Tuesday, January 20, 2009

How To Use SAP Modules For Your Organisations

By Donald Howard

SAP is the short form of Systems, Applications and Products. SAP is not entirely the name of mankind one of the broadest software development enterprise but as well the name of the software product originated by this enterprise. SAP AG, the authorized name of the enterprise since it was made in Germany, in the first place thought of providing customers with a tool with which they can interact with a only master info base for each and every application necessary across the company.

The idea of the tool became practical in the process of a financial accounting system identified SAP R/1, the first version of SAPs iconic enterprise software. The better version of this application, SAP R/2, was founded towards the end of 1970s, which was mainframe settled business application software. Afterwards, SAP AG launched a client -server version of the software addressed SAP R/3, after the advent of divided customer -server computing.

SAP R/3 Functionality:

SAP applications, established around their current R/3 system allows R/3 to comprehend complete procedure and management tasks throughout the enterprise. That signifies, SAP R/3 supply the users with the instrument to supervise financial, asset, and cost accounting, production operations and materials, personnel, plants, and archived documents. It functions on Advance Business Application Programming (ABAP), which is a 4th generation programming language. The R/3 system is compatible with several platforms including Windows 2000 and utilises the client/server model.

SAP R/3 Modules:

SAP R/3 is made up of various individual functional software modules. These modules mix to execute every of the functional and management tasks of any company. All personalized working module addresses particular activities on it's own, but is associated to the others where applicable. The most wide used modules are - Logistics, Accounting and Human Resources.

Logistic Module:

Logistics is the way of completing a process from beginning to complete on request e.g. delivering a product at it's desired 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, each of which are integrated by Logistic module. The different components of this module and illustration of their procedures are:

Logistic Module


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

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

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

Plant Maintenance module: Repair of buildings, maintenance of tools used in the production operation, information about machine usage and possible downtime etc.

Quality Management module: Each operations associated to the quality assurance of the product.

Accounting Modules:

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

Accounting Module Examples

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

Controlling: Controls cost as well as enterprises objectives, Provides data essential for decision planning and future planning.

Enterprise Controlling: Collates internal information with market info to bring out matters in marketing strategies.

Treasury: Corporate banking, Money, budget management etc.

Capital Investment Management: Assists finance organisations 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 defines, Human Resource Modules allows a complete HR management system, dealing fields such as personnel preparation and enlisting, personnel and salary administration, payroll and personnel development.

Beginning, SAP executions as well as its preparation were arranged on module lines. For example, in a training class on Logistics, you would read 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 'tween modules was completely absent. This applied to lead to that, the solutions were optimise on the modules, but lacked in integration. Hence, to accomplish that integration, programs are now being organized along 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 adaptation of operation lines alternatively of modules for solutions, SAP nowadays are moving away from reporting their system as a set of modules, and now are using the term results. These Fresh Dimension Products can stand exclusively or be integrated with R/3. It's profits include elimination of duplication, discontinuity and redundancy in info and increases the return on investment made on IT implementations. It presents quality info designed for the Corporation as a entirely Faster and cheaper which in turn presents quality data to acquire a quality organisation. These results are:

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

Conclusion:

SAP is an Company Wide Business Answer. This stands for that organizations functioning SAP can in effect integrate all of its business actions taking on finance, purchasing, sales, human resources etc. This integration enables each business proceedings in an organisation are available to each fields of that enterprise and there is no duplicate of information in separate systems.

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