The SAP ERP application is an integrated enterprise resource planning (ERP) software manufactured by SAP AG that targets business software requirements of midsize and large organizations in all industries and sectors. It is the successor product to SAP R/3.

SAP ERP includes four individual solutions that support key functional areas: SAP ERP Financials

SAP ERP Human Capital Management

SAP ERP Operations

SAP ERP Corporate Services

SAP STRATEGIC ENTERPRISE MANAGEMENT

SAP Strategic Enterprise Management (SAP SEM) delivers end-to-end ERP software capabilities to support the entire performance management life cycle, including:

Consolidated financial reporting – With SAP SEM, you can generate consolidated financial and

managerial reports for a globally distributed business or entity. The application can aggregate

financial data from SAP and non-SAP systems into a single analytical reporting environment,

enabling you to monitor the financial performance of individual subunits.

Planning, budgeting, and forecasting – SAP SEM helps enables you to model various planning

options and use preconfigured planning software to get a quick start on operational planning tasks

such as cost center planning and sales planning. The application supports traditional budgeting and

rolling forecasts as well as collaborative planning.

Corporate performance management and scorecards – With SAP SEM, you can develop KPIs

that support a number of popular scorecard methodologies, including balanced scorecard, economic

value-added, and activity-based costing methods. You can link operational and strategic plans and

develop scorecards and performance measures based on financial and nonfinancial data.

Risk management – SAP SEM helps you identify, quantify, and analyze business risks within

individual business units and manage risk-reducing activities.

FEATURES & FUNCTIONS

SAP ERP redefines enterprise resource planning – delivering role-based access to crucial data, applications, and analytical tools. With SAP ERP, you can efficiently deal with business challenges in the following areas:

End-user service delivery – Ensure that your employees can readily access the critical data,

applications, and analytical tools they need to perform all their job functions efficiently and effectively

while also supporting a shared-services organizational model for human resources, finances, and

other key processes. SAP ERP offers role-based access, self-services, and employee interaction

center support through SAP Manager Self-Service, SAP Employee Self-Service, Duet and employee

interaction center support. Plus, SAP Mobile Time and Travel enables employees in the field to

report time and expenses offline.

SAP ERP Financials – Ensure compliance and predictability of business performance – so your

organization can gain a deeper financial insight across the enterprise and tighten control of finances.

SAP ERP Financials automates financial and management accounting and financial supply chain

management. The solution also provides rigorous support for corporate-governance mandates such

as Basel II and Sarbanes-Oxley.

SAP ERP Human Capital Management – Optimize your HR processes with a complete, integrated,

and global human capital management (HCM) solution. SAP ERP provides this HCM solution for

organizations of all sizes and in all industries. You can maximize the potential of your workforce,

while supporting innovation, growth, and flexibility. The SAP ERP HCM solution automates talent

management, core HR processes, and workforce deployment – enabling increased efficiency and

better compliance with changing global and local regulations.

SAP ERP Operations – Manage end-to-end procurement and logistics business processes for

complete business cycles – from self-service requisitioning to flexible invoicing and payment –

optimizing the flow of materials. SAP ERP Operations also helps discrete and process

manufacturers manage the entire life cycle of product development and manufacturing. The solution

automates the entire manufacturing process and reduces costs by controlling and adapting the

manufacturing process in real time – and increases customer satisfaction by delivering higher-quality

products.

SAP ERP Corporate Services – Helps organizations manage their most cost-intensive corporate

functions by supporting and streamlining administrative processes in the areas of real estate;

enterprise assets; project portfolios; corporate travel; environment, health, and safety compliance;

quality; and global trade services. SAP ERP Corporate Services is a complete and integrated

solution that maximizes transparency and control, while reducing financial and environmental risks

and enhancing safety of employees.

Performance management – Support the entire life cycle of performance management, delivering

real-time, personalized measurements and metrics to improve business insight and decision making.

SAP ERP supports financial analytics, operations analytics, and workforce analytics, as well as

consolidated financial and statutory reporting; planning, budgeting, and forecasting, strategy

management and scorecards, and risk management.

SAP ERP 6.0 delivers many enhancements to the comprehensive features and functions of SAP ERP.

BUSINESS BENEFITS

SAP ERP delivers a comprehensive set of integrated, cross-functional business processes. With SAP ERP, you can gain the following benefits:

Improve alignment of strategies and operations

o Run your enterprise in accordance with strategy and plans, accessing the right information in

real time to identify concerns early. o Pursue opportunities proactively.

o Achieve corporate objectives by aligning workforce and organizational objectives.

o Find the best people and leverage their talent in the right job at the right time.

