SAP is both the name of a company, in this case SAP AG and the name of their flagship product, SAP R/3. There was also an R/2 and today, in 2020, it is called SAP ECC (Enterprise Core Component) SAP HANA (which has many flavors).
At its core, it is a fully integrated suite of products that provide support for Finance, Logistics and Human Resources.
In addition to the 16 core modules of SAP, such as SAP FICO, SAP HRMS, SAP MM, SD, PM, PS, LE, PLM and EWM, there are a variety of additional 'New Dimension' modules, such as CRM, APO, BW, EH&S, MDM and others, such as SAP RE-FX or SAP Flexible Real Estate. SAP also provides a variety of Industry Specific solutions, which come with additional software functionality specifically tailored to meet the needs of specific industries, such as Airlines, Hospitals, Manufacturers, Defense Departments, Professional Services, and numerous others.
Over the years, SAP has acquired numerous company's, such as BusinessObjects and rolled those companies products into the SAP line-up. They continue to acquire companies at what seems to be a rate of one every two weeks. This is a fairly dramatic change from the early days of SAP, when they mostly developed everything themselves, mostly using ABAP.
SAP maintains a relatively small consulting footprint and instead relies on the vast partner network to drive incremental sales and to provide SAP consulting services, which is what SAP BW Consulting, Inc. provides. SAP Partners come in a variety of flavors, including pure services partners, hardware partners, (IBM, Dell, AWS) and specialized solution add-on providers. With their SAP HANA platform, they have opened up their platform large number of 'start-up' businesses, who are encouraged to develop their solution using the SAP HANA Cloud platform environment.
Probably their single most valuable asset is their SAP User Groups. SAP User Groups exist in a variety of shapes, and are present around the world. These user groups are also often times focused on specific industry areas, for instance, there is an Airport User Group. By sponsoring these user groups, actively soliciting feedback about what needs to be developed next, then actually delivering the requested functionality, they are able to continuously improve their product offering. SAP Industry Principals (I was one) play a key role in these groups. They are the eyes and ears of SAP, and have to decide which whitespace functionality needs to be developed. They then, carry the burden of making their case to the internal development teams at SAP to build out functionality that will further drive industry success.
I frequently use create mindmaps to gain an understanding of complex subjects. For my SAP R/3 mindmap, I was asked by one of the Sales Trainers at one of our partners to explain to their Salesforce what they could actually sell from SAP. Thus was born my SAP ERP Mindmap
MindMap of SAP ERP - For those of you who do not know exactly what is in the SAP box, here is my attempt to sort it out for you. When this opens up, you must first allow it to play, then click anywhere in the white space. Please allow it a few seconds to open up and you will see a nice playable mindmap of the product.