[Closed] SAP

I'm currently in the thick of a project where SAP plays a major part. At no point have I thought "Hey, that's really good"

We use it. £multibn company, 20,000+ employees and we can't tell you what we've spent on anything from a group prospective. Total shite.

It's a classic 'modular and adaptable' type platform, in the fact that there's lots of things that it does, but none of them are quite what you want.

The only people I've met who love SAP are the ones paid to install, configure and modify it 🙂

You can't begin to imagine just how good SAP is when it becomes a public sector IT programme...... 😥

I think it depends what it's replacing - with a payroll of about 15k employees where most of the payroll system dated from the mid-90s and had to be done in Excel or on a desktop calculator, it was a definite improvement, and even the users agreed once they got used to the idea that you couldn't just key in the numbers to pay what you thought the employee should get, but had to have some backup.
Going from a more modern system, maybe not such an improvement...
Best summed up by a tutor I had once - "If you can think like the Germans do, it [i]can [/i]be a good system."

I hate it and have no idea what I'm doing when using it.

[img] [/img]

Wait till you get to play with worldwide implementations - when changes to a "minor" system variable in Schleiswig Holstien can result in whole transaction types disappearing in Hong Kong.

Mind you, oracle isn't any better either.

[i]You can't begin to imagine just how good SAP is when it becomes a public sector IT programme[/i]

I can, because I'm using it on a private sector IT programme.

We're installing it as a banking platform, and it seems to get confused by the concept of interest, which is worrying 😐

We're installing it as a banking platform, and it seems to get confused by the concept of interest, which is worrying

SAP was originally designed for manufacturers and box-shifters. Now those canny Germans are trying to take over the world. Im not surprised it gets confused by the service sector.

SAP is only as good as the implementation that configured it.

I have only used it in passing but have implemented Oracle globally for more years than I can remember. Have seen some really good jobs done but also seen some really bad ones. The key things that hinder a good implementation are:

1) Lack of involvement from the end users
2) Lack of understanding from the senior management
3) Lack of commitment from the senior management (trying to cut costs)
4) Lack of basic business processes

I am lucky as I am an accountant that also understands systems and hence can work with the end users and the developers but can also do the more tecky stuff as well.

Am lucky as I have just started a permie role that is home based.

Stupid And Pointless?

We use it at work and it gets moaned about and shouted at a lot.

I think if you use it all the time (purchasing/stock control etc.) and know the system well, then it is OK.
If you are an occasional user, it is awful to use.

The only people who 'like' SAP, other than those whose job it is to sell and implement it are the big cheeses and bean counters of multi-national corporations - it's makes un-raveling and collating various streams of data much easier. Everyone else loathes it.

Mrs Digga is a senior systems analyst for "a very big" IT firm. her experience is SAP is that the 'experts' are as batshit as the software - an example being that one of them dropped the phrase "donkey punch" (do not Google if easily offended) into a telephone conference. Mrs D was not entirely sure whether the woman (German) knew the context of the phrase or just had an unfortunately poor grasp of English colloquialisms.

"SAP is only as good as the implementation that configured it."

This.

We shift boxes and manufacture. Works well enough within the confiems of our particualar implementation.

We have a lot of customization not in standard SAP.

Yeah get Oracle...I work implementing that 🙂 Bit scared by Fusion as so much is changing but should be awesome...

SAP is only as good as the implementation that configured it.

+ loads.

I've got a SAP background. I've been at two companies where it was very popular with the people actually using it because it allowed them to see what was happening, cut down on admin and to see problems as they were happening and to generate their reports/KPIs/etc automatically. I also know several others where that's the case via people I've worked with.

I also know of many more where it's hugely unpopular. Almost always it's where the business have decided that they know best and have cut the implementation or support budget or made stupid decisions to implement parts of it but not others which then makes it horrible.

Basically it's like bikes. You could get all the best components together and build a horrible bike if they aren't well suited to eachother (think building a CX frame with DH components and road wheels for example.

reconciling purchases.

all scientific equipment and chemicals have to go under 'miscellaneous'

there's about 20 options just for pens.

we're a university.

That's config though. And probably poor testing or testing feedback. You could set up new categories other than 'miscellaneous'. You could also remove the 19 unnecessary pen options.