Improve productivity and insight

o Leverage self-services and analytics across your organization.

o Improve operational efficiency and productivity within and beyond your enterprise.

Reduce costs through increased flexibility

o Use enterprise services architecture to improve process standardization, efficiency, and

adaptability. o Extend transactions, information, and collaboration functions to a broad business community.

Support changing industry requirements

o Take advantage of the SAP NetWeaver platform's latest open, Web-based technology to

integrate your end-to-end processes seamlessly.

Reduce risk

o Solve complex business challenges today with SAP, your trusted partner for long-term growth,

with 30 years of experience working with organizations of all sizes in more countries than any

other vendor. o Join SAP's world-class partner network, uniquely qualified to support the best business

practices in more than 25 industries.

Improve financial management and corporate governance

o Gain deep visibility into your organization with financial and management accounting

functionality combined with business analytics. o Increase profitability, improve financial control, and manage risk.

Optimize IT spending

o Integrate and optimize business processes.

o Eliminate high integration costs and the need to purchase third-party software.

o Deploy other SAP Business Suite applications incrementally to improve cash flow and reduce

costly borrowing.

Gain higher ROI faster

o Install SAP ERP using rapid-implementation techniques that cost less than half what traditional

approaches cost. o Leverage preset defaults and prepackaged versions available for specific industries.

Retain top performers

o Retain your top performers through clearly defined career and development plans.

o Link employees' performance to compensation programs such as variable pay plans and long-

term incentives.

Provide immediate access to enterprise information

o Give employees new ways to access the enterprise information required for their daily activities.

SAP R/3 is the former name of the main enterprise resource planning software produced by SAP AG. Its new name is SAP ERP.

CONTENTS

[hide] 1 History of SAP R/3 2 Organization 3 Technology 4 Implementation Tools 5 See also 6 External links

7 References [EDIT] HISTORY OF SAP R/3

The first version of SAP's flagship enterprise software was a financial Accounting system named R/1. (The "R" was for "Real-time data processing"). The pronunciation is often mistakenly referred to as "sap", as in tree sap. The correct naming is the individual letters

S-A-P. This was replaced by R/2 at the end of the 1970s. SAP R/2 was a mainframe based business application software suite that was very successful in the 1980s and early 1990s. It was particularly popular with large multinational European companies who required soft-real-time business applications, with multi-currency and multi-language capabilities built in. With the advent of distributed client-server computing SAP AG brought out a client-server version of the software called SAP R/3 that was manageable on multiple platforms and operating systems, such as Microsoft Windows or UNIX since 1999, which opened up SAP to a whole new customer base. SAP R/3 was officially launched on 6 July 1992. SAP came to dominate the large business applications market over the next 10 years.

[EDIT] ORGANIZATION

SAP R/3 is arranged into distinct functional modules, covering the typical functions in place in an organization. The most widely used modules are Financials and Controlling (FICO), Human Resources (HR), Materials Management (MM), Sales & Distribution (SD), and Production Planning (PP). Those modules, as well as the additional components of SAP R/3, are detailed in the next section.

Each module handles specific business tasks on its own, but is linked to the others where applicable. For instance, an invoice from the Billing transaction of Sales & Distribution will pass through to accounting, where it will appear in accounts receivable and cost of goods sold.

SAP has typically focused on best practice methodologies for driving its software processes, but has more recently expanded into vertical markets. In these situations, SAP produces specialized modules (referred to as IS or Industry Specific) geared toward a particular market segment, such as utilities or retail.

Using SAP often requires the payment of hefty license fees, as the customers have effectively outsourced various business software development tasks to SAP. By specializing in software development, SAP hopes to provide a better value to corporations than they could if they attempted to develop and maintain their own applications.

[EDIT] TECHNOLOGY

SAP R/3 is a client/server based application, utilizing a 3-tiered model. A presentation layer, or client, interfaces with the user. The application layer houses all the business-specific logic, and the database layer records and stores all the information about the system, including transactional and configuration data.

SAP R/3 functionality is structured using its own proprietary language called ABAP (Advanced Business Application Programming). ABAP, or ABAP/4 is a fourth generation language (4GL), geared towards the creation of simple, yet powerful programs. R/3 also offers a complete development environment where developers can

either modify existing SAP code to modify existing functionality or develop their own functions, whether reports or complete transactional systems within the SAP framework.

