It's been a long time since my last post. I was hammered by a lot of tasks in my last week in NTU and early week in Yogya. I had TERP10 certification test in my last week in NTU and now I'm having my thesis to be done. I planned to meet my thesis supervisor this morning but he was teaching in other site in my university. Therefore, I have to wait till this afternoon. Having 3 hours for waiting, I feel want to post something :P Let me talk something more scientific than the last mellow post.
In this post, I want to talk about SAP ERP, a powerful enterprise resource planning (ERP) software. In my single semester in NTU, I took a course called Enterprise Computing. From that course, I learned a lot about the concept of ERP/enterprise system (ES) and the practical skill of using ERP software, specifically SAP. After finishing that course, I was able to take one of SAP entry level certifications, TERP10. Thanks GOD, I made it. The course was so exciting because the teacher was a real SAP consultant. He was able to combine and deliver the concept of ES, business process, and the practical skill. The latter consists of using and customizing SAP ERP. From the learning that I got, I can frankly speak that I understand about enterprise business processes and the basic skill of using SAP. :P Thanks to my teacher aka James.
ERP software has a main objective to plan the resources in the enterprise so the enterprise can achieve its objective that is profit maximization. The resources could be a material resources, fixed assets, human resources, etc. Resources in the very big company often located and managed in many different departments. At the same time, the companies need to deliver the product to the customer using the integrated business process that involve those departments. In this point, ERP software helps the company to integrate the information so the activity can also be integrated.
SAP ERP is a modular ERP software. It has a module for each company functions, such as accounting, procurement, production, sales and distribution, human capital management etc. These modules serve the users in every departments by integrating the information in one database and distributing the information to the users who need it.
SAP ERP is developed by SAP AG, a Germany-based enterprise software developer. Now, majority of the big companies is using SAP ERP for its operation. SAP ERP could win over its competitors, such as Oracle, because it offers more integration between its modules. The major weakness of SAP ERP is only its interface. It looks very old-fashioned and confusing for the newbie. Many competitors try to offer much better interface to overcome SAP ERP. However, it's hard for them because SAP ERP has the best quality in system integration which is the most important feature of ERP software.
Nowadays, many Indonesian companies, such as Astra International, have used SAP ERP. However, the companies that haven't used SAP ERP and have the potential to use it are more in number. This condition also happened in other developing countries such as India and China. In conclusion, wherever there is a high growth potential, there will be a place for SAP ERP to help the companies to reach profit maximization.
No comments:
Post a Comment