Podcasts about asug

Two seasoned executive coaches, Carolyn Dolezal and Kate Leto, share candid insights on the realities of executive leadership and how to truly earn the trust and confidence of your team and stakeholders. They debunk common myths and explore how personal agendas can undermine leadership effectiveness, while offering practical advice for building influence even when the odds aren't in your favor.The conversation also covers how to recover from early leadership missteps and develop the skills needed to lead authentically at the highest levels. Whether you're already in the C-suite or aspiring to get there, their expert guidance will transform your approach to leadership starting today.Resources from this episode:Subscribe to The Product Manager newsletterConnect with Carolyn and Kate on LinkedInCheck out ASUG and Kate's website

In an exclusive interview with ASUG Talks, Dr. Philipp Herzig, SAP Chief Technology Officer, discusses the talk of the SAP ecosystem:  artificial intelligence. The constantly-evolving technology is steadily becoming a critical component of the software company's offerings, with SAP working to embed AI capabilities across its entire suite of solutions. Ahead of SAP Sapphire & ASUG Annual Conference 2025, Herzig sat down with Geoff Scott, ASUG CEO & Chief Community Champion, for a wide-ranging discussion about the place AI holds in the SAP ecosystem and how he is working to further enable SAP customers to embrace the technology.  Key Insights How Herzig is specifically driving SAP's goal of being the “number one business AI company”Specific examples of how SAP is embedding AI capabilities across its entire portfolioThe vision for SAP Business Data Cloud and how it empowers enterprises to embrace AI solutions Related Resources Read ASUG's exclusive interview with Jan Gilg,  Chief Revenue Officer & President for SAP Americas and the SAP Global Business Suite organizationExpand your AI knowledge with the ASUG  Artificial Intelligence Fundamentals and SAP AI Solutions Content CollectionListen to ASUG Director of Strategic Topics and Communities, Kelly Dowling, on a recent episode of the Women in ERP Podcast, where she discusses her work building and empowering the ASUG community Listen to more ASUG TalksJeff Suellentrop, Chief Information & Technology Officer at Phoenix Global, joins the podcast to walk through his organization's recent GROW with SAP projectAndre Bechtold,  President of SAP Industries & Experiences, lays out how SAP approaches technology innovation and building the next generation of SAP professionalsGeoff Scott is joined by two members of the ASUG Board-- Mark LeClair and Craig Dalziel--to break down the SAP Business Data Cloud (BDC) release and Databricks partnership 

Enterprise Architecture is about to become more intelligent. Join us in Orlando to see how! An XTraw AI episode preview to AI-First Architecture, your Blueprint for Intelligent Enterprise Transformation. Hear how we plan to embed AI natively into Enterprise Architecture Get a preview of frameworks and AI patterns, and real business use casesDiscover how tools like Joule, LeanIX, Signavio, BTP etc., will help EAs move from strategy to execution

What exactly does a GROW with SAP project look like?  ASUG Talks digs deep into this question during a conversation with Jeff Suellentrop, Chief Information & Technology Officer at Phoenix Global, a metals and mining services company. In an effort to jumpstart AI innovation and eliminate technical debt, the enterprise chose GROW with SAP to help facilitate its implementation of SAP S/4HANA Cloud. During the discussion, Jeff walks listeners through:   Why GROW with SAP was the best option for Phoenix Global's digital transformation project and IT ecosystemHow the team overcame specific hurdles during the go-liveAdvice for listeners about to embark on their own GROW with SAP project Check out these ASUG resources mentioned in the episode to stay up-to-date on what's happening around the SAP ecosystem:   2025 ASUG Pulse of the SAP Customer Research: Gain insights into the top focus areas and challenges reported by 787 ASUG Members.ASUG Talks Executive Interview: Andre Bechtold, SAP: Listen to Andre's conversation with Geoff Scott, ASUG CEO & Chief Community Champion, about how SAP is encouraging a culture of innovation and learning—both internally and among its customers.  

While visiting the SAP global headquarters in Walldorf, Germany, ASUG CEO & Chief Community Champion Geoff Scott recently sat down with Andre Bechtold, President of SAP Industries & Experiences. As the software company looks to spur continued innovation, Bechtold focuses on building memorable customer experiences. Through his work with the SAP Experience Centers, Bechtold helps SAP embrace new, cutting-edge practices to help their customers meet modern challenges. During this conversation, Scott and Bechtold covered: ·      How SAP approaches technology innovation ·      Bechtold's thoughts on leveraging AI to assist with upskilling and reskilling ·      Building the next generation of SAP professionalsBe sure to check out these ASUG resources to stay up-to-date on what's going on around the SAP ecosystem: ·      ASUG coverage of the SAP Q1 2025 financial results: Despite uncertain economic conditions, SAP CEO Christian Klein touted key growth in total revenue and cloud revenue. Read our full coverage—and what it means for SAP customers. ·      ASUG and SAP Integration Research: This collaborative project examined how respondents approach developing and enacting integration strategies. Overall, the research teams found that ASUG members are devoting necessary resources to jumpstart integration practices at higher rates. Learn more. 

With SAP Sapphire and the ASUG Annual Conference right around the corner, Jon Reed reconvened with analyst Josh Greenbaum and ASUG CEO Geoff Scott for a two part podcast. Part one: a review of SAP's ambitious Business Data Cloud announcement, what we've learned since the launch news, and the open questions heading into Orlando. Then we shift into a discussion of why so many customers have brought up the need for cloud/modernization business cases - and ways to bridge that vexing/persistent IT/business gap. We discuss the customer feedback we've received so far, and Greenbaum and Reed share their plans for an ASUG workshop on this topic in May, and why we think this issue is gaining momentum. Listeners are encouraged to chime in on how this lines up with their SAP migration plans/questions/concerns, and what other resources and discussions they want to see on this topic.

With SAP Sapphire and the ASUG Annual Conference right around the corner, Jon Reed reconvened with analyst Josh Greenbaum and ASUG CEO Geoff Scott for a two part podcast. Part one: a review of SAP's ambitious Business Data Cloud announcement, what we've learned since the launch news, and the open questions heading into Orlando. Then we shift into a discussion of why so many customers have brought up the need for cloud/modernization business cases - and ways to bridge that vexing/persistent IT/business gap. We discuss the customer feedback we've received so far, and Greenbaum and Reed share their plans for an ASUG workshop on this topic in May, and why we think this issue is gaining momentum. Listeners are encouraged to chime in on how this lines up with their SAP migration plans/questions/concerns, and what other resources and discussions they want to see on this topic.

