Computasoft Consulting, a UK systems integrator, says the result of a survey of 100 UK SAP project managers shows that most SAP customers believe they could get more out of their enterprise resource planning investment if the system was more user friendly, and easier to adapt to local requirements.
The report, sponsored by Computasoft, was conducted by the independent research organization Spikes Cavell & Co. It found that 66% of project managers, and 62% of business managers, believe their organizations don’t realize the full potential of their SAP investment, while 59% of respondents blamed SAP’s lack of flexibility and 56% complained that using SAP required more training than had been expected. In addition, 54% said fine-tuning SAP to local requirements was problematic.
Computasoft is a major provider of SAP R/3 to Lotus Notes integration services in the UK, so it is not entirely surprising to hear that Bev Burgess, the company’s marketing director, doesn’t want to blame SAP for the problems.
We’re certainly not trying to criticize SAP she said. Rather, the message is that people need more flexible, easy-to-use applications in the front-office, Burgess said. Applications, in fact, like Computasoft’s own Enterprise Involvement Suite, which the company bills as a user-friendly range of solutions that extend the reach of back office ERP information and processes throughout and beyond the organization.
Computasoft’s reading of Spikes Cavell’s findings can hardly be regarded as entirely impartial then, but the company may still have a point. What else, for instance, can be made from another statistic in the Spikes Cavell report which shows that, far from providing a universal data access medium to corporate information, in a third of the companies surveyed, SAP access is restricted to just 10% of the organization.
