On Wednes­day, Nov. 8, as the inau­gur­al ASUG Tech Con­nect con­fer­ence con­tin­ued in New Orleans for a sec­ond day of ses­sions focused on tech­nol­o­gy and com­mu­ni­ty, ASUG Chief Oper­at­ing Offi­cer Car­olyn Dolezal took the keynote stage — fol­low­ing a live­ly per­for­mance by the Black Mag­ic Drum­line — to dis­cuss the impor­tance of year-round engage­ment for the ASUG mem­ber­ship, shar­ing her own obser­va­tions on the pow­er of col­lab­o­ra­tion and knowl­edge-shar­ing for the SAP community. 

ASUG reach­es mem­bers through not only indus­try con­fer­ences but also 38 region­al ASUG Chap­ters that each host between three and six events per year, as well as indus­try- and top­ic-spe­cif­ic com­mu­ni­ty alliances, vir­tu­al town halls, web­casts, and edi­to­r­i­al offerings. 

“I encour­age you to engage and re-engage in your local com­mu­ni­ty,” said Dolezal, dis­cussing these ini­tia­tives and invit­ing atten­dees to ​“design your own adven­ture” with ASUG while also giv­ing oth­er expe­ri­enced SAP tech­nol­o­gists at their com­pa­nies an oppor­tu­ni­ty to lev­el up their skillsets.

On stage, Dolezal reflect­ed on a few mem­o­rable occa­sions this year, includ­ing an ASUG Car­oli­nas Chap­ter meet­ing in Octo­ber and Cen­tral Michi­gan University’s annu­al ERP­sim event in March, dur­ing which she’s seen the ASUG com­mu­ni­ty in action and come away inspired by ASUG mem­bers shar­ing lessons learned with SAP tech­nol­o­gy, lift­ing one anoth­er up in the process. 

“Each time we do a sur­vey of our mem­bers, you con­sis­tent­ly tell us, ​‘I want to talk to my peers,’ which is why expe­ri­ences like this are so valu­able,” Dolezal said, reflect­ing on ASUG Tech Con­nect. ​“And hope­ful­ly you’re doing plen­ty of that this week. The sec­ond thing we hear from the major­i­ty of you, each time we talk to you, is that you want to hear each oth­er’s sto­ries. You want to hear how your peers achieve their suc­cess­es, both per­son­al­ly and professionally.” 

To that end, Dolezal invit­ed to the stage Elaine Basa, Man­ag­er, Glob­al Finan­cial Ser­vices at Wal­greens Boots Alliance, and Bob Bucy, IS Busi­ness Ana­lyst, Sup­ply Chain at bio­Merieux, to dis­cuss their jour­neys through the SAP ecosystem. 

“Imple­men­ta­tion Is Just the Start”

Wal­greens first imple­ment­ed SAP in 2016, and efforts to opti­mize change man­age­ment and edu­cate those at the com­pa­ny around use of the tech­nol­o­gy have been under­way since. Basa joined Wal­greens’ glob­al finance ser­vices team last year to head up its Tech­nol­o­gy Advance­ment Pro­gram (TAP), design­ing an SAP skills-build­ing cur­ricu­lum to engage teams and peo­ple with­in the organization. 

“Imple­men­ta­tion is just the start,” reflect­ed Basa. ​“There are many lega­cy sys­tems to con­tin­u­ous­ly [trou­bleshoot] and inte­grate, new part­ners to col­lab­o­rate with, always reveal­ing new needs. Imple­men­ta­tion does that, no mat­ter what we do to try to reduce the obstacles.” 

It was in this spir­it that Basa intro­duced TAP to pro­vide team mem­bers with resources in a mod­u­lar frame­work that would enhance their under­stand­ing of their respec­tive roles and respon­si­bil­i­ties with­in the company’s tech­nol­o­gy evo­lu­tion. Look­ing back on this expe­ri­ence, Basa advised atten­dees to ​“engage with empa­thy” and get to know their audience. 

