In May 2019, about 100 ASUG Exec­u­tive Exchange mem­bers sat togeth­er in Orlan­do one day before the offi­cial start of SAPH­HIRE NOW and ASUG Annu­al Con­fer­ence to share ideas and dis­cuss their suc­cess­es and chal­lenges with their SAP invest­ment. Our vir­tu­al ASUG Exec­u­tive Exchange Nation­al Sum­mit this year wel­comed the same lev­el of enthu­si­asm, as atten­dees dialed in from the com­fort of their own homes to do the same. 

As ASUG CEO Geoff Scott thanked every­one for join­ing, he not­ed, ​“It cer­tain­ly hasn’t escaped my mind that this is typ­i­cal­ly the week we would have all been in Orlan­do. While we can’t be there phys­i­cal­ly, I am hap­py we’re still able to come togeth­er vir­tu­al­ly to dis­cuss the real­ly impor­tant things that are impact­ing our busi­ness­es, our tra­jec­to­ries, our sup­ply chains, and our customers.” 

More than 100 C‑level mem­bers tuned in as Scott and SAP CEO Chris­t­ian Klein kicked things off with a dis­cus­sion cen­tered on how SAP will change under Klein’s lead­er­ship, as well as how he is man­ag­ing in this unpar­al­leled time of uncertainty. 

“SAP was off to a great Q1,” Klein said. ​“Our pipeline was extreme­ly strong. As many oth­er orga­ni­za­tions, SAP was affect­ed by the cri­sis. ​“We first were hit in Chi­na, then in Europe, and final­ly in the Amer­i­c­as. But, thanks to our own trans­for­ma­tion, we have built an extreme­ly strong foun­da­tion. We can sup­port our more than 400,000 cus­tomers with 95% of our employ­ees work­ing from home,” he added. 

The Analy­sis of SAP and SAP Cus­tomers Dur­ing a Pandemic 

Scott asked how being named sole CEO of SAP will affect pre­vi­ous­ly out­lined busi­ness pri­or­i­ties, espe­cial­ly those relat­ed to solv­ing inte­gra­tion chal­lenges. ​“Hav­ing gone through SAP’s own busi­ness trans­for­ma­tion and becom­ing an intel­li­gent enter­prise, I know how impor­tant it is to start with the end user,” Klein said. 

Fol­low­ing the con­ver­sa­tion between Scott and Klein, atten­dees lis­tened in to a Q&A dis­cus­sion between Scott and Co-Founder of dig­i­nom­i­ca and indus­try ana­lyst, Jon Reed. The two not­ed that it was rare for an SAP CEO to dis­cuss things like licens­ing or the ​“end-user.” This was one of the things that makes Klein stand out as a dif­fer­ent type of CEO for SAP. ​“It has to be refresh­ing for cus­tomers to hear that those things are on his radar,” Reed said. At the same time, Reed not­ed that a lot of what SAP is sell­ing is around the intel­li­gent enter­prise and the dig­i­tal core that it’s based on takes a lot of time to imple­ment. ​“Right now, cus­tomers have very imme­di­ate issues, whether relat­ed to the remote work­force or col­lab­o­ra­tion tools, or per­haps bet­ter plan­ning tools,” he said. ​“SAP needs to talk more about non-SAP solu­tions and being more open to plug­ging those in quickly.”

In was an inter­est­ing exchange that spilled into its own break­out track, ​“Ana­lysts’ View of New Nor­mal,” where Reed went into a deep dive of cur­rent and future plans for SAP. 

Klein, how­ev­er, was very clear on his ambi­tions, stat­ing: ​“Cus­tomer suc­cess has to become part of the DNA of SAP and this is why we also have to con­tin­ue our own busi­ness trans­for­ma­tion. Cus­tomer suc­cess doesn’t end with the point of sale. It’s about adopt­ing the solu­tions and fast time to val­ue. It’s about help­ing end users to real­ly under­stand our appli­ca­tions. It’s about mak­ing sure every SAP employ­ee across the val­ue chain under­stands that our first oblig­a­tion is to make our cus­tomers successful.” 

Apply­ing SAP Tools and Actions to the Busi­ness Land­scape Today 

Cus­tomers are faced with a vari­ety of obsta­cles in the face of this cri­sis. One of the break­out tracks, ​“Tools for Today” focused on what cus­tomers can do right now to help mit­i­gate some imme­di­ate chal­lenges with­in their orga­ni­za­tions. ​“We’re going to address two key ele­ments that are impor­tant to orga­ni­za­tions, said ASUG Mod­er­a­tor Chris Crone. ​“Those are mon­ey and people.” 

