Sunday, November 30, 2008

SAP Modules & Solutions: Enhances Efficiency of Organisations

By Patric Eva

SAP is the short form of Systems, Applications and Products. SAP is not simply the name of mankind some of the widest software development corporation but likewise the name of the software product trained by this organization. SAP AG, the official name of the enterprise since it was made in Germany, originally thought of providing customers with a tool with which they can interact with a only master data base for each and every application necessary across the organisation.

The idea of the tool became functional in the form of a financial accounting system listed SAP R/1, the introductory version of SAPs iconic enterprise software. The improved version of this application, SAP R/2, was set up towards the end of 1970s, which was mainframe founded business application software. Later, SAP AG launched a client -server version of the software called SAP R/3, after the advent of distributed client -server computing.

SAP R/3 Functionality:

SAP applications, established around their occurrent R/3 system allows R/3 to handle full procedure and management tasks throughout the corporation. That signifies, SAP R/3 offer the users with the instrument to deal financial, asset, and cost accounting, production procedures and materials, personnel, plants, and archived documents. It works on Advance Business Application Programming (ABAP), which is a fourth generation programming language. The R/3 system is compatible with different platforms including Windows 2000 and practices the client/server model.

SAP R/3 Modules:

SAP R/3 is made up of whatever personalized functional software modules. These modules combine to execute every of the working and management tasks of any enterprise. Every individual functioning module deals special activities on it's own, but is united to the others where applicable. The most widely used modules are - Logistics, Accounting and Human Resources.

Logistic Module:

Logistics is the way of completing a process from start to finish on invite e.g. delivering a product at it's wanted location, on request. Several tasks needed in this process are Sales and Distribution, Production Planning, Materials Management, Plant Maintenance and Quality Management etc among others, every of which are integrated by Logistic module. The individual components of this module and instance of their functions are:

Logistic Module


Sales and Distribution module: Presales support, client enquiry processing, quotation processing, sales order processing, delivery working, billing and sales information system.

Material Management module: Purchasing processes, warehouse management, inventory, invoicing etc.

Production Planning module: Planning & preparing production process e.g. transport and storage of raw materials, by-products and waste etc.

Plant Maintenance module: Repair of buildings, maintenance of equipment used in the production process, data about machine usage and possible downtime etc.

Quality Management module: Each procedures referred to the quality assurance of the product.

Accounting Modules:

This module executes every last financial and accounting actions or in another words this module meets every financial and accounting needs of the organisation. It is self-activating to cater management and reporting of ledger, receivables & payments etc. which in turn enables balance sheets and Profit & Loss (P&L) accounts to be self updated, ceaselessly. Therefore, the elementary reward of this module is that the book reflects the real situation. The different factors of this module are:

Accounting Module Examples

Financial Accounting: Accounting functions example balance sheet, Profit & Loss statements, Compliance with accounting regulations etc.

Controlling: Controls cost as well as corporations objectives, Provides information needed for decision making and future preparation.

Enterprise Controlling: Collates internal info with market data to bring out issues in marketing strategies.

Treasury: Corporate banking, Cash, budget management etc.

Capital Investment Management: Serves finance enterprises in their capital investments and tracking.

Project System: Project Management I, Project budgeting, Project execution/integration, Information system, Operative structures, Project planning etc.

Human Resources Modules

As the words itself specifies, Human Resource Modules supplies a full HR management system, handling fields such as personnel preparation and recruitment, personnel and salary administration, payroll and personnel development.

Initially, SAP implementations as well as its training were organised on module lines. For instance, in a training course on Logistics, you would learn many things about SD such as SD-MD, SD-GF, SD-SLS etc but not much about the remaining of the SAP system and how SD fits into it. So, the integration between modules was altogether absent. This used to lead to that, the solutions were optimized along the modules, but missed in integration. Then, to accomplish that integration, programs are nowadays being prepared on the procedure lines such as:

Order to Money (including parts of SD, FI-AR and probably TY as well)
Purchase to Pay (including MM-Purchasing and FI-AP)
Record to Report (FI-GL etc)

With adjustment of process lines alternatively of modules for results, SAP now are moving away from describing their system as a set of modules, and nowadays are applying the term answers. These New Dimension Products can stand exclusively or be integrated with R/3. It's profits include elimination of duplication, discontinuity and redundancy in information and increases the return on investment made on IT implementations. It delivers quality information designed for the Organization as a completely Faster and cheaper which in turn delivers quality info to produce a quality organisation. These answers are:

Financials
Human Resources
Customer Relationship Management
Supplier Relationship Management
Product Lifecycle Management
Supply Chain Management
Business Intelligence

Conclusion:

SAP is an Corporation Wide Business Solution. This implies that organizations operating SAP can in effect integrate all of its business activities taking on finance, purchasing, sales, human resources etc. This integration allows each business proceedings in an corporation are handy to every last fields of that organisation and there is no duplicate of info in separated systems. - 16089

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