Last week, I trav­eled to Texas to attend the annu­al ASUG Best Prac­tices: SAP for Oil, Gas & Ener­gy con­fer­ence. It was the first time I had attend­ed this con­fer­ence since join­ing ASUG last year as its Chief Oper­at­ing Offi­cer, and I’d been told in advance to expect a live­ly, engaged, and par­tic­u­lar­ly high-ener­gy group — no pun intended.

Held at the Hyatt Regency Dal­las from Sep­tem­ber 13 — 15, the event brought mem­bers of the ASUG com­mu­ni­ty togeth­er in per­son to learn, con­nect, and grow through dis­cussing the future of ener­gy and address­ing busi­ness chal­lenges faced by today’s oil, gas, and ener­gy indus­try cus­tomers, from dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion to data ana­lyt­ics and sustainability. 

Such chal­lenges present valu­able oppor­tu­ni­ties for oil, gas, and ener­gy com­pa­nies to mod­ern­ize, build­ing resilien­cy and flex­i­bil­i­ty into the core of their oper­a­tions to sus­tain the growth and rev­enue their busi­ness­es require. ​“This is an indus­try under­go­ing pro­found change,” one attendee told me of their rea­sons for attend­ing. ​“This is a great way for us to keep pace and get ahead.”

One of the dis­tin­guish­ing char­ac­ter­is­tics of an ASUG event is its open-forum struc­ture for fos­ter­ing mean­ing­ful con­nec­tions, in addi­tion to the pres­ence of edu­ca­tion­al con­tent in its array of keynote and ses­sion speak­ers. To wel­come atten­dees and get con­ver­sa­tions flow­ing, ASUG mem­bers assem­bled on Wednes­day night for speed net­work­ing and a ​‘Cheers with Peers’ hap­py hour — a fun and casu­al way to warm up for all the insights to come, giv­ing atten­dees a chance to meet one anoth­er and in many cas­es reconnect.

ASUG Women Connect

I start­ed my Thurs­day by attend­ing the ASUG Women Con­nect break­fast, spon­sored by PwC and reli­ably an excel­lent way to inter­act with cur­rent and future indus­try lead­ers. A pan­el dis­cus­sion held at this break­fast was an ear­ly con­fer­ence high­light, fea­tur­ing Susan Cat­toz­zo, Oil and Gas Advi­so­ry Prin­ci­pal at Deloitte; Alyson Pre­ston, Man­aged Ser­vices Man­ag­ing Direc­tor at PwC; Lori Ehardt, Con­troller at Con­ti­nen­tal Resources; and Kel­ly Smith, Vice Pres­i­dent of Sales at SAP, in a dis­cus­sion mod­er­at­ed by Indrayani Par­sod­kar, Senior Man­ag­er (Cyber, Risk, & Reg) at PwC. 

Dis­cussing a vari­ety of lead­er­ship top­ics, from insights on embrac­ing rapid change to tech­nolo­gies trans­form­ing the indus­try, pan­elists also spoke more per­son­al­ly about treat­ing inten­tion­al net­work­ing as a pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment activ­i­ty and lead­ing teams by exam­ple in both man­ag­ing hybrid ways of work­ing and estab­lish­ing macro- and micro bound­aries for a healthy work/​life bal­ance. ASUG will con­tin­ue such crit­i­cal dis­cus­sions year-round.

The Future of Energy

Dur­ing a Thurs­day keynote pan­el dis­cus­sion on the future of ener­gy, atten­dees at the con­fer­ence were intro­duced to Stephane Lau­zon, new­ly installed as Head of Oil, Gas, and Ener­gy for SAP. Lau­zon facil­i­tat­ed a stim­u­lat­ing, wide-reach­ing con­ver­sa­tion on the industry’s key role in the glob­al push for ener­gy secu­ri­ty and car­bon reduc­tion; on stage, he was joined by indus­try lead­ers includ­ing Stephan Klein, SVP, Glob­al Head of Ser­vices for the Ener­gy and Nat­ur­al Resources Indus­tries at SAP; John Down­ie, Senior Man­ag­ing Direc­tor at Accen­ture; and Rodri­go Gon­za­lez, Man­ag­er of Dig­i­tal IT Cor­po­rate Busi­ness Solu­tions at Phillips 66. 

As the pan­elists reflect­ed on their com­pa­nies’ ongo­ing tech­nol­o­gy jour­neys and their per­spec­tives on the future of ener­gy, all agreed that the world needs reli­able, avail­able ener­gy sources. Giv­en this, they asked, how should we eval­u­ate our busi­ness­es and make deci­sions about where to invest in exist­ing and renew­able ener­gy sources for the future? For lead­ers in com­pa­nies’ IT orga­ni­za­tions, espe­cial­ly, anoth­er ques­tion emerged: How should busi­ness­es assess the near-term and long-term ben­e­fits of sig­nif­i­cant com­pet­ing priorities?

