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什么是 SAP？写给工程师的 ERP 入门
What's SAP?
2020 — 2022，它一次次回到首页
黑点是上首页（≥ 50 分）的那次投稿，空心点是没冲上去的投稿，点越大分数越高。
导读
Retool 的这篇博客面向工程师解释什么是 SAP——全球大型企业最常用的 ERP（企业资源计划）系统，介绍它的模块体系、数据模型和它在企业后台的核心地位。评论区则围绕 SAP 展开激烈争论：它难用、僵化、迫使企业改变流程来迁就软件，但同时也是跨国企业级整合领域几乎没有替代品的存在。
为什么经久不衰：SAP 是企业软件世界的'隐形巨兽'，工程师迟早会在工作中撞上它；这篇导读和评论从正反两面讲清了它的本质，多年后仍是理解企业级 ERP 的最佳入门材料。
HN 评论精选
SAP 难用且设计混乱，但它的价值在于跨国企业级整合，企业只能迁就它。
我在大学教企业系统，重点是 SAP。它非常难用，我的学生抱怨它不可用、不合逻辑、看不出意义，我都同意。底层'数据库模式'是一大堆反规范化的混乱。SAP 能做的大部分事情，用本地直观的软件（Power BI、Tableau、甚至裸 SQL）都更容易实现。SAP 真正擅长的是跨国、全企业范围的整合：如果你是一家由多次并购组成的公司，可以用统一的方式做 HR、用 FI/CO 模块取代各孤立财务部门的表格和自研应用。我被要求教学生'改业务去适应 SAP 优于改 SAP 去适应业务'，这确实是准确的建议——SAP 不在乎你的独特卖点，所有企业都必须 conform，抵抗是徒劳的。
mr_gibbins查看英文原文
I teach enterprise systems at a university, with emphasis on SAP. It's hideous. Hideous. My students complain it is unusable (agree), doesn't make sense (agree), that they can't see the point (agree). When you look at the underlying database 'schema' (inverted commas deliberate) you'll find it's a massive, denormalised mess. Much of what SAP can do can be done at the local level using intuitive software. Reports, for example, against a well-designed schema or data warehouse are easy. Power BI, Tableau, whatever your poison. You can even aggregate and present data in raw SQL if you like. Each technique is far easier than trying to achieve the same in SAP. What SAP does do well is multinational, enterprise-wide integration. Are you a company comprised of many mergers and acquisitions? You can do HR one way, universally, across your organisation. Credit control? Replace your spreadsheets and custom apps you have deployed across your many siloed finance departments with the FI/CO modules. I (am actually told to) teach that changing the business to fit SAP is preferable to changing SAP to fit the business. And it's accurate advice. It shouldn't be, but it is. SAP is SAP. It doesn't care about your USP. Or your custom approach to business. As far as SAP is concerned all businesses are the same, they do the same things, and all must conform. Resistance is futile.
真实案例：从自研系统迁移到 SAP 后，自动化优势尽失、错误频发、员工大量离职。
我母亲在一家相当大的纺织实验室工作。几十年来他们用内部开发的系统做实验室报告，几年前公司切换到 SAP 解决方案，随后一片混乱：SAP 缺失太多边缘场景，大量报告因信息在 SAP 转换中丢失而不准确甚至完全错误，有时大客户发现错误导致昂贵的产品延误。最后实验室间的沟通不得不在两个层面进行——SAP 内部，加上邮件、电话或直接走过去'非正式'沟通，每份报告都增加巨大时间开销。SAP 几乎抹掉了旧系统的所有自动化优势，还叠加了 SAP GUI 的额外复杂度，员工流失率因此飙升。
lqet查看英文原文
My mother works for a fairly large textile lab. For decades, they used an internally developed system for lab reports (they had a few programmers and admins they called the "nerds" that did nothing else than extend and maintain the system). The company switched to a SAP solution a few years ago. Chaos ensued. The SAP solution missed so many edge cases that a huge number of lab reports were either inaccurate or completely wrong because information was lost in SAP translation between different labs. Sometimes clients (huge international players) noticed the mistakes, which then led to costly product delays. It became so bad that communication between labs eventually had to be done on two levels - within SAP, and "informally" by mail, telephone, or by simply walking to the other lab, adding a huge time overhead to every report. SAP removed virtually every automation advantage of the old system, and added the additional complexity of navigating the SAP GUI. Because of this additional workload and the reluctance of the company to hire more people to counter it (after all, SAP was implemented to streamline everything!), employee turnover suddenly skyrocketed. Everytime I talk with my mother, she complains about the system and tells me that another colleague has quit. She only stays because she only has 2 years until retirement.
