The BASIS of SAP

SAP’s SME Solutions – A Guide to the Product Portfolio

I recently came across an interesting article on SAP’s SME Solutions – A Guide to the Product Portfolio. It breaks down the four SAP products for SME products by size, functionality, industry coverage, deployment options and cost of ownership.

The most important point the post makes is that there exists a range of SMEs, and that a one-size software solution does not fit all. This leads to some further points worth noting.

The smaller the SME, the less likely they are to adopt complex technology. While there is movement to Linux and open source ERPs (because of the TCO perceptions), when they do get into technology, they tend to select Microsoft platforms (e.g. .Net, SQL Server).

Because of TCO concerns, the smaller SMEs were the first to adopt software as a service (SaaS), and that model continues to gain traction within the SME market. The implication is that any SME strategy must include a SaaS strategy.

Given that its a blog post, the article does a good job of detailing the four SAP products that resulted from the new SME Strategy, albeit at a high-level view. While it won’t answer all your questions, it will give you a good starting point, especially about costs and appropriate products, for your conversation with SAP or your implementation partner,

ERPtips Express free articles, April 2010

Every two months ERPtips Express publish a set of three of their articles as a sample of whats available under their subscription model.

This months edition includes three detailed articles.

BI: Getting Optimum Performance from Your SAP BI/BW Environment, by Arthur Pesa.

This article acquaints you with the different dependencies found in the BI/BW environment that can impact your system’s performance, and how to properly assess them.

Data Archiving: Archiving SAP Sales Documents, Part I: Analysis, by Breck Whitten.

There are many loopholes that can leave old data unarchived, without your realizing it. This article covers some of them, which may lead you to revisit your Sales Document archiving strategy.

ABAP: Flexible Programming Continued: Using Field Symbols and References, by Rehan Zaidi.

This article delves into how to combine field symbols and data references using a dynamic programming technique. This is quite usefull knowledge for debugging as its quite widely used in the standard SAP programs.

These articles are available free of charge, but get replaced by new free content every two months, again fee of charge, at http://www.ERPtips.com/Express.asp.

Web 2.0 Presentation Tools from SAP – Integrate Twitter into PowerPoint!

…sometimes the presenter on stage is the only one who doesn’t know what the audience is thinking – because everybody else is viewing the Twitter stream.

The PowerPoint Twitter Tools, built using SAP BusinessObjects Xcelsius, are now available.
To access these tools, download the PowerPoint templates from the SAP web 2.0 powerpoint twitter page, with usage instructions here.

These tools are prototypes and can respond slowly. However, they are easily embedded in your PowerPoint slide deck, and provide a real-time Twitter ticker feed, a Twitter feedback slide, a set of Twitter voting templates, and a Crowd Noise meter. They’re based on the SAP BusinessObjects Xcelsius dashboarding technology, but come restriction free.

Free Articles from ERPtips (formerly SAPtips)

ERPtips (formerly known as SAPtips)is offering free access to a subset of their articles as they are published.

Sign up to their bimonthly Free ERPtips Express Newsletters and get freshly-published articles and white papers, handy tips, best practices and notifications of upcoming events delivered to your inbox, six times a year with no subscription fee.

The following articles available through 1 May;

• MM: Zero Superfluous Inventories with the Strategic Analytic Toolkit
• Financials: Collections Management FSCMCOL
• Human Resources: Understanding Retroactivity in SAP HR and Payroll
• Basis: SAP Role Creation: Guidelines for Planning and Implementation

http://www.ERPtips.com/Express.asp. A new set of four SAP articles will be posted on Tuesday, May 5th

(hat tip to @JonERP)

jonerp.com SAP Technical and Career site

Just a quick post to highlight Jon Reed’s SAP technical and career related site

One useful page is the “hot skills” section which contains a list of hot SAP technical skills (although he does agree that “hot” is a bit of a stretch in the current economy). Jon admits to not being a huge fan of lists, but they can drive discussion. His lists (such as his SAP Technical Skills list), especially, I find to be thoughtfully selected, and his comments on why this or that item makes the list add value to that.

An earlier post of mine on certification linked to some podcasts and posts on SearchSAP.com I’ve since found out that most of this was organised and collated by Jon, as he has worked as their resident SAP career expert. Since I found this content so usefull, I’d like to point you to his own SAP training and certification podcast page. It covers (amongst other things) online training and the range of SAP training options. An example of his content, in this case on SAP certification:

One good exercise is to review current SAP jobs on sites like SearchSAP.com and see what kinds of skills are required. See how often certification is listed as required or preferred, and what other skills are needed. This will not only give you a better idea of what skills are truly hot, it will also help you to see how important certification really is (or isn’t). I think you’ll be surprised at how few SAP jobs actually require certification in order to apply.

Simple, sensible, straightforward advice, but…. its the only place I’ve seen it said.