In this latest episode, Geoff Scott, of ASUG, rejoins Mustansir Saifuddin to discuss the rapidly evolving landscape of AI within the SAP ecosystem, specifically focusing on the impact of partnerships like SAP and Microsoft's collaboration on Copilot and Joule. Listen in as we explore how these advancements will shape enterprise operations in 2025 and beyond, and why you can't afford to ignore this technological shift.to discuss what is required for businesses to be successful with Gen AI as they prepare for the future.  Geoff Scott, is CEO and Chief Community Officer of ASUG, believes that the connections ASUG makes for our members have the potential to become career-defining relationships that inspire innovation and success for their organizations. His forward-thinking leadership prioritizes helping our members make the most of their investment in SAP technologies. To that end, Geoff works closely with customers, members, the SAP Executive Board, and the extensive partner ecosystem to amplify the voice of the SAP customer.   Past positions include CIO for TOMS Shoes, where he led the implementation of SAP: CIO at JBS; and senior leadership positions at Ford Motor Company. Before becoming CEO, Geoff was an ASUG member and served on the board. Geoff has served on several philanthropic boards and is the founding member of the Denver CIO Executive Council.  Connect with Us: LinkedIn Mustansir Saifuddin Innovative Solution Partners  X:  @gscott16 @MmsaifuddinYouTube or learn more about our sponsor Innovative Solution Partners to schedule a free consultation.    Episode Transcript: [00:00:00] Mustansir Saifuddin: Welcome to Tech Driven Business, brought to you by Innovative Solution Partners. I'm honored to have Jeff Scott, CEO of as a, rejoin me to discuss the rapidly evolving landscape of AI within the SAP ecosystem, specifically focusing on the impact of partnerships like SAP and Microsoft's collaboration on copilot and Joule. [00:00:26] Mustansir Saifuddin: Listen in as we explore how these advancements will shape enterprise operations in 2025 and beyond, and why you can't afford to ignore this technological shift. [00:00:39] Mustansir Saifuddin: Thanks for coming back on our podcast. Geoff, it was really nice to have you back. You remember, you know you came on last year and we dove into this whole [00:00:48] Geoff Scott: Oh. [00:00:49] Mustansir Saifuddin: gen AI topic. Everybody remembers that, you know, it was a very hot topic last year and, you know, everybody was going in that direction. Now, fast forwarding everything to this year and say, Hey, what is going on? And this year, SAP has had some major announcements, as we all know about the partnerships that we leverage the power of AI within the SAP ecosystem. And what I see with the majority of SAP clients using Microsoft in the enterprises. There is a lot of opportunity in SAP and Microsoft , you know, the whole partnership, especially around copilot and SAP Joule. I believe it'll make a big impact. [00:01:30] Geoff Scott: I'm surprised you have me back. I was very nervous. It's a year later. I was like, okay, this is never gonna happen again. I, I disinvited myself from future podcasts. [00:01:39] Mustansir Saifuddin: Well, I have you back [00:01:42] Mustansir Saifuddin: on. [00:01:43] Mustansir Saifuddin: and I am telling you that it is more exciting than what we were talking about last year, and I think this is what I want to get some thoughts on, Hey, what's going on? What's your take on how these partnerships are coming together and what are we going to see in 2025? [00:02:01] Geoff Scott: Well, the good news is that what we see in 2025 is no apparent slowdown in any of this technology. You know, but what's interesting is we, in the SAP space, [00:02:13] Geoff Scott: are not necessarily meeting that challenge head on, and we probably are not moving as quickly as we should to capture the amount of opportunity that's out there. I, I think AI is real. It's gonna continue to evolve at a furious pace, and that necessitates that we as technology practitioners determine how we best leverage that technology. [00:02:36] Geoff Scott: You, you talked about Microsoft Copilot, Joule, right? I mean AWS. Bedrock , Google Gemini, you know, now we've got, other LLMs popping out all over the place. Right. , deep seek . Which just popped up very quickly. So there's just, a tremendous amount of movement here and it's really hard [00:02:57] Geoff Scott: to stay abreast of it. And I think the opportunity to jump in and start leveraging this is mission critical and what I think it really necessitates, and you talked about some announcements from SAP that I think double or triple down on this notion that AI is here, so if you really want to take your SAP data and make it AI enabled using Joule or using any other series of tools, [00:03:24] Geoff Scott: it's gonna necessitate that we as technology practitioners start to do some fairly radical things with our data. Number one is we start to de-customize everywhere we can and move the responsibility for code back to SAP so that they are responsible for figuring out how to make the AI work, not us. [00:03:42] Geoff Scott: So [00:03:42] Geoff Scott: , [00:03:42] Geoff Scott: how [00:03:42] Geoff Scott: do we over time de-customize and how do we over time think about the necessity of adopting SaaS based solutions such as SAP's Public Cloud? Many of our of our community members are implementing private cloud right [00:04:00] now through Rise which is great, but ultimately if we recreate all those customizations downstream, then we have to figure out how to make them AI enabled, and I think that's where we're gonna find ourselves under continuing amounts of stress as the business innovates faster and faster. [00:04:17] Geoff Scott: We typically in the SAP ecosystem, think about our innovations on a stair step model. And what I mean by that is we do an upgrade, we sit on that upgrade for a couple of years, as long as we possibly can. You know, and then we do an upgrade again. And the challenge I think that's gonna present is that there's so much innovation happening and, all these things are moving at such a speed that if we're not continuously innovating, [00:04:39] Geoff Scott: we are gonna find ourselves further and further behind. I, I'd like to see our SAP data be the sole source of truth inside our enterprises and an innovation gold mine. [00:04:49] Geoff Scott: And to do that, I think we have to de-customize. I think we have to be able to, innovate faster. I think we have to be able to look at this data, do a lot more work around archiving and getting the old stuff, swept up and moved out. Master data is gonna become a major, major opportunity for all of us. [00:05:05] Geoff Scott: And if we do all those things really, really well. We will have a fighting chance at making our enterprises very savvy. And on top of the latest trends versus trying to perpetually catch up. [00:05:16] Mustansir Saifuddin: It's a race, the way I look at it, and I think , you summed it up very well, and I think that leads me to my question into this whole topic of collaboration. Let's take that right now. What would you tell your SAP users about the power of Microsoft and SAP's collaboration? [00:05:33] Mustansir Saifuddin: How will it positively impact their day-to-day operations? Let's start with that. [00:05:38] Geoff Scott: Well, I, I think you set this up really well. We, we know from an ASUG research perspective that most SAP customers are also Microsoft customers. And that partnership has gone back almost as long as SAP and Microsoft have been in business. You know, there's some pictures I've seen of Bill Gates and Hasso Plattner, the two founders of both organizations working together early on. [00:06:04] Geoff Scott: So this is a partnership that goes back a long, long time and it's a tremendously powerful partnership. And it indicates to me that these are organizations that work very well together, very closely together and collaborate. I mean, almost everyone I know who works in SAP also uses Excel spreadsheets, also uses PowerPoint slides, [00:06:23] Geoff Scott: also creates Word documents. I do these almost every single day. It makes perfect sense to me that a tool such as Microsoft Copilot and SAP's Joule would be working in harmony together. And I think we're seeing some interesting innovation from both organizations where they're able to demonstrate that. [00:06:39] Geoff Scott: I saw some really cool, rag based technologies, a few weeks ago where a copilot can reach out and grab some data from SAP and bring it back. Likewise Joule is being able to show some similar capabilities. For most customers, as much as we'd like to have one AI tool, I just don't think that that's going to be the way this works. [00:06:58] Geoff Scott: I think we're gonna have multiple, which, which makes the enterprise architect's role that much more challenging because they're gonna have to figure out how to integrate these tools, when these tools are best used, how they're used, and how do we as as organizations, get value from them. [00:07:15] Mustansir Saifuddin: Absolutely. And if you take this a step further, right? The hype around Agentic AI, everybody's talking about agents. What are you seeing in the marketplace? What, what is your take? [00:07:25] Mustansir Saifuddin: How are SAP users benefitting from Agentic AI within their organizations? [00:07:31] Geoff Scott: As it relates specifically to the SAP ecosystem, my. My perception, maybe right or wrong, probably more wrong than right, is that many of them are investigating and researching. I haven't necessarily seen any specific in production, customer running, agentic AI using SAP dot dot yet. Is it coming? [00:08:00] I think it's coming. [00:08:01] Geoff Scott: Has everyone figured this out yet? No certainly SAP's talking about it. I saw some presentations from the AI team at SAP led by Philip Herzig where they're demonstrating a lot of this. And I think it's gonna be very interesting to watch how agentic, you know, agent-based AI starts to manage tasks. [00:08:19] Geoff Scott: And I'm very keen to see how this works. [00:08:24] Mustansir Saifuddin: It's still very early on in, in this space where a lot of SAP customers are thinking about using it. But [00:08:32] Mustansir Saifuddin: how [00:08:32] Mustansir Saifuddin: do we really find a use case that is really beneficial to the organization at least from a investment standpoint, the time standpoint , and the value add you get as a, as a result of this application basically. [00:08:47] Geoff Scott: And I think the, the potential challenge with agentic AI is it also has to be reasonable from a, you know, a what is this agent, what is this agent's tasks? One of the things that we all know about the SAP ecosystem is we exist here because our businesses are complicated. Someone used to say to me, if, if you didn't need to run SAP, you wouldn't. [00:09:11] Geoff Scott: Right. So you know, most of the organizations that run SAP are of a, a sufficient size and scale and complexity, whether that be that they're multiple businesses running, they have international components, the business makes a complicated product that has a lot of configuration to it, right? There's reasons why these organizations are running SAP. [00:09:32] Geoff Scott: So that kind of then begets the next point, which is, an agent based AI. It's going to have to be fairly complicated in order to handle all of those different, particulars of a business. So I, I think it's gonna be interesting to watch how organizations slice that down to make it so that they can demonstrate some success early days without making the agents so complicated that they basically can't function. [00:09:58] Geoff Scott: You know, even some of this agent AI we talk about that seems like really simple. Like, Hey, I want to go out to eat at a restaurant tonight. Have agentic AI make a reservation. When you break that down. How does it do that? what type of food do you want? [00:10:13] Geoff Scott: I don't know. Maybe Italian, maybe French, maybe American. What about what time do you want to eat? How far away do you want to go? And so much of that is, is left to our brains to just on a whim, we make these decisions. How do you have that conversation with AG Agentic AI, right? Where it says, Hey, you know, here's a reservation at Italian restaurant at six 30. [00:10:32] Geoff Scott: Nah, well, 6 45, nah. Well, what do you want? Not Italian. Well, what do you want instead? I don't know French. No. You want a burger? Nah, I don't feel like a burger tonight. I mean, oh my God. I mean, it's exhausting. [00:10:47] Mustansir Saifuddin: Let's take a step up, right? Let's, let's talk about from SAP customers, you know. Everybody's getting on this [00:10:55] Mustansir Saifuddin: What word of advice would you have for SAP customers when they get further into the journey with AI? Like, what are the things that they should be looking at? [00:11:03] Geoff Scott: First and foremost, take the time to experiment, right? I mean, if you're not using these AI tools every day start. And this has taken me a little bit of time to warm up to, I'm finding now that, I have enough, road underneath my tires that it's hard for me to do new things, [00:11:22] Geoff Scott: 'cause I'm fairly, you know, set in my ways. But if I don't, use these tools to do things, I'm just not, I'm not learning. And so I. As an example, I'm recording a podcast tomorrow with a couple of fellow ASUG board members, and last night I needed to get them some prep materials. [00:11:40] Geoff Scott: I uploaded three or four documents into Claude and I said, please look at these three documents and I need to brief the podcast participants on what they say. And it looked at all three documents and it coughed up a pretty darn good summary. [00:11:55] Geoff Scott: Perfect? No. Pretty good. Yes. Was it [00:12:00] easier that I didn't, I didn't have to go and look at each document and figure out what to say. I could take a look at its summarization and determine if that was something that I wanted, that I thought was accurate and something that I thought we could share. And the answer was it was pretty good. [00:12:15] Geoff Scott: That was a great experiment. And then I said, okay, now create the podcast questions. And it did it. Now, are we using all of them? No. Did it give me at least a starting point? A hundred percent. And by the way, for the people out there was like, oh my God. He put that into, he put that into Claude. Oh my God. What about the security things? We own a subscription to Claude. So it was in a subscription. It was, it was in our protected space. It was public information. So, you know, but you gotta think about those things, right? [00:12:42] Mustansir Saifuddin: . [00:12:42] Mustansir Saifuddin: Absolutely. And I think the one thing that you hit upon is time to value, right? When you look at these tools, these technology aspects of how it can make things faster, better . But it brings up another point, like when, when you look at these, these use cases, everything is about data. What you feeding into the model. [00:13:07] Mustansir Saifuddin: So, you know, from a data perspective, I know a lot of customers doesn't matter, SAP or other technologies, and especially in SAP you know, either struggle with clean governed data and kind of makes it very difficult. So what, what's your take on that in that space? You know, especially when they are ready to go to the AI [00:13:32] Mustansir Saifuddin: journey, but they have some work to do. [00:13:34] Geoff Scott: I think there's a tremendous amount of work to do on this, and this kind of comes back to a part of our earlier dialogue that I think that data has to be right. Right. If, if we're gonna succeed in this future AI enabled world, the data that is being accessed, from your SAP systems, whether through some sort of rag or wherever you're doing, it has to be accurate. [00:13:57] Geoff Scott: So the archiving perspective of this has to be right. And you know also what has to be right is your ability to get master data correct. So if you have the same customer in your SAP system, this is an easy example, five times. Well, you now have increased by factors, the likelihood that the answer that pops back is wrong. [00:14:18] Geoff Scott: So, you know, we've been talking about this for a long time, that your SAP data has to be accurate, has to be right, and SAP data is very accurate at the time that it was entered. I think this is one of the brilliant things about SAP. And where we as SAP, you know, professionals spend so much time is getting the data into the system correctly from the get go. [00:14:41] Geoff Scott: The problem is it doesn't age so well, right? It's not like a fine wine. It can sometimes get a little stale and old and if we're not also getting it broomed out. The challenge we run into is it could be part of a , hallucination that we're not aware of. And if all of a sudden people are looking at this data and making broader based decisions on it, and the decision processes was flawed and the data's flawed, we could be making a lot of really bad decisions. [00:15:12] Mustansir Saifuddin: Yeah, absolutely. Data and analytics is very near and dear to me. So I, I know that whole conversation about getting The data clean, having that value around data, right. Which drives a lot of those those results out of the tools that we [00:15:28] Mustansir Saifuddin: want to apply. Especially. [00:15:30] Geoff Scott: It's all gonna come down to data at the end of the day, right? The data wins and the accuracy of the data wins. And the more that we're gonna use these tools to summarize and roll up, the higher the risk that that summary is inaccurate because the data underneath it isn't right. [00:15:49] Geoff Scott: We had this conversation in an ASUG executive exchange forum last week. And I think most people are starting to recognize that , if you have been [00:16:00] deferring your archiving routines, now might be a good time to get some of that back under control. [00:16:07] Mustansir Saifuddin: Yeah, [00:16:08] Geoff Scott: Most of the models right now, the L lms right, are based on data that doesn't, that the, you know books, fueling [00:16:15] Geoff Scott: research reports, fueling these LLMs that that data has been around for a long time and is, and has stood the test of time. Most of our SAP data, you know, has to be thought of through a very specific lens. But I, I think it's critical, a hundred percent critical. [00:16:33] Mustansir Saifuddin: Yeah. So let, so let's take it down a, a notch, right? From an ASUG perspective, how have you seen ASUG members approaching realtime data analytics moving to the cloud? I know ASUG does a lot of research on this. What have you seen? What, what do you see in this year? [00:16:49] Geoff Scott: So I think, you know, almost everyone is having cloud conversations, which is the beginning of this, because I don't think you can innovate at scale if you're not thinking about moving into the cloud. You know, the other thing is, is that most of these solutions, if you think about the innovation curve, mostly solutions are gonna appear first in the latest additions of your software. [00:17:08] Geoff Scott: So if you can't start innovating at a faster and faster cycle, move out of the stair step you and I discussed earlier, moving to a constant innovation framework, you're gonna find yourself further and further behind because if you want to take advantage of innovation at scale at the time it's released or near to the time it's released you need to be on the latest versions of software. [00:17:27] Geoff Scott: The hard reality of most of our ecosystem is we are not. And if we are not, that's where this stuff is gonna appear first. Will it make it down to other versions of the software? Yes. Is it gonna be on SAP's first order priority to do that? No. They're gonna want to make sure where they get it out [00:17:44] Geoff Scott: to market fast and they're gonna look at their latest versions of the software to do that, where they're the most comfortable. You know, there's this question, why can't I run AI in my on-prem data center? Well, you could, but you're gonna have to do all of that lift by yourself. And that becomes a very costly exercise that unless you're the bigs of the bigs, is probably outside of your budget to do that. [00:18:08] Geoff Scott: So if you want to do this with some degree of economy, you have to be in the cloud, you have to de-customize. You have to think about your SAP implementation as a SaaS service, push accountability and responsibility for code and business process back to SAP, right? I mean, I, I think that, you know, what has AI told me, loud and clear at a volume level of 11? [00:18:30] Geoff Scott: We as SAP customers now more than ever, need to stop customizing and moving responsibility for code back to SAP, 'cause if we don't, we are never gonna be able to keep up. .In, in addition to that, that many of us over these years have outsourced our application maintenance services. We rely on consultants to do most of the work we need done, right, so we're not even in control of the productive resources necessary to make this stuff a reality. [00:19:05] Geoff Scott: We are project managers. We are business analysts, right? We don't necessarily know how to write code to do this, and if we're gonna have to rely on outside resources every time we make one of these moves, that's gonna be super costly and super slow. [00:19:22] Mustansir Saifuddin: Yeah. I hear you. [00:19:23] Mustansir Saifuddin: and I know the ASUG community hears that [00:19:26] Geoff Scott: But we have a lot in our ASUG community, right, who have been around for a long time that says, well, you know, my job is an ABAP programmer. What do you want me to do next? Or I'm a basis person and I don't like this. And I'm like, you are some of the people that are in , the best position to retool and relearn. [00:19:42] Geoff Scott: We're all gonna have to relearn. And, you know, is your business's, joy in life to have you produce more ABAP code or figure out how to get that ABAP code out, move it to SAP and say, congratulations, SAP, you're now responsible for this. Here's what I need this business process to do. Right. [00:20:00] And using your, using ASUG to help you influence that business process, instead of you saying, well, I'm gonna just take it and twist it to my own needs. [00:20:08] Geoff Scott: Even with me saying that, I still think that there's a lot of distance that SAP has to travel, by the way, I don't think they have this figured out. I don't think that they'll look at this and they go, yep, we got this. You just, you know, trust us. No, I think in certain areas they have this well done. [00:20:23] Geoff Scott: In other areas they do not. So what's the best thing we can do? Help them get there faster, influence them, participate in your ASUG chapter meetings, have a voice, talk about where you're hitting challenges. How do we need SAP to make better business processes? How are we gonna use the, you know, the tools that they have, like Lean IX and Signavio to help drive some of this? [00:20:48] Geoff Scott: That's to me where this is gonna need to happen. I would much prefer to have SAP struggle to keep up with business process than have. 10,000, 15,000, 20,000 customers do it on their own. It doesn't scale. [00:21:03] Mustansir Saifuddin: No, it doesn't. And I think, and that's a fair point, right? And this is where the value of ASUG comes in. And, and I mean the journey is long, but the, the path is there for us to follow. [00:21:14] Geoff Scott: I, I, yeah. [00:21:14] Mustansir Saifuddin: Right. And that's the, [00:21:15] Geoff Scott: I think the journey is long and the journey is more important than ever. It's time to get off the couch and go out and start walking, and then when you can walk, you can run, then, you know, then you can sprint. And I think , that's kind of the, the message that we're giving as ASUG is this isn't gonna slow down for you, you're gonna have to catch up to it. [00:21:32] Mustansir Saifuddin: No, I think, and that's the message. A lot of people are hearing loud and clear now, especially 2025 has brought in that that whole concept of either you go along with it or you're gonna be left behind. [00:21:44] Geoff Scott: Or, or, or at some point you're going to have to catch up, and the question is, is how much lifting are you gonna have to do to get there? I, again, I don't think this is easy. I, I don't think that there's , a magic pill we can swallow, you know, that that cleans us all up and we're all perfect. [00:22:01] Mustansir Saifuddin: No. No, for sure. And I think I, I know we talked about a lot of things today and we can keep on talking and the journey keeps on you know, is it's a [00:22:11] Geoff Scott: It's journey. [00:22:11] Mustansir Saifuddin: it's, [00:22:12] Geoff Scott: Yeah. [00:22:12] Mustansir Saifuddin: ending, but what, what is the one key takeaway that you want to leave with the listeners [00:22:18] Geoff Scott: One key takeaway [00:22:18] Mustansir Saifuddin: as we wrap up? [00:22:19] Geoff Scott: it. [00:22:20] Mustansir Saifuddin: Yep. [00:22:21] Geoff Scott: Spend time experimenting and learning this stuff. Get comfortable being uncomfortable with these tools. Use them. Think about how your business can benefit from them. Spend some time, you know, in BTP learning how to access these LLMs through your BTP interface. If you're having a challenge getting a business case written to move from your ECC environment to S 4. [00:22:46] Geoff Scott: Talk to us at ASUG, we will help you with that. Go to a chapter meeting and ask others how they made that investment work. Spend some time, you know, if you don't have a, a license for copilot where you and I started this afternoon, ask your IT counterparts to have access to copilot, use it. [00:23:04] Ask it questions, engage in iterative rep iterative prompts. These are things I think the, the faster we get comfortable with these technologies, the better off we as technologists will have light bulbs go off and say, oh, I, now I get how I can really put agent AI to work. Right. And I'm not gonna listen to just, you know, Microsoft, you know, talk about it or SAP talk about it. [00:23:24] Geoff Scott: I actually have some ideas. And these are good ideas and I'm excited, I'm excited to share 'em. Get out of the stands and on the field. [00:23:32] Mustansir Saifuddin: And who better do it? I mean, I think I, I love , your closing, right? Especially when you are looking at your own business, your own technology, and your way of doing things. Who better can come up with , a solution , or see the applications of these co-pilot Gemini, no matter what I mean, type of tools you can use. [00:23:51] Mustansir Saifuddin: But these are , the ways you can innovate, right by looking at the processes. [00:23:56] Geoff Scott: Yes. Someone told me that they set up two agentic AI bots [00:24:00] and the two of them constructed a podcast and it was pretty good. So withstand zero. I'm worried that next time you and I meet, it's not gonna be you or I, it's gonna be our agentic AI counterparts, some version of us. [00:24:14] Mustansir Saifuddin: and yeah, I'm looking forward to it. I think it is here. It's going to be here at some point, so might as well embrace it. [00:24:22] Geoff Scott: Yeah. Absolutely. [00:24:23] Mustansir Saifuddin: Thanks for listening to Tech-Driven Business brought to you by Innovative Solution Partners. Embracing innovation is no longer an option, but really a necessity for enterprise success. Geoff's key takeaway? Proactive experimentation with AI is crucial for SAP users to discover its business benefits. Engage with tools like copilot and Joule, participate in ASUG, and push for cloud migration to stay ahead of the rapid technological changes. We would love to hear from you. Continue the conversation by connecting with me on LinkedIn or x. Learn more about Innovative Solution Partners and schedule a free consultation by visiting isolutionpartners.com. Never miss a podcast by subscribing to our YouTube channel. Information is in the show notes. I.

