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What's SAP?

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Re: What's SAP?

#201

Post by buzzkillington »

I wanted to be angry at it. But I couldn't. It's so bad it's reached greatness.

A piece of software that plays (at least) one sound on every user action, and the sounds are completely arbitrary and 8bit at best.

Where you have to press 5 buttons in a row to do the one thing it's meant to do.

Where you have an angry fruit salad in a time sheet.

A piece of software that takes 30 minutes to enter your worksheet time. And lets you enter a special opex code for using it.

I felt the anger and hate of the man who coded it and every Friday I felt I knew that man better than anyone else I have ever known.

Re: What's SAP?

#202

Post by nojvek »

I love this. I am obsessed with back office admin systems (software that helps an org run and their various workflows). Quit my job last month to take a stab at it. Working on boomadmin.com. (Still working on landing page and an MVP)

Re: What's SAP?

#203

Post by littlejohnny »

Does anyone else think that over a period of years products like SAP provide diminishing returns for the efforts and money put in, over software built from scratch in house ?

Yes, software built form scratch can also be messy, but which is the lesser evil?

Re: What's SAP?

#204

Post by bargle0 »

Proziam wrote: post #193
tluyben2 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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…

Which of the open source ERP systems is the least bad?

Re: What's SAP?

#205

Post by qaq »

fefe23 wrote: 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…

If you are not working for SAP SMM they should give you a call :)

Re: What's SAP?

#207

Post by m12k »

shrimpx wrote: post #92
fefe23 wrote: 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…

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...

Corporations running at the scale where SAP operates are so huge that basically nobody fully understands them or really know what they're doing (but they're also big and entrenched enough that they don't need to - inertia, institutional memory, brand awareness and existing product-market fit will do the job as long as the market doesn't radically shift from under their feet, cf. disruption). Seen through that lens it's no surprise that cargo culting is so widespread, or that huge businesses like SAP, Oracle and McKinsey can make massive profits off of essentially giving upper management in big corporations the reassurance that 'they are doing what everyone else is doing' so hopefully the good times will keep rolling.

Re: What's SAP?

#208

Post by cco »

shrimpx wrote: post #92
fefe23 wrote: 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…

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...

It makes getting bought by the market leader easier at least.

Re: What's SAP?

#209

Post by dsfyu404ed »

mbesto wrote: post #117
kumarvvr wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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: - O…

My experience with Oracle's products is similar. At these kinds of scales simple tasks like paying someone or restocking widgets become user hostile because of all the process complexity required to capture all the cases.

Re: What's SAP?

#210

Post by totololo »

Do "high innovation velocity" companies like Tesla or SpaceX use any ERP? If so, do they develop in house? Use a modern equivalent to SAP?
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