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anne-petteroe
Community Manager
Community Manager






The SAP Champions Spotlight Interview Series highlights key strategic topics, such as emerging technologies, learning, and other topics, and provides insights from SAP Champions and SAP leaders on turning ideas into innovative approaches that impact people, process, and technology.

Energy comes in many forms.

For a community, it’s about knowledge, action, activities, inspiration, listening, and learning.

For society, the importance of energy grows in importance each day, including the goal of achieving a future with zero waste, reducing fossil fuel reliance, and enabling circular economy solutions.

f502e87dffa543a7957f934e18de6f84, SAP Champion (former SAP Mentor) and SAP Architect at the Enel Group, lives by both a community and society approach to energy every day.

He journeys forward based on his passion in the programs that he is involved with, such as sustainability solutions, along with his SAP User Experience (UX) and SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) expertise. And in his free time, he makes it a point to ensure that everyone feels welcome within the SAP Community!

It was a pleasure to catch-up with David and find out a bit more about his fascination with energy!

Anne Petteroe (AP): From your days as an electronics engineer student at the Universitat Ramon Lull to today as an SAP Architect at Enel Group, what inspired you to go into the field of High Tech, Telecommunications, and Utilities?

David Ruiz Badia (DB): I was always fascinated by technologies in general, and eventually a relative of mine convinced me to start with electronics. I learned to structure my mind trying to solve complex problems and that’s when I discovered computer sciences.

When I was finishing my studies, I started to work for a telecommunications company and, once I had graduated, I received an offer to join to a utility company which was starting a big project with SAP. This was the very beginning of my connection with the SAP world.

AP: In your Blog It Forward, you mentioned you were facing a new challenge, and it was to “learn to play the ukulele!” Did you ever take the next step forward? If so, how’s it going? If not, are you still playing your guitars? 🙂

DB: Yes, my family gave me a ukulele as a present for my birthday. But I must confess…I have not spent many hours of practice with the instrument, I have only learned two songs and a few chords.

From time to time, I take out a guitar and play for one or two hours. I really do love music and was so excited when my mother-in-law gave me a keyboard last summer to begin to play piano, which is another challenge ahead!

AP: Tell us about your transition from being an SAP Mentor to becoming an SAP Champion. In this role, how do you engage with Community members?

DB: I had the honor to join to the SAP Mentor Program in 2016, and when the SAP Champions program was born, I was invited to move to this new Influencer program which would be more focused on people and the SAP Community. The SAP Community team and I agreed that it would be helpful to focus my activities toward this initiative.

Basically, what I do is try to serve as a role model to make the SAP Community a more inclusive and receptive environment. I co-organize SAP Stammtisch Barcelona and SAP Inside Track Barcelona and always make an effort to introduce the SAP Community to new members and build a local community.

AP: With your expertise in user experiences (e.g., SAP Fiori design concepts, SAPUI5 library framework) in the utilities industry, what are one or two examples of compelling trends (e.g., deregulation, decarbonization, decentralization, digitalization) that you see with customers from a low-code and no-code standpoint?

DB: Low-code and no-code seems to trend when developing a new application for business that has mainly accelerated digitalization across industries. There are a lot of initiatives at customers that have transformed old business processes to paperless applications, providing agility and confidence to the business in data capture and data management.

AP: Your interest in sustainability and innovation is very timely when it comes to reducing the reliance of fossil fuels. What is an example of a compelling trend that you see as having a big impact on SAP technology and the world?

DB: Great question! As you may know, SAP and Enel are partner sa to the World Economic Forum (WEF) who selected the program called The Second Life Project as a “member initiative.” This pioneering initiative is based on circular economy principles and was designed by Enel and Nissan. This project uses electric vehicle batteries as a source of energy, interconnecting and storing them in power plants such as Endesa’s Melilla facility to re-use batteries (e.g., from Nissan Leaf electric vehicles) in a "pioneering" storage system.

Here is a great benefit. If the power plant was disconnected from the system, the storage facility can inject energy into Melilla’s electricity grid for 15 minutes, which is enough time to reset the system and restart the power supply.

So, the project leverages on advanced technology based on a simple idea: once the useful life of a battery within an electric vehicle has come to an end, these batteries are recycled and assembled in a large stationary storage system.

There's a great opportunity here for the SAP Community and ecosystem to implement comprehensive value chains and extend sustainability initiatives from raw materials, recycling, and ultimately improving the environment, businesses, and people's lives.

AP: When students and recent graduates ask you about the best way to get a job or take their career to the next level, I expect that “networking” and “contributing” is a topic that you know a lot about between the SAP Community, Spanish SAP User Group, SUGEN, Special Interest Groups (SIGs), and others. What suggestions do you have for the next generation of talent as it pertains to making new connections and exploring new opportunities?

DB: For the next generation of talent my suggestions would be as follows below:

  1. Find your passion and follow it.

  2. Engage and enjoy the SAP Community, with activities like following topics of your interest, reading blogs, asking questions, attending calls and events-in-person, and more.

  3. Always stay curious and learn about latest innovations related to your interests and passions.

  4. Find an SAP Champion to get advice and guidance.


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