Tune in to a special roundtable episode of ASUG Talks, where Geoff Scott, ASUG CEO & Chief Community, is joined by two ASUG Board Members: Mark LeClair and Craig Dalziel.  A few weeks ago, the three attended the SAP Business Unleashed event in New York, where the software company unveiled the SAP Business Data Cloud along with a new partnership with Databricks. Aimed at helping ASAP customers establish a sound data foundation in order to embrace AI solutions, the offering is yet another in SAP's business AI development journey. The three thought leaders leveraged their extensive SAP knowledge to offer their thoughts on what the announcements mean for SAP Customers. Key topics covered in their discussion include: How SAP Business Data Cloud integrates into the larger SAP suite of solutions. The ways in which SAP Business Data Cloud can enable customers to improve their data management practices and set a foundation to embrace AI solutions. The three leaders' first impressions of the new solution and partnership. 

ASUG Talks dives deep into the technology of the moment: artificial intelligence. In this roundtable, Jim Lichtenwalter, ASUG Content Manager, is joined by two AI experts:  Paul Modderman, SAP AI Director, Mindset ConsultingAnurag Barua, Transformation Leader, SAPOver the past 18 months, SAP has taken massive strides in developing AI solutions and embedding them across its entire suite of solutions. During the conversation, Modderman and Barua lend their expertise to articulate the value of AI and how enterprises can embrace these solutions. Key topics covered in the discussion include:  Steps enterprises can take to effectively leverage AI solutions in their IT landscapes. The importance of data security and governance and how SAP approaches this critical topic.  The future state of AI and what development trends are telling us about where the technology is going. 

Each year, ASUG charts the shifting attitudes, focuses, hurdles, and solution adoption rates among its members with the annual Pulse of the SAP Customer Research project. With the release of the 2025 iteration, ASUG Content Manager Jim Lichtenwalter sat down with Marissa Gilbert, ASUG Research Director, and Geoff Scott, ASUG CEO & Chief Community Champion.The three discussed key highlights from the research--including popular focuses and challenges among ASUG members--and what the data is saying about how the ASUG Community is approaching SAP innovation.Key insights from the conversation include:What SAP undertakings ASUG Members are prioritizing in 2025.Top challenges ASUG Members are facing, especially as they embrace SAP S/4HANA and migrate to the cloud.The breakdown of environments ASUG Members are leveraging to run their SAP investments.Download the full 2025 ASUG Pulse of the SAP Customer report here.

ASUG CEO & Chief Community Champion Geoff Scott traveled to New York for the SAP Business Unleashed event, where SAP unveiled its newest offering, SAP Business Data Cloud, and its partnership with Databricks, a data analytics and  management software company.During his trip, Scott sat down with Irfan Khan, President and Chief Product Officer of SAP Data & Analytics. They discussed SAP's new offering and partnership, and how these announcements will help enterprises develop a data foundation for business insights and artificial-intelligence applications.Key topics from their conversation included:How SAP Business Data Cloud is different from SAP Datasphere.The way SAP Business Data Cloud will sit in the SAP suite alongside applications such as the SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) and SAP Analytics Cloud.The importance of integrating SAP and non-SAP data into a single data layer.For more information on these announcements and their impact on the SAP ecosystem, check out the following SAP insights:The trust factor: Data, resilience, and innovationSAP and Databricks Open a Bold New Era of Data and AI

At ASUG Tech Connect 2024, for the first time, I hosted a joint podcast collaboration with the ASUG Talks team - to be issued on both of our platforms. Joining me in for a live podcast taping were familiar suspects: ASUG CEO Geoff Scott and analyst Josh Greenbaum. But this time around, we had a live audience - and pulled them into the conversation. The audience had a choice of an Enterprise Architect or AI focus. They chose Enterprise Architects - and, I think, for good reason. Effective AI is probably not possible for enterprises without the right data platform and Enterprise Architect approach. I think you'll agree that hearing so many articulate real world questions from the audience made this podcast a standout, and I'll look to do that again this year where possible. And, of course, we covered AI also - that topic always finds its way in. EDITING NOTE: This podcast was recorded and produced by the ASUG Talks team, and initially released on the ASUG Talks platform. The podcast was (very) lightly edited by ASUG Talks for listening clarity. The only difference between this version and the ASUG Talks version are the differences in musical intro (which I don't do) and my outro.

At ASUG Tech Connect 2024, for the first time, I hosted a joint podcast collaboration with the ASUG Talks team - to be issued on both of our platforms. Joining me in for a live podcast taping were familiar suspects: ASUG CEO Geoff Scott and analyst Josh Greenbaum. But this time around, we had a live audience - and pulled them into the conversation. The audience had a choice of an Enterprise Architect or AI focus. They chose Enterprise Architects - and, I think, for good reason. Effective AI is probably not possible for enterprises without the right data platform and Enterprise Architect approach. I think you'll agree that hearing so many articulate real world questions from the audience made this podcast a standout, and I'll look to do that again this year where possible. And, of course, we covered AI also - that topic always finds its way in. EDITING NOTE: This podcast was recorded and produced by the ASUG Talks team, and initially released on the ASUG Talks platform. The podcast was (very) lightly edited by ASUG Talks for listening clarity. The only difference between this version and the ASUG Talks version are the differences in musical intro (which I don't do) and my outro.

 ASUG partnered with Diginomica for a special episode of ASUG Talks. Recorded at ASUG Tech Connect,  Jon Reed, Co-Founder at Diginomica, hosted a conversation with  Geoff Scott, CEO & Chief Community Champion at ASUG, and Joshua Greenbaum, Principal at Enterprise Applications Consulting.  The three thought leaders fielded live questions from the audience focused on two areas of vital importance: artificial intelligence and enterprise architecture. During the session, the three experts had an insightful dialogue on how enterprises can leverage AI to drive improved business outcomes, and how the enterprise architect role is evolving.  

To debrief major announcements from the most recent editions of Microsoft Ignite and ASUG Tech Connect, ASUG CEO & Chief Community Champion Geoff Scott and Carolyn Szczurek, ASUG Communications Lead, recently welcomed Holger Bruchelt, Principal Product Manager at Microsoft, to a special episode of the ASUG Talks podcast.

I was unable to get Josh Greenbaum and Brian Dennett together for an on-the-ground podcast at ASUG Tech Connect in November, but the show provoked important talks on RISE, clean core, and why SAP projects need enterprise architects. Those topics aren't going away, so we got together virtually to make sense of what we learned - and what's next. With looming ERP deadlines on the one hand, and modernization/AI on the other, it's a crucial year for SAP. The role of the S/4HANA public cloud edition is in the middle of this also. That's plenty for this discussion, which starts out on a humorous note as the cities and shows blurred together for your host. Note: there are more podcasts from this show, including an ASUG collaboration on Enterprise Architects coming soon - and my on the ground taping with Jelena Perfiljeva of the Boring Enterprise Nerds on SAP developer issues, clean core debates and more: https://jonerp.podbean.com/e/asug-tech-connect-review-jelena-perfiljeva-of-boring-enterprise-nerds/

I was unable to get Josh Greenbaum and Brian Dennett together for an on-the-ground podcast at ASUG Tech Connect in November, but the show provoked important talks on RISE, clean core, and why SAP projects need enterprise architects. Those topics aren't going away, so we got together virtually to make sense of what we learned - and what's next. With looming ERP deadlines on the one hand, and modernization/AI on the other, it's a crucial year for SAP. The role of the S/4HANA public cloud edition is in the middle of this also. That's plenty for this discussion, which starts out on a humorous note as the cities and shows blurred together for your host. Note: there are more podcasts from this show, including an ASUG collaboration on Enterprise Architects coming soon - and my on the ground taping with Jelena Perfiljeva of the Boring Enterprise Nerds on SAP developer issues, clean core debates and more: https://jonerp.podbean.com/e/asug-tech-connect-review-jelena-perfiljeva-of-boring-enterprise-nerds/

Tune in for a special episode of ASUG Talks dedicated to insights from the recent collaborative research project ASUG undertook alongside DSAG and UKISUG. Focused on AI, the research examined how members of the three communities are approaching the technology and implementing it into their IT ecosystems.In this roundtable conversation, ASUG Research Director Marissa Gilbert is joined by Geoff Scott, CEO & Chief Community Champion; Conor Riordan, Chairperson at UKISUG; and Jens Hungershausen, Chairman at DSAG. The four thought leaders break down the research's highlights and key findings and discuss the impact of AI across the SAP ecosystem. 

Supply chains have steadily become a major priority for organizations in recent years, especially as black swan events severely disrupted normal supply chains and trade routes. Enterprises must take steps to ensure their supply chains are effective and resilient, even in the face of unplanned circumstances.In this latest ASUG Talks Roundtable, supply chain experts Isabelle Leclerc, Vice President Supply Chain, Cascades; and Darcy MacClaren, Chief Revenue Officer for SAP Digital Supply Chain, sit down with ASUG to discuss how organizations can leverage technology to bolster their supply chains. During our conversations, we learned how SAP approaches developing effective supply chain solutions based on its customers' needs, and how customers--like Cascades--are using SAP supply chain solutions to confront modern hurdles and drive their businesses.

In this latest episode of ASUG Talks Live, recorded at ASUG Tech Connect, AI takes center stage. Marissa Gilbert, ASUG Research Director, is joined by Geoff Scott, CEO & Chief Community Champion, ASUG; Jared Coyle, Chief AI Officer, SAP North America; and Soulat Khan, Worldwide Head of SAP Solution Architects, AWS. Diving into recent ASUG research focused on the community's usage and attitudes of AI solutions, the panel also discussed the way AI is driving change in the SAP ecosystem along with ways listeners can effectively embrace these solutions. 

