Like many of you, I attended SAP Sapphire & ASUG Annual Conference in Orlando. After the event, I’ve been unpacking the many announcements from SAP. Like previous years, SAP shared a host of new capabilities, plans, and partnerships to help SAP customers succeed in their journey with SAP solutions. You can see the full list of announcements in the SAP Sapphire News Guide. For this month’s article, I’m going to dig into a couple of the announcements that I feel should be of particular interest to members of the ASUG Executive Exchange community.
Enterprise Architects and RISE with SAP
Earlier this year, SAP released the RISE with SAP Migration & Modernization program to help provide clarity and direction for customers on their RISE with SAP journey. Christian Klein sweetened the value of RISE with SAP during SAP Sapphire & ASUG Annual Conference by announcing that all future and current RISE with SAP customers will be assigned a dedicated enterprise architect (EA) to provide additional support and guidance.
Having access to an EA trained in the framework and methodologies around the RISE with SAP offering should be a great asset to streamline RISE with SAP adoption. The challenge for SAP will be in how this plan is delivered. SAP doesn’t have a big pool of underutilized EAs sitting around looking for work. If you are a current or potential RISE with SAP customer, I suggest you reach out now to get access to these resources. You can benefit significantly from this announcement, but only if you have access to an EA.
WalkMe
Another announcement SAP revealed during SAP Sapphire & ASUG Annual Conference is its plan to acquire WalkMe (https://www.walkme.com/). WalkMe is a digital adoption platform that, according to its website, “helps to accelerate proficiency by directing users through key tasks and providing interpretive and evaluative information as users navigate their way through a product.”
I’m super curious to see how WalkMe gets incorporated into SAP’s existing portfolio. On the one hand (and SAP’s intention), WalkMe has the potential to complete the solution SAP has been working toward by becoming the link between business process tracking and management provided by the transformation suite (CALM, SAP Signavio, LeanIX) and the user experience in process execution. On the other hand, it could end up as just another screen-scraper tool that gets lost as SAP continues to focus its efforts on embedding Joule (and other copilots) into the user experience. SAP is betting $1.5 billion that WalkMe will be a key part of its customers’ transformation journeys, so it’s definitely worth learning more about this solution and its benefits to your organization.
The ASUG Executive Exchange Community Is Alive and Well
We also had a fantastic day together as an ASUG Executive Exchange community! The afternoon featured engaging talks on topics ranging from cloud adoption to understanding b business AI, followed by dinner and networking at SeaWorld. Everyone had a great time and took away valuable insights and new and renewed friendships within the community. One positive indicator of the value of the ASUG Executive Exchange Day: We already have members registered for the ASUG Executive Exchange Summit coming up Aug. 20–22 in Seattle, space is limited so apply to attend now!
Final Thoughts
ASUG is strengthening its efforts to grow its Executive Exchange community and find new ways to connect throughout the year. Watch for announcements over the next couple of months on new opportunities to connect with our dynamic community in person. Take advantage of your ASUG membership to help your organization get the most value from your SAP technology investment!