As I said, it's down to how it's been implemented. You could get a consultant in to make the changes above in less than an hour most likely (though if all 20 pen categories have actually been used it may make that harder now)

it's adminosphere bullshit. a way to dump work onto the people who are supposed to be supported.

I'm not a fan.

rhid - Member
I hate it and have no idea what I'm doing when using it.

+1

For a double whammy of crapness 'integrate' SAP with Teamcenter.

It does a few things well but yes, 90% of the time it is shite. Possibly the most un-intuitive software I have ever had to use.

For a double whammy of crapness 'integrate' SAP with Teamcenter.

And yet, I've seen that work well...

Stupid And Pointless?

I'm getting used to it and can use it for what I need, but it's pretty much horrible.

I recall us being very impressed when it was put in

To be fair that's largely because it's precursor was an early nineties HP developed custom logistics solution... Now THAT was unintuitive!

OK, I'll explain how bad implementations that most of you are experiencing go.

1. Company decides it needs new ERP to improve its profitability/efficiency/because it wants something new and shiny.

2. Company gets quotes. SAP (or a third party really) provide a quote, explaining what it'll do and tell them that SAP is not the cheap option but that it does deliver benefits beyond what other ERPs will

3. Company chooses SAP but company either:
- doesn't commit good staff to the project
- doesn't let good staff spend enough time on the project
- goes against the advice of people who know SAP and cuts corners/insist on specs that don't make sense
- won't fix broken, existing business processes and instead tries to make SAP work how they want it to even if that makes no sense
- decides half way through that they actually can't afford all the things they said they need and cuts the budget/scope

End results - users hate it and it doesn't do what it's supposed to. Or at least not as well and users blame 'SAP' for being crap.

[i]OK, I'll explain how bad implementations that most of you are experiencing go.

1. Company decides it needs new ERP to improve its profitability/efficiency/because it wants something new and shiny.

2. Company gets quotes. SAP (or a third party really) provide a quote, explaining what it'll do and tell them that SAP is not the cheap option but that it does deliver benefits beyond what other ERPs will

3. Company chooses SAP

4. Implementation starts. Company either: [/i]

We have to pay a consultant for the rest of the post?

Select Another Package

Sorry 🙂 Hit enter too soon, was editing...

Configuration (consultancy) budget is often what's cut in part 3 which leads to problems...

So, which ERPs do people think are universally popular out of interest? I've heard horror stories about them all which really comes back to my point that it's not down to the ERP but rather the implementation.

Of course, maybe some companies are missold how hard it will be to implement an ERP which would certainly cause problems but IME, that's not the main cause.

Its the most unintuative pile of cr*p I've every used. How SAP is as successful as it is is a mystery. I can only suppose the competition is even worse.

I'd be really interested (geek!) to hear specific issues.

I do actually agree that sometimes SAP isn't intuitive - they still rather arrogantly insist on their GUI not conforming to the unofficial standard for how MS type things work but really, people get past that pretty quickly IME. Most of the issues I hear are that they need to do multiple transactions with too many options to do simple tasks (though they're multiple transactions because some companies do need all the steps). Of course that's quite simple to manage but companies often cut this bit.

We have the joy of working with Maximo mostly, sometimes SAP. If I'm honest I try to stay as far away from both as possible as they make life a misery.

Setup right there is not much better. When badly implemented being used by badly trained (or motivated) staff it is a pita.

if SAP was a person, i can't imagine getting bored of doing awful things to that person.

(i'd start off with a small hammer, and break some fingers. then i'd get a cheesegrater and... i should probably stop typing now)

in that way, it's like Tony Blair.

nemesis - Member

I'd be really interested (geek!) to hear specific issues.

for a start, right now, i can't log on.

some shit about "SSO logon not possible; browser logon ticket cannot be accepted"

Are our servers just slow or does it just take ages to do anything?
There are some transactions I do tens of times a day and a couple of times a week it'll want more parameters inserting. No logical reason, just randomly decides it particularly wants me to throw things at the computer at that specific time.

SAP HR person here - have to say I like it.
Not found anything it can't do which we want it to.

For the people not liking it... Maybe it's user error 😀

some shit about "SSO logon not possible; browser logon ticket cannot be accepted"

That sounds like an issue with your windows side of things rather than SAP. Basically SAP can't confirm with windows that your login details are right.

Are our servers just slow or does it just take ages to do anything?

