A Study On SAP Software Providers Information Technology Essay

Customer relationship management (CRM) is a broadly recognized, widely-implemented strategy for managing and nurturing a company’s interactions with clients and sales prospects. It involves using technology to organize, automate, and synchronize business processes-principally sales  activities, but also those for marketing customers, and technical support .The overall goals are to find, attract, and win new clients, nurture and retain those the company already has, entice former clients back into the fold, and reduce the costs of marketing and client service. [1] Once simply a label for a category of software tools, today, it generally denotes a company-wide business strategy embracing all client-facing departments and even beyond. When an implementation is effective, people, processes, and technology work in synergy to increase profitability, and reduce operational costs

SAP Customer Relationship Management (mySAP CRM) is a complete multi-channel suites supporting all customer-facing lines of business across marketing, sales, and service, as well as customer interaction channels such as the Interaction Center, the Internet, and mobile clients.

It provides:

Cross-industry and industry-specific end-to-end Business Processes.

Flexible and process-based deployment options.

An open, adaptable technology platform, powered by SAP Net Weaver.

At the center of SAP CRM is the SAP CRM server, which consists of CRM Enterprise functions, CRM Middleware, and various adapters.SAP CRM enables communication channels between the CRM system and Mobile Clients, Handhelds, the Internet, and telephones or E-mail. SAP ECC or R/3 systems can be used as backend systems, whereas Business Intelligence (BI) in SAP Net Weaver and SAP. Supply Chain Management enhance the spectrum of functions.

SAP CRM excels because it does the following:

Provides the flexibility to create unique customer experiences – SAP CRM enables a wide range of end-to-end business processes to address an array of marketing, sales, and service situations. The functionality of SAP CRM is deployed step-by-step and easily adapts and extends to create a more distinctive customer experience.

Drives the organization to more consistent, relevant interactions across all channels and touch points – SAP CRM allows organizations to make the most of every customer interaction across the entire customer life cycle by ensuring that each interaction is consistent and relevant, with real-time information about the complete history, context, value, and profitability of each customer.

Enables end-to-end processes within the industry value chain – SAP CRM is the only application that helps organizations drive customer value, loyalty, and profitability across the entire value chain. With best-in-class front-office functionality that complements industry-specific processes, SAP CRM turns the vision of customer-driven growth into reality.

How companies can benefit by SAP – CRM

One of the most effective ways for a business in any industry to achieve a competitive advantage is by offering its customers superior service. But how can businesses provide today’s customers with the speedy, reliable, and consistent customer service – delivered though multiple contact channels – which they demand?

SAP Business Communications Management software can help by enabling companies to fully leveraging the expertise of the staff within your organization to fulfill customer expectations

SAP Business Communications Management provides an advanced, all-IP communication solution for multichannel contact centers and contact-intensive, multisite organizations. It replaces traditional communications systems hardware with a software-based IP telephony solution that can help make your staff’s interactions with customers and partners more effective.

Intelligent routing ensures that customers reach the right people within organization – people with the skills to best address the customers’ needs. Plus, unified queuing, prioritizing, and routing of all contacts, no matter their format – telephone, e-mail, fax, voicemail, text messaging, and the Web – ensures that users have a smooth, consistent experience.

SAP ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning)

A sound foundation is necessary to compete and win in the global marketplace. The SAP ERP application supports the essential functions of business processes and operations efficiently and is tailored to specific needs of your industry.

SAP ERP, an application included in SAP Business Suite software, delivers these solutions:

SAP ERP Financials

SAP ERP Human Capital Management

SAP ERP Operations

SAP ERP Corporate Services

SAP ERP Financials :

A sound foundation is necessary to compete and win in the global marketplace. The SAP ERP application supports the essential functions of your business processes and operations efficiently and is tailored to specific needs of your industry. SAP ERP, an application included in SAP Business Suite software, delivers these solutions The world of finance and accounting is radically changing – convergence of accountingstandards, greater expectation for transparency, more demand by your line of businesspartners for clarity. SAP can help. With more than 30,000 best-run businesses in over 120 countries running our 45 country

specific versions, SAP has enabled companies like yours to thrive in a business environment characterized by intensified competition, uncertain market conditions, and

increased regulatory oversight.

SAP ERP Human Capital Management

SAP ERP Human Capital Management (SAP ERP HCM) provides features and functions that – along with SAP ERP’s end-user service delivery options and workforce analytics – can help you manage the following business processes:

Talent management – Support people during every phase of their employment – from recruitment through training, development, and retention. Find the right people, put their talent to best use, align employee goals with corporate goals, maximize the impact of training, and retain top performers. With SAP ERP HCM, you can develop and deploy talent more rapidly and flexibly than ever before. The solution supports and integrates all talent management processes – so you can attract, acquire, educate, and develop talent; identify and grow future leaders; and align and motivate talent with overall objectives.

