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September 16th 2012
This blog was originally inteded to appear at the end of June, but due to my vacation and a busy August, it is here only now. Well, in the SAP ecosystem, nothing changes overnight, so my blog from June is still valid, I think.
I returned home from the SAP Financials 2012 Europe Conference in mid-June. The first week of June in Milan, Italy was loaded with SAP solutions, financial process topics and related SAP Ecosystem initiatives. I have the practice attending this conference in Europe or U.S.A. every second or third year, to learn the latest developments and best practices packaged into this hectic 3 day event.
The most common type of presentations is a 45 minutes lesson, with the possibility of brief discussion and questions in the end of the presentation. Basically there are three types of presentations in this category: SAP AG presentations typically focus on SAP product roadmaps or on the latest features as part of a new release or Enhancement Pack. SAP customers usually provide a customer case, for example on their past implementation roadmap of SAP financial consolidation solutions or how they have mastered SAP Material Ledger painpoints in their approach. The third category of presentations has the focus on best practice approaches and experiences on a variety of topics, being delivered by SAP partner network, including global SAP partners such as IBM/PricewaterhouseCoopers, Deloitte or small boutique consulting companies.In SAP Financials conferences, there are also other types of program events, including keynote speeches, lab visits to have access to systems and round table discussions.
To have an idea and for more information, check the SAP Financials 2012 Asia (October 16-18, 2012) site: http://www.financials2012.com/Singapore/Overview/. The next US conference will be held In Las Vegas, March 19-22. And the next Europe conference: obviously not released yet (as of September 16., 2012).
It was not difficult to notice the majority of presentations were dealing with SAP new dimension products or whatever you like to call them: Business Objects BI tools, Business Planning and Consolidation (BPC) and most importantly, HANA in-memory computing platform and its latest applications for financials. The new capability to use HANA in connection with ERP applications such as CO-PA reporting is most interesting, as now there is a business case to leverage existing investment with HANA technology, too.
Not to forget: In the classic ERP side the popular themes remain much the same year after year, it seems: which ledger to use for which purpose, Material ledger application and issues in intercompany processing, to name some examples.
In the next blogs, I shall continue discuss the new software capabilities in more detail.
Hope you will be back!
Auvo