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What's SAP?

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Re: What's SAP?

#251

Post by kumarvvr »

bane wrote: post #188
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.

One way to think about it is this: if having good UI in internal enterprise tools was a competitive advantage, companies would move to having good UI.

It is a competitive advantage. A good, consistent UI would make people at-least not hate their job when it comes to handling SAP systems.

See, using an SAP system requires a lot of unnecessary cognitive load, so much to remember, so much to digest. So un-intuitive.

I am sure people would be more productive with a UI that is not complete crap.

Re: What's SAP?

#252

Post by nachteilig »

hef19898 wrote: post #176
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…

The last paragraph is the core issue, IMHO. SAP, while as software is cumbersome, user hostile and the opposite of intuitive, has some really great standard processes. Stick to them and SAP as an ERP system will run, almost, like a charm . When your company has the scale to benefit from it. And sticks to 90% of the standard processes. Try to implement it without the necessary scale of operations, with sticking to sta…

What would you say is the right scale for something like SAP? We are only at a few million right bald and around 250 people and are starting to think about it.

Re: What's SAP?

#253

Post by kumarvvr »

aswanson wrote: post #183
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.

Sounds like a startup opportunity.

Absolutely. I am thinking that a reasonably efficient system can be built with that 100 million put in a bank and pay the interest (4%, 4 million), to about 10 - 15 developers and use standard practices and open source systems for a custom erp system.

But I guess the reason products like SAP survive is because in a corporate environment, people have the "No one was fired for buying IBM" mentality.

If an SAP implementation is thrust upon the organization, then there will not be anyone particular to blame. Just the 3rd party devs perhaps.

Re: What's SAP?

#254

Post by eitally »

BlobRunner wrote: post #244
mbesto wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't buy the "real world is complex deal with it" explanation. Banking (especially in US) is a total complexity nightmare. Yet you have Stripe.com who simplify it. Your PC operating system complexity and the International Network of computers is so complex you cannot figure it all with your brain alone. Yet you write your email everyday with it and your colleague in China get's it in seconds. Your supply chain is…

You're asking the wrong question, really. SAP is a result of what's built when a software company is started to solve megascale business process automation problems. It is literally impossible to create a great user experience when developing software in or for enterprise IT departments, for a lot of reasons.

1. Budgetary restrictions

2. Quality of engineering teams

3. Lack of autonomy to make and enforce product functionality (or even UI) decisions

4. Competing stakeholders

5. Inconsistent workflows

The chasm between product development at a "digital native" and how business software is created in captive IT are worlds apart (and my list doesn't even touch the added challenges when it's outsourced IT).

Re: What's SAP?

#255

Post by drunkpotato »

ProstetnicJeltz wrote: post #124
deelly wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you name good alternative that supports all SAP features?

'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…

Bespoke is expensive but sometimes the least expensive option. I worked at a company that just hired an auditing consultant firm to certify their existing system. It took a year of locking down existing processes and slapping approvals and change management on everything, but at the end the system stayed more or less the same with minimal changes in business process required. I think they made the right choice, but they had the personnel, time, size, and money to do it. I think it would have been riskier, taken longer, and been more expensive to buy an ERP (NetSuite and SAP were evaluated), and the business came to the same conclusion. However I would not recommend this for for any company with less than half a billion in revenue already!

Re: What's SAP?

#256

Post by boomfus »

djmobley wrote: post #198
swarnie_ wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft Dynamics, AX, JD Edwards, Netsuite, Oracle ERP, Sage, Salesforce, Syspro, IFS ERP. And a hundred other specialised systems which fit their niche markets. Not everyone needs a full stack ERP/FSM/CRM solution, their are almost as many players as variations in requirements.

If you’re the kind of large organisation that is considering SAP, the only real competitor is Oracle, which is just as bad. The implementation of any ERP system is bound to be extremely painful. It’s big and complex and involves lots of change. You might as well pick one of the undisputed market leaders rather than have all that pain attributed to your decision to go with a niche player.

I would agree with your criticisms of most of those companies as not being suitable for large companies, but I would argue Salesforce is definitely an option for large companies. I see job postings for Salesforce developers from companies like Google and Facebook all the time, and personally every company I've worked at as a Salesforce developer has been a Fortune 500 company.

Re: What's SAP?

#257

Post by epr »

somesortofsystm wrote: post #151
dr_dshiv wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, what is that about? Do you have more insights on this?

Academia is easily bought, especially in Germany. Also, HN is a hacker crowd with a particular axe to grind re: UI, since all the cool new UI shit makes insta-billionaires, or at least thats the dream. Whereas with a SAP-using business, the computer isn't the product - the products that the computer allows the company to manufacture/distribute are the only thing that matters - and the SAP UI is intentionally set up b…

:x

Re: What's SAP?

#258

Post by lucasverra »

myspy wrote: post #223
Arwill wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

We did that, with one technical user to share data between our backend and SAP, but got the news that it's not legal and must be licensed per user that's using our app. Even over http you can't access data in SAP without paying your fees accordingly.

ehh if you have access throught http(hopefullly)s into a webbrowser and consume it with your eyes, can't i just puppeteer it ? heck event print screen and OCR ?

Re: What's SAP?

#259

Post by triggercut »

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…

When it comes to Financial Accounting for asset heavy and inventory heavy businesses who need audit ready financial reporting (IFRS/GAAP), most are going to have pretty standard Order-To-Cash, P2P etc. workflows with similar controls.

But yes, what changes are the business end users requirements for slicing and dicing performance data from 'subsets of this' and 'subsets of that'. I think HANA plus the move to the cloud will potentially help this.

Re: What's SAP?

#260

Post by drunkpotato »

nachteilig wrote: post #252
hef19898 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last paragraph is the core issue, IMHO. SAP, while as software is cumbersome, user hostile and the opposite of intuitive, has some really great standard processes. Stick to them and SAP as an ERP system will run, almost, like a charm . When your company has the scale to benefit from it. And sticks to 90% of the standard processes. Try to implement it without the necessary scale of operations, with sticking to sta…

What would you say is the right scale for something like SAP? We are only at a few million right bald and around 250 people and are starting to think about it.

I would not recommend it at that scale. You’ll grind your sales people down for no good reason, and flush several million dollars down the toilet on a project that will most likely get canceled and several people fired (gotta have fall guys at that level...). The right time to implement an ERP is at the last possible second that you are legally or contractually obligated to, or a make or break $50-100M sales contract is in play. And in the latter case, losing the contract and flushing the SAP project down the toilet are real risks. I’ve lived this project at a company the size you describe and it ended very poorly.
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