I interviewed Geoff Scott and Dave Wascom of ASUG (America's SAP User's Group) last week, and we talked about SAP customer heroics during the pandemic, S/4HANA adoption plans, remote implementations and other topics. The replay is here.
This week, I listened to a joint ASUG/DSAG (DSAG represents customers in Germany, Austria & Switzerland) session which focused more on S/4HANA trends.
They did a nice job highlighting where there were significant differences in expectations in the customer bases. One clear one is DSAG users covet integration a lot more - their S/4 implementations are broader in scope. In other slides, their expectations of SAP provided integration were also higher. Register here to watch a replay
One striking slide to me showed how much focus there is on Financial modules. That's the most mature functionality in S/4HANA, but to me a reminder of what happened with R/3 implementations. Many SAP shops ran out of budget and never got beyond FI and CO in spite of promises of wall to wall coverage. It suited SAP's partners, many of them with accounting backgrounds. As we enter an investment-challenged environment - customers need to think long whether just a "refresh" of that functionality is the best path ahead.
In contrast, I was pleased to see Peter Maier show the 3 minute video below in a verticals-focused session for analysts. It shows agile customer responses during the COVID-19 crisis using a variety of SAP products. Peter had discussed several of these customers in an interview I did with him - watch it here.
Much as SAP and its partners want to keep the "big elephant hunting" around horizontal functionality, it is these smaller, higher value, industry-specific projects which will likely be more in demand for the near future.