Workforce process management – Streamline and integrate essential workforce processes such as employee administration, organizational management, time management, benefits, payroll, and legal reporting.

Workforce deployment – Deploy the right people with the right skills to the right positions at the right time. Create project teams based on skills and availability, monitor progress on projects, track time, and analyze results for strategic decision making. You can use SAP ERP HCM to assign workers to appropriate jobs, projects, and teams; unify resource management, project execution, and skills management; and optimally, schedule call center staff and retail staff

SAP ERP Operations

With SAP ERP Operations, your organization can realize its full efficiency and cost-effectiveness potential. With smoother day-to-day operations, you can maximize your profitability, free up resources and budget so that you can invest more in innovation. Gaining competitive advantage, you can look toward the future, and operate as a best-run business over the long term.

SAP ERP Corporate Services

With SAP ERP solution, a company can manage real estate; enterprise assets; project portfolios; corporate travel; environment, health, and safety compliance; quality; and global trade services more effectively.

SAP ERP Corporate Service can be implemented in:

Real estate management, Enterprise asset.

Project and portfolio management 

Travel Environment, health, and safety management ,Quality management .

How companies will benefit with SAP -ERP

With SAP ERP Operations, an organization can :

Automate and streamline operational processes with greater adaptability.

Increase productivity in your operations with a role-based solution and centralized information.

Extend collaboration to all value chain partners.

Improve operations performance with strategic business insight.

SAP Product Lifecycle Management

Product lifecycle management (PLM) is the process of managing the entire

lifecycle of a product from its conception, through design and manufacture, to service and disposal. PLM integrates people, data, processes and business systems and provides a product information backbone for companies and their extended enterprise. Product lifecycle management is one of the four cornerstones of a corporation’s information technology structure. All companies need to manage communications and information with their customers (CRM-Customer Relationship Management), their suppliers (SCM-Supply Chain Management), their resources within the enterprise (ERP-Enterprise Resource Planning) and their planning (SDLC-Systems Development Life Cycle). In addition, manufacturing engineering companies must

also develop, describe, manage and communicate information about their products

SAP PLM supports core business processes in the following areas:

Product management – Enables planning and decision making to align high-level product plans and objectives with corporate growth strategies, supported by product portfolio analysis and management.

Product development and collaboration – Share critical information such as project plans, technical drawings, product structures, product documentation, service bulletins, audit results, and change orders across virtual teams.

Product data management – Encompasses comprehensive product master and structure management, optimal recipe and specification control, proactive service and maintenance management, and graphic visualization and publishing.

Lifecycle management – Enables product compliance, product intelligence, product costing, tool and workgroup integration, project and resource management, and document management.

How companies will benefit with SAP- Product Lifecycle Management :

The SAP Product Lifecycle Management (SAP PLM) application can help companies quickly develop and deliver the products that drive your business. With SAP PLM, companies gain the following benefits:

Reduced costs – SAP PLM allows you to outsource tasks and focus on company’s core competencies while controlling the cost of relationship management. The solution also allows you to manage the cost of changes and evaluate the progress of projects across product lines.

Better business results – With SAP PLM, companies can develop innovative products, explore new market opportunities, gain a higher market share, and increase customer satisfaction.

Higher product quality – SAP PLM helps companies to manage product quality and reduce waste throughout every phase of the product life cycle.

Faster development – The solution reduces time to market and time to volume by integrating supply chain management and procurement closely.

Improved manufacturing operations – SAP PLM enables you to plan, measure, and track equipment availability, operation, safety, and maintenance.

Higher productivity – SAP PLM increases productivity through an easy-to-use, role-based enterprise portal that delivers all of the necessary content to workers.

Better business decisions – SAP PLM supports decision-making at all levels with powerful analytics covering areas such as portfolio management, occupational health, product safety, product quality, and maintenance management.

Lower cost of ownership – SAP PLM can be integrated with operational systems, such as computer-aided design, ERP, CRM, SRM, and SCM systems. Using a modular approach, you can implement gradually to meet evolving needs.

SAP Supply Chain Management

The SAP Financial Supply Chain Management (SAP FCSM) application helps support, accounts receivable, credit, and collections teams coordinate communication and processes to manage receivables, analyze root causes of late payments, and proactively handle customer disputes – providing tools to reduce days sales outstanding, and improve customer service.

A supply chain is a network of facilities and distribution options that performs the functions of procurement of materials, transformation of these materials into intermediate and finished products, and the distribution of these finished products to customers and the process of managing the whole chain of supply is called Supply Chain Management.

