Cringely believes that SAP is acting squirrelly — which gives him an excuse to examine squirrel behavior in a bit too much depth:
You are driving down a street in your car and up ahead there is a squirrel at the side of the road eating a nut. You aren’t on an intercept course, there is no way you are going to hit that squirrel. So what does the squirrel do? At the very last possible moment, rather than watching you drive by, THE SQUIRREL DARTS STRAIGHT FOR YOUR CAR, passing inches in front of or behind the front tires.Why does he do that?
Obviously I’m a guy with too much time on my hands because I’ve given this quite a bit of thought.
From a purely metabolic perspective, whatever its motivation the physical advantage clearly lies with the squirrel. Sure, my car is bigger and faster, but the squirrel is smaller and quicker, with a heart that beats up to 700 times per minute. To the squirrel I seem to be driving by in slow motion, and whether he goes in front of the tires or behind or in front of one and behind another is strictly a matter of style: once the squirrel has my vector, Victor, he’s in command.
But judging by the number of squirrels squished on the road, there must be some risk to this game, so why does he do it?
The answer has nothing to do with cars because squirrel psychology predates both cars and men. For the squirrel, in fact, there may be no difference between my car and an ice age saber-toothed tiger.
The squirrel doesn’t trust me. Sure, it looks like I’m not even chasing him, but he’s a tasty squirrel and I’m a saber-toothed tiger. By waiting until the last possible moment then running TOWARD me, the squirrel is rushing the net, moving the confrontation effectively forward in time in such a way that the squirrel is pushing his tactical advantage.
As a predator, I’m simply not supposed to expect this squirrel to be running toward me, rather than away. He’s using the element of surprise to confuse me. And it works, because I’ve never hit a squirrel with my car.
So, what does this have to do with ERP giant SAP?
SAP and companies like it do something similar by making powerful software that is quite deliberately difficult to use. They could make it easier. Heck, the capability to make it easier is shipped right with the software, though never pointed out to the customer.
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Unlike standardized financial statements, the most powerful ERP screens and reports will vary dramatically from company to company, so the ability to customize SAP is vital to obtaining the maximum possible benefit from the software.That’s why there are so many SAP consultants. And that’s why SAP, itself, makes 40 percent of its revenue from providing consulting services — revenue that would be significantly less if the software was easier to customize and easier to use.
If SAP software was easier to customize and use, SAP the company might get a few more customers but would have significantly less revenue. Or that’s the fear.
There is a product called GuiXT that is an interface builder shipped for free with every copy of SAP R/3. Pronounced “gooey-x-t,” this client-server application sits on top of R/3 and can be used with almost no programming to customize and integrate R/3 screens as well as add certain overlay functions that aren’t readily available in R/3, itself. The point with GuiXT is to not mess with the underlying R/3 code, which means an SAP installation can be less customized on the back end, installed cheaper, and be up and running quicker.
So when you, as an SAP customer, call up your SAP consultant to ask for customization, that consultant will often show you the next day a GuiXT implementation that does exactly what you asked for but is presented as a mock-up. Once you’ve signed-off on the look and feel then the SAP consultants can dig into R/3 itself and spend a few weeks implementing what you asked for. OR they could simply run the GuiXT app that took them an hour to build.
Are you starting to see the picture?
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The squirrel dives for your front tires because by ice age rules that’s the thing to do, though at an obvious cost today in squished squirrels. Similarly, SAP deliberately hides the power of GuiXT thinking it could hurt consulting revenue when, in fact, it could INCREASE sales revenue by broadening the market and making R/3 less scary for companies to install and run.Both the squirrel and SAP do what they do because it appears to work, though a safer and easier course was there all along.