Retail giant Kingfisher rejects SAP ERP upgrade plan

SAP insists customers wanting "innovation" such as AI must upgrade to its latest platform for ERP, using prescribed cloud migration plans. Kingfisher - which operates 2,000 European retail stores including UK brands Screwfix and B&Q - rejected that approach. Rather than follow SAP's upgrade strategy, which includes a shift to …

[Doctor Syntax]

"Yet the retailer says it has still developed AI, personalization and recommendation engines"

Thanks for the warning. I'll be careful when using B&Q or Screwfix sites.

[Charlie Clark]

To be fair, what else would you expect from a retailer?

I find the comments and the request for "value" refreshingly honest. I can't remember the last time I saw any of the large software vendors bother to the use word, and their managed services clouds are just price rises waiting to happen.

[BinkyTheMagicPaperclip]

At one point we dealt with the now departed Kwik Save as a customer, a common negotiating point was 'we're going to have to sell a lot of tins of beans to pay for that'.

Retailers absolutely will throw lots of money at you *if* and only if you can show the value returned is substantially greater than their outlay. Business 101.

They also, shockingly, expect professionalism, the product to work, and support that does what it says on the tin. Who would have thought?

Unreasonable customers usually aren't too difficult to deal with except in the short term, anyone trying to exceed their contract will eventually go back to negotiation at a business level and change requests to fix their requirements - or to be asked to leave. It's the *reasonable* customers who expect the product to do exactly what it should, when it fundamentally doesn't, that are the problem - or when the contracts team gets eaten alive by retailers who are very good at negotiating and the contracts team or management look only at the headline rate, and not at the ongoing cost.

The only exception are smaller companies who frankly received a bargain, and then in future years are unwilling to pay a reasonable market rate, not one influenced by unnecessary cloud architectures or poor business decisions. in those cases, well, they'd better try and find another company who will sell a solution at below the going rate, pony up the market rate cash, or move to a standardised product with no customisation.

[Doctor Syntax]

"The only exception are smaller companies who frankly received a bargain"

Let me guess: those were early adopters who put up with early versions, whose feedback shaped the product, whose enthusiastic recommendation helped sell it and whose money was immensely more valuable to a fledgling vendor than a "reasonable" rate would be today.

[BinkyTheMagicPaperclip]

I see your viewpoint, but no. By that stage we were already established. I'm not aware of any specific feedback that would have influenced the product, otherwise I would have mentioned it!

It helped bring in money. I'm sure as with every customer they will have highlighted interesting edge cases. The strategy back in those days was 'take the code base, adapt it to customer specifications, and worry about the future later'. That becomes a problem when you don't have a sensible mainline code base with nice neat branches, instead there's a sprawling mess of divergent code bases, and if it's an implementation that's not following the general direction of the product, any modification to bring it towards that becomes very expensive.

As the technical debt was slowly dealt with and everything brought back to One True Mainline (it mostly is now, except for the ones that aren't) they had the choice of moving to the mainline version (extra cost if they wish to keep their customisation), moving to a different product (more expensive), or leaving as Business deemed the support/development cost over income to be insufficient to continue supporting their bespoke implementation[1]. Especially so as after being taken over things were decidedly more corporate and structured - an improvement in a few areas, a disadvantage in many others.

Most of these customers got a very good deal and well over a decade of a supported environment, and advance notice of literal years that they had to make a choice - they did not do so badly. Many moved to the follow on product, or alternative products in the company group.

[1] You may reasonable ask the difference between this and SAP at this point. The differences are small vs a very large company, and the fact there is no such thing as a cheap SAP installation.

[Snake]

RE: early adopters

Tell it like it is, brother. Must be a universal 'burn' then, not even close to the same industr[ies] and I still have those same memories...

[Anonymous Coward]

I once years ago had to deal with two companies one who were supplied us with software, the other were competitors. The much larger company was more than a little arrogant in their dealings with companies outside the USA. It might also have been inside the US as well but we never found out. We had their main product deployed through 95% of the company and they were happy to collect the money from us for the licenses. However they were far less happy to deal wirh problems let alone anything anyone desired as a feature or even tiny modifications.

