Welcome to your November News
Chairman's Note
Welcome to this month's newsletter, I hope you are keeping safe and well.
At the start of the year we launched our SUGTalks podcast and recently started publishing episodes from our fifth season! SUGTalks is a great way for members to get the inside track on all things SAP and many of the initiatives your User Group is involved in.
The results from our member survey are in with some surprising results. 11% of our member organisations are already planning to use RISE with SAP. Our findings are very similar to recent research from both ASUG and DSAG in that it shows many organisations still aren’t overly familiar with RISE with SAP, what is covered by the single contract and how it could help them. Whether RISE can help customers build a strong case to move to S/4HANA is still to be seen. Every customer situation is different, but many need a much clearer understanding of the commercial impact and how it affects existing cloud investments before they can make an informed decision.
We will be hosting a dedicated RISE with SAP stream at our conference, UKISUG Connect, later this month, which we hope will provide you with greater clarity. (There will be a customer speaker who is on the RISE journey!) With less than two weeks left until UKISUG Connect, we have some exciting news. We have added an extra stream for our Women in SAP community, with two dedicated sessions. You can find more information below, along with our Networking Tables and Soapbox sessions.
Now that face to face meetings have started up again, we have taken the opportunity to restart our Trust Initiative with SAP UK&I. This is a collaborative endeavour using Design Thinking methodologies to explore the Customer / SAP relationship and how we can work together to improve engagement, trust and transparency. It's looking across the whole SAP journey and ultimately ensuring we as customers are successful with our SAP journey. Talking of success, I was able to attend the SAP UKI Customer Success Awards, a number of the User Group Board members had been involved with the judging of these awards. It was great to meet the participants and see the winners pick up their ‘trophy’ from Liverpool legend John Barnes and Michiel Verhoeven the SAP UKI MD. Having reviewed the entries, there were a really broad range of projects and successful outcomes particularly against the challenges of working in the Covid era. Congratulations to all the User Group members that participated.
Our volunteer Special Interest Group Chairs will, over the coming months, be starting to look at the 2022 programme. Please engage with them directly or via SAP Jam on topics you would like to see us cover next year and even better, let us know if you have a story to share!
I look forward to seeing you later this month if you are joining us in Birmingham.
Paul Cooper Chairman
SUSE - a global leader in true open source innovation – was this year delighted to announce that SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications had been granted SAP Endorsed App status.
"SUSE continues to strengthen the long-lasting partnership with SAP and give customers confidence to deploy SAP solutions faster and more efficiently," said Paul Devlin, Chief Customer Officer at SUSE. "SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications is the leading Linux platform for SAP HANA, SAP S/4HANA and SAP NetWeaver and also the development operating system for SAP HANA. We are honoured that our solution has earned distinction as an SAP Endorsed App, which will lead to better serving our customers in their transformation journey to an intelligent enterprise."
SAP Endorsed App status reflects many years of partnership, innovation and providing value to joint customers. For example, a global engineering and manufacturing company uses SAP applications to pay its 46,000 employees accurately and on time. Deploying the built-in High Availability solution in SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications increased availability to 99.995% for SAP HANA database systems. In four years, the company has experienced only two hours of unplanned downtime.
Another customer, a multinational enterprise information technology company, redesigned its business processes to enhance customer, partner and employee experiences. Using SAP S/4HANA running on SLES for SAP Applications, the company reduced the number of applications in use by 50%, reduced touchpoints in sales processes by 90%, and increased ecommerce revenue by 150%.
If you are visiting ‘Connect’ this year then you can visit SUSE on stand S17 in the expo hall.
Human Factor Podcast by SAP: Building a High-Performance Culture and Sustaining It
What constitutes performance? Listen to this episode as SAP delve into what performance really means, what is the impact of non-performance on our engagement, wellbeing and mental health. Join them as Professor Damian Hughes shares his insights, observations and reflections. Listen now.
