[Info-vax] Seasons Greetings

[Main, Kerry]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: info-vax-bounces at rbnsn.com [mailto:info-vax-bounces at rbnsn.com] On
> Behalf Of Arne Vajhøj
> Sent: December 31, 2008 5:27 PM
> To: info-vax at rbnsn.com
> Subject: Re: [Info-vax] Seasons Greetings
>
> johnwallace4 at yahoo.co.uk wrote:
> > What the newbie does is probably irrelevant, the Board have been
> > persuaded to throw it all out and replace it with SAP/OracleApps/
> > whatever other Enterprise Management package is popular this week.
> >
> > See also
> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/12/24/select_comfort_sap_freeze/
>
> SAP is not exactly "whatever is popular this week" - it is more
> "whatever is popular these decades".
>
> SAP projects are usually bloody expensive though. And some
> projects get in big problems.
>
> But I don't think there are much reason to believe
> it is related to the specific software. It is generic
> characteristics of huge software projects that
> requires changes in the way business is done.
>
> Arne
> _______________________________________________

While there are certainly challenges in any large software project, two of
the big challenges facing large SAP implementations are:

1. The company business processes need to adapt to the way SAP is designed.
Imho, software should adapt to the way the business processes are designed,
not the other way around. This is a basic philosophy that one needs to
decide on before jumping into any large SAP project.

2. Due to the huge complexity, there are very few SAP specialists that
can work with all aspects of SAP, so "teams" of SAP specialists are required
to assist with integrating and changing the company business processes (HR,
Finance, Mfging etc) into the SAP way of doing business. At $2K per day per
SAP specialist, this gets real expensive real fast.

Unfortunately, the original business plan to justify the move is typically
hugely under scoped and under estimated in terms of the pain and complexity
required to implement the project as per the original "vision". If the
real costs were properly forecasted, then the project would not even get off
the ground, so they often get under scoped.

Regards

Kerry Main
Senior Consultant
HP Services Canada
Voice: 613-254-8911
Fax: 613-591-4477
kerryDOTmainAThpDOTcom
(remove the DOT's and AT)

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