I have worked in places where they didn't have a real ERP, and things were a mess. Hard to get anything done, hard to understand, a decent amount of time wasted.
Then I worked places with SAP. And if they were lucky and just "did things the SAP way", the result was easy to understand, actually worked, and saved time.
Can you do that without SAP? Of course. Can a SAP system also suck? Of course. I have no argument to make here, other than it's sometimes good and sometimes not. If I had to compare it to anything it'd be IBM.
Then I worked places with SAP. And if they were lucky and just "did things the SAP way", the result was easy to understand, actually worked, and saved time.
Can you do that without SAP? Of course. Can a SAP system also suck? Of course. I have no argument to make here, other than it's sometimes good and sometimes not. If I had to compare it to anything it'd be IBM.