On the final day of ASUG Tech Connect, Jon gets a strong (overdue) podcast debut from Jelena Perfiljeva of the Boring Enterprise Nerds. During this taping, Perfiljeva was fresh off her interactive session on the state of SAP developers - where clean core turned into the topic that stirred up the room. Perfiljeva explains why, which leads to a different discussion of clean core than Jon was expecting. The two also discuss the impact of AI on SAP developers, and why the sessions at Tech Connect brought customer concerns to the fore. They also trace back to Jelena's emergence in the SAP community, and why strong/outspoken voices matter to customers. Audiophile note: to remove static from the recording Jon's audio had to be adjusted, but this was still the best of the two recordings and hopefully is a good level of listenability for you.

On the final day of ASUG Tech Connect, Jon gets a strong (overdue) podcast debut from Jelena Perfiljeva of the Boring Enterprise Nerds. During this taping, Perfiljeva was fresh off her interactive session on the state of SAP developers - where clean core turned into the topic that stirred up the room. Perfiljeva explains why, which leads to a different discussion of clean core than Jon was expecting. The two also discuss the impact of AI on SAP developers, and why the sessions at Tech Connect brought customer concerns to the fore. They also trace back to Jelena's emergence in the SAP community, and why strong/outspoken voices matter to customers. Audiophile note: to remove static from the recording Jon's audio had to be adjusted, but this was still the best of the two recordings and hopefully is a good level of listenability for you.

In a special episode of ASUG Talks, Thomas Saueressig, Member of the SAP Executive Board overseeing the Customer Services & Delivery Board area, sits down with ASUG CEO & Chief Community Champion Geoff Scott. Their conversation, recorded at SAP's global headquarters in Walldorf, Germany, focused on Saueressig's background, how he approaches his customer-centric role, and his thoughts on the importance of enterprise architects in the SAP ecosystem. 

In this ASUG Talks roundtable, we are joined by three change management experts--ane E. Schwartz, Senior Director of Global Financial Services, Arthur Lawrence; Karan Froom, Transformation Change Leader & Owner of KFROOMCO Consulting; and Elaine Basa, Senior Director of Global Financial Services, Arthur Lawrence--to discuss how organizations can empower their employees when rolling out new software and processes. During the conversation, we touch on importance of change management efforts, common pitfalls companies can avoid, and how to approach budgeting. Listen here. 

