Recently I was invited by my office colleague to give a talk on SAP, the ERP software, at an MBA class she was attending in Dela Salle University. It was a class, I think, on Technology Management.
In my talk, I gave an overview of SAP, as well as the latest developments on SAP software, as far as I knew it, which centered on Enhancement Packages. Enhancement Packages are essentially add-ons to the base ERP software of SAP. Instead of doing costly upgrades, if a company wants to add a new SAP functionality, it could be done via this route, which installs on top of the base software. This potentially minimizes risk and avoids downtime that are commonly associated with upgrades.
Since my audience were mostly business professionals, I also emphasized the need for business process knowledge and expertise as a very important aspect of ERP success, regardless whether it is SAP or any other software. If one thinks about it, a software is just a model of a business process, one that reflects the reality of the organization. The more mature an organization's business processes are, the better chance of a smooth implementation.
At the end, I pointed them to some resources that maybe useful for them if they wanted to do a further study on SAP. These are the websites help.sap.com and sdn.sap.com. These are surprisingly very rich sources of knowledge that can jumpstart anyone wanting to study SAP.
