Over 650 SAP pro­fes­sion­als from a vari­ety of indus­tries — includ­ing ener­gy, chem­i­cals, mill prod­ucts and min­ing, and indus­tri­al man­u­fac­tur­ing — gath­ered in Hous­ton, Texas last week for the first-ever ASUG Best Prac­tices conference. 

Fea­tur­ing rich dis­cus­sions with experts and thought lead­ers, the event pro­vid­ed insights into how indus­tries can lever­age SAP soft­ware to tack­le mod­ern chal­lenges, espe­cial­ly as the 2027 end-of-main­te­nance dead­line for SAP Busi­ness Suite 7 — which includes SAP ERP Cen­tral Com­po­nent (ECC) 6 — steadi­ly grows closer. 

While the event rep­re­sent­ed dif­fer­ent indus­tries, many of which are faced with unique and indus­try-spe­cif­ic con­di­tions, atten­dees are also tack­ling many of the same busi­ness chal­lenges and lever­ag­ing SAP solu­tions to opti­mize com­pa­ra­ble processes. 

“While you may work in dif­fer­ent indus­tries, you share com­mon prob­lems, com­mon chal­lenges, and — ulti­mate­ly — com­mon solu­tions,” Geoff Scott, ASUG CEO & Chief Com­mu­ni­ty Cham­pi­on, said dur­ing the open­ing keynote.

Through­out ASUG Best Prac­tices, atten­dees were focused on gain­ing insights into next-gen­er­a­tion tech­nolo­gies — includ­ing SAP S/4HANA, cloud ERP, and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI) — to trans­form their businesses. 

Effec­tive­ly imple­ment­ing these solu­tions was anoth­er cru­cial top­ic, as pre­sen­ters shared suc­cess sto­ries, help­ing atten­dees nav­i­gate com­mon dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion chal­lenges. How­ev­er, this is not always an easy jour­ney, and the most game-chang­ing mod­ern­iza­tion projects require sig­nif­i­cant plan­ning and resources from enterprises. 

“While we always think of tech­nol­o­gy as a great sim­pli­fi­er, I believe it’s actu­al­ly more com­pli­cat­ed than it’s ever been,” said Scott. 

Adopt­ing new ideas and busi­ness process­es has nev­er been more impor­tant. Dur­ing a live record­ing of the ASUG Talks pod­cast, Jeff Miers, Direc­tor of Part­ner­ships and Alliances for the Ener­gy & Util­i­ties Indus­tries at AWS, not­ed that most — if not all — of the conference’s atten­dees are fac­ing three crit­i­cal chal­lenges dra­mat­i­cal­ly impact­ing their busi­ness­es: uncer­tain­ty stem­ming from geopo­lit­i­cal con­flicts, share­hold­er pres­sures, and a grow­ing demand for decarbonization. 

Using SAP to Spur Innovation

Some of this com­plex­i­ty stems from the fact that many enter­pris­es are try­ing to spur wide-reach­ing busi­ness trans­for­ma­tion despite IT stacks sad­dled with tech­ni­cal debt, rid­dled with silos, and plagued by inef­fi­cien­cies. Across keynote address­es and break­out ses­sions, speak­ers con­sis­tent­ly honed in on the impor­tance of tak­ing steps to ready an enterprise’s IT ecosys­tem before imple­ment­ing next-gen­er­a­tion tech­nol­o­gy solutions.

“As we think about the long-term tra­jec­to­ry of where we are going as a cus­tomer base, it’s real­ly going to require us to do a num­ber of things if we want to har­ness this thing called inno­va­tion,” Scott said. He fur­ther encour­aged atten­dees to embrace inno­va­tion by mov­ing their IT infra­struc­tures to the cloud, re-eval­u­at­ing their view of soft­ware as a cus­tomiz­able ser­vice, and ulti­mate­ly rid­ding their IT infra­struc­tures of exten­sive customization. 

“If you want to run every­thing on premis­es, you want to have cus­tomiza­tion, and if you don’t want to move the respon­si­bil­i­ty of code back to the part­ners and SAP, you will con­sis­tent­ly be in a sta­tion of try­ing to keep up instead of get­ting ahead,” Scott said.

Scott was joined on stage by five SAP cus­tomers, who shared their per­spec­tives on inno­va­tion and lever­ag­ing SAP solutions: 

• Karthik Varathara­jalu, Senior Direc­tor of Busi­ness Appli­ca­tions at AdvanSix
• Marce­lo Bit­ten­court Gerces­ki, SAP Lead to Cash Archi­tect at ArcelorMittal/​Nippon Steel Calvert
• Dan Stu­art, Senior Vice Pres­i­dent and CIO at Southwire
• Zara Horn, Vice Pres­i­dent of IT Enter­prise Appli­ca­tion Ser­vice at Cur­rent Lighting
• Steve Mutch, Head of Prod­uct Man­age­ment & COE — ERP at Shell

The pan­elists each dis­cussed how they’re lever­ag­ing SAP solu­tions in their respec­tive busi­ness­es and industries. 