In this latest episode, Mustansir Saifuddin is joined by Barry Sjostedt and Julea Ferrera to take a look back at what has transpired since SAP SAPPHIRE 2024. Was it all hype or was the conference content applicable to clients and partners like them? Listen in for an engaging conversation on what still resonates months later and suggestions for organizations on how to navigate the SAP ecosystem and leverage conferences like SAP SAPPHIRE. Julea Ferrera is the Founder of J. Ferrara Consulting Solutions, Founding Director of Techqueria x MKE and is on the America's SAP User Group WI Board of Directors. She has worked in Business Transformation as a Technofunctional consultant in a variety of different companies globally throughout the years promoting lean process and operation excellence through community impact. Barry Sjostedt is a Business Operations Consultant specializing in Finance and Organizational Excellence, having collaborated with numerous global organizations to drive lean processes and optimization through innovative technology solutions. His expertise spans various business areas, uniting teams for enhanced collaboration and future success. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/barrysjostedt https://www.linkedin.com/in/juleaferrera https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/midwest-tech-week/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/asug https://www.linkedin.com/company/techqueria-x-mke https://www.linkedin.com/company/isolutionpartners https://www.linkedin.com/in/mustansirsaifuddin X : @mmsaifuddin IG:@asug365 @midwesttechweek Learn more at www.isolutionpartners.com   Episode Transcript: [00:00:00] Mustansir Saifuddin: Welcome to Tech Driven Business brought to you by Innovative Solution Partners. Now that several months have passed since Sapphire 2024, I invited Barry Sjostedt and Julea Ferrera to share their insights on the post Sapphire landscape, including the role of AI and best strategies for navigating the S4 journey. [00:00:26] Listen in for the customer and service provider viewpoints to see how your team can stay ahead in the ever evolving SAP ecosystem. [00:00:38] Welcome you both. How are you? [00:00:40] Julea Ferrara: Doing pretty good. [00:00:43] Thank you for having us. [00:00:45] Barry Sjostedt: Yeah. Good seeing you both again. [00:00:48] Mustansir Saifuddin: I know we were all at Sapphire back in June and it was a great event and I thought, Coming out of the event I wanted to take this opportunity to talk about [00:01:00] the experience and the reality. You know, that's what I wanted to cover in this show because I think it's always good to look back and see where we have come and where we are heading in the future. [00:01:12] There are a few observations that I would like to share with you both and then like to open it up for your take on. How have you seen things unfold over the past couple of months and where do you see the direction in the future? So I know that the Sapphire event itself this year was full of learning and networking and it was great. [00:01:33] And it was filled with opportunities as well as it was a bit of an overload of information as you can tell by the amount of information being shared and a lot of different things that were happening during the conference. Now, if I look back, it is in our rearview mirror. I think this is time that we talk about and revisit what we got out of Sapphire and see what resonates with different [00:02:00] people. [00:02:01] Just like you, who touch the SAP ecosystem. Coming back to some of the content. Sapphire, we focused on Gen AI. That was like the the theme that was going on in different sessions, different conversations, and on the show floor, in the presentations, and those networking events. [00:02:20] Gen AI, Juul, You know, SAP talked about some key partnerships with their hyperscalers like AWS, Google, NVIDIA, Microsoft. I mean, you name it, right? We also talked about CleanCore, what that means, and a lot more. So, I know there was a lot of things were covered. And based on my experience, I would say some folks even thought that it was a lot of hype. [00:02:47] So, that brings me to you both, and, this conversation today. And I'd like to start with what did you get out of the show and where do you think we are heading? So, let me start with you, Julea. You know, when you left Sapphire, [00:03:00] what was top of your mind? And what was your first action step after coming out of the conference? [00:03:06] Julea Ferrara: I first went to honestly, LinkedIn, and I'm a part of BTP a lot of group sessions shared groups on there to kind of understand, like, different polls. A lot of people put a lot of different polls out there to understand the five different pillars with BTP and where we're at, and 100 percent across the board was on AI. [00:03:28] These last few weeks, since Sapphire, it's been again, a big thing around the AI aspect. I think, yes, there's a lot of hype around it, which is exciting. But as much as I love A. I. I still believe we have to tell the A. I. what to do. So it's what I see missing is people having those general conversations in the S. [00:03:50] A. P. space of how do we do that? What do we work with to do that? A lot of amazing tools. The problem is I don't think people understand like where to [00:04:00] go to get everything set up. So , I realized the importance of all working with all these partners and vendors to get, to understand and having really the ASUG network, the ASUG pre conference conversations were great to help you get [00:04:15] those things set up for your data processes for the AI to work. Barry, what did you think? [00:04:23] Barry Sjostedt: Yeah, I mean, it was a lot. I think, you know, going in there from a focus standpoint, you kind of almost had to know what you were looking for. My feeling is cloud is really the big initiative. I was trying to learn a little bit more about their positioning, you know, what they're really truly trying to accomplish. [00:04:43] And, you know, at the end of the day is my strategy aligned with theirs? My view of it is slightly different from yours, from, you know, you're a customer, whereas I'm trying to assist the customer. So of course I had that slightly different view. AI, [00:05:00] I think. It's AI is more of in its infancy. [00:05:05] It's here. It's evolving. It's quick and it's going to happen faster. So what they laid out is Kind of more as this is what's to come but we know having worked in the space for quite some time. It's It's really not super efficient today, and I agree with you. Where are the resources going to come from where? [00:05:28] They're already trying to look for resources for people to transition and still transition over from ECC to S4. So from my perspective, we're looking, you know, at where SAP is going, and more importantly, where are organizations going? What's most important to them? Who's going to what sessions? [00:05:51] As are they in the same sessions I'm in and who's in the sessions that are in, let's say cloud facing or cloud alignments, you know, and what's more [00:06:00] important to them. Because what's important to you is different than what's important to another organization. And let's say, you know, not all Molson Coors, but let's say something in a you know, a small manufacturer. [00:06:17] So there's a big difference there, and I think it's layered. [00:06:21] [00:06:21] Julea Ferrara: Yeah, you do have a great point. The one thing I have learned by going to Sapphire over these years is everybody tends to take their IT department. And you have a little bit more understanding of, like you said, Barry, Hey, we're more concerned about the cloud aspect. [00:06:40] When companies, customers send their people there, they need to send more of their business teams out there, business process teams, and that's not really happening. So the biggest encouragement I offer is you need to have more of your business functioning teams [00:06:56] to attend because they hear, they hear all these [00:07:00] hype words and around AI, they're ready to go. They don't realize that we have to still do all this work. Ahead of time. And there that's the gap that I see is people don't understand, okay, you have this available. This tool can do all this stuff for us. And I see a lot of different industries keep buying the tools and tools and tools, but they don't understand all the data and all the business processing that needs to be done with that for that automation to work. [00:07:30] So. My biggest takeaway for any customer and send more business functioning groups to those conversations. Sapphire being that. [00:07:40] Barry Sjostedt: That's such a great point. It really is, working with all different aspects of businesses. And this is not just kind of in this circumstances, but just, you know, from years of experience. [00:07:52] There is such a vast difference between the person who's in IT, who gets the complete and total understanding of, how it works, [00:08:00] and how I'm gonna put it into your system, to the individual actually using it, and is it functionally sound for their day to day. And it's almost, you know, sometimes I feel that the representatives that they send to some of the shows, it becomes that telephone game, when they get back to the organization and say, "I saw the coolest thing ever." And then the person sitting at the desk saying, yeah, but only one aspect really kind of helps me. [00:08:27] It's great. But overall for the organization, does it fit the need for where we're going not just daily, but in the future? How are we going to accomplish that? So, yeah, I mean, that's a great point. I enjoy meeting several different people from several different areas. And I think that's kind of where I think I really like more from an ASUG point of view. [00:08:50] When you start to get a little bit more granular in some of the smaller shows, you get to meet the users and understand where their difficulties is in that chain of how it can [00:09:00] go up and it can benefit the organization as a whole and not just one instance. [00:09:06] Mustansir Saifuddin: You both made a great points on this particular conversation. [00:09:11] One thing that I've seen, and this is what is going to persist going forward, especially when we are transitioning from the current environment customers are in, either you take your ECC environment or on prem or whatever the current situation is from their ERP to their data and analytics to any of the technology that they're currently using in their organization is having that path available to them. [00:09:38] You know, having that advisory kind of role, someone who is capable of understanding their current landscape and then walking them through the path to the new technology, to the generative AI type of discussions because the path has to be clear. Because you're not jumping to the [00:10:00] new technology, you know, in the next move. [00:10:01] You're going through those steps to make sure that you are getting to the destination in a way that is helping and benefiting the business, right? In the end of the day, a customer is looking at ways to make sure their systems are running flawlessly. You know, their path to technology and future trends is aligned with what their business strategy is. [00:10:24] That brings me to my next question So Sapphire is in the back view mirror now. A couple of months into it and the dust has kind of settled down How has your outlook changed since you left Sapphire? Barry, I would like to start with you this time. [00:10:41] Barry Sjostedt: For me, my outlook hasn't changed a lot . Having, you know, done a little bit of research prior to going to Sapphire and what we were looking to accomplish. [00:10:54] It's really kind of the same thing. My follow up from the show and the outlook [00:11:00] is, I'm a little bit more focused on some of the, the technology, obviously cloud was being one of them for us. The onset of BTP and trying to roll out the different portions of what they're, you know, trying to make it bigger and better, but really it's much of the same. [00:11:20] How am I going to be able to help organizations and align with their strategies? And really try to help them to make these moves. I mean, we, you know, we've made mention, you know of some of the the people having to move over, whether it's just to S4 or being a part of the Rise journey, or Hana cloud for that matter, How can I help be a value and a benefit for the organizations to make these moves? I always turn back to my past experience of just working in operations. Operations is costly for [00:12:00] groups. It's a cost. How do you defray that cost? How do you make that cost as small as possible to help the profitability in the future? [00:12:08] How can I make, that process more lean and a more efficient, saving more money for them to make this upgrade. Because these upgrades are costly. And that's what we see a lot of is, our focus is solely on this. And it's like, yeah, however, if you have terrible process today here, you can upgrade, but you've just upgraded to another terrible process. [00:12:36] And you just paid a lot more money to do a terrible process. So again, it's getting that mindset. So for me, not a lot has changed in that aspect. I think it's just more of understanding what the messaging is and also aligning with the organizations to make sure they understand what the messaging [00:13:00] is and is it being, is it being relayed from that show to Julea, just like you said, to your business people, to your end users. [00:13:10] If I'm at a slightly larger organization and I'm going to send people down to Sapphire, I'm going to have that mindset of a divide and conquer. And I am going to pick, do you know what I mean? Three groups. I'm going to have an IT, I'm going to have a finance, I'm going to have an end user group. [00:13:28] Do you know what I mean? And I'm going to say this is what I would like to find out. And then All three groups collaborate when they get back. What did you find out? What did you learn? And then once you do that, I think you're really on the path to making the best decision moving forward. [00:13:45] Do we do this? And in what order do we do this? What is most financially advantageous to the group? So we're prepared not only today, but we're prepared for tomorrow when we have to make yet another jump or do we do [00:14:00] it incrementally? That's smart. [00:14:02] Mustansir Saifuddin: That makes sense. [00:14:03] Julea, what's your take on it? I mean, have you seen any change in your perspective after this couple of months? [00:14:11] [00:14:11] Julea Ferrara: Generally, you don't. Again, it's all hype. It goes back to more the cloud perspective and automating. Different aspects and going to the AI route because again not everybody understands that you're putting additional costs onto the problem you already have of upgrading and everybody's too worried about the maintenance side of things. [00:14:33] Instead of fixing the issue right now, everybody's more focused on the tool . The business sees, Hey, you have all these awesome tools. They push and the business gets what the business wants. They have the money. They can say , Hey, I want these tools. And then you have these complicated webs. [00:14:50] I liked the point that you said, bring your finance person, bring your business person. People forget, is bring your data people . Your data people need to be a [00:15:00] part of these conversations. That is one group I do not see a lot of, data people. Yeah, maybe on the analytics side, but you need your master data governance team there. [00:15:10] I think security is another one. [00:15:13] Mustansir Saifuddin: Thank you for sharing your thoughts on that. This is very good to hear the two perspectives. And that was the whole idea of this conversation was to get what you have seen from your point of view, and then how it has progressed since that event happened. [00:15:29] So from your purview, where do you see SAP customers heading when it really comes to this S4 journey we all talking about and a 2027 deadline from SAP? [00:15:39] Julea, what's your take on it? I mean, this is coming up quickly. [00:15:44] Julea Ferrara: Yeah. I see a lot of people scrambling. Again going back, they just, what do we do? Are we taking all the initial steps that we need to, all the checks and balances ahead of time? It kind of goes back to what [00:16:00] I'm previously referencing is people are scrambling. [00:16:03] They're focusing on the tool to get it done and not really understanding that they need to be more involved. And this is where I plug in the ASUG: ASUG plug is even part of your S. A. P. membership is the customer excellence team that you can tap into to help you. And that's where my recommendation seeing those pre conferences, I was like: if you want to work with bigger, like Deloitte and Accenture and EY, to help navigate these things, you still need small providers to come in, to really understand your landscape a little bit more, to help guide those teams. [00:16:41] Those are the disconnects I'm seeing, and I think if you get the mapping and all that stuff done ahead of time, you're in, you're aware of what maintenance fees and stuff. People are there to guide you through all that. And not enough customers know about those benefits. [00:17:00] As being a part of an ASUG membership where you're amongst a group of all these subject matter experts who can guide you, you know, it's, it's full of customers, partners, and vendors, not everybody realizes that. [00:17:13] I mean, I'm still. Been trying to get that out as a champion myself. [00:17:18] Mustansir Saifuddin: That is great. [00:17:20] Barry Sjostedt: Well, pressure's on, isn't it? Right? I mean, that clock has been ticking. There's been that push and I think that some of the early adopters obviously had some pains and let's also remember COVID was slammed right in the middle of this. [00:17:38] So I know that they went from, and correct me if I'm wrong, I think it was 2025 was the original date. I think they're two years out considering the COVID and I don't know if that's enough. The last time that I checked, I want to say that there were still 68 percent of [00:18:00] organizations still on ECC. [00:18:01] I could be wrong on that number you know, obviously, but that's quite a bit. So now we're going to have this mad dash in two years. My concern becomes resources. These organizations if they're not adopting earlier and stuff, are they doing the right thing? Piggybacking off what you said Julea too is you know I couldn't stress enough of using, you know organizations like the ASUGs and the education. And more importantly the peer to peer contacts and I can't tell you how many people I have talked to here in the new england chapter. Use the people who have already moved over. [00:18:39] What approach, what would they do different? If they had to do it over again, spend time on this, clean up this, don't do this. And there I agree again, Julea, it's just that I think that the smarter organizations are taking a step back, they're taking a look and doing just kind [00:19:00] of what I said before. [00:19:02] Thanks. What we have internally. Clean up. I mean the clean core concept is really kind of what I was talking about a little bit more about being lean. let's clean up what we have now clean up some dead data clean up some stuff that we have to do so when you actually make that transition You're not bringing over junk. [00:19:23] You're actually starting and think about the cost and I mean we promote that a lot here. As we're doing our projects, is that working with a documentation, organization, and optimization that we do is if we can assist you to clean up that whole entire area within your documentation, you're not bringing that stuff over. [00:19:46] I mean, I know we've saved organizations hundreds of thousands of dollars in just migrations and think about that. That can go to what you're moving over. This is just one small piece, one small [00:20:00] area of your SAP ecosystem. Think about where else you can clean up. So again, I think that the smarter organizations are really taking a harder look at that move and what makes sense. [00:20:11] And does it make sense if I'm going to do just do S4? Do I do S4 cloud? Do I do it all at once? And how do I do that and how do I go about it? So. Yeah. I think really organization is the key and communication is really big, internally and externally, and who works best for your organization. [00:20:33] You have some of these larger groups, they might be more suited to work with you. But there are a lot of smaller groups that need kind of more boutique, more hand holding, more understanding, and more experience in that area. Someone working on a multi billion dollar corporation, might not be the best fit for a smaller organization. [00:20:58] You know what I mean? That's revenue under a [00:21:00] hundred million. And there are all different levels for that. I think it's going to be interesting to see over the next couple years. I'm starting to see a smaller shift kind of on my end from an interest standpoint of I think that people are learning from the smaller groups and that peer to peer contact. And I actually couldn't encourage that enough from my end. And Julea and Mustansir and we're being part of these organizations is where you kind of get the most benefit. [00:21:25] Talking to each other, get an understanding. And it's amazing how willing people are to help each other in this capacity. I really enjoy that part of the, the group of the organization. [00:21:37] Mustansir Saifuddin: Yeah, totally agree. [00:21:39] Julea Ferrara: I've seen different industries who rely on SAP education to only be in the IT department. You talk to business departments and they're like they solely rely on IT creating the documentation, putting everything together, and really not going [00:22:00] in to do transactional work or understand what they're doing versus they're relying on the reports that are coming out. And my biggest takeaway to customers, the ones that are successful is you have SAP education throughout your whole organization. [00:22:18] Not just your IT department. So if you're doing integrated business planning, it needs to be a part of the whole integrated business planning teams conversation to, like you said, Barry, going back to that documentation, cleaning up the data, cleaning up the process to then move it all over. The hard part is people don't know how to educate others. [00:22:44] And that's why we have great groups like ASUG. I said, you don't have to leave the company to learn other best practices. So focus on educating your people and having that organizational change management process set there for [00:23:00] everyone. [00:23:00] Mustansir Saifuddin: I think that's a great takeaway, I think, from both of you, and you touched upon it, right? [00:23:03] I mean, it's all about peer to peer education, just learning and utilizing the resources available to you to be more prepared before you get on the journey. And the journey is going to be challenging for folks who have not gone through all the work that you folks mentioned about doing the homework, cleaning up, getting your house in order. [00:23:24] All those things are important for you to be successful in this journey, right? And I know we covered a lot today. What would be one key takeaway that you would both want our listeners to leave with? Julea, please start from your perspective. [00:23:38] Julea Ferrara: I know a lot of people are going in the AI route and we're talking data, process and then, big key takeaway is utilize the networks that you have, to come together, share. When it comes to the A. I. aspect of it all: to have the greatest prompting you can. Describe your [00:24:00] scenarios as descriptive as possible when you are building out the AI for these tools. If you leave things very blank, if you leave things very from the box add your operations to that, consider your operational changes, consider the process, and then consider what the software does. [00:24:22] Cause you can customize to that and utilize the SAP excellence center, utilize ASUG. Get some smart, smaller partners in to understand your landscape. If you're a big company to help get those SOWs going in the right direction that work for you and you're not just putting money out the door and out the door and out the door. And you're creating more webs of Disarray, focus on those avenues and I think you'll do, you know, do do really well. [00:24:54] Mustansir Saifuddin: Great. Barry, what's your take? [00:24:57] Barry Sjostedt: I can't stress enough the [00:25:00] peer to peer, partner, collaboration, communication network. I think that's the most helpful. People like to talk about their accomplishments. People like to talk about what works, their successes and how it works. The more you get to know people and the more you kind of get yourself out there and you get more in these groups, you know, they're not afraid to talk about, yeah, we tried this and it didn't work. [00:25:29] And they explain why. Then that relationship continues. And between reading and trying to collaborate on linkedin, which I try to use a fair amount. I try to share as much as I can so that people can learn more about their space . Whether it's the people that I follow or the people that I am connected with I think there's a lot of value in there. But again, it's that research And I agree with you Julea. [00:25:52] It's just vetting out What is best for your organization? What I've seen a lot of is that you have organizations that [00:26:00] come in and say, Oh, don't worry. We have that. We have that solution for you. That's in our portfolio. Well, great. [00:26:09] Does it work? Do you know what I mean? Like, you know, it's great that you have it in your portfolio, but is it a right fit for us today? At the end of the day, if you actually have something in mind and you have a project in mind, take a step back and say," Hey what are the best ones out there right now?" [00:26:26] And let's look at three, four, five and find the best fit with your organization. You know what I mean? We're a good fit for you as you are for us because that means we're setting you up for success. [00:26:39] We're a valued partner and we're going to move forward with you. And I think oftentimes it gets lost because people are trying to sell. People are trying to put stuff in there. It's all great if I put something in your system, But if a year or two later, it doesn't work, [00:26:54] it's bad. It's bad for both of us. Bad for business. Bad for reputation. And it doesn't work. That's [00:27:00] no good. So the combination of that peer to peer contact and understanding and having a true understanding Of your organization and what fits best for your needs for your groups and that comes with communication and collaboration. [00:27:13] Julea Ferrara: I say there's a lot of as for supply chain groups. There's a lot around the finance groups. There's the latest and greatest, and that's where I'm getting a lot of my information from. So I suggest customers do the same as well. Go in those groups and learn, like you said, peer to peer. [00:27:30] Barry Sjostedt: Well, you know, and that's funny. When you mention the latest and greatest here, it's great, right? You take a look at it, and is it a good fit for you today, right? Maybe not. But I think the key is, is that by looking at the different organizations, who is set up the best for you to make that move. [00:27:45] So if you are in fact on ECC today and you want to fix it, is that next step for you S4 and will that solution or that particular idea move over to S4 in an easy [00:28:00] transition.. Or is it more of a, well, since you're going on this version, the next version is going to be twice as expensive to make a move. [00:28:08] And I see that a lot too. Whereas, you know, and it's nice part about stuff that we will do here is that it doesn't matter what version you are on and it's an easy transition. You can just bring everything over once you're ready to move. And I feel that's a true valued partnership. Is that we're, we're looking to move forward with your roadmap and we are aligned with all versionings of SAP. [00:28:33] There's that nice collaboration, right? We're collaborating with the organization. But we're also just going to be right along with the roadmap. If they're going to move forward, we have the capability of moving forward with you and it's not at an outstanding cost. A better ROI at the end of the day. [00:28:50] And ultimately that's what you want. You got to look hard at that. [00:28:53] Julea Ferrara: Yeah. What people don't do is discuss the how together. [00:28:58] Barry Sjostedt: Right. Yep. [00:29:00] No, that's exactly right. [00:29:02] Mustansir Saifuddin: I think this is great and great takeaways from both of you and I think that this is where the real value comes in from sharing this kind of format with listeners so they can get, Hey, what is really out there and what should be focusing on in order for me to be successful in my organization and in the future I want to move forward to. [00:29:24] Thank you again both of you for joining the session and it's been a great conversation. Look forward to talking to you in the future Thank you again for joining us today. [00:29:34] [00:29:34] Mustansir Saifuddin: Thanks for listening to Tech Driven Business brought to you by Innovative Solutions Partners. Barry and Julia shared their unique perspectives to give a 360 view of SAP Sapphire. As we heard from both of them, the key to success in navigating the SAP ecosystem lies in collaboration, [00:30:00] communication, and a focus on business processes. [00:30:03] Don't hesitate to leverage the resources available within the SAP community and seek guidance. from experts when needed. We would love to hear from you. Continue the conversation by connecting with me on LinkedIn or X. Learn more about Innovative Solution Partners and schedule a free consultation by visiting isolutionpartners.com. 

Jeff Miers, Director of Partnerships and Alliances for the Energy & Utilities Industries at AWS, and John Downie, Global Energy Industry Lead at Accenture, joined Geoff Scott, ASUG CEO & Chief Community Champion, to discuss growing value and utility of AI-powered solutions, as well as how AWS and Accenture are helping customers effectively implement and leverage next-generation technology. 