If something went wrong, they just said please run the diagnostic and repair process. That to be fair did fix the majority of problems but not all and they were very slow to fix those that the prog didn’t fix. Then they released a new version on Windows (it had been DOS before) and we were expecting there to be marked improvements. Sadly what they’d done was to port the DOS version over and give it a coat of GUI - nothing else.

It was as if they’d decided that this was the easiest lowest cost route to Windows so let’s do that. So licensing wasn’t internet based it was contact their local support centre and renew. That needed you to spend about 5 minutes per database reading them the current longish code on your screen and then inputting their response. Hardly ideal given advances elsewher in the industry and their response to why something hadn’t changed was that the Amererican market didn’t want or need that.

I was put in charge of a skunkworks project which was to look at alternatives. I found one I liked a lot and had got a demo disk sent to me for evaluation. I though it was excellent and said so to the

Head of Technology who after doing an evaluation agreed. We started using them on a trial basis and were blown away by how good they were. They were also willing to listen to you and we made a suggestion for a feature that we thought would be an improvement. A feature that we had asked the others for and were told to go away they weren’t interested.

Well the new lot thought it was a great idea and a month later it was rolled out in an upgrade. Renewing licenses was done over the internet not the phone and their support was brilliant. We did extensive testing and found no faults or major issues, a couple of what we thought might be minor issues turned out to just be us misunderstanding. When I left they were rolling it out almost everywhere, wasn’t sorry to see the other lot given the boot.

[JollyJohn54]

The problem with diy.com is that it is full of junk.

Use B&Q's trade site - https://www.trade-point.co.uk/ No third party sellers or other 'personalisation' rubbish. If it's on there its in store.

[BartyFartsLast]

Well that's a handy tip, I'd given up on B&Q because of all the shite sold by 3rd parties "not available in store" they give as results to searche

[Dwarf]

Forget AI, get boolean searches working first

Forget AI. I'd like to see the most simple of web site search tools just work properly with a basic boolean search.

Many store search tools do not support basic boolean searches, if I search for "black paint", I am really stating that I'm looking for "black and paint". So many web front ends OR each word, so every word you add, just muddies the water with things you don't want, giving you no way to get to what you want and many ways to say "too difficult" and go somewhere else. The only workaround I've found is to use Google, with a site restriction on it, so "black and paint site:diy.com".

[David Hicklin]

Re: Forget AI, get boolean searches working first

> Forget AI. I'd like to see the most simple of web site search tools just work properly with a basic boolean search.

Have an upvote

What really annoys me at B&Q (and other retailers) websites is where you have a range of filters that you can apply, so you merrily go ahead only to find that the results no longer match reality and the only way to find the stuff you want is to wade through it item by item

[Tom Womack]

Re: Forget AI, get boolean searches working first

What makes me contemplate the synthesis of phosphorus* is AutoTrader, who have a really quite good set of filters (I particularly like the way that they report the number of matches for each option in the dropdown box for the filter) and then randomly inject things that don't match your requirements in the middle of the list of results with a tiny 'Ad' in the corner.

* medieval alchemists synthesised phosphorus by boiling urine

[TM™]

Re: Forget AI, get boolean searches working first

Oh I thought I was the only one! I literally wrote the same to a paint company last week. Default search should be AND. How difficult is that? It's hard to know whether the default OR approach is either gross incompetence or some manager's idea of driving trade to other products. Just drives me away. I also use the same Google tick you mention above, although Google is not what it use to be.

Customer: "I'd like a gold chain please"

Retailer: "What about this bike chain sir?"

C: "No Thanks"

R: "What about this dog chain sir?"

C: "No Thanks"

R: "What about this gold pen sir?"

C: "Goodbye"

[Paul Crawford]

If only one of those vendors could support search/filtering by useful attributes of the goods they sell? Take this example on Screwfix for coach screws:

https://www.screwfix.com/c/screws-nails-fixings/coach-screws/cat840476

I can select by pack size, or price range, but not screw diameter or length. You know the useful attributes one might need to select one that does the job...

[FirstTangoInParis]

^this.

The number of times I’ve searched on sites that had filters, only to find none of the filters were actually useful. You’d have thought they’d have got mystery shoppers to try it out before releasing it on the general public.

