Transforming Business from Transaction Machines to Decision Machines to Drive Profitability and Growth

Don is SVP and Global General Manager of the Platinum Customer Unit at SAP. SAP’s Platinum Customer Unit focuses on leading the global business, digital transformation, and executive engagement with the company’s largest and most strategic customers. He also sits on the Advisory Board for Innovation, Creativity and Entrepreneurship at the Villanova School of Business, and the Industry Advisory Board for the Consortium of Digital Enterprises at Penn State University.

SAP Program Director Insights: Department of Defence

Cary Farmer joined the ERP Program as Program Director on behalf of Department of Defence Australia in 2019, where he is responsible to implement an aligned SAP ERP solution across 14 different groups.

Previously he ran transformation projects for Cathay Pacific Airways, in Hong Kong, and then Emirates Airlines, including international ground handling, catering and their travel agency business, in Dubai.

Cary has 20+ years running and directing major SAP transformation projects across the globe, including the USA, Hungary, India, Germany, Australia, South Africa, Hong Kong and UAE. Cary specialises in end to end, business process orientated, transformation projects, across all aspects of Finance, Logistics, Manufacturing, Sales, Point of Sales, HR, and Payroll for many industries.

Cyber Resiliency in the Face of an Evolving Threat Landscape

The cyber attack on Solar Winds and the thousands of enterprises that rely on their software to monitor the operations of network devices represents a tectonic shift in threat actor tactics that enterprises must now adjust for. The software supply chain poisoning by Russian criminal hackers represents sophisticated skills and stealth in posing as developers to install malware (Sunburst) that impacted thousands of enterprises. We know the lessons learned from this attack:
1. Apply Identity, Access Management (IAM) controls to those developers with access to software code repository management systems (like GitHub)
2. Include software repository management services in the 3rd party governance programs and apply appropriate controls for SAS services
3. Implement workload runtime protection capabilities that is capable of blocking malicious software the finds its way into software workloads

Jim Routh is one of the cybersecurity industry’s preeminent visionaries and leaders. He is widely known for conceptualizing and executing world-class cybersecurity strategies at the most complex and recognizable industry brands in the world, serving as the Chief Information Security Officer for MassMutual, Aetna, KPMG and American Express.

He has specific expertise as a transformational security leader focused on applying risk management discipline to a converged security function for global enterprises to achieve enterprise resilience. He has a demonstrated track record of designing security control using innovation and data science to align senior executives to deliver world-class level security capabilities that drive positive business results in a digital world.

Finance is Accelerating with the Times

Businesses are increasingly looking to Finance for strategic direction. At the same time, Finance must still execute core tasks to ensure transactions and the financial close are executed efficiently and securely. In order to accomplish such a mission, the efforts of finance and risk teams must scale.

Businesses are rapidly applying a variety of automation solutions to improve efficiency, cut costs, and reallocate resources to more strategic tasks. Together with new capabilities to accelerate financial processes, finance is now able to support new business models and provide strategic value with real-time, predictive insights.

• Discover the automation capabilities that are built into SAP S/4HANA Finance and how to tap into them
• Learn about new capabilities that help streamline finance and risk teams, such as supporting new business models through billing of subscriptions and services
• Understand how automated security and auditability processes increase confidence and reliability of financial data for disclosure as well as for decision-making

From Customization to Standardization in SAP – how to Avoid Falling Again into Traps from the Past

The world of large ERP implementations where we were starting from a blank page and doing several months of blueprinting sessions are far gone. Organizations do not have that luxury and those types of budgets anymore. Now we need to focus on Rapid deployment, lean and standard processes.

For that, SAP has come up with their new “SAP Activate Methodology” where we have a series of tools that help us achieve these goals. Our focus will be centered in the “Fit-Gap Analysis” sessions where the business users explore the SAP best practices and standard business processes such as order-to-cash, procure-to-pay or record-to-report that are mapped for SAP S/4HANA. Once the Gaps have been identified, a fit-gap strategy will decide if those gaps will be addressed through a series of system’s enhancements, customized applications or adopting a new business process.

This session will help organizations avoid getting in the old habits of over customizing their SAP systems that put them at risk on maintenance and future upgrades.

How Covid Accelerated Bentley’s Digital Journey

The Covid 19 crisis has accelerated Bentley’s journey toward digitalisation, creating opportunities to increase diversity and inclusion, transform culture and ways of working, whilst also making the business more sustainable.

Astrid leads the Digital Transformation and Digitalization of enterprise, products (car and services) and customer related areas of the business. She is also responsible for full strategic and operational management of all Information Technology (IT) for Bentley Motors globally. One of Astrid’s passions is to lead towards a better gender balance and inclusive culture in the automotive industry.

In addition to her current role at Bentley Motors, she serves as a Member of the Supervisory Board of Volkswagen Group Services. Prior to her responsibilities at Bentley Motors, Astrid worked for Porsche North America as SVP Human Resources, Culture and Innovation and prior to that she was the Chief Information Officer (CIO) for Mercedes-Benz USA.

SAP Data Warehouse Cloud for Beginners

SAP Data Warehouse Cloud is SAP’s new cloud-based data warehouse solution. This hands-on workshop is a series of activities focused on SAP Data Warehouse Cloud. In this beginner session, you will learn about the concept of Spaces in SAP Data Warehouse cloud, you will learn to setup connections, define data models, and created analytical stories based on your data models.

Key Business Benefits:

• Attendees will learn how to get started in SAP Data Warehouse Cloud
• Attendees will learn how to setup Spaces and Connections
• Attendees will learn how to create Entity Relationship models and how to setup data models and analytical stories.

Time to Think About Time Sheeting

Ballance are on a diverse time sheeting journey. We have integrated solutions, paper-based based solutions and old ESS portal solutions. We attempted a bespoke front end to enable ease of entry, have learnt a few valuable lessons along the way and will discuss the selection process of different solutions and pitfalls of bespoke vs custom, as well several change management aspects.

