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LIDL cancels SAP introduction after spending 500M Euro

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Re: LIDL cancels SAP introduction after spending 500M Euro

#81

Post by Notre1 »

sp332 wrote: post #42
lucb1e wrote: post #22

Human translation (I should practice my German anyway): Because introducing a new data system didn't work out, the Deutsche Post (German Mail) has already booked higher losses a few years ago. The same now happened to Lidl. The planned system still doesn't work smoothly after seven years and more than half a billion euros in costs. Now, the discount store pulled the kill chord. For years, Lidl is expanding operations…

What is a high-turnover country?

I'm betting it's inventory turnover (e.g. busier stores). It sounds like they were have problems with the inventory management component of SAP keeping up with the rate and volume of transaction that they were putting through it.

Re: LIDL cancels SAP introduction after spending 500M Euro

#82

Post by lagadu »

mosselman wrote: post #12

This is so unacceptable yet happens so often. Here in the Netherlands the government has several projects that failed with costs amounting to hundreds of millions. For sums as these any Organisation can just setup a more capable development company that could handle all of the internal projects and its developers could be top of the line.

The thing is, yes you can set up a new company and make a new product from scratch whose requirements are exactly defined by you and after a few years of work they'll have a working product. Then what? You'll still be running the same software in 10 years, are you going to keep paying an entire company's worth of employees during those 10 years so they can hang out and be ready to implement all the changes you'll eventually need, to fix bugs and provide support? The costs of that would be far higher.

Most non-enterprise people don't get it (as seen in this thread where most people are only taking into consideration the cost of development): In a software suite's lifecycle, the initial implementation cost is nothing compared to the total cost until sunset.

Application lifecycle management (or product lifecycle management in a broader context) is a hugely important thing for a corporation that plans on existing for more than a couple years.

Re: LIDL cancels SAP introduction after spending 500M Euro

#83

Post by krylon »

sparkling wrote: post #54
DrinkWater wrote: post #11

SAP was, and will always stay, a mystery to me. It is ridiculously expensive and complex. I know that the problems it aims to solve are also highly complex and very specific, but reading stories like this, plus (if you live in Germany and work in the IT industry) sometimes hearing unbelievable stories from your peers, it always confuses me that companies still want so much SAP. In the late 90s/early 00s a lot of peop…

I have not yet seen a SAP software that could not be replaced with a homemade Django/Rails web app (90% CRUD) and some external API integrations to other services that may exist in the company such HR, invoicing etc. Of course, at the fraction of the the cost of the SAP solution.

The moment you touch anything related to accounting or subject to laws / regulations, stuff gets very hairy.

Re: LIDL cancels SAP introduction after spending 500M Euro

#84

Post by mieseratte »

philipodonnell wrote: post #46
pdpi wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you are getting into SAP and "adapting it to your needs" then you will almost certainly fail. This is a tricky topic. If you're getting into SAP and you're not adapting it to your needs, you're almost certainly doing something wrong. The trick is that it _has_ to be a "meet in the middle" kind of situation, where SAP wants to be used in a certain fashion, but also allows a certain amount of leeway — any non-triv…

Absolutely. The bar we always tried to hit was whether the process we were being asked to change was represented a fundamental way in which this company was intentionally different from other large companies, or whether it was just the way it was before they saw what the SAP version looked like. 90% of back-office stuff is exactly the same between very large companies no matter the industry or history, but that is ve…

> Then they can say "Yeah man, SAP sucks, soooo inflexible, I argued against it but what are you gonna do, changing it is really expensive, I guess we'll just have to do it their way" and message boards fill up with complaints about how inflexible and expensive SAP is. Funny how that works!

Scapegoat as a Service. I wonder just how common this is in practice.

Re: LIDL cancels SAP introduction after spending 500M Euro

#86

Post by netinmate »

Customization is key, you CAN't customize. I worked on an SAP implementation, a Fortune 500 company, complexity like crazy, sub-companies, of sub-companies, of sub-companies, federal, state and local compliance for what the company did, operating in 50 states, with an International supply chain, and our integrator was nothing special.

