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​SAP has changed a lot over the years. Most of us know R2, R3, ECC5, ECC6 and the current S4 HANA.

But we have also seen the bolt-ons, the add-ons and some strange things like the time BW became BI 7, then it went back to BW 7.5. Or when Business Object was BobJ then it was BI and we all said “huh?” This made us interested in all the changes over the years and so we asked two of our mates in the SAP community for their thoughts. Let’s see what they had to say.

David Crisp (Project Manager, Saputo)

David has been working in the SAP world for 20+ years as a Functional Logistics Consultant, Solution Architect and Project Manager.

What’s the biggest change you have seen in SAP technology since you started your career?

There have been several major shifts in technology since I first became involved in SAP in the late 80’s. The move from SAP R/2 (mainframe) to SAP R/3 was probably the most significant due to the change in hardware, application and user interface. The biggest change however probably is more recent with the move to S/4HANA combined with the many Cloud offerings as it changes the way all enterprises (large and small) operate inside and outside their businesses.

Looking into your crystal ball, what do you foresee as the next big change to SAP in your field of expertise?

I have predominantly worked across most functions within the end to end Supply Chain and I don’t see any big step change in these areas from a SAP perspective. What I do foresee though is a number of smaller step changes now that core SAP will remain intact over the coming decade. I believe we will see solutions that provide more seamless integration and can be delivered in an agile way, over shorter timeframes.

Is there anything about SAP that you’ve always wanted to change and would if you had the power to?

I would like to see SAP improve the way they take their new offerings to market. There always seems to be an information gap on how a business can best transition to a new solution and what the likely ROI should be. There is always high level detail available but you nearly always need to invest in the solution first before being able to determine detailed benefits.

Brett Campbell (SAP Technical Lead, AGL)

Brett has been in SAP’s Technical space for over 20 years, starting out as an ABAP Developer, and moving into Lead, Management and Technical Architecture.

What’s the biggest change you have seen in SAP technology since you started your career?

The continuing evolution of the ‘user experience’. It’s become a big catch phrase over the last few years with the focus on Fiori, but from the early days of the R3 GUI, the continuous change to how we access and interact with SAP has been significant.

As a techie, the development tools have been of particular interest to me. If you were to throw a young(er) developer into the 3.0B ABAP editor today, they would probably have to take the rest of the day off to recover from the trauma.

Looking into your crystal ball, what do you foresee as the next big change to SAP in your field of expertise?

We always seem to have ‘buzz’ words that fill the SAP arena for periods of time. For a long while, the answer to any question/issue/performance problem was “HANA/CLOUD/HANA”.

Now we have reached that milestone (and of course, now have ZERO performance issues to worry about), the new buzz words seem to be Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.

This does seem to be the next big step for a lot of businesses and many are already well on their way for the journey, so I guess we can look forward to the rise of the machines in the somewhat near future.

Although, based on current voice recognition capabilities, I think that Australia, New Zealand and Scotland will be the last English speaking nations to fall.

‘Assistant’ – “Please say the name of the person you’d like to call.”

Person - Suicide Hotline.

‘Assistant’ – “Calling Susan Hamilton.”

Person - OK Susan, you don’t know me but strap yourself in!

Is there anything about SAP that you’ve always wanted to change and would if you had the power to?

Ooohh. What to say out loud?

• I wish SAP would follow their own rules more. If you expect us to categorise our tables correctly, can you please do the same.

• Client independent tables – Stop it!

• Unreleased Function Modules – Stop it!

• And I know you have stopped upgrading CRM and SOLMAN, but why did we never get transactions SE16N, CG3Z and CG3Y there? That’s just cruel.

For more rambling on this, join me for a scotch and coke when we are allowed out again!

Speller would like to thank David Crisp and Brett Campbell above for their input. It’s really appreciated. Feel free to comment on changes you’ve seen over the years in SAP or tell us your thoughts in what you predict will be the next big thing is SAP.

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