Integrating Systems Remotely at Discovery

Buckle up as this staggering change management initiative being performed fully remote is not for the faint of heart!

The TVN Group is the leading broadcaster in Poland, with channels that offer high quality entertainment, in addition to reliable and impartial round the clock news and extensive online products. The group was acquired by an acquired subsidiary in 2015 and with competing corporate priorities, has yet to be integrated with the wider Discovery Group.

The initiative at hand encompasses replacing the existing production focused SAP system (expansive coding block, significant customizations and interfaces) with the Discovery linear TV focused global template. Internally the project is described as a ‘heart transplant’!

Barbara will focus on the integration of multiple organizational systems into their SAP S/4HANA standard instance using their global integration template and cover how other organizations can benefit from understanding their standardized processes and deviations required to get all entities working together.

Using Fiori to Harmonize Self-Service at Australia Post

Most of AusPost’s core employee & manage self-service tasks were completed offline, or in a clunky complex online form, inaccessible on mobile / off network, not fit for purpose and not harmonised across our workforce. Given we aren’t moving to a cloud based solution (such as Employee Central) for a few years yet, we began developing Fiori apps to act as the overlay. This has allowed us to innovate, harmonise, improve and optimise manager and employee self-service processes in an ongoing agile manner.

• Org Chart functionality for all entities
• Key Manager Self Service tasks, such as Cessation, High Duties, approving leave & timesheets
• Suite of tools for Organisational Management
• Apps to support allowances, deductions & expense reimbursements
• Employee Profile
• Equity & Diversity
• Employee Pay & Leave (leave management, including purchased leave, digital pay slips)

We have an active ongoing pipeline for Fiori that we will maintain heading into FY22.

Our benefits have been:

• Improved harmonization across our workforce segments and entities
• increased uptake of self-service tools to HR, Managers & Employees, with a particular focus on mobile enabled applications.
• Improved access to knowledge for managers to make informed business decisions.
• Productivity and efficiency gains in HR & Payroll operations due to straight through processing.
• Savings in license costs for other tools.

Practical Learnings from the World’s Greatest Rugby Team

James Kerr is a bestselling writer, coach and consultant who helps create high performance cultures for elite teams and organisations. He is the author of the global best-seller ‘Legacy’ which provides a unique insight into one of the world’s most successful sporting teams, including a deep analysis of the All Blacks’ famously consistent team culture. By unlocking the latent potential within the team, Kerr asks:

• What do all great teams have in common?
• What is the Being of Team?
• How does change happen?
• How can you create a culture of initiative, innovation and adaptation?
• How have we got leadership upside down?
• How do leaders create leaders?
• How do they create common cause?
• How do you prepare for and perform under pressure?
• How do you make your teammates better?
• How can culture create competitive advantage?
• And – what will your legacy be?

A superb presenter and a natural storyteller, his talks are a mixture of sports psychology, leadership practice, organisational science, and compelling storytelling, and act as a powerful catalyst for change within organisations, and the individuals within them. James has worked with some of the world’s most exceptional organisations, from Tier One Special Forces to Formula One teams, Premiership Football managers to Olympic teams, Google to Spotify to Boeing.

Using Fiori to Harmonize Self-Service at Australia Post

Most of AusPost’s core employee & manage self-service tasks were completed offline, or in a clunky complex online form, inaccessible on mobile / off network, not fit for purpose and not harmonised across our workforce. Given we aren’t moving to a cloud based solution (such as Employee Central) for a few years yet, we began developing Fiori apps to act as the overlay. This has allowed us to innovate, harmonise, improve and optimise manager and employee self-service processes in an ongoing agile manner.

• Org Chart functionality for all entities
• Key Manager Self Service tasks, such as Cessation, High Duties, approving leave & timesheets
• Suite of tools for Organisational Management
• Apps to support allowances, deductions & expense reimbursements
• Employee Profile
• Equity & Diversity
• Employee Pay & Leave (leave management, including purchased leave, digital pay slips)

We have an active ongoing pipeline for Fiori that we will maintain heading into FY22.

Our benefits have been:

• Improved harmonization across our workforce segments and entities
• increased uptake of self-service tools to HR, Managers & Employees, with a particular focus on mobile enabled applications.
• Improved access to knowledge for managers to make informed business decisions.
• Productivity and efficiency gains in HR & Payroll operations due to straight through processing.
• Savings in license costs for other tools.

Evolving from HCM to HXM with People Analytics

Is the promise of engaging content and easy to access dashboards for people managers finally becoming the reality that we were all sold years ago?

Whilst the team at SuccessFactors might have caught the SAP bug of renaming products, stories in People Analytics does deliver the ability to present some compelling interactive dashboards to your users necessary for Onboarding 2.0 (no other way to report data) and the platform for all future reporting builds in SAP SuccessFactors. We’ll discuss the challenges of getting this solution into place to future proof your organizational reporting functionality – and check out what you can do!

Self-Service Analytics the Costa Way

Is your organisation in the process of defining or improving an analytics self-service approach? Costa Group has been on this journey over the last 18 months.

In this session Christoph will share:

• how challenges like business adoption, varying user maturity levels, a lean IT team, budget constraints and differing/competing business requirements have been dealt with
• how the introduction of SAP BW/4HANA and SAC enabled the process
• how agile project delivery elements were utilised
• the learnings

Cloud ERP Drives Back-Office Digital Transformation

COVID-19 exposed weaknesses in every organization’s back-office system. The inability to easily access data, enable self-service capabilities, and intelligently automate processes has created demand for self-driving and autonomous ERP solutions. Add the shift to the cloud, the pressure of digital transformation, and replacement-cycle dynamics, and customers are seeing the greatest level of innovation in a decade.

