SAP ERP systems - Essay Example

SAP ERP systems This paper expounds on the SAP ERP systems. It discusses the system in-depth and provides the purposes and objectives that come with each. It concludes with an individual perspective reflection on the solutions offered. Each ERP system in SAP has specified tasks. Sales system is also linked with that of distribution; it is a critical module that handles the entire order processing and delivery. It executes business processes in shipping, selling and billing of all products and services. The following are the components in this system; sales support, shipping, sales, master data, foreign trade, billing, sales information system and credit management (SAP Software & Solutions, 2014). It has major functions such as inquiries and quotes, sales returns, consignment, sale orders, contract and scheduling agreements, rush orders and cash sales, credit and debits memos request, back orders and subsequent deliveries. SAP field services offers support as any other service center in field service planning, confirmations and execution. This includes client complaints whilst managing returns and solution selling. All this is embedded in this powerful system software and services package. It has predesigned templates and functionalities acceleration the time to value and implementation. Its main purpose is to assist in achieving better levels in operational excellence, increasing services revenues and lower costs. Delivery is achieved faster, efficiencies in services aimed at boosting customer satisfaction. It assists in proper utilization and raising productivity for the field engineers. It takes the credit for building better performing service team. SAP product design and development deals with business expansion and advancements. The system reduces marketing time while increasing productivity from the developed products. As the product design cycles are reduced, collaboration also improves under the integrated SAP software dealing with product development. It connects development and design, manufacturing, procurement and services seamlessly via flexible collaborations’ environment. Its other tasks are to raise the innovation speed, lower marketing duration through aligning products developments and designs with manufacturing and procurement. It allows for flawless environments collaboration to avoid time wastage and minimizes the cost of the designed products through streamlining design and optimizing components. The system ensures regulatory compliance under transparency during the phases in product definition. Decision making becomes speedy to maximize quality in 3D visualization embedding and boosting productivity. Production and inventory control offers a suite full of features essential for the success of supply chain management and inventory controls. The objective is to kitty, track objects, industry specified customization to ultimately assist in boosting the bottom line. I has several benefits in that it increases revenue, accelerates decision making and indentifies non moving and discounted products in real-time. The I.T infrastructure is simplified whilst optimizing inventory levels by ensuring production of the right products at the right time. It assists in working with granular and detailed data that increases the information accuracy in business. Finally it transforms the business procedures to dispatch a wow shopping experience to meet individual preferences for every shopper. The human resource entity in Sap assists in retaining the best talent. This is a development of people centric software to offer solutions for human resource software. It was developed for both small and large businesses. It works better on collaborated solutions in cloud, premise, or through combining both. It improves performance in the workforce where the employer can view real time insights into the workforce and make futuristic decisions. It is automated and aligns the Human resource procedures with the client’s business objectives. It has a benefit of over 34 currencies and languages and includes over 90 localized regulations. It harnesses the current and upcoming technology such as cloud computing, in-memory, mobile and analytics. SAP can assist a client in surpassing the shareholder’s financial expectations through its financing and accounting systems. It completes budgets, reports on management and the clients’ financial closes at a significant and faster rate in the embedded financial solutions for any sizes of business. The vendor can attain insight in the entire financial processes and make the best of commercial decisions required to foster profitability. Risk management is eased and enhances compliance across treasury and accounting departments. From the automated processing, accurate reporting becomes faster and also harnesses the latest technology. Sap models in two main packages, the starter and the standard. The standard captures the most important but limited features at a fair price. It is preconfigured software it only has the basic features such as in financing, accounting, customer relation management, inventory and purchasing. It can accept up to five users. This model requires 3 to 10 days to start running dependent on the business scope. The standard has extensive features customizable for the client’s platform. The environment is more complex with more users and capabilities. It is a bit expensive. It can be achieved after upgrading to the latter without disruptions. Both models purposes are implanted in the ERP systems discussed above. The standard model may take longer to launch. Besides the involved functional data and technical relevance, pricing is also dependent on other factors. While budgeting to purchase business management software from SAP, the implementation is all that matters to impact on the prices to suite your needs. Pricing is dependent on the development model SAP’s standard and starter packages requires up-front payments with their option the client pays flat subscription fees (Jones & Burger, 2009). Software licensing is also worth considering when calculating the amount to spend, solely dependent the level of access required or the number of users. Implementation costs are also considered during pricing. The hardware compatibility requires attention where upgrades may be called for. On-demand provides a section of the package. Maintenance costs, new releases, upgrades support and related costs must also be considered. Reflecting on the solutions provided by the SAP ERP, it is realized that it enables simplified global integration through closing the barriers in exchange rates of different currencies, languages and culture (Williams, 2008). Any changes that require updating do not need to be replicated and instead they are only updated once in real time to provide information company-wide eradicating chances of redundancy. It would also prepare efficient environments for employees to execute their tasks once implemented. The vendor will acquire more experience in newer developments from current experience to ease future implementations. It offers entirely customizable platforms where end users may dedicate their operations’ structures in a product. References: Jones, P., & Burger, J. (2009). Configuring SAP ERP financials and controlling. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. SAP Software & Solutions | Business Applications & IT | SAP. (n.d.). SAP Software & Solutions | Business Applications & IT | SAP. Retrieved May 21, 2014, from http://www.sap.com/index.html Patel, M. (2008). Discover SAP ERP financials. Bonn: Galileo Press. Williams, G. C. (2008). Implementing SAP ERP sales & distribution. New York: McGraw-Hill. Read More