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

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

#521

Post by mixmastamyk »

jerf wrote: post #430
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…

"I feel there is a lot of room to develop better tools that are not so horrid" Probably not. SAP is an everything-to-everyone product. Using Fred Brook's terminology for essential versus accidental, the problem with everything boxes is that even just the essential complexity of such a product is so insanely large that they are sufficient to produce a "horrid" product. Of course they don't have just the essential comp…

Yes. Reminds me of the ol' classic, "Things You Should Never Do, Part I" by Joel.

However, I do believe a (slightly) better competitor could be created, with better technology, better workflow, etc. If well-capitalized. If it had well-factored plugins. If you had a top-notch team to design all that and then build it.

That's a lot of ifs. Joel says it isn't guaranteed a brand new team will even do better than the old on the essential angle. It's risky and costly enough to prevent it from happening.

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

#522

Post by WastingMyTime89 »

tenebrisalietum wrote: post #357
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…

I feel like I see SAP in a US company anytime it has major business units outside of the US. I know Walmart and Honeywell use it, and they both are multinational. I have always wondered: Does SAP do something better for international finance/etc. than others or is it just an accepted standard?

> Does SAP do something better for international finance/etc. than others or is it just an accepted standard?

Yes, it does it correctly for tax purposes everywhere and can be used in a way which conforms with how these companies want to do their accountings for shareholders reporting. Also it used by so many companies that every niche thing you want to do has probably already been done.

The people here complaining about the UX for reporting their hours just have no idea of the mind boggling complexity of the problem space. There is a reason everyone use SAP and it’s not because it’s bad.

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

#525

Post by psidium »

patja wrote: post #452
tristor wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sad thing is that Concur used to be great. It was acquired by SAP and then "SAPified", now it's a nightmare. But it does /exactly/ what the bean counters want, which is to mindlessly and stupidly apply policies against business travelers who are just trying to get their job done.

the funny thing about Concur is its origin was the internal expense reporting front end that Microsoft had built on top of their own SAP implementation.

wait do you have more info on that or a link? never heard of it

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

#526

Post by musiciangames »

cm2187 wrote: post #11
JetAlone wrote: post #5

You can copy off my homework, but just this once 1) They do Enterprise Resources Planning. 2) Because ERP is immensely complicated, and encompasses features that would be useful for almost anyone coordinating any organization, and ERP systems are really hard to change, so they have acquired a user base with lots of zeroes and a thick moat to keep them in.

Though they have many competitors. A consultant who works on integrating SAP told me once that what gave them a competitive edge is that they let 3rd party consultants integrate SAP while others insist on in house consultants. That means that 3rd party consultant have a clear preference when it is time to advise the client on which system they should pick. That was 20y ago, not sure if it is still the case.

Don't know if it's still the same, but I suspect it will be - another insidious part of the 3rd party consultant relationship is (was) that customers would hire one of the big 5 to help them evaluate and select ERP systems. And that consultancy would also be in a consortium with one of the suppliers (usually SAP), to do the implementation. Isn't that a conflict of interest you would ask? Oh no, the two parts of the consultancy are behind strict Chinese walls, and the evaluation was strictly independent of the bid team. But surprisingly, the vendor they were in bed with always won the contract. As a sales rep with Oracle, I declined to bid on a project. I offered the CFO to write the name of the winning consortium in a sealed envelope, that he could open when the selection was announced.

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

#527

Post by ihaveajob »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #521
jerf wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I feel there is a lot of room to develop better tools that are not so horrid" Probably not. SAP is an everything-to-everyone product. Using Fred Brook's terminology for essential versus accidental, the problem with everything boxes is that even just the essential complexity of such a product is so insanely large that they are sufficient to produce a "horrid" product. Of course they don't have just the essential comp…

Yes. Reminds me of the ol' classic, "Things You Should Never Do, Part I" by Joel. However, I do believe a (slightly) better competitor could be created, with better technology, better workflow, etc. If well-capitalized. If it had well-factored plugins. If you had a top-notch team to design all that and then build it. That's a lot of ifs . Joel says it isn't guaranteed a brand new team will even do better than the old…

Good read, thanks!

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-...

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

#528

Post by briandear »

derefr wrote: post #479
jonhohle wrote: post #449

Earlier 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…

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…

Zero based budgeting is the answer. But nobody wants to do it.

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

#529

Post by jupp0r »

mardifoufs wrote: post #405
brightball wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'd have thought that the US army would be using its own solution, or at least an American one. Using a foreign made platform to handle such a critical aspect of your military (logistics) sounds a bit weird. Not that I think that those risks, if they even exist, haven't been thoroughly evaluated by tons of experts in the army!

Gun barrels for the army’s main battle tank are also made in Germany. It’s a close ally. I’d worry more about other countries.

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

#530

Post by robocat »

endtime wrote: post #502
DubiousPusher wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Then the inventive is to add $50million of unnecessary budget one year, and cut $50million the next year to get the EOY bonus.

The same dynamic can occur with hedge funds, where the incentive is to increase variance (because high volatility pays the fund managers a lot more on average) or increase risk (example swing for the fences if underwater).

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