Building a Security Program from the Ground Up

Everyday decision-making and processes across roles and functions have the power to bolster a company’s resilience. What can security leaders do to not only set up the necessary operations that mitigate risk, but also establish a culture of security where employees feel informed and supported to play their role? This discussion will delve into the views of SAP customer’s and their experiences with building a cyber security program from the ground up.

• How do you benchmark security best practices?
• Structuring a security function and operating model
• Shifting the mental model held around security awareness within an organisation
• Targeting security budget – product selection and investment mapping to business outcomes
• Coaching and mentoring future security leaders

How RPA Became the Unsung Hero of 2020

Zuellig Pharma traditionally relied on humans for manual processing of repetitive tasks such as order input or delivery shipments. However, sweeping social and economic restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic forced the business to rethink processes and workflows. They chose to rapidly adopt technology to accelerate change and ensure that they could continue to make health care accessible. Daniel Laverick, of Zuellig Pharma joins Dr. Nicholas Nicoloudis of SAP to discuss their innovation approach, how and why they deployed SAP iRPA – Robotic Process Automation and chatbots, plus the surprising challenges and practical lessons learnt along the way.

This is a great example of how to approach hyperautomation and the measurable performance improvements and enhanced customer experience that can be achieved.

During his time with Zuellig Pharma, Daniel has managed and overseen the largest SAP migration in Asia to public cloud, along with the development of the first Blockchain hosted drug traceability application in Asia named eZTracker. He has championed the use of machine learning to streamline internal operations with the introduction of bots.

How RPA Became the Unsung Hero of 2020

Zuellig Pharma traditionally relied on humans for manual processing of repetitive tasks such as order input or delivery shipments. However, sweeping social and economic restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic forced the business to rethink processes and workflows. They chose to rapidly adopt technology to accelerate change and ensure that they could continue to make health care accessible. Daniel Laverick, of Zuellig Pharma joins Dr. Nicholas Nicoloudis of SAP to discuss their innovation approach, how and why they deployed SAP iRPA – Robotic Process Automation and chatbots, plus the surprising challenges and practical lessons learnt along the way.

This is a great example of how to approach hyperautomation and the measurable performance improvements and enhanced customer experience that can be achieved.

During his time with Zuellig Pharma, Daniel has managed and overseen the largest SAP migration in Asia to public cloud, along with the development of the first Blockchain hosted drug traceability application in Asia named eZTracker. He has championed the use of machine learning to streamline internal operations with the introduction of bots.

Finance Transformation in a Post-Covid World

Finance has been in transformation mode for more than 20 years—benchmarking, best practices, shared services, process re-engineering, ERP and digitization have all driven significant change. However, the landscape has changed dramatically over the last two years as the world has navigated through the global pandemic. Many finance organisations have taken the opportunity to accelerate automation and adopt new working practice, so what does finance transformation look like now?

• What will be long term impact of ‘work from home’ be on finance?
• How will continued technology adoption change the role of the finance professional?
• What new skills and capabilities will finance need to develop?
• How should the finance organization adapt to a changed environment

In this masterclass, David Axson, will explore the trends and actions that are driving the finance transformation agenda.

Highlights of the SAP Roadmaps for our Solutions for HR

With SAP, you’ve got some great options to support your HR digital transformations. In this session, you’ll learn about the recent deliveries and latest roadmap planning across the SAP SuccessFactors HXM Suite, including our reimagined user experiences, planned new capabilities to drive employee growth and organizational agility, and integrations with the rest of the SAP solution portfolio. You’ll also hear updates on how you can continue to leverage your ERP HCM investments in new and innovative ways.

Delivering HRIS Value in a Changing Business Environment

Over the past 12-18 months businesses have had to adapt, pivot or restructure to deal with the impacts of COVID. Given this ever-changing landscape, how do you get HR teams to best manage their HR technologies and processes so they can continue to add value to the business and improve the employee life cycle experience?

In this presentation Josh will walk through some of the process initiatives Medibank has taken and provide feedback on the changes that have succeeded. This includes changing the expectations of the workforce from time spent to value added as well as implementing processes for collaborative working in a remote environment.

Business Transformation is HERE. Is Your Team READY?

Business transformation is NOT about adopting new technology just for the sake of having “On-going IT Projects”. Transformation should be tangible, actionable, and immediately applicable with an on-going end-user development. Digital transformation is a journey. It requires cultural and behavioral changes as they can be complex, disruptive, and time-consuming.

Each company is unique, and so is the scope and effort required to achieve a successful transformation. Your digital transformation roadmap must be prescriptive and address specific pain points for your departments and your most significant assets, “your end-users.” For a successful transformation, business processes need to be reassessed, remapped, and simplified in advance, but it also takes the right digital-savvy leaders in place.

Hey – Where’s My Payment? A comprehensive look at Payment Medium Workbench

SAP’s Payment Medium Workbench (PMW) is a powerful yet complex transaction used for generating payment files. SAP payment medium workbench is an alternative to the standard payment media print programs. Using payment medium workbench has more advantages as compared to using the standard payment media print programs. Formats for payment medium workbench can be easily changed without making some modifications to the programs. In this discussion you are going to get an understanding of how SAP payment medium workbench is created and how to convert already defined payment methods to use with SAP payment medium workbench.

Is Your SAP Finance Environment Keeping Up as Business Models Change?

Traditional borders between industries are blurring. Where there once were product-driven industries and service industries, we now find car companies selling mobility services, agri-nutrient companies selling fertilisers to individual farmers and retailers moving almost completely online, changing the requirements for billing and controlling.  

As the business world becomes more volatile, finance organisations are expected to deliver better quality information faster. Again, where once corridors were full of paper lists, now managers expect to find a smartphone app with a list of critical open items and key actions.  

