learning sap

[Former Member]

what is SAP?

[Former Member]

Hi,

SAP means System Applications and products in data processing.

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 "Realtime 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.

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.

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. Simply because 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 and so forth. 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:

CRM: Customer Relationship Management

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 8 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", which is used in the MM Module to define inventory values by location, into "Storage Types" and then into "Storage Bins". Control of stock to a physical level down to a warehouse bin. Placement and removal rules can be configured, stock counts can be done.

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

If it is helpful rewards points

Regards

Pratap.M

[Former Member]

Hai.

SAP->SYASTEMS APPLICATION AND PRODUCTS.

- What is SAP?

SAP, started in 1972 by five former IBM employees in Mannheim, Germany, states that it is the world's largest inter-enterprise software company and the world's fourth-largest independent software supplier, overall.

The original name for SAP was German: Systeme, Anwendungen, Produkte, German for "Systems Applications and Products." The original SAP idea was to provide customers with the ability to interact with a common corporate database for a comprehensive range of applications. Gradually, the applications have been assembled and today many corporations, including IBM and Microsoft, are using SAP products to run their own businesses.

SAP applications, built around their latest R/3 system, provide the capability to manage financial, asset, and cost accounting, production operations and materials, personnel, plants, and archived documents. The R/3 system runs on a number of platforms including Windows 2000 and uses the client/server model. The latest version of R/3 includes a comprehensive Internet-enabled package.

SAP has recently recast its product offerings under a comprehensive Web interface, called mySAP.com, and added new e-business applications, including customer relationship management (CRM) and supply chain management (SCM).

As of January 2007, SAP, a publicly traded company, had over 38,4000 employees in over 50 countries, and more than 36,200 customers around the world. SAP is turning its attention to small- and-medium sized businesses (SMB). A recent R/3 version was provided for IBM's AS/400 platform.

check links.

http://searchsap.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid21_gci1009120,00.html

http://techrepublic.com.com/5208-6336-0.html?forumID=75&threadID=172349

REGARDS.

SOWJANYA.B

[Former Member]

Hi Ranjit,

make sure that ur question is specific.

I can understand, if u r new to sap, u can ask.

but think once, u can get sap definition from anywhere.

regards,

Hema.

[Former Member]

hi,

Systems, Applications, and Products (SAP) is a business application software package used to implement Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). A SAP package helps an organization allocate its resources, capital, and manpower productively, while managing all its daily business processes, such as purchase and sales, in a systematic manner.

Overview of SAP

You can use SAP R/3 to manage functional systems in an organization. A firm will have functional systems, such as human resource system, sales and distribution, material management. Each functional system has a collection of business application tools and a set of tables to store the application data. For example, the sales and distribution module has the application tools to prepare billing and sales documents.

SAP R/3 uses Advanced Business Application Programming (ABAP) language to develop interactive business applications. All the application tools in SAP R/3 are written in ABAP language. A firm can customize standard business applications by modifying the standard ABAP code and using the modified application for its own specific business requirements.

SAP Basics

Before SAP was introduced to the market, organizations had to approach ERP vendors to buy an ERP package for each functional system. It was difficult to integrate these packages into a centralized system. SAP R/3 provides a centralized control over the functional modules in a system. As a result, it is one of the most popular ERP packages in use in the manufacturing, pharmaceutical, banking, insurance, and transport industries.

The Role of ERP in Organizations

Human Resource System

Payroll and employee welfare benefits

Logistic System

Production and manufacturing

Sales and Distribution

Sale and distribution of finished products

Financial Accounting

General ledger, tax, accounts receivable, and accounts payable

Control

Cost elements, cost centers, and profit centers

Production Planning

Capacity planning, master production scheduling, and material requirements planning

Materials Management

Requisitions, purchase orders, goods receipts, and accounts payable

Quality Management

Planning, execution, inspections, and certification

Plant Maintenance

Labor, material, down time, and outages

Cross Application

Workflow, business information warehouse, workplace, and industry solutions

ERP is a collection of application programs, a software package specifically created to manage, administer, and operate the functional systems of an organization. ERP allows for the exchange of data from one functional system to another and stores application data in a central repository.

ERP packages currently available in the market are System Applications and Products (SAP R/3), Peoplesoft 8.0, Oracle HRMS/Financials 8i, BAAN, JD Edwards, and MFG Pro.

Roles Involved in the Development Process

A SAP development team has different roles assigned to different members. Roles involved in the development process are:

Functional Consultants: Develop the blue print to customize SAP modules and develop ERP applications. The functional consultant must be conversant in creating functional modules and should be able to create the requirement specification documents, database designs, software designs, and execution plans.

Technical Consultants: Implement the blueprint developed by the functional consultant. A technical consultant must possess good ABAP/4 programming skills and should have broad technical knowledge about functional aspects. The tasks carried out by a technical consultant include coding, database creation, customization of modules, and report generation.

Hope this is helpful, Do reward.

[Former Member]

SAP - systems applications and products in data processing

it is one of the leading erp packages .

SAP applications, built around their latest R/3 system, provide the capability to manage financial, asset, and cost accounting, production operations and materials, personnel, plants, and archived documents. The R/3 system runs on a number of platforms including Windows 2000 and uses the client/server model. The latest version of R/3 includes a comprehensive Internet-enabled package.

SAP has recently recast its product offerings under a comprehensive Web interface, called mySAP.com, and added new e-business applications, including customer relationship management (CRM) and supply chain management (SCM).

As of January 2007, SAP, a publicly traded company, had over 38,4000 employees in over 50 countries, and more than 36,200 customers around the world. SAP is turning its attention to small- and-medium sized businesses (SMB). A recent R/3 version was provided for IBM's AS/400 platformSAP 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. Simply because 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 and so forth. 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.

The Role of ERP in Organizations

Human Resource System

Payroll and employee welfare benefits

Logistic System

Production and manufacturing

Sales and Distribution

Sale and distribution of finished products

Financial Accounting

General ledger, tax, accounts receivable, and accounts payable

Control

Cost elements, cost centers, and profit centers

Production Planning

Capacity planning, master production scheduling, and material requirements planning

Materials Management

Requisitions, purchase orders, goods receipts, and accounts payable

Quality Management

Planning, execution, inspections, and certification

Plant Maintenance

Labor, material, down time, and outages

Cross Application

Workflow, business information warehouse, workplace, and industry solutions

ERP is a collection of application programs, a software package specifically created to manage, administer, and operate the functional systems of an organization. ERP allows for the exchange of data from one functional system to another and stores application data in a central repository.

ERP packages currently available in the market are System Applications and Products (SAP R/3), Peoplesoft 8.0, Oracle HRMS/Financials 8i, BAAN, JD Edwards, and MFG Pro.