Not Without My CCoE

The term CCC is well-known to more experienced members of the SAP community. In the days of R/3 and ECC, the Customer Competence Center served as a primary support, training, and consulting hub within the data centers of SAP customers. The CCC had two main functions: it relieved the burden on SAP support and, at the same time, provided SAP users with savings on SAP training. It was one of the few mutually beneficial arrangements within the community. The CCC continues to serve long-standing SAP users. What is the outlook for the future?

For many years, the DSAG (German-speaking SAP User Group) successfully hosted an annual CCC Forum, which provided a valuable opportunity for IT managers, CIOs, and SAP Basis employees to exchange ideas and gain new insights. A regular participant in the CCC Forum was Gerd Oswald, a former member of the SAP Executive Board. The forum was held in Salzburg for many years and later relocated to Würzburg.

The advent of cloud computing has had a transformative impact on the IT landscape and the SAP community. Some SAP partners and users believed that a CCC in the style of R/3 first-level support was no longer a necessary. There was a brief period of uncertainty within the community. In 2023, E3 magazine assumed responsibility for the event, renamed the CCC forum the SAP Competence Center Summit, and relocated the event to Salzburg. The SAP CC Summit has now been held on two occasions with great success. The upcoming Summit will take place again in Salzburg on May 21 and 22, 2025. upcoming Summit will take place again in Salzburg on May 21 and 22, 2025. Why?

Why does E3 Magazine hold this event? The emergence of hybrid, private, and public cloud computing has significantly impacted the way we view ERP architecture and infrastructure. Technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI) have been incorporated. SolMan and NetWeaver, which originated in the R/3 and ECC eras, required further development. The current focus on Cloud ALM (Application Lifecycle Management) is a direct result of SAP's recent acquisitions of Signavio, LeanIX, and WalkMe. SAP Basis is taking on new responsibilities in the areas of automated testing, monitoring, and Fiori. The number of tasks has increased, and the CCC has evolved into the CCoE (Customer Center of Expertise). The need for information and exchange of opinions has remained consistent, which is why the CCC forum exists in the form of the SAP Competence Center Summit in Salzburg.

The CCoE is currently a significant concern for all SAP customers, particularly those using RISE with SAP. The RISE discussion at the DSAG Annual Congress 2024 in Leipzig highlighted the critical need for a CCoE once the contract is in place. With RISE, customers are in a new situation with regard to SAP, as future cloud services will be accessed by users directly from the SAP platform. The user-to-SAP ticketing system requires an organizational and operational foundation, which will be a primary responsibility of the CCoE in the future.

In conclusion, it is imperative to have a CCoE in place before signing a RISE contract. This new development was first presented at the DSAG Annual Congress in Leipzig, where it was observed by the entire SAP community. In addition to key topics such as automation, cloud ALM, monitoring, Fiori, process mining, enterprise architecture, and AI, the effective management of cloud, RISE and GROW will be a significant focus in IT ERP management in the coming years. The Summit in Salzburg is the ideal platform to address these challenges.