Nobody is prepared to wait for the period close to see their margins or the consolidated view of their business. As business models change, Finance is expected to deliver better steering information and advise their business rather than simply checking the numbers are correct. These topics are covered in “SAP S/4HANA Finance – The Reference Guide to What’s New” and this session will dive into the reasons why organisations have begun a transformation and what they have achieved. 

• How industry requirements are changing and how this is reflected in the software 

• How the requirements on a finance organisation are changing and how SAP S/4HANA Finance supports this 
• How reporting requirements are changing and organisations are looking to introduce new steering models 

Driving Governance at Bridgestone

It is unavoidable that there are risks in every business. It’s crucial to be able to identify segregation of duties and apply mitigating controls against the risks. Bridgestone Australia & New Zealand use Soterion as a tool to ensure that we meet J-Sox audit requirements and authorisation standards.

One of the key functions of the tool is that it allows us to run a simulation before a role is created or access is assigned to users, then highlight conflicts if any. It provides a short description of why this change will cause segregation of duties. The tool has increased the visibility of risks in the business and assists us in reviewing controls.

Jess will take you through a journey of how we used to maintain segregation of duties, the problems we faced, and why Soterion is a solution that we adopt.

Build Resilience and Mind Strength

Anxiety is the most prevalent mental health challenge, detrimentally impacting approximately 30% of the working population and costing the economy $500 million daily. Jodie’s Mind Strength Method is transformational and ground-breaking. The ROI of conquering anxiety and stress and building resilience is significant. Benefits include reduced turnover, absenteeism, conflict and burnout whilst increasing productivity, performance, emotional intelligence, mental health, well-being and engagement.

The Value of Design Thinking and Why Collaboration is Key to Creative Problem Solving

I like people. I strongly believe that creative problem solving, and empathy are key for better solutions and happier people. The way we work has changed in the past year. The way we collaborate and engage with people, colleagues, and customers has changed.

At Philips Experience Design for Markets, innovation is bought to markets with a Design Thinking mindset. Creative problem solving is their strength, and fast iterations focusing on the users’ desires and needs enables the team to engage with the people around them.

Julia shares lessons from her work and how innovative communication tools are helping Philips Experience Design collaborate across continents and time-zones.

In Search for the Source of Truth…for Employee Data

As organisations navigate SAP’s transition from OnPremise solution (SAP HCM) to Cloud-based Applications such as SAP SuccessFactors, the “source of truth” for employee data has become blurred as most have ended up with a hybrid, combination of both systems.

• How do organisations determine which system is their “source of truth” for employee data?
• What tools and solutions are available out there in the market to overcome this challenging problem?
• How has this impacted your organisation’s ability to provide employee data to other 3rd party systems in your company?
• What reporting solutions can be used that combine data from multiple HRIS sources to create insightful, expedient people analytics to assist with effective, decision-making?

For those still using VLOOKUP, join our discussion as we explore effective solutions in our quest for the “source of truth” for employee data.

Organic Valley’s SAP S/4HANA Greenfield Implementation: New House! Old Furniture?

Organic Valley, a $1.2B dairy cooperative based in the United States, is in the middle of an ERP migration that is moving the business from a dilapidated and cluttered ERP system to the greener pastures of SAP S/4HANA. In this allegorical telling of the unfolding transformation, we’ll reveal the complexities and new discoveries of moving data from the old to the new system.

• As we move furniture (data) from the old house (legacy ERP) to the new one (SAP S/4HANA) what really matters and who gets to decide (master data governance)?
• Should we fix the broken dresser drawer or replace it with an armoire (data quality)?
• Can we live without the family heirlooms that we’ve been keeping in the attic (understanding the value of data)?
• Will the couch even fit in the new living room or should we only keep the recliner (fit-to-standard)?
• How do we tell the kids (OCM)?
• Do we care what the neighbors will think… (application integrations)?!?

Powering our HR Future – CS Energy’s HR Transformation Journey

CS Energy’s People and Culture strategy is “to empower you to deliver your strategic priorities”. One of those priorities over the past 16 months has been to upgrade the HRIS from SAP to SuccessFactors, including Employee Central, Performance, Learning, Succession, Recruitment, Onboarding and Comp and Variable pay. While they are in the final stages of completing the implementation, they have seen an incredible uptake and response from employees resulting in efficiency gains, record performance completion rates and quality talent conversations.

Laura will showcase their need for a new solution, the foundational planning that went into the various phases and the key lessons learned to drive greater personalization and inclusion for the workforce.

Driving Stakeholder Engagement for Ongoing HR Innovation

Innovations pushed from Cloud First applications require a deliberate approach to help stakeholders understand frequent changes in functionality, and to drive a culture of adoption. The Transport for NSW IT team looking after SuccessFactors submitted an Investment Brief and secured funding for a plan to drive business adoption of new features.

Liza shares how Transport for NSW are using the SAP SuccessFactors release schedule as a scaffold for ongoing business improvement and what it has taken to get stakeholder buy in.

Driving Usability Through Custom Overview Pages/Dashboards in SAP S/4HANA

SAP S/4HANA offers new ways of working that can really improve an end user’s experience but depending on the implementation approach and the applicability of the thousands of already available Fiori apps, users may be left with a solution that could be more clunky than prior to the upgrade. What this Masterclass will cover are the key implementation aspects of S/4HANA to set-up this new way of working, plus highlight how a role-based SAP S/4HANA Transaction dashboard might be a good quick win. The presentation will be broken up into 2 sections, each followed by an open discussion and questions. First – The critical implementation aspects of SAP S/4HANA before you can even start the real SAP S/4HANA UX journey. Second – How the SAP S/4HANA transactional dashboard (A Fiori Elements Overview Page) might be designed and built with the build process included.

Please Complete and Submit Form ID AE643…and Best of Luck!

