Last week, InsideSAP attended the inaugural e’ffect event at Sydney’s Carriageworks. The Innovation Experience was more than just a conference or a summit, immersed in the latest proven technology.
E’ffect provided attendees with the opportunity to see, hear and experience how the best in the world embrace innovation with a line-up of phenomenal speakers handpicked to challenge conventional thinking and spark imagination. From our customers disrupting their industries and transforming themselves (Mercury NZ, Xinja, Queensland Office of State Revenue, Taronga Zoo, MyWave), to a theoretical physicist looking to be among the first to live on Mars and a technology futurist and biomedical engineer.
During the event breaks attendees immersed themselves in experiences where technology operates in real world examples, engaged with our innovators and took away tangible insights on how to drive innovation experiences in their organisation.
SAP’s Head of Marketing ANZ, Rushenka Perera, told InsideSAP:
“SAP has an almost 50-year history in enterprise software. Most people know us for underpinning critical infrastructure and business processes for corporates and governments – in fact some of the world’s largest and most notable organisations run SAP.
But what many people don’t know about SAP is that we also power disruptors, we also are the backbone of the start-up looking to shake up the status quo but scale quickly, and we power innovation within enterprises who want to transform industries. This is the SAP that we want more people to know about, and was the inspiration for e’ffect.
Many technology conferences continue to focus on vendor product and solutions discussions – we saw a gap in the market to design an event that tells the story of the SAP that people don’t know. An innovation experience that would allow attendees to see technology practically applied and to have customers, and business and thought leaders, tell their stories about how they are seeing an innovation effect.”
Guests were treated to amazing speakers such as Xinja’s Eric Wilson and SAP’s own ANZ President and Managing Director, Damien Bueno. The entire venue was filled with showcases of groundbreaking innovative technology and systems, from a planetary transfer calculator to an intelligent distillation system utilizing IoT sensors.
e’ffect Experience Zone
The most unique aspect of the event was the Experience Zone. SAP Innovation Manager Adam Sivell shared this with us:
“At e’ffect, we wanted attendees to experience, understand and appreciate SAP’s why – our purpose. In the Experience Zone, we built different ‘worlds’ that examined three key themes: the environment; our relationships to society; and business innovation.
The society showcase in particular aimed to demonstrate how SAP technology shapes human experiences. Covering smart cities, sustainability, intelligent technologies like machine learning, blockchain and AI, the Experience Zone demonstrated how a data-driven world positively impacts people’s lives. From the feedback on the day, I know a lot of attendees were surprised by the breadth of SAP innovation.”
Each “World” within the Experience Zone showcased how intelligent technology will become integral to an aspect of future life:
- Society World took us from early childhood and education, to securing our first job and home, through to aged care.
- Environment World looked at how technology can support a sustainable future from all aspects of the product lifestyle, supporting a more regenerative process.
- Business World led us on a journey in starting a coffee business to learning how to delight empowered customers, engage a mobile workforce, or being a sustainable and innovative creator.
- Interactive Sports Zone had guests battle over a FusBall table and visualize IoT data to score more goals, or trying out a VR-replica catamaran.
- Innovation Factory was a staple of SAP Innovation events, giving us the chance to experience Design Thinking in action, while looking under the hood and getting hands-on with intelligent technologies.
- Expert Bar, an excellent SAP concept, enabled guests to approach SAP experts directly, to discuss how to best leverage intelligent technologies and drive innovation in business.
Perera hopes that guests left feeling empowered by the experience and gained a greater awareness of SAP’s purpose. She told InsideSAP:
At SAP we have the most intelligent software on the market. We also have a strong purpose – to help the world run better and improve people’s lives. Our job is to deliver the technology and innovation to help our customers and partners realise their ideas to: transform an industry, reduce environmental impact or impact a society.
We hope that people left the event inspired by what they saw, with more awareness of SAP’s purpose and that SAP is an innovation partner focused on customer outcomes.
The feedback from customers, partners and employees has been overwhelmingly positive. We’ve had a number proactively send us emails outlining that they now perceive SAP as an innovative technology provider. And the verbal feedback from customers on the day was similar. A lot of them said ‘I never knew SAP did that’, which was exactly what we wanted to achieve.
Based on the overwhelmingly positive feedback, SAP ANZ will run e’ffect 2020. A number of customers and partners have already said that they want to know when the next event is planned so they can diarise and attend.
For other SAP events coming up, please go to https://www.sap.com/australia
