ASUG is the largest SAP community in the world. Founded in 1991, 1 year later than Meta, its mission is to help people and organizations get the most value from their investment in SAP technology.

The ASUG chapter meetings are held periodically to gather the region’s SAP group and share insights, lessons learned, tips, cases, and knowledge. On November 22^nd, the last 2022 Ontario chapter meeting took place in the Living Arts Centre, in Mississauga, ON. Meta IT was an official sponsor of the event.

The main discussion in this chapter was about a municipality whose systems lacked integration, and it drove to a SAP S/4HANA upgrade split into 3 phases, all kept in-house. One of the main issues they reported was resource constraints, preventing a fully parallel landscape, and leading to a total of 3 years to complete the project. Meta IT is an accredited SAP partner globally and can provide staffing, support, migration, and upgrade services, within a full end-to-end tech portfolio to support companies in their IT department.

Official agenda for the ASUG Ontario Chapter Meeting – November 2022

The upgrade was the beginning of the city’s Digital Transformation journey, and the next steps involve mainly automation initiatives within invoicing, for example, as it currently takes too much of the team’s time. This subject also appeared in SAP’s speech later in the chapter meeting on how to better explore the tools and functionalities offered. Spotlight, an SAP solution, can indicate which of your processes involve the most manual effort and users, such as accounting (accounts payable and receivable, financial close, assets), providing a better direction on where to focus for continuous improvement.

The responsible project manager highlighted the importance of understanding and applying change management. The main lessons learned, and where they struggled, were that CM doesn’t end on the go-live day, and the training for handling the changes implied with the new implementations must be effective, so the team is ready to support any future situations. Culturally, the change is even more significant. In business transformation, it all comes down to people, how ready they are for the unknown, and how open they are to evolution.

Meta IT Executives at ASUG Ontario Chapter Meeting – November 2022

Closing the discussions, and looking into a SAP S/4HANA migration scenario last year, only 33% of SAP customers inside the ASUG community started to move, while 25% plan to do it in two or more years, 16% within seven to 24 months, and only 2% within the next six months. 6% are not considering a move at all, and 18% have plans on hold. And you, where are your company in the plans for migrating? Tell us by sending us a message.