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Comment by anotheracctfo | Hacker News Reader

The lowest grade I got in my business degree was Information Systems. The reason I got that grade is that I made a case for in-sourcing development based on my personal experience, where we provide services for cheaper than consultants, that aligns with OUR business processes.

The only answer to any and all business IT questions in non-IT companies is to outsource. The reasoning is that it is considered a support activity on Porter's value chain, and as such should be cut cut cut cut cut cut and cut some more.

Hilariously we're also taught to adopt best-of-breed software for ERPs, CRMs, and SCM tools AND CHANGE OUR BUSINESS PROCESSES TO MATCH THE SOFTWARE. You know, like Target did when they moved to Canada, adopted SAP, and ended up failing hard, because their entire competitive advantage came from a custom in-house developed supply chain management tool that beat all of their competitors.

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You know its interesting you bring this up. My first internship out of college was with Colgate-Palmolive which from what I recall was one of the largest SAP users in the US at the time (early 2010s). I heard among the grapevine that it was a massive effort to change the whole company around to the "SAP" way of doing things and that competitors (like P&G I think?) attempted but failed to implement SAP and suffered due to it. I don't know if P&G eventually managed to convert to SAP and I often wondered if Colgate could have been run better without SAP?

It was so ingrained into their operations and personally I don't think they could attract the caliber of engineer required to implement an in house system better. The lack of good devs in the industry is a massive problem for companies like Colgate. You just won't get the FAANG caliber devs working for a toothpaste company unless you really go way above and beyond in compensation and even then that might still not be enough to get the numbers you need.

My guess is that SAP(or other ERP) is better than in house for a company that has no competitors that have successfully implemented in house. As soon as you have a competitor that can implement in house better (maybe Amazon compared to their competitors?) then the balance shifts and SAP becomes a liability more than an asset. Not sure, just brainstorming.

I left after a year because coming out of an engineering college with a CS degree doing some complex stuff and then having to writing reports in ABAP depressed me immensely and resulted in one of my worst productive years in my career. I was eventually not offered a full time position because I was so depressed that I just did not complete my projects towards the end of the internship. On a positive note, Colgate was very accommodating and they treated me extremely well when I was there. It worked out though as I am much happier today doing Angular/Python dev.

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