I was a developer on AcceleratedSAP (actually wrote the earliest versions which were pathetic...this is about 10 years ago and my coding skills were not exactly sharp).
I didn't get to see much of SAP (i assume you mean R/3 or R/4...that is flagship enterprise software), but what i did see was very strange. Very austere interface with no colors or design to it that had menus and submenus with dozens of confusing commands. As I understand it, R/3 is all about tying together dozens/scores/hundreds of databases across an entire organization. It's not pretty or fast software, but what it does is bridge all different kinds of data in all different kinds of formats which might even be on different continents and it brings it all together and cross references and correlates it.
SAP software is very complicated and our entire project (AcceleratedSAP) was dedicated to simplifying the horrific task of installing R/3. Companies would go bankrup installing it. But, once it was installed, they would come roaring back and would report all kinds of efficiency increases.
For companies like Ocean Spray, Coca Cola, etc., this software can do great things. It's not pretty, but neither is the tangle of legacy databases that some huge enterprises have to contend with.
Great? I have no clue. I left that job to join a record label. It is tremendously complicated and ugly and confusing and that's why people want consultants...people who know how to use it. Most of these companies are pretty large as I understand it.
Hope that helps.
