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What's SAP?

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Re: What's SAP?

#91
post #4

Some consultant had told "Adopting an ERP (SAP, Oracle or other) is a stronger bond than marriage". So those valuations could be strong and long term.

[deleted]

Re: What's SAP?

#92
post #70

People complaining about how user-unfriendly SAP is or how companies adapt to SAP instead of the other way around are missing the point of SAP. The point of SAP is that the module for your type of business is being implemented at the market leader in your area, because they are the only ones who can afford it. SAP will come to the market leader and put their processes into software. Then everybody else adapts to SAP…

It seems super strange to adopt the market leader’s processes. You’d think the spirit should be that you can outdo/outcompete then instead of adopting what they’re doing...

Re: What's SAP?

#93
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn’t match the quality of the rest of the article and would really benefit from some fleshing out.

I bet there were extra paragraphs but an editor went “too many words already for a webpage” or “let’s not criticise them too much”.

I also think that. They skipped making a statement about today's SAP position.

Re: What's SAP?

#94
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TBH SAP is almost required for big corporations as they usually are publicly traded companies, require external audits from BIG4(and these guys know how to get data from standard SAP models, not so much from you self-developed system) and have to report their financials in consistent way. For example Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and Google all can use SAP internally. But it would be false to state that all their business…

I would be interested to know if they are actually using SAP. These companies are so much better at software development and they are swimming in so much money that they could even implement something by themselves.

Why would they? It's none of their core business and SAP already has everything covered. Think of all the legal/financial stuff. The UI is not that important in that field, your domain expert in that area knows how to navigate stuff.

Re: What's SAP?

#95
post #51

I used to work in a research project where I went to some UX conferences in Germany (not really my field). The big irony/running gag is that SAP seems pretty good in UX-research, Hasso Plattner Institute is fairly recognized for their UX work and yet SAP-UX is a nightmare. They just can't/won't roll out new things.

Yeah, what is that about? Do you have more insights on this?

Re: What's SAP?

#96
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until you know the internals of SAP ;). They have/had an own programming language (ABAP) which is the worst combination of BASIC and SQL you could imagine. Do not know the status in 2020, 2007 it was still a combination of ABAP and Java. Interestingly, the source code of SAP is openly readable (once you have their software installed).

SAP is effectively open source, IIRC there were/still are options to install local development stacks for free... but without an army of experienced consultants it's gonna be useless for you and they won't touch a pirated/cloned system with a 10 feet pole.

open source implies license. It is "source open".

Re: What's SAP?

#97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It brought the "swim lane" mentality to my outfit. There is a "process is king" mindset where people exist to run some report or the other with a completely impenetrable abbreviation and set of unmarked mandatory fields also with no intuitive signifcance. Grab the next item on the work list, do your thing, and mark it complete. If some project asks what's required on either end or how to move their need forward, that…

> There is a "process is king" mindset where people exist to run some report or the other with a completely impenetrable abbreviation and set of unmarked mandatory fields also with no intuitive signifcance. Grab the next item on the work list, do your thing, and mark it complete. Those are birth pains as felt from inside. It's a beginning of a new sentient life; your company is acquiring its own mind. You and your co…

> Those are birth pains as felt from inside. It's a beginning of a new sentient life; your company is acquiring its own mind.

Yeah. Kind of like 'Aliens' when one bursts through a chest cavity.

Re: What's SAP?

#98
Can please a decision maker regarding SAP buying/implementing tell us how on earth SAP is that mainstream (in corporate) ?

I've had to use it at EU big corp, and it to this day the worst experience I had.

I've seen at techcrunch Berlin 2019 that there is something called SAP.io, somewhat opening its plateform ?

Re: What's SAP?

#99
Why not develop your own ERP if SAP forces one to change its processes?

AFAIK, Tesla is the only company I've heard to have done it. Would be useful to hear their experiences on this road.

Re: What's SAP?

#100
I don't know any decent CS/software engineering student that would want to work on SAP. As a result, all the SAP consultancies I know are filled with business graduates that happened to know a bit about software. I wonder how much that contributes to the SAP clusterfuck.
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