As anoth­er year draws to a close, I find myself incred­i­bly excit­ed about the future. Our indus­try is in the midst of great change — both in terms of the busi­ness­es we run and the tech­nol­o­gy solu­tions we lever­age to facil­i­tate their operations. 

As all of us explore new ways to deliv­er excel­lent results for our cus­tomers and adopt new, sus­tain­able meth­ods of pow­er­ing their lives, I tru­ly believe that the pace of tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ment is primed to help us evolve, for the better. 

In the SAP space, 2024 brought sig­nif­i­cant devel­op­ments in cloud com­put­ing and gen­er­a­tive AI solu­tions. With lega­cy employ­ees retir­ing in increas­ing num­bers each year, there exists an amaz­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty for us to recruit a new gen­er­a­tion of tech-savvy employ­ees to the util­i­ties industry. 

And as we work to solve com­plex and inter­con­nect­ed chal­lenges, trans­form­ing tra­di­tion­al pow­er gen­er­a­tion and mov­ing toward a clean­er ener­gy sup­ply chain, what bet­ter time to bring in new per­spec­tives and push the lim­its of what we believed possible? 

Per­son­al­ly, I’m excit­ed to con­tin­ue my work with the ASUG and SAP com­mu­ni­ties, devel­op­ing con­tent that will help our com­mu­ni­ty con­tend with such chal­lenges, that will empow­er our lead­ers to think and plan dif­fer­ent­ly for the future. After yet anoth­er great edi­tion of SAP for Util­i­ties, Pre­sent­ed by ASUG this fall, I am already work­ing close­ly with the ASUG team and util­i­ties peers to ensure anoth­er can’t‑miss con­fer­ence in 2025. 

In the near term, how­ev­er, I encour­age every­one in the com­mu­ni­ty to con­sid­er attend­ing sev­er­al upcom­ing events. Join us Feb. 24 – 27 at SAP’s glob­al head­quar­ters in New­town Square, Penn­syl­va­nia, for Next Gen­er­a­tion SAP Enter­prise Archi­tect Forum — Mind­sets, Skills and Tools, a des­ti­na­tion event for the enter­prise-archi­tect com­mu­ni­ty. Addi­tion­al­ly, the SAP for Util­i­ties com­mu­ni­ty has two cus­tomer sto­ry ses­sions planned in the begin­ning of 2025. On Jan. 16, Hydro Tas­ma­nia will dis­cuss its tran­si­tion from SAP S/4HANA 1809 to 2022 (join us here at 3 p.m. CT). DTE Ener­gy is set to present on its SAP Emarsys util­i­ties solu­tion. Stay tuned for more details.

At the end of the day, we are crit­i­cal all our com­mu­ni­ties. As we move into a new year, I encour­age every­one in this com­mu­ni­ty to take inven­to­ry of their cur­rent progress and think about how we can embrace new tech­nol­o­gy to con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing for our cus­tomers. I’m look­ing for­ward to con­nect­ing and col­lab­o­rat­ing with you all in 2025.