“Once again about the naked king” or how I tested SAP B1 (sap business one)

    Little Preface


    Yesterday's post about “how not to give up on choosing ERP” caused some discussion, during which I promised to post material on how to practice my instruction and how it generally happens in life. He promised - I spread it.

    Frankly, this material was intended for my LJ . Anyway.

    A year and a half ago, this story began. One of my acquaintances came as an executive director to Paramed (there is such a company). I used to work as a sales manager for my client. Calls me: “Here, he says, it seems they are throwing a company with SAP business one, they are feeding breakfast for six months, there’s nothing at all, no TK, no prototype, nothing at all ... Help me figure out if there is any point in investing in a black hole?” Okay, I think, why not help. Well, he began to understand there, introduced himself from a certain company, arranged a presentation with these guys who were trying to introduce them in Parameda. I looked at the product, everything became clear. The divorce of tourists. Wrote a post in sql.ru. Here it is www.sql.ru/forum/actualthread.aspx?tid=610610&hl=sap . Read, fun.

    I'm generally a supporter of honest business. Know how - do it. Do not know how - do not lie that you know how. Most of all, I am annoyed by those who not only lie, but also make money on it.

    I didn’t plan to cause any discussion there (on sql.ru), but simply wanted to tell the community the truth about what I saw with my own eyes. About Habr then did not know, otherwise I would have told here. However, the discussion began, "Mom Do not Cry." This sql post has been around for more than a year and a half, and there is still a discussion going on !!! I myself almost did not participate in the discussion, this was not my goal.


    But here, after 1.5 years, my colleague told me that my post is still very much discussed and I decided to drop by. Of course, I didn’t read all the comments, there are too many, but I noticed a certain user (his email is still so strange sbo_sap@bk.ru), who accused me of lying. The first thing I thought was that maybe after a year and a half, my post simply became outdated and the guys from glanders just solved the problems that I wrote about there (and I don’t even doubt that many Sapovites read this post) . Of course, I suggested that this person meet and test SB1 together, with a web camera, and put the report somewhere on the root. But ... the meeting did not take place, because he lives in another city. For some reason, there were no other people who wanted to refute my words ...

    But still, the words of this man haunted me, and I thought that maybe in 1.5 years something in SB1 has changed, and its developers made a functional breakthrough and now everything really works?

    I decided to test it again. It turned out that little has changed in 1.5 years. But here's what caught my eye - it seems that all SB1 sellers (by the way, for some 1.5 years the product abbreviation has slightly changed for some reason. Maybe they are trying to dissociate themselves from the negative? They used to be called SBO, but now SB1) carefully read that post of mine, because that, when SB1 was presented to me this time already, in that part, which concerned the presentation in ppt, the emphasis on those things about which I wrote 1.5 years ago was stubbornly. Well, like this is it and this is it too, and there we have it too. No, well, maybe so, of course, it happened by accident and my post on sql has nothing to do with it, and the guys just decided to slightly change the approach to the presentation ...

    How cool is it in ppt


    According to ppt's presentation, there are already 65 lucky SB1 owners. I asked to give me the coordinates of the leaders of 2-3 companies from this list. Not so simple. First you need to organize a survey of my company, then agree on a budget, and only then I will, like, be given the opportunity to communicate with clients. I did not refuse the examination, and decided to go all the way. The survey was done and it is perhaps worth writing a separate post about it. The coordinates of at least one client, where it is implemented and works, I have not received. After the examination, they just stopped talking to me. Apparently, they realized that I was too complex a client, which was not enough, that he would simply become the happy owner of SAP SB1 and he would also have to do something.

    Everything is clear, SAP, steepness, all that, implementations around the world, huge momentum, etc. The breathtaking. It is not clear only one thing - why then everyone writes, almost obscenely, according to the results of the implementation (or rather attempts) of this solution. Everything is wonderful all over the world (sort of), but here, on you, it somehow does not add up. Either we are not like that, or they are either not introducing us, or we don’t want to adopt this “best practice”, damn it.
    This time I went to the coolest company, of all who implement SAP B1. Coffee, however, was poured instant, and even without cream. Well, at least they gave sugar ...

