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What's SAP?

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Re: What's SAP?

#231

Post by bumby »

igetspam wrote: post #224
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…

As an employer, it felt equally as hostile. Every process was riddled with more process. Approvals were miles deep. Getting appropriate hardware and software that wasn't on The List was nearly impossible. Good times were had by all.

How industry dependent is this? Is this an artifact of the needs of a particular industry (aerospace, automotive) that has a lot of process to cover supplier quality concerns?

Re: What's SAP?

#232

Post by organsnyder »

mr_gibbins wrote: post #230

I teach enterprise systems at a university, with emphasis on SAP. 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…

That's similar to Epic's value proposition in the healthcare space. Sure, their software is above average (with "average" being barely functional or vaporware), but their main selling point is their ability to assist leadership in strongarming an organization to adopt standardized workflows.

Re: What's SAP?

#233

Post by GuB-42 »

deelly wrote: post #108
shrimpx wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Yes, Its really super strange to adopt Google, Microsoft, Apple processes.. Yes?

Scale matters.

Unless your company has thousands of employees and billions in revenue, Google/Microsoft/Apple processes are probably not for you.

Re: What's SAP?

#234

Post by bharam »

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…

I once worked for a company that uses SAP for several important business processes. The software provides great support for well defined areas like payroll, benefits, accounting and so on. It does not work well for things that are unique about the business (i.e. how it sells to- or services customers). For those things custom built software is usually a better choice.

Re: What's SAP?

#235

Post by throw0101a »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #87
OldGuyInTheClub wrote: post #47

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…

> 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. Those are birth pains as felt from inside. It's a beginning of a new sentient life; your company is acquiring its own mind. You and your co…

> Those are birth pains as felt from inside. It's a beginning of a new sentient life; your company is acquiring its own mind.

Kind of like the ant colony being sentient but the individual ants not (see Gödel, Escher, Bach).

Re: What's SAP?

#236

Post by reportgunner »

72deluxe wrote: post #141
reportgunner wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your comment except Visual Studio part. Everytime I use Visual Studio it feels like I'm using a big pile of hacks of varying age.

What language do you write in using Visual Studio? I use it with C++ and C# and I can't say stress enough how amazing it is to use with C++, compared to the teeth-pulling experience of using xcode for the same tasks (some of which are impossible in xcode, edit-and-continue for example, set next statement).

It might be just me, I use Visual Studio to write C# (not my "first" language) plugins for an older (non C# core) tool. Sometimes I also use Visual Studio to manage SSIS ETL packages, but I need an older VS version because they are not always backwards compatible - this leaves me with three versions installed on my computer - 2015,2017 and 2019 - each for something else.

To be honest what I don't like is the neverending march of tiled frames for everything - the whole program is one frame, then i have one frame for the code, one frame for the solution explorer, two more frames for error list and output, another one for properties and so on. A lot of screen space is taken by just blank spaces or dividers.

Another thing that I didn't like was that the 'Comment selection' option is hidden in Edit -> Advanced -> Comment selection. You also have to use two keyboard shortcuts in succession to comment something (Ctrl+K, Ctrl+C) and the uncomment shortcut is different (Ctrl+K, Ctrl+U). All this while Ctrl + / does nothing and could do both at the same time.

I often need the whole VS solution and not just the code when I need to copy paste the project to a different folder or a different machine.

Re: What's SAP?

#237

Post by zxienin »

lucasverra wrote: post #98

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 ?

> I've seen at techcrunch Berlin 2019 that there is something called SAP.io, somewhat opening its plateform ?

No. SAP.io is how SAP thinks it can hit long arc innovations. It runs accelerators for „entrepreneurs within SAP“ who would otherwise have no chance against corporatized SAP.

Re: What's SAP?

#238

Post by froindt »

buzzkillington wrote: post #201

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. A…

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

I've worked places that have SAP, Oracle, and one place that had both. I've never personally used SAP, and rarely dealt with Oracle.

I would be curious though, if it makes that many sounds - how much error checking is done because something "didn't sound right"? Does doing business tasks sort of turn into a song, with an expected sequence of sounds which feels wrong when not executed correctly?

If I'm typing and talking to someone at the same time, I intuitively know "I typed f rather than g, quick backspace and keep going". Do people internalize the pattern of noises they should hear while completing their work?

Re: What's SAP?

#239

Post by pferde »

schst wrote: post #156
orbifold wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really is insane, I know people who don't even work for SAP, are "IT consultants", whose credentials are a (very good) Art History degree and travel around nationally and internationally to essentially push a button to do SAP database migrations after mergers and acquisitions. There are independent companies that just live off the fact how bad SAP is.

It must be a little bit more difficult than "pushing a button" if companies have to hire an external consultant for that. But yeah, SAP has huge ecosystem of external companies that profit from SAP's fails

It often really is just pushing a button. But you can never tell in advance, and the real value of such consultant is knowing how to fix whatever breaks if it does.

Re: What's SAP?

#240

Post by eranation »

What’s the main reason we don’t see many startups trying to disrupt that field? Is it the long sales cycle? The upfront investment? Lack of awareness?
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