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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?
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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 shits…
> ERP software generally sucks The question isn't whether it "sucks" or not, but rather to whom it "sucks". It rightly reads as sucking to us as tech-savvy developers, but that's not the reality for the actual consumers of such products who are not programmers . To them, irregardless of our protests of inefficiency or bloat, there are only 2-3 possible platforms and the competitive advantages of each over the others…
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> 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.
> It's 2020 and one would hope software companies realize the value of a good, clear, effective user interface. SAP is not the only one; ever tried the enterprise software from Oracle? Or the open source ERPs/CRMs? Painful. But everything has API's these days, so lot of departmental work is done on top. Small budgets so they have small, simple LoB apps made on top which are 'idiot proof'. These apps are very localize…
Each and every one of these systems suck. Sometimes they suck in creative and extraordinary ways. But, one thing you can count on is that there's a real reason that they suck. It turns out that the real world of business is complicated and messy. So, as you say, businesses build their own solution on top of these systems to simplify it for their users while keeping the capabilities of the underlying system intact. Of course, nobody is ever happy with the end result - it's always just the least terrible option.
On a slightly related topic since this may be seen by folks who can benefit from this information.
A lot of "Open Source" systems these days are not what you could honestly call open source. Odoo is the example I'll use, but what I'm about to say applies to a lot more than just Odoo. Most of the organizations behind these solutions are predatory. I've seen features get taken out, hidden, intentionally broken, or have fixes released that are only available in the 'pay us' versions. [0-1]Odoo's accounting functions are one such example.
[0]https://www.odoo.com/forum/help-1/question/is-accounting-fea...
A best case scenario looks like Cisco’s ERP implementation, which took them 9 months and $15 million. In comparison, Dow Chemical’s implementation, for example, took $1 billion and 8 years; At the last SAP site I worked at the general feeling was implementing SAP had left the company weak. This lead to them being taken over by one of their competitors.
what does this competitor run its business on?
When Larry starts to mention a market it is a signal is innovation can be expected from his competitors. AWS Aurora, Google Cloud Spanner that are competing with Oracle legacy solutions.
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There are/were 5 different Web technologies over the years you could use to make Web apps for SAP. There are also standard WebService (XML SOAP) and REST interfaces over HTTP. There are also SAP native interfaces for specifically transferring data. There are ways to do stuff in SAP, lots of implementation problems arise from the fact that people don't know how to do it right, and just try to apply whatever they do kn…
The problem with SAP APIs and services is that each user that uses the system is billed individually. When you try to build an app that helps one department you have to pay for each of the user accounts despite the fact they just use your app, not all the other stuff. On top, there are no real pricing schemes to know what is coming at you. Either 100$ per user per month or 5000$. Depends. The cloud solution doesn't m…
But i agree, SAP is not for those who are sensitive to license prices. Most commonly the solution is a third-party custom built software, that interfaces the data into the back-end SAP system.
The OP's comment was about scraping data from pages generated from SAP Web apps. I tried to point out that it make little sense, as there are proper ways of interfacing data (even over HTTP).
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> ... when compared to alternatives. What do you see as the alternatives?
Microsoft Dynamics, AX, JD Edwards, Netsuite, Oracle ERP, Sage, Salesforce, Syspro, IFS ERP. And a hundred other specialised systems which fit their niche markets. Not everyone needs a full stack ERP/FSM/CRM solution, their are almost as many players as variations in requirements.
The implementation of any ERP system is bound to be extremely painful. It’s big and complex and involves lots of change.
You might as well pick one of the undisputed market leaders rather than have all that pain attributed to your decision to go with a niche player.
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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?
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In my previous company, there is a senior worked on SAP for a long period of time. In his point of view, the UI of SAP was nice in 90s, but they are outdated now. And you can’t customise the user interface with what you want. He also thinks we should not put too much effort in learning SAP product as a developer because he thinks ERP is not not for this generation. He suggested We can learn the integration with SAP,…
> ERP is not not for this generation This generation has options for creating full custom software faster than one can configure an ERP.
No we can't do that, because the real world is messy. I currently work on a SAP system and the amount of localization and customization that was done for you is inexpensive for big corp. And you know that SAP will last the next 30 years, you don't know that about your Framework of choice.