The annual CWG European Conference 2018 in Berlin, Germany
We are delighted to announce that this year’s annual CWG European Conference in Berlin (April 15th – 18th) was once again a very successful event. Customers and partners came from all over the world to the “Mövenpick” Hotel in the German capital to present their implementation stories and meet other experts in person. They had the chance to witness the latest developments in SAP S/4HANA for advanced variant configuration and Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ). The participants collaborated with the purpose of defining how to approach future trends and learned how to improve their SAP Variant Configuration setup, now and in the future.
DAY 1
The CWG Conference started with a keynote from CWG’s executive board. Product Configuration was explained as a key success factor for industrial products and manufacturing companies. SAP experts explained how Variant Configuration and CPQ fit together and laid out the product history and track record of SAP in this area. SAP S/4HANA for advanced variant configuration Vice President Johann Dornbach revealed the strategy of SAP Digital Configuration Lifecycle. Followed by a session about extending Configure to Order (CTO) with customer specific order “bill of materials”, the conference continued by showing current releases and the roadmap within SAP S/4HANA for advanced variant configuration.
DAY 2
Remarkable for the second day of the conference was the high interest shown by the participants in joining several sessions in the crowded halls. There were many interesting topics like customer stories about configuration with SAP UI5, and a session about Product Configuration Intelligence. In another hot topic, the participants learned how to simplify their Variant Configuration maintenance. The attendees saw how to install and configure SAP Hybris. They also learned how to prepare their Variant Configuration model for S/4HANA. The majority of participants confirmed their plans for future usage of S/4HANA, and approximately half of the group have plans to leverage Advanced Variant Configuration – we consider this as great feedback and interest from our customers in our new products. Customers and partners saw how to keep an eye on their costs, by experiencing sales price determination at its best.
DAY 3
The last day at the conference continued with a detailed development update on Internet Pricing Configurator (IPC) and the product modeling environment (PMEVC). The participants had the opportunity to learn how to change business processes with material variants and experienced the cloud strategy with the latest trends in product configuration, pricing, and the intelligence platform for E-Commerce and Sales. A great example of how machine learning is improving classification and variant configuration in S/4HANA was shown. The end of the conference was marked by a CWG Forum. The customers and partners contributed a lot to accelerate the process of implementing the latest SAP standards.
The CWG conference has become an institution, not only because of the constantly growing number of participants but also due to the great atmosphere. Besides attending the very beneficial CWG Conference, the members had the opportunity to experience the culture of the German capital, establish new contacts, and expand their relations within the VC environment during the organized evening events.
Would you like to find out more about the CWG Conference and 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