The following perspective was authored by Marc Rosson, Enterprise Architect for Snohomish County PUD.
In March of 2008, the Snohomish Power Utility District (PUD) finished its evaluation for customer information system solutions and decided to move forward with the SAP Industry Business Unit (IBU) for Utilities. We would not sign our scope of work (SOW) to purchase until June of 2008, but we wanted to get to know as much as we could about our proposed partner in SAP.
Snohomish PUD was advised to engage with the ASUG Utility community that existed at the time. We explained to the ASUG Volunteers leading the community that Snohomish PUD was not an ASUG member—and could not be until we signed the SAP SOW and purchase agreement. The ASUG Volunteers encouraged us to speak with Stefan Wolf, an SAP employee in the IBU, and a great resource for utility organizations.
I remember our first call with Wolf. He was surprised by getting a call before we had signed our deal. That said, he welcomed us to the SAP Utility family and shared what Snohomish PUD could expect from SAP in terms of product and roadmaps. He also helped get our questions answered and suggested we attend the SAP Sapphire Conference in May 2008, which we did—even before signing our deal. This call began our 16-year partnership with SAP, which has continued to this day.
Wolf helped make connections with the entire SAP Utility community both in and outside the IBU. Over the years, he has delivered countless presentations and workshops to help us manage all the changes we’ve been through with SAP, supporting continual improvement and innovation as enhancements have been delivered. His commitment to our SAP Utility community has ensured our success and benefitted everyone who is part of our community. Our commitment to networking with our peers found its genesis with Wolf, who was always welcoming and full of encouragement as we started our journey.
But all journeys have a starting point, a middle, and an end. We all know that, within utilities, many of our organizations face the inevitable challenge of our generation of tech professionals reaching the end of our careers, and that applies to SAP as well. Wolf is set to retire from SAP at the end of the month. On behalf of this community, I wanted to be the first to wish him well on his next journey and thank him for all his commitment to our success.
The SAP IBU is in the midst of succession planning and will be supporting our community with roadmaps and workshops at the SAP for Utilities, Presented by ASUG conference in Miami this September. You will have an opportunity in this setting to connect more closely with the SAP Utilities IBU family, which continues to improve and innovate. As we all move forward on our SAP journeys, we stand in support of, and because of, those who came before us. Stefan Wolf has given us a great model of how to effectively network, support one another, and move our community’s mission forward.
Please join the SAP Utilities Community on April 24 at 12:00 P.M. C.T. for a presentation from Tina Kuo, Senior Director of Customer Service for SAP Service Cloud. She’ll be covering SAP Service Cloud for Utilities. Click here to attend via Microsoft Teams. Meeting ID: 287 772 735 435, and Passcode: 5tErz9.