Bethel Downsizing - Management Discussions (page 5)

shadow

In the interests of combating ignorance . . .

http://www.drexel.edu/IRT/SAP/about.html

About SAP

SAP offers companies a comprehensive solution for managing financials, human resources, operations, and corporate services -- providing the most comprehensive ERP product available today. It attempts to integrate all departments and functions across a company onto a single computer system that can serve all those different departments' particular needs.

Facts about SAP

Founded by five former IBM employees in 1972 and headquartered in
Leading global provider of client/server business software solutions.
Number one vendor of standard business application software, with a worldwide market share of 31%.
Fourth-largest independent software supplier in the world.
Available in 14 languages.
34% of SAP's customers worldwide are under $200 million.
10 out of the top 10 companies with the highest market value use SAP software.
8 of the top 10 largest corporations use SAP software.
8 of the top 10 highest profit companies use SAP software.
More than 7500 customers in over 90 countries have chosen SAP.
Reported revenues of DM 6 billion in the most recent fiscal year, a 62-percent increase over 1996 revenues.

SAP Products

SAP products empower companies of all sizes and all industry sectors to respond quickly and decisively to dynamic market conditions, helping businesses achieve and maintain a competitive advantage. Its strategic product architecture links all areas of an enterprise. Crucial to making sure that SAP products, your legacy systems, and third-party products all work together as seamlessly as possible are the development of open interfaces to link disparate systems and provide enormous scalability and flexibility. SAP, in collaboration with its hundreds of complementary software partners and world-class hardware providers, has created this program to ensure the use of its standard implementation methodologies; and realize the solution in an accelerated time frame at least cost to the customer.

SadElder

Much of the behind the scenes IT work is furthered by a dub from Florida - Haniph Latchman, an Oxford educated Phd. His work has most notably been the Bethel WAN and inter-branch communication via the internet.

See this for his bio http://www.list.ufl.edu/latchman.htm

truth.ceeker

I have seen this trend as well being in the IT contracting business for about nine years now. One of my last projects was at Nike, and they got around this by hiring contractors for only nine months at a time then a forced leave of 30 days was placed where the contractor could not work at the company. After the 30 days had completed, the contractor was eligible to be re-contracted doing the same work. I thought I heard about a case in northern California, where a temp/contract worker sued for benefits and won, since he was a contractor for 6-9 years, he received quite a large settlement from the firm and ever since then, IT firms have changed their practices regarding contractors.

..my past experiences..
truth.ceeker

truth.ceeker

Does anyone know what the going rate is for an SAP contractor? My guess is about $45-$65 per hour for the low end and about $120-$160 per hour for the high end?? Then again, if someone were to donate their time for implementation and development and support, the WTBTS could save money and only spend it on the software and hardware, then again, they could get a good discount on the software if they had someone on the inside who could work deals, or something like being a beta or test site for SAP to try out new versions and modules.
My experience when learning about how companies get these larges software implementation is that someone high up has some type of connections to the software vendor and many times there are 'incentives' to both parties.
If the WTBTS begins to go the route of outsourcing many of their in-house functions, they could save 'potential' dollars as not having liability of legal action by volunteers. But their initial cash flow out would be greater at first in order to get the job done. I'm not sure what type of insurance they have, but I have to reason that the insurance companies are always looking out for themselves and if they were following court cases and then run some analysis with their insurees, they would most likely raise premiums in order to protect themselves against potential lawsuits. So the WTBTS may be trying to keep their insurance rates low by taking these somewhat extreme actions.
All in all, it seems that their pocketbook is more precious to them than their people. Go figure.

truth.ceeker

kerc

SAP consultants are on the very high end of the spectrum. I also work as a consultant for a small company, mostly P8, FileNet, and custom Microsoft .NET development, and we charge between $65-$100 depending on the job being done...

M.J.

1st they started to see where they could save $ so they started the Unify Consolidate Simplify (something like that) strategy.

I can just picture it...

alt

"Well, uh, I'd like to, uh, welcome a new member to our team. Uh, Bob Slydell. Yeah. Uh, he is, uh, a consultant. Yeah. He is a consultant. He'll be helping us out a little here, asking some questions, making sure things go a little more smoothly. Yeah. Oh and remember, next Friday is Hawaiian shirt day! So, y'know, if you want to, go ahead and uh, wear a Hawaiian shirt and jeans."

serendipity

Much of the behind the scenes IT work is furthered by a dub from Florida - Haniph Latchman, an Oxford educated Phd.

If Latchman is a JW, I wonder how he feels about the recent anti-education propaganda. And shame on the WTS for using his skills instead of the inhouse Bethelites.

What-A-Coincidence

well put seren

Abaddon

Maybe they've automated the Elder appointments, disfelllowshipping, and the 'Questions from Readers' departments?

Holy Spirit with Intel Inside.

The companies I know that use SAP have a love-hate relationship with SAP. They'd love to have something else, and hate the fact it gets so intetwined with your business it's really expensive to change. They tend to be software lead rather than business-model lead, although this might be more to do with their software teams than the software

under_believer

Tell you what, they could automate the Writing Department. They could fire all those people and use that old ELIZA program to write the literature. It would be just like 1984.

Bethel Downsizing - Management Discussions

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