Basically SAP is a large database/software package that runs all aspects of your business. From accounting to billing. Your business probably needs to change a lot if you’re going to use it. When I did a time card application for a big company we interfaced our app with a backend some sap engineers made available to us.

I have no idea how it works, but apparently it does.. sometimes…

https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252435884/Chances-of-suc...

> that runs all aspects of your business.

i think this is under-emphasized for people unfamiliar with them.

I think SAP and related modules are "solidified business processes", and their consultants and sales persuade your CxO level people that switching business processes will improve overall efficiency (and somewhat hint at standardization, so that the CxO will have experience at that domain when switching jobs!).

But of course, it's not really true - best practice business processes are an illusion imho, and it will turn out that the subtle differences have to be implemented individually.

SAP are more known for ERP than CRM

They're absolutely colossal in size

My ex-girlfiend's father is an engineer there in Baden-Wurttemberg - I'd characterise them as closer to something like Oracle rather than Salesforce

> I'd characterise them [SAP] as closer to something like Oracle rather than Salesforce

They feel more like IBM, but more crusty, more conservative and more corporate.

Working for a railway on anything touching SAP sounds like an absolute nightmare of wasting decades threading water with nothing to show for it.

(I saw a bit of SAP inside DB… nope nope nope)

It's funny, I was originally going to comment "the worst of Oracle with the worst of IBM" but I prefer the way you put it

Edit: no offence intended to anyone at SAP, IBM or Oracle - I do think each company has a legitimate role to play for rather different markets

They are so colossal that switching to SAP usually means reworking company's processes to match SAP's, not the other way around.

To be fair, that is the case for most ERPs. It's not really about the size of the product but rather the important role it plays in a company.

Most ERPs can be quite flexible too, there's a ton of customisation possible. And a whole cottage industry of addons and integrations for every imaginable integration or business model. But the problem is you really screw yourself with added complexity when it's time to update. Then you're really condemning yourself to spending millions on consultants at a time when you might not have the resources. And postponement leads to technical debt.

Hence the idea of adapting the business to the system. Making sense too if you think about it this way: you're not really just buying a system but a methodology.

And another thing is that it makes integration with other companies easier. Makes the company more easy to sell or too acquire other companies and integrate them.

Heh, you described my work situation to a T.

They decided to modify a number of core functions to work the same way as their old terminal system instead of the default ERP process. Now our job for the next couple years is decoupling the custom add-ons so we can safely update to a modern ERP system.

This was true even for Royal Dutch Shell, one of the largest companies in the world. A few years before he retired, my dad led a team responsible for coordinating implementation of SAP and for training thousands or even tens of thousands of employees to work with the new system.

I read recently that not using SAP - or heavily customizing it - in markets where it’s prevalent can break big(ish) companies. Apparently the interface to other companies (from which to buy or sell) is so much easier to setup when all have the same system, that using any other system is prohibitive. If you need to interface with hundreds of enterprises that all implement standard SAP, you become the expensive outsider if you don’t. Integration projects can take years and then fail, with nothing to show for - which can threaten a company’s existence. Better to use standard SAP „off the shelf“ and do as little customization as possible.

Without necessarily wishing to call into question your source on this particular occasion, it is of course in SAP's interest that as many as possible believe this to be true.

One of my customers was taken over during their SAP implementation. The general feeling among management was the work had weakened them so much it made them vulnerable to takeover.

SAP is mainly an ERP system, but it has various modules dealing with stuff from Purchase Orders and Materials Management to HR. It can be very large and extremely expensive, like over $1 billion for one company in ~ 20 years. It can be customized in many ways, good consultants are very expensive and the cheap ones are usually a waste of money. Without customization very few companies can map their processes on out of the box SAP.

It was developed a very long time ago, it has a huge adoption in large companies and a few years ago when they migrated from R3 to Hana one of their own people told us in an architecture review meeting that they have over 300,000 built in reports to migrate.

In many cases companies are adopting SAP because "nobody was ever fired for buying IBM". Anecdotical, the company where my brother works is implementing SAP and changed all existing networking gear with Cisco because "this is what big companies do". They threw away brand new equipment and spent several millions on the SAP implementation that is still not working, forecasting they will pay even more millions to make it work then millions per year to use it.

Think Oracle, with business logic on top. (JDEdwards, Oracle, SAP) were the OGs of BI.

(and bloat, and McKinsey infiltration into many a large F100+)

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They are old school, entrenched, but yu would jump off a cliff supporting any of this legacy stuff. It will persist as the inertia on huge systems is heavy.

But yeah - I wonder if they are signing any NEW business... aside from military bunker grade stuff (which will cost as much as the bunker to implement) I dont see a reason to implement (not because I am bashing, but because I dont know the modern business case reqs that would call for SAP)

Google switched to SAP two years or so ago.

switched what?

The company.

I would have expected something like ABC CRM, tailored to Google.

> McKinsey infiltration into...

What is McKinsey infiltration?

I don't know about “McKinsey infiltration into many a large F100+” first-hand, but from context I'd guess it's simply getting consultants from McKinsey & Company[0] jobs in the ‘infiltrated’ firm, on the basis that it has no in-house employees capable of properly setting up / running the bizarrely complex and idiosyncratic SCM-ERP-HCM-BI-etc. software in question.

Basically: You have a problem; Oracle/SAP says they'll solve it for you. Now you have a second problem; they say McKinsey'll solve it for you. Now you have …

[0] https://mckinsey.com

Its the cancer that permeates your C-Suite. Meta-stasize-ing,

God I love etymology:

"-Stasize"

     **To stand on a hilltop once. To be, this time, on advance. To reach the highest clouds. To touch the limits of space. To out-grow skyscrapers. And make them look at my face.**

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So FB is becoming a meta-stacious being..

That which wishes to control from a vantage, or t corrupt from within the minds... The light house.

Imagine an Octopus like Goldman Sachs but for Enterprise Software.

You might look up the running gag for the german abbreviation.

In a word: ERP.

think Üracle

The OG ERP