[HN Gopher] Software horror show: SAP Concur
___________________________________________________________________
Software horror show: SAP Concur
Author : luu
Score : 143 points
Date : 2023-01-07 07:52 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.plover.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.plover.com)
| tsujamin wrote:
| having an app (even Concur) to do expense acquittals sounds like
| heaven to me...
| devniel wrote:
| SAP invested a bit on improving UX, e.g. things like SAP Fiori
| and SAPUI5, I was even able to create hybrids apps using its SAP
| Kapsel.
| voidee wrote:
| I've no doubt that you have many anti-Concur club members here!
| Whenever they make "improvements" it breaks something. Monthly
| Concur expense reports are torture, possibly being the only part
| of my job I consistently dislike. Can anyone recommend better
| alternatives to lobby my company to try?
| higeorge13 wrote:
| Spendesk?
| rightbyte wrote:
| > Can anyone recommend better alternatives to lobby my company
| to try?
|
| A stapler, a letter, a pen, an envelope and a secretary.
|
| That is how I always done it were I worked and it worked
| flawlessly each time.
|
| During Covid WFH I had to send email and take photos of the
| recipes so it was abit more cumbersome but I managed to cope.
| Moissanite wrote:
| Having to use Concur is one of the primary reasons I have avoided
| ramping up travel again after the COVID lockdown period ended.
|
| It also inverts incentives in other ways. I'm narurally inclined
| to be frugal, but that would often involve buying 3 or 4 smaller
| things to eat rather than a large meal. Since I know that would
| massively increase my own expense filing hassle, I instead tend
| to make individual purchases which are larger than I otherwise
| would.
| iconcur wrote:
| My employer recently switched to Concur, and it's the first time
| I've thought that we're now large enough that teams that are
| making software decisions for the rest of the company are either
| insulated from or don't care about the feedback of the people who
| actually have to use it.
|
| The UX is completely atrocious and the help is even worse. It
| took far too long to figure out how to make an expense request
| and they wouldn't accept my valid bank details. Our accounting
| team even had to send out a company wide message telling everyone
| to change their password, because apparently you can have both
| SSO and password logins with the default password set to
| something like expenses1234.
|
| There are no easily accessible documents. Instead you have to
| watch videos or wait hours! on hold to speak to someone. We came
| from Spendesk which was completely intuitive.
|
| On top of all of that, many people had to wait weeks for a
| reimbursement. I can't garantie that it was because of Concur but
| I wouldn't be surprised.
| johnwalkr wrote:
| I don't mind using concur but there is one thing I hate about it.
| When you take an picture of a receipt, it used to overlay a
| polygon with four corners for you to crop it. Now it
| automatically crops it and half the time it cuts off part of the
| receipt. One time in 100 it falls back to the overlay so you can
| fix it, but usually you have to delete the image and try again.
| It tends to fail on similar images so you have experiment by
| folding the receipt and using different backgrounds until it
| works. Oh and each time you take a picture using the app, it
| requires several taps so you have to constantly switch one hand
| back and forth between handling receipts and tapping on dialogue
| boxes.
| jl6 wrote:
| The most fundamental theorem of Enterprise software is that the
| users aren't the the customer, and so UX issues fall to the very
| bottom of the priority list. So the explanation is very
| plausible.
|
| Furthermore, amongst the already-low-priority UX issues, I can
| imagine UX of the _expenses_ application being rock bottom,
| because which business ever called up their ERP vendor and said
| "we need to make it easier for our staff to claim expenses"?
| IshKebab wrote:
| > which business ever called up their ERP vendor and said "we
| need to make it easier for our staff to claim expenses"?
|
| Businesses that were fed up with fielding questions from
| employees about how to claim expenses?
|
| In my experience it's _reasonably_ common for companies to
| switch expense claim systems because their existing one was
| rubbish. I haven 't worked for any SAP-using megacorps though
| tbf.
| pavlov wrote:
| There's Expensify which is supposed to have a very good UX
| and does about $200M annual revenue. So at least that much
| people are willing to pay for a better expense claim tool.
| raverbashing wrote:
| Expensify is much easier to use than Concur
|
| But their sales team probably plays less golf, let's put it
| this way
| jimnotgym wrote:
| That is the crux of it.
|
| I have a background in finance, and I think everyone is missing
| the problem that this is trying to solve.
|
| People are careless when they claim expenses. They claim for
| things they lost the receipt for and then they try and pressure
| some accounts clerk into forcing it through. They make careless
| mistakes like multiplying their milage by the wrong rate,
| because they don't see why they should have to look up the
| right one. Then their line manager doesn't get around to
| signing it off, so employee chases accounts team, and accounts
| team have to chase approvers. Senior people are usually worst.
|
| The accounts team then hand to justify why they processed a
| claim despite x,y and z...to external auditors.
|
| Setting an expectation that if you don't get it right up front,
| the computer won't let you through is a very powerful selling
| point to a CFO who has to control this rubbish
| rwmj wrote:
| This would be true if they weren't employees of the _same
| company_ who are wasting time on make-work nonsense when they
| could be doing something productive.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Workers need to stop giving corporation access to their
| credit card. That is an even simpler solution.
| aikinai wrote:
| I think you have the incentives backwards here. When you
| use your own credit card for company expenses, you can rack
| up tons of personal benefits. The company would prefer you
| to use their card so they get those instead.
