[OT] After two months of SAP training :-(
Didier Morandi
Today is the end of the second month of my SAP Project Manager training,
AcceleratedSAP method (still two weeks left).
One word to summarize the hell:
1. SAP has _no f** idea_ about what human engineering is. For example:
a) most of the modules are programmed by different teams who follow
different GUI rules (screens layouts, position of buttons, exit buttons
with different names, etc. etc.)
b) you can start the same process via four or five different paths from
the main menu
c) a screen may have pop-up menus, buttons, right-clicks, double-clicks
on a line and other (generally hidden) ways to open a sub-window
etc.
2. These guys from SAP engineering are (were?) mad. I have never seen
such complexity. Each doc is more than a thousand pages long, there are
thousand of docs and entries in the main menu, and the screens have more
than hundreds of data each. Just unusable (is this on purpose?)
3. They also miss a Localization Lab (even if I was told that there is
actually one for France... in Walldorf GE). The translations to French
are less that sh*t. And when you say so to the instructors, the answer
is "this is SAP language, you'll get the use of it". And moreover, they
invent words, and "cherry on the cake", they change the meaning of
existing words.
I give an example:
Suppose you manufacture equipments and you send to a Client an equipment
which arrives out of use. The Customer calls, you tell him that you are
sorry, that he should send it back to you and that you will send him
back a new equipment with a box of (swiss) chocolates in a few days or
issue a credit note.
Do you know how to handle this with SAP? When the equipment arrives to
your warehouse, you produce an "outside delivery" then you issue a
"debit note".
In France, we produce an "inside delivery" (réception) and then we issue
a credit note (avoir).
Not only am I wasting my time and money, but I do not know where to go
to make some $$ now. JD Edwards? PeopleSoft? IBM?
D.
PS: the only piece of valuable software I found is the AcceleratedSAP
tool, made by... SAP USA.
JF Mezei
> a) most of the modules are programmed by different teams who follow
> different GUI rules (screens layouts, position of buttons, exit buttons
> with different names, etc. etc.)
I knew SAP was bloated, but I had no idea is was that bad.
Dave Gudewicz
to say, I'm beginning to believe it.
--
Dave...
I have made it a rule never to smoke more than one cigar at a time. ----Mark
Twain
"JF Mezei" <jfmezei...@vl.videotron.ca> wrote in message
news:3E68C160...@vl.videotron.ca...
Bart Z. Lederman
>
>I have made it a rule never to smoke more than one cigar at a time. ----Mark
>Twain
As long as we're off topic: this wasn't always true.
My grandfather was an artist and art teacher. One of his teachers
was a friend of "Mark Twain". Twain liked to play practical jokes
on people. One was that when invited for dinner he would glance
at the sideboard and memorise which cordials and liquors his host
had: then when dinner was finished he would ask for something he
knew the host didn't have. At the time, many people would be
very embarrased not to have something their guest requested,
and this was true of the teacher. He finally figured out that
Twain was doing it on purpose, and decided to get even. He
collected small bottles of a wide variety of liquors (this was
long before airline bottles, but they still existed) and hid them
in a rack under the table where they couldn't be seen. The
next time Twain requested something, it was supplied. Twain was
non-plussed, and asked for something rather exotic: it was also
supplied. The teacher thought he had finally taught Twain a lesson.
On a later visit, Twain patted his pockets and mentioned that he was
out of cigars. His diligent host went out to obtain some. During
his absense, Twain stuffed cotton wool around the doors, pulled out
a handful of cigars, and smoked them as rapidly as possible, filling
the room with smoke. When his host came back, he thought the house
was on fire. There were no witnesses to Twain actually smoking more
than one at a time, but it was probably necessary to achieve the
effect.
Twain, by all accounts, wasn't all that nice to his friends.
--
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Arne Vajhøj
> I once heard the SAP = Stops All Production. After reading what Didier had
> to say, I'm beginning to believe it.
SAP projects tend to be very painfull and very overbudget.
Which you can also read as very profitable for the consultants
doing the implementation !
Arne
Arne Vajhøj
Why should SAP improve their stuff by simplifying ?
People are buying it now !
(same as why should Microsoft improve quality when people are
buying it as it is)
Arne
Carl Perkins
Not only are epople buying it, they are paying huge sums of money to
be trained how to use it.
If it was easy to use, the training money would disappear. So would a lot
of the consultants' money.
There is pleny of reason for them to make it as complicated as they
can, as long as people still buy it.
--- Carl
Dan Foster
That's the most charitable thing I've ever heard about SAP, including from the people
who do the actual SAP module coding :-)
I have a friend who used to do SAP work for his manufacturing company.
He is a smart man... can handle physics, art, music, computer programming,
engineering, statistics, higher math (advanced calculus, etc), finances,
etc.
But SAP drove him nuts :-) He said that to write a simple, small module...
it took him at least 3-4 days because he had to go talk with various other
SAP people in his company, each of which were responsible for knowing a
particular module in depth, to ask them what the data fields were, and the
allowable values, and the API for the functions involving them, and any
documentation (sometimes non-existent, or in another obscure language from
some of the outsourced consultants). The way it was structured, he *had*
to talk with these people... in person, and that was not very efficient
at all. Doing it on his own? Well, the index was about 700 pages alone. :)
That's the index for the module documentation. They also had to grant
permission for an extension after understanding how the proposed module
or procedure would fit in with the overall SAP system.
3 to 4 days just to cobble together a functional 100 line SAP program
that might not do much at all. If that needed other functions or
procedures, repeat this whole thing. Doesn't matter if it's a 5 line
program that does 'SET FOO=1'.