[Anonymous Coward]

Or half the products are not tagged properly, so if you choose a supposedly-useful filter, it removes products that meet that criteria but aren't tagged for it.

[Anonymous Coward]

They did, it was a mystery to me.

This is what happens when the people marketing this stuff have never held a screwdriver or hammer in their life.

[John Miles]

Re: They did, it was a mystery to me.

I'm sure they have - though the Screwdriver will likely be vodka & orange in a cocktail glass, the hammer to break the ice - we are talking marketing

[The Organ Grinder's Monkey]

To be fair to them that's partly because the "appropriate filters" vary with every tiny subcategory of item that they sell.

In the UK Screwfix & Toolstation are comparable companies but Screwfix' website does a vastly better job of matching filters to category than T/stn's. T/stn's search is all but useless tbh. Curiously, the filtering & search on the T/Stn app is way better than on their website.

[ATrickett]

They can't migrate

I know people who worked on their ECC system, it was so bespoke they haven't got a chance of migrating it to the S4/Hana without a lot of pain. They spent a fortune on re-writing the core to do their own thing - that won't play well if they try to migrate to a new version of SAP...

[b0llchit]

Re: They can't migrate

Well then,... they should instead migrate to Oracle?

/me thinks there is no real competition in this ERP field. You can get Pest from SAP or Cholera from Oracle. Either way, a very slow, very expensive and very painful ordeal awaits.

[Roland6]

Re: They can't migrate

There are other ERPs, just that you need to be prepared to accept there will be fewer people out there with relevant experience.

Infor for example have some widely used ERP systems, just trying to find experienced non-Infor consultants seems is problematic. From the number of LinkedIn messages I get, it seems Syteline8 skills are still in demand.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: They can't migrate

I'm not a SAP expert but was working at a site using it for a while (I interacted with the people working on SAP but didn't do anything myself). The people working on it told me that they were clearly told not to customise too much and when they did there were certain requirements to follow in order that upgrades worked.

If that's true then people who can't upgrade due to customisations have only really got themselves to blame.... or more likely the short term management decisions which they've now inherited...

[Lonpfrb]

Re: They can't migrate

The Degrees of Evil were indeed what aligned with the SAP Enhancement concept and cost sensitive customers would restrict themselves to Upgrade Safe Enhancement whereas the reckless would get Evil, and be offended at the cost of upgrade and validation that results.

It's in the first 10 slides of any well run SAP implementation project, and probably other ERP as packaged software code is supposed to be mostly standard because product selection means it fits most business requirements as standard.

[omz13]

Re: They can't migrate

At what point is it easier to develop your own system than to heavily customize core?

[Sam Crawley]

Re: They can't migrate

That is supposedly what is coming down the line in the medium to long term - moving from SaaS and its price gouging to AI-created bespoke software for each individual role - so in theory no more big beast frameworks like SAP. Of course I'm sure the software houses will still find a way to monetise it.

[Lonpfrb]

Re: They can't migrate

Most organisations will massively undervalue a stable architecture proven to scale, and applications that are proven by thousands of customers in most global jurisdictions. That's properly hard and almost no business has the skills, vision and determination required to do it. The cost for ERP functionality is in the $100Mn range and up IMHO.

Just getting a global business to agree their requirements is hard enough...

[Charlie Clark]

Re: They can't migrate

They spent a fortune…

Isn't that the point will all these systems? You buy a standard system and then spend the bank customising it to do what you need. And have to do it all again with the next version!

[Tom Womack]

Re: They can't migrate

So why would you bother trying to migrate?

This seems a classic example of something that's finished, not broken and doesn't need fixing - you won't get support from SAP any more, but if you were in a state to customise the software deeply you probably don't need the support. Maybe it won't run on Windows Server 2035, but that's why the good Lord made kvm.

[Lonpfrb]

Re: They can't migrate

Unfortunately SAP ERP isn't just ABAP application code (source code supplied) but also the Runtime that executes that application code on a variety of hardware and databases.

The basis kernel that provides that Runtime is the intellectual property of SAP and code not supplied. So neither customers nor third parties can support the kernel against security, database and operating system threats/changes.

Events are unpredictable so must be mitigated by appropriate responses, in life and software.

[Pascal Monett]

"show me the value"

Amen to that !

