Playtime is over. For years, in management corridors and board meetings, it was socially acceptable to justify operational mediocrity with a phrase as comfortable as it was false: «It's just that the system doesn't give.».
Let's be brutally honest to close this year: In 2025, that excuse died.
If you have SAP (either Business One or S/4HANA), and you keep blaming the software, the problem is not technological. Enterprise platforms have reached a level of technical, analytical and functional maturity that borders on perfection. Technology is no longer the bottleneck.
The bottleneck is your company's culture.
This is not a kind article to wish you happy holidays. It is an autopsy of what went wrong this year and, more importantly, a warning of what 2026 will not spare you.
1. SAP is no longer an ERP, it's a mirror (and no one likes to see their wrinkles)
There's a reason why SAP makes you uncomfortable and other «lighter» ERPs fall into sympathy. Lightweight systems allow informality; they let you operate «more or less».
SAP is not. SAP is binary. It is pure coherence.
SAP was designed for large, complex and serious organizations. By design, the system does not tolerate ambiguity. When you implement SAP in a messy company, the system does not create chaos; illuminates the chaos you already had and were hiding under the carpet.
If your accounting closings are slow, if your costs don't add up, or if your inventories are a fantasy, SAP is going to scream it in your face in real time. And that hurts.
In 2025 we learned the hard way that SAP exposes the operational reality, even when management would prefer not to see it.
2. The «Excel Parallel»The refuge of managerial cowardice
Let's talk about that elephant in the room. The indiscriminate use of Excel to «fix» what comes out of SAP is not a technical solution, it's a declaration of cultural incompetence.
Why does parallel Excel survive? Because Excel allows lying (or «adjusting», if you prefer the euphemism). It allows lack of traceability. It allows each manager to have your version of the truth.
SAP, by definition, pushes you into a Unique Truth. It forces you to standardize and to hold each user accountable for his or her data. When an organization resists this and reverts to Excel, it is not failing software; it is failing leadership. They're choosing the comfort of lack of control over the discipline of management.
3. The Artificial Intelligence does not work miracles with garbage
2025 was the year of the hype of AI. Everyone wanted AI in their dashboards, in their demand forecasts and in their financials. But they ran into a concrete wall.
AI in SAP doesn't have «imagination», it has data. If you feed an AI model with dirty data, incomplete processes and duplicate item masters, you don't get «intelligence». You get artificial stupidity at high speed.
The lesson was hard: Asking for Artificial Intelligence without having data discipline is like asking for a Ferrari to drive on a dirt road.
AI won't fix your administrative mess. On the contrary, it will amplify it. If your historical data is garbage, your projections for 2026 will be an expensive hallucination.
4. Information without Owner = Management without Power
The biggest sin I saw this year was not technical, it was political. In many implementations, no one wants to own the master data. Marketing blames Sales, Sales blames Logistics, and everyone looks at IT as if we are responsible for getting a customer code wrong.
Let's understand this once and for all: IT governs the platform, but the Business governs the data.
Without clear ownership, there is no accountability. And without accountability, SAP becomes an expensive system of record instead of the competitive engine it should be.
The Ultimatum of 2026
If there's one thing that leading systems in critical industries like ours has taught me, it's that technology doesn't wait for the undecided.
What's coming for 2026 is not «more functionality.» What is coming is more maturity requirements.
Companies that will continue to use SAP as a «glorified typewriter» to produce invoices will be left behind. Not because the system will change, but because the market has already changed. Competitors who understand that information is a strategic asset (and not a boring by-product) is going to walk all over them.
My advice for the coming year?
Stop asking IT to «tweak the system» to accommodate your operational vices. Start tweaking your operation to match the tool you have.
2025 has already made it clear who is who. 2026 will not have patience with those who continue to make excuses.
And SAP, true to form, will do only one thing: Show the truth, whether you like it or not.
See you in the trench.
