The ERP Clause Nobody Reads Decides the Ten-Year Cost

Mon, 29 Jun 2026 22:00:00 +0200

In 2017, a beverage group lost a court ruling over a single word in a contract signed in 2004. The word was “access”. Diageo had connected roughly 5,800 of its own staff to SAP through a Salesforce front end, assuming those people were Salesforce users. SAP read the old licence differently: anyone whose work touched the SAP system was a named SAP user, billable as such. The High Court in London agreed with SAP’s reading of the wording. The claim came to 54 million pounds (SAP UK Ltd v Diageo Great Britain Ltd, [2017] EWHC 189 (TCC), 16 February 2017).

Data Act Access by Design: The ERP Question Hiding Behind the IoT Label

Mon, 15 Jun 2026 12:00:00 +0200

A machine builder in the Hunsrück region is three months out from launching a new generation of connected equipment. The production schedule is set, the first units ship in the autumn, and the control-system supplier has already answered the compliance question in one sentence: “Access by design? We will do that on the PLC.” Everyone in the room nods, because it sounds like a firmware setting and firmware is the supplier’s department.

DataAct on Pfisterer Consulting

The ERP Clause Nobody Reads Decides the Ten-Year Cost

Data Act Access by Design: The ERP Question Hiding Behind the IoT Label