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Ah yes, I remember when Lidl tried to integrate SAP in 2015. No one really knows why and after already having spent €500,000,000 in 2016 they pulled the plug an

Ah yes, I remember when Lidl tried to integrate SAP in 2015. No one really knows why and after already having spent €500,000,000 in 2016 they pulled the plug and just dropped the project because obviously it wasn't done at that point and they still would have to pay more to finish it. The initial offer never went public but I overheard someone once saying it was like €75,000,000 "only" ... They went back to further develop their own ERP system which is still in use today as far as I know.

carstenhag 4y ago
The issue there was that Lidl did not adapt to SAP. They tried to adapt the SAP system to Lidl. Everyone tells you that this is a really bad idea. Everyone.
- isoprophlex 4y ago
  Yeah you build your business around what SAP allows you to do, or you roll your own. Adapting SAP to existing business is just madness.
  - tut-urut-utut 4y ago
    Only startups that don't have business yet should use SAP ;)
- roflc0ptic 4y ago
  Clearly there was someone making part of that $500,000,000 that wasn't telling them this.
  - taway19920706 4y ago
    You would think so, but all of the large consulting firms (Accenture, Deloitte, etc) are driven by billing and people wanting to climb the corporate ladder. What the customer needs comes a distant second. Many projects are staffed with 90-95% juniors or people who have no industry knowledge. I've worked alongside consultants from Accenture, Deloitte, IBM, etc over the years and, while many of them are very competent, I would /never/ engage one of those large system integrators (SIs) on any project I was involved in. There are many excellent individuals working for those companies, but the companies themselves are terrible and you will struggle to get any of the excellent people involved during your implementation. The experts will appear during the early stages of the consulting sales cycle but will be nowhere to be seen during the implementation. Unfortunately this is the dirty little secret of SAP implementations. Many SAP customers think "I'll pay top dollar and get a good SI" but they end up getting the latest round of juniors doing the implementation. Seen it many a time.
    - 656565656565 4y ago
      this imo is exactly why many projects “fail”, overrun or budget
    - roflc0ptic 4y ago
      fully agree, think what you're saying is a misread of my comment. GP said "literally everyone says this thing is bad." My comment was "Well, clearly there were people not telling them [or else they'd probably have stopped short of $500,000,000 in expenditures]". Your comment is a mechanistic explanation of the failure mode, which again, I quite agree with. I worked at PwC for a couple of years; quite corrupt incentive structures and quite a dysfunctional organization because of it.
      - taway19920706 4y ago
        Yes, fair point - I didn't explain myself clearly (I've been commenting too much in this thread as it is!). My thinking is that why would they speak up? Lidl has deep pockets so the thinking was probably "another $5/10/20 million will get the project over the line". Not looking at the project and saying "we've billed you so much already, we've delivered something that's not fit for purpose so we'll absorb some of that and get something that works". For all its faults, SAP is the market leader ERP. Without knowing anything more than what I've read in the general press, I'm fairly confident that the implementation could have been a success.
- appleflaxen 4y ago
  What are some aspects of the "SAP way of doing things"? Do you know any examples?
- _glass 4y ago
  To be honest, I had so many SAP implementations in my career, and it was most likely not that one. Everybody adapts the software to the real existing business processes. Especially in Germany we are not yet there yet, that tech people can tell business people how to work. I think that Lidl most likely did the upfront design approach instead of building a reliable MVP, and moving forward from that. You have to integrate then a lot more with the old system, but more space to move forward and agile. Funny because it mimics a German military concept of Führen mit Auftrag ("mission type tactics").
taway19920706 4y ago
Implementing SAP in retail has its own challenges. The large number of products ("articles") sold, locations ("sites"), handling POS data etc. My first ever SAP implementation was for a large retailer and the project was cancelled (they later implemented SAP ~10 years later after the product matured somewhat) and another project 8 years later was also cancelled. Only two SAP projects I've been involved in that have been cancelled and both were retail (and using IS-Retail, SAP's solution for retail industries).

carstenhag 4y ago

The issue there was that Lidl did not adapt to SAP. They tried to adapt the SAP system to Lidl. Everyone tells you that this is a really bad idea. Everyone.

isoprophlex 4y ago
Yeah you build your business around what SAP allows you to do, or you roll your own. Adapting SAP to existing business is just madness.
- tut-urut-utut 4y ago
  Only startups that don't have business yet should use SAP ;)
roflc0ptic 4y ago
Clearly there was someone making part of that $500,000,000 that wasn't telling them this.
- taway19920706 4y ago
  You would think so, but all of the large consulting firms (Accenture, Deloitte, etc) are driven by billing and people wanting to climb the corporate ladder. What the customer needs comes a distant second. Many projects are staffed with 90-95% juniors or people who have no industry knowledge. I've worked alongside consultants from Accenture, Deloitte, IBM, etc over the years and, while many of them are very competent, I would /never/ engage one of those large system integrators (SIs) on any project I was involved in. There are many excellent individuals working for those companies, but the companies themselves are terrible and you will struggle to get any of the excellent people involved during your implementation. The experts will appear during the early stages of the consulting sales cycle but will be nowhere to be seen during the implementation. Unfortunately this is the dirty little secret of SAP implementations. Many SAP customers think "I'll pay top dollar and get a good SI" but they end up getting the latest round of juniors doing the implementation. Seen it many a time.
  - 656565656565 4y ago
    this imo is exactly why many projects “fail”, overrun or budget
  - roflc0ptic 4y ago
    fully agree, think what you're saying is a misread of my comment. GP said "literally everyone says this thing is bad." My comment was "Well, clearly there were people not telling them [or else they'd probably have stopped short of $500,000,000 in expenditures]". Your comment is a mechanistic explanation of the failure mode, which again, I quite agree with. I worked at PwC for a couple of years; quite corrupt incentive structures and quite a dysfunctional organization because of it.
    - taway19920706 4y ago
      Yes, fair point - I didn't explain myself clearly (I've been commenting too much in this thread as it is!). My thinking is that why would they speak up? Lidl has deep pockets so the thinking was probably "another $5/10/20 million will get the project over the line". Not looking at the project and saying "we've billed you so much already, we've delivered something that's not fit for purpose so we'll absorb some of that and get something that works". For all its faults, SAP is the market leader ERP. Without knowing anything more than what I've read in the general press, I'm fairly confident that the implementation could have been a success.
appleflaxen 4y ago
What are some aspects of the "SAP way of doing things"? Do you know any examples?
_glass 4y ago
To be honest, I had so many SAP implementations in my career, and it was most likely not that one. Everybody adapts the software to the real existing business processes. Especially in Germany we are not yet there yet, that tech people can tell business people how to work. I think that Lidl most likely did the upfront design approach instead of building a reliable MVP, and moving forward from that. You have to integrate then a lot more with the old system, but more space to move forward and agile. Funny because it mimics a German military concept of Führen mit Auftrag ("mission type tactics").

taway19920706 4y ago

Implementing SAP in retail has its own challenges. The large number of products ("articles") sold, locations ("sites"), handling POS data etc. My first ever SAP implementation was for a large retailer and the project was cancelled (they later implemented SAP ~10 years later after the product matured somewhat) and another project 8 years later was also cancelled. Only two SAP projects I've been involved in that have been cancelled and both were retail (and using IS-Retail, SAP's solution for retail industries).