I did not really understand how bad it was until he showed me the SAP
manuals and local documentation... *WOW*. I find that even being an OS
developer (VMS, Solaris, whatever) is *easier*! They are large and complex
projects, too, but at least they have much more logic and usable structure
involved, and much less inefficient overhead.
SAP is... just one big money maker for the manufacturer and the various
consultants!
Well, he said that one thing that may make it easier for people to learn
SAP is when they roll out the Java support. But still... the overall
system...
Oracle is *much* easier to learn than SAP by orders of magnitude.
(Although Oracle's licensing costs is well beyond ridiculous... we have
Sybase licenses at 1% of the Oracle licensing cost! DB2 is higher but
not anywhere near as bad as Oracle.)
-Dan
labadie
"Dan Foster" <d...@globalcrossing.net> wrote in message
news:slrnb6mu8...@gaia.tf.roc.gblx.net...
> In article <<3E68C160...@vl.videotron.ca>>, JF Mezei
<jfmezei...@vl.videotron.ca> wrote:
> > Didier Morandi wrote:
> >> a) most of the modules are programmed by different teams who follow
> >> different GUI rules (screens layouts, position of buttons, exit buttons
> >> with different names, etc. etc.)
> >
> > I knew SAP was bloated, but I had no idea is was that bad.
>
> That's the most charitable thing I've ever heard about SAP, including from
the people
> who do the actual SAP module coding :-)
>
> I have a friend who used to do SAP work for his manufacturing company.
>
> He is a smart man... can handle physics, art, music, computer programming,
> engineering, statistics, higher math (advanced calculus, etc), finances,
> etc.
In 1997 I went to work at Rhone-Poulenc Rorer (now known as Aventis since
the merge with Hoechst)
I met again with an old friend of mine, who had studied chemistry. He had 2
guys from SAP working for him, to
"fine tune" (parametrer le système) SAP.
My friend explained me that he knew next to nothing in computing (knows
Word, Excel, but not more) and accounting, but stated that he knew
more than the 2 guys from SAP about computing or accounting!
The Sap guys were paid more than 1000 $ /day, had been there for more than
one year, and Sap was still not "fine tuned".
A proof that Sap needed some more tuning: some material needed for
laboratory practices/tests was ordered by 50, instead of 1 or 2, because it
was
not possible to order in smaller quantities.
But thanks to SAP, you will save a lot of money.
And you will be with SAP for the next 50 years.
Regards
Gerard
Didier Morandi
D.
labadie wrote:
../..
> And you will be with SAP for the next 50 years.
>
> Regards
>
> Gerard
>
>
--
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19 chemin de la Butte 31400 Toulouse France
Tél: 33(0)6 7983 6418 Fax: 33(0)5 6154 1928
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John Smith
"labadie" <en_traject...@127.0.0.1> wrote in message
news:3e6c56ba$1...@usenet01.boi.hp.com...
...<snip>
> A proof that Sap needed some more tuning: some material needed for
> laboratory practices/tests was ordered by 50, instead of 1 or 2,
because it
> was
> not possible to order in smaller quantities.
> But thanks to SAP, you will save a lot of money.
> And you will be with SAP for the next 50 years.
All the more reason to get SAP on VMS. Wilh all those
suckers....er..customers hooked on SAP, they may as well run a real
operating system for the next 50 years.
John Wallace
"Arne Vajhøj" <ar...@vajhoej.dk> wrote in message
news:3E68F411...@vajhoej.dk...
Precisely.
Anyone know what goes on inside HPQ? CPQ were going SAP. CPQ UK's order
management stuff (which I *think* covers Europe) *was* in the process of
being Bangalored. But HP is an Oracle Apps shop (according to Oracle). Now
what? Can't have two in parallel for long or the promised benefits of
"integration" won't be achieved.
How many different and incompatibly-formatted part numbers on entirely
unrelated systems in HPQ are there now for (e.g.) a 128MB DIMM? An Intel
10/100 NIC? etc... Does it matter? To HP? To resellers? To customers?
There used to be a very nice DEC-built infobase in CPQ whose name I forget
that managed to integrate the CPQ and DEC part number systems (including
BoMs, used-on, stock, etc). All done with links to the outside stuff.
Probably gone now.
Meanwhile, SAP sucks, says anyone except SAP-bigots, but sells by the
truckload. Windows sucks, says anyone except Windows-bigots, but has
traditionally sold by the truckload. Mac is brill (say its supporters), but
barely visible in sales figures. VMS is brill (say its supporters), but
barely visible in sales figures. Weird.
regards
john
Bill Hobbs
> 2. These guys from SAP engineering are (were?) mad. I have never seen
> such complexity. Each doc is more than a thousand pages long, there are
> thousand of docs and entries in the main menu, and the screens have more
> than hundreds of data each. Just unusable (is this on purpose?)
Let us know when you have applied a few patches to SAP. I found much
of the code to be hideous. An activity monitor with divide by zero
errors at times of no activity. A call to a misspelled function.
Those are two errors that I patched that stand out in my memory.
SAP's customers appear to be intimately involved in the quality
control process ...
John Smith
"Bill Hobbs" <bdho...@acm.org> wrote in message
news:74ca5032.03031...@posting.google.com...
Maybe it's a good thing that SAP isn't on VMS afterall - it would be a
drag on VMS's good name.
Didier Morandi
Now, I need to find at least one SAP implementation in France to have
some ROI :-)
D.
Bill Hobbs wrote:
--
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