Between host­ing Super Bowl LVII and being renamed ​“Swift City” to com­mem­o­rate the launch of Tay­lor Swift’s Eras tour, sun­ny Glen­dale, Ari­zona, served as the site of the ASUG Best Prac­tices: SAP S/4HANA® and SAP Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Plat­form (BTP) con­fer­ence, which wel­comed atten­dees ear­li­er this month.

Held from March 7 to 9 at the Renais­sance Phoenix Glen­dale Hotel & Spa, the antic­i­pat­ed event brought togeth­er SAP cus­tomers and SAP exec­u­tive speak­ers to share their expe­ri­ences, exper­tise, and expec­ta­tions while dis­cussing progress, suc­cess­es, and chal­lenges amid con­fig­ur­ing BTP to achieve busi­ness goals and estab­lish­ing SAP S/4HANA busi­ness cases. 

Top-of-mind for atten­dees — and promi­nent­ly fea­tured on the agen­da — were top­ics such as seam­less­ly inte­grat­ing SAP BTP with SAP S/4HANA, pro­mot­ing effi­cient intel­li­gent automa­tion with RISE with SAP, and upskilling or reskilling to pre­pare for the future of work. Keynotes, Exec­u­tive Exchange round­ta­bles, net­work­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties, cus­tomer-led ses­sions, hands-on demon­stra­tions, pan­el con­ver­sa­tions, and even a vis­it to Camel­back Ranch to take in a spring train­ing game between the Seat­tle Mariners and the Los Ange­les Dodgers made it a con­fer­ence to remember. 

ASUG pre­vi­ous­ly pre­viewed sev­er­al SAP S/4HANA and SAP BTP con­fer­ence ses­sions, but here offers a dis­patch from the con­fer­ence floor, where cus­tomers and exec­u­tive speak­ers con­versed and con­nect­ed while acquir­ing valu­able skills, resources, and tools to bol­ster their orga­ni­za­tions’ dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion journeys. 

“Learn, Con­nect, and Grow”

In his open­ing remarks, Geoff Scott, CEO of ASUG, reaf­firmed ASUG’s core mis­sion to help its mem­bers get the most from their SAP tech­nol­o­gy invest­ment and invit­ed atten­dees to ​“learn, con­nect, and grow” through lis­ten­ing to diverse speak­ers and attend­ing net­work­ing ses­sions at the conference. 

“There is some­thing real­ly spe­cial about com­ing togeth­er face to face,” he said. ​“Use this time to do what you’re here to do. Con­nect with each oth­er, ask ques­tions, talk to your peers, and hear each other’s sto­ries. Use these days to acquire skills.”

As Scott not­ed, the sub­stance of the con­fer­ence ses­sions was derived from the 2023 ASUG Pulse of the SAP Cus­tomer sur­vey results, which iden­ti­fied top focus areas such as inte­gra­tion, stan­dard­iz­ing busi­ness process­es, mov­ing to SAP S/4HANA, and ana­lyt­ics and dashboards. 

Shar­ing remarks by a CIO who went live on SAP S/4HANA just days before the con­fer­ence, Scott affirmed that ​“inte­gra­tion mat­ters,” adding that the CIO had encour­aged atten­dees to ​“get it right. Keep it sim­ple. Keep it stan­dard. Min­i­mize the num­ber of cus­tomiza­tions and try to make it the stan­dard imple­men­ta­tion we all talk about but rarely achieve.” 

Fol­low­ing this, in a keynote address titled ​“Rad­i­cal Inno­va­tion: Trans­form­ing Busi­ness, Soci­ety, and the World,” tech­nol­o­gy futur­ist Jack Shaw asked atten­dees to con­sid­er all pos­si­bil­i­ties for mak­ing emerg­ing tech­nol­o­gy come to life with­in spe­cif­ic industries.

