nitpick: $100B (now 2022), not $163B
Though the drop is not SAP specific, but broad based (tech stocks carnage, ukraine war effects).
What's SAP, and why's it worth $163B? (2020)
581–590 of 703 posts
Re: What's SAP, and why's it worth $163B? (2020)
#582Earlier 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…
Exactly right. Everyone dumps on enterprise software in general, not just SAP, but the truth is that enterprise software is hard. There are so many requirements and specific workflows that it becomes everything to everyone and thus “horrid”.
Sorry but have you actually used a SAP system. I worked at a company that spent $80m on a SAP system that was comically worse than the system that came before it. To the point that people left the business because it made their working days so unpleasurable. This same story has happened at multiple businesses I know. But it's sunk cost fallacy - once the CEO and board has endorsed spending $80m everyone's just going to pretend it's fine.
Re: What's SAP, and why's it worth $163B? (2020)
#583Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think what's often being overlooked is the complexity of the business ( or underlying processes) that SAP supports. There's this strong,yet often unsupported argument that something complex can somehow be made super simple. I work with Salesforce, which on its own approaching the complexities SAP supports, only in different areas. So we have a system,which supports a nonlinear process with tons of inputs, multiple…
While the business problems are complex, there are precious few affordances given to the humans operating SAP user interfaces and even fewer capabilities provided to integrators. Indeed, while it may void your warranty, it's often simpler to query the underlying database directly -- and many vendors do -- than to use the trash interfaces provided by the software. SAP will fall from a thousand cuts of the facade patte…
To find a project on our SAP system you had to know a code. If you did a search for the name of the project you had to put a * at the start and end of the search otherwise it would show no results. What is this the 1980s?
Now that's one simple process imagine that on every single step. SAP is worst software I've ever used.
Re: What's SAP, and why's it worth $163B? (2020)
#584Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
While SharePoint is not the best choice for many applications, it has enough features to make it work. Since there are plenty of SharePoint experts already in the organization, it could be cheaper to just leverage them to build some SharePoint site that just barely works well enough for whatever application. It would cost a lot more to bring in some consultant that knows how to setup the proper software to do whatever new thing the project needs to do along with whatever new service contracts that need to be signed and paid for to cover the software for years. Do you jump into the new software that might be better or do you just use the same old SharePoint that you've already invested heavily in? The efficiencies of both solutions are probably intangible and it would be difficult to price either of them. Eventually someone out there will be the evangelist to convince program management that the new software really is the best choice (Jira, Confluence, Teams, Salesforce, Trello, etc).
Re: What's SAP, and why's it worth $163B? (2020)
#585Earlier 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…
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.
This exact same experience at my company.
Re: What's SAP, and why's it worth $163B? (2020)
#586Earlier 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…
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.
Any attempt to completely rewrite an existing system is "mind-bogglingly expensive", this isn't exclusive to SAP.
Re: What's SAP, and why's it worth $163B? (2020)
#587I 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…
>SAP feels like one of those businesses that’s too big to fail because it’s so entrenched in the corporate world
more likely situation would be the companies stuck on SAP themselves dying and SAP eventually dying as a result of that. Obviously that's on a long term timescale, but smaller companies not burdened by legacy technologies winning is pretty much the story of modern business
Re: What's SAP, and why's it worth $163B? (2020)
#588Earlier quoted context omitted.
> SAP is sold to the C=suit, never to IT or business operations, nor any of the people that will ever come onto contact with the software. Plenty of terrible corporate software works like this. Precurement has a checklist of features, and that list never includes "Has great UX", because only the people on the floor has to use it. I'm looking at you JIRA... > SAP project often fail (this is not specific to SAP but com…
Agree 100%. The whole "management consulting" industry is rotten and all of the "Big 4/5" accounting firms suck. There are boutique consultancies that do excellent work but so many CIOs will go with Accenture et al. because of their name and perhaps because they perform their annual audits, etc. BTW, on the last point - ABAP (SAP's proprietary language) has improved a lot over the years. Variable names are no longer…
Work for a small consultancy. Our project's manager at our customer fought with others so they don't force him to get Accenture. Their argument was "when the project fails and we have taken Accenture, then it is not our fault". The project would most probably fail with Accenture..
Currently the customer is very happy with our development speed and unhappy with their Accenture project's speed
Re: What's SAP, and why's it worth $163B? (2020)
#589I 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 Most organizations have horribly convoluted organizational structures and processes, and SAP has been shaped by those customers over the years to cater to those clusterfucks. A clean, sensible ERP system can only work if the organization it serves is also sensibly organized. It is much easier (and less risky) for a company to choose an ERP…
"As the old saying goes, SAP and its customers deserves each other."
Now what does this say, about LIDL, a discounter who dumped 500 m with SAP?
https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252446965/Lidl-dumps-500...
Basically, if your buisness process match that of SAP, everything is fine, if not, good riddance. Or in the words of a former SAP manager about Lidl: “They don’t have the right level of business engagement”
Meaning they did not adapt to SAP enough.
Re: What's SAP, and why's it worth $163B? (2020)
#590The problem I have with SAP, as someone who works in a service desk environment, is that it seems universally slow to migrate/replicate to user’s devices once they’ve had it allocated. I don’t know why this is, but it’s a pattern I’ve noticed.