    Preparing for the performance


    Two weeks before the meeting, I sent them a list of functional requirements to prepare. This is not so much just a list, but a specific chain of business processes and workflow for the supply of equipment within the project, from a commercial offer to an invoice for shipping goods to a client, plus simple production. Everything there, bills, contracts, customer orders, orders to the supplier, invoices, invoices. In short, the complete chain of normal business processes of a company engaged in the supply of equipment, taking into account serial numbers, everything is as it should. Well, at the end, of course, the financial statements, both for a single transaction (project) and for the entire company.
    Overall, the presentation was great. I mean that part of it that is in Power Point. And when we started to look at the combat product and its capabilities ... everything changed in the opposite direction. By the way, the person who was supposed to demonstrate the product itself was not even invited when ppt was shown. That is, apparently, the option was considered that after ppt I will be in complete ecstasy from the greatness and power of sap, and I don’t even want to watch it, but immediately I will ask you to write me an account.

    A curtain


    But I got the audacity and began to watch the product. Then the person was invited with a laptop.
    The ability to work several "their" companies in one database seems to be implemented. But even the list on which they are entered is very suspicious. For some reason, the surname of the director, accountant, bank and its details are entered manually, and not from the corresponding directories. An interesting nuance: in this list of our companies there were two, but in the list from which you already choose a company when entering any document, there were for some reason much more records ... 5 or seven pieces, I don’t remember exactly.
    Project management in SAP business one is completely absent. Rather, it is present, but only in the form of a certain plate, where there is a project name and ID. And that’s all. That's all. Nowhere in the system is there any connection with this table. With the same success, this table can be maintained in Excel.

    Of the agreement

    Contract management is also practically absent. Yes, there is a list. But it even lacks half of the important parameters of any contract. It is impossible to form contract templates (not a single fish was shown to convince me that the system is able to form the preamble of the contract, details, specification, etc.), nor to organize chains of movement and approval of the contract, nor to restrict access depending on the state of the contract. But we have the status of the contract - the presenting people proudly informed me. But nothing but a comment on this status can be called. This status can be changed by anyone, in any order and at any time. Primary files with the text of the contract or its scanned image cannot be stored in the database either. Of course, they tried to “buy” me with a link to a file where the picture of the contract might supposedly be. But this file does not lie in the database, but on the computer and glanders only a link to the path to this file. It is clear that in a week this file will not be in that place, and all will only shrug their shoulders at the question "where did the file go."

    In general, the documents

    It’s enough to say that, for example, during the presentation, the invoice template disappeared somewhere, which we could not see from the system. What is being done in industrial operation, even if a company that sells glanders itself loses these templates? It turns out that all document templates are in some files “outside” and SAP B1 itself does not generate documents at all. This is done by Excel, where, apparently, some macros are written. The only document template that was shown to me from the glander itself is a simple commercial offer, where there is only a plate with the goods. What to do for those who do not understand Open office. Although no, I see. I think that they should not even contact sap, because it’s not the right one.

    Warehouse

    Very original built inventory control. It doesn’t matter what kind of sale or production you are engaged in, you still have to deal with certain parties, which always and everywhere will have to be specified and chosen by hand. And all right, if you are engaged in, say, medicines. There really is no place without parties and lots and they must be indicated everywhere. But even if you sell lids from cans or even the cans themselves, you will always have to choose lots everywhere and indicate the quantity of goods shipped (accepted) in them. Otherwise, you can’t see the accounting for GTE. But even in the case of using these batches, in the invoice, for example, the goods will not be split according to the cargo customs declaration, but according to these very batches. And in our case it turned out quite original. We have a product in the chain, counted by the factory (serial) numbers. Imagine my surprise when in bargaining-12 and in the invoice the product was broken down by serial numbers. That is, you ship 100 pcs. some product that you want to consider by serial numbers and in the documents you will have one hundred (!!!) lines. Moreover, you will need to indicate the number 1 a hundred times in each serial number when it is shipped. It was in such a miraculous way that the consultants adapted their batch system to take into account serial numbers. By the way, it is possible to take goods to the warehouse without serial numbers. The amount of goods received at the warehouse and the need to indicate (enter) the corresponding number of serial numbers of the item, not related in any way. Yes, another nuance. When you enter the customs declaration, for some reason, the country must not be selected from the directory, but indicate its international code. God forbid you make a mistake and indicate the wrong country code (although the system will easily allow you to do this), then in the invoice in the column “Country” you will get a “donut hole”, i.e. empty, which happened in our case. I asked for Bangladesh. Well, do you remember all the codes? The girl indicated BG, but it was necessary BGD. Bad luck.