Shaw engaged the audi­ence by ask­ing them to pre­dict which emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies would have the biggest impact on busi­ness and soci­ety across the next three to five years, not­ing robot­ic process automa­tion (RPA), AI, augmented/​virtual real­i­ty (AR/VR) and the meta­verse, 3D print­ing and addi­tive man­u­fac­tur­ing, and blockchain as poten­tial can­di­dates (all tech­nolo­gies that cus­tomers can con­sid­er inte­grat­ing with SAP BTP to enable their dig­i­tal transformations). 

Inter­act­ing with Shaw via poll capa­bil­i­ties avail­able in their event-spe­cif­ic smart­phone apps, near­ly half of atten­dees (49%) select­ed AI as their pre­dict­ed indus­try game-chang­er, with RPA (22%) as the sec­ond most pop­u­lar option, and AR/VR and the meta­verse (12%) third.

Shaw reflect­ed that, with a host of new tech­nolo­gies, the biggest chal­lenge that busi­ness­es face is ​“mak­ing the shift to con­tin­u­ous strate­gic plan­ning,” mon­i­tor­ing their tech­nol­o­gy envi­ron­ments, and accept­ing the inevitabil­i­ty of evolv­ing busi­ness mod­el process­es. His clos­ing remarks quot­ed the Amer­i­can his­to­ri­an Hen­ry Steele Com­mager, who said, ​“Change does not nec­es­sar­i­ly assure progress, but progress implaca­bly requires change.” 

SAP S/4HANA and SAP BTP Suc­cess Stories

Fol­low­ing an announce­ment from SAP that intro­duced SAP Data­s­phere, described as ​“the next gen­er­a­tion of SAP Data Ware­house Cloud,” Ker­ri Ten­brun­sel, SVP and GM of SAP BTP North Amer­i­ca, took the stage to express words of appre­ci­a­tion for ASUG mem­bers. ​“SAP is noth­ing with­out our user group,” she said. ​“You dic­tate the future for us.” 

Ten­brun­sel assessed that SAP cus­tomers under­stand the need to trans­form their busi­ness­es and stat­ed that SAP BTP is foun­da­tion­al­ly based on ​“dri­ving trans­for­ma­tion, agili­ty, flex­i­bil­i­ty, and opti­miza­tion.” Her intro track, ​“Adven­ture of a Life­time” by Cold­play, ref­er­enced the band’s recent Music of the Spheres World Tour app, devel­oped with SAP, which uti­lized SAP BTP in addi­tion to SAP Cloud for Sus­tain­able Enter­pris­es and SAP Ana­lyt­ics Cloud.

“BTP has nev­er been more rel­e­vant to dri­ve the agili­ty, resilien­cy, and effi­cien­cy of your enter­prise,” said Ten­brun­sel. ​“The help is all around you, in this room and out there through our SAP experts and partners.”

In con­ver­sa­tion with Ten­brun­sel to reflect on their com­pa­nies’ dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tions, Matt Golds­by, Direc­tor of IT at Swift Pre­pared Foods, and Karthik Nee­lamegam, Senior Direc­tor of EA at Flori­da Crys­tals, shared lessons learned from their implementations. 

Swift Pre­pared Foods, a sub­sidiary of JBS USA, went live on SAP S/4HANA on Feb. 20, days before the con­fer­ence, but its invest­ment in SAP tech­nol­o­gy has been exten­sive, with SAP BTP allow­ing Swift to save time and mon­ey while increas­ing the accu­ra­cy of its glob­al and com­plex pric­ing sys­tem and oth­er SAP cloud solu­tions, such as SAP Inte­grat­ed Busi­ness Plan­ning (IBP), at work with­in the Swift land­scape. ​“We need­ed a solu­tion that ben­e­fit­ted us up and down the sup­ply chain and gave us the flex­i­bil­i­ty to free up more of the time of our crit­i­cal indi­vid­u­als that had been respon­si­ble for pric­ing,” said Golds­by. SAP BTP has been that solu­tion, offload­ing heavy lift­ing pre­vi­ous­ly required for Swift’s pric­ing process­es into the cloud while auto­mat­i­cal­ly cal­cu­lat­ing pric­ing records and adding a fixed-price com­po­nent to its food-ser­vice area. 

