The ASUG Best Practices Events for Industrial Manufacturing happened in Houston, USA, from Oct 14-16. The event was attended by SAP customers from multiple industries, including industrial manufacturing. There were multiple customer best practices sharing sessions and keynotes around Cloud ERP and AI.
Here are the key takeaways
1. Need for speed
Cloud ERP's value is now a given. The focus has shifted from “Why Cloud ERP” to “How” and “How quickly.” Companies are pushing for faster ERP implementations to stay competitive. The days of 7 year long ERP transformation business case are long gone. The board has no appetite for such long term projects, given the dynamic nature of businesses and disruptions today.
Faster implementations, faster value, faster speed to market are defining characteristics of the modern day ERP implementations.
2. Need for higher ROI
Companies starting Cloud ERP projects with a “clean core” strategy & execution are getting higher ROI. Rapid adoption of innovations and meeting market demand are driving success stories. I did a session with the VP of IT applications and CIO of an industrial customer who have two S/4HANA Cloud landscapes. One of them was driven through clean core thinking from the start and other was just a landscape conversion from old ERP to S/4HANA Cloud.
The one with clean core thinking was obviously the winner in terms of ROI, helping the customer in launching new innovations in the market within a 90 day turnaround time.
More details on References on sap.com
3. Need for superior user experience
Embedded AI is not just about boosting productivity, it makes organizations more attractive to the new generation of employees, who are used to superior user experiences from the consumer applications. You cannot imagine retaining younger talent with a complex system coded 20 years back. The UX is key.
Most customers I spoke to were curious about implementing Joule to utilize the insights synthesized by Joule agents operating on the business data within SAP systems, unlocking not just productivity but a superlative user experience.
Finally a picture to wrap up a great event with an amazing set of colleagues from across the world!
