SAP software

[chipy]

does anyone here have experience working with SAP or know someone that does?

i'm wondering how valuable (or not) it would be to have SAP experience from the end user perspective (not a programmer/developer or integrator). is there demand in the IT or business industry for people with end user experience?

 

[her209]

I hear from the end user perspective, its hard to use. Again, that's what I hear.

 

[Ns1]

I hear from the end user perspective, its hard to use. Again, that's what I hear.

that's why SAP users are valuable.



We use SAP daily; gotta get those transferable skills. I don't find it that difficult, but I have a strong background in tech + accounting. Users who lack skills in both will find it unbearable.

 

[RedArmy]

I used SAP Operations software in the manufacturing sector at a local tech business. There was a lot of shit to it but I think it was dumbed down enough that you could pick up the basics quickly enough. Half the stuff on the screen I never even touched since it didn't relate to what I did.

 

[spidey07]

If you could know it well enough to be a trainer you could make some serious money.

 

[JS80]

I hear from the end user perspective, its hard to use. Again, that's what I hear.

Weird, I hear opposite. I use Oracle at work, and it's one of the shittiest pieces of shit on the face of the planet. In fact, I'm convinced Larry Ellison is the devil. But my coworker says SAP is like child's play compared to Oracle.

 

[GuitarDaddy]

I've got about 8yrs of SAP implementation experience, and it does help on a resume (landed me my current job) because so many big companies use it. It's an extremely complex system that trys to serve all purposes for all industries and winds up being mediocre for most all companies. For the multi-national corporate manager types SAP does provide some bennies especially in the area of consolidations, but for the end users it's a cumbersome, daunting, steaming pile of shite.

 

[JS80]

I've got about 8yrs of SAP implementation experience, and it does help on a resume (landed me my current job) because so many big companies use it. It's an extremely complex system that trys to serve all purposes for all industries and winds up being mediocre for most all companies. For the multi-national corporate manager types SAP does provide some bennies especially in the area of consolidations, but for the end users it's a cumbersome, daunting, steaming pile of shite.

Compared to what? I.e. what is a better competing system?

 

[her209]

Weird, I hear opposite. I use Oracle at work, and it's one of the shittiest pieces of shit on the face of the planet. In fact, I'm convinced Larry Ellison is the devil. But my coworker says SAP is like child's play compared to Oracle.

JD Edwards?

 

[JS80]

JD Edwards?

Never had experienced with it nor met anyone who's ever touched it.

Anyone thoughts on JDE?

 

[her209]

Never had experienced with it nor met anyone who's ever touched it.

Anyone thoughts on JDE?

Never used it, was wondering myself. We used Oracle as our backend database.

 

[Colt45]

The only SAP I know of is “Second audio program”, which I don't think you are referring to.

 

[ViviTheMage]

We moved away from it..we now use a web based application...saleslink.

 

[Skeeedunt]

So SAP actually does something? And people know how to use it? I thought you just paid them a lot of money to integrate your backward overflow and motivate crossword dynamics, and then just had people use excel to make pie charts.

 

[GuitarDaddy]

Compared to what? I.e. what is a better competing system?

Depending on the size and industry there are many better systems IMO. For large manufacturing companies JD edwards is much better, for smaller manufactures there are several BAAN comes to mind.

SAP was primarily designed as a project management system and it works well in that arena, but as it was expanded to try and meet the needs of almost every industry as a full function ERP system it became an overblown hunk of junk IMO.

For instance in one of my implementation consulting gigs for a company that was moving from JD edwards to SAP (moving backwards IMO) I was flow charting transaction entries and the particular process I was charting took 3 keystrokes to accomplish in JDE and the same transaction took 3 screens and 16 keystrokes in SAP. Through the years SAP has added more functionality by just increasing the screens and transaction istead of improving and consolidating, to the point where the R3 version of SAP has over 17,000 transaction screens.

Another problem with SAP for American companies is that being a german developed software it has controls in place to adhere to european IFRS reporting rules, but is lacking
some control features required by GAAP reporting standards used in the US.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I had to enter my time in sap at one point and also had access to the back end password reset portion as I worked at the helpdesk. Don't ahve to touch it anymore now. It's an ok software, but not the most intuitive. I've seen MUCH worse.

 

[GuitarDaddy]

To more directly answer the OP, SAP experience is critical for companies that run SAP simply because it is so fundamentally different than most all other ERP systems and the learning curve is so steep. My current company won't even consider anyone for IT or accounting positions that don't have it.

 

[DT4K]

Compared to what? I.e. what is a better competing system?

MS Dynamics for one.

I'm not sure if there are capabilities that SAP has and Dynamics doesn't, but from an end-user perspective, Dynamics is much more user friendly.

 

[AreaCode707]

For positions that touch it in companies that use it, SAP experience is a must and candidates are often filtered out based on whether they have experience. SAP is not an intuitive tool, so you can't say you know it and then fake your way through it til you have it figured out.

I'd say it's a pretty useful skill but it depends on which module of SAP you're learning. Learning how to use the employee management modules isn't going to help you much if you're going to be in a warehouse environment.

Of course, you can always wind up skipping shops and then your experience is useless. I worked a bit with SAP at my last company but my current is a Peoplesoft shop (where I don't have to touch the ERP except at review time, thank goodness) so my SAP experience is moot.

 

[chipy]

all, thanks for the fast reponses. it seems there're enough companies using it to where if one had experience in it, even as an end user, it would add to the skillset. i was just concerned that maybe the demand would only be there for developers/integrators and not end users but this doesn't seem like the case. also cool to hear about other competing software... seems Oracle is out and JDE is in. thanks!

 

[DT4K]

all, thanks for the fast reponses. it seems there're enough companies using it to where if one had experience in it, even as an end user, it would add to the skillset. i was just concerned that maybe the demand would only be there for developers/integrators and not end users but this doesn't seem like the case. also cool to hear about other competing software... seems Oracle is out and JDE is in. thanks!

I'd say it really depends on what kind of job you are looking for.
If you're looking for a job in a warehouse and the company uses SAP in it's warehouse, then yeah, it would probably be helpful, because one of the few skills you'll need to learn for that job is how to use their ERP system.

If you're an accountant and you're looking for a job at a company that uses SAP, I guess having some end user experience could be helpful, but my guess is that the company would be more interested in your accounting knowledge than your experience with their software system. Accounting knowledge is much harder to teach a new employee than how to use their ERP system.