In this they proceeded on the sound principle that the magnitude of a lie always
contains a certain factor of credibility, since the great masses of the people in
the very bottom of their hearts tend to be corrupted rather than consciously
and purposely evil, and that, therefore, in view of the primitive simplicity of
their minds they more easily fall a victim to a big lie than to a little one,
since they themselves lie in little things, but would be ashamed of lies that
were too big. Such a falsehood will never enter their heads and they will not
be able to believe in the possibility of such monstrous effrontery and infamous
misrepresentation in others; yes, even when enlightened on the subject, they
will long doubt and waver, and continue to accept at least one of these causes
as true. Therefore, something of even the most insolent lie will always remain
and stick - a fact which all the great lie-virtuosi and lying-clubs in this
world know only too well and also make the most treacherous use of.
I. Rolls-Royces and Russian ‘hunchbacks’
Questions for our readers:
- Do you think that a car worth 100 thousand dollars is better than the one worth 15 thousand? From this onward for the sake of the sake of argument we’re considering vehicles of the same intended purpose – passenger cars for everyday use.
-
Sure enough. E.g. - a Mercedes vs. a Korean vehicle.
- OK. What about a 1 million dollar car – is it better than the one worth 100 thousand?
-
Very much likely. Exclusive Rolls-Royse cars, custom Aston Martins, armored Pullmans vs. typical non-expensive configurations of German luxury cars.
- OK. What about a $300 000 000 (three hundred million US dollar) car – is it better than the one worth one million?
- What (you might say)?! What three hundred million dollars, are you out of mind? There ain’t no such car! Even if it were made of gold (though its performance would only be worse), or its wheels were encrusted with diamonds (Arab sheikhs love it), even then it would cost times cheaper.
- No (you go on after considering it for a while), a car can’t cost three hundred mil. Only if we’re talking about some kind of a space intercontinental amphib rocket with vertical takeoff, an advanced NASA design for the Superman.
Yes, I guess that’s exactly the kind of hypership you (i.e. us – note by Ultima) have in mind. Well, then it surely can cost three hundred mil: it can fly, go to space, make it from Paris to New York in two hours, etc.
The dialogue will come down to the idea that for three hundred mil a customer has to get something uber-galactic, stupefying, and mind-blowing. God knows exactly what, but it must be supercool anyhow.
And what if then you’re told, that you’re asked to transfer three hundred mil for a Soviet hunchback car? It will be, of course, equipped with a wide range of gimmicks and a separate module trailer with a disco-on-wheels Pimp-My-Ride-style.
OK.
And what if, they tell you, people buy a lot of these Soviet hunchback cars, ‘thousands of successful installations over the globe’, billions of dollars in sales, a supercool image, and that anyway, this old junk of a half-century old design with gimmicks and various trailers of gypsy coloring makes up more than a half of the world market for super-elite cars?
What will you say then?
This is insane, stop bullshitting us, you’ll answer most probably. It just can’t be true. The difference between a Rolls-Royce and a hunchback is obvious to any idiot – it’s in design, size, interior, quality of driving and finishing of materials. So, to buy this thing, you’d have to be not only hopelessly stupid, but both unbelievably rich and hopelessly stupid. Which is rare.
And – surprise-surprise! – you’re absolutely right! It’s all exactly like that.
These are exactly the reasons that there are neither Soviet hunchbacks, nor cars worth 300 million dollars on the super-elite segment of the world car market.
II. Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus, two thousand years before SAP
Actually, Kirby is a Spherical impersonation of sellers’
pushiness and buyers’ dumminess in a vacuum.
Dummies think that the product is expensive and with a
high markup, but since it costs 150 grand, it just can’t be
bad – at least it’s as good as the best ones is stores.
But reality is better than a dream!
Analysis of Kirby vacuum cleaners
marketing strategy by Lurkmore.to
Now let’s address the ERP systems market. A typical implementation budget in case of a mid-size – in-between kiosks and transnational corporations – business is several hundred thousand dollars, or maybe two or three million.
Budgets for large projects may be several times higher – but only times, NOT orders of magnitude.
What if we ask someone (a NON-professional) about an ERP system worth three hundred million dollars?
Surely, in perfect analogy with car example above, the unsophisticated customer’s mind will visualize something at least rocket-space-like.
Combined with the conditioned reflex of ‘higher price – higher quality’, it will launch the imperative: “they won’t take <SO MUCH> dough for nothing".
Simply, the target audience won’t be able to express its expectations and its delight – since it’s incompetent.
The most we can expect is enthusiastic cheering, something like ‘This is SAP!!!11111’
A dialogue with such people (as with anyone who truly believes) based on rationale has no perspective – since the coordinate systems mismatch dramatically. Believing is absolute in itself.
It either exists, or it doesn’t. The very attempt to look for sound arguments is indicative of its not being strong.
