When Corn­ing Incor­po­rat­ed began to archi­tect its SAP BTP plat­form, the com­pa­ny need­ed to align stake­hold­ers, archi­tects, devel­op­ers, and future end-users to ensure a suc­cess­ful implementation.

As an influ­en­tial IT Solu­tions Archi­tect at Corn­ing, Tom Gee was asked to cham­pi­on the plat­form as Prod­uct Own­er and Domain Archi­tect. He began by intro­duc­ing the plat­form inter­nal­ly, inform­ing small teams about the com­pa­ny’s intend­ed uses for SAP Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Plat­form. Giv­en their pri­or imple­men­ta­tion of sim­i­lar tech­nolo­gies, it was impor­tant for Corn­ing to fol­low a ​“crawl, walk, run” approach and under­stand the use cas­es enabled by SAP BTP, as well as the val­ue it could enable, espe­cial­ly when under­tak­ing ERP transformation.

“Ini­tial­ly, my goal was to estab­lish a ​‘Com­mu­ni­ty of Prac­tice’ for Solu­tion Archi­tects, allow­ing us to dis­cuss the tech­ni­cal needs from our var­i­ous lines of busi­ness, under­stand their require­ments for suc­cess, and encour­age col­lab­o­ra­tion to cre­ate reusable solu­tions in BTP,” Gee explained in a recent inter­view with ASUG.

To accom­plish this, Gee estab­lished Corning’s ​“BTP Cen­ter for Enable­ment,” or ​“C4E,” ini­tial­ly tar­get­ing five senior SAP Solu­tion Archi­tects at the orga­ni­za­tion. He believed that enlist­ing rep­utable indi­vid­u­als, who had devel­oped exist­ing SAP solu­tions with­in Corn­ing for decades, to com­mu­ni­cate the impor­tance of the plat­form would be more per­sua­sive than his own asser­tions. The ini­tia­tive start­ed with month­ly C4E ses­sions but has since expand­ed in scale and scope, gain­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty across the organization.

C4E In Action

Gee’s ini­tial ses­sions focused pri­mar­i­ly on infor­ma­tion shar­ing and col­lab­o­ra­tion, encour­ag­ing dis­cus­sions around BTP and iden­ti­fy­ing com­mon inter­ests and needs across the busi­ness. These ses­sions helped teams iden­ti­fy the required ser­vices and build the nec­es­sary skills to con­fig­ure and suc­cess­ful­ly adopt the platform.

The scope of these ses­sions soon expand­ed to include top­ics on appli­ca­tion devel­op­ment and inte­gra­tion as well as defin­ing and social­iz­ing the roles and respon­si­bil­i­ties for BTP as a plat­form. Each C4E ses­sion lasts one hour, with addi­tion­al fol­low-up ses­sions sched­uled as need­ed. What began as a month­ly meet­ing has now evolved into var­i­ous types of C4E ses­sions and meet­ings held at least three times per month.

As the plat­form gained trac­tion through word of mouth, inter­nal teams expressed sig­nif­i­cant inter­est in using SAP BTP. This method has proven effec­tive, with the C4E group grow­ing to become a com­plete­ly cross-func­tion­al ​“BTP Com­mu­ni­ty” of over 160 participants.

To keep every­one updat­ed and aligned, Gee re-hosts gen­er­al BTP overview ses­sions and pro­vides a ded­i­cat­ed ses­sion each month to share all upcom­ing BTP-relat­ed train­ing ses­sions and work­shops for that month. This recur­ring ses­sion also pro­vides a com­mon set­ting to pro­vide plat­form updates and announce project sta­tus­es, new projects, and addi­tion­al areas of inter­est. All C4E ses­sions are record­ed and shared so that employ­ees can revis­it them at any time or if they have sched­ul­ing conflicts. 

“In cor­po­rate life, we expect that not every­one will be able to join every ses­sion,” he not­ed, adding that he typ­i­cal­ly prefers record­ed ses­sions as they can be watched at an accel­er­at­ed play­back speed to opti­mize his time.

Struc­tur­ing The Team

Gee orga­nized his BTP Cen­ter for Enable­ment (C4E) using Microsoft Teams, which pro­vides a sin­gle loca­tion for cen­tral­ized file access and com­mu­ni­ca­tion regard­ing ​“all things BTP.” He chose Teams due to Corning’s exist­ing use of Microsoft prod­ucts and its robust and well-inte­grat­ed capa­bil­i­ties for such com­mu­ni­ca­tion and collaboration.

Anoth­er advan­tage of Microsoft Teams is the auto­mat­ic cre­ation of a back­end Share­Point Online site for C4E-relat­ed file stor­age, includ­ing ver­sion con­trol, elim­i­nat­ing addi­tion­al con­fig­u­ra­tion or infra­struc­ture needs. With­in Teams, Gee defined sim­ple and intu­itive nav­i­ga­tion and nam­ing struc­tures for con­tent, includ­ing direc­to­ries named Active Projects, Meet­ing Record­ings, Imple­men­ta­tions, Roles and Respon­si­bil­i­ties, Ref­er­ence Archi­tec­tures, and Roadmap. MS Teams also dynam­i­cal­ly gen­er­ates an email dis­tri­b­u­tion list of C4E group mem­bers, which is used for future meet­ing invitations.