Defence Finance Group is re-imagining the way it does business with its internal customers by applying a user centered design approach, leveraging the capabilities of Fiori to improve the user experience and adopting as much out-of-the-box S4 HANA functionality as possible. We hope to eliminate hundreds of complicated and unnecessary structures, processes, systems and tools, and replace them with a new ERP solution that will provide a single, trusted source of accurate, near real-time information.

A reform initiative that demonstrates this, is the replacement of the wide-ranging standalone finance forms that our customers love to hate. Our journey so far has involved transforming purchasing and employee reimbursement forms into online Fiori apps that ensure data is captured once, validated in real-time, workflowed for review and approval, and a UI that makes it easy for users to understand what is required of them with minimal to no training.

The 50:50 Rule of Any Implementation

Often with system implementations the primary goal is GO – LIVE, and although that is a feat in its own right, implementation success is based on governance, embedment and support post go live. This is where the business will see a return on investment. Using a 50:50 rule, Michael applies 50% to the system implementation and 50% to governance, embedment and support.

Michael will discuss the lifecycle of a system implementation and highlight the importance of change management from the conception to 3-5 years post go live.

Debunking the Risk When Moving to the Cloud

The decision to move payroll to the cloud is not an easy one for most organisations. Most Businesses that are looking at implementing SuccessFactors are keeping their payroll instance out of fear of failure. We are going to look at several areas within the Payroll process where organisations can be better informed and reduce anxiety during their decision-making process when migrating to SAP Cloud Payroll. We’ll focus on the areas that are typically the most concerning and see how the risks are mitigated, such as:

• Implementation journey – is it that different or have we overhyped the implementation?
• Data security concerns and how to overcome them
• Failure risks within payroll processing
• Benefits of a cloud environment

Modern HR Innovation and Digitisation: Empowering Enterprises and Employees

The dynamics of how and why people work is changing, impacted by and in parallel with broader social, economic and technological shifts on a global scale. Skilled labor markets are more competitive than ever, and we must excel in attracting, retaining, growing and reskilling top talent to compete in this new environment.

Employee expectations have changed dramatically in the last decade. How does one then set up the HR digital transformation in this experience age? How can companies set up focus areas for better analytics and experiences, that can help enterprise be agile in the face of challenges and ensure that they can engage and retain necessary talent?

This masterclass will address the above in the context of how Microsoft is making foundational investments in HR Technology with SAP Success Factors Employee Central and others to leverage investments for business agility, connected data, inclusive systems and delightful experiences.

• How to set up the modern HR vision that focuses on Employee Experiences
• How to plan and execute on leveraging the investments for an agile enterprise and engaged employees.

Using SAP Analytics Cloud for Stronger Forecasting at Ameropa

Ameropa Australia is impacted by fluctuating global and local demand for their products and seasonal changes. An accurate and agile Sales Forecasting solution to service customers more intelligently, and manage inventory costs is critical. Ameropa Australia needed a solution that was intentional and delivered a development platform for the medium- long term.

A Sales Forecasting solution using SAP Analytics Cloud for Planning was implemented. The solution delivers accurate awareness for various stakeholders by presenting various views but linked to one source of the truth. With accountability and traceability at the core of the solution, Ameropa Australia’s commercial and trading teams can respond to fluctuating demand in an agile manner, manage supply efficiently and unlock cost efficiencies.

SAP Launchpad Service Content Federation of SAP S/4HANA 2020 Fiori Content

The SAP Launchpad Service is part of the SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP). It enables organisations to provide a central point of entry for access to SAP, custom-built, and 3rd Party applications.

Content Federation has been provided from SAP S/4HANA 2020 to enable replication on-premise Fiori Launchpad Content to the SAP Launchpad Service.

This session will show you how to federate on-premise content allowing you to leverage SAP delivered content to provide users Fiori application access via the SAP Launchpad Service.

Cultivating an SAP Security Culture, Let’s Get Growing

Christchurch City Council’s SAP S/4 HANA transformation project was a catalyst for building a positive security culture. Transforming from ECC to SAP S/4 HANA, with limited security resource and a tight deadline, meant establishing a security culture with sound roots, quickly!

Engaging with Basis and ABAP colleagues was key. Transformation meant lots of data cleansing, including digging up data on historical tcode/report usage, and sharing it to contribute to everyone’s planning.

Sandi dives into the detail of her approach and how she tackled an SAP S/4 HANA Security project, when everyone just wanted things to work, and not have to think about security.

• Partnering with functional analysts to grow their understanding
• Sharing your tools, test and trace – it’s a team effort
• Making it real for end users/business influencers to communicating what’s in it for them
• Planting the seed of a security culture, partnerships and personalisation

Finance Transformation – Make it Real, Make it Happen, Make it Last!

Finance Transformation – buzz words or reality? It’s not enough to talk about it – you need to show what it is, you need to do something, and you need to embed it in the culture of your teams and add real value to the business.

Hear how BlueScope has taken transformation as an action by implementing Robotic Process Automation, taking the robot out of the human, creating capacity and allowing for more creative and strategic partnering with the business, while enabling finance to own their own digital development.

The key benefits have been greater adoption of new systems, an understanding that change can be positive and the impact these changes can have on elevating the finance function.

The Nervous Organisation’s Guide to Moving to the Cloud

Are you considering a move to the Cloud? You’ve heard it’s a wonderful place with many advantages, and yet you have so many questions! Four experts share their different vantage points to help you understand and accelerate your move to the cloud.

• How do you communicate migrations and upgrades with non-technical senior execs who have to weigh-in or sign-off on projects?
• What can you do with SAP S/4HANA that you can’t do today with your existing system?
• How can Hyperscalers help your business, and how do you go about choosing or assessing them?
• What happens to the modifications your teams are so comfortable using in your old SAP system? And how do you know your systems will continue to run optimally?