Nee­lamegam, mean­while, over­saw Flori­da Crys­tals’ SAP S/4HANA 2020 imple­men­ta­tion last year and told atten­dees that 60% to 70% of his company’s busi­ness process­es run on SAP. Flori­da Crys­tals, part of Amer­i­can Sug­ar Refin­ing (ASR Group), facil­i­tates farm-to-table glob­al oper­a­tions in sug­ar­cane farm­ing, milling, and refin­ing, as well as man­u­fac­tur­ing, pack­ag­ing, and dis­tri­b­u­tion; such a com­plex ecosys­tem requires dynam­ic enter­prise archi­tec­ture. Nee­lamegam men­tioned SAP IBP, SAP BTP, SAP Ari­ba, SAP Ana­lyt­ics Cloud, SAP Suc­cess­Fac­tors, and SAP Con­cur as some of the third-par­ty SaaS appli­ca­tions at work across ASR Group. 

He not­ed that the vari­ety of SAP ser­vices avail­able allowed greater agili­ty and sup­port for the inter­de­pen­dent ASR Group ecosys­tem. Notably, through SAP BTP, Flori­da Crys­tals has con­sol­i­dat­ed from five inte­gra­tion tools to two, dri­ving effi­cien­cy across its busi­ness­es. Nee­lamegam lat­er expand­ed on the key dri­vers and moti­va­tors behind Flori­da Crys­tals’ tran­si­tion to cloud-based inte­gra­tion (iPaaS) in a ses­sion focused on the company’s mid­dle­ware footprint.

SAP Exec­u­tive and Cus­tomer Ses­sions in the Spotlight

Dis­cus­sion of SAP Cloud strat­e­gy, and its evo­lu­tion in response to cus­tomers’ dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion jour­neys, dom­i­nat­ed a pop­u­lar ear­ly ses­sion led by Damien John­son, Glob­al Chief Archi­tect of RISE with SAP Pro­grams at SAP. Touch­ing upon roadmaps, planned inno­va­tions, and future fea­tures for Cloud ERP, his ​“Under­stand­ing SAP’s Cloud Strat­e­gy” ses­sion was a big-pic­ture view of the port­fo­lio geared toward edu­cat­ing atten­dees about the var­i­ous sup­ports avail­able to cus­tomers amid their jour­neys to the Cloud. 

John­son spoke to the impor­tance of under­stand­ing the busi­ness changes that are dri­ving orga­ni­za­tions to address ​“lega­cy com­plex­i­ty” through their IT strate­gies; dis­rup­tion across glob­al sup­ply chains, chang­ing cus­tomer and employ­ee pref­er­ences and needs, and busi­ness chal­lenges around lever­ag­ing increas­ing­ly over­whelm­ing amounts of data were all sur­faced as the busi­ness changes dri­ving IT strategy. 

The move from on-premis­es to cloud chang­ing soft­ware from an asset to a ser­vice, imple­men­ta­tion of intel­li­gent tech­nolo­gies, and plat­form capa­bil­i­ties enabling more ​“decou­pled” archi­tec­ture to con­tin­ue inno­va­tion in a sus­tain­able man­ner were among the changes to tech­nol­o­gy land­scapes dis­cussed. SAP cus­tomers can work with­in its ecosys­tem to car­ry out an ​“end-to-end jour­ney to dri­ve trans­for­ma­tion,” said John­son, encour­ag­ing atten­dees first to trans­form their busi­ness process­es, then deploy Cloud ERP, then dri­ve con­tin­u­ous inno­va­tion across their companies.

