Job Title: IT-Senior Consultant
Location: Pittsburgh, PA
Submitted on: 30-Jul-03
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Business Outlook
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| IT-Senior Consultant |
The SAP package is a VERY DIFFICULT beast!! No usable documentation, no
sources of "how to" information unless you happen (if you are lucky) to
know someone who has done the work several times before or you can pay
over $100 an hour to a "consultant" who usually has to consultant with
someone else to get the answer. SAP has the worst user interface and
documentation of any package that I have ever used. It takes a
substantial number of people to set this pig up and to keep it running.
We spend about 15% to 30% of the time searching for "OSS Notes" to apply
to SAP to fix problems. It is a time consuming and error-prone process
for a package that is supposed to be "state of the art". I believe that
business people must make the decision to buy SAP because anyone that
knows anything about IT would have serious reservations about the total
cost of ownership and the complexity level of what is required to
support basic business functionality with SAP. At this time, their game
plan is counter-productive and they are cracking the whip more and more
on employees. In IT, 50 hour weeks are veiwed as "business as usual".
There is not enough emphasis on proper planning and estimating and
business units are not held to agreed deliverables and functionality
documents. This make "scope creep" a weekly fact of life on the SAP
implementations. Additional work to cover new requirements and rework
due to incorrect specifications documents is growing at a constant rate
and is simply added to the development workload without any extension to
the due date and without any additional resources. Managers who are
responsible for the poor planning and estimates routinely pass the blame
onto their staff. Morale is the lowest here of any company that I have
ever worked for. One manager proclaimed that everyone on her staff would
have to work additional hours to make up for any sick time that they
take so that her team would meet "billable hours" and profitability
goals. Many IT employees are just waiting for the economy to get better
and do plan to leave Bayer as soon as they can find a comporable
position elsewhere. As Bayer places more emphasis on the dollar and less
and less on their employees, they will face a real gap in attracting
experienced talent. Their current IT workforce is getting older and
older and their reputation in the IT community in one of a sweat shop
where the managers' mantra is "everyone is replacable" (except for the
managers, of course). Who want's to work for a company like that?
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