> everything else in their IT land outside this system runs off SAP (likely including the actual distribution of the output of crew scheduling) so if I had to gamble I'd say the failure happened somewhere in the integration between them.
I have a reflex repulsion for off-the-shelf "enterprise" software. You pay millions of dollars to subscribe to a suite of (seemingly) bad, bloated software that takes more work to customize and integrate than it would to fully replace. An army of developers trying to keep a business running with the world's largest Swiss Army knife.
My gut tells me that big names like SAP and Sales Force are easier to sell to executives, and it makes a company seem like it knows what it's doing. And maybe feeling pressure to choose a "respected" brand leads to fewer alternatives? Or maybe all the alternatives are quickly bought out by the behemoths. I really don't know. Maybe someone can enlighten me. It just seems like an enormous turd of inefficiency to me.
Have done consulting for 15 years, understand your feelings. But I'd like to offer some alternative viewpoints.
Buying an off the shelve package also buys you an industry-standard business process. The idea is that part of value comes from the process that you have to shoe-horn into. Some integration is expected (and provided for) but if you have to modify heavily, You're Not Using It Correctly.
Also, using an OTS package means less development risk (not every IT dept has 10x developers coming out the wazoo) and it also means that you have a huge reservoir of skilled labour if you need it. Not just for development but also on the business side.
Finally, if you're a big, publicly owned company, you likely have many financial / reporting constraints. The scope of your non-negotiable requirements may be bigger than you imagine.
I've seen people implement SAP in a couple of months. It's possible. It's still expensive and clunky though :-)
> I've seen people implement SAP in a couple of months. It's possible. It's still expensive and clunky though :-)
Never worked with SAP, but still coming off my burn-out hangover from $OLD_JOB - worked to migrate the nexus of the firm's accounting systems from COBOL to MS Dynamics. Unto itself, I don't really have a problem with Dynamics - I do have a problem with MS and their piss-poor available materials on the topic. While I understand their business sells training and certifications, this does ass all for folks pulled in as a pinch hitter during a death march. Can scarcely fly out to Las Vegas for a week long vacation while I'm working 16 hour days to beat the clock on our last true COBOL coder's retirement date.
The greater issue I have in enterprise systems - often the consultant / contractor firms[0] involved in the process. The classic fly-out of classy sales-engineers replaced with low-rent off-shore coders for the actual work. Slick-as-shit documentation that does not match reality in even the simplest of cases. Counter-Party contacts that neither care nor hide their lack of caring for the outcome of the project. Pressing for aggressive timelines that do not meet reality
I would assume there is some correlation, however, between buying $ENTERPRISE_TOOL and an unwillingness to hold consultants feet to the fire on their own failings, structuring a contract that keeps them honest.
[0] - Not to state `ArnoVW is one, only stating a pattern I've run into all too often.
Thanks for the footnote =) And I concur. Outsourcing your IT replaces one type of work with another. If you can't manage your externalized projects, you're gonna get eaten alive by IT services suppliers.
In fact my line of work was managing 'complicated IT projects', generally involving formalizing things and chasing said suppliers (ie they outsourced the outsourcing)
You see, when your Foxpro guy retires in 10 years, either you've been training your new hires how to program Foxpro (a waste of time) or you'll pay a specialist to move all your business data and operation macros to a new platform (a waste of money).
SAP lets you stop kicking that can down the road by wasting your time and money today.
I’ve never seen a SAP install that wasn’t modified heavily, usually to the tune of millions of dollars of development - which can’t help but make me think that if nobody can use it “correctly”, then perhaps it can’t be used in its unmodified form.
In addition, a common occurrence seems to be businesses paying for extensive custom developments (such as an integration with a third party system), and footing the entire development cost - despite their “custom” development being 100% identical to that deployed at other businesses. They’re then trapped in a world where changing the URI for an API endpoint costs €150k.
Honestly, I see it as just being a big corrupt hole fuelled by interpersonal relationships rather than any actual rationale.
My previous boss recently tried to pick up an enterprise solution. He runs a non-software company that has a lot of custom internal apps - 90% built/maintained by interns. Of course the intern-built custom apps are super buggy but the bugs get fixed immediately, and the system is tailored to the company's way of doing things. The company spent an obscene amount of money just demoing a full-fledged SAP-type thing to potentially replace the custom stuff, but they ultimately found the rag-tag web apps better and cancelled the SAP contract.
That whole situation convinced me pretty thoroughly that "enterprise" software is indeed a form of large-scale snake oil. I think most businesses can go a long way with just spreadsheets and email.
Nothing gets me as excited as a lowly footsoldier in a company as when the c-suite decide to spend $100mil doing a custom install of a big name software stack that will "totally change the way we work and at the same time be fully customised to the way we work here".
This is one of the reasons I'm bullish on no-code doc-apps like Coda [0]. I recently started consulting with someone who calls himself "The Coda Guy" and pulls together truly wizard-like apps out of Coda [1]. (Coda is effectively a hybrid of Excel, Google Docs, and Notion.)
I think the "Excel+" category should receive a lot more attention than it does now. I can easily see "no-code" tools like Coda taking over Salesforce and effectively filling the niche you describe.
Agreed, except for the spreadsheets. Please get people to use server based databases instead. They are no longer difficult or expensive to install or use and make life so much better even for 'interns' and it will reduce their workload dramatically as well as increasing the quality of the solution..
I have a reflex repulsion for off-the-shelf "enterprise" software. You pay millions of dollars to subscribe to a suite of (seemingly) bad, bloated software that takes more work to customize and integrate than it would to fully replace. An army of developers trying to keep a business running with the world's largest Swiss Army knife.
My gut tells me that big names like SAP and Sales Force are easier to sell to executives, and it makes a company seem like it knows what it's doing. And maybe feeling pressure to choose a "respected" brand leads to fewer alternatives? Or maybe all the alternatives are quickly bought out by the behemoths. I really don't know. Maybe someone can enlighten me. It just seems like an enormous turd of inefficiency to me.