The role of the enter­prise archi­tect (EA) in dri­ving busi­ness trans­for­ma­tion was key to mul­ti­ple ses­sions, such as ​“Pow­er Peer Groups” led across both days by Syl­vain Gar­neau, SAP EA of Res­olute For­est Prod­ucts at SAP; Peter Keller, SAP EA at SAP; and Todd Lutz, Glob­al Man­ag­er of SAP Basis at Goodyear Tire. These round­table dis­cus­sions focused on the EA practice’s role in plan­ning and exe­cut­ing trans­for­ma­tion activ­i­ties on the way to adopt­ing SAP S/4HANA and SAP BTP. 

Sim­i­lar­ly, open dis­cus­sions and even a SAP BTP-spe­cif­ic round of ​“Jeop­ardy!” were host­ed through­out the con­fer­ence in a Part­ner Solu­tions Pavil­ion where atten­dees min­gled and net­worked freely; Eli­jah Mar­tinez, Senior Prod­uct Man­ag­er of SAP Cloud Plat­form Inte­gra­tion at SAP; Glen Leslie, Senior Direc­tor of SAP BTP Cen­ter of Excel­lence at SAP; Bob Sakalas, Inno­va­tion Evan­ge­list at SAP; and David Mal­oney, North Amer­i­can VP of SAP BTP at SAP were on hand for one of the most buzzed-about ses­sions, ​“Infor­mal Chat with the Experts: Why BTP Is the Key to Strate­gic Dig­i­tal Transformation.” 

There, and else­where, the impor­tance of ​“keep­ing your core clean” was empha­sized. Suc­cess­ful imple­men­ta­tion of a clean core was also the focus of a ses­sion led by Roochir Purani, Asso­ciate Part­ner of SAP Chief Data Exec­u­tive at IBM, and Gairik Acharya, Asso­ciate Part­ner at IBM, detail­ing IBM’s strat­e­gy and cus­tomer project expe­ri­ences imple­ment­ing SAP BTP-based clean core solutions. 

The Advan­Six Journey

Advan­Six, an Amer­i­can chem­i­cal man­u­fac­tur­er that pro­duces nylon 6 and relat­ed chem­i­cals such as capro­lac­tam and ammo­ni­um sul­fate fer­til­iz­ers, has lever­aged SAP solu­tions since its first SAP imple­men­ta­tion in 1999. In their event ses­sion, Jen­na Snook, Project Man­ag­er; Michael Tomaino, Trans­for­ma­tion Project Leader; and Andrew Bodun­rin, EA (all from Advan­Six), dis­cussed tak­ing a green­field approach with SAP S/4HANA, first imple­ment­ing a pilot and then bring­ing in recent­ly acquired sites on S/4HANA.

In craft­ing a busi­ness case for SAP S/4HANA, the Advan­Six team iden­ti­fied key oppor­tu­ni­ties to improve core finance and risk process­es, opti­mize inven­to­ry and plan­ning, improve its finan­cials through faster pro­cess­ing and reduced cler­i­cal work, lever­age embed­ded ana­lyt­ics for bet­ter insights to action, and improve the employ­ee expe­ri­ence by lay­ing a foun­da­tion for automa­tion and process intel­li­gence. In its prepa­ra­tion stage, Advan­Six explored val­ue maps, engaged with SAP Ger­many on Adop­tion Starter Kit, and worked with SAP on cus­tom code analysis. 

In build­ing a busi­ness case, Advan­Six engaged with SAP, com­plet­ed a col­lab­o­ra­tive val­ue assess­ment (CVA), applied design think­ing by hav­ing the Advan­Six PMO team inter­view crit­i­cal key­hold­ers, and pre­sent­ed a busi­ness case for green­field imple­men­ta­tion of SAP S/4HANA on RISE with SAP for new­ly acquired sites of Advan­Six. Imple­men­ta­tion involved a process of part­ner selec­tion, assess­ment, and pilot imple­men­ta­tion. AdvanSix’s two pilot sites went live on SAP S/4HANA late last month, on Feb. 27.

