Last week the 15th International SAP Conference for Utilities took place in Milan. It was a pleasure for me to kick off the conference in front of the 1100 attendees representing 307 companies from 60 countries making it one of the largest industry-focused SAP conferences in 2019.
I would like to thank to all your customers and partners that have attended. I would like in particular to thank Enel for beeing our host utility to the event and to Mr. Fabio Veronese for beeing our distinguished keynote speaker.
The event was held jointly together with the SAP Conference for Oil & Gas.
Despite the limitations I had with my physical condition, it was overwhelming to meet again so many friends with whom I have worked over many years, this time as host for this conference.
This year’s theme was all about the intelligent enterprise to seize the opportunities in the digital economy; understanding how SAP S/4HANA can help unlock the potential of an enterprise, exploring opportunities with cloud solutions and hearing more about other topics like Customer Experience, Intelligent Asset Mangement or Artificial Intelligence.
Peter Maier opened the keynotes by giving an overview of the current status of the energy industry where he announced the SAP intelligent enterprise app which will be launched at SAPPHIRE.
For the first time, you can watch the keynotes from Peter Maier, Peter Molengraf, Enel and myself via this live stream.
In my keynote I have decided to elaborate on key capabilities of the Intelligent Enterprise and on how these are supported by the latest SAP Solutions.
I have opened my keynote highlighting why Milan is such a unique location for the utilities industry.
In Milan the first power plant ever built in continental europe was put in operation, near Scala Theater, to power the illumination of that historical building and opera theater.
On the topic of Intelligent Enterprise, I decided to elaborate on what this means for utilities, aligned with fundamental Intelligent Enterprise capabilities that we need to nurture. These are very simple ones where we should keep our focus on:
If you want to know more, do not miss to watch my entire keynote via this link.
I had the previledge to give way to our host utility keynote by Fabio Veronese. We all had the pleasure to get a unique insight on the journey that Enel has done for S/4 HANA Utilities, this journey included taking important decisions and important risks that in the end brought the business benefits Enel was seeking: more flexibility with Hana Enterprise Cloud and unique business performance with the impressive acceleration of the billing cycle, leveraging the scale out architecture delivered on SAP S/4 HANA Utilities.
I would also like to highlight the impressive keynotes that I had the occasion to attend.
Peter Molengraf, Industry Executive and former Alliander CEO, spoke in detail about energy transition, about the unique challenges these bring to utilities and in particular about the emerging business models associated with the roll-out of distributed energy resources and related coordination activities that can be monetized in the near future.
Albert Cheung, provided a unique compilation of facts and projections about energy transition that he has summarized in five global trends alongside maturity of EVs and batteries, clean power systems, commodity markets in energy transition, digitalization and social & political changes.
Arno Hagmans, elaborated in detail about the SAP S/4 HANA Innogy project. In this presentation we could understand the lessons learned about a very successful S/4 implementation project accross the entire Innogy group with a strict guidance for adoption of standard best practices in particular from the SAP Model Company.
As every year we invited our attendees to the exhibition were we offered over 75 microforum sessions and live demos on Customer Experience, Intelligent Asset Management, SAP S/4HANA, Intelligent Enterprise for Utilities, SAP Leonardo and more.
(Picture: Stefan Engelhardt delivering a microforum on SAP Cloud for Utilities)
But not just SAP presented microforum sessions, also our 31 partners and sponsor presented their solution portfolio in the vibrant exhibition hall.
Amongst those, I would like to highlight the presence for the first time ever of ESMIG, an European Industry Association, where I am chairing a working group. ESMIG members came over to our SAP conference showing an end to end interoperability demo, envolving many technologies, vendors and solutions. A demo integrating from the individual smart meters to SAP business solutions
We have closed our event with a Closing Keynote "Technology in the Intelligent Enterprise" by Kevin O’ Donovan, Technology Evangelist, that concluded an extraordinary 3 days of workshops, meetings, interviews with many, many unforgettable exchanges.
This event exceeded my expectations in partcular because the number of attendees but mainly because of the very high quality of all presentations and speakers.
We closed the conference in fashion and style. Milan style.
I want to thank you all for attendance.
See you next year!
I would like to thank to all your customers and partners that have attended. I would like in particular to thank Enel for beeing our host utility to the event and to Mr. Fabio Veronese for beeing our distinguished keynote speaker.