“Approach mak­ing a con­nec­tion with your teams with a desire to get to know them,” she said. ​“That means lead­ing and act­ing with empa­thy for them and their work and their learn­ing paths with­in your shared envi­ron­ment. That’s impor­tant because they need to know they mat­ter. This first stage is how you show up.”

“An Incred­i­ble Network”

Bucy, who serves as the ASUG Car­oli­nas Chap­ter Chair, has been vol­un­teer­ing with ASUG since 2009 and shared with the audi­ence his belief in ​“the pow­er of rela­tion­ships and com­mu­ni­ty” as he has expe­ri­enced both through ASUG.

In addi­tion to his work with ASUG Chap­ters and the SAP Uni­ver­si­ty Alliances, Bucy pro­vides part-time teach­ing sup­port for ERP class­es at North Car­oli­na State Uni­ver­si­ty, which is also an ASUG Uni­ver­si­ty Alliance mem­ber school. That oppor­tu­ni­ty arose through a Chap­ter meet­ing on the NC State cam­pus in 2008 at which Bucy met Dr. Mar­i­an­na Brad­ford, a pro­fes­sor in the school’s Poole Col­lege of Man­age­ment, who lat­er invit­ed Bucy to review por­tions of an ERP-cen­tric text­book she was writ­ing at the time.

“That was just one of many impor­tant rela­tion­ships that I’ve devel­oped over the years,” Bucy said. ​“Some of them have grown into per­son­al friend­ships. It’s an incred­i­ble net­work of like-mind­ed peo­ple, where we sup­port each oth­er, share ideas, and bounce ques­tions off each oth­er. Many indi­vid­ual rela­tion­ships com­bine to cre­ate a community.”

Bucy also reflect­ed on the recent ASUG Car­oli­nas Chap­ter meet­ing, which intro­duced the ASUG Cam­pus Con­nect pro­gram to the Car­oli­nas region. ​“As a com­mu­ni­ty, it’s our desire to do all that we can to con­tin­ue to pro­vide sup­port for stu­dents and edu­ca­tors at our mem­ber schools in the Car­oli­nas,” he said.

Bucy encour­aged atten­dees to seek out the ASUG com­mu­ni­ty beyond con­fer­ence ses­sions. ​“Whether it’s through a region­al chap­ter event, one of our com­mu­ni­ty alliances, or an influ­ence coun­cil here at ASUG Tech Con­nect,” he said, ​“there are all sorts of oppor­tu­ni­ties for you.”

“Rela­tion­al, Not Transactional”

In dia­logue with Dolezal, both Basa and Bucy shared insights on com­mu­ni­ty-build­ing and net­work­ing with the audi­ence, reflect­ing on what advice they’d give oth­er SAP pro­fes­sion­als look­ing to learn, con­nect, and grow.

“What’s most impor­tant is find­ing a men­tor, or some­body who can serve as a sound­ing board,” Basa told atten­dees. ​“Some­times con­nect­ing isn’t expand­ing your net­work, but find­ing that one per­son who can help lead you through change, through trans­for­ma­tion, and who you can be frank with about your own process.” 

Bucy, mean­while, encour­aged atten­dees to make their approach to net­work­ing ​“rela­tion­al, not trans­ac­tion­al” and nev­er to hes­i­tate before shar­ing their sto­ries with others. 

“Every­body here has some­thing that they can share, and some­body that needs to hear it,” he said. ​“Look for those oppor­tu­ni­ties to share, and look for those oppor­tu­ni­ties to help oth­er peo­ple with­out hav­ing any expec­ta­tions in return. And I believe, if you do that, you’ll find that net­work­ing is easy, because peo­ple are just going to want to meet you.” 

For more from ASUG Tech Con­nect, read our cov­er­age of the day-one and day-three keynotes, an inter­view with Jabil’s IT Direc­tor Cyn­thia Kendall on Jabil’s S/4HANA migra­tion, new columns by the Bor­ing Enter­prise Nerds and the SAP Cus­tomer Evo­lu­tion team, an inter­view with enter­prise archi­tect Syl­vain Gar­neau of Res­olute For­est Prod­ucts, and our pre-con­fer­ence inter­view with SAP CTO Juer­gen Mueller.