12th customer council on SAP S/4HANA for advanced variant configuration

The unifrog was the motto animal of this customer council

This year between March 5 and March 8, customer representatives from more than 10 different international companies met with SAP development for a 4-day workshop on S/4HANA for advanced variant configuration. This group of companies forms the customer council working together with SAP development.

The customer council has met for the 12^th time together with SAP development, and we are very delighted that we almost doubled the number of attending customer representatives.

The goal of the workshop was to better understand and align on the requirements for future developments of S/4HANA for advanced variant configuration, in continuation of our last customer council in the year 2017.

Our Workshop Locations in Walldorf and Sankt Leon-Rot

In locations between Walldorf and Sankt Leon-Rot, the participants worked together on the definition of requirements and newest trends in the processes around variant configuration.

Along with SAP product development, our customers used design-thinking methodologies to find best possible answers to the requirements on future solutions in dedicated break-out sessions.

The council focused on three main topics – loose coupling of the different aspects of the product configuration model, engineer to order (ETO) processes, and system behavior improving user experience in complex situations.

The first two days were dedicated to setting the fundaments of loose coupling.

The first day’s session was concluded by a visit to “SAP City”, where SAP presented to the customer council the latest solution demonstrations around S/4HANA for advanced variant configuration.

SAP City

On the third day, we collected feedback and requirements about future scenarios on “engineer to order” (ETO) in the context of configurable products, and on the fourth day, we defined requirements and approaches on system behavior improving user experience in complex situations while configuring a product.

The group presenting their design thinking results

Our customers were very interested in experiencing and testing our new solutions, knowing that they play a significant role in the continuous improvement of SAP standard solutions.

All participants stated that they want to be part of the next customer council and we received positive feedback.

We all agreed that there is only one way to get better – together!

Would you like to find out more about SAP S/4HANA for Advanced Variant Configuration? Follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn to get the latest news. In case of additional questions or comments, do not hesitate to contact us: sapvc@sap.com