SAP Portfolio Overview
Key Areas of SAP
In order to support customers in the ever-changing business world, SAP is expanding its solution portfolio with innovations to provide instant value to customers’ IT needs. While expanding the solution portfolio, SAP maintains consistency of the data, processes, and applications in the portfolio.
SAP focuses on the following key areas:
- Scaling the core businesses of customers (on premise)
- Innovating through extensions (on demand)
- Extending the reach of customers (on device)
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SAP: On Premise, On Demand, and On Device
SAP: On Premise
SAP solutions scale the core businesses of customers and deliver instant value to them. To make these solutions easy to use, SAP ensures that they are preintegrated and implemented in a nondisruptive way. SAP solutions are developed using software principles such as decoupling, layering, abstraction, and design.
SAP: On Demand
SAP provides rapid innovations that deliver extended, on-demand functionality for a specific line of business.
SAP: On Device
SAP also aims to extend the reach of customers in the following ways:
- By enabling end users to use SAP data and processes from various devices everywhere by using SAP applications for mobile business
- By providing end users with information from both inside and outside the enterprise so that they can make decisions based on a broad array of data according to their use cases
- By helping end users cooperate and optimize performance across a dynamic business network of people
- By enabling partners, customers, and end users to extend the functionality of SAP to build user experiences
Orchestration
SAP will continue to invest in life cycle management, master data management, and process orchestration. To ensure that all the solutions and software components fit together perfectly in the customer landscape, an orchestration layer that works across all applications is required.
Products for Companies of All Sizes
SAP offers a vast range of scalable products that can be adjusted to any size and adapted to the continuously changing processes of companies of any size.
The following SAP solutions are available to small and midsize business customers, as shown in the figure:
- SAP Business One
- SAP Business ByDesign
- SAP Business All-in-One
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SAP Business One
SAP Business One has the following features:
- SAP Business One provides simple navigation and expansion options, innovative Drag&Relate functions and integration with Microsoft Word and Excel.
- SAP Business One enables you to uniformly manage important business areas, such as sales distribution and finance, with a single integrated application. The SAP Business One application provides an up-to-date overview of the important data of a given company. This data helps companies better meet customer requirements, which is an important prerequisite for profitable growth.
- SAP Business One can be hosted locally within a company or by a partner and can be implemented within two months.
- SAP Business One is the ideal solution for small companies with around 100 employees who are looking for an affordable system to ensure the successful and profitable operation of their core processes (such as finance, sales, customer service, and operations). SAP Business One is sold exclusively through a global partner network of certified and experienced partners. These partners offer 24-hour support, which covers the enhancements from independent software providers. SAP Business One is currently being used by more than 34,000 customers as of 2012 in over 40 countries.
SAP Business ByDesign
SAP Business ByDesign is a solution for small (around 100 employees) and midsize (100 to 500 employees) companies that want to use an on-demand solution to improve their core processes and lower the entry and operating costs. The solution is aimed at midmarket companies that are not using integrated business software.
SAP Business ByDesign has the following features:
- It combines the advantages of an integrated, end-to-end application with the benefits of an on-demand solution. Having a low risk potential and low operating costs, SAP Business ByDesign provides integrated service and support, adaptability, and user-friendly features. The solution also guarantees transparency and adheres to legal requirements.
- It is the most complete, fully integrated, on-demand solution to help midsize companies manage their finances, human resources, projects, production, and supplier and customer relationship management. It also supports the regional and local legal requirements of companies. The design of SAP Business ByDesign addresses country-specific compliance (statutory) issues.
SAP Business ByDesign was not developed merely for standard business applications or customer relationship management. Instead, the application was developed with user interfaces that can be customized by user role to support all business processes within a company. The application offers end-to-end processes for the work center of the future.
SAP Business All-in-One
SAP Business All-in-One is powered by SAP NetWeaver and includes the SAP ERP application, the SAP Customer Relationship Management (SAP CRM) application, and applications from the SAP BusinessObjects portfolio. SAP All-in-One is the brand name for vertical solutions (solutions that are industry-specific or country-specific) that are based on the SAP NetWeaver technology and developed with SAP partners.
SAP Business All-in-One has the following features:
- It allows businesses to leverage the best practices of industry leaders at an affordable fixed price. And, it is all on a platform that businesses will not outgrow.
- It can be used as local software or hosted by a partner of a company.
- It is based on various SAP products with a focus on SAP ERP, SAP CRM, and the SAP BusinessObjects portfolio.
- It provides a portfolio of industry-specific functions, based on SAP Best Practices.
- It can be planned easily.
More than 13,000 small and midsize customers in more than 50 countries run SAP Business All-in-One. More than 1,000 SAP partners around the world deliver local implementation and customization support for SAP Business All-in-One, giving you access to expert assistance everywhere. Preconfigured business scenarios and implementation accelerators can be put into operation in this application – within 8 to 16 weeks.
The following table shows a comparison of the SAP solutions for small and midsize companies:
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Overview of SAP Business Suite
The SAP software portfolio is constantly extended, optimized, and tailored to the needs of the market. SAP has developed many industry-specific applications over the years and added more products for small-to-midsize companies to the software portfolio. SAP enables integration between various applications (modules) from different vendors and across company boundaries.
SAP Business Suite applications are an extended family of business applications that enable companies to manage their entire value chains. These applications provide users with consistent results throughout the network of a company and the flexibility needed to address dynamic market situations. The applications also support cross-company processes.
