This series of tweets provides an interesting insight into why SAP and other ERP systems are so popular worldwide even though they are difficult to use.
The main points are as follows
- ERP is primarily intended to increase productivity of high wage earners, and ease of use in the field is not a priority. The time-consuming data entry process is a side effect of this.
- Rather than integrating dispersed data, it is better to have mass input into a centralized master data, which facilitates analysis and decision making. Difficulty of use varies by position.
- The same problem exists in Salesforce, where thorough KPI management leads to results, but the more people who can’t do it complain about the tool.
- The idea of governance in Western companies is similar to colonial rule, with an emphasis on getting work done at a certain quality using standardized management methods.
- ERP has anti-fraud mechanisms, making the process more reliable. Easier to audit than local systems.
- In the end, the emphasis is more on improving white-collar productivity, standardization, and fraud prevention than on ease of use for workers.
These points are highly suggestive. However, from the perspective of employee motivation and creativity, it may be desirable to give some consideration to ease of use on the shop floor as well.
Heehoo_kun Seriously, SAP, or ERP, is designed to increase the productivity of people with high salaries, and it is not easy to use for people with low salaries, it has low priority, and it requires a lot of data entry at the end. It requires a lot of data entry at the end of the line. There is no contradiction.
Duetousandyou: “Why is SAP so hard to use, yet loved around the world?” I think you could publish a whole book on this system.
Heehoo_kun Instead of taking into consideration the feelings of the end users, why don’t you have them input a large amount of data according to the master so that it can be analyzed and processed seamlessly? You can use it for analysis and decision making, right? If we had to integrate distributed databases every time, it would take time to make decisions. It’s not difficult to use (), it’s just a matter of your position.
Heehoo_kun This same problem occurs with salesforce. It is just like the mothers of children who take the entrance exams to the most difficult junior high schools. However, the ones who do not perform well complain about the tool and put in false data. I think it’s very allegorical and interesting.
Heehoo_kun I think the underlying idea of governance in Western companies is like the governance of a colony. This is true of business management in general, though. How to systematically manage people of ordinary ability and have them perform work of a certain quality, and how to evaluate countries of different cultures and ideas with a unified standard to identify and improve issues. I think if we can have that perspective, we can understand that SAP and SFDC are good tools.
Heehoo_kun Another important perspective is control, the point is that the system cannot be rigged, and there is a certain trust in the process provided by a standard ERP That is the point. You can’t trust any process that works with a local Japanese accounting system you’ve never heard of. If SAP is in the system, audits are almost over when the SAP output is sent to the audit firm. It would be a ridiculous situation where junior staff would have to work very hard to manually check that the program’s processing was correct.
Heehoo_kun “Why is SAP so hard to use, yet loved around the world?”
- Because I want to increase white-collar productivity
- Because I want to work with standardized processes
- Because the quality of certain processes is guaranteed to be difficult to cheat, and the BIG4 and other companies are familiar with the process.
There may be others, but in any case, it’s not so important to say it’s difficult to use from the worker’s point of view.
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