Hi,
This review is not just about the product but will also act as a prelude to those who would like to know what is this three lettered animal - SAP all about.
SAP AG is a German firm known for its flagship product (Read: package) with the same name. SAP is a German acronym when translated into English reads Systems, Applications and Products for data processing. SAP is the leading ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) product as on date. I am not dwelling into the concepts of ERP, since it was detailed out by Kamaljit. Please go through Kamaljit’s review about it. Hey Kamaljit, I am getting your points yaar..!
What prompted me to write about SAP? I work for a leading software service firm in their ERP practice. I have been working with this package for the past 5 months. The range of business processes covered and the services provided by this package is enormous. Being the third largest independent software company in the world, one should know how they made to great heights. I’ll try my best to avoid all the jargons of the package.
The company was started in 1972 by five ex-IBM engineers. The data collected from various industries and the man-hours spent in coming out with this comprehensive package was massive. Now lets directly go to the package. 4.7 Enterprise edition is the recent version of SAP package. Like any other ERP package, SAP contains various functional modules. Some of them are:
Materials Management (MM)
Sales & Distribution (SD)
Production Planning (PP)
Quality Management (QM)
Finance & Controlling (FICO)
Sounds simple! Doesn’t it. But every module is complex enough to make one go crazy. If this being the case, then just imagine a package implementation with all these modules integrated! We used to ‘Sit And Pray’ to avoid the state of ‘Sab Aadmi Pareshan’. Yes, these are the lighter expansions for SAP!
The package is called as the SAP R/3. R/3 standing for Real-time information system. Based on the Client-Server architecture, the package provides high level of integration thereby guaranteeing consistency of data through out the system. The bunch of programs written to make this package is called the R/3 kernel. This is written in C and C++. These programs can sit upon databases like Oracle, DB/2 etc. The front-end part where the end-user interacts is again made from C, C++ graphics. The business requirements to be fulfilled are written in a programming language called ABAP (Advance Business Application Language). The database inside SAP is called BASIS. Each of these categories have separate specialized consultants. That’s it now with technical stuffs. Lets see the pros and cons of the package.
Pros:
The package is based on the concept of table-driven customization. This means that there is a separate set of programs which makes the changes in these tables quickly according the business requirements. Users can also pitch in their own programs to add their functionalities. This makes the entire architecture flexible.
Cons:
The package is very expensive running to crores. And the consulting charges outdo cost of the package. Companies which make atleast 100crores of annual revenue go for it. Recognizing this, SAP AG has come out with a low-cost version called BusinessOne for the SMBs.
Hope I made myself simple and clear. Thanks for reading it.