Join the panel for advice and guidance as they imagine themselves in the shoes of an organization interested in moving and upgrading their customized SAP On-premise system to SAP S/4 HANA Cloud.

Driving Innovation, Stability and Quality in Payroll

Payroll is one of the most complex parts of HR for most companies, and it is also one of the primary Human Experiences employees have with the company – the delivery of their compensation. Companies have to pay employees accurately and timely in a challenging environment that frequently changes.

How can companies do this, while also striving to innovate with more self-service and other new features? Steve will present experience-based practices and methods for improving the quality of payroll calculations and delivery, maintaining a stable environment as changes and upgrades are rolled out, and innovating at a pace that is right for your company.

Raising the Game on User Experience and Digital Innovation

Innovation was at one time only driven by technology, but in the 21st century, experience design is the new currency required to create impactful innovation. It is no longer the organisation with the best technology that wins, but the organisation with the best User Experience (UX).

In this thought-leading and idea-provoking presentation, Sunjoo Kim, shares her insights on why, what, and how Human-Centered-Design-led UX drives the success of tomorrow.

Sunjoo is a Visionary, astute Strategist and hands-on Executioner in Technology Innovation, Digital Transformation, and UX improvements. With over 20 years of experience in IT as an SAP practitioner, Enterprise Mobility/ IoT/ Wearable technology Specialist, Head of Digital Innovation and a User Experience Strategist, Sunjoo has been working with a range of international and Australian companies in public and private sectors. Sunjoo believes and participates in creating a better life for people, enabled by Human Centered Design-led business success in this time of ‘Digitisation of Everything’.

Modern Development Tooling in the SAP Space

This is a broad masterclass session will look at the role of Business Application Studio and VSCode in the modern SAP development space. We will see how to get started with both community tooling and SAP provided tooling in each environment to support HANA, CAP, Fiori, Mobile and even ABAP development.

Part 1 – Getting setup for development in both Business Application Studio and VSCode locally. We will show the basics of getting started in each environment. We will see how to configure development spaces and why they are needed. How to install SAP ecosystem friendly VSCode extensions. How to setup a test and debug environment in both tools. Basically get a developer setup for all types of modern development in the SAP tools space.

Part 2 – Let’s build a Cloud Application Programming Model application. We will use the latest in CAP modeling and development tooling to create a CAP application, add Fiori UI and extend the basic project to include HANA native artifacts and tooling as well.

Section 3 – But I’m an ABAP developer. Let’s bring the workshop back around to where most of us started – ABAP. Although ABAP tooling isn’t official offered outside of Eclipse; let’s look at the state of community tooling in VSCode. Also let’s see how CAP, Fiori, and HANA tooling plays alongside the ABAP development experience.

Accessing the People Data we Need to Succeed – the Ongoing Systems Access Challenge

Employee and origination information is needed to support most workflow processes from identity management, budgeting, hardware support to sales approvals, and most importantly to support people processes (remuneration, talent etc.). In a time where data privacy legislations are being amped up, how do originations provide the right access to a multifaceted user base? Without it becoming an administrative extravaganza. Here we talk about Fonterra’s journey, including systems-role based access design, business maturity considerations and governance approach.

Accessing the People Data we Need to Succeed – the Ongoing Systems Access Challenge

Employee and origination information is needed to support most workflow processes from identity management, budgeting, hardware support to sales approvals, and most importantly to support people processes (remuneration, talent etc.). In a time where data privacy legislations are being amped up, how do originations provide the right access to a multifaceted user base? Without it becoming an administrative extravaganza. Here we talk about Fonterra’s journey, including systems-role based access design, business maturity considerations and governance approach.

The Path to SAP S/4HANA Thought Central Finance

With SAP S/4 HANA ‘everything changes’ in some areas but they ‘stay the same’ in others. Why is that? The answer lies in the strategic direction of SAP and software in general where terms like cloud, best of breed, best practice, Internet of things, user experience, virtual data are now mainstream.

This masterclass will discuss the choices to upgrade the finance function including using Central Finance and some of the new functionality in S/4 HANA Finance/Central Finance. The format will be interactive with ‘quick fire’ Q&A.

Getting SAP S/4HANA Foundations Right

In May 2021 ElectraNet successfully went live with SAP S/4HANA.

The project was put in place as ElectraNet responded to the maturity of the existing technology stack, but also recognising the benefits we could get in the long run from upgrading our current SAP solution. To ensure we deliver a robust outcome and build strong foundations for future growth, ElectraNet applied a 2 phased approach to the project.

Firstly, a laser like focus was applied to upgrade the core, moving our existing SAP environment into SAP S/4HANA.. Secondly, we looked at innovations, with a focus to streamline processes and leverage the additional functionality. This allowed us to remove customisation, hence becoming more efficient whilst also gaining functionality, which we consider a win-win.

The project’s success can be traced back to sticking to the clearly defined and simple scope and selecting a proven delivery partner. Defining the scope and having a strong partner materially de-risked the project and ensured our ability to deliver to budget and meet all stakeholders’ requirements.

Looking to the future, ElectraNet is excited about the optionality S/4HANA provides us with and how it links to other aspects such as SAC. However, for now we are enjoying operating in a robust and modern environment.

Consolidating Commonly Used Applications into a Single App at AGL

Like many businesses, AGL have many tools within their systems environment. Each tool serves its purpose however knowing which tool to use and when brings in complexity to users. We launched the AGL one IOS app to consolidate, simplify and provide a simple User experience to users for administrative tasks.

Developing this process included interviews, workshops and feedback cycles from different departments to understand common pain points and priorities in their workflow. By creating a front end, mobile solution our teams now only need to focus on the task and not the tool to get their work done.

Joy will share the journey to consolidation, the impact of bringing teams together to build the solution and the power of a front-end tool that drives productive outcomes.

