Business Integration - Essay Example

? SAP Systeme, Anwendungen und Produkte in der nverarbeitung is a multinational corporation based in Germany that specialises in the development of business software solutions. The company name translates to Systems, functions, and commodities in Data Processing to highlight company products and services whose target is business enterprises. The products and services are geared towards the management of business operations and customer relations, which enhances productivity (Oslon and Kesharwani 2010). SAP is among the largest software companies globally known to provide products such as enterprise resource planning application (ERP), SAP business warehouse among others. A group of former IBM engineers started the company in 1972 in an effort to develop a software package that incorporated a company’s diversity with regard to supporting departments (Anderson 2011). This would see companies replace numerous business applications within the departments with a single integrated enterprise system. The vision sought to minimise the enormous complexity and bulk associated with existing applications, and provide the businesses with real-time computing capabilities. Presently, the company continues to offer products and services beyond the initial vision owing to advances in the technology and globalisation. Moreover, SAP products have found home in millions of businesses serving thousands of customers in more than 100 countries. The proliferation in various business industries is aided through partnerships with various support partners such as Microsoft and other developers. Although SAP and its enterprise competitors are distinctly different from one another, each competitor actively participates to sustain the company. For instance, Microsoft provides the operating systems while Oracle serves as the largest database vendor. Among the benefits realised in such associations is innovation, which has seen the integration networking capabilities in SAP’s products and services. This is essential in the management of large corporations that have various departments concurrently running to fulfil company mandate. Over the years, SAP has receives awards and accolades for their contribution in business management and to the economy. The company boasts of more 60,000 employees who help generate about €16 billion in revenue and €2 billion in profits in the financial year ending 2012. As a software company, SAP commits its resources towards creative solutions for business management. Among the bestselling products is the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), a system consisting of configurable packages presented as software that integrates the best practices while conducting business. The information within the software framework is custom built to meet the needs of the organisation of interest; the packages include information ranging from business practice to academic theory to facilitate the smooth flow of information between various departments. This is the highlight of SAP ERP systems, which aims at improving the productivity through enhancing efficiency within the organisation. Organisations seek ERP systems for various reasons and among them are the desires to adopt better business practices, globalisation, increase flexibility, and centralise information among others (Hallikainen, n.d.). The software infrastructure also presents an opportunity for the business to sustain a competitive advantage in the evolving world of information technology in business. This is achieved by ensuring cooperation and integration of various departments in an organisation and is in line with information technology, a key aspect in relation to effective management (Bernroider & Koch, 2003). There are various applications offered by ERP system depending on the needs of the organisation, which include supply-chain management, human resource management, customer relationship manager, and accounting applications. Various applications are tailored to meet an organisation’s goals and expectants under SAP components within their products. Other important SAP functions under the business group include Supplier Relationship Management, Product Lifecycle Management, Supply Chain Management and Customer Relationship Management. These applications provide a management platform on which all companies, manufacturers or retailers, can assess the flow of their products and services through an integrated system. There are numerous benefits associated with integration of SAP business solutions in large enterprises as well as in small and medium size businesses. The benefits are derived from the opportunities provided by the effective installation and implementation of the business applications. Companies enjoy centralised management, an aspect that is handy in times of crisis since the situation is addressed in a limited period. This is attributed to the ease with which decision are made following consultation with the details presented in the business suite. In addition, the implementation allows companies in the planning of future endeavours by evaluating data analysis and projections. In this regard, businesses are presented with new market opportunities by understanding logistics provided through data analysis. Implementation of SAP business suites enhances accountability within an organisation’s departments by maintaining entry logs following data. This ensures transparency within the company’s undertakings, which translates to increased productivity and increased turnover margins. Transparency is enhanced through standardisation of operating procedures thus providing unification of products and services offered by the company. Similarly, enterprise management applications serve to reduce the cost operation by minimising lost hours enhancing business profitability. Businesses that incorporate business applications in management attain a competitive advantage in their area of specialisation (Remenyi, 2004). This is relation to the improvement inefficiency, which translates to increased productivity. Users are empowered by the ease of accessing company information, which is essential in enhancing public relations and customer satisfaction. Business applications provide companies with an opportunity to invest in flexible technology infrastructure where SAP applications do not require complex hardware systems for efficient running. This makes the business solution a viable option to all companies regardless of their financial capacity since no major infrastructure upgrades are required. Contrary to popular belief, the process of reengineering businesses does not merely involve adapting enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, but includes changing the business protocols (Kulkarni, 2011).This implies a change in the structure and culture of the organisation, which more often than not sees the adjustment of company vision and goal. As such, comprehensive restructuring of the company’s