What's SAP? • Hacker News Board

Re: What's SAP?

#451

Post by cr0sh » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 5:56 PM UTC

bgun wrote: post #428

cr0sh wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once worked for a company that let me go because I looked bad on their bottom line and they were looking to sell the company, around 2003. So, severance package in hand, and one week later I had a new position at another company making much more than I was originally. Anyhow - I was essentially the sole developer of a simple ERP system written in VB6 and using an Access 2003 MDB file for storage. It was being used…

Reminds me of a recent HN post about the uncanny survival of MS Access https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21401198

I probably posted to that one as well...

Re: What's SAP?

#452

Post by jasonlhy » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 5:56 PM UTC

piva00 wrote: post #298

Proziam wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to agree. I've had the massive misfortune to have to implement and test (almost?) every open source ERP/CRM system out there from vTiger, Odoo, SuiteCRM, Yeti, NextERP, Dolibarr, ...and more that I can't recall from the top of my head. 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. I…

At least as a software engineer for such kind of integrations you can take fulfilment by knowing you are helping real people do their job in a less painful way. I know a few colleagues who enjoy that kind of work, slapping a much better and intuitive UI on top of their own services integrating with SAP, Salesforce and so on. You improve overall productivity and can show that data comparing how much faster someone usi…

From my experience, to integrate with SAP may not be that trivial with just calling SAP’s RFC. Companies may need to workaround SAP issues, for example, user license, slow RFC response. And also need to consider the case of error recovery, otherwise you will suffer from data inconsistent. What you end up actually are a set of “micro service” to build on top of SAP

Re: What's SAP?

#453

Post by cptaj » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 5:59 PM UTC

npace12 wrote: post #339

I was an ABAP developer around 10 years ago, wrote a bunch of Planning & Scheduling apps/"screens" running in SAPGUI R/3 and APO for a (brand new) manufacturing plant with a new SAP implementation. I learned ABAP in a literally one weekend and was able to make stuff really quickly. For the most part, you could just "loop at " extract what you want and show it on a screen using one of their existing ui components. The…

For someone with a web development freelancing background wanting to get into enterprise software, would you recommend going into SAP? Would Salesforce be a better path? Which one is better for a freelancer working from home (if any)?

Feel free to share any other thoughts on the matter

Re: What's SAP?

#454

Post by erikbye » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 6:04 PM UTC

blaser-waffle wrote: post #402

bargle0 wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$220m Wow.

Total cost means nothing. What was forecast? What was the original budget? If the original was billed at 1.3 billion NOK and we're at 2 that's still very high, but it's a different discussion from a 400K NOK estimate. "Take whatever you think you need and double it" comes to mind.

Of course TCO means something. You have an expected ROI when you go into an ERP. In this specific situation TCO far exceeded possible ROI.

Re: What's SAP?

#455

Post by NikolaNovak » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 6:08 PM UTC

mark-r wrote: post #427

chadash wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I (am actually told to) teach that changing the business to fit SAP is preferable to changing SAP to fit the business. And it's accurate advice. It shouldn't be, but it is. SAP is SAP. It doesn't care about your USP. Or your custom approach to business. As far as SAP is concerned all businesses are the same, they do the same things, and all must conform. Resistance is futile. I've worked in companies making decisio…

There's a third option - customize the ERP to conform to your existing processes. The last place I worked chose that option, they were a medical device company and didn't want to change their processes. Of course it made a huge amount of extra work, much of which was done by expensive contractors.

That option is a long thick gray line.

Every ERP will be "customized". It has to be - provide your own chartfields, business units, workflows, decision points, etc.

It's the amount of the customization that makes the difference. I've been on ERP implementation projects that were 28 days long, and 5 years long.

I am the "expensive contractor", and I have never ever in 20 years met another expensive contractor who did not fight, tooth and nail, to minimize customization. From the initial business requirements and scoping, to the constant CRs likely to be encountered during implementation.

On average/as a generalization, contractors/consultants have seen many businesses and see the commonalities, seen dangers of customizations, and fight them; clients know only themselves, believe in their uniqueness, and don't have a good vision or image of themselves post-transformation - how they could possibly do things differently. Consultants want their Time & Material bills, sure; but even more want successful project and references - not to mention sanity, semblance of life, and feeling like they did good work and helped the client.

