A New Solution for a Changing Business Environment

The SAP® ERP application is the market-leading enterprise software suite that provides organizations with a proven foundation to improve performance, support growth, lower operating costs and achieve operational excellence. Powered by the SAP NetWeaver® platform, the company’s enterprise-class service-enabled application platform, the latest release of SAP’s flagship enterprise resource planning (ERP) application addresses the core business requirements of midsize companies and large organizations including financial management and human capital management, procurement and logistics, product development and manufacturing, as well as sales and service. With SAP ERP, enterprises can achieve superior performance in all areas of their organization, adapt quickly and cost-effectively to changing requirements, and deliver business insight broadly to information workers throughout the organization. SAP ERP also includes robust analytics and rich functionality to address the requirements of more than 25 industries.

In an effort to keep up with rapidly-changing business requirements, the latest release of SAP ERP includes over 300 functional enhancements for finance, human capital management (HCM), operations and other essential corporate functions. The application is built to address and adapt to industry-specific needs and is designed to empower an organizations’ workforce to be highly productive, make better decisions and take actions that improve business performance.

Business Benefits of SAP ERP

SAP ERP Helps Organizations Maximize Workforce Potential
People are the most important asset of any organization. SAP ERP enables organizations to support their people, maximize their talents and do so at a lower cost than ever before. SAP ERP helps organizations manage their human capital management processes with contemporary strategies and systems. Supporting organizations in significantly increasing workforce potential will continue to be a primary objective in further development of SAP ERP. Today, it provides a very rich set of integrated talent management capabilities that help improve organizational insight of talent and help align human resources (HR) executives on best-practice hiring and training strategies. SAP ERP supports organizations in their efforts to lower HR costs by enabling them to establish HR shared service centers. Via shared services, organizations can automate and standardize core HR processes, improve the quality and responsiveness of their HR departments, as well as enable worldwide access to HR services. The shared services framework is complemented by analytics capabilities to help organizations measure the performance and effectiveness of their HR teams and help HR teams demonstrate their strategic and bottom-line value to the organization. This foundation provides a solid basis for organizations in all industries worldwide to address the changing needs and strategic objectives for human capital management.

SAP ERP Enables Financial Transformation
Today’s complex global businesses need to reduce administrative costs, streamline manual processes and improve internal controls. The new general ledger functionality in SAP ERP helps organizations reduce costs by eliminating the need to manage multiple ledgers, automating reconciliation processes, reducing manual processing and associated user errors. The SAP® ERP Financials application helps increase collaboration with customers and suppliers through streamlined invoicing and payment processes. The SAP® Financial Supply Chain Management set of applications automates core invoice, payment and collections processing. It helps companies enhance cash flow and working capital management through integrated electronic billing, credit and collection management and treasury and risk management solutions. SAP ERP also supports the heightened focus on profitability analysis with integrated corporate performance management solutions. Integrated analytic solutions provide powerful data analysis capabilities that turn raw data into powerful information that helps improve decision making.

SAP ERP Is Industry-Ready
Organizations using SAP ERP benefit from SAP’s more than 30 years of expertise in developing, implementing and supporting tailored solutions for more than 25 industries. Industry-specific capabilities in SAP ERP enable organizations to innovate and adapt to changing industry requirements with greater speed and at lower cost through simplified configuration and administration. Enhanced by industry-specific features and best practices, SAP ERP helps companies to reduce total cost of ownership, achieve a faster return on investment and benefit from a more flexible IT infrastructure.

SAP ERP Is an Enterprise Application Platform that Responds to Process Innovation
The latest SAP ERP application provides customers with a cost-effective and evolutionary path to the industry’s first service-enabled suite of enterprise applications. Recently, SAP announced that all new functional enhancements to SAP ERP through 2010 will be made available as extensions to SAP ERP in a series of optional enhancement packages. Customers can choose new capabilities that best meet their specific business requirements, thus eliminating the need to continually upgrade their systems to take advantage of the newest technology and enhancements. SAP is the first and only enterprise software provider to use enterprise service-oriented architecture (enterprise SOA) to benefit customers by transforming the way they consume new features and functionality. It also benefits the SAP partner ecosystem by providing them with a stable platform for innovation.

Upgrading to SAP ERP Is Simple, Cost-Effective and Provides Value
Upgrading to SAP ERP provides clear value to SAP customers – the application features major functionality enhancements in financial management, human capital management, sales, procurement and corporate services in addition to capabilities that address industry-specific requirements. SAP ERP enables global organizations to dramatically leverage their existing technology investments and build a foundation for the future. Built on SAP NetWeaver, the application enables customers to innovate and adapt to changing business needs with greater speed and at lower cost than previously possible. SAP is making the upgrade to SAP ERP simpler and with less risk than ever before. SAP and its partners provide expert guidance, services and highly trained consultants that work with our customers to plan and execute their upgrades cost-effectively, and with minimal business disruption. SAP offers a proven, cost-effective upgrade path with tools, content and capabilities honed through years of experience.