SAP 已深度嵌入企业世界，极高的学习曲线反而带来工作安全感，替换它几乎不可能。
我在四大会计师事务所工作，接触的每一家大公司都用 SAP，它是该领域事实上的标准，根深蒂固。它的 UX 是我见过最可怕的东西。我们需要多个聪明人才能完整记录客户在 SAP 中执行其职能的流程，用户积累的知识高度专业化，一旦有人离开很难有人接替。学习曲线极高，我确信这给了那些人工作安全感。替换 SAP 的过程漫长且几乎不可能——它'大到不能倒'，半开玩笑地说，让美国改用公制单位都比替换 SAP 容易。任何挑战者都必须足够庞大、接受十年以上的亏损、并提供极好的客户支持，这不是创业公司能做到的。
pwpw查看英文原文
I worked in public accounting with some major corporations as clients. Every single company I interacted with used SAP. It is the de facto software in its field and is deeply entrenched. Its UX is the most horribly wicked thing I’ve ever come across. We would conduct walkthroughs with process control owners that showed us what they would do in SAP to perform their job functions, and it would take multiple, intelligent people to capture all of the processes. The knowledge that the users at the client had built up was extensive and highly specialized. If something happened to that person, I don’t think you could quickly plug in a new person and have them take over. The initial learning curve felt far too high. I’m sure it gave those people a sense of job security. I feel there is a lot of room to develop better tools that are not so horrid, however, the process for replacing SAP will be long and close to impossible. SAP feels like one of those businesses that’s too big to fail because it’s so entrenched in the corporate world. Somewhat jokingly, I think it would be easier to switch the US over to the metric system. Any challenger will have to be massive, accept losses for over a decade to gain market share, and have incredible support for their clients if they ever want to takeover in the Fortune 500 world. Challenges too great for a mere startup to accomplish. It’s easier to just hire people to learn the SAP workflow and then hire external auditors to make sure the accounting policies are properly being followed.
SAP 集成的铁律：必须让业务流程适应 SAP，定制化只会烧钱失败（Lidl 案例）。
提醒大家 SAP 集成的规则：1) 你的公司流程必须适应 SAP 流程。就这一条。你可以尝试定制 SAP 来适应你的流程，但你只会浪费时间和数亿资金，然后失败。Lidl 花了近十年和 5 亿欧元做 SAP 项目，但没有遵守规则 1。
theshrike79查看英文原文
This is a good time to remind everyone of the rules of SAP integration: 1) Your company processes MUST adapt to SAP processes. That's it. You can try customising SAP to fit your processes, but you will just waste time and hundreds of millions of money and then you will fail. Lidl spent almost a decade and 500M€ on its SAP project, but didn't follow rule #1: https://www.henricodolfing.com/2020/05/case-study-lidl-sap-debacle.html
资深 SAP 开发者：虽然难用，但企业后台工作确实没有替代品，且内部有不少创新。
我是 2009 年毕业起就做 SAP 开发的。起初我讨厌它，但越深入越明白为什么选 SAP：因为真的没有替代品。数据模型如此复杂是因为它从 80 年代起迭代生长。ABAP 如今已经相当不错，CDS Views 是很好的发明，糟糕的文档之下埋着很多创新。总之虽然糟糕，但后台工作我看不到替代品。SAP 真的很灵活，支持很多不同流程。它昂贵的原因是文化：没有小版本发布、没有 MVP 等。但你可以用 SAP 做敏捷，尤其是迁移到云端之后。
_glass查看英文原文
I am an SAP developer since kind of forever, my first job after university (since 2009). First I hated it, but the deeper I am entrenched, the more I see why you choose SAP: Because there really is no alternative. The data model is so complex because it is growing iteratively since the 80s. Hacker News is valuing businesses that adjust to the customer instead of going for some kind of purity. Another complexity especially now is the different paradigm changes in between. ABAP, the programming language of SAP, is quite nice nowadays. CDSViews are a great invention, and so on. There's really a lot of innovation buried in the bad documentation, it's getting better. In summary as bad as it is, I don't see an alternative for all of the backoffice work. SAP is really flexible and supports a lot of different processes. A thing that makes it so costly is a lot of time culture, no small releases, MVP, and so on. But you can be agile with SAP, especially if you move to the cloud.
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