Re: What's SAP?

#456

Post by anvarik » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 6:11 PM UTC

> 77% of the world’s transaction revenue touches an SAP system

wonder how they have calculated that

Re: What's SAP?

#457

Post by pletnes » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 6:13 PM UTC

erikbye wrote: post #136

OldGuyInTheClub wrote: post #32

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…

When my organization (20k+ employees) started its process to migrate many systems to SAP, this project filled a seven-story building. Cost: 2 billion NOK, so far.

Which company? 20k+ employees is one of a handful norwegian companies.

Re: What's SAP?

#458

Post by jimbokun » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 6:17 PM UTC

smolder wrote: post #307

jasode wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>changing the business to fit SAP is preferable to changing SAP to fit the business. And it's accurate advice. It shouldn't be, but it is. This is a common misunderstanding. Many people miss the underlying philosophy of SAP software. The reason SAP encourages businesses to adopt SAP's way of doing things is that they did research into the optimal way of doing the common business processes that don't differentiate you…

The research that was put into finding optimal processes for those non-differentiating business functions can of course be invalidated at a later time. We all put lead in gasoline because it seemed optimal, then later we kept putting it in gasoline well past the point it was known to be harmful, because everything was designed around it.

"The research that was put into finding optimal processes for those non-differentiating business functions can of course be invalidated at a later time."

And there's a good chance the new, improved process will make it into SAP sooner than you could develop a new software system reflecting the new process.

Re: What's SAP?

#459

Post by NikolaNovak » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 6:19 PM UTC

BlobRunner wrote: post #244

mbesto wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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: - O…

I don't buy the "real world is complex deal with it" explanation. Banking (especially in US) is a total complexity nightmare. Yet you have Stripe.com who simplify it. Your PC operating system complexity and the International Network of computers is so complex you cannot figure it all with your brain alone. Yet you write your email everyday with it and your colleague in China get's it in seconds. Your supply chain is…

My understanding was that Stripe only does a very very small, specific portion of what "Banking" does, for a fairly specific subset and type of customers, for clearly defined types of transactions and needs. They were successful specifically because they would take well-defined, well-understood bites of the overall "Banking" problem that could be simplified, even at the cost of excluding the 1% or 0.1% "edge cases". I'm sure people here or Patio11 could correct me :)

I feel the failure of extrapolation between Stripe and Banking is exactly the failure of imagination most IT folks have between "single or multi purpose application" and "Enterprise Resource Planning Application".

One of the implementations I've worked on had 128 labour agreements. That's like 128 companies or ways of handling employees, in one. 10's of thousands of time and labour rules. Across 50+ government departments. A smart, focused company like Stripe would not touch that project with a 10,000 foot pole - but it still needs to be done :).

Re: What's SAP?

#460

Post by NikolaNovak » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 6:22 PM UTC

BlobRunner wrote: post #336

MagnumOpus wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Banking (especially in US) is a total complexity nightmare. Yet you have Stripe.com who simplify it. In this analogy the ERP system is the Stripe plumbing that simplifies it for the endpoints (factory logistics manager, salespersons etc) just like Stripe does for its endpoints (merchants and customers). You might find that re-implementing Stripe is not so simple because of the nightmares of naturally-grown internat…

Please note that I am not saying it is easy ! Far from it. I say it is possible to obtain something friendly that actaully help you get the job done. I discovered that Lidl spent 500 millions $ for nothing (literally) trying to implement SAP. Give 500 millions euros to a talented group of Stripe - like engineers and, maybe, you will have something sorted out and maintained for a few decades. Half a billion dollars...…

The press headlines of how much was spent on an IT system; as well as how much actually went to "coding" portion; in my experience can be sensationalized and wrong by several orders of magnitude.

As indicated elsewhere, ERP implementations can go spectacularly badly - and I maintain my claim that treating them as an IT project, which your estimate/equations are doing, is the #1 way of setting them up for failure.

In fact, I would imagine that the key work done at Stripe is not by talented engineers/coders with IT/systems knowledge (not to in any way put them down), but by business/financials/law/banking experts (who ideally would have some or lots of IT knowedge or background so as to not be dangerous). Again, think of our friendly neighbourhood patio11 as a perfect example of technical skills and hard-earned real-world business experience.