SAUG Summit 2009 - Session Overviews

Grahame is a trained Electrical Engineer and has a Masters Degree in Engineering Management. With 20 years experience in manufacturing across the food and petrochemical industries, he is currently working for Qenos Pty Ltd as a SAP Analyst and Project Manager.

In November 2008, Grahame has been appointed Chairman of the SAP Australian User Group after one year in the role of Treasurer. He initially started with the SAUG over 4 years ago in the role of Upgrades SIG Lead and then as the Supply Chain SIG Lead. He has been a committee member for four years and prior to that he was the coordinator for all SIG activity.

Ross has been an analyst, consultant, writer and presenter of business intelligence in Asia for nearly twenty years (half that time in Hong Kong), with expertise in high technology and professional services sectors.

For four years, Ross was a partner and Managing Director of a B2B market research consultancy, Intercedent Hong Kong, where he served as Practice Director for the Information & Communications Technology industries. He served as primary consultant and project manager on all client work related to information technology, telecommunications, and digital media service and equipment market, and remains a director in the firm.

Prior to Intercedent, Ross worked extensively with Pyramid Research (once an EIU subsidiary), managing their Asia research practice and serving as primary analyst on Asia’s markets for Pyramid’s clients, the world’s largest multinational infrastructure vendors and service providers. Ross developed the ‘Information Economy’ advisory service for Singapore’s Strategic Intelligence.

Dennis Lewis has been the CIO at 7-Eleven for 3 years. He has previously worked for API, Just Group, Brashs and Myer in senior IT positions. 7-Eleven uses SAP products extensively to support its core business processes.

Phillip Merrick has worked for SAP for about 12 years and many years before that in the technology and architecture space. Working across many different industries, he has enjoyed the diverse opportunities in applying technology to address business challenges. Calling upon this broad background in technical and business computing, Phillip is fuelled by a passion for understanding and solving problems and the not so occasional chocolate.

Chaya Buhari is currently managing IT at Konica Minolta. Her responsibilities include managing applications and infrastructure covering a large foot print of SAP systems. She has been with Konica Minolta for 2 years. Her past experience at companies like Luxottica Retail and Optus has provided her with over 15 years of experience dealing with SAP systems. She was the BI & Portals manager at Luxottica Retail, the largest Optical Retailer in the southern hemisphere responsible for rolling out SAP portal technology across Asia Pacific. Chaya will join us to tell us about the recent upgrade to CRM 2007 and the challenges and opportunities it brought with it.

Scott has been a CRM Solution Architect for SAP Australia for the past five years. Scott spent the previous eight years as a consultant implementing SAP solutions in Australia, New Zealand, Europe and North America. Much of this time was focused on the customer service and call centre operations for utility companies.

Patrick has been involved in the business of leadership and solution delivery for 20 years. With a strong background in the ICT professional services industry, Patrick is part of a significant whole of company transformation program within QR. His objective is to transform the IT division into a service orientated enabler for the business. Patrick brings a broad range of solution delivery experience from mining, utilities, power, health, aviation, gaming, retail and infrastructure. His approach is action biased and customer centric.