It’s a peri­od of rapid change and inno­va­tion in the SAP ecosys­tem, with cus­tomers eval­u­at­ing poten­tial adop­tion of cloud ERP, SAP S/4HANA, and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly focus­ing on max­i­miz­ing their exist­ing invest­ments in SAP technology. 

This is espe­cial­ly true in the ASUG com­mu­ni­ty, where mem­bers are addi­tion­al­ly focused on inte­gra­tion, sus­tain­abil­i­ty, and automa­tion with­in their tech­nol­o­gy land­scapes. One of the biggest take­aways from the recent SAP Sap­phire and ASUG Annu­al Con­fer­ence in Orlan­do was how many announce­ments close­ly aligned with top­ics crit­i­cal to ASUG mem­bers. With that in mind, here is a quick break­down of key announce­ments for the ASUG community. 

Cloud ERP and Inte­gra­tion Strat­e­gy:

2024 ASUG Pulse of the SAP Cus­tomer Research indi­cat­ed that mov­ing to SAP S/4HANA is the top focus area for ASUG mem­bers, with 48% call­ing it the ​“most impor­tant” focus for their orga­ni­za­tions this year. The results also showed that inte­gra­tion is a lead­ing chal­lenge for 34% of respondents. 

See­ing as how these pri­or­i­ties align with SAP’s strat­e­gy to help tran­si­tion cus­tomers from on-premis­es ERP envi­ron­ments to the cloud, it’s no sur­prise that major announce­ments at SAP Sap­phire & ASUG Annu­al Con­fer­ence Orlan­do includ­ed sig­nif­i­cant advance­ments and sup­port for cloud ERP migra­tion and inte­gra­tion ini­tia­tives, including:

• Expan­sion of the SAP Busi­ness Trans­for­ma­tion Cen­ter – SAP unveiled new sce­nar­ios for tran­si­tion­ing from SAP ERP Cen­tral Com­po­nent (ECC) to SAP S/4HANA Cloud Pri­vate Edi­tion. Tra­di­tion­al­ly, cus­tomers mak­ing this jump could choose between deploy­ing a brand-new solu­tion or doing a sys­tem con­ver­sion. Mov­ing for­ward, cus­tomers can choose a ​“lean selec­tive data tran­si­tion sce­nario,” which will help elim­i­nate extra­ne­ous cus­tom code and enable cus­tomers to adopt a clean data foun­da­tion. In a release, SAP said these sce­nar­ios will help cus­tomers ​“extract, trans­form, and load rel­e­vant data; and val­i­date data for com­plete­ness, con­sis­ten­cy and correctness.”
• New SAP S/4HANA Cloud Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion – Avail­able now on the SAP Learn­ing Hub, this new cer­ti­fi­ca­tion ensures IT pro­fes­sion­als ​“pos­sess the core skills required to explain and exe­cute core imple­men­ta­tion tasks.” Spe­cif­ic skills cov­ered in the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion include ​“deploy­ing, adopt­ing, and extend­ing SAP S/4HANA Cloud Pub­lic Edition.”
• SAP Inte­gra­tion Suite Anom­aly Detec­tion – Fueled by machine-learn­ing capa­bil­i­ties, SAP Inte­gra­tion Suite now pos­sess­es appli­ca­tion pro­gram­ming inter­face (API) anom­aly detec­tion capa­bil­i­ties to iden­ti­fy API call surges and drops easily. 

AI Inno­va­tions:

Gen­er­a­tive AI took cen­ter stage at the con­fer­ence, play­ing a crit­i­cal role in both exec­u­tive keynote address­es. Dur­ing his keynote, Chris­t­ian Klein, SAP CEO and Mem­ber of the Exec­u­tive Board of SAP SE, declared, ​“We are enter­ing a new phase of AI, with end­less pos­si­bil­i­ties for all.” 

The announce­ments about AI inno­va­tions, prod­ucts, and strate­gic part­ner­ships clear­ly show­cased SAP’s ded­i­ca­tion to push­ing these tech­nolo­gies for­ward. Over one-third (38%) of ASUG mem­bers iden­ti­fied AI as impact­ful for their dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion ini­tia­tives this year; this fig­ure marked an increase from just 23% in 2023, indi­cat­ing the grow­ing impor­tance of AI to the ASUG community. 

