A bold renovated booth and a dazzling display of SAP® S/4HANA know-how illuminated “digital core” opportunities at SAPPHIRE NOW 2016

Brilliant! A bold renovated booth and a dazzling display of SAP® S/4HANA know-how illuminated “digital core” opportunities at SAPPHIRE NOW 2016

As the largest SAP customer-run conference, SAPPHIRE NOW is a marquee event that is often described with hyperbole. But this year, the conference, which was held May 17-19 in Orlando, went above and beyond the hype to draw more than 17,000 attendees and to be often described as the biggest and best SAPPHIRE NOW ever. What was the big attraction? SAP S/4HANA was shown to be the star of the 2016 event, and Deloitte was brilliantly aligned with SAP’s “digital core” vision. In fact, our commitment to SAP S/4HANA outshined the competition in a number of ways:

• Deloitte received the 2016 SAP Pinnacle Award for SAP S/4HANA Adoption Partner of the year, which was presented to us at the conference. We also received the SAP Pinnacle Award for Workforce Partner of the Year, and both awards were displayed prominently in our booth. Pictured to the right with the two awards are: Beth Thiebault, Global HRT SAP/SuccessFactors Leader; Jan Waals, Global SAP Practice Leader; John Steele, SAP S/4HANA Co-Lead; and Jag Bandla, SAP S/4HANA Co-Lead.
• Deloitte was featured in an article about SAPPHIRE NOW and SAP S/4HANA in the CIO Journal. If you missed it, you can check it out here.
• Our practitioners conducted 29 conference sessions on an array of topics, with about half of those involving SAP S/4HANA.

In addition to these high-profile activities, we also built eminence through our hard-to-miss booth. Deloitte’s theme for SAPPHIRE NOW was all about “doing something new,” and for the first time in many years, we renovated our booth, giving it an updated look and a more digital feel with robust hanging LED signs. Drawn in by the signs and an extremely popular caricaturist, hundreds of attendees stopped by to experience one or more of our 70 interactive demos and 30 booth theater presentations as well as to participate in our Envision Wall. This interactive, ever-evolving feature asked conference delegates to name one new thing that their business wants or needs to do over the next year and a talented artist brought the concepts to life on the wall over three days. Common themes we heard from attendees were wanting to do something new with analytics, internal processes and growth among their businesses. Our new “Digital Boardroom,” was shown to be another big draw, where we dedicated our lower meeting space to demos on this popular topic.

Deloitte’s participation in this year’s SAPPHIRE was as sparkling and multifaceted as an emerald-cut diamond. But don’t worry if you missed it. You can catch some of the highlights and replays at: http://events.sap.com/sapandasug/en/sessions.aspx. The ASUG session proceedings can be found on www.asug.com.