SAP Those Things - Theory -7- The strengths and weaknesses of SAP

SAP Those Things - Theory -7- The strengths and weaknesses of SAP

Speaking of advantages and disadvantages, I would like to talk about the concept of Yin and Yang in Chinese traditional culture. nvidia partner Why? Yin and Yang in traditional Chinese culture is actually a kind of philosophical thinking, which first divides all things in the world (including the visible and intangible) into Yin and Yang, and then believes that Yin and Yang can be transformed into each other, so that the balance of Yin and Yang can be stable. For example, for the body, the balance of Yin and Yang can be healthy. Since Yin and Yang can be transformed into each other, then advantages and disadvantages can also be transformed into each other, of course, this transformation needs to be under certain conditions.

Anyway, back to SAP. SAP has many advantages, such as multi-language, multi-country, multi-industry, multiple business models, containing management ideas, etc. SAP Outsourcing, but I think the biggest advantages are three, one is integration, one is planning and forecasting, and one is customization. Let's talk about each of them. In addition, as mentioned above, advantages and disadvantages are actually two sides of the same coin, which can be converted into each other under certain conditions, we need to remember that if not used properly, advantages will also become disadvantages.

Let's talk a little bit about the first advantage: integration. This kind of "integration" more loud name is "financial business integration"! Since SAP is a kind of ERP, ERP is also called enterprise resource planning, and the resources of an enterprise include many kinds, at least including people, money, and things, right? smart waste management Resources must affect each other, don't they? For example, people will affect money, you hire people, they work for the company, then you need to pay them wages. Things also affect money, you still have to pay for things, right? Anyway, the three are interrelated and inseparable, aren't they? So since we want to plan and manage these resources, we must use the "integration" of the east, not "integration", or play their own, there is no enterprise resource planning, that is, independent human resources planning, financial resources planning, material resources planning. Ok, so what are the benefits of integration? It is to reflect the mutual influence of people, money and things, and it should be reflected in real time. For example, I spend 10 yuan to buy 10 materials A required by the production of the enterprise. From a financial point of view, the raw materials (inventory) of the enterprise should be increased, and the provisional estimate (that is, the money to be paid to the supplier according to the purchase price) should be reflected. By integrating material A in the warehouse to reflect the increase of 10 items in logistics, a financial voucher can be generated in real time through integrating finance, which is reflected as an increase of 100 yuan in raw materials (10*10), and an increase of 100 yuan in dealing with provisional estimates, and so on. All the businesses affecting finance need to be reflected in real time in finance. Through "integration", the data can be transferred to finance in real time, and the logistics information on the business can be converted into financial information in real time. Such benefits are obvious, the financial department can accurately view the financial information in real time, but this is not the most compelling, because this integration is still the integration of the accounting level, this integration is more to manually input vouchers into the system to generate vouchers. In fact, finance pays more attention to the impact of prediction and planning, that is, how to achieve the impact on finance when the business does not happen or when the business starts to happen, this integration of planning and forecasting becomes pre-planning. Next, we will talk about the second advantage of SAP, "planning and forecasting". In fact, many things that human beings have done since the beginning of history are to accurately predict the future, such as divination in the primitive period, and various physical laws and mathematical equations discovered later, all of which are intended to predict the future through certain methods, thus increasing the certainty of the development of things. Unfortunately, there are also many facts later, especially in quantum physics, which prove that in fact, many things are unpredictable. For example, electrons appear in the probability of "electron clouds" rather than in a specific orbit, and in recent times, there has been a "chaos effect" and "uncertainty principle." It is in response to the thinking of traditional Chinese culture, the so-called Yin must be Yang, there is visible, there is invisible, accurate measurement, there is uncertainty, this is the nature of this world, ha ha, and go far.

"Planning and forecasting" is actually inseparable from "integration". Only with the help of "integration" can planning and forecasting be supported, because many planning and forecasting data are closely related to business, such as sales plan, production plan and procurement plan. Only after the seamless integration of business module and financial module can business plan be converted into financial plan. For example, there is the concept of Integration planning in SAP. To put it simply, sales plan is the source of all plans, and the sales plan drives the production plan, and the production plan drives the procurement plan, thus driving the entire supply chain. For example, the sales plan can be entered in SIS or COPA (transaction code: KEPM) in LIS, and the sales price can be automatically calculated by the system. Generally, sales plans can be broken down into customers, products, years, and months. After the Sales volume plan is completed, it can be transferred to the SOP (transaction code: KE1E), where the planned sales volume will be compared with the required production resources, and if the production resources cannot be met, it can be scheduled in advance. The SOP calculates the required planned work volume (based on the production volume and standard working hours in the process route) and transmits (transaction code: KSPP) to the cost center's work volume plan (KP26), which can then be used to assess whether there is sufficient capacity based on the work center's capacity data. Payroll expenses can be transferred from the personnel module (transaction code: KPHR) to the cost center plan (KP06), and depreciation expenses can be transferred from the asset module (transaction code: S_ALR_87099918) to the cost center plan (KP06), plus other cost plans input by the cost center itself (such as water, electricity, maintenance, office and other manufacturing expenses) to form the completion of the cost center plan, and then calculate the planned operation price, the planned operation price and BOM and process route can be combined to calculate the product standard cost. The product standard cost can be transferred to (evaluation strategy related configuration, evaluation point 03 (manual planning) /04 (automatic planning), when KEPM input the planning data, the menu "Other - evaluation analysis" can update the material planning cost) COPA, the planned cost and sales can be combined to calculate the planned profit, and then adjust the sales plan according to the results of the planned profit. A planning cycle is formed until satisfactory results are reached.

