SAP Solution Landscape
If you’re like many SAP customers, you may have bought and implemented your SAP system many years ago. At the time of your implementation, many people will have spent many, many hours deciding on the scope of your SAP implementation, and with the help of a Solution Architect or maybe even an Industry Principal, a SAP Solution Landscape will have been designed and a SAP software license sold.
You Started With The Core SAP Modules
Typically, you may have started out with a “core” implementation, consisting of FICO, MM and SD (Financials and Controlling, Materials Management and Sales and Distribution). This is SAPanese for accounting, purchasing and selling.
Depending on the complexity of your business processes, and your budget, these SAP modules may well have covered most of your ‘must have needs” at the time. However, compromises will have been made to get to go live.
SAP Is Your Central Core Digital Platform
Now post Go-Live, years later, your SAP system may have become your central system or it may have just become one of many, which is the most common scenario. During and just after your implementation, you will have had many people who had a lot of SAP knowledge available both from the consultancy side and inhouse.
SAP Knowledge Center
But, as happens so often, time marches on, and the SAP knowledge level available to the company may have begun to decline (learning curves work both ways), even as SAP usage increased or at least stabilized. Some companies will have set up SAP competency centers and continued to increase their SAP deployed foot print, and invested in sending their people to continuing SAP education, training and events, perhaps even participating in ASUG (SAP User Group).
SAP Capabilities Increased Through Enhancement Packages
Others, however, will have ‘moved on’ and may not be aware of just what is in the SAP box, nor be aware of the continuing developments that SAP delivers via enhancement packages or via acquisitions, such as Sybase or SuccessFactors or BusinessObjects.
What is the big deal then about SAP modules and why do we see a constant flow of questions about SAP Modules? Well, you should know that one of the most common questions this author receives from CEO’s of companies using SAP is ‘what is SAP”!
You Have Unused SAP Capability You Already Paid For
Many companies are actually buying software to do things they could already do with SAP, if they only knew the capability was there. SAP has at least 16 core modules, and if you make something or sell something from somewhere, you probably aren’t fully leveraging even 10 percent of the capability that’s in the box. For instance, did you know SAP can help banks manage their commercial real estate, such as bank branches and repossessed property portfolios? That would be the REFX module or Flexible Real Estate module.
SAP REFX is Just One of the Many Functionalities inside SAP
Eliminate Custom Code To Reduce Maintenance Cost
On a more broadly focused level, if you bought your SAP system more than 8 years ago, you may not realize that the Industry Specific functionality has been continually enhanced and what you may have paid to develop back then is now standard functionality you could implement and thus eliminate a lot of custom code and reduce cost. For example, Linear Asset Management has been greatly enhanced and you can do a lot of what I have seen many companies develop enhancements to do, such as record Railroad Track conditions.
In 1960, railroads typically could only put around 5% of their assets into use due to lack of technology to know where their rolling stock was physically located. Today, the government requires positive control of rolling stock, at all times.
What’s the big deal about that, you already built it, you got what you need, right? Well, to take one example, if you built an interface that supports one of your required business process functionalities, say in a MRO or Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul scenario, you may have spent as much $50,000.00 to build it, and are spending a lot to maintain it.
They spend how much on an Interface?
Each interface that SAP builds for you and delivers as part of the standard functionality eliminates about $750,000.00 of annual interface maintenance cost burden from you. That’s right, SAP estimates it spends that much each year to maintain each interface.
On a recent SAP Carve-Out project, using cheap, Indian, offshore resources, just to recreate an existing interface, cost almost $50,000. This excludes all ongoing maintenance cost. This was the cost for a thoroughly documented interface - which also had cost a small fortune to develop during the initial implementation.
- SAP CRM has at least 230 Interfaces!
When you consider that just SAP CRM has more than 230 interfaces to other parts of the system, you realize why it is such a big deal to let them do it inhouse with all the tools and techniques it takes to do development on a global scale for 120,000+ customers.
Use Value Engineering to Maximize Your Return and Minimize Your Cost
In fact, I recommend an annual review to compare what you are using, what you developed and what I know is now available as standard, along with a Value Engineering exercise to build a business case to get in the planning process.
You don't want to arrive at a point where end users have lost confidence in the system and no longer use it or the product and system you have developed is no longer supportable nor can be upgraded without doing a complete rip and replace.
Do You Know Everything SAP Has to Offer?
No matter where you are at in your SAP journey, unless you spend every waking moment studying SAP, you probably don’t know all there is to know about what SAP has to offer. That is why I made this unique, one of a kind SAP Mindmap a while back, as I think it provides the smallest footprint method in existence to help you explore SAP and answer the CEO's questions.
To get it, just press the button and download it. You need Adobe PDF reader on a windows machine to make it run.
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Please Leave Us a Question or a Comment!
We hope you found this article on SAP Solution Landscape informative and helpful. We would love to hear your thoughts on the key point that many companies are buying software to do things they could already do with SAP, if they only knew the capability was there. Your comments are valuable to us and other readers, as they provide insights and perspectives that we may not have considered. Additionally, if there are any other topics related to SAP that you would like to read about, please let us know. Some possible subject areas include SAP Industry Specific functionality, Linear Asset Management, or SAP CRM interfaces. Remember, staying informed about all the capabilities that SAP has to offer can help you maximize your return and minimize your cost. So please, leave us a question or a comment!
