Over 650 SAP professionals from a variety of industries—including energy, chemicals, mill products and mining, and industrial manufacturing—gathered in Houston, Texas last week for the first-ever ASUG Best Practices conference.
Featuring rich discussions with experts and thought leaders, the event provided insights into how industries can leverage SAP software to tackle modern challenges, especially as the 2027 end-of-maintenance deadline for SAP Business Suite 7—which includes SAP ERP Central Component (ECC) 6—steadily grows closer.
While the event represented different industries, many of which are faced with unique and industry-specific conditions, attendees are also tackling many of the same business challenges and leveraging SAP solutions to optimize comparable processes.
“While you may work in different industries, you share common problems, common challenges, and—ultimately—common solutions,” Geoff Scott, ASUG CEO & Chief Community Champion, said during the opening keynote.
Throughout ASUG Best Practices, attendees were focused on gaining insights into next-generation technologies—including SAP S/4HANA, cloud ERP, and artificial intelligence (AI)—to transform their businesses.
Effectively implementing these solutions was another crucial topic, as presenters shared success stories, helping attendees navigate common digital transformation challenges. However, this is not always an easy journey, and the most game-changing modernization projects require significant planning and resources from enterprises.
“While we always think of technology as a great simplifier, I believe it’s actually more complicated than it’s ever been,” said Scott.
Adopting new ideas and business processes has never been more important. During a live recording of the ASUG Talks podcast, Jeff Miers, Director of Partnerships and Alliances for the Energy & Utilities Industries at AWS, noted that most—if not all—of the conference’s attendees are facing three critical challenges dramatically impacting their businesses: uncertainty stemming from geopolitical conflicts, shareholder pressures, and a growing demand for decarbonization.
Using SAP to Spur Innovation
Some of this complexity stems from the fact that many enterprises are trying to spur wide-reaching business transformation despite IT stacks saddled with technical debt, riddled with silos, and plagued by inefficiencies. Across keynote addresses and breakout sessions, speakers consistently honed in on the importance of taking steps to ready an enterprise’s IT ecosystem before implementing next-generation technology solutions.
“As we think about the long-term trajectory of where we are going as a customer base, it’s really going to require us to do a number of things if we want to harness this thing called innovation,” Scott said. He further encouraged attendees to embrace innovation by moving their IT infrastructures to the cloud, re-evaluating their view of software as a customizable service, and ultimately ridding their IT infrastructures of extensive customization.
“If you want to run everything on premises, you want to have customization, and if you don’t want to move the responsibility of code back to the partners and SAP, you will consistently be in a station of trying to keep up instead of getting ahead,” Scott said.
Scott was joined on stage by five SAP customers, who shared their perspectives on innovation and leveraging SAP solutions:
- Karthik Varatharajalu, Senior Director of Business Applications at AdvanSix
- Marcelo Bittencourt Gerceski, SAP Lead to Cash Architect at ArcelorMittal/Nippon Steel Calvert
- Dan Stuart, Senior Vice President and CIO at Southwire
- Zara Horn, Vice President of IT Enterprise Application Service at Current Lighting
- Steve Mutch, Head of Product Management & COE - ERP at Shell
The panelists each discussed how they’re leveraging SAP solutions in their respective businesses and industries.
Stuart noted that Southwire focused on changing its customer experience, leveraging SAP Hybris to build a hub for customers and purchasing agents to buy Southwire’s products. According to Mutch, Shell is leveraging SAP to help with the coming energy transition and enabling its customers to “decarbonize their operations and their lives.”
Current Lighting faces instability and disruptions in its supply chains—like most enterprises present at the conference—SAP cloud ERP solutions enable the organization to adapt to changes “as the industry and supply chain moves around us,” noted Horn.
Varatharajalu said AdvanSix is focused on using SAP solutions—like SAP Datasphere—to “unleash the power of data,” and enable more predictive analytics. Finally, Gerceski noted that SAP cloud solutions has enabled fast onboarding of new and acquired companies at ArcelorMittal/Nippon Steel Calvert.
The Promise of AI
The place of AI in the SAP ecosystem, and how organizations approach implementing the technology to drive operational efficiency and innovation, was another key topic at ASUG Best Practices.
“We want AI to do our laundry, not paint our paintings,” Gerceski said during the first keynote’s customer panel.
His fellow panelists encouraged attendees to take structured, careful approaches to leveraging AI. Horn told attendees to prioritize a “smart” approach, investing in the team members who have already worked on development of AI applications to make leveraging the technology easier. Varatharajalu urged attendees to “keep it simple,” and resist the urge to implement complicated strategies.
At the conference’s day-two keynote, Carolyn Szczurek, ASUG Communications Lead, was joined by a group of SAP leaders to discuss AI in the SAP ecosystem:
- Stephane Lauzon, Head of Oil, Gas, and Energy at SAP
- Muriel Rakotomalala, Global Head of Chemical Industry at SAP
- Sayan Bose, Global Head of Industrial Manufacturing, Aerospace & Defense Industries, SAP
- Stefan Weisenberger, Global Vice President and Head of Industry Business Unit for Process Industries & Natural Resources at SAP
Weisenberger noted that, before leveraging AI, many organizations must “clean up” their landscapes, getting data in order and striving for a clean core. However, once enterprises set the data foundation to leverage AI, the technology—according to Rakotomalala—can accelerate innovation and help organizations optimize their operations.
Lauzon is already seeing this improvement play out in enterprise asset management (EAM) operations. Across an enterprise’s entire value chain, AI can help build a bridge for data to flow from revenue accounting statements for gas plants into an enterprise’s ERP system, he said by way of example. Additionally, when it comes to equipment health, AI can help enterprises with predictive maintenance and support the last mile of deliver of materials and equipment.
Bose also discussed the ways AI can help support supply chain operations. “Resilient supply chains are one of the most important topics,” he said, underlining how AI can help with supply chain forecasting processes. Additionally, generative AI enables organizations to build early disruption alerts, resulting in “self-healing supply chains.”
In the oil, gas, and energy field, Lauzon said SAP customers are leveraging generative AI to improve logistics, and “get the right product to the right point.” This is a critical function in the industry, which is “highly orchestrated,” and involves thousands of moving parts, assets, and people.
The relevance of enterprise AI will only grow in the coming years, as the technology evolves and more companies embed AI tools in their landscapes to improve operations. In the meantime, panelists encouraged attendees to leverage SAP solutions to clean their data core and lay a foundation to embrace AI.