Grassroots

The German coal phase-out is a visionary thing. Rarely before has so much money been spent on "environmental protection. Many of the players are patting themselves on the back and congratulating each other for the innovative concept that is supposed to reconcile industry and environmental protection.

But already there is the first collateral damage because people were too busy with visions and buzzwords. The basic work was neglected. The simulation of a dynamic system never took place.

Because opencast lignite mining is being discontinued, there will also be no more coal briquettes in the future, which are very energy-efficient and have relatively little environmental impact. As part of the coal phase-out, the RWE Group is closing a briquette factory at the end of 2022 because the raw material is running out: "Cause is the stop of the Hambach open pit mine".says the energy company. The downstream industrial plants must immediately develop new energy concepts if there is a shortage of briquettes - or, like the briquette factory itself, close down. It is a complex story, which can be read online in the Handelsblatt at "Coal phase-out causes first collateral damage".

Short-term thinking, quick tweets and loosely presented visions can be found in politics and business at the moment. It seems that hardly anyone takes the trouble anymore to make serious, fact-based and reason-oriented decisions and strategies. On the one hand, SAP is letting the "Leonardo" innovation concept die, while on the other hand, people everywhere in the Group are talking about the "intelligent" enterprise.

In the context of a digital transformation, SAP is talking about new sales opportunities, better and more transparent customer relationships, optimal service and aftercare, but the surprised existing SAP customer no longer hears anything about the two-year-old customer relationship management concept C/4. Is Hybris, i.e., C/4, now dead alongside Leonardo?

Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook can be important tools, but without groundwork, every communication channel degenerates into "much ado about nothing. Buzzwords like the "intelligent enterprise" are counterproductive without groundwork. A few colorful PowerPoint pictures and one-year roadmaps are not proof of a hopefully existing ERP concept. SAP's maintenance extension of Suite 7 (including AnyDB?) and the promise of S/4 availability are important and right - but do not replace the necessary planning work.

Although the existing SAP customer knows that, if the worst comes to the worst, its Suite 7 with AnyDB, Abap and Java could function until 2030, it still has to do its basic planning work, submit its annual IT budgets to the management and secure its operational ERP operations. These are important, vital tasks that the Sapphire that took place did little to address.

C/4 has already been mentioned and is unfortunately not an isolated case. Anyone who has invested their own groundwork in the topic of "SAP Data Hub" will have to rethink: The concept consists mainly of buzzwords and white papers. Obviously, no simulation of this dynamic "data slinger" has ever been performed, because even the simplest calculations of a quantity structure would have shown that the concept does not work in practice. A dynamic information system generates a different computer load than a simple copy command. The desire to avoid duplicate data in the future was naturally ambitious and honorable.

"Back to the source" should also apply in IT and not only be used highly successfully by organic farmers. Back to the source and do the groundwork before sending out the next tweet, rehearsing the next Sapphire keynote or unleashing the next buzzword on SAP's existing customers.

It's not that SAP can't do this necessary groundwork. There are enough highly qualified SAP employees who also master and verify the simulation of dynamic systems before approaching SAP's existing customers with new ideas, concepts and products. In any case, basic work seems to be in high demand again soon.