Stu­art not­ed that South­wire focused on chang­ing its cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, lever­ag­ing SAP Hybris to build a hub for cus­tomers and pur­chas­ing agents to buy Southwire’s prod­ucts. Accord­ing to Mutch, Shell is lever­ag­ing SAP to help with the com­ing ener­gy tran­si­tion and enabling its cus­tomers to ​“decar­bonize their oper­a­tions and their lives.” 

Cur­rent Light­ing faces insta­bil­i­ty and dis­rup­tions in its sup­ply chains — like most enter­pris­es present at the con­fer­ence — SAP cloud ERP solu­tions enable the orga­ni­za­tion to adapt to changes ​“as the indus­try and sup­ply chain moves around us,” not­ed Horn. 

Varathara­jalu said Advan­Six is focused on using SAP solu­tions — like SAP Data­s­phere — to ​“unleash the pow­er of data,” and enable more pre­dic­tive ana­lyt­ics. Final­ly, Gerces­ki not­ed that SAP cloud solu­tions has enabled fast onboard­ing of new and acquired com­pa­nies at ArcelorMittal/​Nippon Steel Calvert.

The Promise of AI 

The place of AI in the SAP ecosys­tem, and how orga­ni­za­tions approach imple­ment­ing the tech­nol­o­gy to dri­ve oper­a­tional effi­cien­cy and inno­va­tion, was anoth­er key top­ic at ASUG Best Practices. 

“We want AI to do our laun­dry, not paint our paint­ings,” Gerces­ki said dur­ing the first keynote’s cus­tomer panel.

His fel­low pan­elists encour­aged atten­dees to take struc­tured, care­ful approach­es to lever­ag­ing AI. Horn told atten­dees to pri­or­i­tize a ​“smart” approach, invest­ing in the team mem­bers who have already worked on devel­op­ment of AI appli­ca­tions to make lever­ag­ing the tech­nol­o­gy eas­i­er. Varathara­jalu urged atten­dees to ​“keep it sim­ple,” and resist the urge to imple­ment com­pli­cat­ed strategies. 

At the conference’s day-two keynote, Car­olyn Szczurek, ASUG Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Lead, was joined by a group of SAP lead­ers to dis­cuss AI in the SAP ecosystem: 

• Stephane Lau­zon, Head of Oil, Gas, and Ener­gy at SAP
• Muriel Rako­toma­lala, Glob­al Head of Chem­i­cal Indus­try at SAP
• Sayan Bose, Glob­al Head of Indus­tri­al Man­u­fac­tur­ing, Aero­space & Defense Indus­tries, SAP
• Ste­fan Weisen­berg­er, Glob­al Vice Pres­i­dent and Head of Indus­try Busi­ness Unit for Process Indus­tries & Nat­ur­al Resources at SAP

Weisen­berg­er not­ed that, before lever­ag­ing AI, many orga­ni­za­tions must ​“clean up” their land­scapes, get­ting data in order and striv­ing for a clean core. How­ev­er, once enter­pris­es set the data foun­da­tion to lever­age AI, the tech­nol­o­gy — accord­ing to Rako­toma­lala — can accel­er­ate inno­va­tion and help orga­ni­za­tions opti­mize their operations. 

Lau­zon is already see­ing this improve­ment play out in enter­prise asset man­age­ment (EAM) oper­a­tions. Across an enterprise’s entire val­ue chain, AI can help build a bridge for data to flow from rev­enue account­ing state­ments for gas plants into an enterprise’s ERP sys­tem, he said by way of exam­ple. Addi­tion­al­ly, when it comes to equip­ment health, AI can help enter­pris­es with pre­dic­tive main­te­nance and sup­port the last mile of deliv­er of mate­ri­als and equipment. 

Bose also dis­cussed the ways AI can help sup­port sup­ply chain oper­a­tions. ​“Resilient sup­ply chains are one of the most impor­tant top­ics,” he said, under­lin­ing how AI can help with sup­ply chain fore­cast­ing process­es. Addi­tion­al­ly, gen­er­a­tive AI enables orga­ni­za­tions to build ear­ly dis­rup­tion alerts, result­ing in ​“self-heal­ing sup­ply chains.” 

In the oil, gas, and ener­gy field, Lau­zon said SAP cus­tomers are lever­ag­ing gen­er­a­tive AI to improve logis­tics, and ​“get the right prod­uct to the right point.” This is a crit­i­cal func­tion in the indus­try, which is ​“high­ly orches­trat­ed,” and involves thou­sands of mov­ing parts, assets, and people. 

The rel­e­vance of enter­prise AI will only grow in the com­ing years, as the tech­nol­o­gy evolves and more com­pa­nies embed AI tools in their land­scapes to improve oper­a­tions. In the mean­time, pan­elists encour­aged atten­dees to lever­age SAP solu­tions to clean their data core and lay a foun­da­tion to embrace AI.