5 ms·

We actually joke around the area where SAP is located (Walldorf, Germany). In surrounding cities devs joke about the fact that there are literally dozens if not

We actually joke around the area where SAP is located (Walldorf, Germany). In surrounding cities devs joke about the fact that there are literally dozens if not hundreds of web agencies doing nothing more than mobile/tablet ready SAP user interfaces. That's their only business model. I'm not kidding you, there's an entire ecosystem around the fact that SAP UI5 is so crap that people cannot use it on their smartphones. And concept-wise it's built very similar to the early jquery-ui releases (remember the first iPhone's menus? Yeah, THAT old), but only in undocumented and even crappier. I don't even know how to rationalize this anymore. At one point I ditched every company that uses SAP, but it's like the plague. You can't avoid it.

intelVISA 4y ago
The people buying the software don't have to use it, would you buy your corporate underlings the comfortable, expensive shoes or just enough rags to painfully remind them who their masters are? SAP produce the lowest cost rags in town, and you will learn to love them.
- jjeaff 4y ago
  I thought SAP was extremely expensive.
  - eastbound 4y ago
    That’s for the golf course. Same as IBM: The business model is they mostly sell golf courses, and software is a side-effect so they have to save on that.
    - skrebbel 4y ago
      Are you just making stuff up?
      - eastbound 4y ago
        I was sysadmin for IBM software in a 50k-people company, there is no way they paid 12m$ for ClearQuest, ClearCase or RequisitePro when Git and Jira were already out. They clearly played golf to win this market.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
- coliveira 4y ago
  There's nothing cheap about SAP. It is just the opposite. They sell the most expensive software ever for any given need. But they make sure to promise their victims that the software covers any possible business "need" under the sun, so the CTOs feel coerced to pay the hefty price.
  - intelVISA 4y ago
    Damn I can't imagine that given the software, I've never had to buy any SAP stuff so I figured it was only surviving by being the inexpensive option!
  - jojobas 4y ago
    SAP = sucks all profit.
    - qubex 4y ago
      Satan’s Accounting Package
  - hef19898 4y ago
    SAP, at its core, is an ERP system. Those, in turn, run around MRP (Material Requirements Planning), all in xompliant and auditable manner (if used properly, that is). There is a reason why ERP systems rule the manufacturing world, and SAP rules ERP systems. All the chatter about CTOs going golfing with some SAP sales rep not withstanding, SAP is a very solid system and used by very sophisticated folks (ideally, if not, well, you cannot blame Red Bulls latest Formula 1 car if I crash it in turn one). So, if you are a manufacturing business, MRP is a must and SAP an expensive but solid choice. If you are not, and thus don't need MRP and ERP, well, you wouldn't use a semi truck for your weekly groccery shopping neither. People who only look at the UI, and then not even the UI of the core funtionality of an ERP system, and then dump on, e.g. SAP (all ERPs are the dame but different in that regard), just show that they have zero clue what those ERPs are supposed to do and how they are supposed to be used.
johannes1234321 4y ago
> I don't even know how to rationalize this anymore. Bad UI doesn't matter, while the company's exec is golfing with the sales rep from SAP. And after the deal is done the exec has an assistant responsible for filing expenses etc. What then counts for the exec are the reporting features, where somebody can send them a nice report on all the expense bookings, accounted for tax and all those complicated things, and agreggated per depertment etc. and knowing that expenses which can be passed down to customers are put in the invoicing systems ... that's the area where the value of such systems lies. Not in usability.
- stainforth 4y ago
  >nice reporting and usability both are within reach and we should not give up the fight
acdha 4y ago
> I don't even know how to rationalize this anymore. Enterprise IT is like that because the buyer never uses it and often assumes anyone complaining is just whiny/lazy. A previous employer had a massive outage with an expensive ’Orrible reporting application: down for weeks, developers expecting them to repair corrupted data, etc. They paid many millions of dollars to license that app and millions more for “support”, so you might naively think that someone would demand better results. What actually happened was that the regional sales VP got our VP the corporate box for an NFL game, and Monday morning the edict went out that the problem was resolved and should not be mentioned again. Dozens of people spent the next few weeks continuing to fix things up but understood the message and didn’t include it in their updates to the senior level.
- HyperSane 4y ago
  Name and shame, that is just ridiculous.
  - hyperdimension 4y ago
    I'd guess it's something truly 'Orrible. Maybe helmed by a vicious lawnmower?
  - msla 4y ago
    Oracle, because I hate this childishness.
    - acdha 4y ago
      The impulse was more to avoid showing up in simple searches.
- mint2 4y ago
  If that’s a public company that sounds like that is malfeasance and grounds for an investor lawsuit
  - acdha 4y ago
azalemeth 4y ago
I can't use SAP on my phone because it's rooted and they block that. I have literally no idea why. I'm not going to commit fraud, and if I was going to, having a phone I control would not help matters in the slightest compared to receipts or (more likely) a partner who gives me a kickback under the radar -- like booking.com does for people who say they travel for business, for example.
- userbinator 4y ago
  It's a cat-and-mouse game. Once you actually are root, there's always ways to force apps to behave as you want.
tjohns 4y ago
It's worth noting that SAP Concur wasn't designed by SAP. They acquired it. It's had some minor UI tweaks since, but for the most part is unchanged from the pre-acquisition product.
- gorkish 4y ago
  If by "minor UI tweaks" you mean "destroyed the platform" then, yes, it has had some work done. Their most recent announcement is the reintroduction of the ability to drag-and-drop receipts onto expenses. Not in the list view where everyone used to do it, mind you, but maybe someday they will bring that feature back as well. Maybe they will eventually bring back their outlook program that lets you upload an email as a receipt too!
throwawaaarrgh 4y ago
> doing nothing more than mobile/tablet ready SAP user interfaces As a user, a user interface is literally all I care about, so this seems great to me.
hef19898 4y ago
Why would I use my ERP system on a phone to begin with? IMHO, this market comes from management, and other people, unwilling to work inside an ERP system. And the clout to get away with it. Not every piece of software has to be a consumer app.
- pjc50 4y ago
  Expense reporting while in the field.
- mrweasel 4y ago
  It's not that you'd necessarily want to use the ERP system as such. It just that many companies have base pretty much everything on SAP. Perhaps you're a fields technician. Your assignments are managed by SAP, inventory is managed by SAP, the customer is managed by SAP, you, yourself is a resource managed by SAP. You venture out to fix a wind turbine, now you either need a laptop and remote in to enter things into a convoluted SAP setup and navigate the myriad of screen in that thing, or someone, perhaps SAP (the company) or some smaller company they bought attempted to bolt on a web GUI or a mobile app, as to simplify the work for the technicians. There is an entire industry designed around building application to abstract away the SAP client and provide simpler interfaces.
tibbydudeza 4y ago
Former ABAP developer here - there are a lot of cruft and technical debt in the core but they can't easily change it because it's behaviour is certified and accountants trust it - so they wrap the old crud into sexy JS and cloud bindings but you can only go so far with that. So they expand by buying up other companies and slapping their interfaces on it (you shall use HANA and not Oracle or anything else).
Stranger43 4y ago
The entire sales pitch for SAP is that Oracle and Microsoft based solutions tend to fail even worse then SAP based ones, and that there is no real success stories where a smaller vendor/startup have manged to deliver anything that comes near handling the complexity the old mainframe/minicomputer systems people are trying to replace can.

