Does Ibanez use SAP?

BigShred · #1 12-16-2007, 06:10 PM

If not, what do they use? Anyone know?

Tank · #2 12-17-2007, 03:26 AM

I hope not for them. If they use it, it makes me wonder why the guitars don't cost 10.000 bucks to fund SAP.

Ibateur · #3 12-17-2007, 03:47 AM

But think of all the savings they would get with such an efficient system!

What's behind the question? You're going for a job?

markg5150 · #4 12-17-2007, 04:26 AM

Has anybody got a positive experience from using SAP? My company launched it 18 months ago and we're still suffering !!! It has to be the most un-user friendly system out there

Ibateur · #5 12-17-2007, 05:08 AM

From an accounting perspective, there's not many large vendors out there. Oracle and SAP are probably the largest names.

From a treasury perspective, they could have something like Sungard, or Oracle as well. SAP's not popular for Treasury at the moment.

From a manufacturing perspective, I could guess a few, but then you'd have to look at what is popular in their manufacturing hubs (Indonesia, Korea, Japan).

Each customer will have their pain points, and I personally think that this is some kind of consultancy strategy to keep revenues coming in. Just like in cars, manufacturers can probably build software that installs itself and comes close to fixing itself when broken. But, becuase of price pressure on the initial sale, the manufacturers move the revenue away from actual licenses to the services around it. They call this "continuous evolution" and if you're on SAP R/3 4.6 now, there will be pressure on you to move to a new version "because it is better", even if you're not done with the roll-out of the current version. That will result in more pain, and more revenues.

markg5150 · #6 12-17-2007, 12:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ibateur

Each customer will have their pain points, and I personally think that this is some kind of consultancy strategy to keep revenues coming in.

That's probably true - SAP consultants get paid a fortune!!

I think it many companies underestimate the work and effort required to launch SAP properly (maybe poorly advised by SAP). This results is a nightmare recovering and healthy revenue streams for SAP supporting a rescue plan

BigShred · #7 12-18-2007, 02:39 AM

SAP isn't supposed to be "user friendly". It's supposed to be an efficient ERP solution. The two are seldom synonymous. If it were "user friendly", then you can bet that it'd be too dumbed down to do anything with any degree of efficacy.

Is there any way to find out if Ibanez uses SAP? I think if they did it'd be publicized somewhere. When Fender went SAP it was all over the news. Oh well...any info would be appreciated

Tank · #8 12-18-2007, 03:14 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BigShred

SAP isn't supposed to be "user friendly". It's supposed to be an efficient ERP solution. The two are seldom synonymous. If it were "user friendly", then you can bet that it'd be too dumbed down to do anything with any degree of efficacy.

Is there any way to find out if Ibanez uses SAP? I think if they did it'd be publicized somewhere. When Fender went SAP it was all over the news. Oh well...any info would be appreciated

Every computer program is supposed to be user friendly, it leaves less margin for error. There are many excellent working ERP solutions that are more userfriendly and get the job done (Oracle). Even highend manufacturing software is becomming more and more user friendly. So could SAP, but they would lose millions in consulting income.
Not to mention that R/3 is the same crap as R/2 was on the mainframe, reloaded. They did not do any real innovation for years, just putting things ontop of crap wont make crap any better.

Then why do managers buy SAP?
Well no manager ever got fired for buying SAP and so many others do it, so can we

And they have a nice educational center in South Africa with a nice golf course where manager can learn more about the features!

Ibateur · #9 12-18-2007, 04:05 AM

http://www.progress.com/progress_sof...cs/hoshino.pdf

This is from the website of Progress (software/consulting), where they talk about web-enabling (one of) Hoshino's systems. There could be more systems there (like in every company).

http://www.entrepreneur.com/tradejou...171538854.html article says that Hoshino USA have implemented a new ERP covering a range of things that I personally think imply an Oracle ERP over SAP.

BigShred · #10 12-19-2007, 03:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tank

Every computer program is supposed to be user friendly, it leaves less margin for error...