[BinkyTheMagicPaperclip]

It's not rocket science

Similar issues at work. Much of my area gained popularity because we provided a decent product at a reasonable price with a lot of per customer customisations.

This is expensive to maintain, however, and unless you're very strict with your development process (and we weren't, making the business over clean architecture trade off) it leads to sprawling technical debt. But hey, the company prospered because of it, so not a bad business decision.

Then we got taken over aaaaand innovation stopped. Then the next step was trying to push customers to the newer platform which was more expensive, and overall less functional (did some things much better, others somewhat worse). 'Surprisingly' this is not a selling point.

If you want the big companies you're going to have to support customisation, and put in the resource to support it. They will take some pain when the platform evolves, as they're not completely unreasonable, but a huge price spike which boils down to 'we want more money and less hassle' will just lead to them looking elsewhere.

There seems to be the repeated expectation/hope by various management that there is a Sunshine and Unicorns marketplace where companies will pay through the nose for whatever you provide. Providing solutions at this level is inherently messy to your Ideal Architecture (although a degree of that is normally because providers under quote and don't factor in proper training and documentation, which are mandatory for long term support and platform stability)

If you're going to effectively ask the customer to re-buy their entire solution, the likelihood is you'll do it repeatedly. Why bother sticking with a company like that, when you can try another company that may be more competent - or at least more reasonably priced.

[Monkey61]

That is a refreshing attitude from a client of a software house who wants to drive their customers with their own agenda.

SAP is receiving real pushback from their "RISE with SAP", and moves such as this will demonstrate to other customers that there is a cheaper alternative.

[Anonymous Coward]

When did we start calling common sense a 'refreshing attitude'.

[Doctor Syntax]

When we realised it wasn't really at all common.

[Anonymous Coward]

'Common Sense' a popular concept often NOT backed up by reality !!!

You are forgetting that 'Common Sense' is not particularly 'Common' at all, hence the 'refreshing attitude'.

I learned this quite early on in my career when I questioned why certain 'common sense' things did not happen in office environments I was working in.

These office environments were across many industries BUT the common factor was 'common sense' seemed to be lacking once you placed a large number of people in a typical office.

These people were not uneducated, in fact there were many graduates from scientific/engineering backgrounds BUT placing them in a large group seemed to nullify any 'common sense' they had.

The IT group I was in was quite small, compared to typical departmental headcounts, and we covered UK & Europe. There was a much bigger group who covered the US of A. The rest of the world was covered by appropriate groups who tended to do their own thing outside of the US or UK/Europe models.

Soon learned to stop using the phrase 'Common sense' ... it did not apply, it was an assumption based on an invalid model !!!

:)

[Charlie Clark]

When vendors started putting up prices faster than we can put up ours. IT has got a lot more expensive in the last 5 years.

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps Kingfisher along with Tesco is a good sign of customers pushing back on ‘too big’ software houses that just want to push customers around and squeeze them.

Big user groups need to start saying NO more often.

[Pirate Peter]

you mean the supermarket is learning what its like to be one of their own customers?

seems kingfisher are finding out how it feels to be a customer of there's

things that don't work, hidden costs, price rises, websites that are frustrating to use, a take it or leave it approach

as with customers they have the option to take their money and business elsewhere

[ComicalEngineer]

At what point --

-- do SAP realise that shafting their customers is going to backfire?

[BartyFartsLast]

Re: At what point --

As I say to people at work, SAP is like bindweed, when it takes root it's an absolute nightmare to get rid of it

[Pirate Peter]

Re: At what point --

seems SAP are the latest to follow the

1:- try and force customers off legacy systems and onto cloud base SaaS platforms

2:- once on cloud insist on subscription models which are only available at discount with long multi year deals

3:- once customers are tied in to multiyear SaaS deals hit them with eye watering price rises disguised as AI services

4:- if customers resist AI costs then force customers to accept price rises by removing all the cheaper non AI options

[Anonymous Coward]

Why sap ?

Are they called sap because they drain the juice and sap from the money tree that pays them or because a sap is a naïve person?

[Edward Ashford]

Re: Why sap ?

Twenty years ago a colleague called it "Shut-up And Pay". Getting to ECC was a total nightmare if there was any level of customisation.