|
| A few years ago Google, for example, cracked down and
| started requiring company cards for expensive purchases
| like flights.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| Credit card rewards typically represent around 1% of
| transactions. For a cross-country trip with a $500
| flight, 3 night at a $200 hotel, 4 $25 taxi trips and 9
| (average) $20 meals that works out to 1% of $1380 or
| $13.80. In exchange for this modest benefit you will need
| to keep receipts and do data entry for about 15 items. If
| you forget a single meal receipt or accounting disputes a
| single charge, you're already in the red. It's not even
| clear if this reward covers the theoretical cost of
| extending a loan to your employer (at consumer interest
| rates), which is what you're doing.
|
| This only adds up to a substantial benefit if you're
| doing major international travel (carefully) or handling
| big-ticket hardware purchases on your card. Meals and
| travel is almost certainly a net loss.
| fshbbdssbbgdd wrote:
| You can just use your personal card on the big ticket
| items (flight and hotel) and use the corporate card for
| the small ones, if you're worried about forgetting
| something. And you can get 5% points for those expenses
| (with either airline/hotel brand loyalty cards, or
| something like Amex Platinum that works on any brand). If
| you're traveling a lot and flying business class for work
| it can add up to thousands of dollars and pay for your
| vacations.
| beisner wrote:
| People who travel a lot for work are often extremely
| attuned to the credit card rewards game, so getting only
| 1% back is unrealistic. You can eek out at least 5% back
| (and often much higher, depending on redemptions) on all
| travel expenses. So in this(extremely inexpensive, bare-
| bones) travel scenario it's more like $65. With
| international or frequent travel, it's not hard to arrive
| at a couple extra thousand dollars a year.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Oh ye I forgot kickbacks on CC is a thing in the US.
|
| I even remember a colleague when I worked in California
| boast to me about his $10000 claim recipe and the
| kickback.
|
| Since it was a 5 man startup at that point I don't think
| it was worth the credit risk though.
|
| Ye well ... dunno who to blame then in the CC mess.
| rhn_mk1 wrote:
| The blame is now even more clearly on the employees. They
| get the hassle of expenses _because_ they want the
| kickbacks.
| aikinai wrote:
| You still have to file the expenses even if you use the
| company card, at least everywhere I've worked.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| Yes, the company needs your receipts for tax compliance.
| fshbbdssbbgdd wrote:
| This particular form of embezzlement is legal so
| everybody can get it out of their system.
| bonzini wrote:
| And then you have silly rules like "company credit card
| expires after 9 months of no use" coupled which basically
| prevents people who travel rarely from following the
| rules.
| Moissanite wrote:
| Wouldn't a flat per diem payment make more sense then? That
| way you don't need the complex (and presumably pricey)
| expenses software, and you don't torture your employees with
| it when they could be doing something useful.
| xmcqdpt2 wrote:
| Even if you have a per diem you still need to expense
| things, just less of them. So the system still needs to
| exist.
|
| Unless your per diem is completely over the top, you'll
| need to expense flights, hotels, team dinners, client
| dinners, etc.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Depending on jurisdiction, taxes. So it is most likely not
| the company responsible for the "torturing"...
| p_l wrote:
| In reality you end up dealing with a flat per diem... that
| you have to calculate to the hour with things like crossing
| borders (even funnier when you have to include work
| authorizations in there, like with Switzerland!), and you
| still have expense claims, which might or might not be
| discounted by per diem depending on type of the claim!
| robertlagrant wrote:
| I think it's fine to have expenses software, but I'd love to
| have something modern and usable. I think the problem is that
| if you try and make that, all your customers secretly want a
| clunky ERP and need all the non-expenses features built.
| jbk wrote:
| Have you ever used SAP Ariba?
|
| Numerous large American tech companies are using that for
| supplier, including Intel, Google or ARM. They used to have their
| own system, and they moved to that abomination.
|
| Everything is counter-productive, the UX is insane, but to give
| you an idea: you have a list of PO or invoices, but you cannot
| click on them to see them, you have a three-dot menu that allows
| you to get an email to "act on the PO"... They broke the simple
| idea of an hypertext link... I'm not even talking about changing
| a bank account...
| popotamonga wrote:
| The nightmares. I was a supplier for cocacola and it was so bad
| they had to do the invoicing for me because it was magic.
| BenFeldman1930 wrote:
| Maybe "SAP Dirty Sanchez" would be a better name?
| manholio wrote:
| What happened here is that a 1000 ton gorilla is entrenched in
| the business operations market and it's irrational for managers
| to phase them out since it's very risky for their careers. This
| poisons the field for startups who can't grow to the critical
| mass to be viable on this market, which in turn lowers
| competition, witch leads to monopolistic practices, inefficient
| bad software and broken drop-boxes.
|
| The drop-box looks like it does because it's good enough and
| there there are no business pressures on the market for SAP to
| fix it. The manager gets to keep their job by buying SAP and the
| low level staff needs to deal with such stupidities (and much,
| much worse ones) ad infinitum.
| pachico wrote:
| No CTO was ever fired for choosing:
|
| SAP, JIRA, SalesForce, Oracle, ...
