Oct 26: Value-Add-in
Show notes
From the perspective of critical educational work and journalistic observation of the SAP market, the history and future of GIB serve as a case study in how pragmatic, mid-market expertise can defy the pretensions of lofty corporate architectures.
From an add-on to a value-add-in in the core digital ERP system: GIB’s roots lie in traditional inventory planning and procurement optimization within the SAP R/3 and Business Suite 7 environments. Early on, GIB’s experts recognized that simply delivering software on a „plug-and-play“ basis was bound to fail if silo mentality, information gaps, and conflicting departmental goals prevailed within a company.
The self-critical mantra coined in 2006—„With our software, we manage the misery“—marked a turning point: From then on, GIB no longer saw itself merely as a code provider but increasingly took on an advisory and long-term educational role within the SAP community to uncover the „skeletons in the closet“ of the supply chain and break down unhealthy process patterns.
„For us, end-to-end in the supply chain doesn’t primarily mean the technical linking of process steps, but rather the end-to-end operational management from demand to delivery,“ explains GIB Managing Director Björn Dunkel in an E3 interview. „Many companies already have a wide range of integrated systems. The real challenge lies in making the right decisions every day when demand changes, materials are missing, or capacity becomes tight,“ says Björn Dunkel, drawing on his many years of successful work in the SAP community, and he adds: „For GIB, end-to-end therefore means transparency and control throughout the entire supply chain. What matters is not that data flows from A to B, but that the right people can make the right decisions at the right time—or that, in the future, these decisions will increasingly be made automatically.“
The company is making a historic shift this year under the slogan „GIB goes GIB“: The parent company, ifm, has separated the supply chain software division from the rigid corporate structures. GIB is once again operating on the market as an independent, agile software company, while ifm continues to provide strong financial backing as a major shareholder. The revival of the GIB brand marks not so much a technological fresh start as a sharpened market positioning.
The transition from a traditional add-on provider to a value-add-in for SAP S/4HANA had already taken place in recent years. However, within the corporate structure, this development often remained unclear to the market. As an independent SAP specialist, GIB can now once again clearly communicate where its strength lies: in the optimization and operational management of complex supply chains directly within the SAP core, based on the same master and transaction data and without the need for additional data silos.
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