SAP, and many competing products from companies such as Oracle, are frameworks and programming languages, although not very good ones, sold to customers as if they were applications. You need just as many people to "customize" (actually 'program') after you convert to SAP, as they needed before, but now they have the illusion of using a standard application.
What's SAP, and why's it worth $163B? (2020)
391–400 of 703 posts
Re: What's SAP, and why's it worth $163B? (2020)
#392I 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 manage…
Are there any documents supporting this? I ask because I am curious what official documents exist around this idea of mandated return to inefficiency -- there must've been a gain elsewhere (or is that too optimistic)? Plus there must be costs documented associated with the first and second program. Genuinely curious about this type of decision (call it "inefficiency thrash"?).
Re: What's SAP, and why's it worth $163B? (2020)
#393Earlier quoted context omitted.
I always wondered, why wouldn't an in-house developed lean, ERP system would not trump a behemoth like SAP. A few reasons seem plausible. - No one gets fired for hiring SAP - Getting an in-house software developer team that can develop an easily extensible / modifiable ERP system is neigh impossible It is one of my dream to build an alternative ERP system. But it looks like sub-ERP functions (payroll, HR, etc) have b…
I recall that Tesla built own ERP in-house
SpaceX as well. I believe they both use the same internal system that Tesla built.
Re: What's SAP, and why's it worth $163B? (2020)
#394Earlier 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…
>Why is SAP successful? Because the general purpose tools (or worse, amalgamations of multiple single-purpose tools) that came before were absolute shit, and SAP is instead only difficult to use.
The people who are hurt by it are not the people deciding to buy it.
SAP looks great for Csuite executives when it produces reports. For an engineer trying to enter their hours it's an hours long torture session every two weeks.
Re: What's SAP, and why's it worth $163B? (2020)
#395Re: What's SAP, and why's it worth $163B? (2020)
#396"Everyone" is on SAP or Oracle. And yet... They send you PDF invoices with no consistent formatting. There's never a decent way to get an electronic invoice. Any electronic files you do get, such as lists of invoices, are in a completely different format from all the others. There's no way to place an electronic order without using their website (manually or by scraping) At best, stuff comes by email. Often, you get…
My biggest frustration as a small business. Each month you need to deep dive in website of every service you use to find your invoice. Big company like Facebook and Google need 20 click to find your invoice. No way to automate this. I dream about a standard or a service that just collect all invoice on your google drive/dropbox.
Re: What's SAP, and why's it worth $163B? (2020)
#397Earlier quoted context omitted.
The thing with an SAP introduction is that one has to analyze and understand how the business actually works to adapt the system to it. However in reality nobody really knows. There is a general idea, hopefully, but over time there are more and more shortcuts and side processes and things. Unless you analyze them an introduction of any new business software (be it SAP or Oracle or whatever) will fail. Whether it is w…
>It will certainly demotivate many employees who are used to the old way In my experience, what demotivate them is that a lot of the features in the marketing materials for these types of products are lies and they are filled with bugs. The executive who chose the product typically don't use it so they think it's a great tool. When you report major problems or workflows that makes no sense, they brush it off like it'…
I'm one of those employees and it just makes my life miserable. To the point I want to quit.
It's been one year of this BS and it's clear no one cares or listens to our complains, so we just pretend to work and execs are angry because of KPIs, clients complain, etc.
But seriously, we can't do it anymore. Their idea is that with this new software everything will be taken care automatically and so they won't have to educate employees anymore and technical knowledge will no longer be needed, and we'll become you regular brainless contact center but magically better because we have such good software!
I hope I can get out soon.
Re: What's SAP, and why's it worth $163B? (2020)
#398I 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…
The risk alone from a company switching ERP systems, or switching versions of the same ERP, is well documented in the press. Companies have lost tens to hundreds of millions on failed projects. So the pain points to switch to another platform must be so great even to think about going down this road. Like all ERP software, cost to implement is 2x - 3x the cost of the software.
https://www.thirdstage-consulting.com/the-biggest-erp-failur...
Larry Ellison had a famous quote from some Oracle ERP event where he chucked every Oracle ERP consultant under the buss by saying: "It doesn't do everything you want, but it does everything your business needs". He was referring to custom workflows business take on which require massive customizations of ERP platforms, increased consulting costs and a painfully hard upgrade process.
Re: What's SAP, and why's it worth $163B? (2020)
#399I'm glad I'm seeing some SAP post on HN frontpage. Why? When my sister started to working at SAP working on documentation, I had to look at some of those. I noticed something like SAPUI5 and thought: hey, this looks pretty modern and nice and something that competes with Microsoft offerings! https://sapui5.hana.ondemand.com/#/topic/8b49fc198bf04b2d980... Then I see them documenting/pushing people in CI/CD direction (…
SAP targets ERP, and basically nothing else. You will never[1] see SAP HANA used outside of a SAP deployment, even though it is a general purpose in-memory database with some nice features. Similarly, you never see SAP ABAP used outside of a SAP deployment. Microsoft targets the most generic use-cases possible, even more so than, say, Linux. You can do anything[2] with Windows, SQL Server, ASP.NET, Azure, etc... [1]…
I have 'one' exception to that. I worked with a medical data analysis company that had implemented SAP HANA as a data warehouse/analysis platform for tons of treatment records.
My task was replacing it with Spark/S3 :P
Re: What's SAP, and why's it worth $163B? (2020)
#400"The definition of successful SAP migration is one where the company remains solvent."
The company I work for maintains and has built some custom ERP solutions. While we've never dealt with SAP directly, almost universally the mindset of the IT departments at these businesses is that they are the last defence against the dark forces of SAP.
ERP migration is a terrifying thing and they seem to fall into the same pattern every time. Company has their way (workflows, processes, strategies, philosophies) of doing things. New ERP consultant promises the tool will adapt. Company spends $50M with consultant and product trying to make the tool adapt. Pain loop of "Well, it can't really do X like we said, but we can make it do Y which is close!". Company either a) bends to the opinionated process of New ERP, b) cuts their losses and runs, c) spends years and millions more trying to fight the opinionated process and then cuts their losses and runs, and/or d) goes bankrupt.
It seems to me that the only way to do this right is to spend as much time as it takes nailing down your processes and workflows, being honest with your company about what you need to change, what you want to change, and what can functionally change. Then use the broadest technology possible and create a custom solution. I feel like there's room for a broad business logic framework/library.