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| The Lidl guy might be a counter-example ?? (Partially their
| fault though.)
| hef19898 wrote:
| Name one serious alternative for SAP, if you need a real ERP
| system?
| billwashere wrote:
| Depends on the industry,Oracle Netsuite is similar to SAP. A
| lot of construction/professional services use Deltek
| Vantagepoint. Also Mircosoft Dynamics comes to mind.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Yeah, it really depends on the exact use case. And the
| availability of functional consultants with relevant
| industry expertise. SAP isn't great t project management,
| even if make-to-order works just fine, but that is still a
| manufacturing environment. SAP is also somewhat lacking in
| terms of logistics and warehousing (at least it was last
| time I checked / worked with SAP in that field 5 or so
| years ago).
|
| MS Dynamics seems to have some good ideas when it comes to
| field services (I never worked with that, so). INFOR is
| rather good when it comes to project management and project
| driven manufacturing and planning. So, pick your poison,
| because no system will satisfy all you wishes, but the
| decent ones will satisfy almost all your needs, one way or
| another.
|
| One of the big benefits of picking SAP is the huge pool of
| people with relevant experience, from developers over users
| (from simple employees over key users to super key users)
| all the way to those "controversial" consultants. And that
| across almost all industries, countries, regions and
| functions.
| hbarka wrote:
| I don't understand the disdain here in Hacker News for enterprise
| software. Every now and then this type of post would show up,
| decrying how terrible the user interface is or how awful looking
| the fonts are and how they can program the same functions in 1000
| lines of code and support thousands of users.
|
| These companies have revenue in the billions. They have enabled
| large companies, since before many of us were born. Your payroll
| and accrued sick leave and benefits deductions and AP/AR doesn't
| miss a beat because of these companies. Apple runs on SAP (and
| Oracle and Workday), mind you. So does Google.
|
| Are they bad or is it the crowd here?
| deadpannini wrote:
| What you say is true, but these companies aren't successful
| because their products are usable. They succeeded because of
| their first-mover advantage, lack of alternatives, and
| compliance requirements that raise the cost of competition. We
| don't owe them any respect when it comes to UX.
|
| I can see how it gets tiresome reading repetitive arguments,
| but a solid theory undergirds all the criticism: that one way
| to beat SAP, oracle, Microsoft, etc. Is to provide a better
| user experience.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Nefore better UI and UX help you beat SAP and co, you need
| compliant, and industry specific ERP functions on par with
| them. And then you need to sway all those existing customers
| away from them. In market that doesn't value UI half as much
| as you seem to think.
| deadpannini wrote:
| I agree that the enterprise market does not value usability
| very much, and I would even agree that the enterprise
| vendors made the _right choice_ to deliver anything at all,
| in the early stages of ERP (even the first two decades).
|
| None of that means the software is good: we can recognize
| the smart business choices those companies made and also
| abhor their products.
|
| They provide what Alan Cooper calls "Dancing bearware" - it
| doesn't matter how badly the bear dances, they're just
| grateful to have a bear that can do it at all.
| hbarka wrote:
| User experience is fleeting. I like the user experience of
| manual transmission cars but >80% of new drivers today would
| scream user experience if you gave them one. Perhaps the
| complaint here comes from these types of users who expect
| novelty to their liking.
|
| There was a comical reference to Tesla. If you've only
| experienced the user experience headache that Tesla forces on
| you every time they have a major software update (at least 2x
| a year). The muscle memory has to adapt.
| IceDane wrote:
| They are bad, and the crowd is dismissive.
|
| I work in this industry, though I work almost exclusively with
| non SAP related stuff.
|
| On one hand, the problems being solved are complicated and for
| some products, there are decades of embedded domain knowledge,
| and they have a lot of products, and can basically do anything
| any kind of business needs to be able to do, and integrate it
| somehow with other parts of the system.
|
| On the other hand... large parts of it are absolutely horribly
| engineered. ABAP is a programming language that makes me recoil
| in disgust. What it is is the result of polishing the same turd
| for several decades, seemingly without one person or group ever
| trying to think about the direction or bigger picture for the
| whole stack(which is just impossibly large at this point, and
| like a tentacle monster from another dimension).
|
| It does work, but mostly because people have been hammering out
| the kinks for thousands of person-years. As for the things said
| about the consulting industry.. they are definitely true.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Thank you! I once had the pleasure (ahem) to work with a
| "solution architect" who shared the opinion around enterprise
| software you mentioned. He was in charge of getting the MRP
| running, but he had no idea how MRP works, e.g. he set thought
| having one (!) use case without (!) lead times life represents
| a successful implementation... Almost a year later, I still try
| to clean that mess up...
| robertlagrant wrote:
| I have a similar thing with people who think snow is white.
| Joseph Stalin also thought that, and he killed 50 million
| people!
| hef19898 wrote:
| Come again?
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Sibling comment nailed it. It's just a brief analogous
| category error.
|
| Someone thought SAP was bad and messed up an
| implementation, therefore people who think SAP is bad
| mess up implementations.
|
| Someone thought snow was white and killed 50m people,
| therefore people who think snow is white are mass
| murderers.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Ok, you got me. I am no match to your logic nor your
| argumentative skills. SAP sucks, because its UI is bad.
| Doubly so because the UI of an expense solution SAP
| acquired through a third party is bad. You win.
|
| Now someone has to come up with something that solves all
| the other challenges industrial enterprises have. And
| tell them whatever alternative was developed is actually
| so much better that an ERP system change is warrented.
| douglee650 wrote:
| It's an allegory OP is making to express their disdain
| for anecdotal correlation, illustrated here by the
| absurdity in which the story of a solution architect
| making a mistake based on a single case, is itself an
| anecdotal correlation ...the purpose of which is
| perceived to paint an entire class of people (solution
| architects) as reactively decisive with incomplete
| information.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Well, I did talk about one specific solution architect.
