tomer CoE to evolve into a next-gen­er­a­tion SAP CoE,” said Paul Kurchi­na, ASUG evan­ge­list and the host of the con­fer­ence. ​“It is time to oper­ate off a new play­book for the 2020s and beyond to achieve greater suc­cess with SAP.” 

The Case for a CoE 

The first step in devel­op­ing any new addi­tion to your orga­ni­za­tion — whether it’s devel­op­ing a CoE or imple­ment­ing a new solu­tion — is iden­ti­fy­ing the val­ue this addi­tion will bring your orga­ni­za­tion. Many of the speak­ers and experts pre­sent­ing on the first day of the con­fer­ence helped atten­dees make the case for form­ing a CoE. 

Jeff Schwartz, author and prin­ci­pal at Deloitte Con­sult­ing, gave the first pre­sen­ta­tion of the event, focus­ing on how work has changed over the past year. Accord­ing to Schwartz, COVID-19 quick­ly sped the rate at which some inno­va­tions in the busi­ness world take. He said that many orga­ni­za­tions are using old ​“maps” to nav­i­gate the future before them. This can be a detri­ment to deploy­ing fast­ing-chang­ing solu­tions, where con­stant learn­ing and mon­i­tor­ing are necessary.

“In 2020 we all became futur­ists when we expe­ri­enced shifts in how and where we work in days and weeks — not years,” Schwartz said. ​“The ques­tion going for­ward is what we learned as we piv­ot­ed and adapt­ed, and most impor­tant­ly, what choic­es we make as indi­vid­u­als, busi­ness lead­ers, and communities.” 

He encour­aged orga­ni­za­tions to look at three val­ues when it comes to imple­ment­ing new prac­tices into an orga­ni­za­tion: cost, val­ue, and mean­ing. An SAP-cen­tric CoE not only will help with keep­ing up with the updates SAP solu­tions go through, but it will also help a com­pa­ny ensure that a tech­nol­o­gy solu­tion always is a ben­e­fit to help­ing orga­ni­za­tions low­er costs, increase the val­ue of options and oppor­tu­ni­ties, and increase the impact a solu­tion will have on an organization. 

Advice for Devel­op­ing a CoE 

John Gib­son, head of glob­al CoE in the SAP plat­form and tech­nol­o­gy group, host­ed a ses­sion that gave prac­ti­cal advice to atten­dees on how to cre­ate an effec­tive CoE. Gib­son and his team run their own CoE serv­ing SAP customers.

He encour­aged atten­dees to think about the tech­ni­cal skills nec­es­sary for run­ning an effec­tive CoE: experts on data man­age­ment, UX, AI, ML, and busi­ness intel­li­gence — to name a few. Once an orga­ni­za­tion fig­ures out which tech­ni­cal-skill experts are vital to its CoE, it can then use that exper­tise to dri­ve val­ue in the organization. 

Anoth­er impor­tant part of devel­op­ing a CoE is fig­ur­ing out its spe­cial­iza­tion and defin­ing which prob­lems and top­ics it will and will not cov­er. Accord­ing to Gib­son, a CoE should do two things: gen­er­ate inno­va­tion and help get infra­struc­ture and process­es put into place quick­ly. Defin­ing the scope and con­text of a CoE is vital to its success.

In a lat­er ses­sion, Doug Shup­tar, prin­ci­pal of busi­ness trans­for­ma­tion con­sult­ing at SAP Amer­i­ca, gave atten­dees some advice to ​“rethink, ren­o­vate, and renew,” their CoEs for the cloud. 

“The SAP Cen­ter of Excel­lence con­tin­ues to play an impor­tant role as hybrid envi­ron­ments are becom­ing the new real­i­ty,” Shup­tar said. ​“Foun­da­tion­al prin­ci­ples of a clear­ly artic­u­lat­ed vision, clar­i­ty of ser­vices pro­vid­ed, and a sol­id gov­er­nance struc­ture are even more crit­i­cal to hav­ing an effec­tive, val­ue-gen­er­at­ing CoE.”

Shup­tar said that with tra­di­tion­al, on-premis­es IT land­scapes, SAP cus­tomers often focus on oper­a­tional aspects of their CoEs, while cloud envi­ron­ments demand them to have a dif­fer­ent focus: man­ag­ing ser­vices. Among oth­er things, he encour­aged atten­dees to adopt this ser­vices-focused mind­set, tran­si­tion to a DevOps struc­ture, and shift to Agile development. 