Many events have passed since our post-Sapphire clean core review. Time to hash out AI, clean core and more - in the context of ASUG's fall events, and fresh research data. Analyst Josh Greenbaum, ASUG CEO Geoff Scott and your host Jon Reed rejoin for another unscripted review of event lessons learned - from SAP shows and beyond. Along with Geoff's new ASUG data, Jon shares his top event gripes and learnings; Josh shares his clean core/BTP findings. Then we look ahead to what we want to learn from ASUG Tech Connect, and why Enterprise Architects are central to the changes afoot. Show notes: 1 - 31:00 - fall event reviews, ASUG research findings, clean core, and AI hype vs customer reality 31:00 - SAP TechEd news review 51:00 - ASUG Tech Connect preview, why Enterprise Architects matter, and community as a learning framework Jon recommends listeners look at SAP's Knowledge Graph pursuits, a notable TechEd topic not covered in this podcast.

Many events have passed since our post-Sapphire clean core review. Time to hash out AI, clean core and more - in the context of ASUG's fall events, and fresh research data. Analyst Josh Greenbaum, ASUG CEO Geoff Scott and your host Jon Reed rejoin for another unscripted review of event lessons learned - from SAP shows and beyond. Along with Geoff's new ASUG data, Jon shares his top event gripes and learnings; Josh shares his clean core/BTP findings. Then we look ahead to what we want to learn from ASUG Tech Connect, and why Enterprise Architects are central to the changes afoot. Show notes: 1 - 31:00 - fall event reviews, ASUG research findings, clean core, and AI hype vs customer reality 31:00 - SAP TechEd news review 51:00 - ASUG Tech Connect preview, why Enterprise Architects matter, and community as a learning framework Jon recommends listeners look at SAP's Knowledge Graph pursuits, a notable TechEd topic not covered in this podcast. Here is a link to the smartShift research mentioned in the podcast.

The steadily growing skills gap is complicating the implementation of next-generation technology, including cloud ERP and AI solutions. We're seeing this at play in the ASUG community. According to the 2024 ASUG Pulse of the SAP Customer Research, 29% of respondents cited maintaining knowledge staff and turnover as challenges their organizations are experiencing. In the first episode of our roundtable discussions focused on topics vital to the ASUG Community, ASUG Talks dives deep into the technology skill gap, and how hiring companies and education institutions are working to improve current workforces and empower the next generation of SAP professionals. We are joined by three experts keenly focused on this issue: Jelena Perfiljeva, Expert SAP Developer at Mindset Consulting & Chief Nerdess at Boring Enterprise NerdsDr. Ronald Freeze, Director for Enterprise Systems & Professor at the University of ArkansasChristine Aboud, CEO of St. Michael's Learning AcademyListen in to our conversation, where we discuss where hiring organizations and education experts are seeing the skill gap, how both groups work with one another and SAP to improve the knowledge base of SAP professionals, and the importance of reskilling and upskilling. 

Kicking off the SAP for Utilities conference, Michael Sullivan, National Vice President of Renewable Energy and Utilities at SAP North America, joined Geoff Scott, ASUG CEO & Chief Community Champion, to discuss cloud migration, the clean energy transition, the increasing relevance of AI, and how SAP is empowering its customers.

In episode 207 of our SAP on Azure video podcast we talk about talk with the CEO of ASUG, Geoff Scott. As you might know I am a product manager for SAP integration here at Microsoft. In this role, I always try to connect with customers, listen to them, learn from their feedback and then obviously get this back into our products. Obviously, I do this a lot with individual customers, but SAP user groups, like the Americas SAP User Group, ASUG, are the perfect place to get a consolidated few what SAP customers and partners think. So today I am again super happy to have Geoff Scott, the CEO of ASUG with us today. Find all the links mentioned here: https://www.saponazurepodcast.de/episode207Reach out to us for any feedback / questions:* Robert Boban: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rboban/* Goran Condric: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gorancondric/* Holger Bruchelt: https://www.linkedin.com/in/holger-bruchelt/ #Microsoft #SAP #Azure #SAPonAzure #ASUG #Community

SAP's "clean core" mantra raises enough questions to earn its own podcast. So, in the aftermath of SAP Sapphire and ASUG's Annual Conference, Josh Greenbaum and ASUG CEO Geoff Scott join Jon Reed again. We start with the open questions each of us are pursuing after the show. Then we shift into the SAP clean core discussion: is clean core marketing/sales hype, or a way of achieving deeper customer value from SAP? Scott reveals fresh data from ASUG on customer views, and Reed asks the guys to react to recent blog posts from SAP, as well as the clean core partner certification. We wrap with the question: where should SAP customers take this from here?

SAP's "clean core" mantra raises enough questions to earn its own podcast. So, in the aftermath of SAP Sapphire and ASUG's Annual Conference, Josh Greenbaum and ASUG CEO Geoff Scott join Jon Reed again. We start with the open questions each of us are pursuing after the show. Then we shift into the SAP clean core discussion: is clean core marketing/sales hype, or a way of achieving deeper customer value from SAP? Scott reveals fresh data from ASUG on customer views, and Reed asks the guys to react to recent blog posts from SAP, as well as the clean core partner certification. We wrap with the question: where should SAP customers take this from here?

In this new episode Niklas Siemer, Product Specialist for SAP Business Technology Platform, is talking to Geoff Scott, CEO and Chief Community Champion of the Americas' SAP Users' Group (ASUG). Together they will make a recap of the impression and announcements of SAP Sapphire and the ASUG Annual Conference. Geoff is sharing his top moments and his opinion on AI in business. To close the interview, Geoff give a little preview on the ASUG Tech Connect in November.

In this new episode Niklas Siemer, Product Specialist for SAP Business Technology Platform, is talking to Geoff Scott, CEO and Chief Community Champion of the Americas' SAP Users' Group (ASUG). Together they will make a recap of the impression and announcements of SAP Sapphire and the ASUG Annual Conference. Geoff is sharing his top moments and his opinion on AI in business. To close the interview, Geoff give a little preview on the ASUG Tech Connect in November.

 In this week's episode, we delve into the critical role of enterprise technology and why it matters in today's rapidly evolving business landscape. Our guest, Geoff Scott, sheds light on the complexities of integrating personal communication tools like iMessage into enterprise data systems, the transformative power of cloud computing, and the significance of community and face-to-face collaboration in fostering innovation. Geoff shares his valuable insights on how businesses can navigate the challenges of modern enterprise architecture, data migration, and maintaining effective operations in a digital-first world. Geoff Scott is a seasoned technology leader specializing in SAP implementation and operations. As the CEO of Americas' SAP Users' Group (ASUG), one of the largest technology communities globally, Geoff brings together a diverse ecosystem of purchasers, users, implementers, partners, and consultants. His career spans a transition from accounting to consulting, with hands-on experience in various industries, including automotive, food, and fashion. Geoff's primary focus is on enabling customers to maximize the value of their SAP investment through strategic collaboration with the partner ecosystem and SAP itself. Outside his role at ASUG, Geoff engages with global system implementers, consulting firms, and technology providers to align technological advancements with business value. "Enterprise technology should make jobs faster, smarter, and less friction-filled, with an emphasis on the importance of people and relationships." ~ Geoff Scott Today on Innovation Talks: • The challenge of integrating personal communication tools like iMessage into enterprise systems and ensuring data consistency.• The necessity of having all data available, including tacit knowledge, for AI tools to be effective.• The limitations of AI in high-stakes decision-making and the potential consequences of errors, exemplified by autonomous driving.• The scalability and speed advantages of cloud computing over traditional server provisioning, along with security and licensing considerations.• The superior security provided by hyperscalers compared to internal data centers, particularly for startups.• The importance of community and face-to-face collaboration in fostering innovation and professional growth.• The role of SAP as the central nervous system of an enterprise and the need for integration with major ERP systems for effective business operations.• The future of enterprise technology in the cloud, software as a service (SaaS), and minimal customization, highlighting the challenges and necessity of transitioning from on-premise systems.Connect with Geoff Scott:·     LinkedIn·     geoff.scott@asug.com  Resources Mentioned:• Cloud platforms like AWS, Azure, and Microsoft's cloud-based solutions for SAP, Excel, and Outlook.• ASUG (Americas' SAP Users' Group) for technology-related community events and resources.   Ready to Transform Your Innovation Strategy? If you're a product manager or innovator looking to streamline your processes and turn chaos into control, you won't want to miss this opportunity.  Dive into our exclusive, free eBook on Innovation Ops strategies designed just for you.  Learn the secrets to revolutionizing your approach and achieving success with clarity and precision.  Download your copy today.  Start your journey to becoming an innovation powerhouse now!  This Podcast is brought to you by Sopheon Thanks for tuning into this week's episode of Innovation Talks. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave a review wherever you get your podcasts. Apple Podcasts | TuneIn | Stitcher | Spotify | iHeart Be sure to connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, and share your favorite episodes on social media to help us reach more listeners, like you. For additional information around new product development or corporate innovation, sign up for Sopheon's newsletter where we share news and industry best practices monthly! The fastest way to do this is to go to sopheon.com and click here.

Imran Sajid and Sherry Meyer discuss the latest news/announcements from SAP Sapphire 2024 held in Orlando Florida. Topics include Sapphire Event Highlights Thoughts on the WalkMe Acquisition Major Announcements Joule/Generative AI Capabilities Thoughts on the future of AI SAP Partnerships & ASUG sessions Latest on Moving from On-Premise to Cloud Relevant Links SAP SuccessFactors Accelerates AI Capabilities SAP Enters into Agreement to Acquire WalkMe SAP Sapphire Virtual --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/imran-sajid/message

In a special, live episode of ASUG Talks recorded at SAP Sapphire & ASUG Annual Conference, Marissa Gilbert was joined by Geoff Scott, ASUG CEO & Chief Community Champion; Deirdre Toner Marketing Director for Specialists' Sales at Amazon Web Service (AWS); and Brendan Verni, ASUG Board Member.Coming off the heels of SAP CEO Christian Klein's marquee keynote address where he emphasized SAP's focus on AI and announced an expanded partnership with AWS, the discussion focused on the place of AI in the SAP ecosystem and the experiences of customers working with hyperscalers. Listen here.