| One that got the fundamental basics of ERP systems wrong.
| And part of the problem was his superficial, at best,
| understanding of ERP systems and underlying processes.
| The last part is ehat said solution architect has in
| common with the vast majority of commenters under this
| submission.
| douglee650 wrote:
| Nice, i was trying to get into the motives of the "snow
| is white equals Joseph Stalin" commenter. Not a
| condemnation of your statement.
| hef19898 wrote:
| >> Not a condemnation of your statement.
|
| I didn't take it as such. And you really helped, because
| was a total loss with OP's comment...
| dig1 wrote:
| I think it is a superiority complex. SAP, IBM, Oracle (and many
| small companies running for ages) are all making "shitty"
| products, yet, every year, their revenue is in billions.
|
| On the other hand, we have "beautifully hand-crafted products
| with love" made in the best languages human can invent (your
| favorite language only HN crowd dicking around), and those
| companies are barely paying their developers and bills. But
| hey, their products are auto-scalable, kubernetes managed,
| disrupting the industry, powered with green, recycled energy,
| and vegan food with hand-picked ingredients...
|
| I'll leave it to the astute reader to concur with the pattern
| here.
| neuronic wrote:
| Did you really have to add a jab at vegan food and renewable
| energy in there and somehow make this about politics?
|
| Where is this weird (and frankly suspicious) hostility
| against either of those even rationally coming from?
|
| No need to act as if "crazy HN hipster developers"
| (apparently your perspective) are the only ones who don't
| understand that there is a very good reason why SAP is still
| used at Apple and Google.
| dig1 wrote:
| The funny thing is that people are easily offended these
| days simply by including trigger words they don't like to
| see in a negative context. I'd invite you and other
| downvoters to re-read my prose again. The focus was not on
| someone's personal choices but how those catchphrases are
| (ab)used in a context to promote something "healthy", yet
| the next month that company will be ready to lay off 70% of
| their workforce without a problem due to their bad business
| model.
|
| I was fortunate to be in touch with renewable energy
| companies (professionally and indirectly), and you'd be
| surprised how unhealthy those things are for the
| environment on a grand scale. But, YMMV...
| neuronic wrote:
| Sorry, disagree. You put these words in your original
| comment with intent so do not be surprised when people
| respond to that. This kind of behavior feels weird and
| suspicious and in my eyes it's telling that you
| immediately default to calling others out about being
| "offended" when offending was your intent to begin with.
|
| Otherwise why inject politics and talk about triggering?
| You are doing the framing.
| QuadmasterXLII wrote:
| The connecting thread through veganism, climate change, and
| enterprise software is that you can accrue significant
| personal benefits by causing suffering elsewhere, and you
| will never have to face consequences for that suffering. In
| fact, anyone who even shows you that suffering is a hippie
| bastard
| realworldperson wrote:
| [dead]
| themoonisachees wrote:
| As a sysadmin i often get dealt the worst part of programs. I
| get thrown for the update stuff but never actually use the
| programs so i never get to say "well it's a pain tp update but
| a joy to use". When i was sysadmin in a small firm, updating
| SAP components was always the single most furstrating
| experience, and we ran Matlab.
|
| As someone who has a degree in CS who had to go through
| "enterprise programming" courses, it's honestly appalling how
| SAP and Sage are. They're like the Teslas of programming,
| people who don't know better swear they're great but you can
| _see_ them coming apart at the seams, and you know that you
| could do better because you have, back in university.
|
| add to that a healthy dose of anti-establisment and you get the
| hatred at SAP and Sage, bad products that are viable because
| they were first to market 30 years ago and now have the
| necessary connections to appear legit to unknowing decision
| makers. They have revenues in the billions because the sell the
| same software as 20 years ago at a premium but switching would
| be too expensive, so the clients stay.
| brianwawok wrote:
| I greatly enjoy my Tesla every time I drive it.
|
| I have never enjoyed using SAP or Oracle products.
| hef19898 wrote:
| What are doing in SAP? Supply Chain, Production, Finance? I
| pitty you if it is logistics...
| brianwawok wrote:
| Right now nothing!!
|
| But have used concur and been parallel to some of the
| other products...
| prepend wrote:
| The real reason is because the stackoverflow copypaste that
| worked didn't sort the results.
|
| This stuff drives me crazy as there are people who just don't
| care. I can't imagine ever looking at those results and not doing
| something simple to make it better.
| mrjin wrote:
| Try their timesheet function in any browser, much more amazing.
| Every time you save something, it opens a new tab!!
| PascLeRasc wrote:
| That's a nice feature considering how much they go out of their
| way to override the native context menu and disable middle
| mouse button click so you can't open two expense reports in two
| tabs.
| irusensei wrote:
| My personal experience so far is that the whole SAP ecosystem is
| a great way for incompetent people to print money. I've worked
| for companies that ran SAP and paid obscene amounts of money for
| SAP consultant and developers to write terrible code using their
| proprietary language.
|
| We had this issue with a certain report that was outputting weird
| values. Company had to pay the partner for support. I've skimmed
| over the code and it was processing hardcoded index positions. I
| repeat the person who did that had no concept of a loop. Since
| the query was returning more than 250 results the remaining rows
| were being ignored.
|
| The solution? They increase it to 500. Certified. SAP. Partner.
|
| Other issues like having to create folders on the shared NFS
| volume because developer couldn't arse to create parent folder if
| it doesn't exist. New supplier? Need to mkdir otherwise those
| long running reports would be inconsistent. Ah... let's not
| forget CHMOD 777 EVERYWHERE when handling file systems.
