Philip Zhang
AI-Assisted ERP architect and hands-on builder with 28 years of SAP and enterprise-application experience. Writes from the implementation layer: where agents fit, how tools and context are controlled, what can be automated safely — and where expert judgement remains indispensable.
Philip Zhang writes the sapperment column on AI-Assisted ERP — from architecture to working software. He combines deep expertise in ERP, finance, tax and integration with hands-on development of AI agents, local LLMs and RAG systems: unlike profiles focused on AI strategy or governance, he works on the implementation layer, where the question is not what AI might do but what it reliably does.
His 28 years span the whole arc: founder of an SAP consulting company in Germany, technical and principal consultant at SAP in Germany and Australia — including the BHP Billiton 1SAP programme, where his minimised-downtime approach cut planned transformation downtime by 87.5% — transformation director at SNP, and Business Unit Director at msg Global Solutions China with full P&L responsibility. Today he builds AI-assisted enterprise software in Sydney. Fluent in English, German and Chinese.
His column — The Builder’s Proof
Can a domain expert with AI agents turn process knowledge into governed, running enterprise software — and which architectural choices make that possible? The column argues from built evidence: agents that perform real delivery work, local LLMs and RAG under enterprise constraints, and the judgement calls no automation replaces.
First article in preparation — “If I Were Building an ERP Today, Would I Still Choose the Traditional SAP Stack?”
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Philip Zhang is an independent AI & enterprise solution architect (EDP, Sydney). Dragon ERP, his AI-assisted enterprise-software project, serves in his writing as a source of architectural evidence — never as a commercial product. He writes here in a personal capacity; views are his own. Articles argue from the mechanism, never the product, and are vendor- and firm-neutral.
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