CWG Conference May 2005 in Walldorf, Germany

By Marcus Behrens, Solutions Management, SAP AG

This May CWG meeting had 141/118 registrants/attendees of which 74 where customer employees, 44 were partners or independents and 23 from SAP.

The meeting motto was "Welcome to the New CWG" and was referring to the fact that the CWG wants to more aggressively grow and position itself. One measure to accomplish this is the focus on the needs of the majority of it's members who focus on standard scenarios based on R/3. The CWG is also incorporating as a "eingetragener Verein" in Germany to support its growth.

For the first time surveys were executed to get feedback from participants. Key points in the feedback where that participants would accept a fee of about 100 EUR per person to support the administration of the event and that they would not want/care for the CWG to be scheduled around DSAG or ASUG meetings.

Day 1 - Introduction Day

The meeting was extended to 3 days by adding an "introductory day". This allows customers to bring in colleagues new to this area or new customers/partners to get up to speed in regards of the terminology/concepts/acronyms. This first day was widely accepted and feedback was to keep it. The most positive feedback was collected for the sessions covering product modeling, the expert roundtable and the customization of the IPC UI.

Day 2 - General Session

Customers presenting on Day 2 and Day 3 were:

Wincor-Nixdorf AG - Internet Sales R/3 Edition + Internet Pricing and Configurator
Putzmeister AG - Mobile Sales + Internet Pricing and Configurator (IPC)
Rittal GmbH & Co. KG - Engineer-to-Order leveraging R/3 SD
Siegenia- AUBI KG - Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) + CRM
Lenze AG - PLM + graphical configuration
Hewlett-Packard Corporation - Pricing with the IPC as a central service
Kingspan Limited - Callcenter + IPC with a Dynpro UI
Adobe - Internet Sales and IPC performance
Siemens A&D - System & Solution configuration

The most positive feedback was provided to the presentation of the new CWG portal, the presentation of the new modeling environment in ERP and the CRM & ERP development update. All of the customer presentations got positive feedback.

Day 3 - Hands-on Day

The most positive Feedback was provided to the workshops on the new modeling environment in ERP, the product modeling focus group session and the workshop on the future of custom integrations.

Future of Custom Integrations
First session was crowded (~33 attendees) and there was a repeated session in the afternoon. Content was basically to explain why SAP does not recommend custom integration scenarios (aka standalone) and what the major changes of the 5.0 architecture mean for existing customers. As expected some customers were concerned and would like to understand alternatives for their projects from SAP or partners in the long run. Nevertheless, this early warning was received well.
Variant Configuration/Engineering Change Management Focus Group
About 30 people attended. With ERP 2004, the undo-functionality for engineering change management has been developed as a result of CWG feedback. With ERP 2005, it has been extended. SAP presented the extensions and showed a short demo of the new features. SAP presented the status of the top 5 CWG-requirements to the group. 2 CWG requirements regarding the PME VC are fulfilled already with ERP 2005. The group's expectations haven't been met in regards to the improvement of the variant configurator since according to SAP no new features will be implemented with the next upcoming release.
Advanced Modeling Focus Group
About 15 people attended. The advanced modeling focus group is dedicated to complex configuration topics, knowledge sharing among CWG members and influencing SAP to include additional features in the so-called IPC advanced mode. The session was mostly introductory, explaining the basic concepts of the advanced mode modeling and its advantages over classical variant configuration. Discussed the apparent lack of awareness of the advanced mode within SAP consulting and the new possibilities for further advanced mode use thanks to the official SAP scenario of using IPC in-lieu of the variant configuration in mySAP ERP 2005.
Interactive Configuration
About 30 people attended this session. A live demo of 3 out of 10 improvements in the test-systems of SAP for release 2005 was provided. Many detail questions to those improvements were raised. For the next round of Usability improvements SAP will invite the group into reviews when applicable. The topic of graphical configuration (2D, 3D Visualization) was discussed. Some partners presented Browser-based solutions. Markus Jaeckle will trigger definition of a common use case(s) around which some of the groups members can define further activities.
Product Configuration and Analytics
About 30 people attended this session. Many customers showed an interest in reporting and analytics for configurable products either on top of LIS or in BW. Customers differed in regards of their approach to it (revenues vs. profits, customer-oriented vs. product-oriented) and the level of adoption (only few users use it vs. this is critical when we define the next product offering). The 4 customers that have implemented this on their own will be approached by Marcus Behrens to better understand the use cases.
PME VC Hands-On Usability Session
7 customers attended the hands-on session. 4 Developers from India & Germany were invited to participate and facilitate this workshop. This provides them with first hand feedback from knowledgeable customers. A series of feedback items have been documented; some items will directly be considered with mySAP ERP 2005. About 15 CWG members attended the PME VC demo. As in the general assembly session the day before it was proven that even without knowing details on product modeling rather complex dependencies can be set-up with the PME VC. The overall feedback was very positive.
Joint Roadmap to Enterprise Services Architecture
This session had about 15 attendees. This was a follow up to the overview presentation from the general session on Wednesday. The outside/in approach to identify and specify services was introduced. SAP goal was to find CRM customers for validation workshops. It turned out that especially german customers are not ready to talk about ESA. Very interested and also looking like a good match for SAP to work with was Tennant in USA.
Product Structuring Alternatives
Siemens' Jan Peter Oeser presented their technical solution approach to map a complex system and solution configuration back into a CRM or R/3 Order. Siemens challenged SAP to provide more support for advanced mode IPC in the standard. SAP asked for more input in the form of business scenarios and gaps in those business scenarios and to work closer with the High-Tech and other IBU's to identify the key gaps. Only after this has happened a technical solution and it's funding model can be discussed. Otherwise SAP pointed out technical synergies with other developments and architecture changes.