ABAP's main interaction with the database system is via Open SQL statements. These statements allow a developer to query, update, or delete information from the database. Advanced topics include GUI development and advanced integration with other systems. With the introduction of ABAP Objects, ABAP provides the opportunity to develop applications with object-oriented programming.

The most difficult part of SAP R/3 is its implementation, since SAP R/3 is never used the same way in any two places. For instance, Atlas Copco can have a different implementation of SAP R/3 from Procter & Gamble. Some companies may run multiple productive clients/systems or even multiple instances of SAP R/3. This is seen, for example, when a company running SAP acquires a new business already running SAP. They may elect to keep both systems separate, migrate one into the other, or migrate both onto a completely new instance.

The system landscape is ultimately the customer's decision. There are definite pros and cons on the continuum from single global instance / productive client (master data, impact of configuration changes on multiple business units) to separate instances per business unit (hardware costs and communication between instances/clients)

Two primary issues are the root of the complexity and of the differences:

Customization configuration - Within R/3, there are tens of thousands of database tables that may be used to control how the application behaves. For instance, each company will have its own accounting "Chart of Accounts" which reflects how its transactions flow together to represent its activity. That will be specific to a given company. In general, the behavior (and appearance) of virtually every screen and

transaction is controlled by configuration tables. This gives the implementor great power to make the application behave differently for different environments. With that power comes considerable complexity.

Extensions, Bolt-Ons - In any company, there will be a need to develop interface programs to communicate with other corporate information systems. This generally involves developing ABAP/4 code, and considerable "systems integration" effort to either determine what data is to be drawn out of R/3 or to interface into R/3 to load data into the system.

Due to the complexity of implementation, these companies recruit highly skilled SAP consultants to do the job. The implementation must consider the company's needs and resources. Some companies implement only a few modules of SAP while others may want numerous modules.

SAP has several layers. The Basis System (BC) includes the ABAP programming language, and is the heart (i.e. the base) of operations and should not be visible to higher level or managerial users. Other customizing and implementation tools exist also. The heart of the system (from a manager's viewpoint) are the application modules. These modules may not all be implemented in a typical company but they are all related and are listed below:

EH&S Environmental Health & Safety

Designed for the management of environmental regulatory information, particularly product safety data as required for Material Safety Data Sheets. EH&S has sub-modules of Product Safety, Dangerous Goods, Waste, Industrial Hygiene, and Occupational Health.

FI Financial Accounting Designed for automated management and external reporting of general ledger, accounts receivable, accounts payable and other sub-ledger accounts with a user defined chart of accounts. As entries are made relating to sales production and payments journal entries are automatically posted. This connection means that the "books" are designed to reflect the real situation.The FI module has 9 sub modules:

FI-GL  General Ledger Accounting

FI-LC  Consolidation

FI-AP  Accounts Payable

FI-AR  Accounts Receivable

FI-BL  Bank Accounting

FI-AA  Asset Accounting

FI-SL  Special Purpose Ledger

FI-FM  Funds Management

FI-CA  Contract Accounting

CO Controlling Represents the company's flow of cost and revenue. It is a management instrument for organizational decisions. It too is automatically updated as events occur.The CO module has following sub modules:

CO-OM  Overhead Costing (Cost Centers, Activity Based Costing, Internal Order Costing)

CO-PA  Profitability Analysis

CO-PC  Product Cost Controlling

AM Asset Management Designed to manage and supervise individual aspects of fixed assets including purchase and sale of assets, depreciation and investment management.

PS Project System Designed to support the planning, control and monitoring of long-term, highly complex projects with defined goals.

FS Insurance An integral part of mySAP ERP, SAP for Insurance enables insurance companies to handle customer and market requirements and simultaneously control profitability and economic viability.In Release 6.00, SAP for Insurance includes the following components:

FS-CD  Collections and disbursements

FS-CM  Claims management

FS-CS  Commissions management

FS-PM  Policy management

FS-RI  Reinsurance management

FS-PE  Payment Engine (Banking Payments Solution still in development)

IS Industry Solutions Combines the SAP application modules and additional industry-specific functionality. Special techniques have been developed for industries such as banking, oil and gas, pharmaceuticals, etc.As of Feb 2006, following Industry Specific Solutions are supported by SAP:

IS-A   Automotive

IS-ADEC  Aerospace and Defense

IS-AFS   Apparel and Footwear

IS-B   Banking

IS-BEV   Beverage

IS-CWM   Catch Weight Management (Variable Weight Items such as Meats and Cheeses)

IS-DFS   Defense and Security

IS-H   Hospital

IS-HER   Higher Education

IS-HSS   Hospitality Management

IS-HT   High tech

IS-M   Media

IS-MIN   Mining

IS-MP   Milling (or IS-MILL)

IS-OIL   Oil

IS-PS   Public Sector

IS-R   Retail

IS-REA   Recycling Admin

IS-SP   Service Provider

IS-T   Telecommunications

IS-U   Utilities

IS-U Supplier Switch   Utilities

IS-U EDM   Utilities

IS-U EDM Billing   Utilities

IS-U Agregated Billing   Utilities

IS-U /BW   Utilities

HR Human Resources Complete integrated system for supporting the planning and control of personnel activities and HR module is sometimes equivalently referred to as HCM (Human Capital Management).

HR-OM   Organizational Management

HR-PA   Personnel Administration

HR-PB   Recruitment

HR-PD   Personnel Development

HR-PT   Time Management

HR-PY   Payroll Management

HR-TEM   Training and Event Management

HCM Human Capital Management

LE Logistics Execution

PLM Product Lifecycle Management

PM Plant Maintenance Equipment servicing and rebuilding. These tasks affect the production plans.

MM Materials Management Supports the procurement and inventory functions occurring in day-to-day business operations such as purchasing, inventory management, reorder point processing, etc.

QM Quality Management A quality control and information system supporting quality planning, inspection, and control for manufacturing and procurement.

PP Production Planning Used to plan and control the manufacturing activities of a company. This module includes; bills of material, routings, work centers, sales and operations planning, master production scheduling, material requirements planning, shop floor control, production orders, product costing, etc.

PP-PI Production Planning Process Industries.With the component PP-PI (Production Planning for Process Industries), SAP provides an integrated planning tool for batch-oriented process manufacturing. It has been developed in cooperation with IDS Prof. Scheer GmbH, Saarbrücken.

It is primarily designed for the chemical, pharmaceutical, food and beverage industries as well as the batch-oriented electronics industry. PP-PI supports:

The integrated planning of production, waste disposal, and transport activities within a plant The integration of plants within the company: Vertically by means of an information flow, ranging from central business applications down to process control Horizontally by the coordination of planning between production plants, recycling and waste disposal facilities, and production laboratories.

SD Sales and Distribution  Helps to optimize all the tasks and activities carried out in sales, delivery and billing. Key elements are: presales support, inquiry processing, quotation processing, sales order processing, delivery processing, billing and sales information system.

SCM Supply Chain Management

SRM

Supplier Relationship Management

BW  Business Information Warehouse

SEM  Strategic Enterprise Management

WM Warehouse Management  Subdivides the Storage Location used in the MM sub-module Inventory Management that already defines inventory values by high-level location, into Storage Types, Storage Sections and then into Storage Bins. WM allows control of stocks to a physical level down to a warehouse bin or, if batch-managed, to the batch level within a bin. Placement and removal strategies can be configured, and physical inventory and cycle counting can be done at this finite level.

HUM Handling Unit Management  Used as a unique ID for each pallet of stock held in the warehouse.

AF&R Advanced Forecasting & Replenishment Mostly referred to as Forecasting & Replenishment

[EDIT] IMPLEMENTATION TOOLS

There are multiple tools available to assist in the management of ERP implementation projects. SAP R/3, for example, provides an Implementation Roadmap that is broken up into five phases.[1] Each phase includes documentation and planning tools to help the phase move towards completion. The five phases and their respective tasks include:

Project Preparation o Building of

the project team.

o Designing the system (This includes network, hardware, and software requirements).

o Selecting ERP vendors.

o Defining the project’s scope.

Business Blueprint o In this phase

project team

members decide and document how the business and business processes will function with the implementation of the ERP system. These decisions will guide the configuration of the ERP.

o Determination of methods to transfer or integrate legacy system information into the ERP system will also occur in this phase.

Realization o Configuratio

n of the ERP system occurs in this phase. Configuration guidelines are based on documentation from the Business Blueprint phase.

o Legacy system connections

are developed in this phase.

Final Preparation o Testing of the

new ERP system.

o Development of the Help Desk and Help Desk Procedures.

o Migration of existing data.

o User training. o Schedule a

Roll-Out date.