Tips for Imple­ment­ing a New Solution 

Imple­ment­ing a new solu­tion is also an impor­tant part of devel­op­ing an effec­tive CoE. James Senecal, VP of cus­tomer suc­cess man­age­ment at Tri­cen­tis, gave a pre­sen­ta­tion on the impor­tance of adopt­ing an Agile devel­op­ment and DevOps struc­ture to new solu­tions. Cus­tomers lever­ag­ing an Agile devel­op­ment evolve their solu­tions and busi­ness require­ments through a ​“col­lab­o­ra­tive effort” across an orga­ni­za­tion and its many teams and end users. On the oth­er hand, DevOps (devel­op­ment oper­a­tions) helps ​“deliv­er fea­tures, fix­es, and updates fre­quent­ly based on busi­ness requirements.”

Senecal dis­cussed how advances in tech­nol­o­gy and the SAP ecosys­tem have made both Agile devel­op­ment and DevOps struc­ture more impor­tant. This is because the speed of devel­op­ment has increased, mean­ing that cus­tomers need to be able to react faster and test their new solu­tions more fre­quent­ly as SAP increas­es the num­ber of releas­es. Sim­i­lar­ly, Senecal said that mov­ing SAP projects to Agile devel­op­ment also helps cus­tomers keep up with the speed and fre­quen­cy of new updates and releases. 

Anoth­er impor­tant theme through­out the con­fer­ence was the impor­tance of keep­ing the skill set of an organization’s employ­ees up to date, which can be a tall order today. 

“Change is com­ing faster than ever,” Simone Saar, COO of SAP Learn­ing, said in a ses­sion on build­ing skills and knowl­edge. She laid out how the old world of mul­ti-year imple­men­ta­tion and one-off train­ing ses­sions are gone, and cus­tomers have to con­fig­ure and devel­op solu­tions on demand while embed­ding dig­i­tal train­ing into solu­tions. Saar also empha­sized the impor­tance of main­tain­ing con­sis­tent train­ing and devel­op­ment among workforces. 

“Learn­ing enables us to do jobs bet­ter and faster,” she said. 

Build­ing Your CoE to Sup­port ML and AI in SAP S/4HANA

The final day of the con­fer­ence fea­tured a series of break­out ses­sions focused on appli­ca­tion life­cy­cle man­age­ment, enter­prise sup­port, SAP for Me, and thrive after SAP S/4HANA go-live. In a ses­sion focused on lever­ag­ing a CoE to assist the AI and ML capa­bil­i­ties of SAP S/4HANA, Andreas Welsch, VP and head of intel­li­gent process­es of SAP S/4HANA prod­uct man­age­ment at SAP, walked atten­dees through the ways cer­tain intel­li­gent tech­nol­o­gy solu­tions can be used by an organization’s CoE team. 

Welsch laid out these three main tech­nolo­gies can be lever­aged: sit­u­a­tion han­dling, ML, and intel­li­gent sce­nario life­cy­cle man­age­ment (ISLM). Sit­u­a­tion han­dling is a ​“great way to get start­ed with automa­tion and intel­li­gence, is a low-com­plex­i­ty tool, and only takes 30 to 45 min­utes to devel­op a tem­plate. The fea­ture alerts busi­ness own­ers to cer­tain actions and changes in data and gives rec­om­men­da­tions on how the end user should pro­ceed. When it comes to ML, devel­op­ment is a lit­tle more com­plex, tak­ing about two to three days to com­plete. The solu­tion can learn from end-user behav­ior and actions to rec­og­nize pat­terns and ​“help auto­mate repet­i­tive tasks.” Final­ly, ISLM is a tool of medi­um com­plex­i­ty that could take about one to two days to imple­ment, depend­ing on the effort. Welsch said this lay­er is vital for AI capa­bil­i­ties and can be used to main­tain and man­age ML models. 

It’s that time of year again! ASUG­FOR­WARD is right around the cor­ner. ASUG mem­bers can join us online for exec­u­tive pro­gram­ming on June 15‒17. Lat­er, on June 21‒24, be sure to tune in for ses­sions from SAP cus­tomers and experts. Reg­is­ter now for the vir­tu­al event.