Supply chains exist in both service and manufacturing organizations, although the complexity of the chain may vary greatly from Industry

SAP FSCM includes the following applications:

SAP Credit Management

Employs sophisticated tools to analyze customer credit worthiness and establish policy

Helps a company to avoid overdue accounts and bad debt losses by proactively managing customer credit risk exposure

SAP Biller Direct

Enables customer access to invoices, account status, and payment information over the Internet

Integrates seamlessly with your existing customer or supplier facing portals

SAP Dispute Management

Resolves invoice disputes faster and more systematically

Reduces days sales outstanding (DSO) and improve cash flows

SAP Collections Management

Enables the more effective management of past due accounts

Ensures faster collection of delinquent payments though prioritized collections efforts

How companies will benefit from SAP -Supply Chain Management

SAP SCM can help you transform a traditional linear supply chain into an adaptive network with the following benefits:

Faster response to changes in supply and demand – With increased visibility into the supply chain and adaptive supply chain networks, you can be more responsive. You can sense and respond quickly to changes and quickly capitalize on new opportunities.

Increased customer satisfaction – By offering a common information framework that supports communication and collaboration, SAP SCM enables you to better adapt to and meet customer demands.

Compliance with regulatory requirements – You can track and monitor compliance in areas such as environment, health, and safety.

Improved cash flow – Information transparency and real-time business intelligence can lead to shorter cash-to-cash cycle times. Reduced inventory levels and increased inventory turns across the network can lower overall costs.

Higher margins – With SAP SCM, you can lower operational expenses with more timely planning for procurement, manufacturing, and transportation. Better order, product, and execution tracking can lead to improvements in performance and quality – and lower costs. You can also improve margins through better coordination with business partners.

SAP Supplier Relationship Management

Many businesses are seeking to increase bottom-line cost savings delivered by sourcing and procurement functions. By focusing onprocurement operations as profit centers, forward-looking companies are strengthening supplier relationships and making procurement a more strategic partner in the organization.

The SAP Supplier Relationship Management (SAP SRM) application automates, simplifies, and accelerates procure-to-pay processes for goods and services. With SAP SRM, you can reduce procurement costs, build collaborative supplier relationships, better manage supply bases, and improve companies bottom line with innovative offerings and a faster time to market.

Part of the SAP Business Suite family of business applications, SAP SRM delivers an integrated offering for automating goods and services procure-to-pay processes and extending the value delivered by SAP Business Suite. To see exactly how SAP SRM can add value to the company.

Procurement Business Process Outsourcing

More and more, organizations opting for business process outsourcing (BPO) are turning to providers whose services are powered by SAP applications. Learn how you can generate sustainable business value and dramatically lower costs and BPO risk with BPO-specific process solutions.

How companies will benefit from Supplier Relationship Management :

SAP SRM provides companies with the tools to drive superior results through an end-to-end procurement process. Activities such as spend analysis, category management, requisitioning, sourcing, contract life-cycle management, invoicing, and supplier management, are part of an integrated platform.

SAP SRM enables organization to achieve the following business benefits:

Sustainable cost savings – SAP SRM enables tight process integration. As a result, companies are able to achieve a closed loop from source-to-pay. Aggregating spend in a single platform leads to optimized spend and supplier relationship management.

Contract compliance – SAP SRM provides visibility into enterprise expenditures and enables the procurement organization to effectively demonstrate that spending activities, contracts, and supplier interactions adhere to corporate guidelines.

Competitive advantage – SAP SRM gives you the tools to partner with key suppliers to differentiate in your market, define your supplier management approach, and determine the key metrics that are used to determine supplier success.

Summary

As the world’s leading provider of business software, SAP delivers products and services that help accelerate business innovation for our customers. SAP believes that doing so will unleash growth and create significant new value – for the customers, SAP, and ultimately, entire industries and the economy at large. Today, customers in more than 120 countries run SAP applications – from distinct solutions addressing the needs of small businesses and midsize companies to suite offerings for global organizations.

Founded in 1972, SAP has a rich history of innovation and growth as a true industry leader. SAP currently has sales and development locations in more than 50 countries worldwide and is listed on several exchanges, including the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and NYSE under the symbol “SAP.”

Helping Companies Become Best-Run Businesses

SAP’s vision is for companies of all sizes to become best-run businesses. In today’s challenging business environment, best-run companies have clarity across all aspects of their business, which allows them to act quickly with increased insight, efficiency, and flexibility. By using SAP solutions, companies of all sizes – including small businesses and midsize companies – can reduce costs, optimize performance, and gain the insight and agility needed to close the gap between strategy and execution. To help our customers get the most out of their IT investments so that they can maximize their business performance, our professionals deliver the highest level of service and support.