SAP Reviews in Philadelphia, PA Area

Pros

Great people
Cafeteria on site
Low stress work environment

Cons

They are quick to cut interns and contractors

Pros

The salary is pretty good for the position.

The benefits including the $4.00 per diem for lunch are great.

Depending on the department you work for you may have the opportunity to work from home.

Cons

Many of the departments are very territorial. You will frequently find that the most stressful part of your job will be dealing with other employees of SAP that do not understand that in the end you are all on the same team.

Explanations on how to perform every day tasks in the system are poorly documented and the instructions that come from Germany are rarely helpful because they do everything differently over there.

The sales team can be very arrogant and difficult to work with.

Many of the departments do NOT have flexible hours. There is a school of thought that believes the $4.00 per diem for lunch at the cafeteria is designed to get employees to stay in the building all day and eat lunch at your desk so that they essentially get an extra hour of work out of you. Expect to be there at least nine hours every day, there is no skipping lunch and leaving early.

Currently SAP America is in a hiring freeze and has been since late last year. There has been NO word on when the hiring freeze will be lifted.

Quarter End's for Finance are a nightmare. If you have a family and want to spend Christmas, New Years Eve, Or July 4th with them this is not the place for you. I am not exaggerating when I say I left the building on New Years Eve at 9:30 PM and there were several people that were still there.

Advice to Senior Management

I understand that the company is driven by sales, but I would advise your sales force to have some compassion and understanding for the teams that need to do the work after their contracts are signed. The reality is that once they get them signed and they are high fiving each other the work is just beginning for many other departments, they need to keep that in mind when they are getting things signed at 10 PM on the last day of the quarter.

The company needs to do somthing about the isolation of all of their departments. I have never worked for a company where so many people were completely in the dark about the job functions and responsibilities of other departments they interact with every day. Two words....Cross Training.

How about loosening up the Flexibile hours a bit? We are in the 21st century here guys, some of us have long commutes. The sooner we can get in, get our work done, and get home to our families the better off we will all be.

Pros

Excellent resume builder, diverse work environment

Cons

rigid and complex leadership structure, work interest varies by function, opportunity, division

Advice to Senior Management

Invest into building a bigger SAP Consulting arm. Not only it is good revenue stream, but good consultants help SAP with software purchases fro their clients

Pros

Great products and great people.

Cons

Compensation and Recognition, HR and people ralated issues handled very poorly.

Advice to Senior Management

We personally sacrifice when things are good, and then asked to make even more personal sacrifices when things go bad ... when do you re-invest back in your talent ?

Pros

respect for employees, excellent benefits, good salaries, recognition for hard work and time invested

Cons

the most extensive "meeting" culture I've ever seen in a 20-year career - I could spend 60 hours a week in meetings if I accepted all my invitations; as a global organization, the workday can extend from early morning hours to connect with the European colleagues all the way to very late nights to connect with the APJ (SIngapore, Australia) colleagues

Advice to Senior Management

pick one day per week to be meeting-free and penalize people who don't obey

Pros

Still new to the organization, as part of the Business Objects acquisition. So far, so good.

Cons

The red tape that needs to be wallowed through to get something done.

Advice to Senior Management

change the cultural away from control to enablement

Pros

Flexible hours, good management, good atmosphere.

Cons

Not much hiring happening at the moment.

Advice to Senior Management

Keep it up, but loosen the reins on hiring

Pros

Great reputation in the software world - de facto standard for ERP. Comp is competitive but not great- unless you leave and come back.

Cons

HR puts up road blocks and does not reward loyalty with higher pay or opportunities. There is some degree of empire-building with ex-Siebel and ex-Oracle etc. people coming into higher level positions and immediately promoting their brethren hired in 2 weeks later. Also some short-sightedness in my opinion on quarterly results for license sales.

Advice to Senior Management

Don't focus too much on quarterly results - there has to be a strategic vision of where we're going - not just globally, but regionally or we will never get there. Maybe this is ther - but it's clearly not a priority for employee communicaitons.

Pros

Great potential in the company and the market

Cons

Poor senior management - board members are gods and must not be doubted
EVPs ... a nightmare

Advice to Senior Management

Watch the competition

Pros

IF you like an opportuntity for Global Travel then go here.

Cons

Culture can be slanted to 'German' side of the house. Depending on which department you are in can be a decent place or bad. Large corporation with typical politics. Travel cab be excessive. Can have peaks or periods of time where you are working much more than your 40hr week. Is not as loyal to employees now in 2008 as it was in the 1990's. They will cut people without thinking if the numbers are not being met, just like every other large corporation.

Advice to Senior Management

Senior Management (EVP/SVP on up) really needs to enpower their lower management. They need to be willing to invest in growth areas and not manage the company quarter to quarter. Need a more long term view.