Dur­ing this track atten­dees heard from Chris­t­ian Mnich, VP and head of solu­tion man­age­ment trea­sury and work­ing cap­i­tal man­age­ment for SAP as well as Dr. Ben­jamin Granger, XM Insti­tute, senior prin­ci­pal at Qualtrics. The two dif­fer­ent ses­sions pro­vid­ed insight on how cus­tomers can meet these chal­lenges, but also on how they can iden­ti­fy oppor­tu­ni­ties where they exist. 

Mnich intro­duced SAP finance solu­tions that can help cus­tomers get com­pre­hen­sive work­ing cap­i­tal insights and quick­ly act on them. ​“There is a lot to con­sid­er as it relates to the finances of your orga­ni­za­tion and it is so rel­e­vant to have the right tools and appli­ca­tions in place,” he said. He shared tips on how to man­age and opti­mize work­ing cap­i­tal using SAP S/4HANA and its Cash Man­age­ment, Trea­sury and Risk Man­age­ment, and Receiv­ables Man­age­ment functions. 

Dr. Granger shift­ed focus to dis­cuss the impor­tance of feed­back to not only improve employ­ees’ cur­rent expe­ri­ence, but also to be bet­ter pre­pared for the future busi­ness land­scape. ​“It’s about tak­ing data and all the insight from your employ­ees, or your cus­tomers and your mar­ket, and then syn­the­siz­ing it into some­thing that action­able,” he said. ​“It’s about con­tin­u­ous­ly learn­ing and guid­ing those that can do some­thing down a path. It’s ulti­mate­ly about tak­ing con­trol and every orga­ni­za­tion can do that right now to oper­ate more resiliently.” 

SAP Cus­tomers Lean on Sup­port Dur­ing COVID-19

As orga­ni­za­tions look to make the right deci­sions in the cur­rent busi­ness land­scape, they are look­ing to SAP for sup­port, espe­cial­ly as it relates to cost man­age­ment for soft­ware licensing. 

In anoth­er break­out track, ​“Sta­tis­tics and Sup­port,” atten­dees dialed in for an open dia­logue on how effec­tive man­age­ment of licens­ing and sup­port can both save your orga­ni­za­tion on your soft­ware invest­ments and improve the rela­tion­ship between you and your soft­ware and sup­port providers. ​“Cus­tomers are falling into three dif­fer­ent buck­ets,” said Len Riley, SAP com­mer­cial advi­so­ry prac­tice leader at UpperEdge. ​“There are orga­ni­za­tions that are con­tin­u­ing with their trans­for­ma­tion ini­tia­tives, or actu­al­ly accel­er­at­ing them depend­ing on the indus­try they’re in; there are those that have put a com­plete pause on their trans­for­ma­tion ini­tia­tives; and then there are those that have put things off for the mid- to long-term.” Riley added that regard­less of which buck­et you fall in, this is the time to have con­ver­sa­tions with SAP and have a whole­sale review of your prod­uct and ser­vice portfolio. 

Com­pa­nies don’t typ­i­cal­ly use all of what they’re licensed for. Now is a good time to clean that up and save some mon­ey to pre­pare for the next wave of trans­for­ma­tion. It might also be a good oppor­tu­ni­ty to assess the Dig­i­tal Access Adop­tion Pro­gram. ​“Clients have three key oppor­tu­ni­ties right now,” Riley said. ​“You have an oppor­tu­ni­ty to revis­it your exec­u­tive rela­tion­ship with SAP. You have the chance to look at uti­liza­tion and right size. And you have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to simplify.” 

Dur­ing the sec­ond half of the track, atten­dees heard from ASUG Mar­ket Research Man­ag­er Car­olyn Szczurek. She dis­cussed key find­ings from the ASUG Pulse Check, which didn’t dif­fer much from the inter­ac­tive poll tak­en dur­ing the vir­tu­al Exec­u­tive Exchange event. When asked whether they were post­pon­ing tech­nol­o­gy ini­tia­tives at their orga­ni­za­tions, the audi­ence was in sync with what we’ve heard from oth­er ASUG mem­bers that have par­tic­i­pat­ed in the sur­vey. Near­ly a third were post­pon­ing most ini­tia­tives while half were post­pon­ing just a few. ​“Way more com­pa­nies are con­tin­u­ing on,” not­ed David Was­com, SVP of exec­u­tive pro­grams at ASUG. ​“How they’re doing it is chang­ing fun­da­men­tal­ly, but they’re still mov­ing forward.” 