Advan­Six uti­lized SAP’s Acti­vate method­ol­o­gy, com­bin­ing SAP’s proven Water­fall method­ol­o­gy (which relies on manda­to­ry Qual­i­ty Gate reviews after each phase) with an agile solu­tion design, test­ing, and deploy­ment approach. The com­pa­ny soon saw results, and as Tomaino proud­ly stat­ed, ​“Our go-live date nev­er changed.” That suc­cess came in part because the Advan­Six team orga­nized its SAP S/4HANA trans­for­ma­tion by busi­ness process and care­ful­ly con­sid­ered what was in scope each step of the way. ​“What is the day one neces­si­ty here?” Tomaino advised atten­dees to con­sid­er. ​“What’s the pri­or­i­ty? If it’s not day one, you shuf­fle the deck and push it to the back, bar­ring pre­req­ui­sites. That was critical.” 

Reflect­ing on their first-phase imple­men­ta­tion using no cus­tomiza­tions, the team said their ​“peo­ple-focused approach” led to good sys­tem adop­tion and dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion. SAP S/4HANA was able to deliv­er on enhance­ments AdvanSix’s CFO had request­ed years pri­or, pro­vid­ing a bird’s‑eye view of cred­it man­age­ment. As far as lessons learned, the team said that ​“it’s easy to train too ear­ly or too late,” also advis­ing that every work­stream with­in the trans­for­ma­tion be owned from the start by some­one from the busi­ness and sug­gest­ing that busi­ness­es allow extra time for build­ing secu­ri­ty roles.

Keynote Cus­tomer Pan­els Offer Action­able Insights

Lessons learned from suc­cess­ful imple­men­ta­tions and per­spec­tives on prepar­ing for the move to SAP S/4HANA were shared with atten­dees dur­ing cus­tomer pan­els across both days of the conference. 

Lau­ra Tibodeau, ASUG board mem­ber, led the clos­ing day-one keynote dis­cus­sion, bring­ing Lutz to the stage along with Vin­cent Petit, IT Direc­tor of ERP and Finance Sys­tems at Inch­cape; Kar­lene Gomes, IT Direc­tor of Sup­ply Chain Ser­vice Line at Corn­ing Incor­po­rat­ed; and Saranya Raj, Lead of SAP Cen­ter of Excel­lence for the City of Rich­mond Hill.

Lutz has been an SAP user since 1994 and over­sees the SAP basis and glob­al data­base teams at Goodyear Tire, where he’s faced chal­lenges from con­sol­i­dat­ing lega­cy sys­tems amid the increased capa­bil­i­ties of sys­tems like SAP S/4HANA. Petit, mean­while, inher­it­ed SAP two years ago. At Inch­cape, the largest inde­pen­dent auto­mo­tive dis­trib­u­tor glob­al­ly, he has learned to look at SAP through fresh eyes, which he con­sid­ers a strength as he pre­pares to make the busi­ness case for SAP S/4HANA.

Gomes at Corn­ing, which spe­cial­izes in mate­ri­als sci­ence, has 20 years of expe­ri­ence with SAP and is cur­rent­ly con­sid­er­ing SAP S/4HANA. ​“Trans­for­ma­tion is almost con­stant,” she said. Corn­ing had not been through a trans­for­ma­tion for about 15 years, so Gomes faced the real­i­ty posed by many end-of-life appli­ca­tions: ​“Do we want to invest to sus­tain and main­tain our sta­tus quo, or do we want to invest and modernize?”

Raj has been a hands-on SAP user for 10 years and recent­ly over­saw the Cana­di­an city’s green­field imple­men­ta­tion of SAP S/4HANA and SAP Suc­cess­Fac­tors, as well as an upgrade from SAP S/4HANA 1709 to SAP S/4HANA 2020. ​“Some­times, I think our SAP jour­ney deserves a Net­flix doc­u­men­tary,” Raj quipped. ​“There are so many twists and turns there.”