    Reserve, still reserve

    Reservation of goods, respectively, is also built on this system of parties. You can issue an order and click the "reserve" button. And the goods, it seems, are even reserved. But this only seems so, because if after that you look at the stock balances, then nothing will change there in the “Reserve” column, and accordingly in the “Free quantity” column. Therefore, in order to reserve, as they say, for sure, one also needs to reserve the party. But even after that it is difficult to understand how much product is in stock freely. To do this, you will need to run a list of these parties, and there, in each party, it is written how much free goods it contains. How to use this thing, let’s say so, six months after the start of the system, I can’t even imagine. The number of parties will already be measured in the thousands ... Although, no, I know. It is necessary to do so. Pay the guys to upload this list to excel, and there, in the good old way, write a macro that will sum this column every time. Oh how!

    Where does the cost come from?

    The directory of goods, like 1.5 years ago, is linear. The moving cost on the product card is reflected, but it is impossible to understand how it was formed. So we sat with a consultant and, you can say, stupidly looked at the monitor and simply could not understand how the current cost was formed, what it was before and why it changed. Additional delivery costs are taken into account in a very original way. First you need to enter them in a certain plate, and then again, in a completely different place, already enter the documents from the providers of these additional services, where you also need to indicate the numbers. One, of course, is completely unrelated to the other.

    We carry "on order", but do not deliver ...

    The consultants made a very serious emphasis in the presentation (ppt, of course) that the system supports the ability to reserve goods on the way. It’s a very useful thing, I must say, I almost never really met this functionality so that it would work normally. And it’s necessary, this asshole (I mean), as luck would have it, decided to check how exactly this thing works. Complete fiction and deceit of workers, these are no functions in SB1. Yes, you can reserve something there like in the delivery, but when this product arrives at the warehouse, you can forget about the fact that you reserved something there, since you will not have a reserve in the warehouse. But on the order card to the supplier in the comments it says "Custom so-and-so." Apparently, the developers of glanders by "deliveries to order" just mean the automatic formation of a comment, and not the functionality itself. It is impossible to make one order to the supplier “for several customer orders” even in this comment system, not to mention the real scheme. Apparently, it is assumed that after each arrival of the goods, you need to make an announcement via the speakerphone of the company, so that the sales managers rush to reserve the goods that they just arrived manually using the reservation system in batches, which I wrote about above.

    But the storekeepers do not know ...

    The workplace of the storekeeper is completely absent in the system. He is simply not there. There are no orders for arrival (shipment) in the system. The goods are shipped, just being in the order by pressing a button. How the storekeeper finds out what exactly he should release or capitalize and when , remains incomprehensible.

    Production

    Suffice it to say that the cost of the finished product is in no way connected with the cost of components. Not at all. Further to tell?

    Finance sings romances

    Profit and loss account, it seems, is. It shows some numbers, but it’s impossible to understand what these numbers are, where they came from, how they formed. Report data is not detailed in any way. In order to understand something, you need to do some other reports. How to compare some reports with others is not clear. In other words, the consultants could not explain to me what kind of numbers I see in the report on the screen.
    The cash flow statement, in the understanding of the representatives of glanders, looks very strange. I was just shown some kind of table with amounts and dates. Apparently this is a list of some payments. About how such reports are actually built, they probably did not hear or did not want to hear. That there is a company’s operational activities, financial, investment and flows on them, that there are cost items and separation of flows on them. That the indicators of this report go vertically, and horizontally months, also apparently has not yet been comprehended.

    Again the curtain. Applause ... or a whistle?

    In general, the picture is as depressing as 1.5 years ago. The only difference is that now the consultants lie even more in the ppt presentation.

    What is it?


    I do not understand what is going on? What is it, a worldwide divorce, or only all-Russian, or general clouding of the brain? They also just ask for space money for their product? And after all, someone buys ...
    It seems that much more money is invested in the marketing part of the product than in its functionality. “Killing” presentations in ppt are being developed, which should not be followed by the customer’s study of the product itself, because “everything is so cool, what is there to watch?”
    Such a sad story.

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