Even more successful future

SAP celebrates its 50th anniversary and the SAP community pauses for a moment to ask: What is success, where does it come from? In addition to all the technical achievements, powerful innovations and business inventions, one of SAP's guarantees of success has always been the relationship management between SAP and the customers as well as the holistic problem solving. It is exactly in this tradition that GIB was founded and will continue to develop as part of the ifm group of companies. I was able to observe a part of this successful path.

GIB was founded in 1992 and currently has around 120 employees at its Siegen site and 900 customers worldwide. About 1000 SAP systems are supported. GIB has had a partnership with SAP for 21 years and has continued to develop sustainably - whereby the term sustainability is chosen very deliberately here.

Sustainability as a principle of action means that from a successful creation something new is created in turn. The term comes from forestry, where obviously prudent management of the forest not only yields but also allows new trees to grow. The principle of careful use of resources can be applied to many areas. Sustainability also wants to give future generations a chance and is thus the opposite of overexploitation.

GIB dealt with the topic of procurement, which is not only a complex challenge, but also carries the idea of achieving a maximum yield while saving resources. A careful handling of the means of production causes a sustainability in the structure and operational organization.

GIB became an important player in the SAP community and many existing SAP customers gained a new perspective on procurement through contact with GIB. To a certain extent, the Siegen-based company thus pursued an educational mission. Annual events at the company headquarters are not only an SAP community meeting place, but also a learning opportunity. Those responsible at GIB have always shared their experience and knowledge with customers, because shared knowledge has precisely the sustainability effect described.

Officially, this successful development reads as follows in a company presentation: "The software solutions of GIB extend the SAP standard by important planning functions and methods. Two central effects of using the solutions can be seen clearly and permanently in the reduction of unnecessary inventories and the increased readiness to deliver. This gives GIB customers the decisive edge in their competitiveness and profitability." Because procurement within the framework of an ERP system is only one aspect, GIB continued to develop into an SCM provider. Currently, GIB has a world-leading Supply Chain Excellence program, providing SAP users with sustainable end-to-end processes.

Supply chain excellence is no small task, as it is ultimately about finding a successful process in a cybernetic system. The agility of logistics chains and supply chains is explained in detail on page 46 of this cover story. In any case, GIB took on the challenge of supply chain cybernetics. This move from a procurement solution to a holistically conceived supply chain was important because SAP's existing customers increasingly need more of this helmsmanship. The term cybernetics comes from ancient Greek and refers to the helmsman who steers his ship safely and successfully through the Aegean Sea. Hence the universal translation for cybernetics as the helmsman's art, which GIB now offers to the SAP community with its software tools.

What comes after supply chain excellence? The supply chain is also only one part of a larger whole that can be described with IoT, Industry 4.0 and ERP. The challenges of the coming years will not only be resilient supply chains and production sites, but a holistic and effective mastery of one's own structural and process organization - from the CNC machine to financial accounting, or as GIB's parent company, the global company ifm, puts it more precisely: "ifm is strategically focusing on holistic digitalization and will thus evolve from a sensor manufacturer to a solution provider."

The company ifm was founded in 1969 in Essen, Germany, and currently employs about 8100 people worldwide who have served more than 160,000 customers. Since the company was founded, ifm has developed, produced and sold sensors, controllers, software and systems for industrial automation worldwide. This has resulted in over 1000 patents in the past years. As one of the pioneers in the field of Industry 4.0, ifm develops and implements holistic solutions for the digitalization of the entire value chain "from the sensor to the ERP".

It is a logical step for GIB and ifm to merge. ifm will bring the knowledge and experience of GIB to the world and both companies will complement each other in their expertise.