We held firm to the NO CUSTOMIZATION rule, we re-engineered our processes to fit SAP. Other than a few hiccups when integrating all aspects of a company that has 100 sub companies, and is under federal, state and local regulation the project basically went off without a hitch.

They are still taking upgrades 6 years later, without issue.

Most companies think they are unique, and special, and feel justified in needed to customize, all those companies are wrong.

Re: LIDL cancels SAP introduction after spending 500M Euro

#87

Post by rushabh »

kokey wrote: post #71
arethuza wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"you could do the same thing for 1% the cost and it'd work better etc." I used to think that - then I did some work with large scale ERP systems and realised that I was wildly wrong. Fortunately I moved into other areas while I still had some sanity.

Every few years, over the past 20 years, I look around to see if there are any open source contenders in the ERP space. There are usually a couple, but you never get to hear about them again. I think it's a difficult space to enter and succeed in and I think most efforts probably underestimate the complexity and isn't funded or run well enough to tackle that adequately.

ERPNext has been around for a decade now and doing quite well! https://github.com/frappe/erpnext.

Founder here, happy to answer questions.

Re: LIDL cancels SAP introduction after spending 500M Euro

#88

Post by philjohn »

DrinkWater wrote: post #11

SAP was, and will always stay, a mystery to me. It is ridiculously expensive and complex. I know that the problems it aims to solve are also highly complex and very specific, but reading stories like this, plus (if you live in Germany and work in the IT industry) sometimes hearing unbelievable stories from your peers, it always confuses me that companies still want so much SAP. In the late 90s/early 00s a lot of peop…

My "favourite" SAP experience was at the last company I worked at who used it for everything.

One guy who worked for me did a 4 day week - he sometimes took half a day of leave, and when he got to his last half day he could never book it, because the system was adamant he only had 0.49 days of leave remaining.

Not sure if that was bad configuration when it was implemented ... or the product being a bit ropey when something doesn't fit their model perfectly, but it stuck with me and made me forever wary.

Re: LIDL cancels SAP introduction after spending 500M Euro

#89

Post by ju-st »

mieseratte wrote: post #84
philipodonnell wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. The bar we always tried to hit was whether the process we were being asked to change was represented a fundamental way in which this company was intentionally different from other large companies, or whether it was just the way it was before they saw what the SAP version looked like. 90% of back-office stuff is exactly the same between very large companies no matter the industry or history, but that is ve…

> Then they can say "Yeah man, SAP sucks, soooo inflexible, I argued against it but what are you gonna do, changing it is really expensive, I guess we'll just have to do it their way" and message boards fill up with complaints about how inflexible and expensive SAP is. Funny how that works! Scapegoat as a Service. I wonder just how common this is in practice.

it's called strategy consulting

Re: LIDL cancels SAP introduction after spending 500M Euro

#90

Post by pmyteh »

blattimwind wrote: post #61
lucb1e wrote: post #22

Human translation (I should practice my German anyway): Because introducing a new data system didn't work out, the Deutsche Post (German Mail) has already booked higher losses a few years ago. The same now happened to Lidl. The planned system still doesn't work smoothly after seven years and more than half a billion euros in costs. Now, the discount store pulled the kill chord. For years, Lidl is expanding operations…

> pulled the kill chord. pulled the plug > For years, Lidl is expanding operations. For years, Lidl has expanded operations. > high-turnover countries high-volume or high-revenue

> > pulled the kill chord.

> pulled the plug

Kill cords are a thing (on powerboats, particularly) and the original metaphor is fine.

> > For years, Lidl is expanding operations.

> For years, Lidl has expanded operations.

'For years, Lidl has been expanding operations'. Past continuous tense is better if the expansion's still going on.

> > high-turnover countries

> high-volume or high-revenue

High-turnover is completely correct, at least in British English.

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