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What's SAP?

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Re: What's SAP?

#111

Can please a decision maker regarding SAP buying/implementing tell us how on earth SAP is that mainstream (in corporate) ? I've had to use it at EU big corp, and it to this day the worst experience I had. I've seen at techcrunch Berlin 2019 that there is something called SAP.io, somewhat opening its plateform ?

I’ve witnessed several SAP implementations, along with the buying process.

In short, it’s seen as a safe option, because it’s what “everyone else” uses, and the decision makers have typically come from businesses where SAP has been used.

Nobody actually likes it - but they don’t see any alternatives as viable.

Similarly, I’ve seen folks migrate to and from the various MS Dynamics platforms, and it’s a universal shitshow, with the exact same reasoning, just a different tribe.

ERP software generally sucks, as it has to be all things to all men, ends up customised to meet needs which are obsolete by the time the customisation is complete, and it usually either gets to the point where nobody understands any of how it got to be the monster that it is, and a long and painful replatforming happens, and the cycle begins again - either with a new supplier or a new version of the same old.

Re: What's SAP?

#112

I live and work in USA but spend time in Europe. I noticed that in Europe SAP is wildly popular and a large percentage of “software engineers” are “SAP/ABAP programmers”. I have some engineer friends in Eastern Europe and they’re taking about how their employers are in the process of, or considering moving to SAP and away from in-house programming. These are not massive enterprises, mind you. Just small to mid size c…

Having worked for many multinationals, I've also noticed such a difference. If it's a US company it would often have a group of in house developed systems that are integrated with each other to some degree, and a team that maintains it, that would manage various things like inventory and lifecycle of systems and products and even sales and customer service. European companies, including those in the UK, would often shy away from such efforts and lean more heavily on enterprise vendors and consultants to attempt to deliver this or try operate with nothing at all. I'm generalising, there are exceptions, but I got the impression that there is a certain kind of engineering culture in the US that is willing to take the risk on such in house projects and realise the value of managing it in house and they also have something that makes them able to execute it successfully.

Re: What's SAP?

#113
post #70

People complaining about how user-unfriendly SAP is or how companies adapt to SAP instead of the other way around are missing the point of SAP. The point of SAP is that the module for your type of business is being implemented at the market leader in your area, because they are the only ones who can afford it. SAP will come to the market leader and put their processes into software. Then everybody else adapts to SAP…

You say this, but I can think of two large market leading electronics corporations who are using a big pile of excel spreadsheets to bridge gaps in SAP, as the regulatory environment is moving faster than their development cycle.

Re: What's SAP?

#114
post #108
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems super strange to adopt the market leader’s processes. You’d think the spirit should be that you can outdo/outcompete then instead of adopting what they’re doing...

Yes, Its really super strange to adopt Google, Microsoft, Apple processes.. Yes?

If you want to be better than them, then I'd say Yes.

Re: What's SAP?

#115
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Peak HN right here.

in what way?

Ridiculous to even suggest that the stock management, ordering, billing and delivery tracking for companies like Adidas and their partners worldwide could run on some Excel spreadsheets. Shows stunning disconnect from how much heavy lifting enterprise software like SAP does.

Re: What's SAP?

#116
post #83

SAPs magic is the integration: A company I worked for rolled out SAP for a Production and supply chain distributed across about a dozen countries in Europe and went from 3+ weeks order commitment time (Not lead time) to immediediate including sourcing from external suppliers, logistics Partners and Production facility allocation.

Thanks, that what I was looking for. Would you have a link for non-PR project reports?

Re: What's SAP?

#117

SAP has enabled/mandated an army of people at my company who manage it and ruthlessly control even read access to it. The software is user-hostile, intentionally obscure, and all requests for slightly customized reports have to go through a multilayered approval process - often up to corporate - where it competes for funding against other survivors. Needing something custom invites constant questions of why the stand…

> The software is user-hostile, intentionally obscure This a million times. I don't know if good interfaces can not be built in SAP, or if it's very difficult to do, or if the developers of apps on SAP platform just don't care. It's a real headache to use and completely confusing. It's 2020 and one would hope software companies realize the value of a good, clear, effective user interface.

I take a very neutral position to this. Enterprise software at the scale SAP is operating (mainly its core ERP) at a Fortune 500 enterprise level. This characteristic (needs at that level) are user-hostile, not the software.

Imagine this situation:

- You're a F500 pipe manufacturer and a sales person needs to enter an order for 100 pipes to be manufactured and sent to a customer in the US

Now imagine you need to:

- Order your materials from your Brazilian plant

- Procure raw materials from your Chinese plant to be sent to your Brazilian plant

- Ship the raw materials from your Chinese plant to your Brazilian plant

- Ship the 100 pipes from Brazil to the client's plants, 50 to their plant in the Indianapolis and 50 to their plant in Canada

Now imagine from a systems perspective your software needs to:

- Determine import costs for sending raw materials from China to Brazil to the USA

- Integrate with a 3PL to calculate shipping across all 4 sites

- etc. etc.

Oh and your software needs to:

- Be extensible to adapt to any modifications and user exits.

- Have a beautiful interface that anyone from the age of 22-65 can use.

- have full audit capabilities to adhere to local/regional compliance

- have capabilities for reporting and analytics

The real world is messy, especially at scale.

For the record - I started my career as a millennial at SAP and was appalled that most F500 use it. I've learned a lot about the "real world" since then.

Re: What's SAP?

#118
post #100

I don't know any decent CS/software engineering student that would want to work on SAP. As a result, all the SAP consultancies I know are filled with business graduates that happened to know a bit about software. I wonder how much that contributes to the SAP clusterfuck.

I can't say anything about the consulting companies, but the developers in Walldorf that I got to know were all competent. I can only talk about my experiences and there are many in my social circle (computer science students at KIT) who are capable developers and either work for SAP as working students or would like to join SAP in the course of their professional life. As a first job, SAP is actually not that popular. But that's due to the fact that many don't want to join Big Corporate directly, but want to work at startups first.

Disclaimer: I am a working student at SAP

Re: What's SAP?

#119

The best advice about SAP I've had is that when a company is starting to use SAP, the company must adjust its processes to match the SAP model - not the other way around. If you do it the other way, you'll first spend millions and millions customising SAP and then your project will fail at some point. It will also make all SAP upgrades completely impossible and they will cost millions and millions. All of the success…

My brother, a SAP consultant, says exactly this.
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