The ASUG News Community Corner is designed to present insights from key influencers across the SAP ecosystem — including customers, partners, analysts, authors, and more. Check back often to hear the best and the brightest lend their advice and thoughts on the hottest SAP topics of the day.

Meet the Bloggers

Bob Pennington

Bob Pennington is currently a senior analyst and team lead at CITGO Petroleum, supporting its corporate and refinery SAP logistics systems. He has undergraduate and post-graduate degrees in engineering along with 25 years of progressive procurement, maintenance, operations and IT experience in the plastics, steel and oil & gas industries with the last 15 years involved in SAP implementations and support. He has been actively involved in the EAM Community since 2005 and is currently an ASUG Community Facilitator for the Enterprise Asset Management Community.

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Cathy Kenlin

Cathy Kenlin is currently Manager, Applications at Zausner Foods supporting SAP and a number of other applications. She has 20 years of IT experience, 14 of which involve SAP implementations and support. She has worked for a Fortune 500 company in the Building Products field and for a Fortune 100 company in the Consumer Products field. Her first SAP position was as the IT representative for a Strategic Sourcing and SAP Procurement implementation. She transitioned into Supply Chain Lead and later led several different SAP implementations. Cathy has managed SAP support teams encompassing both application support and development activities and also BASIS/Security support activities.

In her current role, Cathy enjoys being able to set strategy as well as being able to be hands-on in terms of leading project efforts, configuring SAP, debugging ABAP code and defining security roles. She just successfully led an SAP Business Warehouse and BusinessObjects implementation focusing on CO-PA data and is starting an Operations Reporting effort. She has been an ASUG volunteer since 1998 and is currently an ASUG Community Facilitator for the Supply Chain Management business process group.

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Pete Lagana

Senior Vice President of Digital Experience at Excellis Interactive, Pete Lagana has a twelve year history of advising organizations on their enterprise use of technology, driving business results through technology innovation, and producing revenue generation capabilities and cost containment through eSolutions such as eSOA, ePortal, and eCommerce.

Today Pete’s focus is driving the innovation, strategy, and design of next-generation, dynamic eService solutions at Excellis. As such, he helps clients realize revenue-generating opportunities while decreasing costs. Lagana has been a keynote speaker at numerous technology conferences, involved in the Philadelphia Chapter of Americas’ SAP Users’ Group (ASUG), and has served on the United Way charitable committee.

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David Fox

David Fox is Principal Consultant and Practice Manager of Claricent, Inc. Headquartered in Acton, Mass., Claricent, Inc. is an information management consulting organization focusing on strategic implementations of SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse (SAP NetWeaver BW), SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence (SAP BI), and SAP BusinessObjects Planning and Consolidation (SAP NW BPC). The company’s team of SAP technology experts and information management specialists provide architecture and design, implementation, staff augmentation, and BI remote support services for clients throughout North America. Claricent also partners with leading-edge hardware and software companies to develop innovative solutions to the unique BI challenges facing mid-market enterprises. Claricent delivers world-class solutions that move clients’ businesses forward.

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The Insider’s View: From the Editors of SAPinsider

Dig into the latest trends in the SAP ecosystem with the editors of SAPinsider . Published quarterly by WIS Publishing, SAPinsider provides readers with advanced notice of product and service initiatives from SAP and its partners. WIS Publishing also produces insiderPROFILES, SAP Professional Journal, the SAP Experts knowledgebases, and other educational offerings for SAP customers.

Read SAPinsider’s most recent blog

Jacqueline Vanacek

Jacqueline Vanacek is SAP Vice President, Cloud Computing Evangelist and US CLOUD2 Deputy Commissioner.
She brings 25 years of business, IT and operations experience in the software and hardware industries. She has been with SAP for 3.5 years, having also managed business development for SAP Value Prototyping’s application and cloud modeling services. As a Partner, she promoted SAP adaptive computing hardware solutions for Fujitsu; and as a customer, she implemented SAP in multiple business units and led the creation of a new business/IT governance model at Hewlett-Packard. Jacqueline has a special interest in how Cloud Computing can be a strategic technology enabler to accelerate mergers and acquisitions – and invites customers to share their cloud-based business successes “to get the word out!”
Contact Jacqueline at j.vanacek@sap.com and follow her at Twitter @JacquelnVanacek

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Ajay Vonkarey

Ajay Vonkarey is a successful entrepreneur and a Solution Manager Evangelist with more than 15 years of experience in IT & other industries within Fortune 500 companies. With his solid project management, technical and communication skills, he has effectively and successfully managed large-scale SAP projects. He successfully led Alpha Sirius to be the first Run SAP Certified Partner in North America. His skills include identifying project issues and approaches, time and cost dimensions for implementations, and solving problems subsequent to go-live. He has presented on various topics on successful deployment of ALM strategies and Solution Manager at various global events including SAPPHIRE, ASUG Annual Conference and SAP Insider conferences. He is in the process of co-authoring a book on ‘Effective Application Lifecycle Management with Run SAP and Solution Manager’. He is currently the Chapter Communications Chair of the ASUG New Jersey Chapter.