intelVISA 4y ago

The people buying the software don't have to use it, would you buy your corporate underlings the comfortable, expensive shoes or just enough rags to painfully remind them who their masters are? SAP produce the lowest cost rags in town, and you will learn to love them.

jjeaff 4y ago
I thought SAP was extremely expensive.
- eastbound 4y ago
  That’s for the golf course. Same as IBM: The business model is they mostly sell golf courses, and software is a side-effect so they have to save on that.
  - skrebbel 4y ago
    Are you just making stuff up?
    - eastbound 4y ago
      I was sysadmin for IBM software in a 50k-people company, there is no way they paid 12m$ for ClearQuest, ClearCase or RequisitePro when Git and Jira were already out. They clearly played golf to win this market.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
coliveira 4y ago
There's nothing cheap about SAP. It is just the opposite. They sell the most expensive software ever for any given need. But they make sure to promise their victims that the software covers any possible business "need" under the sun, so the CTOs feel coerced to pay the hefty price.
- intelVISA 4y ago
  Damn I can't imagine that given the software, I've never had to buy any SAP stuff so I figured it was only surviving by being the inexpensive option!
- jojobas 4y ago
  SAP = sucks all profit.
  - qubex 4y ago
    Satan’s Accounting Package
- hef19898 4y ago
  SAP, at its core, is an ERP system. Those, in turn, run around MRP (Material Requirements Planning), all in xompliant and auditable manner (if used properly, that is). There is a reason why ERP systems rule the manufacturing world, and SAP rules ERP systems. All the chatter about CTOs going golfing with some SAP sales rep not withstanding, SAP is a very solid system and used by very sophisticated folks (ideally, if not, well, you cannot blame Red Bulls latest Formula 1 car if I crash it in turn one). So, if you are a manufacturing business, MRP is a must and SAP an expensive but solid choice. If you are not, and thus don't need MRP and ERP, well, you wouldn't use a semi truck for your weekly groccery shopping neither. People who only look at the UI, and then not even the UI of the core funtionality of an ERP system, and then dump on, e.g. SAP (all ERPs are the dame but different in that regard), just show that they have zero clue what those ERPs are supposed to do and how they are supposed to be used.