SAP Business Suite provides the following evolved features:
- A complete spectrum of business solutions
- A technological infrastructure that combines openness and flexibility with maturity and stability
- Interfaces for integrating non-SAP products
- Components that can be adapted to meet multiple business requirements
- Numerous industry-specific functions
SAP Business Suite plays a central role in businesses. Many companies are already profiting from the comprehensive and flexible business applications in SAP Business Suite because of their highly evolved functions. These functions include complete integration, industry-typical functions, unlimited scalability, and smooth collaboration over the Internet.
Architecture of SAP Business Suite
Refer to the figure for the components in the architecture of SAP Business Suite.
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As shown in the figure, the core applications of SAP Business Suite are SAP ERP, SAP CRM, SAP Product Lifecycle Management (SAP PLM), SAP Supplier Relationship Management (SAP SRM), and SAP Supply Chain Management (SAP SCM). These applications support all the essential business processes of a company.
SAP CRM enables multichannel customer interactions, including mobile smart phones, the Internet, and social media. It also offers a dedicated communications infrastructure that helps to connect all users anytime, anywhere.
SAP ERP
The SAP ERP application is a market-leading application for optimizing business and IT by reducing IT complexity, increasing adaptability, and delivering more IT value at a lower cost than the traditional ERP solutions. It supports mission-critical, end-to-end business processes for finance, human capital management, asset management, sales, procurement, and other essential corporate functions.
SAP ERP also supports industry-specific processes by providing industry-specific business functions that can be activated selectively by using the switch framework. This framework keeps the application core stable and helps to ensure maximum performance.
SAP Customer Relationship Management
The SAP CRM application provides a comprehensive platform for marketing, sales, and service professionals to obtain complete customer intelligence that they can leverage to manage customers and customer-related processes effectively.
SAP Product Lifecycle Management
The SAP PLM application helps companies manage, track, and control all product-related information over the complete product and asset lifecycle and throughout the extended supply chain.
SAP Supplier Relationship Management
The SAP SRM application provides a procurement platform that helps organizations in all industries improve their centralized sourcing and contract management and enables them to interact with suppliers through multiple channels.
SAP Supply Chain Management
SAP SCM transforms traditional supply chains from linear, sequential processes into open, configurable, and responsive supply networks. In such networks, customer-centric, demand-driven companies can sense and respond more intelligently and quickly to dynamics of supply and demand across a globally distributed environment.
Industry Applications
SAP addresses the requirements of specific business processes for many industries by complementing the basic business processes that are common to all large enterprises.
Support for these industry-specific processes is delivered as part of SAP ERP or as a separate industry application, such as the SAP Dealer Business Management application, which integrates with the other applications of SAP Business Suite.
The architecture and business functionality of the industry applications result from SAP's in-depth knowledge and understanding of the industry-specific business requirements and business processes. SAP industry portfolios are continuously enhanced by adding new applications that address the highly specialized business needs of customers in target markets.
The following table lists some of the industry applications that SAP offers:
| Industry Sector | Industry Portfolio |
|---|---|
| Discrete | Industries SAP for Aerospace and Defense SAP for Automotive SAP for Engineering, Construction, and Operations SAP for High Tech SAP for Industrial Machinery and Components |
| Process Industries | SAP for Life Sciences SAP for Mill Products SAP for Mining SAP for Oil and Gas SAP for Chemicals |
| Consumer Industries | SAP for Consumer Products SAP for Retail SAP for Wholesale Distribution |
| Service Industries | SAP for Media SAP for Professional Services SAP for Telecommunications SAP for Transportation and Logistics SAP for Utilities |
| Public Services | SAP for Defense and Security SAP for Healthcare SAP for Higher Education & Research SAP for Public Sector |
| Financial Services | SAP for Banking SAP for Insurance |
Supplementary Applications and Enhancement Packages
Supplementary applications drive specialized business processes common to a large number of industries, such as manufacturing applications, SAP solutions for auto-ID and item serialization, and applications for mobile business.
The SAP NetWeaver technology platform provides a reliable, secure, and scalable foundation to run business applications like SAP Business Suite and SAP BusinessObjects applications.
SAP NetWeaver ensures that large enterprises can perform mission-critical business processes. SAP also has a proven method for continually delivering updates to SAP Business Suite and SAP NetWeaver without disrupting a company’s operations. SAP provides enhancement packages with collections of new or improved business functions that companies can deploy in a modular fashion and on their own schedule.
SAP NetWeaver
As the technical foundation for Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), SAP NetWeaver delivers a comprehensive set of middleware functions in a modular software environment with the aim of reducing IT complexity and increasing business flexibility across heterogeneous IT landscapes. SAP NetWeaver provides IT organizations with the lowest cost of operation and best business availability for SAP applications across heterogeneous IT landscapes through unified lifecycle management, identity management, secure communications, and end-to-end monitoring.
Enhancement Packages
Enhancement packages enable companies to take advantage of ongoing innovations while keeping their core software stable. The packages were introduced with the SAP ERP 6.0 application. Several enhancement packages have been released since 2006. All core applications of SAP Business Suite are now enabled for continuous innovation through enhancement packages.
In the future, SAP will continue to deliver enhancement packages for the core applications, which will minimize the need for potentially disruptive upgrade projects in companies.
SAP Applications and Components
SAP Business Suite provides numerous applications to address business challenges. However, the submodules of many applications have similar or identical requirements for business functions.
Different applications, therefore, contain similar software components in parts. A component is the smallest, separately producible, deliverable, installable, and maintainable software unit. Examples of components are SAP ERP Central Component (ECC), SAP SCM, and SAP NetWeaver Portal.
Refer to the figure for an overview of SAP applications and components.
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