ASUG Volunteers recently gathered in Austin, Texas, for a weekend of networking, celebration, and professional development.
Emphasizing themes of unity, collaboration, and community engagement, the annual ASUG Volunteer Meeting (Jan. 24-26) drew over 130 ASUG Volunteers to participate in event planning for the greater ASUG member community in the year ahead.
“We hope everything today sets you up for success in your ASUG Chapters and Communities,” Taylor Weathers, Director of Community Operations at ASUG, told attendees in opening the meeting.
2024 was a year of incredible growth for ASUG Communities and Chapters. Last year, these events drew more than 6,000 attendees — over a thousand more than in 2023. Additionally, ASUG is continuing to pilot regional chapter meetings in Arkansas.
Reflecting on her experiences attending and observing the importance of such gatherings to propel SAP professionals forward in their careers, ASUG Chief Operating Officer Carolyn Dolezal praised the ASUG community as “one of the best and most powerful communities I have had the privilege to be a part of.”
Noting that these events have only become more critical in recent months, given tectonic shifts in the SAP ecosystem that range from AI to cloud ERP migration, ASUG CEO & Chief Community Champion Geoff Scott shared his excitement for their future.
“Growing this community is important,” he said. “This is now where people find belonging,”
Key highlights from the weekend:
- Four ASUG Volunteers were awarded for their hard work in 2024:
- Community Volunteer of the Year: Tammy Powlas, Water Utility Professional
- Chapter Volunteer of the Year: Tommy McMullen, SAP Enterprise Account Executive, Fidelis Companies
- SAP Community Advocates of the Year: Conrad Bernal, Product Manager, SAP; and Anurag Barua, Transformation Leader, SAP
- Microsoft took to the keynote stage to give attendees an overview of its partnership with SAP, including the new RISE with SAP on Microsoft Azure Global Acceleration Program.
- ASUG gave attendees an early (and exclusive) look at its upcoming 2025 ASUG Pulse of the SAP Customer Research. Blake Baltazar, Senior Project & Research Analyst, walked Volunteers through the research project, discussing adoption rates in critical SAP technologies (including AI, cloud environments, and SAP S/4HANA), business priorities, and challenges ASUG Members are experiencing with their SAP technology investments. Stay tuned for this research to be unveiled in ASUG First Five later this quarter.
Important Focuses in 2025
Throughout the event, attendees and speakers alike focused on topics critical to the ASUG community that will shape the year ahead. In a keynote session co-hosted by Dolezal, Scott reflected on the themes he believes are most important for members to consider as they head into 2024.
“Innovation won’t stop and wait for us,” Scott said. “It will happen around us.” As enterprises seek to embrace innovation in their ERP environments, “the destination has to be public cloud,” Scott said. “If we really want to see organizations be able to leverage innovations at scale, we have to get rid of code.”
While moving toward a clean-core methodology involves SAP owning more code, he said, such an approach frees enterprises up to innovate rather than focusing on simply keeping the lights on.
And as organizations seek to implement AI solutions, investing in enterprise data management, cleansing, and governance is critical to setting a strong foundation for these solutions. “If we don’t get the data right, then answers from AI will be all wrong,” Scott said.
In-Person Planning and Professional Development Opportunities
Attendees participated in planning and professional development sessions over the weekend. ASUG Chapter Volunteers met with SAP points of contact for an interactive session focused on improving their ASUG Chapters and driving attendance.
Breaking into smaller groups, attendees traded tips and advice for managing meetings, building agendas, scheduling speakers, and planning effective networking opportunities. Attendees learned how their peers approach these topics and came away with insights into how to better facilitate effective and successful Chapter Meetings.
Elsewhere, at an ASUG Women Connect session, Elizabeth Tuckwell, Content Coordinator at ASUG, led a workshop focused on helping members understand and define their personal leadership styles, encouraging attendees to leverage their unique personal qualities to become more effective leaders in their workplaces and communities.
Strategic Topics in ASUG Communities
In presenting strategic topics that ASUG collaborates with SAP to set each year, Kelly Dowling, Director of Strategic Topics and Communities at ASUG, offered attendees key insights into content tracks and themes with which they can elevate the programming of events in their local and regional SAP communities.
Each year, ASUG consults with its members to identify these strategic topics. Dowling noted the four identified topics for 2025 are cloud ERP and SAP S/4HANA strategy, SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP), business transformation management, and AI.
ASUG membership is regularly welcomed to provide ASUG with guidance on which skills they are most interested in building, and where they encounter hurdles in their day-to-day work. Based on this feedback, ASUG defines strategic topics for the year, developing content across all channels—including in-person and virtual events, research, news stories, executive interviews, and podcasts—devoted to these themes. ASUG Community groups can leverage this content across their year-round programming.
Dowling discussed new additions to benefit ASUG Communities and ensure ASUG is “meeting our members where they are.” To that end, she discussed the forthcoming creation of resource centers for each ASUG Community group. These centralized locations will include vital assets, such as slide decks used in virtual community conversations.
ASUG community offerings are critical, as organizations embrace new technologies and embark on enterprise-wide digital transformation projects. As the 2027 SAP Business Suite 7 end-of-maintenance deadline steadily approaches, it is vital that ASUG community members learn from one another about how to best approach business transformations.
“What we do in our ASUG Chapters is one of the most important aspects of what we do at ASUG,” Scott told attendees. “SAP partners and customers agree: Chapters are essential, now more than ever.”