Look­ing For­ward to a Post-COVID-19 Landscape 

As we begin to strate­gize about what will con­tin­ue to dri­ve busi­ness in a new land­scape, as well as the ways in which we can keep the work­force safe and effi­cient, there are a few things that mat­ter most. In anoth­er break­out track, ​“Look­ing For­ward,” experts dis­cussed how data will be the pri­ma­ry dri­ver going forward. 

Data will be an unmatched asset for any orga­ni­za­tion. The key, how­ev­er, will be in man­ag­ing it a way that helps busi­ness­es both sur­vive and thrive dur­ing uncer­tain­ty. Atten­dees learned about best prac­tices, com­mon pit­falls, and first steps in devel­op­ing a mean­ing­ful, busi­ness-out­come-focused data strat­e­gy. ​“Data strat­e­gy is part of an over­all data pro­gram,” said Account Exec­u­tive for DMR, Melis­sa Vogel. ​“Man­ag­ing your data to out­comes has to be strate­gi­cal­ly thought. It’s com­pre­hen­sive. It’s a set of capa­bil­i­ties; not just tech­nol­o­gy. So, to be suc­cess­ful, you need a program.” 

In the sec­ond half of the track, ASUG Mod­er­a­tor Paul Kurchi­na and VP of Appli­ca­tion Life­cy­cle man­age­ment for SAP, Tim Steuer delved into how to lever­age the peo­ple, process­es, and tools for appli­ca­tion life­cy­cle man­age­ment (ALM) to pro­vide a cost-effec­tive way to man­age the deploy­ment, devel­op­ment, and decom­mis­sion­ing of soft­ware assets. ​“There are two key prin­ci­ples of ALM — imple­men­ta­tion and oper­a­tions — and they both have their own set of steps,” Steuer said. ​“It is our objec­tive to help you suc­ceed and to auto­mate as many of those steps as pos­si­ble.” The SAP ALM prod­uct port­fo­lio includes SAP Solu­tion Man­ag­er and SAP Focused Run, as well as SAP Cloud ALM, which will be released to cloud cus­tomers like­ly at the end of May 2020. ​“These are the three strate­gic ALM solu­tions we have to match cus­tomer real­i­ties today,” Steuer said. 

Exec­u­tive Lead­ers Keep a Pos­i­tive Outlook 

ASUG Exec­u­tive Exchange mem­bers found a way to learn from one anoth­er and con­tin­ue on the path of net­work­ing in a new vir­tu­al landscape. 

At the end of the sum­mit, atten­dees heard from Deloitte Chief Glob­al Econ­o­mist Dr. Ira Kalish who reviewed the eco­nom­ic impact of COVID-19 while also pro­vid­ing insights on what the future holds. ​“We know we’re in bad shape. We know we’ve seen a cat­a­stroph­ic drop in the eco­nom­ic activ­i­ty,” he said. ​“But we also know that either now or lat­er, we’re going to see some eas­ing on eco­nom­ic restric­tions. We will at some point see some sup­pres­sion of the virus; we’ve already seen it in Chi­na, we’re see­ing some of it in Europe, and we’re start­ing to see it in the U.S. We will get a return of eco­nom­ic activity.” 

Kalish went on to note that he doesn’t believe it will be a V‑shape recov­ery, but that a recov­ery is still in sight. ​“In the long run, we are going to be okay,” he said. 

Atten­dees were invit­ed to stay on and par­tic­i­pate in vir­tu­al net­work­ing. ​“When the top­ics of con­ver­sa­tion are in sync with what SAP cus­tomers real­ly need to know about today, it’s no sur­prise that vir­tu­al net­work­ing can be just as effec­tive as in-per­son net­work­ing,” Scott said. ​“Peo­ple still want to learn from and con­nect with oth­er peo­ple, and that was on full dis­play dur­ing the entire event.”

ASUG mem­bers can reg­is­ter for the Exec­u­tive Exchange Vir­tu­al Round­table: SAP in the Pub­lic Cloud on Sept. 29, 1 — 2 p.m. CT.