business processes should be thoroughly assessed before rolling out ERP systems. The area of focus during the reengineering process is evaluation of the company with hope of identifying the strong and weak areas in the organisation. For an efficient restructuring and ERP system, the weak areas within the organisation should be improved and the shortcomings mitigated. SAP boasts of over a thousand features and enhancements to produce a robust solution by the use of simple yet advanced graphical user interface. These features function to stimulate business improvement and align businesses processes to fit the reengineered model. In light of this, extensive research on the extent at which restructuring is required is critical. The key factors to consider while selecting an ERP system include availability, reliability, system functions, and customer support services. However, there are challenges associated with the acquisition and maintenance of enterprise resource planning systems that seek address and thus the assessment. ERP systems are known to have many features to offer, which tend to create confusion in most companies seeking to acquire the services. This can be attributed to the wide scope at which the applications function and as such, companies may not understand where to begin with the process of acquiring ERP systems. To resolve such issues, companies seek expertise from specialist who evaluate the company needs and recommend on available software options. This goes a long way in ensuring that full benefits of the ERP system are achieved and at the same time, the company objectives are realised. Computers are credited for their fast computation of complex data and generation of reliable results. In the present days, computers have grown to generate enormous processing power, which is capable of handling complex analysis of raw data. The internet via the global village has dramatically changed how people communicate, interact, and conduct their business. Advancement in technology has made available new communication tools, which enable communication over long distance. The integration of internet connectivity in ERP systems is regarded as a venture into a new level in conducting business. Most ERP systems base their platforms on the computer connections that work to consolidate information to a centralised point.SAP began its exploration into such integration as early as 1994 in a move to compete with similar setups by other corporations. Internet connectivity is geared towards providing easy accessibility and exchange of information for users. It also facilitates prompt communication and flow of information from suppliers and other stakeholders. The use of internet serves to enhance the benefits from ERP systems such as overcoming geographical barriers, new markets, and streamlining of internal process. Technological advances have seen the growth of electronic commerce with the amount of goods and services provided increasing owing to the widespread internet usage (Jain, 2011). The move to online trading and management of business enterprises facilitates efficiency, which reduces operation costs increasing productivity and sales. Adapting to the evolving market, SAP offers applications tailored for data analysis and reporting by administrators. With regard to business solution suites, data mining entails the use mathematical algorithms to establish patterns, models, and trends in the organisation’s business processes. Through business intelligent applications, information is gathered by exploring search patterns and trends. Data mining techniques vary to include visualisation, statistics, decision trees, association rules, and clustering, neural networks among others, which are dependent on the ERP system. Most processes entail a comprehensive analysis of statistical data within the consolidated company servers running ERP systems. Data mining tools construct a working hypothesis based on the user’s query to evaluate the data and provide a viable output.SAP data mining solutions are integrated into the Analysis Process Designer, which allows for the identification of hidden and complex associations. The tools are designed to collect, consolidate, manage, and prepare data for evaluation purposes. The data is presented in a simplified manner to ease interpretation and provide meaningful insight and correlation. SAP designs mining tools in accordance with interested party since each company has different requirements. However, flexibility is offered in SAP BW, a warehouse solution, which allows users to design the tools according their requirements (De Villiers, 2010). Data mining tools are essential in the decision making process where they provide raw analysis about the status of the company. Similarly, information is useful in predicting future market trends and behaviour, which allows the business in maintaining a competitive advantage. Moreover, automated analyses save resources that could have otherwise been used for expert analysis of sensitive data. The automated process gives quality results owing to the detailed nature of analysis done over a consistent infrastructure. In addition, data collection, management, and analysis are near real-time enhancing reliability and quality. However, due to the complexity of data involved, data structures may not be easily interpreted by untrained personnel. This can be attributed to the limited number of data mining algorithms in use. References Anderson, G. 2011. Sams Teach Yourself SAP in 24 Hours, Indianapolis: Sams Publishing. Bernroider, E & Koch, S. 2003, ERP System Acquisition: A Process Model and Results from an Austrian Survey, flylib. [Online] Available from: http://flylib.com/books/en/1.20.1.30/1/ Accessed 10 April 2013]. De Villiers Walton. 2010. SAP Data Mining - How to get more out of your existing data. [Online] Available from: http://www.dvwsolutions.com/resources/white-papers/127-sap-data-mining.html Accessed 10 April 2013]. Hallikainen P, Laukkanen, S & Sarpola, S. n.d., Reasons for Erp Acquisition, Department of Information Systems Science. [Online] Available from: http://pdf.aminer.org/000/306/363/reasons_for_erp_acquisition.pdf Accessed 10 April 2013]. Jain, N. 2011, Impact of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) And E-Commerce on Accounting Systems, BIOINFOBusiness Management. Volume 1, Issue 1, 2011, pp-07-10 Kulkarni, K. 2011, Overview of Business Process Re-Engineering (BPR) in SAP Implementations, Sap Community Network. [Online] Available from: http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/scn/go/portal/prtroot/docs/library/uuid/906b63f8-a353-2e10-febf-c54336ef4d33?quicklink=index&overridelayout=true Accessed 10 April 2013]. Oslon, D & Kesharwani, S. 2010, Enterprise Information Systems: Contemporary Trends and Issues. Singapore. World Scientific Publishing Co. Ltd. Remenyi, D. 2004, Proceedings of the 11th European Conference on IT Evaluation. London: Academic Conferences Limited. Read More