The third advantage is "customization", we know that the most important thing behind a software product is the program architecture and logic, which largely determines what the software can do and what it can't do. Just like a house, if you want to decorate, then the first thing you decide to decorate is the type of room and the structure of the house itself, right, this directly determines where you can move, where you can not move, what kind of decoration. We all know that the decoration of the house, the non-load-bearing wall we can knock off, redefine the space and even re-separate a room, but the load-bearing wall must be carefully weighed, what about the danger to the house? What if the building collapses? The structure of this house is the architecture of the software product, which cannot be easily moved or easily modified. If it is modified at will, the software will have the risk of collapse. So where is the focus of our decoration? Is our soft outfit, right, hard outfit change little, you can choose not much, but the soft outfit choice is more, color, style, position can be designed according to their own preferences. The design idea of SAP is similar to house decoration, it does a good job of structure, but allows you to decorate, our decoration process is a customized process, mature software almost has a similar design, if you have to build a house, then you can only develop a software from scratch, but I still say that, unless your business is very special, if you are not so special, No matter how professional a team you hire, I don't think it can surpass the mature products that have been tested and improved over decades of practice. Therefore, we need to make a preparation, since the choice of mature software, our enterprise is not ready to make some changes to meet the needs of this software, rather than everywhere to reflect the particularity of the enterprise itself, I have no doubt that any enterprise has its own special places, but these special is really so important or can not change to make a question mark. The "customization" of SAP is to allow us to do some "decoration" of the product according to the actual situation of the enterprise while ensuring that the structure of the product is not changed, which not only ensures the stability of the product itself, but also ensures that the product retains a certain flexibility. Based on this feature of SAP, my current thinking mode has also changed. The need for program rigor, compatibility and flexibility is also taken into account.

In fact, we can't say that this disadvantage is the problem of the product itself, but that once the positioning of a product is determined, the opposite of the product positioning is its disadvantage, which is inevitable, that is to say, the perfect product does not exist, I want a product to be rigorous, then it is bound to sacrifice some flexibility. That's for sure. The real problem of the product itself is only BUG, that is, the logical problem of the product itself, which is inevitable even for software products. If it is some mismatch or incompatibility between the product and the business of the enterprise, then I don't think it is the problem of the product, we would rather think it is the enterprise's insufficient understanding of the product, or the enterprise itself is not willing to make changes. It doesn't matter who is right or wrong, just like two people fall in love, just don't match up, then there is no way. Love is also that several results, one is not on the eye, do not talk, say goodbye to each other, one is to continue to talk, make some concessions to each other, and then it is a happy life together, the last one is the most depressed, not on the eye, because of various external factors to continue to talk, pretend to talk, no one is willing to give in, and ultimately painful life together. Therefore, we say that enterprises in the selection stage, it is best to have more understanding of the product, otherwise it is like falling in love, do not know much in advance, first determine the relationship, and even get married, and then invest a lot of feelings, and feel inappropriate, it is not a little late to regret this time, and the price to pay is also a little big, right? Speaking of the disadvantages of SAP, I want to explain that the changes brought about by SAP integration are huge. Once integrated, the affairs of one department are no longer the affairs of one department, which may have an impact on multiple departments and even the whole enterprise. For example, a mistake in receiving goods may affect production, finance and sales, which is not only at the software information level. The actual business is actually the same, but through integration, this impact can be reflected in the system in real time, but it will be troublesome to correct this error at the system level, if the goods have been taken or sent to the customer, then it needs to be offset link by link, this correction will be more troublesome, we should all understand, This is not really a software problem, but the system received the wrong information, which produced the wrong results. Therefore, my point of view is that the ERP product itself is a neutral thing, in fact, there is no advantage and disadvantage, or that sentence, suitable is good. But then again, how many people have a clear sense of what they fit into these days? For the enterprise is also, how many enterprises are aware of what kind of ERP products they are suitable for? Disorderly flowers charming eyes ah!

To really talk about SAP's weaknesses or what SAP can do better, I think there are the following points for your reference.

1. Chinese translation problem, it has to be said that the translation of many professional terms in SAP is really not accurate enough. For example, there was a menu under the production menu in the past called "shop floor control" in English, which was translated into Chinese as "shop floor control", but now it is changed to "workshop site control". There is also the information on the input of the bill of exchange, the Drawer and the Drawee in English one is called "Drawer" and the other is called "drawee". As a result, the Chinese translation is inverted, and the corresponding field of "Drawer" is translated into "drawer" and "drawer" is translated into "drawer". I sometimes talk about this problem with my friends around me, and I think SAP can learn from Microsoft in this respect. Microsoft's software, such as Office, is very accurate in translation, and it is in line with Chinese grammar and usage habits.

2. Input interface and habits. In recent years, SAP has launched NWBC (new user interface, according to my understanding, not many enterprises use it) and Fiori. Fiori is a client for mobile devices, which is based on HTML5, but I feel that it still has the shadow of the original SAP GUI, and the improvement is not particularly obvious. Many users are still using the traditional SAP GUI. Another problem is that too many fields can be input during system operation (some fields need to be input, some fields do not need to be input but will be displayed, although some places can be background Settings, such as field status Settings, but there are still more fields) and the input interface format is not friendly enough, from the system itself, to achieve complex functions, The input of the field is more, and the user interface is concise and easy to enter is a contradiction, so it is not easy to achieve a balance.

Finally, once again kindly remind companies that want to go on SAP, or learn more about the situation before falling in love, the shoes are suitable or not appropriate may not necessarily say that we must try to know, for example, we know that we are 40 feet, then we know that 45 shoes I can not wear, there is no need to try to wear.