In many Business Organization, often we hear the word SAP. Of Course, in Product based IT companies, most of their Projects will have a deal with SAP.
The abstract of this post is to get some basic idea about SAP in an overview way, not in deep of either Finance or Technical but touches the both. Ok let’s dive in.
Trust me, every developer in a Product based company at their Initial stage will have a nice nap at the discussion meeting where the Business Analyst trying to convey something in the SAP integration part which doesn’t make any sense at that time.
But, at some point its better to know about SAP. And it’s an ocean in its planet, so its better to have a basic overview on that.
SAP ?
Generally in an Enterprise company, there will be many business modules, in which every actions and intake/outtake of the company’s belongings have to be noted. Those things are to be maintained in an organised way which will have direct impact on an Organization’s growth.
SAP is an tool/software which helps an Organization to maintain their business data in a well structured way. It contains many standardized Business Process which can be utilized by each Organization on their need base.
Systems, Applications & Products in Data Processing, nothing but a SAP, have their headquarters in Germany. It doesn’t have a great start at it’s initial stage, but after 2 years with some upgrade it went viral in the market. And now, in India, it has a branch in Bangalore.
Ways to Access:
As an ERP tool, SAP can be accessed majorly in below ways:
SAP Logon NetWeaver Application:
This SAP is not a freeware, everything at a cost. We can access SAP by installing SAP Logon NetWeaver Software in our local system with the help of its SAP GUI. Every user access will be billed.
Through HTTP Site:
We can access the SAP through a browser by hitting a URL. But every Organization will follow a common way to access, so this option will be depend on it. If they allow and enable, then we can access the http site.
Through Remote Function Call (RFC):
For a developer, this part is the important one which helps in the Integration part. Most of the business functionality in SAP can be utilized via BAPI which can be accessed by any third party software. By default, no one can access it from outside SAP. If a specific BAPI has remotely enabled in SAP, then it can be accessed by the third party tool. This Business Application Programming Interface will be called in the Integration part.
Apart from the above ways, we can access SAP via webservices. And there is an Mobile App named Fiori which was developed by SAP, grooming gradually.
BAPI
BAPI are the functions which are used in back end for every action in SAP, which was developed with SAP owned ABAP Technology and Java. In order to integrate with SAP, a developer have to call the specific BAPI with some input values in XML format, then SAP will process and provide the Output in XML format. For each and every activity happening in SAP, can be achieved the same outside of SAP via BAPI. Some basic usage of BAPIs are, To get the exchange rate value, To get the PO details, To get the Open GRN items etc.
To store the data in backend, SAP uses MS SQL, Oracle, SAP HANA etc. SAP has its own database named SAP HANA, through which we can monitor and analyze the data and can use it like BI.
SAP Modules:
In SAP, there are many business modules available, majorly,
- Logistics
- Accounting
- Human Resources
Under each of them, there are many business Processes are there. Some of them are listed below.
- Logistics – Materials Management, Production Planning, Logistics Execution, and Quality Management, Sales & Distribution…
- Accounting – Financial Accounting, Management Accounting, Financial Supply Chain Management, Travel Management, Environment, Health and Safety, and Real-Estate Management…
- Human Resources – Training, Payroll, e-Recruiting…
Under each of these business process, there are lot of Business task we can do and those are denoted as Transaction and each have its own separate TCode (shortcut) for ease access.
We can access Transaction by either using SAP Menu or using TCode. But a User need rights for any of the Transaction in order to access it.
As I already mentioned SAP is an vast subject, In that, will look into some basic details of Materials Management (MM).
Scenario Case:
Assume a case like, there is a need of 10 computers for the ABC Company, this necessity needs to be published along with the specifications, so that Quotations will come related to that request. Publishing the needed request is termed as Purchase Request in SAP. Inside this Business Task, we can raise the Purchase Request along with the number of Computer needed and their specifications and all.
Many Quotations will come for that PR, among them, company need to choose the best Quotation and need to make a deal with that Vendor and have to create a Purchase Order in SAP which is an another Business Task which holds the details like, from which Vendor those computers are buying, Delivery date, Quantity, Amount etc.
Now, receiving the ordered Products from the Vendor is the next step. Vendor will deliver the Products, as per the Delivery date mentioned in the PO. Over there, QA team from ABC company have to check the quality of those and if everything passed, then the vendor will provide the Invoice document to the Company. Then someone from the location need to update the received goods details along with the Invoice Document in SAP. This business Task’s Tcode is known as MIGO where GRN get created.
Now the Payment has to be done for that Invoice. In a business company, always there will be a team called Accounts Payable team. This team is the responsible for verifying the the data present in the Invoice is same as what mentioned in PO. There is a term called Three Way Matching, means the data present in the Invoice should be compared with PO details and also with GRN. If all are same then AP team will post and create the Invoice Document in SAP. These task will happen in MIRO.
Then Banking team will check and unblock the Payment status for that Invoice, then same will be get selected in Payment Proposal Screen of SAP and the data will send to Bank. Post getting the Payment Advice from the Bank, we get to know the status of the Payment whether it successfully paid to Vendor or failed.
In the Payment area, Accounting Module of SAP also will get involve.
In the above scenario case, in each and every step, we will get an unique number which helps to track the status. PR Number will get generate while creating the Purchase Request. PO Number will get generate while creating the Purchase Order. While doing MIGO, GRN number will get created. After the successful posting in MIRO, MM Number and FI number will get generated. In Payment, Payment Order number will get created. These many unique numbers will help us to track the status.
Hope, the readers have gained some basic knowledge about SAP. Apart from these there are many scenarios and business cases are there, everything will get differ from one organization to another, but the straight case is the same what we discussed above.
