The week of SAPPHIRE NOW and ASUG Annual Conference kicked off with a strong emphasis on the experience economy and the intelligent enterprise. But even the best run systems can’t make it all work without the human touch.
Attendees who walked the show floor or sat in on any of the keynotes or educational sessions were immersed in emerging technologies, moving to the cloud, upgrading to SAP S/4HANA, and experience management. But on day three, the emphasis shifted to making a difference through leadership, experience, and impact.
SAP CMO Alicia Tillman greeted attendees with a reminder that to become an experience company, you need to be run by an intelligent enterprise. “But today,” she said, “is going to be about commitment and leadership. We wanted to celebrate what it means to be a best run company. We wanted to celebrate what matters. And what matters is to make a difference, to inspire, and to motivate.”
Partnerships Making a Big Impact
In 2017, SAP launched SAP.iO with a mission to help entrepreneurs achieve their dreams and deliver exceptional experiences to their customers. To date, it has welcomed more than 120 companies into the program and it is expected to grow to include more than 500 companies within a few years.
Tillman brought on stage with her two of entrepreneurs as well as the vice president of the SAP.iO program. “They each have very different visions, different journeys, and different experiences,” she explained. “But what they all have in common is a sense of purpose.”
A First Look at Innovations
Jasmine Crowe, CEO of Goodr, Shirley Chen, CEO, Narrativ, and Vanessa Liu, VP of SAP.iO Foundry made an appearance to talk about the work they’re doing and their partnership with SAP. “At Goodr,” Crowe said, “we see hunger not as an issue of scarcity, but rather a matter of logistics. So, we are leveraging technology to solve the surplus food supply chain problem.”
The “iO” stands for small input (i) leading to a big output (O). SAP’s goal for the program is to help entrepreneurs be widely successful in making a big impact by giving them a little support. “We’re doing this because you as customers are asking SAP for innovative solutions to your most pressing business problems,” said Liu. “And we know these solutions can come in the form of small companies that we can plug into the SAP ecosystem and into our technologies. As a result, our customers get a first look into these innovative technologies.”
Your Personal Best Starts with Leadership
There were a number of educational sessions and panels dedicated to promoting diversity and inclusivity in leadership. The Female Quotient, a female-owned business committed to advancing equality in the workplace through collaboration, had a presence at the conference this year.
ASUG’s CMO Cheryl Parsons participated in one of the panels, “Enhance Your Leadership Power with Conscious Management Skills.” A full room of attendees listened as the panel made up of a small business owner, a CIO, SAP representatives, and Parsons discussed why it’s important to redefine what it takes to be a successful leader today.
“Everyone experiences barriers,” Parsons said. “As leaders, our job is to remove those barriers for our teams. If you have a passion for other people, it makes such a difference.”
You Need a Balance of Skills
We’ve often heard about both hard skills (teachable and measurable) and soft skills (personal attributes) in the workplace. But too often, when there is an opportunity to learn something new, the focus is almost always on hard skills. This year, attendees had a variety of opportunities to learn not only about technology, but also how to better themselves, their minds, and their focus.
SAP had a mental health and well-being track, while ASUG offered six unique sessions focused on “Innovating You.” All six sessions—which originated as tracks at ASUG Chapter meetings—were crowd favorites this year. “I was so impressed that both SAP and ASUG are embracing more conversations around wellness and women,” said ASUG Volunteer Thayre Faust.
Carolee Carlin, also an ASUG Volunteer added, “Technical work and technical leadership doesn’t happen in a technical vacuum. These skills are the foundation of any workplace transformation.”
People Make the Technology
Both Carlin and Faust attended more than one ASUG session and felt what they learned will help them in the workplace. “We’re currently using design thinking for a technical project, thinking about what is it we’re trying to accomplish from a business user perspective before we decide what that solution is. Yesterday I was in a session called “Design Thinking for What’s Most Important to You (Your Life!)” Everything I learned in that session can be applied in the workplace for a technical project and I plan on taking back to my team,” Carlin said.
“The exercises we learned in the design thinking session were very practical,” Faust added. “At the end of the day, technology is the easy thing. It’s the people side that’s hard and if we can find ways to bring synergy with that at the conference, it opens up the conversation and creates a dialogue that needs to happen. It really comes back to the basics like we heard in all the keynotes: listen and be kind. It makes us all move faster and make those transformations happen.”
Mark your calendars for next year’s SAPPHIRE NOW and ASUG Annual Conference on May 12 – 14 in Orlando.
I am so grateful for this week every year when 30,000 #bigthinkers, #innovators and #disruptors gather in #orlando for #SAPPHIRENOW & #ASUG2019 I always leave with stronger relationships, a first look at leading edge technology and lessons in leadership.…https://t.co/ufq0tIRJO5
— Kimberly Sharp (@K_I_Sharp) May 10, 2019
Quote of the Day: “You all care so much about mental health because it’s so important. And since you all do so much for the world, I would be wrong if I didn’t beckon for you to do more in that space tonight. You are all too damn smart for me not to ask.” -Lady Gaga
Did you miss this year' SAPPHRE NOW and ASUG Annual Conference? You can catch up on the experience and connections from day one, or hear Hasso Plattner's explanation of the connections between SAP HANA and the cloud.