Erp Review - Microsoft Vs. Sap

Enterprise Tools Review Paper

Clothing Unlimited, Inc.

SAP vs. Microsoft

December 3, 2007

Clothing Unlimited, Inc. is a worldwide distribution and manufacturing company for high-end consumer clothing. Headquartered in Dallas Texas, Clothing Unlimited Inc. has distribution centers and manufacturing locations around the world, UK, France, South Africa, Brazil, North America, China, Japan, and Taiwan. With global revenue of just over one billion dollars and 5,500 employ-ees, Clothing Unlimited, Inc. focuses on modern high-end clothing from around the world. Some of their largest customers include Nordstrom, high end retailers of imported clothes, Sachs 5th Ave-nue, Nike Apparel, Guess, etc. Due to the cut throat nature of import/export and contract manufac-turing industry, Clothing Unlimited, Inc. focuses its' efforts on a streamlined distribution system, inventory management program, just in time delivery, and cost control. Their home grown legacy system is quickly becoming out dated and no longer proves to be competitive in the information and integration age.

This research focused on the evaluation of two leading end to end business solutions, both providing operational, manufacturing, finance, administration, supply chain, inventory management, sales, and order management capabilities. The end goal is to integrate end to end processes pro-viding a clear, on demand, picture of product availability, future needs, WIP, while still providing scalability. Driving this effort is the continued pressure of inventory management, cost of owner-ship, shrinking lead-times, and the increasing technically competent competition.

Directive from the CEO and board of directors is to reduce inventory costs, decrease sales cycle time, and to derive value from the existing corporate information technology infrastructure. Total cost of ownership should be considered, return on investment, and future flexibility to add additional capability as the competitive landscape changes along with the financial goals. Addi-tionally, they are requesting an implementation timeline of no-longer than 15 months, and a budget not to exceed seven million US dollars.

Clothing Unlimited, Inc. is currently deployed globally on Microsoft Exchange Servers for email, uses MS Office products, and is in the beginning stages of using MS BizTalk Servers for B2B integration with customers and suppliers alike. Finding a synergy with an enterprise-application suite to the current infrastructure will be critical.

The two business solutions being considered are mySAP business suite by SAP AG and Microsoft Dynamics AX by Microsoft Corporation. Considered in the analysis will be an enterprise resource planning tool, a customer relationship management application, and finally a supply chain management application. The two solutions were chosen based on industry reputation and differ-ent approaches to business application solutions.

Solution Option 1 Solution Option 2

ERP mySAP Business Suite MS Dynamics AX

CRM

SCM

Solution Option 1 Ð'- mySAP Business Suite

SAP AG is the largest business solution software company in the world. More than 42 thou-sand employees in more than 50 countries worldwide and revenue of 9.4 billion Euro in 2006. (SAP.com) SAP offers business solutions to businesses of all sizes. Their products are designed to streamline operations, human resources, finance, sales, and manufacturing. Their products can be integrated with one another. Their primary focus is to extract as much value from a business as possible using efficient, consistent, and dynamic solutions.

SAP AG's enterprise resource planning tools are designed to help companies recognize additional value from their business activities. SAP breaks its solution into multiple modules for strategic implementation however is focused on business solutions:

Ð'* Analytics

Ð'* Financials

Ð'* Human Capital Management Ð'* Procurement and Logistics Execution

Ð'* Product Development and Manufacturing

Ð'* Sales and Service

Ð'* Corporate Services

(SAP.com)

Their ERP solution is broken into seven different categories and eleven different modules. The point of the segregation is to allow for flexible integration and customization for dynamic com-panies. For Commodities Unlimited Inc. it is important that only solutions that are necessary are purchased and implemented. The module approach from SAP allows Commodities Unlimited to pick and chose the right combination for their needs, with the flexibility to add on at a later time.

The following are modules SAP breaks the ERP solution into. All can be implemented in-dependently or mixed and matched.

FI Financial Accounting Ð'- essentially regulatory Ð''books of record', including

Ð'* General ledger

Ð'* Book close

Ð'* Tax

Ð'* Accounts receivable Ð'* Accounts payable

Ð'* Consolidation

Ð'* Special ledgers

CO Controlling Ð'- internal cost/management accounting, including

Ð'* Cost elements

Ð'* Cost centers

Ð'* Profit centers Ð'* Internal orders

Ð'* Activity based costing

Ð'* Product costing

AM Asset Management Ð'- track, value and depreciate assets, including

Ð'* Purchase

Ð'* Sale Ð'* Depreciation

Ð'* Tracking

PS Project Systems Ð'- manage projects, large and small, including

Ð'* Make to order