Key Statistics for SAP ERP

• SAP is the undisputed worldwide market leader in ERP software and continues to make significant market share gains in multiple ERP categories such as financials and human capital management, according to 2006 reports from analyst firms Gartner and Forrester.
• Customer adoption rate for the newest version of SAP ERP is the fastest in the history of SAP – within seven months after product introduction over 1,000 customers were live on the new solution
  • The current version of SAP ERP offers extensive new and enhanced functionality including:
  • Industry-ready support for financial management, human capital management, and operations
  • Analytics, forecasting and reporting tools
  • User roles and self-services
  • Recruiting, training and employee performance management
  • New general ledger
  • Payments processing, collections, credit and other financial supply chain management processes

Key Capabilities of SAP ERP

Self-services and roles in SAP ERP. SAP ERP significantly improves organization performance and user productivity by providing self-service functionalities and support for various roles, such as:

• Manager self-services. Helps managers identify, retain and reward top performers; manage employees and budgets proactively; and make better management decisions without involving significant administrative time and effort.
• Employee self-services. Enables employees to create, view and modify personal data using multiple technologies. In addition, employees can manage tasks that were previously handled by other departments, such as updating personal information or planning travel.
• Centralized employee interaction support. Provides organizations with an integrated solution to support an employee interaction center—a central point of contact that enables employees to interact with their employer more efficiently. Employees have access to a single, unified source of information, while HR staff can easily access the information and tools they need to handle requests
• Roles support. The self-services portfolio in SAP ERP has been expanded to include a wide variety of new roles in the areas of human capital management, financials, operations and analytics, such as business unit analyst, plant manager or compensation specialist.
• Performance management. SAP ERP offers comprehensive analysis, forecasting and reporting tools that support human capital management, financial and operations processes. With SAP ERP organizations can implement strategies quickly and successfully, as well as manage business performance throughout the entire organization. It also supports integrated business planning, performance monitoring, business consolidation and effective stakeholder communication.
• Financial analytics. Helps organizations define financial targets, develop a commensurate business plan and monitor costs and revenue on execution.
• Operational analytics. Facilitates the compilation of detailed operations reports, as well as informed operational decision-making.
• Workforce analytics. Provides data analysis and reporting tools to analyze and optimize workforce performance, implement and monitor corporate strategy and evaluate how various scenarios may affect business goals.

SAP ERP Financials. SAP ERP delivers a comprehensive solution for enterprise-wide financial management:

• Financial and management accounting. New general ledger functions support legal financial reporting, managerial and segment reporting, international accounting standards, parallel ledgers, profit center maintenance, allocations, and planning.
• Financial supply chain management. Credit, collections, dispute resolution, electronic invoicing, electronic payments, in-house banking, cash, treasury, and risk management can be integrated as one seamless set of processes to help you improve control of working capital and cash flow.
• Treasury, cash and in-house cash management. Execute hedging transactions to reduce financial risk of corporate transactions, improve visibility of cash flows and structure internal payment structure to reduce float and improve use of working capital.
• Financial controls and audit support. An internal audit information system, deep system controls for financial reporting and accounting enable customers to streamline their entire approach to corporate governance. This can greatly reduce the administrative cost of complying with current and emerging financial reporting standards.

SAP ERP Human Capital Management. SAP ERP delivers a comprehensive solution for human capital management:

• Talent management. Enables customers to support their people during every phase of their employment—from recruitment through training, development, and retention. A unified view of available talent worldwide enables customers to accurately evaluate and optimize their resources. As a result, SAP ERP HCM helps customers to acquire, develop and deploy talent more rapidly and flexibly.
• Workforce process management. Workforce-related processes such as employee administration, organizational management, time management, benefits, payroll, and legal reporting can be standardized and consolidated onto a single platform to help ensure adherence to local regulations and laws. The solution supports current legal regulations in 47 countries worldwide.
• Workforce deployment. Project teams can be created based on skills and availability. The solution enables customers to monitor progress on projects, track time, and analyze results for strategic decision making.

SAP ERP Corporate Services. SAP ERP helps organizations to reduce costs and streamline internal processes:

• Real estate management. Manages every stage of the real estate portfolio life cycle, including property acquisition and disposal, portfolio management, technical management of building operations and maintenance, and investment controlling and reporting.
• Enterprise asset management. Manages the complete life cycle of an asset, including the specification and design phase, the build phase supported by procurement activities, the operational phase supported by maintenance activities, and the disposal phase.
• Project and portfolio management. Identifies, selects, prioritizes, and manages a portfolio of projects of any kind, including R&D projects, enterprise IT projects, or professional-service delivery projects. Key performance indicators for budgets, schedules, and staffing can be tracked.
• Travel management. Supports and optimizes processes from travel requests and approvals through planning and reservations, travel expense management and analytics.
• Environment, health and safety compliance management. Performs product safety management, hazardous substance and dangerous goods management, and waste and emissions management. The application helps companies manage product compliance, industrial hygiene and safety programs, as well as occupational health programs.
• Quality management. Controls and maintains quality and reacts quickly when unexpected issues arise throughout the product life cycle.
• Global trade services. Manages all complexities of international trade activities, including regulatory compliance, interactions with customs, and management of risk.

