SAP ERP Solutions

SAP is providing different ERP solutions for different customer needs. Most of the SAP professionals are not familiar with all of the SAP ERP solutions that the software provider offers. There is one product which is known from all of them and it is SAP ERP 6.0 also known as SAP R/3(2,1)  or mySAP ERP. These are the names of the most advanced ERP Solution that SAP is providing. The name of the top product was changed several times in the past 30+ years. I will cover only the most well known solutions in this article which are provided by SAP AG.

SAP ERP 6.0 (SAP R/3 or mySAP ERP) – Known also as real or big SAP. It is fully customizable and highly scalable solution used primarily in large and multinational companies. When SAP is telling you, that 90% of Fortune 500 companies use SAP they are talking about this product. SAP ERP is the heart of SAP Business Suite which also contains SAP Customer Relationship Management, SAP Supplier Relationship Management, SAP Supply Chain Management, SAP Product Lifecycle Management, etc. This package is suitable for big companies which have specific processes which they would like to use as competitive advantage. It used mostly in very big companies or market leaders their field.

In 2015, SAP S4/HANA was introduced to the customers of SAP. It is a product build on the basis of SAP ERP with a lot of rebuilding to take an advantage of SAP HANA database and Fiori User Interface.

SAP Business All in One is the brand name for industry or country specific solutions which are based on the same software package as SAP ERP. They are practically the same besides the fact the SAP ERP is heavily customized while All in One is implemented with the help of preconfigured packages which are combining the best practices that SAP accumulated in the past 30+ years.  SAP Business All in One is suitable for midsized companies which would like to take advantage of the know-how and best practices implemented in the SAP industry specifying solutions preserving the full scalability of the SAP. Typically customizations comprise not more than 10% of the final price of the SAP Business All In One solution. That’s the reason why SAP Business All in One is highly competitive solution compared to other ERP software available on the market in terms of both price and unmatchable functionality. In most cases this solution is used by companies with 25-450 users.

SAP Business by Design is on demand solutions suitable for midsized companies. So it means that the servers will not be on your premises, but on site of the SAP or their certified Partners. It is completely different solution compared to SAP ERP and SAP Business All in One. It is offered with very competitive price and extensive functionality. Having on demand solution has its pros and cons. The positive aspects are that you don’t need to hire IT professionals to administrate and to buy expensive hardware equipment.  Implementation times could also be reduced substantially. On the other hand you will need highly reliable internet connection and you will not be able to insert custom code in the solution. In most cases you will not need custom code, because the functionality will exists and it will need just little configuration.  Similar to SAP Business All in One, SAP Business by Design could fit well on organizations between 25 and 450 users.

SAP Business One is another ERP solution which is designed mainly for small companies. It is on-premise solution as SAP ERP & SAP Business All in One, but it’s again totally different in terms user interface and technical base. It is known by its simple navigation, interface similar to MS Windows and Drag & Relate functions.  It is simple to use and it could well work on companies with 5 to 60 users.

These are the ERP Solutions that SAP is offering. With them the ERP Solutions market leader is able to cover most of the needs, if not all, not matter what is the industry or the size of the company.