SAP way of doing things

08 Feb 2009 00:48

From the University as an extra I was offered a unique opportunity to study SAP software for heavily discounted price. It works out as almost five times cheaper. This course package includes three doorstopper thick photocopied books, online access to pre-recorded lectures (sounds like a speech synthesizer was used) and slides, a notepad and a company pen! The price also includes the final exam and if successful I will be awarded SAP TERP10 mySAP ERP Integration of Business Processes Certificate. It is an introductory level certificate which gives full introduction/overview to the software capabilities. An offer I could not resist.

Simply put, SAP is a software that helps businesses do their businesses better. For more information click here. The University also provided additional lectures on SAP. I attended the first lecture and I got more confused about SAP instead of gathering information which would clarify the subject. Obviously the lecturer didn't quite appreciate some of the ideas about SAP. Followings are some of his words that made me laugh:

"...it is just a software, a product...I did the same course and passed the exam, my tip for exam: try to answer some question from marketing point of view!"

"...this slide shows exactly the same diagram that we just saw on previous slide but with a bit different colours and shapes..."

"When implementing the software (SAP) do not try to change and modify it to match the way how you do your business, but change how you do your business and match the SAP way of doing things."

"...and here they are just trying to sound complicated by using fancy words to explain same ideas we have just seen on previous slides."

"...it almost feels like the books were written in German then translated into French then to Indian then to Chinese and finally translated to English by some poor Chinese in the field."