#ASUG Maryland – Virginia Chapter Meeting Recap “In our Nation’s Capital”

On Thursday July 27^th we held a joint ASUG Maryland-Virginia Chapter meeting in Washington DC, co-located with the ASUG Executive Exchange.  In previous ASUG chapter member surveys those ASUG members who belonged to the Virginia Chapter said that Washington DC was their first meeting location choice.

Source: ASUG

Various barriers prevented the Virginia Chapter from meeting in Washington DC – the cost to rent a meeting location is expensive and not in our budget.  The cost to park is prohibitive.  Taking the DC subway is a low cost option but adds more time to the commute to get there.  SAP has offices in the Reagan Building in DC but the conference rooms only hold 25 people.

Fortunately ASUG Maryland Chapter Chair Richard Gillespie offered his company’s location, Pepco Headquarters, as a location to meet in Washington, DC.   First I want to thank our sponsors:

M Files, Paymetric, Original Software and DATUM all sponsored – thank you, the chapter meeting would not have been possible without your support.

I also want to thank former ASUG employee Lauren Reinhertz; I was very resistant to this due to cost and she kept pushing it along.  The same goes to current ASUG Community Coordinator Rebecca Thurman.

This event was co-located with the ASUG Executive Exchange.  For the first session of the day, both groups were in the same room, attending the keynote by SAP’s Ina Felsheim.

Ina gave away a prize to the first person who asked a question, in this case it was Jane Fowler.

Ina reviewed key investments in BI:

Source: SAP

Source: SAP

Ina discussed Analytics Hub, as one single portal for your BI content (not just SAP’s) and is available in the Cloud.

Source: SAP

Ina said SAP runs the SAP Analytics Hub internally.

Source: SAP

Ina said if you are starting a new project, to start with the tool on the right as shown above.

Next, David Turner of M-Files discussed “Dark Data”

Source: M-Files

David said the following:

According to Gartner dark data is the information assets an organization collects, processes and stores during regular business activities, but generally fails to use for other purposes, including analytics.  Ultimately, it is content that is important to a business that has become invisible because it can’t be found effectively.”

Source:  M-Files

Above are David’s key takeways

Next, Original Soft spoke about testing in ERP environments.

Source: Original Software

Source: Original Software

Lisa and Jonathan spoke a great deal on this slide about testing; they offered posters to those who stopped by the table (and several did).

Next, part of our Public Sector track, SAP’s Marlyn Zelkowitz and Jerry Kobeh covered Road Map: SAP S/4HANA for the Public Sector.  Of course the legal disclaimer applies that things in the future are subject to change.

Source: SAP

Marlyn got all of us standing, by asking when/which year we started using SAP products.

Source: SAP

Jerry covered the above, discussing how S/4HANA as the core, big data, cloud applications, and the SAP Cloud Platform.

Source: SAP

Jerry covered the data simplification model for S/4HANA

Source: SAP

Of interest to us Public Sector customers is the integration of Public Sector Accounting (Funds Management) to the Universal Journal.

I had to leave early so I missed the hybrid analytics session,  so I’m signing up for these upcoming ASUG webcasts:

• Sept 6 Smarter and Faster: How Hybrid Analytics can Help You
• Sept 13 Lumira 2.0 for Business users
• Sept 19 Lumira 2.0 for Application Developers
• Sept 21 Integrate SAP Analytics Cloud with your landscape and gain powerful insights
• Oct 12 Introducing SAP Analytics Hub

Source: SAP

This slide was interesting; planned to have SAP Analytics Cloud planning integration with Analysis Office

Registration and attendance at this event was outstanding; special thanks to ASUG Maryland Chapter Volunteers Richard Gillespie, Robyn Bollhurst, and Sainabou Sosseh.  Special thanks to the Pepco employees and the speakers.

See you next time in Richmond, Virginia, at the ASUG Virginia Chapter meeting on October 27^th.

Register here

Presentations are posted here (ASUG logon required).

I enjoyed the presentations, networking, and seeing people I hadn’t seen for years.  See you at the next meeting.