System-Wide Features

System-Wide Features

SAP uses certain system wide features that should be understood at the outset. These are used to logically, safely and flexibly organize the data in a business enterprise.

• Customizing--
  
  is the configuring of the system
  

  

  to represent your organization's legal structure, reporting requirements and business processes. Internal reporting is a managerial tool in the daily operations. External reporting is required by governmental units controlling the legal structure of the corporation, such as, the IRS state taxing authorities, SEC etc.
• Organizational Elements
  
  • Financial--
    
    • client is a legal and organizationally independent unit at the highest level in SAP
    • company is an independent legal entity within a client
    • business areas are used to produce profit and loss statements and balanced sheets across marketing lines
  • Materials Management
    
    • Purchasing units
    • Plants
  • Sales and Distribution
    
    • Sales Organization
    • Distribution channel
    • Division
• Master Data is records that remain in the database
  
  
  over an extended period of time. Examples:
  
  • Customer Master
  • Vendor Master
  • Material master
  • Account Master
  This structure eliminates redundant data and is shared by all SAP Modules. It is a critical aspect of the robustness of the system.
• 
  
  Employee Self Service--your employees have access to the own HR records over the Internet.
• Classification is the assignment of objects to a class. Each class has standard characteristics.
• Matchcodes are query tools used to find specific information using search methods.
• 
  
  Security
  

  

  is administered for objects, profiles and authorizations. Users are only authorized to see or change the parts of the system required by their job responsibilities.
  
  

Business Processes and SAP Functionality

In order to understand a system like SAP a thorough understanding of the events and relationships that take place in a business is required. It is not enough to just realize the Sales, Production, Finance and Accounting have jobs to do in a business. The exact details of each action, the timing of that action and its interrelationships with every other process must be understood. In many large operations there may be no person that has a complete grasp of the situation. Before an operation can be automated or computerized a thorough study of the business must be undertaken. This task is called Business Process Engineering.