Day: February 25, 2018

#Technology Huawei successfully held the Global Digital Transformation Forum leading up to Mobile World Congress 2018 (MWC 2018). The forum focused on five topics, namely 5G, new economic value, business-to-business (B2B) services, big video, and operation transformation. These discussions centered around accelerating operators’ digital transformation in the age of All Cloud, gathering more partners to forge a favorable digital ecosystem, and enhancing digital infrastructure. The aim is to help operators achieve new technological breakthroughs in capabilities, connections, business development, user experience, cooperation, and many more other diverse fields. http://bit.ly/2oprT7K #Huawei #BigData #AI

This January I was invited by SAP to co-present as a keynote speaker at the yearly ASUG volunteer meeting in Nashville, TN. I was asked to offer my perspective as an SAP customer for their business transformation service, the SAP Optimization & Pathfinder Report. This report takes a 30-day capture of the usage of your SAP ECC, analyzes it, comes up with recommendations on how to: take advantage of SAP functional enhancements, move to the Cloud, implement SAP’s award-winning UX “Fiori”, and migrate to SAP’s in-memory database HANA. I just so happened to be one of the first SAP customers to run the report when it was released last year, and I am fairly active on the SAP and ASUG community forums (although nowhere as active on SCN prior to the migration to the new platform). So, I naturally drew the attention of the SAP Services & Support teams, thus my invitation.

One of the many hats I wear in my company’s IT department is that of the SAP Basis, Security & Access Manager. I take to this role with all the zest and enthusiasm that one can, and I am always on the lookout for any and all services and tools that are part of my company’s SAP Enterprise Support contract. Because if you are an SAP customer the one constant is that you are overwhelmed and confused by the arsenal of services and tools available to you from SAP.

Okay. Okay. Okay! So why am I talking about so much general SAP in a SAP blog? Great question! Here is where the roads intersect. The audience for my presentation was a mix of ASUG volunteers representing special interest groups (SIGs) for: Human Resources, Supply Chain, Sales & Distribution, Finance, IT, Warehouse Mgmt, and other others. Additionally, these SIG’s were comprised of VP’s, C-level, directors, and managers from all industries. My presentation about business transformation had to reach all of them. SAP, Microsoft, Verizon… it didn’t matter the technology. My message had to be that business transformation traversed all departments and required stakeholder’s buy-in from each.

Fortunately for me I work for a wine and spirits distributor. Alcohol is a great icebreaker. Everyone it seems has a great story to tell involving alcohol.  So as I went through my presentation outlining the business transformation opportunities of this report I periodically stopped and would query the audience: “Show of hands! How many of you subscribe to the SAP Enterprise Support newsletter?” Out of 450 only about 30. “Show of hands! How many of you are SAP Certified Center of Excellence?” Maybe 10. “Show of hands! How many of us regularly initiate the SAP Continuous Quality Checks?” About 15. “Show of hands! How many of us are aware of openSAP? SAP’s free training available to everyone?” Maybe 10. “WOW! You people got some homework!” Laughter ensued.

Before I finished my presentation it dawned on me that technology in the business landscape is still expected to be championed by IT. These are ASUG volunteers I was presenting to and even they aren’t taking advantage of SAP’s services and tools. These are meant for the entire business to innovate, transform, and grow. But my “show of hands” exercise not only revealed that the services and tools are not only not being utilized but the business isn’t tuning in to their strategic vendor’s communications. The realization of the value of enterprise services is lost.

So that leads me to you my fellow SAP Community members. Show of hands, are you leveraging all of the services and tools that SAP has to offer? If so, which ones are your favorite? http://bit.ly/2F5iOKU #SAP #SAPCloud #AI

Source: VASC.org

So how does NASA fit in the 2018 plans?  This is a teaser, so you’ll have to wait and see below.

Below is the ASUG Virginia Chapter “YRC” (year-round calendar) plans for 2018:

Month

Activity

April
Friday, April 6 – Fairfax Water – Lorton, VA

* Registration is open

May
Open Call for Speakers for Newport News meeting – topics – SuccessFactors, Defense

July
July 27 Virginia Air & Space Center

Save the date

October
Friday, October 26 – Altria – Richmond, VA

*

* Save the date

So you can see the registration is open for our next chapter meeting in Northern Virginia.  We listened and followed the ASUG Virginia Chapter Survey results and you can see over 62% of ASUG Virginia Chapter members prefer meeting in Northern Virginia.

Our summary agenda for April is as follows:

Meeting highlights include:

* Preparing the way from ECC to S/4HANA
* Creating ROI on the road to HANA
* Customer story from Loudoun Water on mobilizing SAP Geo.e
* SAP Public Sector Roadmap, courtesy of Marlyn Zelkowitz of SAP

Again this is based on the survey results for topics. For a “sneak peek” on how chapter volunteers plan for a meeting, see my draft spreadsheet below:

ASUG Virginia Chapter Meeting Agenda April 6

Time
SINGLE Track
Sponsor Name

7:30-8:00
Breakfast/registration

8:00-8:15
Chapter Intro/SAP Intro

8:15-9:15
Decluttering and the Cloud: Preparing the Way from ECC to S/4HANA
Symtrax

9:15-9:30
Break

9:30-10:30
Creating ROI on the Road to HANA
Titan Consulting

10:30-11:30
Sink or Swim: Managing the Growing Flood of Dark Data with Intelligent Information Management
M-Files

11:30-12:15
Loudoun Water Mobilizes SAP’s Geo.e for Improved Field Operations

12:15-12:45
Lunch

12:45-1:30 pm
Water Tour

1:30-2:30 pm
SAP Public Sector Roadmap: S/4HANA & More

2:30-2:45
Chapter Giveaways, Adjourn

Table sponsor
Utegration

 Table sponsor
Vistex

I want to thank our sponsors for this meeting, without them it wouldn’t be possible:

Source: ASUG 

More on the April meeting in a future post.  See you there?

July 27 ASUG Virginia Chapter Meeting, Virginia Air & Space Center – Save the Date

Plans are confirmed for this ASUG Virginia Chapter meeting to be held at NASA Langley Visitor Center in Hampton, Virginia.  This is being lead by ASUG Board Member Rudy Hendricks and ASUG Virginia Chapter Chair Keith Seckman.  The chapter hasn’t held a meeting in this area for several years, and kudos to Keith for thinking of this location.  According to the 2017 survey the Hampton area is the third requested location for the ASUG Virginia Chapter.

The video above gives you an indication of how the meeting will look.  You can also take some time to visit the exhibits, as the chapter meeting is tentatively planned to end at 1:00 pm.

I’ve been to the National Air and Space Museum before, but I haven’t visited “Coastal Virginia” so I am looking forward to this meeting.  Call for speakers is planned for in May.

More to come on the Fall Chapter meeting in Richmond (the 2nd requested location from the survey) later this year.  Special thanks to returning ASUG volunteer Melody Abadam and Altria for hosting ASUG again.

So what do you think of the ASUG Virginia Chapter’s plans for 2018?  You can follow the chapter on twitter @ASUGVA http://bit.ly/2BNHGVs #SAP #SAPCloud #AI