July 11, 2007
e.r.p. and social media are not the same thing, dammit
In response to my recent post about the lines that separate ERP and social media becoming blurrier over time, my old high school friend, Hamish, who works a lot with SAP, talks about ERP and Social Media, and the place where the twain shall never meet.
In SM, the message that is received, read or whatever, is not pre-determined for any purpose, it could be a blog entry about how cool sunsets are, or why LA sucks, the network does not care. All interpretation of the message is done by the human receiver. The language it is written in, the content, the references to external events and culture, are all parsed by the human. The software is just the conduit, or the environment in which the discussion takes place, if you will.
In ERP by contrast we have a whole load more stuff to do, as all interpretation is done by the software, or more accurately by rules written in software by a designer who is not in situ to intervene in any ambiguous situations. Is the message a request for spare parts for a car factory delivered by EDI, or is it holiday request from an employee? At the network and delivery level it is not possible to tell. The ERP software has to have a lot of additional information and processing to determine this, with a constrained and consistent data model, with specific processes that will create different outcomes under different initial conditions, etc.
I’m waiting with baited breath to hear Sigurd’s response.
[UPDATE:] Sigurd leaves a comment:
And as I said a bit earlier: “Actually it boils down to the definition of what ‘social software’ is…“
As Chad says — take the flexibility and transparency inherent in SM and add structure to the flows if required and design so that all data and events and whatever is properly captured. Add reporting capabilities and voila SM as ERP
(Have more to discuss with Hamish there though as much of the rules-requirements in ERP or process systems is a leftover from the good (?) old days of pen and paper inherited “event documentation thinking” — but that would be a another story!)
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This reminds me of what I hear about mainframe applications, “we’ll never get rid of the mainframe, it’s to complex and does deep dark secret stuff”. But somebody must have implemented it originally. Same with these mystical ERP rules. Who’s to say we can implement a much more efficient/flexible/schematized/whatever workflow on a social platform? Somebody must have developed the rules in the first place, why can’t somebody do it again?
Another amazing and unforgettable cartoon, Hugh. I will quote you on this one.
I’m with Hamish but for different reasons but there are peripheral use cases where social media does have an impact.
*clearing throat*…
And as I said a bit earlier: “Actually it boils down to the definition of what “social software” is.…. “
As Chad says — take the flexibility and transparency inherent in SM and add structure to the flows if required and design so that all data and events and whatever is properly captured. Add reporting capabilities and voila SM as ERP
(Have more to discuss with Hamish there though as much of the rules-requirements in ERP or process systems is a leftover from the good (?) old days of pen and paper inherited “event documentation thinking” — but that would be a another story!)
Hold it Sig — where’s the SM component here or rather where does it fit in your thinking? I can see use some cases but you’re being as clear as mud.
your pics are really nice and different
hugs and kisses
@mark… yeah, but it probably opens up some nice new options for how to do it.
For me the problem is discourse and data. Numbers and words. The ERP flow is a river of numbers from which my ERP system allows me to dip the buckets of clarity and compliance. Its all about the hard numbers. SM is dialogue, discussion, debate, inspiration, creativity. Well, hey, I need that too so the questions in my mind at the moment are about how can I use SM software, models, and an open collaborative approach to help drive process improvement. Process improvement is ongoing and feeds back into our ERP developments anyway but at the moment I just can’t quite put my finger on how exactly I can use existing SM applications inside the company.
Don’t we all? But then again, I do it anyway.
Fun
Fun
Fun!
H
SAP isn’t known for it’s competent handling of whimsy
Although it is in principle possible to use an SM system for ERP the chance of errors is so high in the general case that in the near future it will not be practical. You have to take a freeform natural language input, complete with idioms and regional variations, and convert that into a rigid structured language. In anything other than the trivial case this is an open research problem.
There are cases like conversational trading systems where the natural language used is sufficiently limited so as to be able to extract meaning consistently, but that is hardly SM.