On Teams, Gee also open­ly shares ASUG and SAP webi­na­rs, resources, local chap­ter events, and upcom­ing work­shops cen­tral­ly, most of which are includ­ed in mem­ber­ships that Corn­ing holds and help work­ers upskill and grow their knowl­edge on BTP. Fre­quent­ing events such as last year’s ASUG Tech Con­nect, where Gee spoke about Corning’s C4E, he also brings back valu­able insights to Corn­ing and encour­ages oth­ers from his orga­ni­za­tion to do the same any time they attend a tech­nol­o­gy com­mu­ni­ty event.

Gee also engages with dif­fer­ent busi­ness lines indi­vid­u­al­ly across the cor­po­ra­tion to pro­vide BTP overviews and iden­ti­fy how SAP BTP can assist in var­i­ous capac­i­ties, thus gain­ing orga­ni­za­tion­al buy-in and dis­sem­i­nat­ing infor­ma­tion effec­tive­ly. Under­stand­ing the val­ue-dri­vers for each busi­ness helps to iden­ti­fy addi­tion­al use cas­es for BTP and sup­port ongo­ing POC efforts.

Expert Advice

Gee has advice to offer based on his expe­ri­ence lead­ing the C4E. As a ​“team of one” spear­head­ing this ini­tia­tive, he lever­ages sup­port from Corn­ing’s BTP Cus­tomer Suc­cess Part­ner (CSP) at SAP, who helps him to bet­ter under­stand SAP BTP and share knowl­edge with­in Corning’s BTP C4E com­mu­ni­ty effec­tive­ly. Corning’s BTP CSP helps coor­di­nate experts to host C4E ses­sions ded­i­cat­ed to spe­cif­ic top­ics of inter­est with­in Corn­ing. This pro­motes curios­i­ty as well as allow­ing for the eval­u­a­tion of addi­tion­al sce­nar­ios where BTP would pro­vide val­ue to the organization.

Gee also stress­es the impor­tance of cre­at­ing qual­i­ty pre­sen­ta­tions that can be ref­er­enced and reused again and again. As the C4E expands, he con­tin­ues to main­tain con­sis­tent brand­ing on slides and pub­li­ca­tions with inter­nal­ly rec­og­niz­able SAP BTP logos, ensur­ing a cohe­sive experience.

Addi­tion­al­ly, he ded­i­cates time each week to main­tain an ​“intake” process that records who request­ed which ser­vices, who reviewed the request, who approved it, and any secu­ri­ty con­cerns that arose. This for­mal sys­tem ensures that all find­ings from the dis­cov­ery and onboard­ing process are doc­u­ment­ed and retriev­able in the future, pre­vent­ing any infor­ma­tion from being lost once imple­men­ta­tion occurs.

Next Steps

Corn­ing is still pro­gress­ing with imple­ment­ing SAP BTP ser­vices and enhanc­ing the inter­nal team’s knowl­edge and skills. Gee has iden­ti­fied key BTP ser­vices of inter­est; he also cre­at­ed and man­ages Corning’s SAP BTP Cen­ter of Excel­lence (CoE), com­prised of mem­bers from each core SAP func­tion, includ­ing IT HR, Sup­ply Chain (ECC + S/4), MDG, IT Finance, Cor­po­rate Com­pli­ance, IT Infor­ma­tion Secu­ri­ty, and more. The BTP CoE acts as a gov­er­nance team and over­sees new use cas­es, POC efforts, and estab­lish­es SAP BTP usage best prac­tices. Although CoE meet­ings are less fre­quent than C4E ses­sions, they still con­vene month­ly to ensure alignment.

For the larg­er C4E group, Gee even­tu­al­ly aims to host week­ly con­sult­ing hours to address any road­blocks or ques­tions from teams who are in the process of build­ing solu­tions with­in BTP. He also plans to pro­vide more hands-on train­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties for Corning’s tech­ni­cal teams. 

For instance, a high­ly suc­cess­ful one-day work­shop held in Char­lotte, North Car­oli­na, saw par­tic­i­pa­tion from 30 Corn­ing staff and 5 SAP experts, dis­cussing poten­tial BTP use cas­es and work­ing on solu­tion designs. Based on the pos­i­tive feed­back from that ses­sion, there is strong demand for sim­i­lar train­ing ses­sions in the future, with more time ded­i­cat­ed for hands-on solu­tion building.

As Corn­ing adopts and inte­grates addi­tion­al ser­vices into its SAP BTP land­scape, Gee and the BTP CoE will con­tin­ue defin­ing plat­form best prac­tices and ensure that all stan­dards are open­ly com­mu­ni­cat­ed to mem­bers of the BTP Cen­ter for Enable­ment (C4E). 

Con­tin­u­ous and con­sis­tent social­iza­tion and engage­ment with the C4E has result­ed in pow­er­ful momen­tum with­in Corn­ing, as well as a shared desire to learn more about the SAP Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Plat­form. This momen­tum is expect­ed to con­tin­ue, as more and more users con­tin­ue to join the C4E and bring addi­tion­al val­ue-dri­ving use cas­es to the team.