Response time for most transactions should be under a second except maybe at really busy times (eg month end reporting) or when running reports.

a couple of times a week it'll want more parameters inserting

That's a new one on me 🙂 Best guess would be that there's some sort of cache clean up in your systems that's causing it to lose your default/previously entered values - are you using the SAP program or using it through a browser?

One suggestion is that you can set parameters in your user preferences so for example it always defaults in a certain plant.

As said countless times they key to SAP is it's implimentation. And it's really hard to impliment well. All huge ERPs are hard to impliment well.

This is becuase IT people don't understand the business and business people are really crap at helping them understand. But conversley the business doesn't know how SAP works and SAP are really, really bad at helping you understand how the thing hangs togther.

The key to a good SAP implimentation is people who understand both and have authority to make decisions on the implimentation. These people need to be able to understand the objective of the business process so they can make a judgement on how to configure SAP to match and when the business process can be changed to meet the same objective but in a more SAP way. SAP has a millions ways to do everything, the skill is picking the right one.

I like SAP and I didn't choose it and don't impliment it. I do make decisions about how it is implimented.

The irony is that we dropped OS/360 hosted products (not sure what exactly) for SAP globally in order to standardise and use standard off the shelf products that didn't need extensive customisation.

Well, that ended well. We now just have legions of developers with different skills, and are only tied in to one vendor. Well, maybe a few, some bits would need a bit of head scratching to change now.

To be fair the near death of the batch processing and the instant results in some uses do seem a bit like magic, even if the presentation layer is a bit ... austere...

However I'm lead to believe the cost saving and flexibility of moving to x86 virtualised hosting of the infrastructure made it worthwhile.. having seen what it moved too I can only assume we nearly owned IBM beforehand if this is a saving.

No one ever accused SAP of being pretty 🙂 You should have seen old R2 green screen...

Maybe they should offer a comic sans patch 🙂

I was involved SAP implementation in Finance for a very large FTSE 100 company, developing a bespoke solution, that was then used as the basis for the SAP that everyone else buys. We had a whole bunch of SAP techys working on site for about a year, and to be fair between us all a great solution was developed

Some years ago I worked for a company that ran SAP and was 'trained' along with the rest of our team as part of our 'integration' into the European operation, shortly before I left.
It is/was supposed to be one of the better CRM packages.
We had two sayings for what SAP stood for 'Sod all progress' or 'Select and Pray'.

While trying to see if you actually can get comic sans on SAP, I found this. SAP geek joke 🙂

[img] [/img]

nemesis - Member

...sounds like an issue with your windows side of things rather than SAP. Basically SAP can't confirm with windows that your login details are right.

my login details haven't changed in 7 years - but there's a problem now?

No but there's probably an issue with the link between SAP and windows (well, AD).

Mind you, no password changes in 7 years is pretty poor practice from your IT guys...

I work with SAP BI reporting a lot and love it. The amount of detailed data that is available is leagues ahead of the systems we had before it.

That data has to come from somewhere and it is the people who process orders, move stock etc who feel the pain as everything takes so much longer.

It doesn't necessarily have to though. This comes back to the implementation or ongoing support but a small amount of work and create custom transactions to bundle together several others (eg multiple movements) or to reduce the complexity of screens (screen variants).

Problem is people usually don't realise that it can be done and don't know to ask. Or the company won't invest and relatively small amount in order to save a lot of work.

SAP falls into the same mirky pool as Citrix.

@nemesis, you seem like a knowledgable fellow.

Can you point me to a (free) website that describes (in English) what particular SAP table are meant to do and how they relate to each other?

If I have a table name, www.se80.co.uk will tell me the table name and the fields it contains but it doesn't realy explain waht the table is meant to hold or do.

JDEdwards works well (a competitor to SAP although I don't know if it scales up at the very high end).

Prev company I worked at implemented it.
Firstly they tried to fit the implementation to a timeframe and budget - didn't go so well..
Pushed out the time frame - got a bigger budget - listen to managers and end users. Even listened to the consultants. My god is that user centric design is see before me?
Lots users involved in testing, user lead training and all the good stuff mentioned by some wise people here.

So.. took longer, cost more but now everyone is singing its praises..(all except the bean counters..). Successful imp and software depending on how you measure it.

The real test is how quickly users stop saying 'Well in the old system'.
Took less than a week - seriously.

