as data monitoring tools?

I’ve a mate who’s a SAP consultant, I can possibly ask him to field any specific questions (so long as you’re not in any hurry).

cheers cougar – may well be in touch soon

I’m an SAP project manager (which means that I know nothing about SAP, but know lots of people who do…)

What can you tell me about a SAP project then oddjob?

What do you need to know?

I am sat here with 4 SAP and 2 APO screens open with a BW report running in the background?

There is a team of SAP consultants sat 200m from me as well.

Can you tell me why the SAP system we have to use in work is so rubbish?

I know lots about SAP – what do you want to know?

aracer – probably because when it was installed, the people at your company decided that they knew best and went against all the advice that makes it work best… SAP here is great 😉

S -Slow
A -And
P -Painful
in the three companies I worked for who used it.

Yeah, it can definitely be awful…

Just like a badly set up bike really, come to think of it.

“aracer – Member
Can you tell me why the SAP system we have to use in work is so rubbish? “

SAP in general works well and quickly here, but then our implemenation was several years in the design, developement and testing stages before it went live.

Good point clubber.

SAP is just like anything else, implement a bad design and it will work poorly.

To extend the analogy further, Installing SAP is like being given a box with all the top of the range components to build up a brilliant bike.

Some people would build it up properly, as advised by experts and properly adjusted to suit them. It’d take a little more time to build and they may have to accept some suggestions from the experts that they’d have not initially gone for but in the end they’d love riding the bike.

Other people would decide they knew best and end up with a bike with the forks on backwards, gears set up incorrectly, brakes not properly bled, the chain too short and the suspension set up incorrectly. The bike would be crap to ride.

To be fair, that’s not specific to SAP.

I deal with, day to day, people going “oh, $product is rubbish” and when I investigate it turns out to have been installed by a gibbon who thinks that a server install amounts to “insert the CD and keep clicking ‘next’ until it’s done.” A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

Absolutely, I just think that because SAP has a huge amount of functionality/options/modules, if you don’t spend the time getting it right it’s particularly bad when compared to simpler products.

SAP is ace.

Unfortunately a lot of companies refuse to believe that it is ace and want to change stuff that they think should be “how we’ve always done it here” and then it becomes significantly less ace.

As the above stated, it’s like taking and XTR group set and deciding you can improve it by changing little bits here and there.

Gues what? you can’t.

SAP is god-awful, soul destroying waste of money.

That’s quite a sweeping statement. Care to expand on it? I’ll bet that your company is a good example of exactly what I posted above.

our install was by SAP AG. its for a nationwide scientific research institute.

reports, effort logging, apprsials, meetings, ordering supplies – on every level people agree its a bag of shite, apart from the department who are responsible for it, strangely enough.

Part of the problem is that what SAP does is rather dull. I can’t imagine that many people who use SAP on a day to day basis really love what they are doing with their time whether is it ordering goods, paying invoices or managing their payroll. However, given what it is capable of doing (ie running global companies from one end to the other) it is pretty amazing and there isn’t much that can touch it really (Oracle being the only real competitor).

It can be badly set up, badly used and badly managed, but what it is able to do is incredible it just isn’t all that much fun for mose of the users if the truth be told.

Just because it’s installed by SAP, doesn’t mean that your company didn’t insist on set ups that were crap or simply didn’t take the time/spend the money to make it suit your business.

I’d be interested to know what’s specifically ‘shite’ about it though rather than just generalising. I could get any number of our users here to claim exactly the opposite you see…

I’m about to go and work at a SAP conference

I know nothing about SAP though apart from the fact that it’s tools for harvesting social networking sites and linking the information into personnel/other databases is somewhat disturbing.

Haven’t heard about that functionality 🙂 Sounds interesting/scary… Part of the HR module I guess.

it’s a prototype extension of this http://www.sapweb20.com/blog/2009/03/sap-enterprise-social-networking-prototype/

not sure how far in they’ve got though, it was kind of speculation last time i saw them talk about it.

I’m an Oracle consultant; having great problems with a client who ignored our advice regarding hardware and is now complaining about performance. Not a lot we can do other than get them to add CPUs which they can’t do at the moment.

I had the same situation at my previous company when upgrading from SAP R2 to R3. SAP advised 12 servers, the company’s management decided to go with 6 against the recommendation of the IT people. We went live, it was too slow, they got 3 more servers in at emergency speed which cost more than it would have to have gone with the original recommendation 🙄

SAP is god-awful, soul destroying waste of money.

I’m willing to bet you could easily save 10% off the wage bill where I work by doing away with SAP. For a start, you’d be able to get rid of the support team, and the constant need for external ‘consultants’, and that’s before the time each and every one of us here has to waste to differing levels fighting with it. The ones who are more senior (and get paid more) get to waste even more time, costing even more money

Oh, and we’re not a small organisation – about 4000 of us work here

Sure, I guess it has some useful features, but why the **** is it so bloody slow and cumbersome?

I’m willing to bet you could easily save 10% off the wage bill where I work by doing away with SAP

So what processes does SAP cover? Are you suggesting you’d do them all manually instead?

that’s before the time each and every one of us here has to waste to differing levels fighting with it

Examples again, please.

why the **** is it so bloody slow and cumbersome

Likely for the reasons stated earlier.

MMW, what is it you do then? Sounds something along the lines of my profession.

(of course, I do know of your encyclopaedic knowledge of the dark peak)

our install was by SAP AG. its for a nationwide scientific research institute.

reports, effort logging, apprsials, meetings, ordering supplies – on every level people agree its a bag of shite, apart from the department who are responsible for it, strangely enough.
I reckon I could have a good guess who you work for, bigrich 😉

our install was by SAP AG. its for a nationwide scientific research institute.

reports, effort logging, apprsials, meetings, ordering supplies – on every level people agree its a bag of shite, apart from the department who are responsible for it, strangely enough.

Dunno who installed ours, but yes, it allegedly does all those things for us too – very badly.

So, are you at, CEH bigrich?