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​Last week the Speller team attended the Melbourne SAUG, starting with an exclusive Speller networking breakfast and attending the morning session at the Melbourne Convention Centre.

It was a great turnout of attendees with fewer sponsors meaning more opportunities to talk to and catch up with old connections and make new ones.

Key take aways from this year’s Melbourne SAUG conference

My main take away from the event was seeing the roadmap for the SAUG, there is a big push for Business AI. Since the event we’ve seen the email introducing SAUG Business AI. An AI online resource which has practical, business centric AI knowledge, including a guide to understanding and embracing AI, a framework to AI adoption & a survey on where business’s sit on the AI maturity curve.

It seems like a great tool they’ve put together as a source of truth on what is out there, how it effects businesses and what we need to know.

Unsurprisingly, another big headline topic is the looming deadline of SAP ECC being out of maintenance and more so, not just the push to S/4 but the push for customers to fully adopt a cloud environment, such as RISE with SAP and the utilisation of BTP.

The direction of SAP is clear and that is very much Cloud - I noticed a much firmer “tone/mood” change at this conference that was stressing on-premise technologies are old and out of date and customers now need to embrace Cloud and move with the times!

Key Highlights

I really enjoyed the talk from Paul Taylor around stress management. He was a great addition to the schedule and nice to see a non SAP topic, speaking about a highly relevant and important subject. It is a stressful time globally (in business and in personal life) with technology moving faster than ever and people putting more and more pressure on themselves. People seemed to get a lot from this energetic talk - I know I took away some great stress management tips and have put them into action; including having had a 30 second cold shower every day since the SAUG, to train and control your stress response. It is also proven to reduce sickness by 29%, which with 2 x kids at day care - was the selling point for me!!

Great idea combining an outside speaker, it definitely created good talking points.

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What’s your advice to SAP consultants on the direction of SAP this year?

SAP consultants need to be fully aware of cloud technologies, and the BTP space. Look to upskill and/or sidestep into these areas to ensure career longevity and progression. There is no point pushing against this, the best way is to accept the direction of technologies and carve out a space for yourself within it.