I'm sure if SAP was chosen the same thing would have happened.

Well personally I hate SAP and think it's crap, and of course that's nothing to do with the fact that I run an Oracle practice in a large consultancy firm! We even have an SAP practice too, but I hate them as well.

Seriously though, there is nothing wrong with the SAP or Oracle ERP systems themselves but a lot of the implementations are very poor indeed.

JDEdwards works well (a competitor to SAP although I don't know if it scales up at the very high end).

Owned by Oracle now and effectively dead as a product line. Same with Peoplesoft.

I think you will find NAV and Oracle are both crap. Dynamics NAV is where it's at. This has nothing to do with me working for a NAV reseller.

We used to have a Dynamics practice but gave it away to another part of our group as we didn't want anyone to think we were that low rent.

Owned by Oracle now and effectively dead as a product line. Same with Peoplesoft.

Probably...

The only spanner in the works there is JDE's green screen product only runs on AS400 and IBM is not really to give up that revenue stream just yet.

Green screen. The good old days!

It could be worse.... you could have an IFS 'solution'

Luckily, the firm I work for is investigating moving ERP systems.... I've actually got my fingers crossed for SAP (having used it before)

Hey - lets not forget that there are probably very few off the shelf business software packages that do most things a normal business do that can scale up to 1000's and 1000's of users.

SAP? Oracle? what else?

I'm sure MS Dynamics will get there oneday (much like SQL Server and their VM offering) but it will take a few years.

Green screen. The good old days!

Unless you are a mouse salesman.

Can you point me to a (free) website that describes (in English) what particular SAP table are meant to do and how they relate to each other?

No. that's what keeps those of us who know that information in work 🙂 I am being a little flippant but it's true - I am always surprised that there isn't more documentation around it. Mind you I could probably tell you most of them if you have some specifics.

And to give a more technical answer, part of the issue is that just because you know VBAK links to VBAP, VBRP VBEP, VBFA etc doesn't mean that you actually understand the full structure of the data to generate reports (that are consistently accurate - most of it is fairly simple) which will vary depending on some parameters - eg order types, status, etc.

I've been administrating SAP Business One for 8 years now, implementation and support is key. This is the reason why I have learnt so much because support was pretty rubbish from our SAP partner. The stuff I've managed to achieve with it has been a massive benefit to the business (not that I get any recognition for that) and yes although people have questioned how it does things in the end it always seem to be that the Germans have decided on the best way to do things after all.

And that's key. Any decent company pitching SAP will explain that you should expect to redesign your business processes (at least at a high level) to match SAP rather than try and do it the other way around - SAP processes follows best practice anyway IME. Problems often arise in that the company commits to SAP and then once the implementation starts, people/depts refuse to change and SAP then has to be frigged to work which causes the types of issues mentioned - or the company has to spend a lot to develop their own solution.

SAP is certainly not perfect - there are bits of it I hate - but in general as I've said, if done properly from both the business and IT side, it's a brilliant product and can make real differences to how effectively a business runs.

[i]"SAP is only as good as the implementation that configured it."[/i]

this +1

No different to any other package/ERP.

No. that's what keeps those of us who know that information in work

Oh well, it was worh a try 🙂

SAP - More tables than a Lyons tea house, and never knowingly under-engineered.

Absolutely and that's the root of this discussion - it can do loads of things, it has 1000s of options so that it suits almost everyone ONCE CONFIGURED PROPERLY.

That does of course mean it is hugely complex behind the scenes though (IIRC it's around 200k tables). As I said though within reason, happy to help with your tables if you have any questions.

I have a suspicion that SAP wasn't developed by the Germans at all. It was a bunch of Italians pretending to be German. It has a thin veneer or ruthless efficiency over a massive pile of impenetrable bureaucracy.

You could get a consultant in to make the changes above in less than an hour most likely (though if all 20 pen categories have actually been used it may make that harder now)

Should you need a consultant to do that kind of thing?

Sounds to me like that might be part of SAP's problem...

SAP don't sell themselves as the cheap solution, just the best 🙂

I take your point and actually many companies would have people that could do all this work pretty easily but many others refuse to invest in them and as such are reliant on contractors...

Not to mention that given the impact of poor configuration on comapanies' business (financial blackhole anyone?!), it makes sense not to allow it to be too open or easy to modify.