- Almost all meetings I've been in start with prospective clients mentioning to SAP consultants that SAP has a 'certain reputation'. The SAP consultants acknowledge this.
- Some of the solution pitch ideas they come up with signal they have almost zero knowledge of how some technologies actually work.
- Services we rely on with SAP frequently fail for no apparent reason.
- They are slow and uncooperative with setting up demo environments and responding to support requests.
- Their licences and consulting fees are outrageously expensive considering the lack of quality and performance when compared to alternatives.
- Tech leads in our own company frequently talk about how bad SAP solutions are.
- Their poor UIs are what they are known for in the market. They've tried to address this with things like UI5, Fiori and Fundamentals which feel like too little too late.
- Their attempts at acquiring startups (AI, chatbots, analytics etc) to stay on the edge provide hardly any real value besides propping up the credibility of the buzzwords they cram into their presentations.
Yet SAP remain entrenched in the market and companies still get into bed with them despite knowing the pain they're in for. A lot of system integration companies have tried to attack this market with open source solutions and have failed to make any real dent. The only major player that has started to eat SAPs lunch recently is Salesforce.
Perhaps I'm missing something but surely it would be better for an organisation to have a solution that can be maintained by more than one company so that the company can be replaced if they aren't performing?
The only example I can think of where this is being addressed is the UK's GDS Service Standard which mandates that all government projects should use open source tools to avoid vendor lock-in. It really is perplexing how SAP still maintains its position in today's market.