A MeltOner’s Perspective on the 2019 USF Convention!

For the second consecutive year, MeltOne attended the USF trade show, which was held for its 29^th edition in Nantes on October 9 and 10. This was an opportunity to reiterate the challenges and objectives of this event, now essential for stakeholders in the SAP ecosystem.

The USF, the Association of French-speaking SAP users, now boasts over 3,000 members, three-quarters of whom come from CAC40 companies, representing a broad spectrum of more than 450 companies (6 out of 10 of which use SAP). This demonstrates the importance of the association’s network, which continues to grow over the years.

Looking more closely at the figures, the 2019 convention exceeded 1,500 unique participants over the two days of the exhibition, with 75 workshops held and 92 exhibitors present.

Over these two days, members and exhibitors were able to meet freely to share their experience, expertise, and expectations regarding SAP, as well as standard and niche solutions peripheral to SAP: migration to S4, data security/processing, Robotics, Invoice Digitization, GRC, EPM, Predictive… all areas covered by various players in an ultra-competitive market undergoing a complete renewal thanks to tomorrow’s technologies.

As usual, the exhibition is an opportunity to highlight a contemporary and technical issue that aims to showcase the ability of information systems to meet new functional and technological challenges.

This year, AI was in the spotlight with the theme: AI, a new driver for business transformation.

Artificial Intelligence is present in our daily lives (Facebook filters important content to display on our pages, Google Translate embeds an OCR that recognizes and translates text live, Amazon suggests purchases based on our consumption habits…) and is becoming more tangible within companies that are starting to take a strong interest in it, perceiving the beneficial effects on overall performance and productivity that the development of this technology can bring (RPA, automation of supplier reconciliation, advanced chatbots, on-the-fly dashboarding, etc.) at the level of business functions and processes within an organization for more or less complex or repetitive tasks.

SAP’s recent acquisitions, notably Qualtrics (Customer Experience Management, the famous ‘X-data’), Recast.AI (conversational interface creation platform), and Contextor (RPA tool), demonstrate SAP’s ever-increasing commitment to the field of artificial intelligence.

And how can we not mention SAP.iO Foundry, a true startup accelerator that relies on innovation and artificial intelligence to provide concrete answers to advanced business use cases driven by their SAP clients. We can cite Heuritech, which enables image recognition and relies on algorithms to predict fashion trends for the next 6 to 12 months, or Qopius, which automatically scans shelves to correct stockouts in stores.

Key takeaways

The various plenary sessions organized on the first day aimed to highlight the essential nature of artificial intelligence in an era where digitalization and machine learning are seen as the disruptive pillars of a new digital economy. The presence of a former RAID officer to explain how AI could greatly assist in decision-making during hostage negotiations is an example. The machine could be better able to distinguish emotions on a human face (even imperceptible) to detect exploitable and contextualized elements for decision-making, which is obviously critical in such situations.

Another similar example was the presence of Julia de Funes, a management philosopher, who pitched on the conformism of current corporate management, which she described as too procedural, too traditional, and ultimately uncreative. In this context, AI could support the process by allowing for a broader perspective, deeper reflection, and pushing thinking to a larger scale.

Artificial Intelligence was not the only topic at the exhibition, as a large part of the workshops organized by SAP, particularly on the second day, revolved around the migration to S/4 and the SAP roadmap. To this end, Gérald Karsenti, CEO of SAP France, reiterated the deadline of 2025 as the end-of-maintenance date for the traditional SAP ECC6.

After this date, SAP will no longer provide any maintenance. This announcement raised some questions from customers who may sometimes find it complex to justify an ROI for changing their current base. The solution may lie in an educational approach to this system change and the benefits that can be expected from a common and unified base under a single S/4HANA system (strategic alignment, easier access to data, little to no replication, shortened processing times, accelerated closings, etc.). It can also be noted that migrations using a Brownfield approach, without a new implementation and without disrupting existing business processes, can also be a solution with migration tools that are now mature. SAP offers several migration scenarios for customers who wish to upgrade their base to S/4HANA and retain existing functionalities.

MeltOne on cloud nine…

This year, MeltOne took to the stage to share feedback with its client Veepee, whom we warmly thank for their participation, formerly known as vente-privee.com.

The REX (Return on Experience) focused on the implementation of a Core Model Finance SAP system on an S/4HANA Public Cloud base, also known as MTE (Multi-Tenants). This was an opportunity to demonstrate our expertise and provide detailed feedback on one of the first French projects to run under this configuration, which is now live across several entities of the group.

It was also an opportunity to answer the many questions from those, ever-increasing in number, who are interested in this deployment mode, which shortens project times and implementation costs for an SAP solution by favoring an agile approach and standardization of operational processes (with varying degrees of customization freedom) according to the Fit to standard methodology.

This Public Cloud solution notably allowed us to address the multiple challenges of our client, who wanted to build an evolutionary solution that easily integrates into an existing application landscape while harmonizing Finance business processes and providing broad operational coverage, particularly to improve the group’s closing times.

Please do not hesitate to contact us if you need information on this subject or if you would like us to answer any questions you may have about transitioning to an S/4HANA solution, whether on-premise or in the cloud.

Thank you to the USF and the city of Nantes for hosting us, and see you next year in Bordeaux to celebrate the exhibition’s 30th anniversary!

Find all MeltOne offers on our website: https://staging.meltone.com

• Smart ERP: SAP S/4 HANA, Simple Finance/Logistics, Central Finance
• Performance Management: SAC Planning, SAP FC, SAP BPC, Anaplan, Tagetik
• Data & Analytics: SAC, Tableau, Power BI, Looker
• RPA & Predictive: Contextor, UiPath & SAP Predictive Analytics
• Project Management: Scoping Mission, Consulting and Project Management, AMOA Support Mission

Would you like to learn more and assess your maturity level for a switch to S4? MeltOne can help you, do not hesitate to contact us via jsaccona@meltone.com