Meeting November 2004 in Philadelphia, USA

By Michael Zarges, Solutions Management, SAP AG

November 10th – General Assembly

We had about 60 attendees at the general assembly. 39 customer employees (representing 22 companies), 10 partner and 10 SAP employees attended the presentations on that day. Customer participation was about the same as last year. First time present were e.g. Nike and IBM Hosting.

4 Customers presented their projects covering a wide range of topics and industries: Nike (AFS at Cole Haanand IPC for custom golf clubs within Portal), Yorktowne Cabinets (IPC in custom webshop), Putzmeister (Mobile Sales with IPC for cement pumps) and Tennant (VC remodeling effort).

Focus Topic of the SAP presentations next to the Development Updates and outlook to the next release was ERP (PME VC in ERP and ERP Overview). Possibility to use IPC integrated in ERP 2005 was announced.

Don Cochran presented the latest overview of the configurator market, and Henk Meeter presented the CWG Review as the quarterly magazine for the CWG community.

A vivid Panel Discussion at the end of the day to address the "next decade" for the CWG brought to light that the majority of customers appreciate and are interested in networking and knowledge sharing (best practices) with each other and with SAP. The CWG Leadership is now pondering how to a) evolve the organization further to be able to increase the size of the event and the CWG significantly and b) support more learning and knowledge-sharing between CWG members.

Transition of official SAP contact for the CWG was moved from Manfred Muench to Marcus Behrens and Michael Zarges. Manfred was recognized for multiple years of tireless efforts as the CWG Secretary. In the past three years, CWG tripled its size to more than 400 members now.

In the evening, we had a common dinner which was generously paid by the CWG sponsors.

November 11th – Workshops and Focus Group Meetings

Workshop "Meet the Expert Mobile Sales":
Well attended. No further information available.
Workshop "Future of Custom IPC Integrations":
Very well attended, all of the customers with custom integrations and other interested parties showed up. Michael presented the current situation with significant risk in regards of know-how and support for custom integrations and the future risks - in particular upgrade risks. SAP strongly recommends going for a SAP standard scenario. Customer reacted carefully and had a lot of questions on the details of planned architectural changes.
Workshops "Hands-On PME VC" & "Product Modeling in ERP 2005":
Well attended, the overall feedback on the PME VC is positive. Some minor usability issues are still hampering the flow of work (e.g. in the dependency editor). Many improvements have been suggested. The list of planned development items for ERP 2005 was shown and basically accepted as a next step. There also seemed to be comprehension of some deferred items. The planned Table Dependency Wizard was discussed in detail and there was a lot of feedback for it.
Focus Group "Advanced Mode Modeling":
Well attended. No further information available.
Focus Group "(Advanced Mode) Integration":
Only few attendees. Leader Steve Yip is considering shifting the focus of the group to smaller, more tactical issues that might be addressed by ESA long-term.
Focus Group "Interactive Configuration":
Well attended. 3 new customers were introduced to the work of the group showing UI improvements that have been developed for CRM 2005. In the afternoon 2 customers (have NDA) reviewed Wave 3 specification for pricing & configuration overview in JSP, ISA and MSA.
Focus Group "VC (and ECM)":
Very well attended (packed). Through the session and in extended sessions 40 requirements were prioritized down to 5 key requirements. Criteria were: Useful for most customers - Easy to implement for SAP. These requirements will now be discussed with SAP development in detail.
Focus Group "Pricing":
Moderate interest. Charter of group is unclear. Leadership is unclear. Proposal was to focus on pricing issues related to configuration. 4 requirements related to pricing maintenance in configuration context were discussed in more detail.

Note: Acronyms used above (assuming that SAP, CRM, IPC and VC are known):

ESA – Enterprise Service Architecture
ISA – Internet Sales
MSA – Mobile Sales
ERP – Enterprise Resource Planning
AFS – Apparel Footwear Solution
JSP – Java Server Pages
PME VC – Product Modeling Environment for Variant Configuration
NDA – Non-Disclosure Agreement
ECM – Engineering Change Management