Those of you reading this who have not used it and whose companies are considering moving to SAP, please be assured that EVERY LAST THING in this thread that says what is bad about SAP is absolutely true! Please, if you have never believed something I have said, and there have been reasons for doubt in some cases, believe me now. I was on the migration team at my last company and the software, training, and documentation produced every last one of the complaints in this thread. I firmly believe that SAP has killed more companies than it helped.
Me: Uh, is there any SAP documentation or training material to help us setup this system we have to migrate our entire company to before Y2K kills our AS-400*?
Expensive consultant: Print out the help screens.
Unrelated gripe: it was hard-coded to ignore the 21st century so rather than update the hardware the home office forced us to go to SAP. Never get bought out by a German or Swiss company because SAP gives them wet dreams.
I’ve only been in the SAP game for a year, but no, I couldn’t really tell you what it is either. If you visit their website or read their literature, you get the impression that SAP aren’t sure themselves, so vague and woolly are their descriptions.
OK, that’s not quite fair - their core product, R/3 or now ERP2004, is an Enterprise Resource Planning suite. Look on Wikipedia or whatever for a description of ERP (or better, MRP) and you will learn about something that doesn’t sound like total bullshit, at least.
But the trouble with SAP is that their marketing department is completely out of control - they constantly rename their products in the most confusing way possible, and they’re always adding new products with names and descriptions that sound just like all the other ones. Try working out from their website what the hell are NetWeaver, mySAP.com, WAS, SAP BW, SAP XI, SAP CRM, SAP BI yadda yadda, and what the relationships and differences are between them. It’ll drive you nuts. I sometimes wonder if there’s anybody anywhere who really knows what all thus stuff does.
Y’know, when I first started reading this thread I said to myself, “Self, it sounds to me like SAP needs a good technical writer. I am a good technical writer, and I need a job. It is a match made in heaven. I should apply forthwith!”
As I continued reading the thread, however, I realized that SAP is, apparently, buggered up beyond belief. I’m good, but I don’t think I’m that good.
Pity. Good documentation can go a long ways towards alleviating bad software design, but it sounds like this company has gone far beyond the point where it could help.
How in hell do they manage to continue selling this to people?
Momentum, and market position. Executives who don’t have to actually, y’know, work with the system, and who let the marketplace browbeat them into following the herd, as going against the trend is punished by the street, are the ones who choose the software.
I didn’t realize all that Spanish I was hearing on the Seperate Audio Programming track was actually advertisements for new careers. I always thought they were translating the dialogue of the TV show.