Ted,
"Going with integrated packages such as SAP" is easier said than done. Here's a recent article from Computerworld
computerworld.com
I don't short stocks (I don't have a margin account), but if I did, I would look very closely at SAP.
What's the scoop on SAP
implementations? SAP
promises savings and
efficiencies with its
enterprisewide software,
but customers also cite
frustrations - from time
and cost overruns to the
difficulties of changing
business processes to
accommodate its demands
By Miryam Williamson
Dan, manager of employee
support systems at a Fortune 500 company, was two hours away
from proposing to senior management that they pull the plug on an
enterprisewide SAP project when a senior technical professional
called Dan to his desk.
"His PC had just flipped out and started rebooting. When it came up,
every Windows icon label was in German," Dan says. Dan was
appalled at the sight of an application modifying an operating system.
The SAP guys were "way into the blood and guts of Windows, and I
didn't want to go there," Dan says.
He attached a screen shot of the new Windows interface to his
presentation to management and got what he wanted: permission to
bail out. Thus ended a long string of problems, including three weeks
during which five SAP-savvy consultants tried to configure SAP to
handle the company's new benefits plan. "They couldn't make it
happen," Dan says. "SAP is wonderfully integrated, but if you aren't
willing to bend your business to SAP's model, the results aren't
pretty."
Reports abound on the successes of SAP customers - the savings
realized and efficiencies achieved once the mammoth enterprise
management system has been implemented.
But it isn't all beer and skittles. Jim
Johnson, chairman of The Standish
Group International, Inc., a research
advisory company in Dennis, Mass.,
estimates that 90% of SAP projects
run late. "Most people
underestimate the time and cost," he
says. "If you estimated realistically,
the numbers would be so staggering
that you might never start." Vinnie
Mirchandani, research director at
Gartner Group, Inc. in Stamford,
Conn., adds, "They end up
implementing a few key modules, but it's a far cry from the vision they
have painted."
Critics say the complexity and rigidity of SAP's R/3 software often
cause project delays and failures. Problems arise when the company
has to adapt to R/3's way of doing business, rather than the other way
around. When the real-life business processes don't map well with
SAP's model of business processes, trouble looms.
Flexibility and complexity
Looked at one way, SAP's 8,000 configuration tables give it
unparalleled flexibility. Information technology professionals define
business processes by filling in blanks and setting switches that model
the flow of materials, information and money through the company. If
they get it right, virtually everything of interest to the enterprise is kept
up to date in real time.
But implementers rarely get it right the first time. Jayaram Bhat, vice
president of marketing at Mercury Interactive, Inc., a Sunnyvale,
Calif., vendor of SAP testing tools, tells of a company running a test
simulating 220 concurrent users. Under that load, certain screens took
two to five minutes to appear. Changing some values in a
configuration table slashed the response time to five seconds. But
finding the parameters to change was a matter of trial and error, done
at considerable cost.
SAP gives new meaning to the eternal trade-off between flexibility
and complexity. Some find the table-tweaking required intolerably
demanding. Companies organized along functional or divisional lines
must reinvent themselves to fit SAP's hierarchical process orientation
or pay a heavy price - much of it in consulting fees.
Dan found it impossible to model his company's organizational
structure in SAP. "Our company has lots of many-to-many
relationships, and SAP's model is very hierarchical, top to bottom," he
says. |
