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Software horror show: SAP Concur

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Re: Software horror show: SAP Concur

#121

Post by greatgib »

To give my software dev guess of the reason of the issue, I would suggest this:

Concur being based on SAP, forms are built in a kind of "no code" way. There is a generic component "list picker from data table". Usually, for that kind of components, the order is user defined based of the row position in the data table or an index column value. Like first "N/A" then "yes" the "no".

As it is obviously too complicated to manually fill all the cities by hand, this data table was probably setup by a script that didn't mind the order. In addition, the cities data was probably not filled all in one go but incrementally, even with probable late additions when there are report of missing cities.

Re: Software horror show: SAP Concur

#122

Post by mint2 »

acdha wrote: post #94
cookiengineer wrote: post #71

We actually joke around the area where SAP is located (Walldorf, Germany). In surrounding cities devs joke about the fact that there are literally dozens if not hundreds of web agencies doing nothing more than mobile/tablet ready SAP user interfaces. That's their only business model. I'm not kidding you, there's an entire ecosystem around the fact that SAP UI5 is so crap that people cannot use it on their smartphones…

> I don't even know how to rationalize this anymore. Enterprise IT is like that because the buyer never uses it and often assumes anyone complaining is just whiny/lazy. A previous employer had a massive outage with an expensive ’Orrible reporting application: down for weeks, developers expecting them to repair corrupted data, etc. They paid many millions of dollars to license that app and millions more for “support”,…

If that’s a public company that sounds like that is malfeasance and grounds for an investor lawsuit

Re: Software horror show: SAP Concur

#123

Post by starky »

sokoloff wrote: post #18

I hate submitting expenses probably as much as the typical engineer, but Concur seems “no better, no worse” than the typical dumpster fire of these systems. I will say that it does have good integration between the company card transactions and the expense reporting feature. I am more mystified than the author at why my 75-mile range electric car offers a default sorted list by full street name, then by state , happi…

I've used Concur and Certify and they are oodles better than the crappy one that my company now uses that probably hasn't changed since the early 2000's and doesn't have any sort of mobile support for uploading receipts.

Re: Software horror show: SAP Concur

#124

Post by tjohns »

cookiengineer wrote: post #71

We actually joke around the area where SAP is located (Walldorf, Germany). In surrounding cities devs joke about the fact that there are literally dozens if not hundreds of web agencies doing nothing more than mobile/tablet ready SAP user interfaces. That's their only business model. I'm not kidding you, there's an entire ecosystem around the fact that SAP UI5 is so crap that people cannot use it on their smartphones…

It's worth noting that SAP Concur wasn't designed by SAP. They acquired it. It's had some minor UI tweaks since, but for the most part is unchanged from the pre-acquisition product.

Re: Software horror show: SAP Concur

#125

Post by ashgoyal »

No software is perfect. Not even the one which flew Boeing 747, thats why they had 3 services coded by 3 different teams running on 3 different brand processors and the system takes the 2 matching entries as the truth.

Even micro processors are not immune to long running bugs.

Picking one small thing and demonising a whole team is unfair for them and the company.

Sounds like much ado about nothing.

Re: Software horror show: SAP Concur

#126

Post by jojobas »

acdha wrote: post #94
cookiengineer wrote: post #71

We actually joke around the area where SAP is located (Walldorf, Germany). In surrounding cities devs joke about the fact that there are literally dozens if not hundreds of web agencies doing nothing more than mobile/tablet ready SAP user interfaces. That's their only business model. I'm not kidding you, there's an entire ecosystem around the fact that SAP UI5 is so crap that people cannot use it on their smartphones…

> I don't even know how to rationalize this anymore. Enterprise IT is like that because the buyer never uses it and often assumes anyone complaining is just whiny/lazy. A previous employer had a massive outage with an expensive ’Orrible reporting application: down for weeks, developers expecting them to repair corrupted data, etc. They paid many millions of dollars to license that app and millions more for “support”,…

The goal of whoever chooses the ERP software is to have people make fewer decisions. Whether it takes you 5 or 15 seconds to figure out what to do next/record what you've done is of much lesser importance than what to do next/how what you've done is processed.

Sure the UI could be improved, but https://xkcd.com/937/ rule still applies.

Re: Software horror show: SAP Concur

#127

Post by jojobas »

coliveira wrote: post #92
intelVISA wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people buying the software don't have to use it, would you buy your corporate underlings the comfortable, expensive shoes or just enough rags to painfully remind them who their masters are? SAP produce the lowest cost rags in town, and you will learn to love them.

There's nothing cheap about SAP. It is just the opposite. They sell the most expensive software ever for any given need. But they make sure to promise their victims that the software covers any possible business "need" under the sun, so the CTOs feel coerced to pay the hefty price.

SAP = sucks all profit.

Re: Software horror show: SAP Concur

#128

Post by hyperdimension »

HyperSane wrote: post #107
acdha wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't even know how to rationalize this anymore. Enterprise IT is like that because the buyer never uses it and often assumes anyone complaining is just whiny/lazy. A previous employer had a massive outage with an expensive ’Orrible reporting application: down for weeks, developers expecting them to repair corrupted data, etc. They paid many millions of dollars to license that app and millions more for “support”,…

Name and shame, that is just ridiculous.

I'd guess it's something truly 'Orrible.

Maybe helmed by a vicious lawnmower?

Re: Software horror show: SAP Concur

#129

Post by acdha »

mint2 wrote: post #122
acdha wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't even know how to rationalize this anymore. Enterprise IT is like that because the buyer never uses it and often assumes anyone complaining is just whiny/lazy. A previous employer had a massive outage with an expensive ’Orrible reporting application: down for weeks, developers expecting them to repair corrupted data, etc. They paid many millions of dollars to license that app and millions more for “support”,…

If that’s a public company that sounds like that is malfeasance and grounds for an investor lawsuit

It wasn’t but also I’d expect something like that to be very hard to make a case about: courts tend to be very deferential to business judgement and I’m sure they’d have very good lawyers arguing that the original problem was unforeseeable and this was maintaining an important business relationship (“the cost of switching would be astronomical!”). This kind of stuff tends not to have consequences unless it’s unbelievably blatant in writing or the higher ups are looking for a justification to terminate someone.

Re: Software horror show: SAP Concur

#130

Post by jojobas »

emodendroket wrote: post #30
ghaff wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, Google Maps seems to be equally random when it starts guessing your destination. I reluctantly started using a corporate card for most things because I sort of had to. I don't like not getting the personal benefits but it actually does make (most) things easier with Concur. Only real issue is it's harder to split personal and company charges.

Don't you still need to make an expense report in that case?

Depends. Most companies would have you specify the project/cost centre for every purchase, but amounts/locations/etc are automatically provided by the card issuer.
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