Dr. Frank Schoenthaler is the president and chairman of the management board of PROMATIS software GmbH. In his responsibility lie the Company- and Product-strategies, the business unit Oracle plus, Human Resources, Sales and Marketing. Before the company’s formation, Frank was active at the University of Karlsruhe in research and in the sector of applied computer science for several years.
Frank is speaker for the Special Interest Group E-Business Suite in the DOAG Deutsche Oracle Anwendergruppe e.V. (German Oracle User Group) as well as member of the curatorships of the Integrata Foundation and AIK Angewandte Informatik Karlsruhe e.V. (Applied Informatics Karlsruhe).

3 July 2006

We want to see you battle!

It’s quite astonishing what’s going on in rather minor-true Germany during the FIFA World Championship: Houses, cars and faces decorated with flags, more or less spontaneous Public Viewing Events where totally unknown people of all social levels and ages lie in each others arms, and a sheer unlimited optimism comes up. One watches it with saucer-eyes and asks: what’s happening? And we begin to smirk – latest at the time when one looks upon the fancy flag on his own car, his black-red-gold rouged junior and his cheering daughter, who actually didn’t want to have anything to do with the game.

I believe that we can learn a lot these days. It is to be recommended to take a glance on our sacrificially battling Team Germany, who – due to global competitors – can’t always offer high gloss-soccer, but who always plays highly concentrated and with a lion’s heart and dedication. Thereby the team lives up integrity, companionship (just remember the unforgettable Kahn-Lehmann scene) and professionalism (the Koepke-cheat slip for goal keeper Lehmann before the penalty shoot-out against Argentina will make history). And the people watching notice that, the spark leaps over and creates an optimism that enfolds everybody like a wave, carries away everyone and seems to move mountains – and would have done so even with a drop out during the quarter-final!

Frank Schoenthaler

9 February 2006

Truthfulness

It’s truly astonishing, what’s going on in the Medias at the time. That the boulevard press sometimes tends to ‘generate’ wishful news is fairly known. But that assumed elites – politicians, economic leaders, association officials, … - also descend more and more to ‘generate’ justifications for their decisions to suit their wishes, that really is thought-provoking.

Why does company relocation always have to be reasoned with high unit labor costs, when actually the development of new markets stands in the foreground? Is it only to casually pile on the pressure on labor relations? Or perhaps because reasoning with high unit labor costs is ‘in’ at the moment? And why is it that the last payment-percent has to be fought for to increase purchasing power when it should be far more important to maintain jobs? And why has it become custom that politicians are tirelessly torpedoing every sensible proposal for reforms by hinting on wages for nurses and bus drivers?

It is idle at this point to give more examples. Much more important is the question how we can expect from ‘the people’ (as politicians like to say) the right decisions, when it’s the elites who lack truthfulness and therefore mislead ‘the people’. Isn’t it true that our economy – even our society – can only work out well when also elites live truthfulness? For good reasons Immanuel Kant sees truthfulness as a sanity commandment.

But also we, who carry responsibility in the Information Technology branch, are called on to practice truthfulness. Because only then our products and services will develop to meet our customers’ needs. And isn’t exactly that the point when bringing our success to being?

Frank Schoenthaler