|
| Don't even let me start on the "move to standard" utopia and the
| horrors that come with it.
|
| I didn't dare to touch that thing. First it was the company could
| lose support if the supplied code was modified and second if they
| knew I could fix stuff they would treat me as some cheap labor
| alternative.
| jmclnx wrote:
| I see this all the time, and on our UN*X servers, everything
| remotely related to SAP is 777, even text files. Not matter how
| many times I tell them not to do that, it happens anyway.
|
| Good help the company if someone every gets access to the SAP
| servers.
| masklinn wrote:
| > Certified. SAP. Partner.
|
| IME (not sap but adjacent) partners cert and "levels" only has
| to do with how much you earn for the company.
|
| Competence only comes into play if you're so egregiously
| incompetent you start sinking projects and costing product
| rep', and neither is really a concern for SAP.
| arpinum wrote:
| I've gone through 3 certification processes for a company.
| First was gained via licence sales, second via spend on
| training by the vendor, third via 3 blog posts about the
| vendor.
| madaxe_again wrote:
| I've spent too long over the years working with businesses who
| use SAP to not get a clear picture of how it works there.
|
| They are an extremely formulaic organisation. Progression paths
| are clearly defined, and practically everything is run by a
| management system. This sounds good, in principal, and does
| result in a general baseline of reliability.
|
| The flip side of this is that everyone is promoted to the limit
| of their competence, product development and implementation are
| rapidly spinning revolving doors, from top to bottom, and
| roles, not people, own products and decisions.
|
| The result is a sort of methodical malcoordination, and
| seemingly insane decisions being taken at every juncture -
| unless you view them all through the lens of an emergent
| process driven by a simple set of rules and constraints: cover
| your ass, don't do it if it isn't explicitly ordered, always
| follow the management system.
|
| It's terrible. It's just that it's very reliably terrible, and
| that has its own appeal to other reliably terrible
| corporations. It's all minmax, least worst, etc. - quality does
| not matter in the corporate world - consistency does.
| ComradeMatis wrote:
| It is amazing that some how SAP has made Oracle software half
| decent in comparison - and that isn't saying much for either of
| them.
| vulcanash999 wrote:
| > I've skimmed over the code and it was processing hardcoded
| index positions. I repeat the person who did that had no
| concept of a loop. Since the query was returning more than 250
| results the remaining rows were being ignored.
|
| Unrelated, but this reminds me of a time when I had to write
| some code in some proprietery programming language in some
| industrial automation project to program a PLC. The language
| was similar to Visual Basic but lacked support for basic things
| such as for loops. I spent some time creating a "meta-language"
| that would compile code down to this language with added
| support for loops and some other stuff. Then I would paste the
| compiled code in the proprietary software each time I had to
| change anything.
| [deleted]
| Bouncingsoul1 wrote:
| That's odd most of these PLC are programmable with IEC
| 61131-3 languages,e.g. Structured Text which has For-loops.
| That said i did my fair share of metaprogramming as these
| usually lack dynamic allocation.
| electroly wrote:
| Most PLCs _these days_ support 1131! My whole career in
| industrial automation was on older PLCs that were produced
| before 1131 existed. (And long before they added the "6"!)
| Lots of them are still running factories today. Not one of
| them supported anything like a for loop. The only loop is
| the whole program scan loop.
| HyperSane wrote:
| I worked for a company that uses Syteline ERP and it was a
| similar horroshow.
| noAnswer wrote:
| I worked for a company that uses Microsoft Navision. The
| consultant/dev wold remote work via Teamviewer directly on
| the production system. Build in editor had no syntax
| highlighting. No version control possible, since the code is
| in the database. (Unless the dev copied the code into Notepad
| and saved it separately.) Certain reports would block all
| clients company-wide. To print something one would need to
| click ~6 buttons with super long mouse movements. I
| programmed AutoHotkey-Scripts to ease the pain. "Fun" times
| :-)
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Recent discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33857694
| PascLeRasc wrote:
| SAP Concur somehow permanently kills the KeyPassXC extension for
| me on every browser, every computer. I think that's pretty
| impressive.
| a2800276 wrote:
| "And then the product manager didn't point at the screen and say
| "wouldn't it be better to alphabetize these?"
|
| And the UX person, if there was one, didn't raise any red flag,
| or if they did nothing was done."
|
| ...and all of the no doubt uncountable complaints by the poor
| sods being forced to use this pile of crap by senior executives,
| who have secretaries to fill out their expense reports for them
| and get invited to luxury junkets by SAP, were utterly ignored
| najdan33 wrote:
| This thought deserves some admiration:
|
| >Assume that bad technical decisions are made rationally, for
| reasons that are not apparent.
|
| It could be generalized:
|
| >Assume that acts or behavior you don't understand are made
| rationally, for reasons that are not apparent.
| fetzu wrote:
| Fun fact: last year I had to re-input a whole expense report
| because of a greyed out mandatory field (I wish I was kidding).
| So I naturally made screenshots of every position to re-enter
| them. The amount of the second expense report was not the same as
| the first (it was less in my local currency): apparently the
| conversion rate is not fixed (for a given day) but can vary on
| the whims of the system (RNG?).
|
| I emailed our "concur people" about it, and they did not even
| understand what the issue was. I have since forwarded the case to
| our finance and IT, but am not holding my breath on getting some
| kind of answer.
