SAP Basics for Beginners

What is SAP software?

SAP stands for Systems, Applications and Products in data processing (German acronym). It is an ERP software by the same name as the company. SAP, as a leader in enterprise resource planning software, serves small, medium-sized and large companies, helping them achieve their goals with fully integrated modules. The modules are employed in a full spectrum of industries such as Aerospace, Automotive, Finance, Defense & Security, Healthcare, Education, Media, Life science, Oil & Gas, Pharmaceuticals, Telecommunications companies and more.

With the help of SAP, the organisational teams can work independently, with the necessary access controls and approvals and also the management can consolidate and integrate regulatory performance reporting. The modules are developed, keeping in mind different processes within organisations, thus they cater to various domains including:

• Human Capital Management
• Financial Management
• Product Lifecycle Management
• Supply Chain Management
• Logistic Management
• Cross-Application
• Accounting Management etc.

If you're a beginner who is passionate to learn SAP to build a successful career, then choose the right software as per your background. For more details, you can click here to know everything about SAP.

An overview of SAP ERP

SAP is a European multinational software company that developed enterprise software to handle customer relations and different business operations. Headquartered in Walldorf (Germany), it is the world's largest software developing company with offices in 180 countries including France, Spain, Sweden, Canada, United Kingdom, United States, and Singapore.

On the other hand, SAP ERP is an enterprise resource planning software developed by SAP SE. ERP stands for Enterprise Resource Planning or ERP Central Component (SAP ECC) in an advanced form. An ERP is a logical representation of the business which is centrally connected and helps in doing the necessary transactions and real-time reporting. For example, if you are working with Amex and it has various divisions such as

• Risk Analysis
• Accounts Payables
• Sales & Marketing
• CRM, etc.

If there is an ERP (SAP), it will have the necessary 'specific' screens to capture the transactions happening in various departments, and the access is also restricted. i.e. A CRM person cannot access the Risk Analysis screen, etc. And when your MD or MIS team wants to review the performance at various levels, they can pull out multiple reports of the transactions happened in numerous functions.

Types of SAP Modules

The company provides a large number of modules to help businesses worldwide; however, all the modules are not applied. In general, SAP ERP modules can be characterized into two: Functional Modules and Technical Modules. The most implemented modules are the most successful and have the highest job opportunities. Some of them include:

This module is SAP's one of the essential modules which manage all tasks from hiring an employee to its final termination in an organisation. The various components in this module are Personnel Management, Organisational Management (OM), Time Management and Payroll.

This module manages the financial transactions within the enterprise. It helps employees to manage data involved in any business and financial transaction in a unified system.

SAP SCM stands for Supply Chain Management. This module deals with Production Planning (PP), Demand Planning and Business Forecasting. It also controls the information flow and product flow in the organisations.

It enables Provision, Composition and Management of SAP and non-SAP applications across all heterogeneous software environments.

It is a significant module of SAP. It is an in-memory data platform that is deployable as an on-premise appliance, or in the cloud. It is a revolutionary platform, which is best suited for performing real-time analytics and developing and deploying real-time applications.

It refers to Materials Management (MM). It is a part of the Logistics area which manages the procurement activity of an organization. It supports all aspects of material management (planning, control, etc.). It deals with material management and inventory management.

BI refers to Business Intelligence. This module deals with analyzing and reporting data from various heterogeneous data sources. Besides integrating data from different stores, it allows transforming, storing, consolidating and data cleansing.