What's SAP? • Hacker News Board

Re: What's SAP?

#321

Post by namdnay » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 2:50 PM UTC

fogetti wrote: post #79

john_minsk wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TBH SAP is almost required for big corporations as they usually are publicly traded companies, require external audits from BIG4(and these guys know how to get data from standard SAP models, not so much from you self-developed system) and have to report their financials in consistent way. For example Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and Google all can use SAP internally. But it would be false to state that all their business…

I would be interested to know if they are actually using SAP. These companies are so much better at software development and they are swimming in so much money that they could even implement something by themselves.

> These companies are so much better at software development

That's like saying "why doesn't Tiger Woods win Wimbledon? He's so much better at sport than anyone else". There are lots of different types of software development, and lots of different types of software engineers. Corporate IT projects don't succeed or fail on algorithmics - it's a completely different job, where 90% of the difficulty is managing people and politics

Re: What's SAP?

#322

Post by Proziam » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 2:50 PM UTC

piva00 wrote: post #298

Proziam wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

At least as a software engineer for such kind of integrations you can take fulfilment by knowing you are helping real people do their job in a less painful way. I know a few colleagues who enjoy that kind of work, slapping a much better and intuitive UI on top of their own services integrating with SAP, Salesforce and so on. You improve overall productivity and can show that data comparing how much faster someone usi…

Absolutely. I think that it's a necessity for businesses to periodically review their processes and see how 'tool x' fits in, and whether it can fit better. Filling in the gaps or improving workflows can unlock treasure troves of hidden value that are often left unnoticed. Fortunately, I think awareness about what is possible in that department is growing and that we'll see a lot more focus (rather, jobs) on such optimizations over the next 5-10 years.

Re: What's SAP?

#323

Post by lonelappde » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 2:51 PM UTC

As hinted in the article, SAP is bad because anyone who could do it better would dominate their industry and not sell it to the public.

Re: What's SAP?

#324

Post by lonelappde » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 2:51 PM UTC

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…

Why is that taught at a university? It seems a junior college topic.

Re: What's SAP?

#325

Post by jerf » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 2:52 PM UTC

delfinom wrote: post #277

monkeynotes wrote: post #267

SAP implementation basically sunk Target's huge investment into operations in Canada https://www.canadianbusiness.com/the-last-days-of-target-can... Seems to me SAP is ripe for disruption, but it would be a very challenging throne to unseat.

The problem nobody wants to admit is that any competitor to SAP will just become SAP. SAP grew to what it is because it was made to fit everybody's workflow to make sales to businesses wanting ERPs. Business is a wild world of so many ways to structure the org down from workflows to departments which is basically the only thing that differentiates a large majority of businesses these days. Sure, you could enforce a s…

"The problem nobody wants to admit is that any competitor to SAP will just become SAP."

This is an entire category of software. Closer to most of our homes, see "bug tracking software", "web frameworks" (frontend or backend), or "programming languages". Countless examples of someone getting frustrated and starting a "lightweight alternative", gets lots of attention, gets lots of customers who find various issues and features get added to address them, and before you know it, 5-10 years later, the "lightweight alternative" has become the monster the next generation of "lightweight alternatives" are being started up against.

I'm actually at the point where I consider advertising something as a "lightweight alternative" to be nearly a strike against one of those things; it likely means the author doesn't understand how the previous things got to where they are and are just going to follow them down the same road. If you've got a coherent story on how to address that, talk directly to that.

Of course, if you're a new bug tracker/framework/language author, you'd probably rather get the numbers you can get from advertising "lightweight!" rather than the smaller numbers you'll get from advertising "we're going to contain complexity by an aggressive modularization system based on the principles of ...".

Re: What's SAP?

#326

Post by majewsky » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 2:52 PM UTC

smolder wrote: post #307

jasode wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. This is a common misunderstanding. Many people miss the underlying philosophy of SAP software. The reason SAP encourages businesses to adopt SAP's way of doing things is that they did research into the optimal way of doing the common business processes that don't differentiate you…

The research that was put into finding optimal processes for those non-differentiating business functions can of course be invalidated at a later time. We all put lead in gasoline because it seemed optimal, then later we kept putting it in gasoline well past the point it was known to be harmful, because everything was designed around it.