That's one of the most untrue statements I've read in a very long time. Have you ever been to a military base or NASA? Are their systems "user friendly"? These systems don't have any need for pretty and "friendly" interfaces. They need to get the job done.

I'm not gonna argue. It seems you're bitter for some reason against SAP. I just want to know if Ibanez is using it or not.

Ibateur · #11 12-20-2007, 03:46 AM

No arguments here, but "user friendly" depends highly on the type of user. In areas where "users" are told to "follow what's on the instruction card" the most user unfriendly interface will still result in a predictable outcome. In areas where users are given a system, and told to "load up the invoices, and generate me a report on accounts payables in 30, 60 and 90 days" with an 8 hour training session beforehand, the ability to "hit F1 for help" or have the system tell you with some workflow process, what you have to do next, adds to user-friendliness and has an impact on quality of results.

The NASA/military comparison I think is a good one but the "need to get the job done (without bells and whistles)" is likely their definition of "user friendly". In the past, for example, their radar systems simply blipped what was in the air. Nowadays, you have IFF, collision warning, altitude, speed, direction indicators, etc. That's all in my eyes, definition of how user friendliness evolved.

Tank · #12 12-20-2007, 05:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BigShred

That's one of the most untrue statements I've read in a very long time. Have you ever been to a military base or NASA? Are their systems "user friendly"? These systems don't have any need for pretty and "friendly" interfaces. They need to get the job done.

I'm not gonna argue. It seems you're bitter for some reason against SAP. I just want to know if Ibanez is using it or not.

Actually I have.

Trust me on this: If you are working at NASA, are a summa cum laude PhD from MIT, some programs may be userfriendly to you, that others could not understand.

Also trust me on this: I have implemented several SAP, Oracle, Siebel and JD Edwards Systems.
Business Men and women (who are often the main users of an ERP system) were very very thankful if the system becomes more userfriendly. As they give a rats a** if the system gets the job done, when they lack the means to tell the system how it gets the job done.

Now don't get me wrong: From my experience SAP R/3 is a very good system at the core. But most of the time it crashes or becomes unusable be the simple people using it, simply through over customization, wrong usage and silly ideas of SAP consultants.
Now I do not say that the other systems are much better, but especially the new Oracle systems from my experience where much easier to implement and the users got it right much faster, through user friendly GUIs.

So I do not agree with you on this. I would say even the folks at NASA, although they have learned to live with this programs are very thankful for improved user friendlyness. We can see how much dollars are wasted from simple computer error on the first mars rover, they crashed, as the program did not output the measurements right... (they would only have needed to hit a few keys to see the right measurement though...). Can you say millions of dollars wasted due to a non userfriendly program?

So I would say: Userfriendlyness counts every bit.

dex · #13 12-20-2007, 06:39 AM

I used SAP Business Information Warehouse almost exclusively in my previous job as marketing analyst for Yell and now use Business Objects XI R2 and TOAD to fish info from Oracle for my new employer.

I'm relatively PC savvy and can find my way around MS Excel and MS Access and have to say that the front end of SAP (SAPgui) made WAY more sense to me than the table structure Oracle uses.

For a developer Oracle is probably more tweakable software that offers better solutions as a whole but for an end user the SAPgui made it much much more intuitive and easy to use.

Tank · #14 12-20-2007, 08:19 AM

You are comparing Apples with Oranges.
Oracle is in no way ment to be used with Toad as an ERP system. Probably your new boss could not afford the correct license for the Oracle ERP Frontend. Which tends to be very userfriendly.

dex · #15 12-20-2007, 01:05 PM

I'm an analyst so don't use the ERP systems we have - I just dig into an Oracle DB that has financial information in it and fish info out to run models and test them.
I only use TOAD as an ad-hoc tool, my actual reporting tool is Business Objects XI and I use proprietary model testing software to crunch through the data.

My previous job was more of a reporting role (supply chain management) and my current one is more about looking forward (projects) so they're not the same but from what I can remember Yell's system was much easyer to use.
Information was structured in a more intuitive way.
That was back in 2001 so not sure what's what these days.

I'll admit I've no idea how good Orcale and SAP are as ERP as I'm not in senior management and I don't use that side of them.