The event was held jointly together with the SAP Conference for Oil & Gas.
Despite the limitations I had with my physical condition, it was overwhelming to meet again so many friends with whom I have worked over many years, this time as host for this conference.
This year’s theme was all about the intelligent enterprise to seize the opportunities in the digital economy; understanding how SAP S/4HANA can help unlock the potential of an enterprise, exploring opportunities with cloud solutions and hearing more about other topics like Customer Experience, Intelligent Asset Mangement or Artificial Intelligence.
Peter Maier opened the keynotes by giving an overview of the current status of the energy industry where he announced the SAP intelligent enterprise app which will be launched at SAPPHIRE.
 |  |
| Ian McVey, Qualtrics | Peter Maier, General Manager SAP Industries |
For the first time, you can watch the keynotes from Peter Maier, Peter Molengraf, Enel and myself via this live stream.
In my keynote I have decided to elaborate on key capabilities of the Intelligent Enterprise and on how these are supported by the latest SAP Solutions.
I have opened my keynote highlighting why Milan is such a unique location for the utilities industry.
In Milan the first power plant ever built in continental europe was put in operation, near Scala Theater, to power the illumination of that historical building and opera theater.
On the topic of Intelligent Enterprise, I decided to elaborate on what this means for utilities, aligned with fundamental Intelligent Enterprise capabilities that we need to nurture. These are very simple ones where we should keep our focus on:
- Do: automate and assist business process execution
- See: end to end visibility of the business, retrospectivelly, real time and predictive
- Change: adapt to new circumtances by developing variants for business
- Collaborate: business process execution in a collaborative mode, in particular with other enterprises
- Sense ( manage experience): capture and measure the experience provided to main stakeholders.
If you want to know more, do not miss to watch my entire keynote via this link.
I had the previledge to give way to our host utility keynote by Fabio Veronese. We all had the pleasure to get a unique insight on the journey that Enel has done for S/4 HANA Utilities, this journey included taking important decisions and important risks that in the end brought the business benefits Enel was seeking: more flexibility with Hana Enterprise Cloud and unique business performance with the impressive acceleration of the billing cycle, leveraging the scale out architecture delivered on SAP S/4 HANA Utilities.
I would also like to highlight the impressive keynotes that I had the occasion to attend.
Peter Molengraf, Industry Executive and former Alliander CEO, spoke in detail about energy transition, about the unique challenges these bring to utilities and in particular about the emerging business models associated with the roll-out of distributed energy resources and related coordination activities that can be monetized in the near future.
Albert Cheung, provided a unique compilation of facts and projections about energy transition that he has summarized in five global trends alongside maturity of EVs and batteries, clean power systems, commodity markets in energy transition, digitalization and social & political changes.
Arno Hagmans, elaborated in detail about the SAP S/4 HANA Innogy project. In this presentation we could understand the lessons learned about a very successful S/4 implementation project accross the entire Innogy group with a strict guidance for adoption of standard best practices in particular from the SAP Model Company.
 |  |  |
| Peter Molengraaf, Industry Executive | Albert Cheung, Bloomberg | Arno Hagmans, innogy |
As every year we invited our attendees to the exhibition were we offered over 75 microforum sessions and live demos on Customer Experience, Intelligent Asset Management, SAP S/4HANA, Intelligent Enterprise for Utilities, SAP Leonardo and more.
(Picture: Stefan Engelhardt delivering a microforum on SAP Cloud for Utilities)
But not just SAP presented microforum sessions, also our 31 partners and sponsor presented their solution portfolio in the vibrant exhibition hall.
Amongst those, I would like to highlight the presence for the first time ever of ESMIG, an European Industry Association, where I am chairing a working group. ESMIG members came over to our SAP conference showing an end to end interoperability demo, envolving many technologies, vendors and solutions. A demo integrating from the individual smart meters to SAP business solutions
We have closed our event with a Closing Keynote "Technology in the Intelligent Enterprise" by Kevin O’ Donovan, Technology Evangelist, that concluded an extraordinary 3 days of workshops, meetings, interviews with many, many unforgettable exchanges.
This event exceeded my expectations in partcular because the number of attendees but mainly because of the very high quality of all presentations and speakers.
We closed the conference in fashion and style. Milan style.
I want to thank you all for attendance.
See you next year!
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