I have spent a lifetime implementing, analyzing, now blogging about SAP, Oracle, Lawson, Infor and other on-premise ERP vendors. In recent times, I have grown increasingly disillusioned with them and have been critical of them – their maintenance models, their services ecosystems, and general lack of innovation.
One area they appear to show some interest in innovating is around sustainability. But they are letting their accounting side versus their shop floor side lead that. The focus is on compliance and reporting. As further proof, alumni of SAP and Oracle have launched a company called Hara. The founders have a Sarbanes-Oxley compliance background.
That’s well and good, but we will regulate and comply and report ourselves to oblivion if we do not curb and reduce emissions and greenhouse footprints.
So, here’s a plea to ERP vendors. Focus on the plants, the refineries, the supply chains in your customers. You have plenty of MRP, plant maintenance, health and safety, transportation management licenses out there. Work more actively with your technology partners which provide control systems, sensors, scrubbers.
Get out of your white collar comfort zone. The big opportunities are far away from headquarters . Even the data center is a very small percent of the carbon footprint. Focus on your customer utilities, planes, factories, buses. Get to the root causes. And don’t just report. Help reverse.
Give me stuff I can proudly write about. Not your TCO.
Radical idea for generally moribund industry, but it’s becoming standard B-school wisdom that radical ideas translate into tremendous opportunity.
