221–230 of 622 posts
I started working as an engineer in 1997. Every other day I would receive an email saying "SAP is down, IT is working to resolve the issue."
This continued at my job in 2005.
Last week I got an email from IT saying "SAP is down."
I still don't know what it does or really care but it sure is down a lot.
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…
> 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.
Nope. Forget about it! :-)
I think another problem with these horrific ERP's is that their tentacles are everywhere in the org.
Oracle EBS, my personal "favorite", runs PLM (product lifecycle management), inventory, order management, work orders, customer install base, finance, purchasing, AND PTO entry, F.M.L. !
We can't have nice things in, say, PLM because the whole damn system is tied up tight as "modules" in Oracle EBS. Any kind of change or request involves, at a minimum, harassing a overworked guy in India who is constantly dealing with battle-axe personalities in finance and order management.
Things that SHOULD be taken for granted, like being able to create a hyperlink to the bill of materials for any part number-- that's seriously impossible, it's like a freaking moon shot for them (or so they say).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
I think the logic is that the Web API's are for apps doing things you would otherwise do in SAP's own GUI. 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 littl…
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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
'More modern' these days appears to be the 'thousand papercuts' approach - many SaaS products that collectively provide the same feature set. It's still hell, just a different kind of hell. Bespoke is a genuine competitor. In the UK it's not uncommon for SAP implementations to cost several million £s, this could be used to build bespoke software. There's a massive risk here though - there are thousands of ways bespok…
I know of a French Organic retailer that took that road ( postgres / java / angular). The story ends well. May be an exception. Or not.
Can please a decision maker regarding SAP buying/implementing tell us how on earth SAP is that mainstream (in corporate) ? I've had to use it at EU big corp, and it to this day the worst experience I had. I've seen at techcrunch Berlin 2019 that there is something called SAP.io, somewhat opening its plateform ?
Business decisions are usually made on exports in third party tools (Excel, Tableau...). Why is not disrupted yet then? For me it’s the same as Oracle for database engines and IBM mainframes: enterprise sales process and trust in proved decades solutions when you you bet your whole business in a software or hardware solution.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
'More modern' these days appears to be the 'thousand papercuts' approach - many SaaS products that collectively provide the same feature set. It's still hell, just a different kind of hell. Bespoke is a genuine competitor. In the UK it's not uncommon for SAP implementations to cost several million £s, this could be used to build bespoke software. There's a massive risk here though - there are thousands of ways bespok…
I know of a French Organic retailer that took that road ( postgres / java / angular). The story ends well. May be an exception. Or not.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It brought the "swim lane" mentality to my outfit. There is a "process is king" mindset where people exist to run some report or the other with a completely impenetrable abbreviation and set of unmarked mandatory fields also with no intuitive signifcance. Grab the next item on the work list, do your thing, and mark it complete. If some project asks what's required on either end or how to move their need forward, that…
Process is king in mature industries where profits are extracted from scale and volume. Anything outside of standard process is expensive. If there is no external entity to bear the cost, then this cost is to be minimised. You and I may not agree with this approach, and the formula is somewhat different for creative industries, but numbers don't lie. It's always a compromise between agility/adaptability and cost when…
It's hideous. Hideous. My students complain it is unusable (agree), doesn't make sense (agree), that they can't see the point (agree).
When you look at the underlying database 'schema' (inverted commas deliberate) you'll find it's a massive, denormalised mess.
Much of what SAP can do can be done at the local level using intuitive software. Reports, for example, against a well-designed schema or data warehouse are easy. Power BI, Tableau, whatever your poison. You can even aggregate and present data in raw SQL if you like. Each technique is far easier than trying to achieve the same in SAP.
What SAP does do well is multinational, enterprise-wide integration. Are you a company comprised of many mergers and acquisitions? You can do HR one way, universally, across your organisation. Credit control? Replace your spreadsheets and custom apps you have deployed across your many siloed finance departments with the FI/CO modules.
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.