If I could just add my $0.02 as I inadvertedly started this thread...

In my recent experience, SAP is solving some problems but creating
others.
The main benefit I can see with SAP is that, from a manufacturing
point of view, all assets, orders, services etc have a dynamic value
which the management can view at any time. So they can know instantly
what the company is worth and drill down to various other views to
pinpoint overspending, inefficiency or losses. So, from the management
point of view it is wonderful. However, getting the information set up
to enable this "instant" view can be a nightmare. SAP seems very
rigid. You do have to restructure some processes to make them work
with SAP. This can be a good and bad thing. Some processes soldier on
unchanged for years because "it's always been done this way" and as a
result, any improvements have been stifled. SAP insists that the
processes be done the SAP way and you either change the process or SAP
doesn't work as advertised. Obviously the speed of change in
technology requires that modern businesses can adapt to new practices
much faster and I think SAP provides this ability to a company. The
cost is high in $$$s and some people cannot handle the changes
involved but the company's long-term health is probably improved as a
result of a SAP installation, in my view, as long as they can afford
it and it works!

One "good thing" from our implementation was that it enabled us to
consolidate applications from HP-UX, MPE and Windows NT into SAP on
HP-UX. This eliminated interface problems. Another "good thing" was
that the implementation involved microscopic analysis of all our
processes which was necessary to gain understanding of how they all
worked together. This was a major learning curve for many people and
it highlighted several areas for improvement.

SAP is vast, has huge numbers of tables and as it has it's own
schedulers and dispatchers, you could almost rate it as an operating
system.
With this territory comes a high cost of administration both in number
of bodies and their skill-level (not to mention the cost of training).
Setting up the user permissions is a huge task in itself and is rather
a "black art" from what I can see. Of course this has to be done
right  to protect the data and sensitive areas but it is galling from
my point of view since I have nearly 20 years of being a "System
Manager" on HP3000s and could do "anything" on the system but now I am
only able to use a few screens which have been identified as
sufficient for my job description! Oh well, times change and I'll be
moving on...

Cheers,

John Dunlop

(These are my own opinions and in no way reflect those of my
employers)
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