Saphila 2001, SAP Africa`s annual user group conference, kicked off at Sun City yesterday morning with keynotes from international speakers on the future of e-business. A total of 1 200 delegates are expected to attend during the course of the event which includes technical workshops, breakout sessions and an exhibition of SAP-complementary solutions by a number of local and international vendors.
Prof Clause Heinrich, SAP business economist and executive board member of SAP AG, announced new versions of the company`s flagship enterprise resource planning software, as well as renewed commitment to e-business integration.
Heinrich emphasised that the new version, SAP Enterprise, should be seen as a component of the company`s mySAP.com e-business platform rather than a separate product. The company is banking on mySAP.com to give the performance, reliability, speed and integration capability that enables businesses to create real value for clients in the new, new economy, says Heinrich.
Guest speaker Jeffrey Mann, electronic business strategies analyst with the Meta Group, said the IT industry is moving away from the chaos of the dot-com crash and back to business. He predicts that the expected reductions in IT spend will lead to a more portfolio style of management with regards to enterprise IT projects.
"In the financial world you have assets which must be risk-managed - current accounts, cash and pensions. In the IT world more and more companies are classifying their IT investments in a similar way to manage cost savings."
Johan Smith, chairman of the local SAP User Group, said the new year would be an exciting one for the organisation.
"The user group will be taking a much more partnered approach to working with SAP. We are all in the same boat - working together with the company to get the business benefit. I think in the past the user group has been too independent. We want to get back to the feedback model where real users` needs are communicated back to SAP."
Heinrich says the role of the Internet is still key, despite the dot-com associations.
"The association of the Internet and the dot-coms is unfortunate. What the dot-com companies said was 'we have a better business model` and they ended up getting involved in the supply chain where it wasn`t necessary. In fact, the Internet as a driver for new ideas is going to be even more important than the dot-com wave. In my customer base there are no dot-coms, but they are all integrating the Internet into their business processes."
Nearly all of the delegates that ITWeb spoke to were optimistic about the future of their own businesses and SAP. Most listed their number one concern as business integration.
"There are just too many systems in our enterprise," said one. "If we could replace that with a single system from SAP then that would help."
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