Damian will join us at UKISUG Connect as our Inspirational Keynote. Join us and become one of the first to get his new book. What's Happening at UKISUG Connect Networking Tables
A returning feature for this year will be the Networking Tables. They will facilitate a group of individuals with similar interests to discuss current, specific and relevant SAP related issues or industries. An excellent, structured opportunity to share thoughts and learn from like-minded delegates!
This years networking tables will include: Monday - Retail industry Tuesday - Public Sector industry
Attendees don't need to book onto these sessions - just turn up!
Soapbox Sessions
Lindsey Rowe from SAP will present three soapbox slots linked to the Three Zero Theme:
Simon Nichols will be presenting:
Creating a calm thought space and to give you a goal of being more aware of you, your surroundings and of others, to help sustain you all the way through to the end of the conference.
Entitled “Finding your Wellbeing Purpose” and will concentrate on the “Change Psychology”, or rather the nature of change. We will be looking at what it takes to break old habits and create new ones, looking at why change needs to happen in many cases and then how we can harness that change to positively affect our wellbeing.
Women in SAP
We have added an extra stream to UKISUG Connect 2021 just for you with two dedicated sessions:
Roundtable - Women in SAP Following on from our very successful virtual event in September, this is an opportunity to come together with like-minded members of the UKISUG community to continue the conversation at Connect.
This is an opportunity to share experiences in an informal setting, talk about some of the challenges facing women in tech roles, and how the User Group’s Women in SAP initiative can support and encourage women to be better represented in the SAP community. If you are attending Connect on your own, we would also like to invite you to come to this session to meet others and make connections, especially if you would like to buddy up with others to attend the evening at SUGFEST together.
Women in SAP: How I got here Rayanta Rana will be talking about her career path that has led to her role as Chief Customer Officer at SAP UKI, sharing some of her experiences along the way and her advice for other women who want to succeed in senior leadership roles. She will also tell us about the initiatives that SAP is supporting to promote gender diversity and increase the number of women in leadership. There will be an open Q&A session and this is a great opportunity to discuss our own experiences and find inspiration that we can take away for our personal journeys as well as for initiatives in our own organisations. Usability Testing Normally taking place at UKISUG Connect, this year we invite you to review topics and register to participate in Usability Testing sessions that take place the week after Connect 2021. These are not demos; they are one-on-one, 60 minute sessions that allow you to provide feedback on the products you use, or will be using in the future, directly to the development teams that build them. Reserve your preferred topic, date and time here.
Our chosen charity for UKISUG Connect 2021 is Anthony Nolan.
Every day, Anthony Nolan saves the lives of people with a blood cancer or blood disorder. They do this by matching incredible individuals willing to donate their stem cells to people who desperately need a lifesaving transplant. They also carry out cutting edge scientific research, fund specialist post-transplant nurses and support patients and their families through the transplant process and beyond.
This year, to make donating easier for our members, we have set up a just giving page. This means you can donate however and wherever you like, whether you are attending the conference or not. Both UKISUG and Anthony Nolan appreciate your support.
Live Customer Session on SAP S/4HANA Learn how DEUTZ AG successfully implemented SAP S/4HANA in China and find out how the Enterprise Management Layer for SAP S/4HANA can help accelerate your implementation project, too.
The enterprise management layer for SAP S/4HANA offers ready-to-consume preconfigured end-to-end business processes across all lines of business. Its focus lies on the complex accounting and reporting requirements that multinational corporations face when they need to follow both group and local accounting principles.
In addition, learn from Samy Nassif Makki, S/4 Transformation Manager at DEUTZ AG, how DEUTZ used the template ‘fit to standard’ approach and successfully implemented SAP S/4HANA for their operations in China, completely remote from Germany, during the pandemic.
Member Survey Winners
Do you have a story to share?
It is really important to us that we include customer experiences in our events, both online and in person. Please get involved and let us know if you are interested. You will be invited to attend a speaker training workshop as a thank you and you will also receive a complimentary pass to our annual conference, UKISUG Connect 2022.
'Events enable sharing of experiences and builds relationships with people in similar positions, often sharing the same challenges. Together our voices can be heard.' - Daren Addison, Sanctuary Housing
Email Robyn.Brentley@sapusers.org to get started.
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