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Ray Wang

R “Ray” Wang currently is a Principal Analyst and CEO at Constellation Research Group. He previously was a founding partner and research analyst for enterprise strategy at Altimeter Group and an analyst at Forrester Research. He is the author of the popular enterprise software blog A Software Insider’s Point of View, which provides insight into how disruptive technologies and new business models impact the enterprise. His background in emerging business and technology trends, enterprise apps strategy, technology selection and contract negotiations provides both clients and readers with the bridge between business leadership and technology adoption. Follow Ray on Twitter at @rwang0.

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Yosh Eisbart

Yosh Eisbart is a principal and cofounder at NIMBL LLC, an industry-recognized SAP professional services firm focused on agile delivery and maximizing customer SAP investment by doing more with what clients’ already own. Headquartered in Denver, Colo., with offices in Los Angeles and Chicago, NIMBL serves both Fortune 500 organizations and midmarket companies across North America. Yosh began his SAP career over 17 years ago in the days of R/2, has lead SAP initiatives across the globe and believes strongly in actively contributing to the SAP ecosystem. Driving NIMBL’s strategic business initiatives, he proselytizes the importance of value and mutually beneficial partnership between customer and vendor. Email Yosh at yosh.eisbart@benimbl.com.

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Sherryanne Meyer

Sherryanne Meyer is the Manager of the IT HR Solutions and Delivery group at Air Products and Chemicals, Inc. She has been working with SAP since 1999 when Air Products began its global SAP deployment. Sherry has managed implementations of SAP HR in the Americas, Europe and Asia as well as projects deploying ESS, MSS and LSO functionality. An active volunteer leader in the ASUG Human Capital Management Community, Sherry currently serves as the Program Chair for the ASUG Talent Management Special Interest Group and as a member of ASUG’s Volunteer Leadership Council. Her blogs on ASUG.com are focused on networking and maximizing ASUG as a resource. Sherry is also an active contributor to the SAP Community Network where her writing is focused on usability and the human aspects of technology. Sherry’s interests are global in nature and broad in technical scope. Find ways to connect with Sherry at about.me/SherryanneMeyer.

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Gabriel Orthous

As Senior Development Manager for the Business Intelligence group at McKesson Revenue Management Solutions, Gabriel “Gabe” Orthous has more than 10 years of IT managerial/architectural experience. He has experience in object-oriented systems design, development, implementation, post-implementation support, and production procedures. He has extensive expertise around Business Intelligence, Accounts Receivables, and Decision Analytics based on large/complex prior consulting engagements with major companies in the U.S. and abroad. He’s an expert in all phases of the system development life cycle and agile development methodologies for SAP BusinessObjects technologies. Currently, he holds the position of Chair for the Dashboarding and Visualization Special Interest Group (SIG) for ASUG. Additionally, Gabe is a member of the ASUG Leadership Council, as well as co-chair for the SAP BusinessObjects Strategic SIG. Gabe has been inducted to the International Honor Society Beta Gamma Sigma in 2008. Follow Gabe on Twitter @orthous.

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Jarret Pazahanick

ASUG member Jarret Pazahanick serves as the Managing Partner at EIC Experts, a company that specializes in SAP Human Capital Management and the Employee Interaction Center. Over the past 13 years, Jarret has completed 20 high-profile, full life-cycle SAP HCM implementations for Fortune 1000 companies, many of them global in scope. He is a SAP Mentor, HCM-Certified Consultant, moderator, and gold level contributor on the SAP Community Network and HR Expert Author. Contact Jarret at jpazahanick@eicexperts.com or follow him on Twitter at @SAP_Jarret.

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Mico Yuk

ASUG member, Mico Yuk serves as the Director of Sales and Product Development at Benchmarkers Business Intelligence, a company that she recently launched to represent the consulting and services side of EverythingXcelsius.com (the “Xcelsius Gurus” network), a popular weblog she founded in 2008. A computer engineer by degree, she has been designing and implementing enterprise dashboards for major corporate clients since 2006 and is considered to be one of the top Xcelsius dashboard developers in the world. She has implemented executive dashboards for SAP BusinessObjects Global Services clients such as Allstate, Pfizer, Aviva Canada, McKesson, Ryder Logistics, the US Airforce, Medtronics, and Schering Plough. Yuk is also an SAP Mentor. To find out more about Yuk, please visit her profile on the Benchmarkers website.

Read Mico’s most recent post on SAP BusinessObjects 4.0