It makes sense to have a dialogue with a believer in SAP (pbuh) and its ‘best-practices’ (as well as with any other kind of believers) only to exemplify symptoms of a disease and to warn other representatives of the risk group – look, children, what a funny guy. Try not to be like that!
It’s a paradox (at first sight), but the more absurd the nonsense to worship is, the more sustained the religious virus is. It’s a fact, confirmed by a lot of comparative scientific research and popular science narratives.
The reason Christianity, during the early centuries AD, was the religion of the retarded strata of society, was that for the educated people of that time (whose number was significantly higher in proportion to the present times) it was evident, that theses, whereby people were born by a virgin by means of a pigeon, could walk on water, turned water into wine, came alive and went to heavens after death, were absolute folly.
Now a word from Mr. Tertullianus: ‘The Son of God died: it is immediately credible – because it is silly. He was buried, and rose again: it is certain – because it is impossible’ (Tertullianus, “De Carne Christi").
Moreover, the appeals (and the practice!) to abandon one’s family, sell all property, give the money to some dubious people in exchange for a promise (I’m tellin’ ya! Trust me!) of an afterlife salvation, and then go roaming around the country, by today’s laws would be more than enough to place the first Christians among destructive sects (which they actually were), and put the dodgy ‘apostolate’ to prison for fraud.
That was exactly the reason, by the way, for the infamous ‘persecution’ by the prudent Roman justice – nothing satanic, just criminal.
But we got distracted.
The belief that if we pay three hundred million dollars for a Russian hunchback, then it becomes a hyperspace transgalactic ship (so to say, the Transubstantiation), doesn’t differ much in its rationality from the belief in a rocket-like ascension of the old lady Mary to heaven without the use of strap-on impulse propulsion.
Whether it was a deep understanding of flaws of human thinking or an accidental hit, but the SAP guys managed to brilliantly take advantage of the ‘credo quia absurdum’ maxima (‘I believe it because it is absurd’), derived from Tertullianus.
Three hundred million dollars for a massive of program code lines (which is also obsolete and low quality) – what is it, if not ‘absurdum’?
However, combined with the aforementioned imperative: ‘they won’t take <SO MUCH> dough for nothing’, this absurdum works true wonders, year after year squeezing multibillion profits for SAP AG out of coprolite of the hideous ABAP code, which generations of SAP morlocks coders have grown like a crystal.
The host of wonder-workers of all known Cristian denominations with their cumulative spell power has failed to make even a fraction of a percentage point of such wonders over the past two thousand years.
So, in a sense, the belief in SAP’s power, unlike the Cristian god power, has material proof in audited reports.
What would happen to SAP, if not for the super-successful use of the Tertullianus maxima? I.e., if SAP were sold at a realistic price, determined by its practical usefulness?
In this case, my fair readers, the market outlook for SAP would be so sad, that it wouldn’t exist at all.
In fact, if we move consideration of SAP’s sacred super-advantages from the faith domain (‘they won’t charge three hundred mil for nothing’) into the rational reasoning domain – immediately the coach will turns into a pumpkin, and the king’s nakedness becomes an eyesore due to his wrinkled cellulite ass.
Imagine, that the Cristian church instead of the good old categorical dogmata (‘…it is immediately credible – because it is silly’) all of a sudden starts supporting theses about Assumption of the Virgin Mary by some aerodynamic equations for human body and defining emanations of the Holy Spirit by quantum physics terminology. What would happen, except for a scientific scandal? The profit-generating flock would immediately flee to another nearest religious institution, which does business the old way without messing with their success.
Let’s go back a frame and return to the Tertullianus maxima.
Here’s a typical dialogue:
“300 mil for an automation project?! Are you out of your mind?"
“Well, it’s SAP!"
“Oh, I see …"
‘Nothing is new under the moon’ (Nikolay Karamzin).
If we look at the technology of promotion of Kirby vacuum cleaners, mentioned in the epigraph, or the Amway cosmetics, or the wonderful weight-loss Herbalife products, or tens of other hyperspace hunchback cars, we’ll find that they coincide with the SAP’s marketing strategy even in wording.
The difference is that the hypercleaner or the facial wrinkle-smoothing supercream are just common household goods and can be comprehended by an average John Doe. The invaluable advantage of SAP, however, is that to that same average John Doe ERP systems are something obviously beyond his cognitive abilities. In this sense, SAP is a lot closer to the Most Holy Trinity, than to a Kirby vacuum cleaner.
And more financially successful.
III. Gospel of Mind, or some facts of life
Amen I say unto you: folks, there are no rocket-space ERP systems (as well as other whatever-like systems).
SAP is simply common software (only it’s old and has subsequent signs of senile deterioration).
Amen I say unto you: no piece of software for commercial (i.e. not individual) use can cost three hundred million dollars.