In this latest episode, Geoff Scott, of ASUG, joins Mustansir Saifuddin to discuss what is required for businesses to be successful with Gen AI as they prepare for the future. With more than 20 years of leadership and technology experience, including seven years of extensive SAP implementation and operations experience, Geoff understands the impact of Gen AI in digital transformation. Listen in as he also highlights how ASUG is supporting the SAP ecosystem on the Gen AI journey. Geoff Scott, is CEO and Chief Community Officer of ASUG, believes that the connections ASUG makes for our members have the potential to become career-defining relationships that inspire innovation and success for their organizations. His forward-thinking leadership prioritizes helping our members make the most of their investment in SAP technologies. To that end, Geoff works closely with customers, members, the SAP Executive Board, and the extensive partner ecosystem to amplify the voice of the SAP customer.   Past positions include CIO for TOMS Shoes, where he led the implementation of SAP: CIO at JBS; and senior leadership positions at Ford Motor Company. Before becoming CEO, Geoff was an ASUG member and served on the board. Geoff has served on several philanthropic boards and is the founding member of the Denver CIO Executive Council.  Connect with Us: LinkedIn Mustansir Saifuddin Innovative Solution Partners  Twitter:  @gscott16 @Mmsaifuddin YouTube or learn more about our sponsor Innovative Solution Partners to schedule a free consultation.    Episode Transcript   Welcome to Tech-Driven Business brought to you by Innovative Solution Partners. I'm honored to have Geoff Scott, CEO of ASUG, joins me to discuss what is required for businesses to be successful with Gen AI as they prepare for the future. He'll also share valuable insights on how ASUG is supporting the SAP ecosystem on the GEN AI journey. [00:00:02.560] - Mustansir Welcome to TechDriven business, Geoff. How are you?   [00:00:11.190] - Geoff I'm wonderful. How are you today?   [00:00:13.480] - Mustansir I'm doing great. Thank you. Thank you for joining our show.   [00:00:17.570] - Geoff Pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me. Or I should say, you can make that decision after we're done today.   [00:00:23.130] - Mustansir All right. Sounds like a plan. Hey, it's always good to have you, Jeff, especially meeting in person every year, either in the volunteer meeting or at Sapphire or other events. It's always fun to have that conversation with you. Glad to have you on our show.   [00:00:38.390] - Geoff What a pleasure to be here. I want to thank you for your connection and commitment to ASUG, your commitment to the Michigan chapter, one of our most wonderful places to be in all of the United States. I have close ties to Michigan, so it's always wonderful to hear Go Green, for those who are Michiganders, my alma mater. I think that being part of ASUG and being part of this The SAP community is really a tremendous thing. I've been doing the CEO job at ASUG for 10 years. Every year, as you mentioned, we get all 300 volunteers together to plan the year and celebrate our successes and talk about our challenges. It's a tremendous things. So I encourage everyone to be part of ASUG. If you are an SAP professional and you want to be at the top of your game of SAP, there's no better place to be than being an active part of ASUG, which you are. I want to thank you for that.   [00:01:28.530] - Mustansir I second that. Thank you. Thank you. So today, we will be talking about how digital transformation in AI is changing the business landscape. How does that sound to you?   [00:01:39.350] - Geoff I think that sounds like a tremendous conversation.   [00:01:42.040] - Mustansir It absolutely is, and it's going to be fun. So let's start with the basics. Jeff, you have been around for a long time, not counting your-Original dinosaur. Hey, it's all good. But your extensive background with SAP. Can you share with our listeners a brief overview of your career journey?   [00:02:03.150] - Geoff Well, I would love to. As we just spoke about, 10 years as the CEO of Asug, and I don't love the CEO title. I like to think of myself as the Chief Community Champion. My job is to rally us as a community around this SAP software and make sure all of us are getting the most value from it. The organizations that are purchasing the software, we as all professionals in investing our careers into this amazing ecosystem, it's very important that we feel like we make forward progress. We feel that this is a place where we can learn, connect, and grow, which are three of our very important ASUG pillars. That's been a tremendous journey for me for the last 10 years. I didn't come into this intentionally. Prior to that, I was a CIO. I was at Tom's Shoes in Los Angeles. Prior to that, at a beef company, small beef company, only the third largest in the world, in Greenley, Colorado, where we were also an SAP shop. That was where I cut my teeth on being a full-time SAP advocate. Then prior to that, in your neck of the woods, in your backyard, in Deerborn, Michigan, doesn't take a lot to figure out what's in Deerborn these days.   [00:03:08.510] - Geoff So I was there for almost 10 years doing lots of different IT work. And then obviously prior to that, consulting in college and being a teenager and things like that.   [00:03:20.120] - Mustansir That's a wonderful background, Jeff. It's okay. I think the best part about this is being in your role, the role that you're playing at ASOG, your background or your history really brings that tremendous amount of knowledge and technology know-how, which really is what a lot of ASA customers or in general, SAP folks who are dealing with technology on a daily basis can utilize your know-how and your in-depth knowledge of what's going on in the industry versus someone with a background in business. You don't really have that depth in terms of what you bring to the table.   [00:04:00.920] - Geoff You're very kind. You're very kind. In my career, I started off when I was going to college, just a little bit west from where you are. Again, go green. Then that's the last I'm going to say that today, maybe. My degree's in accounting, and I chose that field because I really wanted to understand how business worked. I figured the best way to figure out how business would work is to understand how the money moves around. Accounting was actually a fallback for me. I started I started off in finance, and then this will date me tremendously. Then the stock market collapsed back in the late '80s, and I went, Oh, wait a minute. I don't know I want to be on Wall Street anymore. I grew up in the suburbs of New York City, so I had this delusion I would go back into New York and be on Wall Street. I said, I don't think that's going to work so well. I went to accounting, and I found I liked it better. A little bit more pragmatic. Finance can be fairly esoteric. I came into consulting in IT because I always thought about IT as a way in which businesses can be more efficient.   [00:05:01.780] - Geoff I was always intrigued by how we could use technology to drive business outcomes. That has served me throughout my career. I really think about business outcomes first and technology second.   [00:05:13.390] - Mustansir Absolutely. I think that's what really counts, how business drives technology. That takes me to my next discussion point. Ai. Ai took the business world by storm last year. We all know that. How are ASOG and ASAP supporting their clients with navigating AI and Gen AI in particular. Everybody is about Gen AI, so I'd like to hear your thoughts on that.   [00:05:38.820] - Geoff Yeah, I think that generative AI and all the things related to AI, nothing new to that, Mustache. We've been around in the SAP ecosystem. Ai has been around for a long time. What was new in November of 2022 when ChatGPT first came onto the market was this thing of generative AI. Well, that was different. But most SAP practitioners, the people you and I are talking to today, would say, Hey, we've been filling around AI for a long time. Understanding PDF documents, understanding pictures, converting pictures to text, scanning documents, scanning invoices, making sure we can convert all that. None of that is terribly new. I think generative AI made it mainstream. What was back office technology that was used to achieve business the outcomes all of a sudden became available to the masses. And it became available to the masses in a very simple way. I can sit down, I can write a sentence into a computer, and it will produce paragraphs of very eloquent text. We can have a whole conversation about how accurate it is, but I could finally get this star tracky type of thing, or I could type a sentence in and I would get this back.   [00:06:55.320] - Geoff And I could do cute things. Tell me how to bake a cake in Shakespeare in English, and it would do it. I think it became a piece of technology that everybody could connect to, and that everybody includes the board of directors, the CEO, the rest of your business peers who can now say, I get it. I understand how this works, and I want that for my business. We can make this work for all of us.   [00:07:25.460] - Mustansir I think it's a very interesting point you mentioned, Jeff. We always talk about C-suite, right? And you know that in this-I'm one of them. Yeah, exactly, right? So we talk about, I still get involved with a lot of implementations and boots on ground. And I know that a lot of these technology implementations, you have this gap between the C-suite and folks who are actually involved in the technology day to day, right? Do you think Gen AI is going to close that gap? What is your take on that perspective? Bringing these two worlds together.   [00:08:03.730] - Geoff I think generative AI is going to be an incredibly interesting diversion or departure for all of us in the sense that we've talked about for a long for a long time, the importance of some things in the SAP ecosystem that are near and dear to our heart. Master data, accuracy of data, archiving, things that warm our hearts that make the business run for cover. You want to watch paint dry? Have a conversation about archiving. The challenge with all of that is if we really want to get the most value from a generative AI solution, whether it be SAP's Joule or ChatGuard, GPT or everything in between, our enterprise data has to be lined up correctly. I think this is where we're going to see a tremendous amount of energy and effort to understand how this enterprise data will form these models and make them work. There was an article in the New York Times, I think two weeks ago, and this is topical because last week I was in Las Vegas for a few days at Google Next. And I always go to Google Next, and I also like to try to make it to AWS and Microsoft's events as well, because it refreshes me and it makes me think about how to tackle these problems from different perspectives.   [00:09:29.500] - Geoff And that, coupled with the New York Times article was very interesting to me in that it appears we're running out of trainable data for these models, that our models now are demanding so much data that we can't fill them. And And so there was an interesting topic in Las Vegas about synthetic data, which I'm still wrapping my head around and what that means. I'm trying to understand how we get to the levels of data. We do know one thing that these generative AI models require a lot of data in order to give very effective answers. And even when they have a lot of data, they can still hallucinate. I mean, there's no greater data source than the English language over the last 300 years. And the cool thinking about it is it hasn't really changed all that much. I can take all that stuff and I can pour it in. And yeah, there's different dialects, but the English language or pick a language, French, whatever, it hasn't moved all that much. So the data is fairly stable. Sure. Is that true when we think about our enterprise data? And the problem that I see coming is if we have lots of historical data, what does it really mean?   [00:10:37.900] - Geoff How accurate is it? And then the second big question is, how relevant is it? And if both of those are not at the top of their game, you run a huge risk that your model is being trained on data that isn't accurate, isn't relevant, and then you expect it to give you amazing results. The thing that makes me chuckle is the notion of saying to a model running on top of your SAP data, Hey, what's the best product I should sell? And it spits back a product that you made 15 years ago because it might have been at the time the most profitable based in parts that you don't even have access to anymore. And the model doesn't know that. I think there's another really important part of this whole equation, and that is something that I call gray data. And gray data is the data that's in our heads, in our minds, which is what we use to make decisions that the AI models have zero knowledge of. And the only way long term an AI model will be able to replicate what you do, what I do, what anyone listening today does, is it has exactly what's up in your head.   [00:11:42.850] - Geoff And it's not going to. We still know today in you're involved in SAP implementations all the time, that it takes someone interpreting that data, oftentimes, to understand what it's saying and what cues it's giving. Ai doesn't understand that because it's missing all the stuff that's in your gray space. And if that's the case, and how much of the data that you use to run your enterprise is gray data versus bits and bytes. If the answer is greater than 50 %, 60 %, 70 %, wow, we got a lot of missing data, and the model is not going to be that effective.   [00:12:17.980] - Mustansir For sure. I think it's an interesting point you mentioned about historical data and the quality of data. And that leads me into this next conversation about, I'm an analytics person in data focus. And it's all about good information will produce good results, right? So from that perspective, I'm curious, what are you seeing with ASUG members as it applies to their approach, especially to real-time data and analytics, and also the move to the cloud? Because a lot of things are happening in the cloud. So what is your take in this whole space?   [00:12:53.370] - Geoff Well, certainly, I believe that if you are going to want to participate, play in in a generative AI, AI space, and you say, and probably before you make that conclusion, you have to ask a question, which is, where do you and your organization want to be on the innovation curve? Do you want to be on the very front of it? Do you want to be in the middle of it? Where do you want to be? Now, if you want to be on the very, very back end of the innovation curve, continue doing what you're doing today. If you want to be to the middle of the innovation curve or the front end, and I think about it as a bell curve. If you want to be to the middle to the front end of that curve, and most people don't want to be at the front, you need a lot of courage and a lot of strength to be. That's the scary place. But there are organizations that are there. Let's say you want to be safely in the middle. I don't want to lead the pack. I don't want to trail the pack. I want to be right in the middle.   [00:13:47.870] - Geoff It necessitates three things, I firmly believe. Number one, you have to be in the cloud. Number two, you have to really think about your software investments as software as a service. You're moving the requirement for changes and updates to the software vendor in this world SAP. Number three, as little customization as possible. If you can If you can do those three things and you can do them well, you have the greatest likelihood that you will be able to take all this innovation, absorb it and go. Which to your question is, when you talk about analytics, when you talk about predictive analytics, that's what you're going to For many, many SAP customers, that is a tectonic shift in perspective. And certainly, the longer you have been an SAP customer, and the more customizations you have made for whatever reason. Your business process doesn't line up with SAP's. Sap didn't have a solution for you at the time. We talk about this thing of technical debt, and where I quibble with some of the leading thought people is We tend to say and infer the technical debt is bad. Well, I don't think any of us as SAP practitioners wake up in the morning and say, Today is the day I'm going to build a lot of technical debt.   [00:15:11.820] - Geoff There are some good reasons for it. There might be some bad reasons for it, too. I don't know how to do something, so I'm just going to code it. I get it, but I don't necessarily believe that the technical debt is something that we all strive for. Motherhood and apple pie, as few customizations as possible. The problem now is the stakes are way up because we've learned that you have to be in cloud, you have to be in SaaS, and you have to be almost no customization in order to adopt fast. And that means that we have to be super careful about customization. That creates another problem inside most organizations, and that is how do you handle change control and how do you handle organizational change management? So the IT folks say, Hey, this is good for me. No customization. I'm good to go. And the business says, Well, wait a minute here. I have to retrain thousands of people across 16 time zones in 32 different geographies, and that's hard. And it is. And it is. So how do we find that necessary balance? And I think if you've been on SAP a long time, that transition is not going to happen overnight.   [00:16:14.000] - Geoff It's going to be multiple years, maybe even a decade, dare I say. And if you haven't started your S/4 migration yet, you are fastly running out of time. And so there's no time like the present to start working on that, because absent that, you are going to be perpetually behind. And I don't want to be Cavalier here, Mustanzer, because what I just described is an epic undertaking. But if you get there, predictive analytics is super interesting, right? We have got to figure out a way to take our technology professionals and find ways for them to have more time. Because if we really want to do predictive analytics, it requires us to jump into data sets. It requires us to look at data, plant floor data, log data, all these other things where we haven't traditionally looked for things. In order to find those patterns and those indications and those clues that help us sell more, get more efficient, do other things. And that requires time. And in order to get that time, we have to be more efficient. So if we're going to spend all of our time working on customizations of SAP, we are not going to be doing predictive analytics.   [00:17:18.870] - Mustansir For sure. And I think that's one of the key points you mentioned about that, right? Stop spending time on doing things that are not adding any value, especially in this fast pace, changing constantly on a daily basis. And you put AI in the middle of all this, all of a sudden, your stakes are different, your challenges are different. And at the same time, the time to make those decisions is shrinking for you. So for organizations to be nimble and be able to act quickly, I mean, all the things you just mentioned, I think they go hand in hand, especially a lot of times folks think about analytics as a byproduct, right? It's after the fact. And then What we're thinking or what are you talking here at this point is put analytics in front because that will drive that whole behavior of change of exactly what is important to me. Predictive is one part of it. There's so many different aspects of information which you can put your right brains and your geeks. I mean, everyone has got geeks in the organization. I mean, you want to put those folks to good use. And the best way you can do it is having that Get ahead of the curve, right?   [00:18:31.520] - Mustansir Don't wait, basically.   [00:18:32.910] - Geoff That's what I'm hearing. A hundred %. And I'm excited about the potential of AI to help us migrate systems faster. I'd like to see us use AI to help understand quality in data, to help us understand how we lift and shift business processes out of legacy systems into new systems. I'd like to understand how we use AI to drive business test cases, quality assurance. I believe that we are at a massive inflection point where the upgrading of these systems, you asked a question earlier about digital transformation. We have to move to the next generation of SAP software. I believe that unlocks the gateway to everything we're talking about today. That cannot be a five-year project. We have got to figure out as technology professionals how to automate it, how to make it faster, how to do it and how to make sure we can get an unlock value faster. It's my biggest ask of SAP, and in conversations that I have with their CEO and their leadership team, please stop making new SKUs for new software licenses. I implore you to make your software easier to migrate and uplift and move to the next generation.   [00:19:53.220] - Geoff And can we use some of these AI ML tools to achieve that? It's essential.   [00:19:58.860] - Mustansir For sure. No, for sure. And I think talking about all this technology and SAP, let's come back to our conversation ASAG. Asag is a great start in 2024, right? I mean, personally, I know we had over 150 people at our Michigan Chapter meeting back in February. That is absolutely amazing. So what can ASEC members expect this year from their membership? Can you delve into that?   [00:20:26.820] - Geoff 100 %. First and foremost, I think you said the most important thing where we're seeing the most interest, the most excitement is in our 39 chapters. So if you are an SAP professional and you want to be at the top of your game and you want to learn, connect, and grow, you don't have to jump on an airplane. And of course, we're welcoming you to do that. You don't have to spend hotel room nights. Go to your local ASUG chapter and become involved. You will meet people like you who want to get ahead and understand how to solve problems using SAP. And you're You're in the middle of the Michigan SAP scene. It's amazing. So go spend time there, which is a huge pitch for what you do and why you volunteer is because you want to be part of what's happening on the ground, real-time in geography. And that is what the chapter organization is here to do. And I would really like to see that over the next three to five years grow to epic proportions. I have a challenge. I want to see your Michigan meeting not be just 150 people. I want it to be 350 people.   [00:21:33.460] - Geoff That, to me, is exciting, which is a very different change of perspective from us. But I think in a post-pandemic world, what a great opportunity to get out from behind your laptop. And whether you're back in the office or still working remotely, go spend time with your friends in an ASUG chapter event in Michigan or in California or in Florida. Pick a place and just go and have fun and meet your peers. It'll be so wonderful for you. If that's not good enough, then And enjoy some of the other events that we do. Get online and do some research and education there. We have ASUG annual conference and SAP Sapphire coming up in June. In the fall, we have SAP for utilities. We have ASUG best practices, which is a whole source of industry-based events. And then we cap off the year. This is my most exciting event. We cap off the year in West Palm Beach, Florida, November 12th through 14th with ASUG Tech Connect. It used to be called TechEd, but we've reconfigured TechEd with SAP. So TechEd is a virtual program. But in North America, it's ASUG Tech Connect. So if you want to wrap up 2023, sorry, 2024, getting my years all confused, and get ready for an amazing 2025, ASUG Tech Connect is the place to be.   [00:22:46.120] - Geoff And I think those are fine. What else can you do? First Five newsletter comes out every Monday morning. It's an amazing place to just get a recap of the top five articles that happened in the SAP ecosystem over the last week. Podcast, you and I are in a podcast Today. Everyone's doing podcast. Aseg does podcast. Be there. Let's get together at Campus Connect. Citadel University, University of Texas at Dallas, Fayetteville State University, and then my favorite at Michigan State University. There's my last plug for Go Green, are all very much in the Campus Connect program. What a great way to have this next generation of talent, get excited about the careers that we've been so fortunate to have in the SAP ecosystem.   [00:23:29.360] - Mustansir For I think there is a lot to learn. And the best thing about it, like you said, there's so many mediums. You pick what makes sense to you, what really florts your boat, especially after the pandemic. A lot of folks are open to coming out and meeting others and getting to know what's coming exciting. No, put it this way. Excitement is one thing. You get to meet people and either it's online, either it's in person or you're traveling somewhere else. Or like you mentioned, June. June, big event. A lot of new things are being shared and you understand and know exactly where SAP is going, where ASAG wants to take you in your journey. And as an organization, you want to learn from your peers, right? And That's the best opportunity. And one thing I like about your plug for the November event, you cannot go wrong with it. Exactly. You end your year on something that you really want to take into next year, and that and search your basis for exactly what you want to do. A lot of opportunities. I really love the whole platform that you explained so well.   [00:24:37.180] - Geoff Thank you. There is a lot going on inside the SAP ecosystem. It is a wonderful place for professionals like you, me, and everyone else, 130,000 of us in North America, to make our home, to learn, connect, grow, to thrive. And all you got to do is just raise your hand and go to a chapter meeting, meet with people outside of your your standard core team that you might be working on SAP for, and the whole world will be unlocked for you. And it'll make you feel like what you're doing has value, that the things you're learning can have a place in this broader ecosystem. We are going to need a lot more talent who stands there in the next 10 years than we have today. It frightens me about how much change is happening, and I believe we all find very rewarding careers inside of SAP.   [00:25:27.700] - Mustansir Now, I think the future is really bright And I know we can talk for hours, Jeff. I mean, your knowledge, your passion for technology and SAP. But I do have to finish our session, our talk for today. I'd like to leave with this one question for you. As far as topics and discussions you covered, what is the one key takeaway that you want our listeners to leave with?   [00:25:55.440] - Geoff I believe the key takeaway today is generative AI is real. The faster you get in and start contemplating what it can and can't do. We are trying inside of Asug lots of different technologies, and we're fiddling, and we have this experimental culture. Let's go try some stuff. It's good. And I think we We're doing a lot with video to text, recaps, things like that. I think there's a ton of upside to all of this. Go get yourself immense in AI.   [00:26:25.780] - Mustansir Yeah, for sure. I think that's a great advice. And It seems like a lot of folks who are still on the edges, it's time for them to move on and get on this bandwagon because this train has started rolling and there's no stopping. At least I don't see it in the near future.   [00:26:43.870] - Geoff Today is the worst day AI ever will be. It will get better from here, and it's going to be on an exponential scale. So don't wait another three, four weeks or months or years. Get in now.   [00:26:54.490] - Mustansir Great advice. Thank you. Now, this is an awesome conversation. Really enjoyed the talk, and I would love to get you back in the future. Whenever you need. Feedback on how things have settled down once we traverse through the 2024.   [00:27:10.980] - Geoff We are here for you, and I appreciate greatly everything you do for the community, for the SAP community, for ASUG, and everything you do in Michigan. Thank you.   Thanks for listening to Tech-Driven Business brought to you by Innovative Solution Partners. Geoff delved deep into the transformative power of Gen AI shared valuable insights on how organizations can transform business with Generative AI. His main takeaway? Generative AI is real. Go get yourself immersed in AI as today is the worst day AI will ever be. We'd love to hear from you. Continue the conversation by connecting with me on LinkedIn or Twitter. Learn more about Innovative Solution Partners and schedule a free consultation by visiting isolutionpartners.com. Never miss a podcast by subscribing to our You Tube channel. Information is in the Show Notes