AI-spe­cif­ic announce­ments from the con­fer­ence included:

• Ongo­ing inte­gra­tion of Joule, SAP’s gen­er­a­tive AI copi­lot, across the SAP enter­prise port­fo­lio, includ­ing SAP Ari­ba and SAP Ana­lyt­ics Cloud lat­er in 2024. 
• New con­sult­ing capa­bil­i­ties with­in Joule, crit­i­cal for cus­tomers tran­si­tion­ing to SAP S/4HANA Cloud as part of the RISE with SAP program. 
• Addi­tion­al embed­ded AI capa­bil­i­ties through busi­ness appli­ca­tions for CX, ERP and finance, HR, pro­cure­ment, and more.

Sus­tain­abil­i­ty:

Sus­tain­abil­i­ty also emerged as a key top­ic at the event, reflect­ing yet anoth­er crit­i­cal area for ASUG mem­bers, as revealed by our inau­gur­al ASUG and SAP Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Research Study. The chal­lenges and oppor­tu­ni­ties asso­ci­at­ed with this top­ic are becom­ing increas­ing­ly impor­tant to the ASUG com­mu­ni­ty, and SAP con­tin­ues to equip cus­tomers with new tools and capa­bil­i­ties nec­es­sary for long-term suc­cess in dri­ving sus­tain­abil­i­ty ini­tia­tives year over year.

Sus­tain­abil­i­ty announce­ments spanned a vari­ety of func­tions, from track­ing to mon­i­tor­ing and report­ing capa­bil­i­ties, embed­ded into the SAP cloud ERP port­fo­lio, with specifics relat­ed to key SAP Sus­tain­abil­i­ty solu­tions, including:

• SAP Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Con­trol Tower – Cus­tomers can auto­mat­i­cal­ly report their avail­able envi­ron­men­tal, social, and gov­er­nance (ESG) data.
• SAP Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Foot­print Management – The solu­tion now pos­sess­es AI-enabled capa­bil­i­ties that increase the accu­ra­cy and speed of car­bon foot­print cal­cu­la­tions. Addi­tion­al­ly, SAP said in a release this solu­tion enables ​“intel­li­gent emis­sion fac­tor map­ping recommendations.” 
• Car­bon Cal­cu­la­tor Engine – SAP Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Con­trol Tow­er and SAP Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Foot­print Man­age­ment are now equipped with fea­tures allow­ing users to ​“address the full scope of required emis­sions report­ing in align­ment with uni­ver­sal­ly accept­ed car­bon account­ing prac­tices defined in the Green­house Gas Protocol.”

Oth­er key announce­ments that align with this year’s strate­gic top­ic pro­gram­ming included:

• New SAP BTP solu­tion dia­grams designed to help accel­er­ate project timelines.
• Extend­ed capa­bil­i­ties with­in SAP Ana­lyt­ics Cloud, allow­ing cus­tomers to inte­grate with Microsoft Pow­er­Point natively.
• New SAP Build and ABAP Cloud capa­bil­i­ties, let­ting devel­op­ers extend the capa­bil­i­ties of their ERP sys­tems while keep­ing their core clean.
• New gen­er­a­tive AI capa­bil­i­ties across SAP Sig­navio.

It’s encour­ag­ing to see so many of this year’s SAP Sap­phire & ASUG Annu­al Con­fer­ence Orlan­do announce­ments direct­ly address crit­i­cal focus areas for the ASUG com­mu­ni­ty. ASUG­’s aim is to con­tin­u­ous­ly meet mem­bers’ top needs by pro­vid­ing ongo­ing guid­ance, edu­ca­tion, and sup­port. Shar­ing these key announce­ments with the broad­er com­mu­ni­ty fos­ters deep­er under­stand­ing and engage­ment across strate­gic top­ics, ensur­ing that ASUG­’s year-round pro­gram­ming remains aligned with SAP’s strate­gic direc­tion and mem­bers’ evolv­ing priorities.

To see a full list of announce­ments, check out the SAP Sap­phire News Guide 2024. And to dis­cov­er best prac­tices, lessons learned, and oth­er insights on these top­ics, vis­it asug​.com/​i​n​s​ights.

Kel­ly Dowl­ing is Direc­tor of Con­tent Strat­e­gy at ASUG.