This past week, I trav­eled to Hous­ton to attend the ASUG Best Prac­tices: SAP for Chem­i­cals con­fer­ence, mark­ing the first time this indus­try has come togeth­er in per­son since 2019. It was won­der­ful to wit­ness first­hand the re-con­nec­tion between long-time col­leagues and new mem­bers join­ing us for the first time. 

Held at The Wood­lands Water­way Mar­riott Hotel & Con­ven­tion Cen­ter, the two-day event saw mem­bers of our ASUG com­mu­ni­ty con­vene to address the mul­ti­plic­i­ty of busi­ness chal­lenges faced by today’s chem­i­cal indus­try cus­tomers. From eco­nom­ic head­winds to man­u­fac­tur­ing process com­plex­i­ties, sup­ply chain dis­rup­tions and an increas­ing focus on sus­tain­able busi­ness prac­tices, such sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges present key oppor­tu­ni­ties for chem­i­cal com­pa­nies to mod­ern­ize, build­ing resilien­cy into the core of their oper­a­tions to sus­tain the growth and rev­enue their busi­ness­es require.

Serv­ing as our event emcee, Matt Rey­mann, SAP’s Glob­al VP for Chem­i­cals, set the stage for explo­ration and con­ver­sa­tion around the top­ic of the ​“resilient” chem­i­cal enter­prise, encour­ag­ing each of the atten­dees to find at least three new learn­ings they could take back from the con­fer­ence and use in their organizations. 

As atten­dees chose between ses­sions on SAP S/4HANA adop­tion, lever­ag­ing the SAP Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Plat­form, and explor­ing future tech­nolo­gies, SAP exec­u­tives, cus­tomers, and part­ners teamed up to pro­vide valu­able insights into automa­tion and inno­va­tion chal­lenges. The ses­sions I attend­ed were high­ly engag­ing and inter­ac­tive, with audi­ence mem­bers ask­ing ques­tions through­out and com­par­ing notes with the pre­sen­ters and one anoth­er. Net­work­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties encour­aged con­tin­ued peer-to-peer con­nec­tions with live­ly and wide-rang­ing discussions. 

ASUG mem­bers tell us that the most valu­able con­tent we pro­vide comes from ASUG mem­bers shar­ing their in-depth sto­ries and expe­ri­ences. One of the stand­out ses­sions I saw was pre­sent­ed by Gary Pehrson, Reg­u­la­to­ry Com­pli­ance Man­ag­er at Tokyo Chem­i­cal Indus­try (TCI), focus­ing on the company’s tran­si­tion from ECC to SAP S/4HANA.

Gary nar­rat­ed his company’s jour­ney, from its ini­tial goals for the project to its out­comes, shar­ing what went accord­ing to plan and where TCI changed course based on lessons learned along the way. I heard one attendee com­ment that he had gained more insights from an hour at Gary’s ses­sion than he had from weeks of try­ing to inde­pen­dent­ly seek out thought lead­er­ship on how to work his way through sim­i­lar issues at his company. 

Much like anoth­er con­ver­sa­tion by indus­try expert Vikas Mal­ho­tra on the IT sim­pli­fi­ca­tion jour­ney for a large chem­i­cal com­pa­ny, this TCI ses­sion was a rich source of action­able infor­ma­tion and pro­vid­ed advice on how to nav­i­gate what hap­pens next, after ​“It sound­ed good on paper…”

Else­where, an ASUG Women Con­nect pan­el on diver­si­ty, equi­ty, and inclu­sion (DEI) gave the spot­light to speak­ers Sheree Fields, Senior Direc­tor of Infor­ma­tion Tech­nolo­gies at Ascend Per­for­mance Mate­ri­als LLC; Alli­son Mar­tinez, SVP of Busi­ness Trans­for­ma­tion and CIO at Chevron Phillips Chem­i­cal; and Kathy Van­Lan­dring­ham, CIO at Lyon­dell­Basell. These pan­elists opened win­dows of vis­i­bil­i­ty into how their orga­ni­za­tions are work­ing to advance DEI, from estab­lish­ing clar­i­ty in def­i­n­i­tions and goals for diver­si­ty to cre­at­ing and sup­port­ing Employ­ee Resource Groups, revamp­ing recruit­ing and selec­tion process­es to include diverse selec­tion pan­els, and facil­i­tat­ing uncon­scious bias training. 

Atten­dees then offered top­ics of inter­est and pledged their per­son­al involve­ment in build­ing future con­tent for the Women Con­nect series. To see this lev­el of invest­ment was noth­ing short of awe-inspir­ing. That the ASUG com­mu­ni­ty is will­ing to make such a com­mit­ment to them­selves and each oth­er, to build their col­lec­tive lead­er­ship capac­i­ty and strength­en their teams, is an invalu­able demon­stra­tion of our organization’s promise: to help our mem­bers grow, both indi­vid­u­al­ly and with their teams.

Sus­tain­abil­i­ty was top of mind for many atten­dees, and the conference’s sec­ond day opened with a fas­ci­nat­ing pan­el dis­cus­sion about how this top­ic of inter­est impacts sup­ply chains. 

Facil­i­tat­ed by Alex Pier­rout­sakos, Indus­try Exec­u­tive Advi­sor for Chem­i­cals at SAP, the pan­el fea­tured Dar­cy Mac­Claren, Chief Rev­enue Offi­cer for Dig­i­tal Sup­ply Chain at SAP North Amer­i­ca; Vikas Dhand, Sup­ply Chain and Smart Man­u­fac­tur­ing Leader at Deloitte; and David Kobe, Senior Direc­tor of Glob­al Logis­tics and Trade Com­pli­ance at Albe­mar­le. This made for quite the star-stud­ded line­up of inno­va­tion lead­ers, not least because Albe­mar­le was recent­ly named to TIME’s list of the Time100 Most Influ­en­tial Com­pa­nies, in recog­ni­tion of the extra­or­di­nary impact of its work bring­ing nat­ur­al resources like lithi­um and bromine to market. 

Dis­rup­tion is a strate­gic busi­ness dri­ver and a con­stant in the chem­i­cal indus­try, requir­ing resilien­cy and sus­tain­abil­i­ty to be fac­tored into sup­ply chains, where approx­i­mate­ly 72% of a company’s car­bon foot­print can be found. Offer­ing wis­doms on how and where to get start­ed, and encour­ag­ing bench­mark­ing across var­i­ous indus­tries to see mod­els of inno­va­tion at work, the pan­el dis­cussed automotive’s com­pet­i­tive col­lab­o­ra­tion in sup­ply chains, con­sumer pack­aged goods’ demand plan­ning and use of arti­fi­cial intelligence/​machine learn­ing and employ­ee adop­tion, life sci­ences’ move of its high-tech man­u­fac­tur­ing on-shore, and the cir­cu­lar econ­o­my mod­el that elec­tric vehi­cles are help­ing to bring about. 

This con­fer­ence brought togeth­er indus­try pro­fes­sion­als who want­ed to learn, explore, chal­lenge, and accel­er­ate their suc­cess­es. It was a plea­sure to watch as ASUG Best Prac­tices: SAP for Chem­i­cals cre­at­ed an envi­ron­ment in which they could meet oth­er pro­fes­sion­als on a sim­i­lar jour­ney. We are proud to be of ser­vice in cre­at­ing that space and empow­er­ing our mem­bers on their growth and inno­va­tion journeys.

Car­olyn Dolezal is ASUG’s Chief Oper­at­ing Officer.