| masklinn wrote:
| > apparently the conversion rate is not fixed (for a given day)
| but can vary on the whims of the system (RNG?).
|
| Assuming all the dates were set up the same, it could be that
| the exchange rate are "latest at creation of expense" (or just
| "latest") and the rates had been updated in the meantime.
|
| I'd usually expect the exchange rate to be the rate at the date
| the expense was incurred but...
| pflenker wrote:
| With sap, the end user is not the customer. Hence, the whole
| thing is designed to pass a sales pitch and nothing else. The
| people who use this are not the ones who make the buy decision.
| hef19898 wrote:
| The whole system, SAP is way more than expenses (!), is there
| to keep multi-national manufacturing networks running. And to
| pass all kinds of quality and financial audits. That people
| fail to realize that, and still think dumping on legacy UI and
| ERP systems, is just beyond me...
| robertlagrant wrote:
| People do realise that. That doesn't mean SAP has a good UI.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Until we have a discussion about things like inventory
| valuation and write off rules across coubtries and business
| units, the use of production orders, demand forecasting,
| monthly closure across sites, countries and lefal entities,
| assets and corresponding write offs and how all of that is
| integrated in one sofware suite, and how those systems do
| one thing better than others, I highly doubt people _do_
| get it.
|
| So far, and the last time we discussed Concur here, we stop
| at comments about lines in reports, how bothersome it is to
| upload receipts and how all of that is taling away minutes
| of peoples othereise highly productive time on their job.
| imtringued wrote:
| No, sorry to burst your bubble but the SAP UX is bad and
| it is proven by all the people trying to build their own
| front ends on top of it.
| hef19898 wrote:
| No bubble to burst, SAPs UI sucks. As does any other ERP
| system I saw. I never disputed that, but that is actually
| not the point. And all those front ends I know don't
| cover the core functionalities of ERP system anyway.
|
| The fact only UX, which is different from UI, was again
| adressed, and none of the other points I mentioned, kind
| of proofs my point.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| The other points you mentioned weren't relevant to the UI
| or the UX. That's why no one's addressing them.
|
| I get you have some knowledge here and so want to talk
| about it, but should do so in the knowledge that you're
| doing so in spite of its relevance, not because of it.
|
| In a similar way if someone criticises the Amazon UI,
| coming in saying, "But no one's addressed my comments on
| how hard logistics and warehouse management are" would be
| a non sequitur.
| hef19898 wrote:
| You have no idea how the UI of Amazon's internal tools,
| whrn it comes to Retail and Fulfillment, look like, do
| you?
| samwillis wrote:
| That's the same with all enterprise software sales. However the
| counter argument is that there are multiple layers of "end
| user" and the executives who purchase it, but don't "use" it,
| are still recipients of the the output from the system. They
| will read the reports, and use it for insight.
|
| Point is though, you are right, the majority of users of these
| systems are very removed from the purchasing decisions. And
| therefor the UX for them is very often subpar.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Everybody but upper management uses ERP systems to literally
| keep the lights on. And some of those reports are to be
| published quarterly, you know, balance sheets and such...
| speps wrote:
| 2022
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| My supply chain consultant friend can never understand why I
| recoil whenever he mentions SAP.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Which says a lot about both of you.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| Be constructive with your feedback, please!
| PaulAJ wrote:
| SAP has a very clear idea of how it makes money. It makes money
| by selling to senior managers who don't have to use it, and have
| very little idea of the realities for people on the front line.
| So SAP have no incentive to produce a system that is useable,
| because that won't increase their sales. Their sales are
| increased by clever salespeople, so that is where the money goes.
| tluyben2 wrote:
| Previous discussion:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33857694
| gnabgib wrote:
| Extensive discussion too.. 356 pts, 190 comments
| thayne wrote:
| I've seen the same thing (dropdown with no discernable order) in
| other products too. Like the AWS console and atlassian products.
| Although, in some of those cases it was eventually fixed.
| LightG wrote:
| OMG sorry this is so relevant ... we've just been dealing with a
| client with SAP software that is supposed to automate on-boarding
| suppliers/customers.
|
| It takes 2 people client side to hand hold third-parties through
| the labyrynth, and 1 person at the third party to desperately go
| back and forth to those 2 people to check if everything is ok and
| to answer questions about why things aren't progressing.
|
| Literal facepalm.
|
| Have had the same experience with two other clients recently.
| What is going on with SAP?
| Kiro wrote:
| The list is sorted, just not alphabetically. No idea why the
| author presumes that lists can only be sorted in one way or not
| at all.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| The list might be ordered, but it's not sorted, at least not by
| a criteria that would be obvious to me or the author.
| sidcool wrote:
| I think it's a bit fashionable here at HN to lambast enterprise
| software (and companies). I myself find a guilty pleasure in
| doing so. We like to call them incompetent.
|
| But these companies do something right. If not software then in
| sales or marketing.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| That's true. But no one is criticising their business
| abilities.
| deely3 wrote:
| Most people that criticizes SAP and other enterprise software
| miss the point that SAP and enterprise software is complex. Not
| because it made complex but because this area/domain is really
| complex. Finances are complex, role based access control are
| complex, ORM is complex. Now combine all these things and add
| different implementation in different countries/regions and you
| will probably understand why SAP is de-facto standard.
| haunter wrote:
| SAP must be the sacrificial lamb to keep the "legendary german
| engineering" myth alive
| jimnotgym wrote:
| To be fair US companies have built some truly awful tools in
| this field.