SAP ERP Operations. SAP ERP offers an extensive solution to help companies achieve operational excellence by gaining agility and speed in operations.

• Procurement and logistics execution. Enables customers to manage end-to-end procurement and logistics business processes for complete business cycles, from self-service requisitioning to flexible invoicing and payment. SAP ERP Operations can also help optimize the physical flow of materials.
• Product development and manufacturing. Supports the entire life cycle of product development and manufacturing. The application performs production planning, manufacturing execution integrated with shop-floor systems, product development, and life-cycle data management in a wide variety of industries.
• Sales and service. From selling products and services, to managing professional-services delivery and internal processes such as calculating incentives and commissions.

SAP ERP for the Information Worker

With millions of workers expected to operate both enterprise applications and Microsoft Office solutions proficiently to maintain expected levels of productivity, SAP offers Duet™ software, a joint product with Microsoft, to connect SAP ERP capabilities with Microsoft Office solutions. By leveraging this familiar business environment, companies can increase user adoption and user productivity through a tighter link with SAP ERP, exposing employees to vital vertical business processes and new enterprise services while enabling major cost and time-savings.

By reaching a broad community of business users, companies can leverage SAP ERP to greatly reduce IT complexity while speeding up business processes and supporting growth. Among newfound capabilities, companies can better monitor budgets in Microsoft Excel and manage vacation requests and travel planning via Microsoft Outlook. Better integration with Adobe Acrobat and Microsoft Excel standardizes the use of forms for more efficient invoicing and order management processes. Integration with SAP® xApps™ composite applications from SAP and partners provides increased control over complex business scenarios such as trade management, outsourcing and regulatory compliance.

SAP ERP and Enterprise SOA

SAP helps customers leverage the power of business-driven, service-oriented approach to software architecture. SAP NetWeaver lays the foundation for new cross-functional business processes, helping businesses gain the flexibility to sense and respond to market changes and continuously align their operations with evolving market demand. As the enabler of enterprise SOA, SAP NetWeaver combines software applications and the underlying software infrastructure, allowing customers to expose and fully leverage Web services for maximum flexibility.

SAP ERP is already delivering enterprise service-enabled processes such as invoices in electronic bill presentment and payment; recruiting and enterprise learning; shop-floor integration; process collaboration via Collaboration Folders (cFolders); radio frequency identification (RFID) in inventory and warehouse management; document exchange in self-service procurement and requisition; collaborative project management; and supplier collaboration in the area of procurement.

SAP ERP Delivery Road Map

With the newest version of SAP ERP, SAP has laid the cornerstone of its updated delivery road map. Through 2010, all new functional enhancements will be made available as extensions to SAP ERP in a series of optional enhancement packages, offered as part of customers’ license and maintenance agreements. The enhancement packages can be configured in a completely modular fashion, enabling customers to activate only the new features and functionalities that best meet their business needs. The first enhancement package, announced in December 2006, includes hundreds of enterprise services that enable functional enhancements for human capital management and financials applications, as well as industry-specific enhancements for the retail and manufacturing industries.

SAP ERP serves as a stable business process platform on top of which the enhancement packages will enable continuous business innovation. This evolved delivery model makes it simpler and faster for customers running SAP ERP to adopt new product functionality, industry-specific features and enterprise services. It also shields customers from the complexity of multiple upgrades and improves return on investment (ROI) by providing a single, stable platform that enables them to consolidate their systems and reduce the number of separate instances that need to be maintained. This software delivery method improves long-term planning and decreases operational risk by virtually eliminating the need to make any major changes to their core ERP systems until 2010 while offering a reliable software enhancement process that alleviates disruption and minimizes costs.

Additional information about SAP ERP can be found at:

http://www.sap.com/erp/

SAP News

• SAP Surpasses Milestone in Product Strategy as 10,000 Customers Run Latest ERP Release
  (July 01, 2008)
• Metropolitan Police Service Selects SAP As Corporate ERP Solution
  (May 19, 2008)
• SAP Continues “Innovation Without Disruption” with Release of Third ERP Enhancement Package
  (February 25, 2008)
• Hobby Lobby Turns to SAP to Help Build its Future
  (February 20, 2008)
• SAP Delivers Successful Business Transformation at the United States Postal Service with Implementation of Landmark HR System
  (December 18, 2007)
• Saudi Arabian Airlines Selects SAP for Business Transformation
  (December 12, 2007)
• SAP to Resell Nakisa’s Talent Visualization Software
  (December 11, 2007)
• Egyptian Government Selects SAP as Strategic IT Provider
  (November 27, 2007)
• Hitachi Selects SAP to Power Global IT Strategy
  (October 25, 2007)
• Wal-Mart Selects SAP
  (October 18, 2007)

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