Every year (when there’s not a pan­dem­ic-induced halt to the fun), ASUG mem­bers, SAP cus­tomers, and experts from lead­ing orga­ni­za­tions make the trek to Orlan­do to attend two co-locat­ed con­fer­ences that might just be the most impor­tant con­fer­ences we all attend each year. 

The main prob­lem for most of us— once we secure per­mis­sion to go, find a flight, and locate a hotel room — is to fig­ure out how to cope with the over-abun­dance of things to do: dozens of ASUG ses­sions, seem­ing­ly end­less SAP keynotes, and numer­ous work­shops and ven­dor booths to vis­it, all while bask­ing in that love­ly Flori­da-in-the-spring weather.

Ok, so we’re not there for the weather. 

We’re also not there just for what’s on the offi­cial agen­das, even though we told our boss­es that we need to get the lat­est infor­ma­tion about SAP Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Plat­form (BTP), RISE with SAP, GROW with SAP, the dif­fer­ence between SAP S/4HANA pub­lic edi­tion and pri­vate edi­tion, the lat­est in indus­try func­tion­al­i­ty, and where SAP is head­ing in crit­i­cal domains like cus­tomer and employ­ee expe­ri­ence, sup­ply chain, sus­tain­abil­i­ty, SAP Sig­navio, and SAP Busi­ness Net­works, among many others. 

Don’t get me wrong; all of that stuff is gen­uine­ly impor­tant, and atten­dees stand to gain a lot of valu­able knowl­edge from the offi­cial side of SAP Sap­phire & ASUG Annu­al Con­fer­ence Orlan­do. A ton of ASUG and SAP experts are there to make sure we know how to get the most out of our SAP invest­ments, and a well-planned cou­ple of days in Orlan­do can be a very cost-effec­tive invest­ment in your company’s success. 

But there’s anoth­er impor­tant rea­son to go, even if it’s one that’s hard to put into words while star­ing down a bud­get-con­scious super­vi­sor giv­ing your trav­el request a skep­ti­cal read. This oth­er rea­son is in some ways as valu­able as any­thing else SAP Sap­phire & ASUG Annu­al Con­fer­ence Orlan­do has to offer, even if doubt­ful boss­es and oth­ers don’t always see it that way. 

That oth­er rea­son can be summed up in one word: com­mu­ni­ty. And there promis­es to be a lot of com­mu­ni­ty in Orlan­do: fel­low ASUG mem­bers, peers from oth­er com­pa­nies with­in and out­side of your indus­try, old friends and new ones you’ve only ever met on a video call, and all man­ner of con­sul­tants, experts, part­ners, and SAP employ­ees whose expe­ri­ence and per­spec­tives can add sig­nif­i­cant val­ue to your time at SAP Sap­phire & ASUG Annu­al Con­fer­ence Orlando. 

The ASUG and SAP com­mu­ni­ty attend­ing these two con­fer­ences can pro­vide more than just fun­da­men­tal knowl­edge of how SAP tech­nol­o­gy, hope­ful­ly, deliv­ers val­ue. Even more impor­tant­ly, the com­mu­ni­ty brings along its vast trib­al knowl­edge about the things you won’t nec­es­sar­i­ly learn from a for­mal brief­ing or an exec­u­tive keynote: the per­son­al expe­ri­ences of peers and part­ners who’ve been labor­ing in the trench­es, try­ing to make good on the promis­es SAP makes from the keynote stage. 

SAP Sap­phire & ASUG Annu­al Con­fer­ence Orlan­do is, of course, the start­ing point for this com­mu­ni­ty engage­ment and for the knowl­edge trans­fer that can only come from look­ing behind the hype to see what actu­al­ly works and what doesn’t. The pre-con­fer­ence is a great way to get the ball rolling. The trick is to keep that knowl­edge trans­fer flow­ing once the offi­cial con­fer­ence gets underway. 

That’s why it’s so impor­tant to do more than just sit in a chair and lis­ten to what SAP wants you to hear. The real val­ue often comes into play when engag­ing with peers and experts out­side for­mal pre­sen­ta­tions. If you focus on active engage­ment and not just pas­sive obser­va­tion, your SAP com­mu­ni­ty is where you can find some­one who can help make good on all those lofty promis­es made from the keynote stage. 

Annu­al Con­fer­ence and Sap­phire are the per­fect places to find some­one with expe­ri­ence extend­ing a gen­er­al con­cept, such as SAP Inte­gra­tion Suite’s abil­i­ty to sup­port end-to-end process inte­gra­tion to meet the spe­cif­ic needs of a com­pa­ny like yours. It’s also a great place to find out what to do about those SAP BTP cred­its that came with the RISE with SAP con­tract you signed last year or how to fig­ure out what to do about cus­tomiza­tion you built into SAP ECC that could be the­o­ret­i­cal­ly replaced by a stan­dard process run­ning in SAP S/4HANA Pub­lic Cloud. Or how to opti­mize an SAP S/4HANA invest­ment even if your com­pa­ny also runs non-SAP soft­ware, such as Sales­force, Work­day, and Coupa. That’s not some­thing you can count on get­ting from SAP direct­ly. But chances are, some­one in the com­mu­ni­ty can help. 

SAP part­ners, par­tic­u­lar­ly the small­er ISV and imple­men­ta­tion part­ners, can also be an essen­tial com­mu­ni­ty resource, even if they’re not always seen in that light. The best of them excel at sup­port­ing the com­plex­i­ty that results from real-world prob­lems, such as when a cus­tomer needs a unique busi­ness process or help to fix a prob­lem that doesn’t fit neat­ly into the offi­cial sce­nario about how things are sup­posed to work. Many part­ners are run by ex-cus­tomers, for­mer SAP men­tors, and oth­er com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers who’ve actu­al­ly walked the walk and aren’t just there to land a deal. 

It’s my view that SAP has strug­gled to main­tain its com­mu­ni­ty of late, which is anoth­er rea­son why ASUG is so impor­tant to all SAP cus­tomers. Com­mu­ni­ty engage­ment is an impor­tant source of infor­ma­tion that can real­ly make a dif­fer­ence in decid­ing your suc­cess, and the lev­el of engage­ment that yields the best results is the kind that does not just take place online. Engage­ment must also occur over cof­fee, drinks, din­ner, in the wait­ing line, or while min­gling on the show floor kick­ing tires. More often than not, these ad hoc con­ver­sa­tions turn out to be the most valu­able of all. 

Joshua Green­baum is Prin­ci­pal at Enter­prise Appli­ca­tions Consulting.