Saphila 2012, the African SAP User Group's (AFSUG's) biannual user group event, kicked off in Sun City today.
The event runs until Wednesday and will see more than 1 500 delegates, 171 sessions and 134 speakers. According to SAP South Africa CEO Pfungwa Serima, more than 20 countries are represented at the event this year.
"We also have speakers from India, Germany, the UK and the US," he said during a welcome address at the SuperBowl. "Partners have become an integral part of what we do and we have doubled the number of partners that we had last time. For the first time, we also have a track for the French-speaking countries because they account for a large part of the countries in Africa."
Serima also said that contrary to popular perception, Africa was a massive opportunity for those companies willing to put in the work.
"You will never understand Africa if you just read the news. You need to visit it if you are to truly understanding the potential here. We need to move quickly: Africa is growing at 58% year-on-year for SAP."
Cuan Kloppers, executive chairman of the board of directors for AFSUG, said SAP users can look forward to more evolutionary improvements in SAP's offerings across the board.
"SAP has recognised that wide-scale upgrades are disruptive and costly," he said. "We can't have two- and three-year projects any more. So there have been evolutionary improvements in cloud, analytics and in-memory computing."
Tidal wave
Bridgette Chambers, CEO of the American SAP Users Group, said that as IT users, the delegates were at the coal face of a "tidal wave" of change coming to business.
"Global companies are relying on more and more analytics and good data to drive business. In this tidal wave of change that's going on, IT is the first to see it happening. The world's data is doubling every two years. More than one-quarter of the world's phones are smartphones.
"The worldwide smartphone user base crossed the one billion mark in Q3 of 2012. This trend isn't going to slow down anytime soon. The number of mobile devices will soon exceed the number of people on earth. So it's clear the moment is now to think about mobile."
Chambers said mobile has moved to the core of everything we do. "It's no longer just a connector but an enabler. The impact on business is immediate."
She said companies also needed to think about how social media would impact their businesses.
"One in three small businesses are using social media to connect with customers. More than 2.5 million corporate Web sites have integrated with Facebook, 75% of companies are using Twitter as a marketing channel, and one out of every two CEOs say social media is a high priority.
"77% of buyers are more likely to buy from a company who uses social media. 94% said that C-suite social media participation makes customers like a company more. Internally, 82% of employees trust their company more when the leadership uses social media to communicate. You're going to have to do a lot more than you're doing today. And it makes you think a lot more about your technology choices."
Delegates will also get a chance to see how SAP's in-memory HANA technology works, said Derek Kudsee, COO of SAP Africa.
"This conference offers attendees the exceptional opportunity not only to network and exchange ideas with experts from multiple fields and thought-leaders, but the possibility of getting trained, and learning first-hand about how SAP's HANA in-memory computing will revolutionise the way business is conducted."
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