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...

Corporations running at the scale where SAP operates are so huge that basically nobody fully understands them or really know what they're doing (but they're also big and entrenched enough that they don't need to - inertia, institutional memory, brand awareness and existing product-market fit will do the job as long as the market doesn't radically shift from under their feet, cf. disruption). Seen through that lens it's no surprise that cargo culting is so widespread, or that huge businesses like SAP, Oracle and McKinsey can make massive profits off of essentially giving upper management in big corporations the reassurance that 'they are doing what everyone else is doing' so hopefully the good times will keep rolling.

Competitors cannot outsmart the leader in every facet of business. They creatively optimize some processes, but for the rest of the business their choices are wing it or purchase the Commercial Software solution.

Even a bleeding-edge company will hit an obstacle they cannot improvise through (like in QA or Compliance). That's when enterprise software creeps into an otherwise lean operation.

Think POs, procurement, payables, receivables, treasury and inventory management etc. Is following what Toyota does strange?

It makes getting bought by the market leader easier at least.

Yes, Its really super strange to adopt Google, Microsoft, Apple processes.. Yes?

This is like assuming that Microsoft or Google is successful because of the version control software they use, rather than because of the actual software they wrote. It may be a useful hint about good practices, but it's quite possible that it's not the best solution for you and it is certainly not THE way to be successful.

The other way to look at it is that if you truly believe your strength is your product (the software you write), you might as well not risk in other areas where you could either make a right or a wrong decision, and just standardize on every other process so you're on a level playing field. This way you lose the chance of innovating on how to do payroll more efficiently, but you focus your innovation efforts on your product (your software).

You mean like stack rating, the microservices crazy, massively parallel cluster for dealing with 1GB of data, letting an army of very competent developers to unproductive companies because all you care about is brain teasers, creating user-hostile interfaces because of "design", and other things like that?

If Google had tried hard to adopt Yahoo, it wouldn't have gone very well for them, I figure.

Apple did not use Microsofts processes to get where they are today. Neither did Google.

If you want to be better than them, then I'd say Yes.

The key is to figure out what to copy and what to innovate. This is usually captured by the idea of "core competency": figure out what your company's unique competency is, innovate in that area, and avoid trying to innovate in other areas in order to save time.

Actually yes. I saw numerous teams adopting monorepos, k8s, microservices and other buzzwords, and either suffering infinitely or putting enormous effort into dragging those to the point of sheer mediocrity. Because they are not Google and will never be.

Scale matters.

Unless your company has thousands of employees and billions in revenue, Google/Microsoft/Apple processes are probably not for you.

==Unless your company has thousands of employees and billions in revenue, Google/Microsoft/Apple processes are probably not for you.==

Then you probably don't need and shouldn't buy SAP.

Correct. Random companies cargo-culting what Google does has made half the industry massively dysfunctional e.g. in hiring processes

You say this, but I can think of two large market leading electronics corporations who are using a big pile of excel spreadsheets to bridge gaps in SAP, as the regulatory environment is moving faster than their development cycle.

I integrate into SAP for manufacturing and the users can certainly do every transaction they need to do to account for cost and shipping product and keep finance / supply chain happy.

But yes, to actually plan and run their manufacturing area, that's where the software I write comes in... as well as a ton of spreadsheets :)

As lng as the data in these spreadsheets goes back into SAP. If it doesnt' you can kill SAPs MRP. I saw that happen. Which is then kind of hell's hell. And then the spreadsheet-users complain about SAP.

Yeah - one of the outfits I mentioned had a bit of a catastrophe due to this - BOMs in SAP and XLS were different, they made a medical product (for children) that exceeded RoHS and REACH lead and mercury thresholds. They made millions of units before the mistake was realised. Oops.

Damn. That's worse than anything I saw so far... Hope nothing was actually shipped, or if it was nothing serious happened.

"If you go look at an airplane cockpit, where actual research was done into how to optimize user interfaces so that the pilot will not be confused under stress, you will see that there is a separate button for everything. There is no "shift key", no different modes. If you need to use it, there is a button for it. To someone who has not learned how to use that UI, it appears alien and unfriendly. But the the trained pilot it is the pinnacle of perfection. "

My design professor used cockpits as a example of bad UI. Grown over the years and understood only by repetive drill and not at all intuitive.

So there might have been research to better it, but I doubt there was a major redesign, or was there?

> 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...

I understand that SAP apparently delivers an insane range of good defaults, complex business transactions and covers any imaginable niche use case. That's valuable.

However why does that rule out friendly, accessable and sane UI? Excellent form design, intuitive navigation and generally things that enable efficient work without weeks of training? That seems like low hanging fruit to me. Something as boring as lists and forms can still be a joy to use if done right.

> Nobody is supposed to just wing it with SAP. You are supposed to learn how to do your transaction with SAP, and that transaction is then meant to be super efficient.

But many employees have to interact with SAP only from time to time. They're not supposed to be specialists at it, just get one action done from time to time.

Everyone in my company has to enter their hours in SAP monthly. The interface is terrible; is everyone supposed to learn how to enter a few numbers in a table once a month?

Or say there's a process I need to approve. I just need to read the attached PDF, and click I'm ok with it, maybe a couple of times a month. Where is the benefit of making me learn a complete new and arcane way of validating a task?

If you are not working for SAP SMM they should give you a call :)

You see SAP SMM effect in action – they trick IT guys into vocalizing their mantra in this exact form, since they know who their real threat is. SAP+IBM is a most powerful combo. The total price is so astronomical that IT guys who know how to manage it can have stellar salaries and still look like small happy asteroids floating around this SMBH.

I once worked for a company that uses SAP for several important business processes. The software provides great support for well defined areas like payroll, benefits, accounting and so on. It does not work well for things that are unique about the business (i.e. how it sells to- or services customers). For those things custom built software is usually a better choice.