Euro, Sap, Baan, compliance, ...
Found on C.S.Y2K, thanks to Chris Anderson.
John
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The Country letter: Number 010
<snip>
I have been doing some cleanup of my files recently and
in the process of reorganisation was sifting through
my growing pile of Euro clippings.
A rather cold feeling started to assail me. Europe is
one our largest trading partners. Our perceptions about
Euro are that it is "their" problem. I know of no
efforts currently under way to ascertain if we will
have to make any adjustments to our systems to
accomodate Euro. And I rather suspect that we should
be taking a very hard look at it now.
Now the date of Euro implementation seems to be a
little vague. Clinton has requested a delay to the
original 1999 implementation because of Year 2000
resource conflicts. I remember sitting in the Hilton
Hotel in London last March listening to Peter de Jager
laying down the law on the absolute need to defer Euro
until 2004. To my shame, I was more involved in
running over my own talk in my head and was not really
paying proper attention.
Recently I was browsing a presentation given by
Prof Gerhard Knolmayer of Berne Unversity to a recent
Conference. Essentially he was saying that Europe is
not as interested in Year 2000 as the US. And one the
interesting points he made was that Europeans consider
that ERP products such as SAP and BAAN have solved the
problem for them.
On the face of it this is relatively true. If you go
into the SAP or BAAN websites you are hit on the head
with the fact that their products are Year 2000
compliant. It has become a marketing strategy.
For my sins, I have worked on and programmed in both.
And although they give you the tools to do so, it is
not absolutely inherent in the architecture of either
that the correct date must always be used. It has to do
with setup and options and programming standards.
If the environment on which SAP or BAAN is running has
not been set up to be compliant, then the application
suite, and data derived therefrom, will not be. And I
am seeing this happen more and more in the marketplace.
If your implementation team is not aware of the
implications, and I am discovering that 99% of the SAP
and BAAN people that I speak to are not, then you have
little hope of installing a compliant solution.
If implementation teams insist on installing the
packages with two digit year options, they are making a
rod for their own backs.
What worries me especially is the mindset of the
implementers. When I gently pointed out the problem
and indeed make specific suggestions on how they can
get it right, I meet absolute denial. They will not
even consider the possibility that there could be a
problem. Mules are more pliant.
Now I would suggest that the marketing organisations
behind SAP and BAAN had better address this issue now,
before damage is done. The education process had better
be modified rather quickly. The date options must be
implemented on initial install, before any data is
written to the database. We need specific installation
hints and caveats, not marketing hype.
I am seeing SAP being installed on NT 3.5 without
Service Pack 5. This is just not going to work.
People are attempting to install Logistics within 6
months. Just because a package can be installed in that
time does not mean that your organisation is ready
to use it.
But, hey, nobody listens to me.
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Chris Anderson email: slug@fast.co.za
Y2K Cinderella Project webmaster@cinderella.co.za
cinderella.co.za Striving for Year 2000 Compliance
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