The SAP anti competition argument

prowla

SAP is not a single product - it is a family of products which include warehousing, finance, HR, customer relations, and so-on.

In choosing it, customers need to be aware of its pluses and minuses; it imposes a way of working that may or may not suit them, and there is a large degree of customization required to get it in place. The design is critical and implementaiton needs to be stringently monitored against design.

My understanding is that Centrica's beef was with Accenture, the consultancy chosen to implement the product, rather than the SAP product itself.

Dave_save

brewerdave wrote: »

I used SAP s/ware briefly about 8 years ago in a Production environment -TOTALLY unsuitable, but we were forced to use it because some t**/8r on the Board had bought into it to provide an "integrated MRP solution" involving Finance/Sales/Production & Distribution. What actually happened, on a very regular basis, was that some high level reports would create an apparent black hole in the Company finances - Mayhem would result,we would investigate and identify yet another glitch in the production system as applied -which invariably resulted in a !!!!!!!ised fix on a one off basis.After a year or so, NO-ONE understood what the hell was happening and the production reports were completely valueless to anyone!!When the production side was sold off we instituted controls based on Excel spreadsheets -worked much better!!!

We used it in the service provider/FM environment as a means of paying suppliers based on an input via Excel spreadsheets. It was an uneccessary interface, and required manual checking at around 3 points. We now just use the spreadsheets!

steve-L

Dave_save wrote: »

We used it in the service provider/FM environment as a means of paying suppliers based on an input via Excel spreadsheets. It was an uneccessary interface, and required manual checking at around 3 points. We now just use the spreadsheets!

Isn't it amazing that even a thread on MSE can determine this?
Centrica went for a £317 million contract with Accenture and SAP only to discover what many have discovered before and they could have saved themselves the bother by coming to MSE? (Or just asking other companies what their experience was)

Terrylw1

prowla wrote: »

SAP is not a single product - it is a family of products which include warehousing, finance, HR, customer relations, and so-on.

In choosing it, customers need to be aware of its pluses and minuses; it imposes a way of working that may or may not suit them, and there is a large degree of customization required to get it in place. The design is critical and implementaiton needs to be stringently monitored against design.

My understanding is that Centrica's beef was with Accenture, the consultancy chosen to implement the product, rather than the SAP product itself.

They stated there were so many exceptions that it filled reporting in boxes at a rate they couldn't cope with.

Well, exception creation is based on processes which Bgas would have been fully engaged in.

So, they can largely blame themselves for poor consultancy management. Sadly, they just thing bringing in consultants means leaving them alone...its far from that!

SAP in utilities is often aimed at creating lots of pointless exceptions that you just don't need. It works on the process so strictly that it fails to understand that by creating so many exceptions for what is really one event, just makes processing time longer and costs more money.

One non supplier company in the utility market had been discussing ditching SAP due to its inflexibility last year. I'm not sure what came of that though.

uptomyeyeballs

If the processes in a business aren't competently mapped or understood, SAP implementation will be poor. If staff aren't trained properly and supported, SAP will not solve a businesses problems. As in most fields, there are good consultants and bad consultants. The pressure is always on to get value for money too, so corners are cut and implementation and testing can be inadequate. It's roots are in engineering, bills of materials, works orders and stock control. I probably wouldn't select it for running an energy supply business.

backfoot

uptomyeyeballs wrote: »

I probably wouldn't select it for running an energy supply business.

Sadly, they didn't take your advice.

prowla

uptomyeyeballs wrote: »

If the processes in a business aren't competently mapped or understood, SAP implementation will be poor. If staff aren't trained properly and supported, SAP will not solve a businesses problems. As in most fields, there are good consultants and bad consultants. The pressure is always on to get value for money too, so corners are cut and implementation and testing can be inadequate. It's roots are in engineering, bills of materials, works orders and stock control. I probably wouldn't select it for running an energy supply business.

One issue is where the consultancy ships in new graduates to bulk up the workforce; of course these people do not have the necessary experience to deliver.

Another is in using overseas developers and not specifying & monitoring the work properly.

brewerdave

...one of the problems that we encountered was that the system wasn't idiot proof!!! Someone input an incorrect production figure (by a factor of x1000 !!) - no one noticed at the time,the sysystem didn't reject an obviously incorrect value,so decided that we were overstocked,didn't plan any more production the following week and didn't raise any material orders - what a mess that created!!!!:rotfl:

uptomyeyeballs

brewerdave wrote: »

...one of the problems that we encountered was that the system wasn't idiot proof!!! Someone input an incorrect production figure (by a factor of x1000 !!) - no one noticed at the time,the sysystem didn't reject an obviously incorrect value,so decided that we were overstocked,didn't plan any more production the following week and didn't raise any material orders - what a mess that created!!!!:rotfl:

Yes, we regularly suffer the tonnes/kilos error. It's mainly due to operator error, but those errors are made because of lack of consistency with default UOM (unit of measure). Sometimes it's expecting kilos, sometimes tonnes, and the comma and period look very similar and are next to each other on the keyboard!

steve-L

uptomyeyeballs wrote: »

If the processes in a business aren't competently mapped or understood, SAP implementation will be poor. If staff aren't trained properly and supported, SAP will not solve a businesses problems. As in most fields, there are good consultants and bad consultants. The pressure is always on to get value for money too, so corners are cut and implementation and testing can be inadequate. It's roots are in engineering, bills of materials, works orders and stock control. I probably wouldn't select it for running an energy supply business.

I think its more than that.....
If your business processes do not match what SAP thinks they are ...implementation will be poor...

I have never seen an implementation in (non energy) engineering (i.e. automotive) but everything I have seen in energy seems to not actually do what the business processes need.
This means endless customisation, huge changes (as at Centrica) .. project over-runs and in many cases the end product being unsuitable.

There is a wider issue... IT sometimes think software can DO business processes. To put this in context that's like saying Outlook can attend a meeting for you....
You might be able to arrange it, send invitations etc. but it can't actually DO the meeting.

Every implementation I have ever seen in energy it doesn't actually do (in lowercase) everything in the business process... this means some other software is also required .... and this needs to also interface with other business processes.

The whole issue starts with the expectations of SAP and people believing it will cover a whole process end-to-end AND actually DO the business process as opposed to facilitate it.