johannes1234321 4y ago

> I don't even know how to rationalize this anymore. Bad UI doesn't matter, while the company's exec is golfing with the sales rep from SAP. And after the deal is done the exec has an assistant responsible for filing expenses etc. What then counts for the exec are the reporting features, where somebody can send them a nice report on all the expense bookings, accounted for tax and all those complicated things, and agreggated per depertment etc. and knowing that expenses which can be passed down to customers are put in the invoicing systems ... that's the area where the value of such systems lies. Not in usability.

stainforth 4y ago
>nice reporting and usability both are within reach and we should not give up the fight

acdha 4y ago

> I don't even know how to rationalize this anymore. Enterprise IT is like that because the buyer never uses it and often assumes anyone complaining is just whiny/lazy. A previous employer had a massive outage with an expensive ’Orrible reporting application: down for weeks, developers expecting them to repair corrupted data, etc. They paid many millions of dollars to license that app and millions more for “support”, so you might naively think that someone would demand better results. What actually happened was that the regional sales VP got our VP the corporate box for an NFL game, and Monday morning the edict went out that the problem was resolved and should not be mentioned again. Dozens of people spent the next few weeks continuing to fix things up but understood the message and didn’t include it in their updates to the senior level.

HyperSane 4y ago
Name and shame, that is just ridiculous.
- hyperdimension 4y ago
  I'd guess it's something truly 'Orrible. Maybe helmed by a vicious lawnmower?
- msla 4y ago
  Oracle, because I hate this childishness.
  - acdha 4y ago
    The impulse was more to avoid showing up in simple searches.
mint2 4y ago
If that’s a public company that sounds like that is malfeasance and grounds for an investor lawsuit
- acdha 4y ago

azalemeth 4y ago

I can't use SAP on my phone because it's rooted and they block that. I have literally no idea why. I'm not going to commit fraud, and if I was going to, having a phone I control would not help matters in the slightest compared to receipts or (more likely) a partner who gives me a kickback under the radar -- like booking.com does for people who say they travel for business, for example.

userbinator 4y ago
It's a cat-and-mouse game. Once you actually are root, there's always ways to force apps to behave as you want.

tjohns 4y ago

It's worth noting that SAP Concur wasn't designed by SAP. They acquired it. It's had some minor UI tweaks since, but for the most part is unchanged from the pre-acquisition product.

gorkish 4y ago
If by "minor UI tweaks" you mean "destroyed the platform" then, yes, it has had some work done. Their most recent announcement is the reintroduction of the ability to drag-and-drop receipts onto expenses. Not in the list view where everyone used to do it, mind you, but maybe someday they will bring that feature back as well. Maybe they will eventually bring back their outlook program that lets you upload an email as a receipt too!

throwawaaarrgh 4y ago

> doing nothing more than mobile/tablet ready SAP user interfaces As a user, a user interface is literally all I care about, so this seems great to me.

hef19898 4y ago

Why would I use my ERP system on a phone to begin with? IMHO, this market comes from management, and other people, unwilling to work inside an ERP system. And the clout to get away with it. Not every piece of software has to be a consumer app.

pjc50 4y ago
Expense reporting while in the field.
mrweasel 4y ago
It's not that you'd necessarily want to use the ERP system as such. It just that many companies have base pretty much everything on SAP. Perhaps you're a fields technician. Your assignments are managed by SAP, inventory is managed by SAP, the customer is managed by SAP, you, yourself is a resource managed by SAP. You venture out to fix a wind turbine, now you either need a laptop and remote in to enter things into a convoluted SAP setup and navigate the myriad of screen in that thing, or someone, perhaps SAP (the company) or some smaller company they bought attempted to bolt on a web GUI or a mobile app, as to simplify the work for the technicians. There is an entire industry designed around building application to abstract away the SAP client and provide simpler interfaces.

tibbydudeza 4y ago

Former ABAP developer here - there are a lot of cruft and technical debt in the core but they can't easily change it because it's behaviour is certified and accountants trust it - so they wrap the old crud into sexy JS and cloud bindings but you can only go so far with that. So they expand by buying up other companies and slapping their interfaces on it (you shall use HANA and not Oracle or anything else).

Stranger43 4y ago

The entire sales pitch for SAP is that Oracle and Microsoft based solutions tend to fail even worse then SAP based ones, and that there is no real success stories where a smaller vendor/startup have manged to deliver anything that comes near handling the complexity the old mainframe/minicomputer systems people are trying to replace can.