Spar believes worst SAP deployment problems behind them

Jan said:
Spar estimates SAP rollout problems cost R1.6 billion in lost turnover

The Spar Group says the launch of its new SAP software system at its distribution centre in KwaZulu-Natal has resulted in an estimated turnover loss of R1.6 billion.

Moreover, its implementation led to an estimated loss of R720 million in profits. However, Spar says it has learnt a lot and will delay the rollout of SAP's system in other Southern African regions until management is satisfied with its optimisation.
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As a matter of interest, which company did the implementation of SAP at Spar and Checkers? Or did they try to do this in-house...?
I've yet to see one article from any news source that has actually stated which company was involved.
 
CPTBoy said:
I've never heard of one SAP implementation that went smoothly
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Depends on how the expectations are managed. Our SAP system implementation at work was very smooth and won awards for a medium sized implementation in EMEA.
 
SAguy said:
Not Shoprite, PnP or Spar... that's for sure
I've experienced the hell of all of these first hand.
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Not sure about those. But I know for a fact that the motor industries are running SAP for decades now without any major problems.
 
I've never seen SAP actually improve anything...whether the implementation was smooth or not...the end result is always me wanting to slit my wrists for having to work with the software.
 
the SAP Shareprice is an indication that they aren't doing bad at all. It's a shame that SPAR wants to blame the vendor when clearly they weren't clear about the direction (hence the resignation). Al Dra 'n aap 'n goue ring...
 
Jet-Fighter7700 said:
so SAP is impossible to deploy to a retailer?
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Nothing wrong with SAP. It is working well in virtually all global industries. It is not the reason for their losses. They are probably looking for a scapegoat to blame it on. People who have questions can simply ask global companies like Lego, J&J, Amazon, Apple, Walmart, BMW and many, many more.

As for their SAP systems, they should rather look at the people who are working on it locally and replace them.
 
Dan C said:
Not sure about those. But I know for a fact that the motor industries are running SAP for decades now without any major problems.
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FMCG companies too, banks and mines amongst others.
 
...so no journalist has asked who did the installation...?
Nobody bothered to ask if it was an internal job, or given to an outside contractor. Nobody thought to ask that?
 
We use SAP on a very large scale. Our new software for our business unit, also large scale, has been an utter disaster. Though I think it's the developers fault. Too many people involved in simple processes = broken telephone.
 
karnuffel said:
There are many. I did about 15 years of SAP consulting work and 99% of the full life cycle implementations I worked on worked well.

Also keep in mind SAP ERP is not the same as SAP EWM etc.

Many many companies runs SAP products very successfully.
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Then obviously they have IT components, that are vastly superior to those employed by Spar, a lack of internal leadership and discipline.
 
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Mike Hoxbig said:
The problem is not SAP, it's in the implementation. If you hire people on the cheap to do your customisations then you get what you pay for...
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Nothing for nothing, and bugger all for free. You only get what you pay for, nothing more - nor nothing less.
 
I think we'd all agree that these implementations aren't simple.
A lot of things had to go right for things to work.
 
kolaval said:
I think we'd all agree that these implementations aren't simple.
A lot of things had to go right for things to work.
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100% agreed. Quite often the change management process is neglected, which comes at a cost.

SAP ERP is also quite rigid and strict in many scenarios and people dont like that, hard to fix operator mistakes.
 
karnuffel said:
100% agreed. Quite often the change management process is neglected, which comes at a cost.

SAP ERP is also quite rigid and strict in many scenarios and people dont like that, hard to fix operator mistakes.
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This, I think if you accept the SAP structure and don't try to deviate too much from it the implementation becomes a lot simpler. It's when customer start requesting loads of customizations and move away from standard SAP that the fun and games start.
 
Cray said:
This, I think if you accept the SAP structure and don't try to deviate too much from it the implementation becomes a lot simpler. It's when customer start requesting loads of customizations and move away from standard SAP that the fun and games start.
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Also its when you start bringing in "Business Analysts" who by and large don't have a fscking clue and create bollocks process flows that just makes things more complicated than they need to be.
 
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