Taronga Conservation Society Australia Improves Workflow Efficiencies with Innovative Use of SAP Cloud Platform

Taronga Zoo staff need to regularly raise Purchase Orders for animal feed, medical supplies and business critical items around the Zoo. Based on several hectares of land, the process of manually writing out and hand-delivery PO’s to the Purchasing team for manual processing is time-consuming and cumbersome for staff members stationed across different parts of the site. Additionally, there was a growing need for greater uniformity and efficiency for issuing site-wide alerts to all staff and quickly being able to complete administrative forms online.

Taking a digital first approach, Taronga and Bourne implemented a Fiori-based application named ‘StaX’ to address these requirements. Having upgraded their ERP to S/4HANA they were now able to marry the workflow of purchasing to a technology first, mobile solution on the SAP S/4HANA database and streamline additional form-based workflows to alleviate some of the administrative burden on ground-staff. The benefits have been consistency in purchase requests, reduction of time to approval and an increase in employee experience. The StaX application is now a quintessential part of staff day-to-day operations at Taronga.

End to End Identity Management in a Cloud-first Landscape

With ever more enterprise data and functions moving from on-premises data centres to the cloud, the corporate firewall is no longer an effective demarcation of company-internal assets from the rest of the world. Identity has rapidly become the next security perimeter – the passport which systems inspect to grant or deny access to information assets. But such an approach demands robust processes for managing identities throughout their lifecycle.

Join this talk to hear how Orica evolved from largely manual processes without much visibility, to fully-automated identity management, with provisioning and de-provisioning of job-based authorisations in both SAP and non-SAP systems, how this changed the way we look at security, and what challenges remain.

The Nervous Organisation’s Guide to Moving to the Cloud

Are you considering a move to the Cloud? You’ve heard it’s a wonderful place with many advantages, and yet you have so many questions! Four experts share their different vantage points to help you understand and accelerate your move to the cloud.

• How do you communicate migrations and upgrades with non-technical senior execs who have to weigh-in or sign-off on projects?
• What can you do with SAP S/4HANA that you can’t do today with your existing system?
• How can Hyperscalers help your business, and how do you go about choosing or assessing them?
• What happens to the modifications your teams are so comfortable using in your old SAP system? And how do you know your systems will continue to run optimally?

Join the panel for advice and guidance as they imagine themselves in the shoes of an organization interested in moving and upgrading their customized SAP On-premise system to SAP S/4 HANA Cloud.

Time to Think About Time Sheeting

Ballance are on a diverse time sheeting journey. We have integrated solutions, paper-based based solutions and old ESS portal solutions. We attempted a bespoke front end to enable ease of entry, have learnt a few valuable lessons along the way and will discuss the selection process of different solutions and pitfalls of bespoke vs custom, as well several change management aspects.

Leveraging SAP, and Cloud, for Business Outcomes

How do I optimize my investment in both SAP, and cloud, to ‘turn the dial’ from a business perspective? This non-technical discussion, hosted by AWS, is your opportunity to hear from like-minded executives, and exchange observations and questions about harnessing SAP and cloud for business outcomes. The session will cover hot topics like: SAP roadmap and business case considerations (upgrade or ‘sweat the asset’), unlocking the value of SAP and non-SAP data, and inspiring a new era of innovation and experimentation across your internal teams.

Save Time, Save Money, and Win Friends by Deploying SAP Solutions on AWS

During this technical workshop you will learn how to evaluate your SAP workload requirements on AWS. We will cover best practices related to optimal architecture and the use of new native tools and services, like Launch Wizard, to automate your deployments. This session is your opportunity to hear directly from AWS’s own SAP architects, ask questions, and catch up on the latest best-practices for migrating and operating SAP on AWS.

How SAP Analytics Cloud Delivers Value at McGrathNicol

In November 2019 McGrathNicol implemented SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud. Having a new system has given the firm greater insight and provides Finance with greater depth of reporting without having to rely on manual solutions. Beyond the standard reporting capability, S/4HANA Public Cloud has been enhanced with embedded SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) since McGrathNicol’s implementation.

McGrathNicol now use embedded SAC to deliver dashboards on Utilization / Productivity, Working Capital (debtors and unbilled WIP) and Partner performance. This allows our users to know exactly where they stand in relation to set KPI’s and ensures our business remains focused on cash flow drivers in real time. In this presentation I will explore the value of SAP Analytics cloud and its embedded functionality.

How do Enterprise SAP Companies Improve Test Data Quality?

Many SAP customers and users face continual challenges around how to get quality SAP data into non-production systems for testing, training and support while solving numerous data security challenges.

The integrated nature of business processes makes it impossible to keep several full copies of production in non-production landscapes. This creates a massive challenge around enabling functional analysts, testers, trainers and consultants to access the data they need to support the production system in both a timely and cost-effective manner.

Join this live interactive meet-up as we discuss the key activities you can perform today to reduce costs and optimise your SAP programs.

Risk & Change – Striking the Balance

The most common maintenance activities in the SAP industry include:

– Importing SAP Transports
– Performing S/4HANA Feature Package stack upgrades
– Performing ECC Enhancement Package upgrades

These changes have become more frequent as we strive to improve for software currency, problem resolution and business innovation.
How do I test to give me peace of mind whilst avoiding the need to test everything in a change?

Learn how SAP and Tricentis can help to determine the most at-risk capabilities during these maintenance activities.

During this session, presented by Tony de Thomasis & Jonathan Morar, we will demonstrate how to reduce testing windows by testing only the most at-risk components based on application usage patterns.

Risk & Change – Striking the Balance

The most common maintenance activities in the SAP industry include:

– Importing SAP Transports
– Performing S/4HANA Feature Package stack upgrades
– Performing ECC Enhancement Package upgrades

These changes have become more frequent as we strive to improve for software currency, problem resolution and business innovation.
How do I test to give me peace of mind whilst avoiding the need to test everything in a change?

