Next month’s 2023 ASUG Best Prac­tices: SAP S/4HANA and SAP Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Plat­form (BTP) Conference will offer atten­dees valu­able oppor­tu­ni­ties to exchange best prac­tices and lessons learned with oth­er cus­tomers, part­ners, and SAP representatives.

Peter Keller, SAP Enter­prise Archi­tect (EA) at SAP, believes that one of the most impor­tant func­tions of the upcom­ing in-per­son event (March 7 – 9 at the Renais­sance Phoenix Glen­dale Hotel & Spa in Glen­dale, AZ) is to pro­vide a shared space for net­work­ing and dis­cus­sion in round­table environments. 

That’s the think­ing behind the two Pow­er Peer Groups he’ll co-mod­er­ate, titled ​“Adop­tion of SAP S/4HANA and SAP Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Plat­form — Best Prac­tices and Lessons Learned” and ​“Enter­prise Archi­tec­ture & Adopt­ing SAP S/4HANA and SAP Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Platform.” 

At the for­mer ses­sion, Todd Lutz, Man­ag­er Glob­al SAP Basis at Goodyear Tire, will join Keller to dis­cuss what accel­er­a­tors can help in the prepa­ra­tion and plan­ning for the adop­tion of SAP S/4HANA and SAP BTP while lead­ing a dis­cus­sion with atten­dees about their expe­ri­ences around SAP S/4HANA migrations. 

At the lat­ter ses­sion, Syl­vain Gar­neau, EA for Res­olute For­est Prod­ucts at SAP, will join Keller to dis­cuss the roles that Enter­prise Archi­tec­ture prac­tices can play in the plan­ning and exe­cu­tion of trans­for­ma­tion activ­i­ties on the way to SAP S/4HANA and SAP BTP migra­tions, involv­ing atten­dees direct­ly in the conversation.

“These are hon­est­ly my favorite ses­sions of the con­fer­ence,” said Keller. ​“It’s not just us stand­ing up front and telling you some­thing. It’s more engaging.” 

Design Think­ing

In cre­at­ing a space for dis­cussing best prac­tices and lessons learned, Keller, Lutz, and Gar­neau will each lead by exam­ple in shar­ing their sto­ries with atten­dees, then head­ing up ​“design think­ing-style” brain­storm­ing activ­i­ties to bet­ter under­stand busi­ness ben­e­fits, prepa­ra­tion pro­ce­dures, and chal­lenges around adop­tion that cus­tomers are facing. 

Lutz will touch upon Goodyear’s cur­rent SAP S/4HANA projects and issues he’s expe­ri­enced in gain­ing busi­ness buy-in, get­ting trac­tion in resource cost approvals, and imple­ment­ing fur­ther SAP S/4HANA migra­tions. A vet­er­an of SAP tech­nol­o­gy who’s worked on SAP basis and data­base admin­is­tra­tion since the ear­ly ​’90s, Lutz will speak to the chal­lenges of com­bin­ing or con­sol­i­dat­ing lega­cy sys­tems amid the increased capa­bil­i­ties of sys­tems like SAP S/4HANA, espe­cial­ly with­in large com­pa­nies that must decide between inte­gra­tion, migra­tion, and sep­a­ra­tion amid tech­nol­o­gy merg­er acquisition. 

“Gain­ing col­lec­tive thought from oth­er busi­ness­es is very valu­able,” said Lutz, remark­ing on past pos­i­tive expe­ri­ences at such ses­sions. ​“Oth­er peo­ple were hear­ing what we were doing. They had oth­er per­spec­tives and strate­gies, and that helped to guide us in terms of think­ing about things dif­fer­ent­ly. And we were look­ing at what they were doing and say­ing, ​‘That’s a good idea. Maybe we should be doing that.’”

Gar­neau will dis­cuss his work as EA for Res­olute For­est Prod­ucts amid its acqui­si­tion by The Paper Excel­lence Group, build­ing the prac­tice and align­ing enter­prise and IT strategies. 

“Find­ing a com­mon lan­guage” between the busi­ness and IT sides of his busi­ness has been a sig­nif­i­cant focus for Gar­neau. He plans to ask atten­dees about their own EA prac­tices and chal­lenges, as well as how they’ve man­aged their day-to-day oper­a­tions amid new tech­nol­o­gy on the mar­ket, the chal­lenges of ori­ent­ing busi­ness­es around either pur­su­ing cloud-first trans­for­ma­tion or imple­ment­ing on-premis­es soft­ware, and the impor­tance of con­sid­er­ing full inte­gra­tion of all its solu­tions on BTP. 

“It’s not true that all com­pa­nies have 100% of their land­scapes on SAP,” shared Gar­neau. ​“Com­pa­nies like mine have many lega­cy sys­tems in place, have per­haps one SAP instance or one S/4 instance, and so one has to ask: How can we dri­ve the over­all soft­ware port­fo­lio of an enterprise?”