Introduction of SAP

In the process of organizational evolutionary changes, computers play a vital role. To achieve the organizational plans, goals, and targets, computerization of its activities is inevitable. In the early computerization days, organizations are used to select the individual soft wear products. These products were replaced the manual environment and helped to improve the performance of an organization in all spheres. The independent soft wears were developed to meet the specific requirement of an organizational activity. The growing requirements prompted for designing new tools. Consequently an organization with multifaceted activities bundled with many independent computer packages. Hence development and maintenance of individual soft wears has becomes a white elephant for the organizations. In addition to the cost concept, the globalization and growing concept of global village, required more than the present set up of individual soft wear applications. In the present Global environment the soft wear should supports cross country functionalities, with the diversified activities. To meet such demands of the industry, independent soft wear era has taken a new turn with integrated soft wears. The integrated soft wear supports the cross functionalities, multiple languages, and cross country activities, without changing the existing environment and organizational set up as well. The new Integrated Soft wear is coined as an ERP Product or Standard Soft wear products. The Standard soft wear is developed as flexible and universal product to meet the requirement of as many companies as possible. Standardization can be achieved by incorporating the accepted business common laws, international accounting standards, and scientific knowledge of business processes. The Enterprise Resource Planning product caters the requirements of an organization, with a tight integration among all the business processes. In my own experience, I would like to say the Banking industry in India is too slow to accept the technological changes in the before 90s. There may be so many reasons in the past. However, Now the Banks in India are ahead to imbibe the technological changes happening around them. Privatization, globalization and liberalizations have brought the drastic changes in the facet of Indian Banking industry. The Big Bank i.e. State Bank India and its associates are the front runners in implementing the ERP product. Now Each Bank in India is following the foot steps of state bank. However, Banks ERP product is an Industry solution Product. The implementation of Core Banking solutions (ERP>industry specific solution) is taking place in many of the Indian Banks. Many of the banks which are implemented the ERP product are deriving the benefits. Now our discussion is relating to cross country application soft wears. There are several ERP products are available in the Market. They are mainly SAP 2. ORACLE FINANCIALS 3. JDEDWARDS BAWN 5. EPICORE 6. PEOPLE SOFT etc. However, at present the most familiar product is SAP only. Hence, in the coming chapters I will discuss about SAP Standard soft wear product SAP only. In the available products, some are cross functional products and some products are industry specific solutions (banking soft wear). Industry Specific Products are designed to meet the business processes of unique business. More or less this type of industries will follow the similar business processes wherever they exists Example Banking industry, insurance, retail solutions etc. Cross functional products are developed as standards soft wears to meet the different type of industry requirements, throughout the world. The standard soft wears can not be used as it status. The Soft wear has to be tailored to the requirement of different industries with the cross country functionalities and with the cross industry business processes. The standard integrated product has to be customized or configured with the specific industry requirements. We have to set some pre activities to the standard soft wear, before using called Paramertization or so-called Customizing. The organisations' requirement is to be compared with the capabilities and adaptabilities of the standard soft wear before taking up the Customization task. Many organizations do not understand how to represent their organization structures and business processes in the standard soft wears. To take up the requirement definition task and Customization of Business processes, requires a specialist organization i.e. called Implementation Company. The implementation company selects and forms group with an expert people. This group of People is called a Consultant group. This consultant group has not only expertise in the standard map the structures and business processes of the legacy system to ERP environment. Hence the main role of a consultant is to map up the business processes with the standard soft wear processes and customize the additional requirements if required by the organization. The pre parameterization activities and customization activities are put together is called as an Implementation of Project. The Implementation of the project is more or less similar for all standard soft wears. In SAP environment also the process of Implementation is similar. Implementation of a project is so easy to discuss but involves a lot complexity and cost. Hence has to be properly planned and monitor project in a systematic procedure. The Consultant team and core team has to define the Deliverable Milestones and accordingly monitor the project. Definition of Milestones in the project is a tough task for sr.consultant and senior executives of the company. Then only we can complete the Implementation task successfully. The total activities and programmes are to be document in a proper way. This document is a guide for implementation of a project. This document is called as ASAP METHODOLOGY OR SOLUTION MANGER. It is road map for the consultant, to customize the business processes. The success or failure mainly depends on the methodology we have adopted during the project implementation. software definitions but also to understand the organization's structures and business processes. They will