As dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion becomes essen­tial for SAP cus­tomers, the deci­sion-mak­ers at orga­ni­za­tions are faced with the need to migrate to SAP S/4HANA and to adopt the emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies that sup­port an intel­li­gent enter­prise. This is a lot to learn, apply, and main­tain — all while keep­ing up with con­stant change.

In response, ASUG has launched a new one-day, edu­ca­tion­al expe­ri­ence through its ASUG Express event series. Cen­ters of Excel­lence: Achiev­ing Suc­cess with SAP is designed to help you learn about the capa­bil­i­ties and resources you have with­in your cur­rent SAP sys­tems. It will help you under­stand ways to get best prac­tices to stick and stay up to date through­out your organization’s busi­ness processes.

The first event took place in Chica­go and drew more than 40 atten­dees look­ing to gain a bet­ter under­stand­ing of how to cre­ate a Cen­ter of Excel­lence (CoE) with­in their orga­ni­za­tion. They want­ed to learn how to gain val­ue from their cur­rent invest­ments in SAP tech­nolo­gies and how to best pre­pare for new imple­men­ta­tions. Atten­dees were engaged through­out the day and took back ideas to imme­di­ate­ly apply to their organizations.

SAP Chal­lenges Are Universal

The morn­ing began with a pre­sen­ta­tion from Stu­art Browne, man­ag­ing direc­tor of Result­ing, an SAP con­sult­ing firm. He intro­duced atten­dees to data col­lect­ed from a joint research study with for­mer Gart­ner SAP research direc­tor, Dr. Derek Pri­or. More than 100 peo­ple with expe­ri­ence using SAP pro­grams were polled to estab­lish what made the dif­fer­ence between suc­cess and fail­ure on the SAP imple­men­ta­tions they were involved with. 

Browne talked about the frus­tra­tion caused by unsuc­cess­ful imple­men­ta­tions and how orga­ni­za­tions can set them­selves up for suc­cess with 15 levers. He cov­ered every­thing from strat­e­gy and ven­dor man­age­ment to stan­dard­iza­tion and struc­tured knowl­edge management.

He not­ed, ​“Few­er than 50 per­cent of respon­dents believed they had used their SAP pro­gram as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to stan­dard­ize process­es. And that high solu­tion aware­ness and strong project man­age­ment has the most over­all impact on success.”

But who is charged with man­ag­ing all of that before, dur­ing, and after a project has gone live?

It all Comes Back to the Center

Accord­ing to SAP, a Cen­ter of Excel­lence com­bines busi­ness and IT tal­ents with indus­try best prac­tices to dri­ve and achieve con­tin­ued val­ue from invest­ments in SAP tech­nolo­gies. It’s essen­tial­ly a team of high­ly skilled indi­vid­u­als and experts that is the acknowl­edged source of knowl­edge with­in an orga­ni­za­tion. Cen­ters of Excel­lence are tasked with keep­ing SAP invest­ments on course so they con­tin­ue to meet busi­ness objectives. 

Dou­glas Shup­tar, prin­ci­pal con­sul­tant of Busi­ness Trans­for­ma­tion Ser­vices at SAP, helps cus­tomers design and imple­ment Cen­ters of Excel­lence based on their spe­cif­ic needs and chal­lenges. Dur­ing his pre­sen­ta­tion, he shared sto­ries from four cus­tomers he’s worked with in the last year to help high­light the neces­si­ty of a Cen­ter of Excel­lence, as well as the ben­e­fit of imple­ment­ing one.

Find­ing the Right SAP Cus­tomer Tools

Atten­dees also had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to hear direct­ly from SAP about what tools and resources are avail­able for them. 

Kristin Schef­fler, head of main­te­nance of cus­tomer man­age­ment at SAP said, ​“We want to show you ways to take advan­tage of what’s already avail­able to you with your SAP investments.”

Dur­ing her pre­sen­ta­tion, she intro­duced 10 ways to get the most out of your SAP sup­port and main­te­nance invest­ment, includ­ing full appli­ca­tion life cycle man­age­ment with SAP Solu­tion Man­ag­er. She remind­ed atten­dees that every­one should upgrade to the lat­est ver­sion of SAP Solu­tion Man­ag­er to main­tain con­nec­tiv­i­ty to the SAP Sup­port Back­bone.

Atten­dees also heard from part­ners about how to get their data in order because, it will play a much big­ger role than you think. This drew a lot of inter­est from the room and lead to great conversations.

Set­ting Up for SAP S/4HANA and Beyond

The day wasn’t just about con­sum­ing infor­ma­tion, although there was plen­ty to learn. Paul Kurchi­na, com­mu­ni­ty cat­a­lyst in the SAP ecosys­tem, mod­er­at­ed a pan­el dis­cus­sion with Dou­glas Shup­tar, Stu­art Browne, and Kevin Reil­ly, CIO for Old World Indus­tries and ASUG Mem­ber. The four dis­cussed how to set up a Cen­ter of Excel­lence for all the new SAP plat­forms, tools, and appli­ca­tions includ­ing SAP S/4HANA, the cloud, and beyond. 

Kurchi­na asked, ​“What are the new skills required of a Cen­ter of Excel­lence in this new era?”

Time to Play in the SAP Sandbox

Speak­ing on SAP S/4HANA, Reil­ly said to ​“give your peo­ple who have worked on data­bas­es for the last 15-plus years an oppor­tu­ni­ty to get exposed to SAP HANA ear­ly enough. Let them play in a sand­box envi­ron­ment. Let them see what it’s like to do archives and how it’s dif­fer­ent from their old world.”

Speak­ing about the cloud, Shup­tar talked about build­ing a Cen­ter of Excel­lence for the hybrid world. ​“Pri­or­i­ties of a busi­ness depart­ment will change, as will end-user and cus­tomer expectations.”

Cre­ate Your own SAP Cen­ters of Excellence

Oth­er ben­e­fi­cial new skills that the pan­el dis­cussed included:

• SAP HANA data­base and archi­tec­ture for the admin­is­tra­tor and developer 
• SAP HANA data struc­tures and concepts
• SAP HANA admin­is­tra­tion
• Port­ing cus­tom apps to SAP HANA
• SAP Fiori apps
• SAP Fiori devel­op­ment (UI5)
• SAP Process Orches­tra­tion for inte­gra­tion
• SAP Cloud Plat­form archi­tec­ture, ser­vices and, applications
• SAP S/4HANA data mod­el and of course any solution/module’s data mod­el

This event is intend­ed for SAP cus­tomers and is a free ASUG Mem­ber ben­e­fit. Reg­is­tra­tion includes break­fast, lunch, and net­work­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties with SAP cus­tomers and experts. Atten­dees will also receive a copy of the Ulti­mate SAP CoE Best Prac­tice Guide, the 2018 SAP Suc­cess Report, a Guide to Uti­liz­ing SAP Enter­prise Sup­port, the Solu­tion Man­ag­er eBook, as well as oth­er resources.

Join us in one of four cities sched­uled for an ASUG Express on Cen­ters of Excel­lence: Achiev­ing Suc­cess with SAP in Hous­ton March 26, Toron­to March 28, Atlanta April 9, and Seat­tle April 11.