Delegate registrations open for Saphila 2012

Johannesburg, — Delegate registrations for the Saphila 2012 conference have officially opened. This prestigious biennial conference is scheduled to take place at Sun City, from 28 – 31 October 2012.

Saphila (loosely translated as ‘plenty of life’ in Zulu) is hosted by the African SAP User Group (AFSUG) and supported by SAP Africa. Previously attended by over 1 300 delegates in 2010, this year’s conference is expecting upwards of 1 600 participants, and is designed to allow SAP’s solutions experts, their partners and customers to come together and share best practice in implementing SAP technologies.

“I am delighted to announce that registration for Saphila 2012 is now open,” says Cuan Kloppers, AFSUG Chairman. “We are acutely aware that the SAP community throughout Africa is continuously faced with the challenge to improve their business profitability, drive greater efficiencies and improve innovation as their organisations strive to take their people, business processes and systems to the next level.”

Kloppers adds: “Not only will Saphila 2012 be about customers optimising and harvesting value from their SAP software investments, but also about ‘thought leadership’ for executives to position themselves on a strategic level, and how SAP and partner solutions can be agile in the fast-growing technological environment. This will be achieved through our three core pillars: educate – influence – network.”

Touching on the conference theme: “The Moment Is Now”, Pfungwa Serima, CEO of SAP Africa, emphasises the importance of developing the African economy through sharing of best practices and skills transfer.

“The Saphila conference is of utmost strategic importance to SAP in expanding into greater Africa. South Africa’s technology implementation is reaching a level of maturity similar to Europe, but the challenge remains in how we bring this maturity and knowledge into the markets north of South Africa,” he explains. “AFSUG has made good progress in increasing their presence in key African markets, having already set up a new user group in Kenya, and they are in the process of setting up user group chapters in other countries on the continent. We regard Saphila as a catalyst to facilitate future growth in these markets.”

Bringing together insights from premier business technology conferences all in one place, Saphila 2012 continues to gain support from some of the IT industry’s leading and most influential organisations. Deloitte and SAP Africa have cemented their relationship with Saphila as the conference’s headline sponsors, with Accenture and T-Systems proudly committing themselves as “Platinum” sponsors.

“As the largest SAP user group conference in Africa, we have seen rapid take-up on delegate registrations in previous years. There are limited places available for delegates and partners, so early registration is necessary to avoid disappointment,” concludes Kloppers.

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