Actually, its development may cost a lot more – every new Windows release costs billions to Microsoft, but the customer pays only 80 dollars for it.
Let’s substantiate these statements, i.e. let’s injure feelings of the religious by touching holy relics in their private parts.
Let’s take, e.g. a receipts note (we can consider any functional element) in SAP and in 1C.
In 1C, it will cost you – in proportion to the cost of the implementation project and number of features –
about five thousand rubles. In SAP – three million dollars.
So, what’s the difference?
Maybe, while doing paperwork for receipts, SAP prints you dollars out of a sacral invisible printer? To the envy of the U.S. Fed? We don’t know such facts.
Maybe SAP unmistakably suggests you when to hold these products in order to sell them later and earn ten-fold? It’s impossible.
Does it attract God’s blessing onto your business due to guaranteed Orthodoxy of the goods receipt process? Hardly so: in Germany they’re all heretics and gayropeans anyway.
So why does the goods receipt function in SAP cost twenty thousand times more than in 1C?
Like it or not, but ideas of godly blessing and other spiritual dimensions come to mind.
Having said this, it could be that the goods receipt function in the basic version of SAP has more features, than the same function in the basic version of 1C.
But surely – not 20 000 times more features. And after spending some money on 1C modification, you’ll have the functionality you need for 105, or 505 thousand rubles. At worst – for two million five thousand rubles, but anyhow, not for three million dollars.
And we’re comparing SAP with 1C not because 1C is cheaper, but because in reality 1C works way better than SAP – in cases with a limited number of users.
And in any case – first, ‘overtake my little brother!’ (A. Pushkin)
Next.
Let’s injure feelings of the religious from a different perspective – by using proof by contradiction.
Suppose, some brilliant SAP programmer invented some uber-brilliant thing and programmed it into SAP.
The thing is so impossibly brilliant, that it really justifies the price of 300 mil.
What next?
Since SAP is written in a publicly known programming language (only it’s obsolete and poor), nothing (that mere mortals can comprehend) can stop competitors from copying this brilliant thing. We’re not considering God’s grace resting in SAP, since
- it’s exactly something that mere mortals cannot comprehend
- SAP AG never reported, at least officially, the fact of resting of the said grace.
Thus, the brilliant thing would be copied by a lots of competitors (their name is Legion) a bit faster than immediately, just like brilliant (and not so brilliant) things are regularly copied in all industries.
Consequently (as we’re proceeding with our logical exercise), SAP competitors’ products would inevitably acquire same customer value. I.e. three hundred million dollars.
Where are they, the hosts of three-hundred-million-dollar competitors?
Hey!
No answer…
In fact (we’re concluding this proof by contradiction), because of the inevitable force of the laws of competition on the free market, the price for products of all ERP system vendors with similar functionality (useful and important features are either the same – because of the copying rule, or SAP’s ones are worse – because of the technological obsolescence of their platform) would drop to about the same level, determined by the cost of production plus minimal profits.
Is this correct?
Again, it’s not. Still, SAP with its skull-crushing budget rises like Pompey’s Pillar.
Ergo – legendary SAP implementation budgets are determined NOT by brilliant functionality.
By what then?
It’s trite to say so, but only by two matters:
a) the inevitable belief in SAP (pbuh) and its ‘best-practices’, considered above, and
b) an incredible profitability of this belief for countless international swarms of people who are paid six-
or seven-figure kickbacks on each SAP project.
There might be other reasons, but according to William of Ockham, there’s no point in figuring them out.
We don’t need them.
Those who work in the vineyards of SAP installations and thus have their fair share of benefactions and candles budgets, will be telling (textual quotations) about ‘thousands of consultants, who can manage hard projects for hundreds and thousands of workplaces’ (big deal!); about an unprecedented ‘functionality power – electronic workflow and expense reports, to assortment management and forecasting, to management of warehouses with use of POCTs (we’ve already spoken on the true, ahem, ‘functionality power’); about ‘the invaluable experience, that no other system has’. And a number of other less or more convincing statements, extorted from the followers’ guts in awe of an assault on such profitable sinecure. Try to make a typical priest do something useful – you’ll hear some far worse things.
But all these morale-boosting assurances are nothing but vanity of vanities and all other kinds of vanities, as well as they are a multiplication of entities beyond necessity – according to the same William of Ockham. The aforementioned factors a) and b) are necessary and sufficient conditions for prosperity of SAP AG and those who feed off of it.
Though, for those who believe that the Holy Light comes not from a lighter hidden in a sleeve, we’ll keep sermons about countless herds of consultants, etc., as sufficient grounds for a shameless number of zeros in the budgets.
Let’s look into typical rantings of SAP defendants to militant atheists in more detail:
- ‘Thousands of consultants’… OK.
1C has hundreds of thousands of both consultants and programmers.
