<story><title>Mistakes were made: ERP screwups</title><url>https://tedium.co/2020/01/14/sap-enterprise-vendors-mistakes-history/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>IceDane</author><text>I recently got a job in the ERP industry(SAP), though my purpose is essentially to do stuff that is not SAP related.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t think it should surprise anyone that SAP makes mistakes and&amp;#x2F;or that ERP systems are hard to implement. SAP in particular is an absolute monstrosity. I don&amp;#x27;t just mean in terms of size either. I can&amp;#x27;t help but think about that Nietzsche quote about the abyss.&lt;p&gt;SAPs systems should become textbook examples of tech debt left to accumulate, of what happens when systems are allowed to grow in whatever direction is useful at the time without any thought for the future or proper design. 
This isn&amp;#x27;t very surprising either since I can&amp;#x27;t imagine that there is any group of human beings on Earth that is capable of understanding SAPs systems to the point where they could extend it safely.&lt;p&gt;SAP also takes the NIH syndrome and makes it a core value. Everything they make is worse than that other technology that accomplishes the same. See UI5 - it&amp;#x27;s like they traveled back in time and hired a CS freshman in the late 90s to develop it.&lt;p&gt;When they don&amp;#x27;t have the expertise to create a copy from scratch, they just use the competitors&amp;#x27; solutions and wrap that in their own marketing. They want you to only use SAP stuff.&lt;p&gt;The figures mentioned in the article about how important SAP is to the world&amp;#x27;s economy and logistics should scare the living shit out of anyone.</text></comment>
<story><title>Mistakes were made: ERP screwups</title><url>https://tedium.co/2020/01/14/sap-enterprise-vendors-mistakes-history/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>wayoutthere</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t think I&amp;#x27;ve ever heard of an ERP implementation that &lt;i&gt;wasn&amp;#x27;t&lt;/i&gt; an absolute clusterfuck. My impression is that while most folks from the integrators know their segment of the product pretty well, they don&amp;#x27;t have deep technical skills in a general sense or know much about other modules of the product. Also that the salespeople know almost nothing about the product and promise that it can do things it cannot. The customer eventually figures this out and ends up ripping out and re-implement tools from other vendors.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s a common joke for senior technology leaders at industrial companies to ask eachother &amp;quot;so what was the first ERP implementation you got fired for?&amp;quot;</text></comment>