Learn how SAP and Tricentis can help to determine the most at-risk capabilities during these maintenance activities.

During this session, presented by Tony de Thomasis & Jonathan Morar, we will demonstrate how to reduce testing windows by testing only the most at-risk components based on application usage patterns.

Getting Clear on Your Transformation Modelling – Inside and Outside of SAP

The SAP model for transformation is to upgrade all systems to S/4 HANA and other cloud applications – even if a private cloud “lift and shift” might have a limited TCO. But how does this translate back into your IT philosophy? In this session we will cover the modelling aspect of transformation and show you how to understand how to fit SAP – and any other applications – into a workable context for transformation. The goal? To help you start designing your implementation model that brings customer experience design, needs analysis of your system and future IT needs to the fore. One burning question: how can you tie bigger SAP transformations into the quick wins that the executive board – not to mention users – are looking for? Is it possible to anticipate future AI and planning needs by factoring in an underlying data model? This session is for SAP customers who know they need to move their transformations forward, may have been told how to move, but need to take critical step back to see if whats being proposed aligns with their internal strategy.

1. Industry disruption and benchmarking – how does your upcoming transformation fit into your industry goals? What is your scope of your existing relationship with SAP (SAP as core ERP provider, SAP as cloud enabler, SAP as transformation advisor)

2. Models of transformation – there are multiple models for transformation, even for customers moving S/4HANA to some type of cloud. Examples: analytics/AI driven transformation, customer or supply chain driven, ring-fenced ERP, ERP as real-time backbone

3. IT philosophy – mapping transformation goals to IT philosophy. IT as cost center, workflow automation provider, and/or competitive differentiatior via “smart products” and apps. Are LOB leaders building their own groups?

4. Quick wins, APIs, and data models – how can you build “quick wins” into the move to your future state – not always easy with big SAP projects? How do your digital transformation plans map into an overrall data model or platform? What is the role of trusted third party advisors, independents, and project auditors in all of the above?

It is only with the alignment of these four areas that a durable business case can be built – one that goes beyond TCO.

Drive Data Literacy Through AGL’s Data Literacy Academy

Many big data and advanced analytics investments fail to deliver significant and lasting benefits. Technology is rarely the issue. O’Reilly’s results of their study on AI adoption in the enterprise in 2020 called out culture, skills gap and data quality as the as the biggest obstacles to businesses leveraging value from their data.

Most large companies are incredibly well-placed to generate significant competitive advantage from their data. They’re sitting on a wealth of data; they have talented analysts and scientists, shelfware galore and plenty of pain points to work on. So why aren’t they generating success?

Part of AGL’s shift to a data-driven culture was the establishment of the Analytics Academy. Its purpose is fourfold:

1. Drive data literacy across the company irrespective of job roles

2. Reskill employees into data and analytics technical roles by giving them dependable and high-quality learning resources

3. Upskill employees in existing data science and engineering roles to keep up with the pace of change in their domain

4. Uplift data and AI-driven leadership across the organisation.

This is driving the following major outcomes:

1. Making better data driven decisions as an organisation

2. Increasing the hiring pool to fill hard-to-find data science, engineering and analyst roles internally

3. Lower hiring costs, hiring time and employee churn

4. Embedding data-driven leadership able to leverage data and analytics.

Michaela Shea, Senior Manager for Data and Analytics Change and Transformation, will talk about the development of the Academy and how it is positioning AGL’s data and analytics transformation.

The Power of Ambition – There is a Better Way to Supercharge the Outcome of your Strategy

Every day, in every company and organization around the world, leaders are making mission-critical decisions on how they will execute their business strategy.

Leaders at non-profit organizations, governmental agencies, Fortune 100 companies and Main Street small businesses all know that everyday is an opportunity to make progress or to lose momentum.

It is the choices they make on what to do and what not to do, and how work will get done that will move them and their organizations forward or move them backwards.

And as a result, the pressure is on to make the right decision every single time.

The Ambition Method™ is anchored in behavioral science and decades of observation on organizational performance, and aims to answer this singular question that every leader has asked:

HOW DO I GET EVERYONE FOCUSED AND ENERGIZED TO EMBRACE THE STRATEGY AND DELIVERTHE RESULTS?

The Ambition Method™ lays out the approach that leaders and their teams can follow to create the results that they desire, to have a positive impact on their organizations, and to build the legacy that all leaders can be proud of.

SAP Code Management in 2021

How do developers manage their SAP code? ABAP developers used to just trust in the SAP Change and Transport System (CTS) and not think too much about this. Java developers were pushed towards CTS+. SAPUI5 developers were left to their own devices until they needed to deploy something. And in the cloud …?

Let’s discuss how you manage your code. What are your personal “best practises” and how do they fit in with corporate guidelines? What SAP tools do you use? What else do you use? What are the biggest stumbling blocks to effective SAP code management? What could SAP do to help? Please bring your own experiences and ideas to this discussion – along with an open mind.

Driving Usability Through Custom Overview Pages/Dashboards in SAP S/4HANA

SAP S/4HANA offers new ways of working that can really improve an end user’s experience but depending on the implementation approach and the applicability of the thousands of already available Fiori apps, users may be left with a solution that could be more clunky than prior to the upgrade. What this Masterclass will cover are the key implementation aspects of S/4HANA to set-up this new way of working, plus highlight how a role-based SAP S/4HANA Transaction dashboard might be a good quick win. The presentation will be broken up into 2 sections, each followed by an open discussion and questions. First – The critical implementation aspects of SAP S/4HANA before you can even start the real SAP S/4HANA UX journey. Second – How the SAP S/4HANA transactional dashboard (A Fiori Elements Overview Page) might be designed and built with the build process included.