If you are considering implementing SAP in your company, because you have already reviewed the market ERPs and it is the one that most convinces you, but you do not know where to start, we are going to give you some tips on the process that we recommend.
Many people know the potential of SAP and all its advantages over other products on the market. As pointed out by Deusto Training, the main advantage of SAP is its modular structure, among which we can point out: finance (FI), sales and distribution (SD), materials management (MM), Controlling (CO), human resources ( HR), etc all this interrelated in a database to streamline processes and facilitate subsequent decision-making.
Among the main advantages of SAP:
5 SAP advantages
- Real-time information and decision-making: All SAP operations are synchronized at the moment, so decision-making is more agile and accurate as all the data is integrated on the same platform.
- Supply: SAP facilitates warehouse control and the so-called Supply Chain for the delivery of products and improvement of inventory management, avoiding stock outages.
- Inventories: the control of incoming and outgoing goods is one of SAP’s strengths, as it allows optimization of warehouse control and, consequently, optimization of the company’s finances.
- Budgets: SAP has tools to reliably plan and control budgets to improve productivity.
- Customer Service – Provider: SAP includes powerful tools linked to customer demand and management. This allows anticipating customer demands, personalizing them and having a collection and payment module that facilitates the management of these actions.
Supplier Selection
On many occasions, the company that wants to implement a new ERP does not have previous experience in the use and management of SAP, nor does it have exhaustive knowledge of the tool. On the other hand, they know their internal processes well, but they do not have the necessary “know-how” to transfer all this to a SAP provider or even they do not know the providers, nor the differences of the market stakeholders.
For all these reasons, it is important to work, prior to selecting the supplier, with a company that advises us in this preliminary phase. This company must comply with a series of characteristics in order to bring the project to a successful conclusion, with the least possible risk, avoiding delays and covering all the specific requirements of our business.
The characteristics that we estimate should have a good consultancy in SAP projects:
SAP Consulting
- Expert: To be a company specialized in SAP and digital transformation, offering knowledge of different sectors and fields so that it can understand our cases and apply them to a SAP environment. In addition, it is important that you have developed this type of work before in order to have a broad knowledge of the market.
- Confidence: Company that offers us security with qualified personnel that gives us certainty and a personal and close treatment, since the company will act on our behalf when selecting companies and transferring our requirements to them.
- Neutral: It should not have implications with suppliers so that it can carry out prior independent work for the selection of the best partner in the ERP implementation.
- Commitment: it is important that there is a person within the company who has the role of Leader and is our personal interlocutor so that he or she can accompany the company at all times. On the other hand, the consultant must have different specialists within the company to support said leader in those more specific aspects.
- Flexibility: you must know how to adapt to the idiosyncrasies of the company in question, manage times, focus on problems and resolve them adaptively so that the objectives are met.
- Change Management: accompanying users in the transformation of processes in the new ERP and providing them with good training that gives them the necessary knowledge to be able to be autonomous and get the most out of the tool, is essential.
Conclusion
We can say that SAP is an ERP with a very high potential for improving processes, but in order to carry out an implementation of it, professional support from a company that offers experience, trust and is neutral to the different providers is needed.
At SAPmee, we are specialists in SAP projects and we have more than 20 years of experience working with companies from different sectors and fields.
If you want to know more about us, do not hesitate to contact us. We will be happy to meet your needs and be able to help you in the implementation of SAP.
SAPmee Team