Even if we accept (at discretion) that among SAP consultants the number of dumb idiots is only two thirds, while the same number among the 1C people is 95%, then still 1C would have the arithmetical advantage in the number of smart people. So what, is this a reason for 1C to review their prices?
While in fact, the difference in personnel quality is NOT dramatic. - ‘Why do you keep throwing these failures in our face? As if cheap (in SAP’s opinion – note by Ultima) systems have no failures. Anyway, it’s the customers’ fault – they don’t know what they want, they don’t manage projects, and think that once they have a computer with the system installed, it would start printing money for them.’
Indeed, the customer is not always right. Moreover, the customer sometimes is an ass. That’s why the Ultima company doesn’t want all the customers.
And failure-wise… The question is in the probability of such failure. For some reason, it’s in cases with SAP that the failure probability rate tends to… However, let’s not beg the question.
Google ‘implementation project failures’ – without clarifying what exactly failed – and enjoy the results.
- ‘SAP is not the only one to pay kickbacks’.
It’s true, not only SAP pays kickbacks. However, the issue here is that in many (let’s put it carefully) cases kickbacks are the main, if not the only motivation for the whole thing.
For the Russian state sector – it’s a bit more than all of the cases.
And frankly speaking, dear SAP guys: do you have an alternative explanation why SAP’s so popular among Russian officials? Or, maybe you think they’re inspired by ‘thousands of consultants’? -
Let’s look into typical rantings of SAP defendants to militant atheists in more detail:
- ‘Thousands of consultants’… OK. 1C has hundreds of thousands of both consultants and programmers.
Even if we accept (at discretion) that among SAP consultants the number of dumb idiots is only two thirds, while the same number among the 1C people is 95%, then still 1C would have the arithmetical advantage in the number of smart people. So what, is this a reason for 1C to review their prices?
While in fact, the difference in personnel quality is NOT dramatic. - ‘Why do you keep throwing these failures in our face? As if cheap (in SAP’s opinion – note by Ultima) systems have no failures. Anyway, it’s the customers’ fault – they don’t know what they want, they don’t manage projects, and think that once they have a computer with the system installed, it would start printing money for them.’
Indeed, the customer is not always right. Moreover, the customer sometimes is an ass. That’s why the Ultima company doesn’t want all the customers.
And failure-wise… The question is in the probability of such failure. For some reason, it’s in cases with SAP that the failure probability rate tends to… However, let’s not beg the question.
Google ‘implementation project failures’ – without clarifying what exactly failed – and enjoy the results. - ‘SAP is not the only one to pay kickbacks’.
It’s true, not only SAP pays kickbacks. However, the issue here is that in many (let’s put it carefully) cases kickbacks are the main, if not the only motivation for the whole thing.
For the Russian state sector – it’s a bit more than all of the cases.
And frankly speaking, dear SAP guys: do you have an alternative explanation why SAP’s so popular among Russian officials? Or, maybe you think they’re inspired by ‘thousands of consultants’? -
‘SAP can do anything: banking, securities, project
management, anything at all. Why are you messing with the patriarch? Can your system do all of this?
Ultimate IEM solutions, as it’s easy to guess by its name, e.g. e-Trade, are designed for midsize and large businesses working in e-commerce.
As for the functionality, we’ve spoken of that earlier.
Functionality of an interbank accounting system or of manipulations on the stock exchange are so rarely in demand (though they’re no rocket science either) by the e-commerce sector, that we’ll leave such customers for the SAP corporation. For now.
- ‘Thousands of consultants’… OK. 1C has hundreds of thousands of both consultants and programmers.
IV. Freddy vs. Jason, or what rational grounds we have to say that we’re the best
‘Fast facts’ about ourselves.
We claim that our e-commerce solutions are the best among all alternatives available on the market.
At least, in the CIS countries.
We assert that the present market advantage of Ultimate IEM solutions is a result, in fact, of these three elements:
- technological advantages of the brand new Ultimate Solid platform architecture
- our solutions are designed by business people for business people and for getting results in business. Why so? It just so happened.
- unique business terms for delivery of solutions (literally, unique). Why we’re the only ones on the market offering such terms? Because everything we write about the benefits of our products is truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Consequently, we don’t risk anything, offering such terms.
But you don’t have to take our statements for granted.
On the contrary, feel free to criticize our arguments.
P.S. You may say that by no means every SAP project costs 300 mil.
Well, first, by no means every SAP project (to say the least) ends with a successful installation. So you can’t really say, how much it would cost if there were no budget and time restrictions. A lot more often than not, a SAP installation project just stops.
Second, of course, it’s less bitter to drain only some fifty million dollars (or even mere thirty) down the toilet instead of three hundred.
But on the other hand, isn’t it better not to drain anything at all? Except for what should be drained. Although, in the issues of the faith such questions are considered blasphemy.