Sure. We also found out that Micro-USB as a charging plug for phones does not cover all new uses. But standardizing on Micro-USB was still the correct course of action at the time.

Re: What's SAP?

#327

Post by hef19898 » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 2:53 PM UTC

dragonsh wrote: post #80

zxienin wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Up until some 5 years back, UX really was afterthought to them. Why? Answer is in how enterprise software was (and largely still) sold. Buying was done by CIO, based on all parameters (account relationship, FOMO, $$$ discounts, functional reliability etc.) except us…

SAP is designed based on priority of the requirements by people in a company who will never use it but will ask their staff to extract the data and present them in PowerPoint or excel. So the UI design of SAP is user hostile. Even by embracing modern web components and openUI toolkit SAP will continue to be user hostile design. SAP will need to change the foundations completely to change it and also re do things. But…

While the first thing is in itself bad enough, it becomes just dangerous when these powerpoint higher-ups refuse to, and don't, understand how SAP, and thus an integral part of their business, works. Saw that more than once. Which is also one big reason why the SAP instances I worked with at multiple companies are that bad. Not necessarily bacause of SAP, but because of tech-iliterate old-guard managers trying to work with "computers" and "software".

Re: What's SAP?

#328

Post by danjac » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 2:53 PM UTC

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.

I suspect the startup graveyard has many tombstones throughout the decades engraved with the words "We tried to disrupt SAP".

Re: What's SAP?

#329

Post by rbrtl » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 2:54 PM UTC

tastroder wrote: post #177

_4msi wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, this is the SAP business model. If people think that Apple, Sony, or Microsoft try to lock you in to their 'walled garden' then these people have never seen an SAP installation/integration. It's almost its own industry. There are fleets of consultants charging ~$1000 a day just to install the system. Then, as the OP said, they charge by the hour for customised reports which means that businesses have to choose th…

I'm not sure comparing walled gardens is that benefitial here. Most larger firms will either have consultancies on retainer or in-house personnel that can generate these reports anyway. > They are being frustrated by consultants who want to keep their billable hours up, and extraneously restricting access under guises such as "this person doesn't have enough training to touch the system," because it keeps them in pai…

The difference between an SAP consultant, even on retainer, saying someone else can't do it because it's "too hard for them", and an employee being on the receiving end of that remark, is that the employee is an investment on the part of the company, the consultant is an expense. One is the equivalent of the programmer obfuscating his code to keep himself in a job, the other is an employee learning something new and becoming more valuable to the business.

I work in infrastructure an automation on the AWS/MS platforms and work with just about every level of their technical capabilities. I don't have any certification. I don't even have a university degree. I can work with the documentation, which is more often than not up to date and worthwhile. Though the curve is often steep, this doesn't mean it is beyond people with a careers worth of experience around the subject.

I have also learned a small amount about the sort of work involved in these custom queries from my friend. For the most part it's no more difficult than basic database administration; i.e. it's a query language, akin to SQL. It's difficult enough that I can see why someone would want training in it before touching a production DB. But from what I hear these consultants often work straight on Live and then rack up more billable hours fixing the mistakes they made with the customers' live data.

All of this is anecdotal, but the business model (essential monopoly) makes me squirm at the best of times.

Re: What's SAP?

#330

Post by m-p-3 » Wed, Feb 05, 2020, 2:54 PM UTC

reallydontask wrote: post #295

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…

> 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. This isn't necessarily bad advice when moving to a new system. If the development cost exceeds or far exceeds the retraining cost then this is sound advice. I appreciate that this could be a tough calculation to make. Change resistance will like…

It's also a good practice to keep a massive system as close to the original as possible and tweak it to business needs only when absolutely necessary, otherwise it becomes a beast of its own to support and upgrade later on.

This is a great example of technical debt when adding custom features to an existing commercial platform.