Roll-Out o ERP system

becomes part of everyday activities.

o Help Desk fields questions about ERP system.

o Monitoring of the ERP system starts in this phase.

The time required for each one of these phases differs from project to project based on the size of the implementation, dedication to the project…etc. Oftentimes the finished project’s scope differs from the original scope’s documentation causing projects to go overtime and over budget. When this happens, it is usually testing and training that get cut short which jeopardize the overall success of the project.[2]

[EDIT] SEE ALSO

NetWeaver

[EDIT] EXTERNAL LINKS

Repository of all online documentation (SAP Library) for SAP solutions.

History of SAP at sap.com.

[EDIT] REFERENCES

1. ̂ Monk, E., & Bret, W. (2006). Concepts in Enterprise Resource Pl

anning Second Edition. Boston: Thomson Course Technology.

2. ̂ Kinney, A. (20

08, March 14). Process Improvement and ERP Implementation.

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAP_R/3"

SAP ERP FINANCIALS:

GAIN CONTROL. GAIN INSIGHT. CREATE VALUE.

The SAP ERP Financials solution is a comprehensive financial management solution engineered for the most complex, multinational companies across a broad range of industries. As the leading enterprise software solution,

SAP ERP Financials enables companies like yours to thrive in a business environment characterized by intensified competition, uncertain market conditions, and increased regulatory oversight.

A seamlessly integrated solution, SAP ERP Financials combines core accounting and reporting capabilities with financial supply chain, treasury, compliance, and performance management applications. These applications help you streamline finance business processes, reduce operating costs, manage risk, ensure compliance, and provide robust and timely business insight.

SAP ERP Financials simultaneously supports global financial reporting standards, multiple currencies, and languages with over 45 country-specific versions. The solution powers the highest-performing finance organizations in the world.

Supporting a broad range of industry-specific processes, SAP ERP Financial's scalable and open architecture can help extend your existing financial system investments. You can transform your finance organization into a strategic business partner – one that provides critical business insight and helps drive higher performance and increased shareholder value.

SAP ERP Financials offers a unique advantage through market-leading financial management applications that enables your company to become a best-run business – and extend finance processes to encompass customers, suppliers, and financial institutions to optimize your financial value chain.

Discover why more than 30,000 best-run businesses in over 120 countries run SAP financial applications.

Customers Interested in SAP ERP Financials Are Also Interested in:

SAP ERP Financial Analytics: Support for Financial Analysis and Reporting

SAP NetWeaver: Your Application and Integration Platform

SAP Consulting: Plan, Build, and Optimize Your Solutions

FEATURES & FUNCTIONS OF SAP ERP:

FINANCIAL ANALYTICS

SAP ERP provides powerful analytic software that enables powerful financial analysis to help you analyze your business, develop business plans and budgets, and track performance during execution. You can use the sophisticated financial analytics features of SAP ERP software to align the performance of organizational units to your overall business objectives. Plus, you can work collaboratively using a single platform – and align financial strategies globally.

SAP ERP supports financial analysis and reporting for a wide range of users – from C-level executives to line-of-business managers. You can improve profitability, increase working capital and cash flow, ensure more effective cost controls, and gain greater insight into business drivers when planning and forecasting.

SAP ERP includes features and functions that support the following business activities:

Financial and management reporting – Provide a robust set of tools to meet the reporting needs of

a wide range of end-users, including C-level executives, line-of-business managers, and front-line

information workers.

Planning, budgeting, and forecasting – Support traditional budgeting, rolling forecasts, and

collaborative planning, such as cost center planning. The solution's analytical planning workbench

enables you to model planning scenarios, and provides preconfigured planning applications for

efficient operational planning.

Strategy management and scorecards – Link and align operational and strategic plans and

develop key performance indicators (KPIs) that support a number of popular scorecard

methodologies, including Balanced Scorecard, Economic Value-Added, and activity-based costing

methods.

Cost and profitability management – Allocate overhead costs, manage the costs incurred by

products and services, and analyze the profitability of products and services.

Working capital and cash flow management – Manage working capital management with

functions that optimize logistics processes and improve payables and receivables management.

Optimize cash flow, including cash flow calculations and middle- and long-term planning.

Payment behavior analysis – Manage receivables by analyzing payment histories and determining

the days sales outstanding (DSO), which form the basis for payment optimization. Develop critical

insights into causes of payment delays, leading to actions that accelerate the cash cycle.