Why did the author’s name disappeared from the article and instead now it just says “Retool Team”?
What's SAP, and why's it worth $163B? (2020)
501–510 of 703 posts
Re: What's SAP, and why's it worth $163B? (2020)
#502Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seems to me that the actual "lower the budget if nobody uses it" part works just fine — the problem is that the people affected by it are aware of it and form a feedback loop with it (i.e. "the measure becomes the target.") If you could hide the budgeting effects from anyone with the ability to 1. start projects or 2. add scope to projects, then it seems like it'd work out just fine. (Of course, actually doing that w…
This is a trust problem. Trust problems don't usually get better when you start hiding more shit. Isn't the real solution to make organizations feel confident that they can let unused funding go because they can get it back in the future if they need it?
It seems more like an incentive problem. I'd be interested to see what happens if you give the deciders X% of any unused budget as an EOY bonus.
Re: What's SAP, and why's it worth $163B? (2020)
#503Check out www.recurrency.com
Re: What's SAP, and why's it worth $163B? (2020)
#504My SAP experience in a nutshell (working for two large organization who has deeply entrenched SAP software)
1. It is extremely challenging to integrate with. Your basic option is to overhaul your existing software to at least match the available integration options.
2. It requires constant care. SAP Expert Consultants hired by the companies initially for two years, which was supposed to be the timeline when SAP would have been fully adopted (and turned over), still works as the complexity and evolution of updating the software itself is tantamount to a new system adoption.
3. Users (Majority I would say) hate it. The only reason they live up with it is because someone higher up the decision and authority chain imposed the software after being sold to the premise that it is a game changer to the organization.
Re: What's SAP, and why's it worth $163B? (2020)
#505Earlier 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…
>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 we…
You do onow that SAP does much more than booking your hours on a project, yes?
Re: What's SAP, and why's it worth $163B? (2020)
#506I am an SAP developer since kind of forever, my first job after university (since 2009). First I hated it, but the deeper I am entrenched, the more I see why you choose SAP: Because there really is no alternative. The data model is so complex because it is growing iteratively since the 80s. Hacker News is valuing businesses that adjust to the customer instead of going for some kind of purity. Another complexity espec…
After participating in the hiring of an SAP developer I realized -- financially speaking, anyway -- that I picked the wrong thing to specialize in. The first time we brought in someone truly experienced in SAP development, we paid him more than any other developer on staff[0]. I appreciate the different take on SAP. Can I ask -- is it still as lucrative to be an SAP developer? [0] This was a global multi-national tel…
Depends what you're comparing it to. Even in Germany it's a niche skill set, that has a higher payment than the average Java guy, but with enough skills you can get paid the same for any specialization, e.g. security, cloud-computing. I changed to solution architect recently, which is a bit removed from SAP work itself.
Re: What's SAP, and why's it worth $163B? (2020)
#507Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, I can't see any better argument against contracting an ERP package. This is exactly true, and those 3-5 way more expensive new developers you are hiring through a 3rd party won't create anything better than the original one that knew your company. (They are not temporary either, because the duration of the ERP project is forever.)
And the alternative to an ERP in an manufacturing environment is what exactly, in your opinion?
The alternative to an ERP package is creating software that manages it.
Re: What's SAP, and why's it worth $163B? (2020)
#508I 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…
I left SAP 1 year ago, they just try to add every option to their software and keep maintaining 25 years old applications that are still used by some companies. This is why their software is super bloated and a small and simple task takes so many steps to achieve. Now they are migrating to the cloud, and loosing customers as they push them off their on prem s0lutions Clayton Christensen has some nice youtubes about d…
It sounds crazy and there are some good points here regarding the difficulty of moving from SAP solutions to alternatives, but there is a lot going on and I agree that they are not as invincible as they pretend to be.
Customers are growing increasingly frustrated, the company has dipped its toe into political agendas and they regularly get lit up on Twitter as a result, and Bloomberg has targeted them due to questionable moral practices (most recently, silencing rape victims).
SAP is more concerned with protecting their reputation than actually developing quality software. Sooner or later that is going to catch up with them. They are constantly playing damage control. It's only a matter of time before more and more comes out (and there is plenty to come out).
Re: What's SAP, and why's it worth $163B? (2020)
#509I remember when the company I worked for, switched to SAP. It was a huge pain, and a lot of folks lost their jobs, or had their duties drastically changed.
In our case, it was, basically a "success." I don't think that our customers saw too much of a change. I have heard nightmare stories of organizations, basically grinding to a halt, for months (I think HP lost about $400M when they switched).
It did result in the company hiring a bunch of programmers. Most were women, and they drove nice cars.
Re: What's SAP, and why's it worth $163B? (2020)
#510Earlier quoted context omitted.
The government funding mechanism doesn’t incentivize cost optimization, and in my experience, does the opposite. Money is allocated to be spent and if not spent is “lost” and may be cut from subsequent budget years. This leads to massive end of year purchases to use remaining funds or starting unnecessary projects just because money was allocated, regardless of whether needs have changed. It’s a really broken system…
That problem isn’t unique to government. most sufficiently large public companies do the same thing.
Sharepoint is similarly entrenched at DOE when I worked with them in 2009. Any project that gets a bid contract can't say specifically that it must use Sharepoint, but the requirements will be written in such a way that Sharepoint is literally the only system that fits all of them.