In 2011 Lidl made the decision to replace its homegrown legacy system “Wawi” with a new solution based on “SAP for Retail, powered by HANA”. [..] Key figure analyzes and forecasts should be available in real time. In addition, Lidl hoped for more efficient processes and easier handling of master data for the more than 10,000 stores and over 140 logistics centers.
[..]
The problems arose when Lidl discovered that the SAP system based it's inventory on retail prices, where Lidl was used to do that based on purchase prices. Lidl refused to change both her mindset and processes and decided to customise the software. That was the beginning of the end.
Disclaimer: Lokad competes with SAP on the inventory optimization front.
My take is that the SAP tech suffered from two non-recoverable design issues.
First, HANA has excessive needs of computer resources, especially memory. This is usually the case with in-memory designs, but HANA seems to be one of the worst offenders (see [1]). This adds an enormous amount of mundane friction. At the scale of Lidl, this sort of friction becomes very unforgiving - every minor glitches turning into many-hours (sometime multi-days) fixes.
Second, when operating at the supply chain analytical layer, complete customization is a necessity. There is no such thing as "standard" decision taking algorithm to drive a replenishment system moving billions of Euros worth of good per year. This insights goes very much against most of design choices which have been made in SAP. Customization shouldn't be the enemy.
Disclaimer: Lokad competes with SAP on the inventory optimization front.
My take is that the SAP tech suffered from two non-recoverable design issues.
First, HANA has excessive needs of computer resources, especially memory. This is usually the case with in-memory designs, but HANA seems to be one of the worst offenders (see [1]). This adds an enormous amount of mundane friction. At the scale of Lidl, this sort of friction becomes very unforgiving - every minor glitches turning into many-hours (sometime multi-days) fixes.
Second, when operating at the supply chain analytical layer, complete customization is a necessity. There is no such thing as "standard" decision taking algorithm to drive a replenishment system moving billions of Euros worth of good per year. This insights goes very much against most of design choices which have been made in SAP. Customization shouldn't be the enemy.
[1] https://www.brightworkresearch.com/how-hana-takes-30-to-40-times-the-memory-of-other-databases/