Also in focus was the val­ue of enter­prise oper­a­tions, and the crit­i­cal need to bring all their capa­bil­i­ties togeth­er with inte­grat­ed val­ue chains. Final­ly, the pan­elists dis­cussed the impor­tance of giv­ing end users the abil­i­ty to look across an enterprise’s data in one view, with the help of enter­prise resource plan­ning (ERP) plat­forms. Pro­vid­ing that wide-scale vis­i­bil­i­ty to busi­ness lead­ers and users alike, the pan­elists agreed, enables the kind of empow­ered big-pic­ture deci­sion-mak­ing that can dri­ve sus­tain­abil­i­ty and prof­itabil­i­ty side-by-side, from improv­ing oper­a­tional effi­cien­cies and reduc­ing over­all costs to unlock­ing pre­vi­ous­ly unfore­seen rev­enue streams. 

Unleash­ing Trans­for­ma­tive Potential

Fol­low­ing the keynote, con­fer­ence atten­dees self-select­ed ses­sions on hot top­ics such as sim­pli­fy­ing the com­plex­i­ty of busi­ness oper­a­tions, build­ing data-dri­ven orga­ni­za­tions, and opti­miz­ing pur­chas­ing process­es. SAP exec­u­tives and ASUG mem­bers aligned to present part­ner per­spec­tives and cus­tomer sto­ries, both of which offered insights into automa­tion and inno­va­tion chal­lenges. In small­er ses­sions through­out the con­fer­ence, par­tic­i­pants had a chance to hear about chal­lenges encoun­tered and solu­tions adopt­ed by var­i­ous indus­try lead­ers, to ask ques­tions, and to learn from each other’s experiences. 

One stand­out ses­sion, from my per­spec­tive, was Mus­tang Fuel Corporation’s ​“The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly: A User’s Expe­ri­ence with SAP Soft­ware.” With an evoca­tive lead-in title such as that, I knew imme­di­ate­ly that we were in for an infor­ma­tive ses­sion with some humor sprin­kled in — and Mustang’s team deliv­ered the goods. 

As Kyle Hobbs, Con­troller, and Jim­my Num­my, Assis­tant Con­troller, dis­cussed their organization’s cloud migra­tion jour­ney from SAP ERP Cen­tral Com­po­nent (SAP ECC) to SAP S/4HANA, zero­ing in on the chal­lenge of learn­ing how to uti­lize age-old instances and new imple­men­ta­tions most effi­cient­ly, both of the speak­ers illu­mi­nat­ed the van­tage point of the busi­ness user. In doing so, Num­my and Hobbs cre­at­ed space for the open exchange of ideas between them­selves and the audi­ence. Such a dia­logue is exact­ly the type of explo­ration that ASUG exists to enable, in which every­one learns from every­one else. (You can read more about Mus­tang Fuel’s jour­ney in our exclu­sive ASUG News + Views inter­view with Hobbs and Num­my.)

Ener­gy tran­si­tion was top of mind for many atten­dees, and the conference’s sec­ond day allowed them to dive in, engag­ing with peers and gain­ing insights into the crit­i­cal role that sus­tain­abil­i­ty has to play, from sup­ply chain to man­u­fac­tur­ing, in unleash­ing the trans­for­ma­tive poten­tial of today’s ener­gy indus­tries. Amber Krummes, ERP Prod­uct Man­ag­er for Chevron, dis­cussed Chevron’s recent go-live imple­ment­ing a fit-to-stan­dard, enter­prise SAP S/4HANA solu­tion called Dig­i­tal Core, touch­ing upon all the effi­cien­cies unlocked for end-user teams as well as lessons learned for future releases. 

Else­where, atten­dees heard from Anitha Swami­nathan, Super­vi­sor of SAP Report­ing & Ana­lyt­ics at Pem­bi­na, on how the ener­gy trans­porta­tion and mid­stream ser­vice provider lever­aged SAP BW/4HANA and SAP Ana­lyt­ics Cloud to uni­fy data across its oper­a­tions. This ini­tia­tive empow­ered end users at Pem­bi­na by estab­lish­ing a com­mon and acces­si­ble busi­ness plat­form, one that can pro­vide enter­prise-wide report­ing and enable self-ser­vice capa­bil­i­ties. With this focus on dri­ving val­ue to end users, Pem­bi­na is break­ing down silos and becom­ing a more intel­li­gent, data-lit­er­ate orga­ni­za­tion. (You can read more in our inter­view with Swami­nathan.)

ASUG’s mis­sion is to help peo­ple and orga­ni­za­tions get the most from their exist­ing and future invest­ments in SAP tech­nol­o­gy. I can­not wait to see how such con­ver­sa­tions as the ones I wit­nessed in Dal­las will con­tin­ue to evolve across these dynam­ic, vital indus­tries, as we come togeth­er and emerge bet­ter-equipped to tack­le fast-evolv­ing tech­no­log­i­cal challenges.

ASUG Best Prac­tices: SAP for Oil, Gas, & Ener­gy pro­vid­ed just one oppor­tu­ni­ty to engage with the greater SAP user com­mu­ni­ty and to gain a deep­er under­stand­ing of indus­try best prac­tices, cus­tomer suc­cess sto­ries, and lessons learned. ASUG pledges to sup­port such dis­cus­sions year-round, to empow­er our mem­bers through­out their growth and inno­va­tion journeys.

Car­olyn Dolezal is ASUG’s Chief Oper­at­ing Officer.