|
| Can anyone remember the name of that awful booking system
| Oracle sells?
| bigDinosaur wrote:
| Is there any mythos around US engineering in the way there is
| about German practicality, efficiency, and reliability?
| jimnotgym wrote:
| There is about software engineering yes, a myth that only
| the US can build great products
| seabird wrote:
| The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the
| world that German engineering is something they want.
|
| In automobiles, industrial equipment, electronics, software,
| etc. you can sense when Germans were involved. I've accepted
| that it's something I'll never understand, and that they
| probably feel the same way about American designs. Same planet,
| different worlds.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| In terms of software you are probably right, since we are
| behind in so many areas and education for jobs about creating
| software is not the best.
|
| About cars: Do you mean things like the VW scandal? Or do you
| mean actually shoddy engineering in cars?
|
| I think the reputation for engineering stems from darker
| times.
| lstodd wrote:
| Well, considering best german automotive engineering got
| left behind in early nineties and that for like 20 years
| already owning a BMW or Mercedes means constant hassle and
| tons of cash for trivial repairs - yes. German auto
| engineering just isn't there.
|
| VW scandal is different - it's what you get when you set
| unreasonable and actually conflicting requirements.
| throwmeaway1112 wrote:
| I recently found out it's not SAP native software - rather it's
| USA based company/product that was acquired by SAP.
| TMWNN wrote:
| I've heard it said that the truth behind the myth of German
| engineering and German efficiency[1] is that Germans are,
| rather, _rule followers_.
|
| [1] Example of both: The new Berlin airport
| croes wrote:
| Wasn't the problem with the Berlin airport that they didn't
| follow the rules, e.g. fire protection?
| ingomaro wrote:
| Fire protection mess ... was a symptom. The root cause was
| that the local governments (city of Berlin and state of
| Brandenburg) wanted to split the pie for many small to
| medium businesses in the region. Noble idea but hard to
| execute as we found out later... So instead of giving it
| all to a contractor that actually knows how to build
| (large) airports they tried to managed it themself. Those
| people were unexperienced in this size of operation and it
| went all downhill from there. It's a common theme with big
| projects: Local administration is unexperienced but tries
| to do it anyway and they fail or get ripped off every time.
| What we should have is a federal unit that just does large
| scale construction/engineering projects.
| samwillis wrote:
| See also:
|
| "Lidl's EUR500 Million SAP Debacle"
|
| https://www.henricodolfing.com/2020/05/case-study-lidl-sap-d...
| dx034 wrote:
| Which shows how complex enterprise use cases can be and how
| valuable good SAP consultants are. With all its faults, for
| many large companies it's still much better and cheaper to have
| all processes on SAP than using dozens or hundreds of
| specialized (often self developed) applications. At least with
| SAP you always find someone who will help you, with your
| 20-year old in-house developed software, no one will want to
| touch that code again.
| hef19898 wrote:
| My personal favorite! And if you dig into it, exclusively Lidls
| fault. Also, Lidl wanted to do more than just expenses...
| jzwinck wrote:
| Concur is indeed a poor system.
|
| I suppose the thinking is that by having each employee of a big
| organization do a small amount of work, they can avoid hiring a
| central person who just accepts receipts in envelopes and deals
| with them.
|
| Or maybe that by putting up roadblocks like Concur, some employee
| expenses will not need to be reimbursed.
|
| The problem is that this requires educating every employee on how
| to use these systems. That's a waste of time and a drag on
| productivity. Better to hire that central person who will learn
| all the quirks of whatever system is used and let the other 99%
| of the organization do their jobs.
|
| When companies need photos of their employees they find a
| photographer who provides that service. They don't ask each
| employee to learn about lighting technique and do the post
| processing according to a written set of standards in hopes the
| photos will look consistent. But with Concur that's what happens.
| viraptor wrote:
| > some employee expenses will not need to be reimbursed.
|
| I don't think the savings would offset the system cost. But
| then again, I've definitely got a threshold where just spending
| my money without claiming is worth it for my mental health...
| Closi wrote:
| > I suppose the thinking is that by having each employee of a
| big organization do a small amount of work, they can avoid
| hiring a central person who just accepts receipts in envelopes
| and deals with them.
|
| In a big company that person who 'just accepts receipts and
| deals with them' will have to enter the receipt into an
| expenses system like Concur anyway.
|
| Personally I find it much easier and faster to input it myself
| than to put everything in an envelope with enough information
| in the envelope to allow an admin to correctly expense/bill it
| (e.g. cost centers, an explanation for why the hotel was over
| the policy allowance, a bank transaction for that thing I lost
| the reciept for...).
|
| > When companies need photos of their employees they find a
| photographer who provides that service. They don't ask each
| employee to learn about lighting technique and do the post
| processing according to a written set of standards in hopes the
| photos will look consistent. But with Concur that's what
| happens.
|
| IMO the better comparison would be hiring an in-house photo
| team which has to be used any time anyone in the company wants
| a photo of something.
|
| It's quicker for me to take a photo of this prototype I made
| than it is for me to arrange for the in-house photographer to
| come.
| lrem wrote:
| I'd rather apply Hanlon's razor here. And for your example: my
| employer finds it worthwhile to maintain a security person to
| be equipped and trained to take adequate pictures of employees
| in each office. It's a linearly scaling cost that could be
| optimised away. But, it removes failures modes (contract
| photographer not delivering, employee missing an appointment,
| ...) with total expected impact exceeding the cost of a camera
| and explaining to a new guy which corner of the office has the
| lightning set up for three point portraits.
