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LIDL cancels SAP introduction after spending 500M Euro

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Re: LIDL cancels SAP introduction after spending 500M Euro

#191

Post by derefr »

iron0013 wrote: post #138
rwallace wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know of any case studies of companies being completely destroyed by this process? I have certainly heard of such projects getting into trouble, would be interested to know of any cases where it went as far as the customer going bankrupt.

I've read that Target's botched expansion into Canada was largely attributable to SAP being awful. They haven't gone bankrupt, but years later their stock is still reeling.

My understanding was that the land Target used in Canada for their stores was leased to them by Walmart (who happened to own it for some reason, even though most of the lots used to be Zellers stores, and Eatons before that.) Walmart gave them extortionate prices and conditions on their lease.

They essentially choked their nascent competition in the Canadian market out of existence in the very same move that enabled the attempt.

Re: LIDL cancels SAP introduction after spending 500M Euro

#192

Post by teh_klev »

iron0013 wrote: post #138
rwallace wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know of any case studies of companies being completely destroyed by this process? I have certainly heard of such projects getting into trouble, would be interested to know of any cases where it went as far as the customer going bankrupt.

I've read that Target's botched expansion into Canada was largely attributable to SAP being awful. They haven't gone bankrupt, but years later their stock is still reeling.

There were all sorts of problems with Target's expansion into Canada, I'm not sure you could blame them specifically on SAP:

https://www.canadianbusiness.com/the-last-days-of-target-can...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10956638

The data entered into SAP was riddled with errors, it sounds like a great example of "garbage-in, garbage-out".

Re: LIDL cancels SAP introduction after spending 500M Euro

#193

Post by closeparen »

lagadu wrote: post #82
mosselman wrote: post #12

This is so unacceptable yet happens so often. Here in the Netherlands the government has several projects that failed with costs amounting to hundreds of millions. For sums as these any Organisation can just setup a more capable development company that could handle all of the internal projects and its developers could be top of the line.

The thing is, yes you can set up a new company and make a new product from scratch whose requirements are exactly defined by you and after a few years of work they'll have a working product. Then what? You'll still be running the same software in 10 years, are you going to keep paying an entire company's worth of employees during those 10 years so they can hang out and be ready to implement all the changes you'll eve…

Google Search seems to meet the business requirements, so Google must have laid off most of its programmers by now. Right?

This is a good illustration of the mindset difference between Enterprise and Tech.

Re: LIDL cancels SAP introduction after spending 500M Euro

#194

Post by watertom »

bumholio wrote: post #103
netinmate wrote: post #86

Customization is key, you CAN't customize. I worked on an SAP implementation, a Fortune 500 company, complexity like crazy, sub-companies, of sub-companies, of sub-companies, federal, state and local compliance for what the company did, operating in 50 states, with an International supply chain, and our integrator was nothing special. We held firm to the NO CUSTOMIZATION rule, we re-engineered our processes to fit SA…

> we re-engineered our processes to fit SAP. That sounds just about like the most revolting and negative endorsement you can make for a business solution. Every company is special and the flexibility to adapt to a changing environment is what keeps a company alive during those times of crisis, that always come. "We can't do this because the system does not allow it" is great and expected at the warehouse worker level…

Frankly doing an SAP installation with no customization is no different than using a SaaS platform, there are a lot of options, but no code customizations.

All the processes had become "unique" over time, not because the company was special, but because they were coding their own solutions and either the IT staff or the business wanted something done for the benefit of the specific department.

Once the processes were evaluated with a critical eye toward what actually needed to be accomplished, the uniqueness of the existing process couldn't stand up to scrutiny.

Luckily the CIO and the CEO had the courage to face down the IT staff and business leaders, the rank and file cheered for adopting standard processes, they knew the existing processed sucked.

Re: LIDL cancels SAP introduction after spending 500M Euro

#195

Post by cosmoharrigan »

rushabh wrote: post #87
kokey wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every few years, over the past 20 years, I look around to see if there are any open source contenders in the ERP space. There are usually a couple, but you never get to hear about them again. I think it's a difficult space to enter and succeed in and I think most efforts probably underestimate the complexity and isn't funded or run well enough to tackle that adequately.

ERPNext has been around for a decade now and doing quite well! https://github.com/frappe/erpnext . Founder here, happy to answer questions.

