Introduction To Sap Netweaver

Abstract

Company has always been looking for a way to increase revenue and reduce cost. To increase the revenue, company need to do continuous innovation and expand its business, however, while doing so, a bottleneck usually occur when company have to make a lot of investment and spend a lot of money on the expanded IT architecture. In most cases, more than 70 percents of IT budgets are spent on supporting current system and integration while less on innovation. Therefore, there is a need for improved tools and technology that support company continuous innovation and dynamic IT landscape while keeping the total cost of ownership low.

The objective is the report is to discuss the solution provided by SAP Netweaver, and how SAP Netweaver helps the company do business better. The first section of the report provides background to enterprise resource planning system concept, the second section discussed SAP Netweaver solution in detail and two case study on how companies benefited by implementing SAP Netweaver. The last section concludes on the benefit of implementing SAP Netweaver.

Introduction

Introduction to ERP

Enterprise Resource Planning, referred as ERP, is a process of integrating all aspects of business operations inside the enterprise such as sales, finance, human resource, manufacturing and customer service. The main objective is integration, ERP attempts to integrate all different needs of business operations into a single system to achieve numerous benefits.

The direct benefit of ERP Systems is to have data or information readily available at any time. Company having legacy systems that consists of different applications and database storing data for each business operations are facing trouble of searching information across different business operations. ERP enhance the coordination between company’s department, division or country of operation by having single database structure that support real time and up to date information throughout all company’s business operation for those who needed it.

ERP provides a single point of data entry into the systems. This avoids duplication of work for employee who previously needs to enter data repeatedly into various different applications. Other than increasing employee efficiency, it can also automate and speed up the company’s business process. By having data readily available to every business operations once data was entered, it’s possible to directly initiate the next action needed in the process.

One of the implications of having a single structure database to store all company’s data is having the same structure of data or information that would be seen by all business operations. Same structure impose a standardization of data which would results in better communication or coordination between company’s business operations as they would see the same value and representation of the data. In other words, ERP ensure the integrity and accuracy of the company’s data or information.

The most important benefit of ERP is it provides support for company’s strategic management, decision making and long term planning. Timely and accessible data supports employee to run daily business operation, while comprehensive reporting would helps manager to make decision making for company’s business and higher managerial to make long term planning for company’s business strategy.

Business Process, People and Technology Integration

The major requirement of an enterprise resource planning systems is to support integration of three aspects namely processes, people and technology. ERP systems should be able to support company’s business processes that can extend across different business operation within the company. People as the user of the systems should be able to easily perform business action and retrieve information from various business operations. Technology becomes the enabler which provides integration of all data or information that makes the people and process integration possible. Nowadays, integration within company itself is not enough. Company business processes are extending beyond the company and company are seeking a higher integration with external entity outside the company. Business Process, People and Technology integration boundary have been extended that a new tool to support that is needed.

Content

ERP Solution: SAP Netweaver

Introduction to SAP Netweaver

SAP Netweaver is a technical solution provided by SAP to build enterprise service oriented architecture. It acts as a foundation platform and provides architecture for all SAP Applications. It facilitates the integration of people, process and technology together. The people integration capability means bringing various people together to work efficiently, the process integration capability by providing support for coordination or flow of process between departments, divisions or even companies, and lastly the technology integration bring together applications from SAP or non SAP, across different technology and consolidation of information from various applications into a single architecture.

Company spends a lot of money to integrate their existing applications or with new developed applications. SAP Netweaver provides way to avoid all that. SAP Netweaver is a packaged integration solution, which means it created with integration in mind and can be deployed with integration feature already included. SAP Applications like Business Suite can be easily deployed on top of it. It also support other custom made applications built in popular technologies such as Microsoft .Net or J2EE.

To summarize the introduction to SAP Netweaver, Netweaver can be used to create portals that bring together functionality from various programs, it provides a consistent architecture and data storage of information across different applications, and it provides an interface or workflow of process that can start and end within enterprise or beyond enterprise.

SAP Netweaver Components

SAP Netweaver is consists of 6 core components that provide platform for integration and specialized functionality, namely:

1. SAP Netweaver Enterprise Portal

2. SAP Netweaver Mobile Infrastructure

3. SAP