| PascLeRasc wrote:
| When my company needed photos of everyone they announced a new
| policy and then 10 minutes later sent aggressive emails to each
| manager asking why they thought it was professional for their
| subordinates to be out of compliance. We use Concur too.
| contrast wrote:
| I wouldn't expect it to make things easier for employees to
| require them to have printed receipts for everything. That's a
| roadblock in its own right.
|
| I've not used Concur but I've never met anyone who hasn't
| preferred moving on from antiquated paper processes for
| expenses. Faster to scan receipts on the go, easier to track,
| less risk of a lost receipt, bulk of expenses are incurred via
| a digital process anyway.
| rwmj wrote:
| Concur tip - you can upload a 1x1 png in place of the lost
| receipt. (For some reason the "I don't have a receipt" option
| still requires you to upload a receipt.)
| hef19898 wrote:
| Which will be thrown out by finance, as they need either
| peoper receipts or a signed declaration of the correct
| amount (receipts indeed do get lost). Why? Taxes. So you
| 1x1 png hack will only get your expenses reimboursed later,
| and if accounting doesn't catch the empty png, well, you
| might have more serious issues.
| rwmj wrote:
| They didn't, and it was like a 1 euro purchase.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Depends on country I guess. The rules between Germany and
| Luxembourg are really different. Ideally so, accounting
| should have caught it. Again that depends on internal
| rules...
| rikroots wrote:
| Reminds me of my very first posting in the (UK) Civil Service
| working as an Admin Assistant for the Highways Contracts team.
| Beyond filing, and delivering post to people's desks, my main
| work was to check through the expenses claims made by our
| consultants. Expenses were submitted by letter and -
| surprisingly - most claims made sense and would add up to the
| last penny correctly on first check.
|
| Except for one firm of consultants who seemed, to me, to be
| chaos personified. Their expenses would go on for dozens of
| pages and never tallied to the amount they were claiming. In
| the end I resorted to hand-drawing an 'evil eye'[1] and taping
| it to my in-tray to try and stop the worst of their excesses
| reaching into my working day. Getting a promotion away from
| that work also helped.
|
| [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_eye
| notimetorelax wrote:
| I would argue that giving my receipts to an admin also requires
| a fair amount of input from me before they can file the expense
| report. I'd rather much prefer an expense tool that works.
| xupybd wrote:
| Xero has a great tool but last I checked it was $5 per
| employee per month. With many not making claims every month
| that is too much overhead per claim.
| a2800276 wrote:
| SAP is notoriously expensive. It's not conceivable that
| anyone chose SAP to save a dime. Or $5.
| sidcool wrote:
| I remember a similar link posted a while back.
| ramraj07 wrote:
| Search is one place where mediocre engineers and even many good
| ones consistently seem to think they know what they are doing,
| and they know what is good enough, and worst of all, that all of
| this is super easy. The solution, universally, is "use elastic
| search" (though there's also the puerile cousin where people say
| "use the like operator") but elastic search has never solved
| search if all you did was learn and set it up in a day.
|
| The most important factor is to make sure you weight your results
| by two numbers - one that tries to score the match of the result
| to the search string and another which is a more absolute weight
| (which could be population here, simplistically). Without that
| search will look like this, and these engineers will always say,
| "this looks good to me? Just finish typing the city and it'll
| give you what you want?"
| themoonisachees wrote:
| Very true, but also consider: SAP is a billions of dollar
| corporation. They can afford to throw like 5 engineers who have
| specific experience in elastic search to fix this in a day.
| They won't because they have no reason to, but this is software
| that you sign a contract for, not some random OSS project on
| github.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| And just think with how many companies use it, so many people
| wasting so much time every day.
| rwmj wrote:
| My particular annoyance is Concur "punishes" you for having the
| temerity to disable tracking cookies (which is a legal
| requirement to be the default, and they're based in Germany so
| there's no excuse). Every time you select this option, which is
| every time I do an expense, it sits there for many minutes
| pretending to update my preferences.
| namdnay wrote:
| I don't think the law on tracking cookies applies to your work
| tools on your work computer
| d1sxeyes wrote:
| If that is indeed the case, then there would be legal
| problems associated with that. Either you are accepting
| cookies as a private individual, or you are representing your
| company. Very few companies allow (most) employees to enter
| into agreements on their behalf.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| Why do you think that? Are working people not human beings
| covered by the law? Is an employer allowed to void EU citizen
| rights?
| raverbashing wrote:
| Not if the tracking entity would be the company I'm employed
| to, _not_ some 3rd party tool
|
| Anyway, for non-compliant cookie dialogs, I accept and then
| remove the cookies manually. Track that.
|
| They might enjoy a complaint to the relevant privacy
| authorities as well
| BuckyBeaver wrote:
| Concur = unmitigated trash
| 99failures wrote:
| SAP Concur is weird. Supposedly the best solution in the
| marketplace (got any alternatives?) and 50% of the functionality
| is pretty good, the remainder 50% is questionable.
|
| And the complexity reminds me of mainframes' UX.
| beardyw wrote:
| The folks on Los Andes are pleased it doesn't always assume Los
| Angles. Are we sure there isn't a bit of a sense of entitlement
| here?
| ZiiS wrote:
| Pleasing 100,000 folks by inconveniencing 10,000,000.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-01-07 23:01 UTC)