What's SAP, and why's it worth $163B? (2020) • Hacker News Board

Re: What's SAP, and why's it worth $163B? (2020)

#381

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Sep 09, 2022, 1:55 PM UTC

j-bos wrote: post #242

hef19898 wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the duration of the ERP project, SAP is not different to any other vendor in that regard, from preparation through hyoer care after go live, yes. Yes, you have 3-5 expensive SAP, or other ERP system, consultants sitting next one internal IT guy and another 3-5 internal business people with a very deep understanding of the business processes in question and solid basic knowledge about ERP systems. Otherwise you se…

Then why would any one choose to use SAP with that additional tax?

[deleted]

Re: What's SAP, and why's it worth $163B? (2020)

#382

Post by LurkerAtTheGate » Fri, Sep 09, 2022, 1:55 PM UTC

vain_cain wrote: post #323

ineedasername wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>should adapt their business processes to their ERP, and in my experience they are wrong That depends. I’ve seen a lot of adaptation to processes that are legitimately & measurably better in time & accuracy ignored in favor of costly customizations out of nothing more than “not created here” syndrome. If a customer doesn’t like that then an off the shelf product is the worst choice they can make unless they are prepa…

>If a customer doesn’t like that then an off the shelf product is the worst choice they can make unless they are prepared to hire a significant in house dev team Correct. This is the problem my company solves. We are ERP consultants/dev's who also know web development. Through the years we've made 50+ web apps to extend Microsoft's ERP, most of which can be used in most companies with similar needs with slight modifi…

This is the same niche I fell into - building applications to standardize the work happening parallel to SAP because it didn't cover the edge cases, and people created their own workflows using mostly spreadsheets passed around. Which, comically, our client eventually bought another enterprise piece of software to cover our niche. We figured the gig was up...that was 5 years ago. Turns out the new enterprise software covers only a tiny fraction of the edge cases, so ours just keeps chugging along, paying the bills.

Re: What's SAP, and why's it worth $163B? (2020)

#383

Post by joegahona » Fri, Sep 09, 2022, 1:56 PM UTC

cholantesh wrote: post #370

ethbr0 wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. People underestimate how much SAP is doing behind the scenes when properly configured. And beyond that, they overestimate the ergonomics of any enterprise alternative , especially ones that pre-dated SAP. For every "We had a great internal platform that we custom built" story, there are multiple "We used a small vendor's product, and it was a nightmare." Why is SAP successful? Because the general purpose too…

Are there really no meaningful competitors to SAP in this space?

Workday Financials is a meaningful competitor. I used SAP Concur at my last job and "horribly wicked thing" is accurate. It reminds me of that "evil UX" thing that was making the rounds a year or two ago.

Re: What's SAP, and why's it worth $163B? (2020)

#384

Post by rossdavidh » Fri, Sep 09, 2022, 1:56 PM UTC

ethbr0 wrote: post #363

hef19898 wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the reasons why ERP systems were ao sucessful is because they replaced the majority of administrative jobs by automating them away. One of the results is that those remaining are either highly knowledgable and skilled, or working in a function that has yet to be automated away or outsourced to a cheaper country in that specific company.

Exactly. People underestimate how much SAP is doing behind the scenes when properly configured. And beyond that, they overestimate the ergonomics of any enterprise alternative , especially ones that pre-dated SAP. For every "We had a great internal platform that we custom built" story, there are multiple "We used a small vendor's product, and it was a nightmare." Why is SAP successful? Because the general purpose too…

Having worked at companies that switched from non-SAP to SAP, I can say with confidence that this statement is false. SAP is successful because the transition is so mind-bogglingly expensive that it is impossible to admit that it was a mistake afterwards.

Re: What's SAP, and why's it worth $163B? (2020)

#385

Post by tut-urut-utut » Fri, Sep 09, 2022, 1:56 PM UTC

crubier wrote: post #204

tut-urut-utut wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With 100 mildly competent developers on staff (although not with SAP developers) a company can develop in house everything they need to run a business in a period of time that is shorter than what is needed for a typical "SAP adjustment".

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Re: What's SAP, and why's it worth $163B? (2020)

#386

Post by nradov » Fri, Sep 09, 2022, 1:56 PM UTC

tootie wrote: post #348

sotix wrote: post #310

I worked in public accounting with some major corporations as clients. Every single company I interacted with used SAP. It is the de facto software in its field and is deeply entrenched. Its UX is the most horribly wicked thing I’ve ever come across. We would conduct walkthroughs with process control owners that showed us what they would do in SAP to perform their job functions, and it would take multiple, intelligen…

This kind of thing is that gave rise to RPA as an industry.

RPA isn't usually needed with SAP. They have an API and scripting support.

Re: What's SAP, and why's it worth $163B? (2020)

#387

Post by brightball » Fri, Sep 09, 2022, 1:57 PM UTC

sotix wrote: post #310

I worked in public accounting with some major corporations as clients. Every single company I interacted with used SAP. It is the de facto software in its field and is deeply entrenched. Its UX is the most horribly wicked thing I’ve ever come across. We would conduct walkthroughs with process control owners that showed us what they would do in SAP to perform their job functions, and it would take multiple, intelligen…

20 years ago I was a grad assistant for a couple of professors who'd built a pretty incredible JIT supply chain platform. The US Army started using it to manage their uniform orders and it worked so well that two entire warehouses were torn down due to lack of use.

A new general came in and insisted on using SAP. 6 months later, they had to rebuild both warehouses.

EDIT: For some additional context, the system managed to basically eliminate the "bull whip effect" all the way down the supply chain. It's really a fascinating system. Developed by Dr. Bill Kernodle and Dr. Steve Davis from Clemson Apparel Research.

Re: What's SAP, and why's it worth $163B? (2020)

#388

Post by rossdavidh » Fri, Sep 09, 2022, 1:57 PM UTC

lqet wrote: post #171

My mother works for a fairly large textile lab. For decades, they used an internally developed system for lab reports (they had a few programmers and admins they called the "nerds" that did nothing else than extend and maintain the system). The company switched to a SAP solution a few years ago. Chaos ensued. The SAP solution missed so many edge cases that a huge number of lab reports were either inaccurate or comple…

From what I have seen and heard, this is a pretty typical result of converting to SAP.

Re: What's SAP, and why's it worth $163B? (2020)

#389

Post by cmoski » Fri, Sep 09, 2022, 1:58 PM UTC

Oh yeah I remember when they brought SAP in at my old work and no-one knew how to search for parts anymore. They distributed an Excel spreadsheet exported from the old system along with the SAP part number so we could find things.

Absolute joke of a UX/UI. And don't tell me it can't be done better. The dated, out of support one we had prior had a better UI.

Re: What's SAP, and why's it worth $163B? (2020)

#390

Post by agentultra » Fri, Sep 09, 2022, 1:59 PM UTC

sotix wrote: post #310

I worked in public accounting with some major corporations as clients. Every single company I interacted with used SAP. It is the de facto software in its field and is deeply entrenched. Its UX is the most horribly wicked thing I’ve ever come across. We would conduct walkthroughs with process control owners that showed us what they would do in SAP to perform their job functions, and it would take multiple, intelligen…

You’re right.

I used to work at a company building software that competed directly with SAP products. The IT people in our customers’ organizations were the hardest people to convince to adopt our software. The end users loved our stuff because it allowed anyone at the factory to build forms and share data. But the IT folks would always get in the way.

“Nobody got fired for choosing SAP.”

Competing with them is super hard because of that.