A German colleague referred to it as the Sanduhr Anzeigung Program (hourglass display program).

Maybe it's better now with a document store as a back end, but with a heavily indexed RDBMS (over which we had no control) it was pretty dismal.

[Lonpfrb]

Re: Why sap ?

Systems And Procedures in data processing, or

Solves All Problems ;-)

[ZorgonsRevenge]

Its about time customers said "No" when vendors try to force everyone into SAAS relationships

I am sick to the back teeth of software vendors trying to force customers into software as a service rather then just letting us buy software..

MS Office and even windows seem to demand that I have to create a MS account and upgrade windows with services I don't need.

I don't need to check with Microsoft to determine if I am allowed to save an excel spreadsheet locally or in their cloud!

Disable updates and download a stand alone copy of Office2019.

Fuck em, Fuck em all.

[frankvw]

Re: Its about time customers said "No" when vendors try to force everyone into SAAS relationships

"Fuck em, Fuck em all."

Perhaps Kingfisher should rename Screwfix to ScrewSAP...

[BinkyTheMagicPaperclip]

Re: Its about time customers said "No" when vendors try to force everyone into SAAS relationships

Whilst in general I agree it really does depend on the service's purpose. If it's a word processor - fine, you could get away with using Wordstar from the 1980s for a lot of purposes, WordPerfect from slightly later if you need diagrams and tables. You can effectively argue things haven't moved forward enough/much, especially as Word still doesn't support tables in tables after 30+ years of development.

If the product is driven by a changing legislative landscape and customer requirements that don't stay the same over time, complete with hundreds or thousands of edge cases, interfaces to other systems, and interactions that need to result in a reliable result there's no real alternative to a subscription. In the 90s pre web it'd just be annual support and manual updates, rather than a web app or automatic updates, but the effect is the same.

[Ashto5]

That should be where you start

Conversation should be

“Good morning and welcome, before you start on the new feature and price plan, YOU better have the value add ready or please leave and come back once you do”

Many vendor meetings would be short and sweet.

[Pirate Peter]

Re: That should be where you start

all the vendors have ROI (return on investment) calculators which produce results about as real as unicorns

[Strahd Ivarius]

Re: That should be where you start

"We are currently paying £xxx per year for your product. How much migrating to your new system will remove from our bill?"

[STOP_FORTH]

Anecdote, that may be true

I used to work for a biggish (20,000+) outfit and am still in touch with some ex-colleagues. When SAP came a-calling (this was after I left) their negotiating position was interesting and straightforward. It amounted to them being able to supply a vanilla system at reasonable cost to which they could add widgets to customise the system to your particular requirements.

If the widget had already been developed for another customer, you got it for free (or cheap - I wasn't there, this is second hand knowledge).

If the widget was a brand new one or an existing one that needed alteration, you paid an arm and a leg for it.

Biggish Outfit negotiators realised they were being stiffed when they were asked to pay for e.g. a widget that dealt with people working 9 to 5 on weekdays.

In fact, every single feature they asked for was a brand new widget that would require extensive/expensive development billable hours.

After some pushback the initial price dropped substantially.

Either they have very stupid and/or greedy salesmen or they are in the third stage of company lifecycle, where they are run by accountants. (Not surprising, considering that ERP is basically a tool for accountants.)

All of the above info came from an e-mail from an unreliable narrator so is obviously only allegedly true.

Mind you I used their product at Even Bigger Co (120,000+) and it was absolute shite. Though that may have been a poor implementation of a perfect software tool/system. Or not.

[Gith]

This is pretty much the way my organisations ERP provider also went

Can only host with them, full on SaaS, unable to support quite a few customisations or methods of data manipulation we used, increase in cost of over 100% with no additional value - arguably less value and more restrictions.

[TechYogJosh]

Customer is not always right though

There is no comment from SAP on this. How we know customer is not lying? May be they are in such a mess internally in their architecture, technology, and financial state, that they can't afford to migrate and modernize. They realize even if they do, it wont impact revenue because their portals, digital channels, stores, are in a complete mess. If value means "price reduction" only, then cant blame the vendor. Though SAP is no saint, but one thing to note across is clients are always angry at large tech and still these tech keep growing. It is hard to argue that clients do spend more on them YoY for one of the other reason.