I was curious to learn more about the project, and would like to share some quick feedback; the first thing I noticed was that the first page of the documentation which I opened has multiple spelling and grammar errors:

“Distrobutors have large part of their net worth is invested in the stock in hand. With ERPNext, you can always keep a birds eye view on your stock availability, replineshment, procurement and sales.“ https://erpnext.org/docs/user/manual/en/stock

Second, I noticed that the CI build is failing on GitHub.

Re: LIDL cancels SAP introduction after spending 500M Euro

#197

Post by Aloha »

muxator wrote: post #190
JacobDotVI wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The book Softwars spends a lot of time on this topic, where Larry Ellison blasted all of his integration partners for over-customizing their solutions when the correct approach was to update the business processes to match the software: https://www.amazon.com/Softwar-Intimate-Portrait-Ellison-Ora...

So, let's say you manage to update your client's processes to the ones that best fit the SW you are selling. Eventually, the time for upgrading will come. Magically the specification for the new system will be: "it has to work exactly like the last one", and the last one will naturally happen to be yours. Who wins? The customer? Maybe (how clumsy it may be, he now has a stable, supported process, after all). The vend…

I make custom systems for a living, I also support a CRM/ERP solution for SciFi conventions which often has custom enhancements for customers.

The real answer is to meet in the middle - sometimes the you have to be willing to tell the customer no - its just how it goes - and sometimes you need to go back and bang on the developers to go get it to work the way the customer thinks it ought to, because the customer is correct, and the devs do not understand the use case.

The key is, dont tell the customer no too often, and dont bang on the devs too often - you gotta strike the balance, and only experience can tell you where that magic line is.

Re: LIDL cancels SAP introduction after spending 500M Euro

#198

Post by bigger_cheese »

throwaway_2q121 wrote: post #121

I've been working in this field a bit, not the big two SAP/Oracle but a smaller ERP(PAAS/SAAS) player. Our solutions manage a few steel plants in Slovenia. The way I see it is that it's tough, solutions are rarely chosen based on technical merits. It's a mix of "nobody gets fired for choosing SAP/Oracle", decisionmaker's ignorance, having someone who will be there to point the finger at in 5 years and... politics. Th…

The Steel plant I work at uses SAP, though personally I don't touch it and only know vague details about it.

I know all non-routine maintenance, mandatory inspections, contractors and warehouse supplies etc is booked in it. Stuff like fire extinguishers, elevator mechanic call outs for breakdowns, replacement hydraulic fluid stuff like that is done via SAP. I think even general 'consumables' stuff like toner for printers in offices / control rooms, fluorescent light tube replacement etc are managed by it.

When you think about it these systems are horrendously complicated.

Re: LIDL cancels SAP introduction after spending 500M Euro

#199

Post by rushabh »

cosmoharrigan wrote: post #195
rushabh wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ERPNext has been around for a decade now and doing quite well! https://github.com/frappe/erpnext . Founder here, happy to answer questions.

I was curious to learn more about the project, and would like to share some quick feedback; the first thing I noticed was that the first page of the documentation which I opened has multiple spelling and grammar errors: “Distrobutors have large part of their net worth is invested in the stock in hand. With ERPNext, you can always keep a birds eye view on your stock availability, replineshment, procurement and sales.“…

If you have questions, there is a very active community at https://discuss.erpnext.com

Typo: Thanks for the report. We will get it fixed.

CI: The marker is for the develop branch. So if you are on master, its much more stable.

Re: LIDL cancels SAP introduction after spending 500M Euro

#200

Post by rushabh »

solarkraft wrote: post #137
rushabh wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ERPNext has been around for a decade now and doing quite well! https://github.com/frappe/erpnext . Founder here, happy to answer questions.

Did you underestimate the complexity? Did you limit scope to not go insane? What is the typical size/complexity of a typical using company? Could LIDL have used your software for 500M€, could they have even implemented their completely own solution for that money? Thanks!

There have been a few very large implementations of ERPNext. If I were to consult Lidl, we would have done a few low risk pilots, starting with their warehouses or back-office.

I would have gone for a federated architecture where each store / warehouse would have its own system that would then be consolidated at higher levels, rather than going for a mega instance with zillions of transaction rows.

There are many interesting things you can do when you have an open source system you can work to your advantage.

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