This week I attended the annual SAP Insider Logistics & Supply Chain Event in Orlando. This event is co-located with sister events for CRM, Procurement, PLM and Manufacturing and resulted in a total attendance of over 2000 practitioners from around the US and beyond. I was happy to see that over 800 of the attendees were there for the Supply Chain event.
Sunday saw the traditional pre event Jumpstart Day which gave the attendees an opportunity to get a head start on the conference and learn about specific topics of interest.
The 1st Day was kicked off by Sanjay Poonen (President & Corporate Officer, Global Solutions, SAP AG), who gave an entertaining keynote (2012: Time for New Growth) to the joint attendees of all 5 events. Sanjay made the session very interactive and informative by inviting 2 customers (Bentley and Cemex) on stage to share their experiences as well as including several demonstrations of new capabilities in the SAP portfolio.
The day 2 keynote (Trends and drivers impacting supply chains and the processes that help them run better) was presented by Hans Thalbauer (Senior Vice President, Line of Business Solutions for Supply Chain and R&D) and me. This keynote explored the most prevalent trends and drivers impacting supply chain executives. We then discussed how these trends are shaping the SAP supply chain roadmap and strategies in the areas of:
Integrated Sales and Operations Planning
Demand Management
Collaborative Response Management
Manufacturing and Supply Planning
Supply Chain Execution
We explained how these strategies can build a framework which allows companies to master the supply chain challenges (I will be writing a blog expanding on these concepts in the next week or 2).
This event is one of the largest supply chain gatherings of the year. Over the 4 days, the attendees then had the opportunity to attend over 200 breakout sessions across 11 supply chain tracks delivered by their peers, consultants and SAP experts. This included the full breadth of the Supply Chain landscape:
I am always amazed at both the quantity and quality of every session and would like to thank the SAP Insider team at WISPUBS, all the partners and especially the customers that make this event such a success year over year. .
There will be a second event held in Prague for our European customers running from April 25 to 27. To learn more click on the link.
I will be there.... Will you?