On this week's episode we had a thought-provoking discussion on the future of artificial intelligence in the technology community and the importance of staying ahead of the innovation curve and utilizing these tools effectively to drive successful digital transformation efforts. Discover the significance of data quality, governance, and security in adopting AI technologies and transitioning to cloud-based architectures. Don't miss out on uncovering the central role of ERP systems in leveraging future technologies and achieving business success. Tune in now!

On this week's episode we had a thought-provoking discussion on the future of artificial intelligence in the technology community and the importance of staying ahead of the innovation curve and utilizing these tools effectively to drive successful digital transformation efforts. Discover the significance of data quality, governance, and security in adopting AI technologies and transitioning to cloud-based architectures. Don't miss out on uncovering the central role of ERP systems in leveraging future technologies and achieving business success. Tune in now!

In our prior podcasts on SAP's innovation direction, we debated everything from AI to RISE - with the goal of providing actions and context for customers. This time, we wade into deeper waters by looking at the role of SAP partners. Join us as Josh Greenbaum, ASUG CEO Geoff Scott and Jon Reed look at how SAP services partners are responding to disruptions inside and outside the SAP "ecosystem." How should partners address clean core/BTP versus customizations? How should customers evaluate partners? Are customers missing out on partners that are not on their radar screen? And what is the role of ASUG (and other SAP user groups) in helping customers engage and assess partners? What has ASUG learned from recent surveys on this topic? We cover all that and more in this lead up to SAP Sapphire and the ASUG Annual Conference.

In our prior podcasts on SAP's innovation direction, we debated everything from AI to RISE - with the goal of providing actions and context for customers. This time, we wade into deeper waters by looking at the role of SAP partners. Join us as Josh Greenbaum, ASUG CEO Geoff Scott and Jon Reed look at how SAP services partners are responding to disruptions inside and outside the SAP "ecosystem." How should partners address clean core/BTP versus customizations? How should customers evaluate partners? Are customers missing out on partners that are not on their radar screen? And what is the role of ASUG (and other SAP user groups) in helping customers engage and assess partners? What has ASUG learned from recent surveys on this topic? We cover all that and more in this lead up to SAP Sapphire and the ASUG Annual Conference.

With over 16 years of experience in marketing, Spring Dunn is the Director of Marketing at SKALE Labs. At SKALE, she helps drive marketing initiatives across the growing network, helping reach millions of users across scores of custom app chains. Throughout her career, Spring has demonstrated expertise in marketing strategy, team management, event planning, and budget management. Prior to SKALE in 2021, Spring held key leadership positions at companies such as ZenLedger and Argyle. She also previously held roles at ASUG, MakerBot, and THINK Conservatory. Beyond her professional endeavors, Spring is deeply interested in leveraging blockchain for philanthropic purposes. She believes in the transformative potential of blockchain to drive positive social impact and actively explores opportunities to contribute to meaningful causes. She lives in Portland, Oregon. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/crypto-hipster-podcast/support

In this exclusive episode of the ASUG Talks podcast, celebrating ASUG Volunteer Week, three long-time ASUG Volunteers discuss their journeys through the SAP user ecosystem, reflecting on memorable moments from their ASUG membership and the important role of community engagement in achieving personal and professional goals. Listen now. 

Tune in to an exclusive conversation between ASUG CEO & Chief Community Champion Geoff Scott and ASUG Research Director Marissa Gilbert on key takeaways from the 2024 ASuG Pulse of the SAP Customer Research, reflecting on what these results say about the ASUG membership's outlook on key SAP topics. 

Sometimes, discussions go off the rails - in the best way possible. Earlier this fall, independent analyst Josh Greenbaum and ASUG CEO Geoff Scott joined Jon Reed to try to make sense of shift's in SAP's innovation/AI strategy - and the messaging around it. In this in-depth return, things get a bit heated.  We start off with a catch up from the last talk - and what we learned from events such as ASUG Tech Connect about SAP customer priorities - as SAP tech leaders contend with S/4HANA deadlines, AI confusion/opportunities, economic headwinds and more.  The conversation shifts to a discussion of the future of SAP tech events, particularly in North America. Should/will SAP TechEd return to Vegas? Where does ASUG Tech Connect fit in? How will SAP tech pros upskill for AI, BTP etc?  The final phase of the conversation, on SAP's innovation strategy, goes off the rails as Jon and Geoff take very different positions, and Josh finds himself in an unexpected role as mediator of sorts, and calmest voice in the room. Final note: the goal here was to surface a conversation that matters to SAP and its customers. All three of us agree that customers should own/claim their own innovation agenda - the questions center around how SAP should fit into that. No, we didn't resolve anything here, but did we find some common ground? We hope this debate gives customers motivation to press forward on their innovation strategy - and to engage in dialogue with SAP and user groups, be it ASUG or in other regions. Podcast timeline summary:  2:00 - ASUG Tech Connect and customer priorities, including AI and clean core 30:00 - The future of SAP tech events 45:00 - The SAP innovation debate II Prior September podcast discussion: https://jonerp.podbean.com/e/the-sap-innovation-debate-hashing-out-sap-s-rise-and-ai-plans-with-greenbaum-and-scott/

Sometimes, discussions go off the rails - in the best way possible. Earlier this fall, independent analyst Josh Greenbaum and ASUG CEO Geoff Scott joined Jon Reed to try to make sense of shift's in SAP's innovation/AI strategy - and the messaging around it. In this in-depth return, things get a bit heated.  We start off with a catch up from the last talk - and what we learned from events such as ASUG Tech Connect about SAP customer priorities - as SAP tech leaders contend with S/4HANA deadlines, AI confusion/opportunities, economic headwinds and more.  The conversation shifts to a discussion of the future of SAP tech events, particularly in North America. Should/will SAP TechEd return to Vegas? Where does ASUG Tech Connect fit in? How will SAP tech pros upskill for AI, BTP etc?  The final phase of the conversation, on SAP's innovation strategy, goes off the rails as Jon and Geoff take very different positions, and Josh finds himself in an unexpected role as mediator of sorts, and calmest voice in the room. Final note: the goal here was to surface a conversation that matters to SAP and its customers. All three of us agree that customers should own/claim their own innovation agenda - the questions center around how SAP should fit into that. No, we didn't resolve anything here, but did we find some common ground? We hope this debate gives customers motivation to press forward on their innovation strategy - and to engage in dialogue with SAP and user groups, be it ASUG or in other regions. Podcast timeline summary:  2:00 - ASUG Tech Connect and customer priorities, including AI and clean core 30:00 - The future of SAP tech events 45:00 - The SAP innovation debate II Prior September podcast discussion: https://jonerp.podbean.com/e/the-sap-innovation-debate-hashing-out-sap-s-rise-and-ai-plans-with-greenbaum-and-scott/

On the last day of the first ASUG Tech Connect in New Orleans, Jon sat down with Josh Greenbaum to make sense of what just happened. What was on the agenda of the SAP tech leaders present? Was the show a success? If so - why? How did the interest in AI compare to the interest in S/4HANA? We discuss our own session with customers, what we learned in our pursuits - including Greenbaum's six week SAP show tour. Jon brings up the issue of the clean core, and Greenbaum shares why our talk with Juergen Mueller wound up in discussing new possibilities for RISE - as a process evaluation and landscape management solution. Would that fly? Greenbaum connects the Signavio and Cloud ALM dots, and we head out.