The pan­elists agreed that any trans­for­ma­tion requires buy-in not only from deci­sion-mak­ers but from indi­vid­u­als across the busi­ness. ​“In our com­pa­ny, in gen­er­al, get­ting many peo­ple involved in the deci­sion process and get­ting them onboard with sup­port­ing it was very big for us,” said Lutz.

Not­ed Raj: ​“We had cham­pi­ons at all lev­els of the orga­ni­za­tion engaged from the begin­ning, and they were cham­pi­ons even after the go-live. They became experts in adop­tion and engage­ment, spread­ing the word about SAP to peo­ple who’d nev­er used this type of sys­tem before.”

The day-two clos­ing keynote, ​“Uti­liz­ing SAP Tools as You Adapt to Dis­rup­tive Change,” brought togeth­er Ben­jamin Poku, SAP Oper­a­tions Man­ag­er of Bail­lie Lum­ber Co. at SAP; Farzana Duma­sia, Project Man­ag­er of SAP Busi­ness Sup­port for the City of Mis­sis­sauga; and Emi­ly Bell, CTO of Ful­ton Coun­ty Schools, for a dis­cus­sion about best prac­tices, solu­tions, and com­mu­ni­ties that let them keep pace with inno­va­tion in a fast-chang­ing world.

Issues the pan­elists faced through­out their jour­neys includ­ed staffing and reten­tion, as well as upskilling indi­vid­u­als to uti­lize new tech­nolo­gies and fac­ing dis­rup­tion from the pan­dem­ic. Change man­age­ment soon emerged as a focus of the panel. 

“Peo­ple, process­es, and tech­nolo­gies are three pil­lars for orga­ni­za­tion­al trans­for­ma­tion and to make any change effec­tive for adop­tion,” said Duma­sia, reflect­ing on lessons learned from the City of Mississauga’s jour­ney from ECC to SAP S/4HANA 1809. Duma­sia added all trans­for­ma­tion projects required busi­ness leads rather than being viewed as IT ini­tia­tives and empha­sized the impor­tance of build­ing trust across the organization.

“Orga­ni­za­tion change man­age­ment today looks like build­ing trust and con­fi­dence that we can solve our chal­lenges,” Bell remarked. In her dis­trict, Bell faced dif­fi­cul­ties from dis­parate sys­tems that did not inte­grate well and were ​“high­ly cus­tomized in ways that made it almost put togeth­er with a Band-Aid.” A green­field imple­men­ta­tion of SAP S/4HANA, SAP Suc­cess­Fac­tors, SAP Ari­ba, and oth­er SAP solu­tions all played a role in the ​“all-togeth­er, big-bang approach” that earned Ful­ton Coun­ty Schools an SAP Inno­va­tion Award last year.

All the pan­elists agreed that trans­for­ma­tion begins with­in the indi­vid­ual mind­set and that per­son­al will­ing­ness to learn and adapt is essen­tial to com­pa­ny­wide growth. ​“I’m a firm believ­er in con­tin­u­ous learn­ing,” said Poku. ​“When I inter­act with oth­ers, I try to encour­age them to learn more. There’s no end to education.”

“If you are in this busi­ness and have a fixed mind­set, you’re in the wrong busi­ness,” added Bell, not­ing that edu­ca­tors in her indus­try often express trep­i­da­tion about the rise of Chat­G­PT and oth­er AI ser­vices that have ulti­mate­ly enabled Ful­ton Coun­ty Schools’ trans­for­ma­tion. ​“What we’ve seen is that, through time, these become tools that we can use to get our work done in a more effi­cient and mean­ing­ful way. It’s not going to dis­rupt our lives. It’s going to enable us to move forward.”

Look­ing for oppor­tu­ni­ties to learn, con­nect, and grow? Explore our cal­en­dar of ASUG events.