SAP & F1

I love watching F1 races. When Malaysia first built their F1 track in Sepang, I was one of those fans who got excited about it. With PETRONAS foray into the F1, it even made me proud as a Malaysia to be able to see our technical people working around to clock to perfect their car. In F1, it’s simply not about the drivers but the passion and technology behind it. 

In the quest of building a perfect car, the engineers (technology) need to look at the engines, aerodynamics, tyre, suspension, brakes and even communication. The technology are being embedded into the car does not compromise the comfort and safety of the drivers. On the drivers side, they simply need to have the passion to drive and win races. 

So when people ask me what do SAP consultants do. This is my reply.

SAP Consultants	Role
SAP Basis	In the Formula 1 (F1), they would be regarded as engineers who design the car. They are the ones who will prepare the infrastructures such as installation of the operating system/platform, SAP components, network, backup, hardening (security), and upgrades.
SAP Functional	In the Formula 1 (F1), they would be regarded as F1 drivers who such as Fernando Alonso, Sebastian Vettel or Lewis Hamilton. They are the ones who are the industry experts, who meets up and consult with the clients. For most projects, functional consultants consists the SAP Financial, SAP Materials Management and SAP HR consultant. The main challenge for the functional consultants is to map the client’s current business process into SAP but this time making the processes work better. Say from the current process which takes 10 steps to execute is then reduced to 3 steps to execute.
SAP Abapers	Abapers are programmers. This is because the programming language used in SAP is Abap. They basically help in customization such as reports and customized programs (i.e. interfaces). Abapers will not liaise with the clients directly but will only act upon advise of the SAP Functional consultants. In the Formula 1 (F1), should the F1 driver (functional consultant) thinks that the car needs some improvement and tuning hence the Abapers will come into the picture to make those changes. Let’s say the F1 driver thinks that the car needs to fly, hence the Abapers will build wings for it. You can say the SAP Abapers are the “extension engineers” in SAP.

Simply put it, it’s about the combination of hardware (technology) and software (people). Now, when people who asks me what does F1 got to do with SAP? I’ll simply reply “It relates with everything”.