SAP Applications

SAP stands for Systems Applications and Products in Data Processing. SAP, by definition, is also the name of the ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software as well as the name of the company. SAP Software is a European multinational, founded in 1972 by Wellenreuther, Hopp, Hector, Plattner, and Tschira. They develop software solutions for managing business operations and customer relationships.

SAP system consists of a number of fully integrated modules, which covers virtually every aspect of business management.

Basically, SAP is a German software company whose products enable businesses to track customer and business interactions. SAP is especially renowned for its Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and data management programs. An ERP is basically a rational representation of the business, thus an ERP helps in making the significant transactions and real-time reporting.

But how does SAP helps in managing the enterprise SAP environments? Well, the SAP application services are the processes and methodologies in order to maintain and enhance the enterprise environments. The SAP application services include development, integration, testing, implementation, maintenance and support and also help the desk devices. It also comprises of application monitoring as well as back-up and recovery of applications and interfaces.

To conclude, SAP provides a planning ability and a company can produce valuable data in order to make a forecast. This forecast can then be further fed into SAP. Then SAP automatically generates the purchase orders to buyers with quantity and specifications. SAP can also be used in tracking and monitoring when the money is due to be paid to vendors and whenever it is due to be taken from the customers.

Other Competitive products of SAP Software in the market are  Oracle, Microsoft Dynamics, etc.

History of SAP

The product of five ex-IBM employees, SAP started in 1972 as a small software company in Germany with just one customer. The company’s name stands for Systems, Applications & Products. Its founders had a vision of producing software that could process data when a user wanted it, rather than in overnight batches as earlier software did. Their first product was a modification of IBM’s punch-card data storage, which stored data mechanically and required overnight processing. For their client, the German branch of Imperial Chemical Industries, SAP developed a real-time payroll and punch-card system in 1972.

SAP’s ERP started as R/2, named for its real-time architecture and two servers. In later years it was called R/3, for three servers: the application server, production server, and database server. In 2006, SAP released the latest version, ECC 6.0, and in 2013 an Enhancement Package (EHP7) was released.

SAP Functions

SAP is the world’s largest enterprise applications software company – as measured by software and service-related revenue – with 172,000 customers around the globe. Unlike many of its competitors, SAP has mostly grown organically and has just a few significant acquisitions under its belt. Much of SAP’s customer base consists of very large enterprise accounts. However, they have made significant gains in the small and medium enterprise (SME) market with their Business All-in-One, Business ByDesign and Business One product lines.

SAP offers a wide range of enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications including customer relationship management (CRM), financial management, human capital management, product lifecycle management, and supply chain management. They also have a large network of partners (i.e. the SAP Ecosystem) that provide unique integration and customization offerings for specific markets. For example, Et Alia has developed CREW All-in-One for the construction industry, which is built on SAP Business All-in-One.

In addition to its ERP products, SAP offers several business analytics applications as part of its Business Objects product line. Business Objects is one of SAP’s more notable acquisitions which was announced back in 2007. This acquisition pushed SAP into the business intelligence (BI) leaders circle with IBM, Oracle and Microsoft. They are reinforcing their position with recent innovations such as SAP HANA, their in-memory technology that allows organizations to run queries from multiple data sources in real time. Click on one of the links below to learn more about a specific SAP product, application or industry solution.