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"Founded in 1972, SAP has a rich history of innovation and growth as a true industry
leader. And, with SAP enhancement packages and services for getting started with or upgrading to SAP
ERP software,
you can benefit from reduced costs and minimized disruptions to your business operations."
Source : SAP
The Midsized Company: ERP Revisited
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For you, will it be Bells and Whistles or a Future for your Business?
AS COMPETITION INTENSIFIES, AND EVERY PART OF YOUR ORGANIZATION COMES UNDER
MORE PRESSURE, SO-CALLED ‘BEST OF BREED’ SOFTWARE CAN BE TEMPTING. These solutions
seem to be inexpensive, promise a quick fix, and typically come with attractive bells and whistles
that appeal to one department or another within your company. But, top executives charged with
taking a holistic view of the company’s challenges need to take a stand, and insist on what’s best
for the business. That means putting in place the foundation for its survival and growth.
FOR SMALL AND MIDSIZED COMPANIES, A NEW DEFINITION OF ERP ...
Excellence at a Reasonable Price
Globally, half of all SAP deployments are at companies with revenues of less than
U.S.$500 million. Why? The reason is that the integrated information flow delivered
by ERP software provides a foundation for growth and performance that increases
shareholder value. Why now? Like most technologies, the total cost, complexity, and
speed to value of the enterprise resource planning (ERP) OV compliant software have
declined sharply, making ERP affordable for midsized companies.
In imposing the demands of ever-lower prices,
higher service levels, shorter response times, and
better fill rates, retailers make no allowances for
company size –– midsized and small companies
are under the same pressures to perform the
same as their largest competitors. Regulatory
agencies also add an ever-increasing burden of
compliance in financial reporting, ingredients
labeling, food safety, traceability, and more.
To meet these ever-growing pressures, the temptation
is is to implement a quick-fix point solution
as each new problem comes to the fore, and each
functional department cries out for a remedy.
But as a top executive taking the long view, you
know that what you really need is not a series of
ad-hoc fixes but a suite of integrated processes,
so that your company’s vital fuel –– information
–– flows freely and quickly, everywhere it is
needed. Integration leverages a potentially broad
ecosystem of partners –– other internal departments,
customers, suppliers, and vendors –– to
facilitate collaboration. The result is increased
operational productivity and transparency, leading
to greater efficiency, control, and, ultimately,
customer satisfaction.
What you may not know is how well within
your reach integrated processes now are.
Today, new enterprise resource planning (ERP)
software that incorporates captured best practices
have changed the rules of the game. Today’s
ERP enables companies of every size to maximize
their speed and flexibility to close the gap
in core business processes such as cycle times,
and, perhaps most importantly, to gain visibility
into your customers’ needs and your suppliers’
performance –– all of which are core to next-generation
supply-chain management.
Today, ERP software is no longer just for giant
companies. As with most technologies, time and
critical mass have dramatically cut the cost, complexity,
and speed to value of ERP solutions.
Big companies have assumed the burden of developing
these capabilities. Now, you can benefit
from their pathfinding efforts and investment.
Indeed, for midsize and small companies,
“ERP” might well have become an acronym for
excellence –– at a reasonable price.
SAP offers preconfigured ERP applications
designed to meet the business and operational
needs of midsized consumer products companies.
SAP’s global experience in working with
thousands of consumer products companies
brings best practices knowledge to bear on your
company’s unique challenges. State-of-the-art
software can be deployed quickly, bringing
business-process benefits, and a financial ROI
faster than you may have thought possible. Also
you can tailor aspects of the solution to your
unique competitive requirements, you can do
that, too –– at far less cost than configuring
from scratch.
That’s why, today, forward-thinking mid-sized
companies have revisited and invested in ERP
software. As a result, companies including
Johnsonville Sausage, Jay's Foods, LLC,
Church and Dwight Co., Inc., Solo Cup
Company, Carolina Turkey, and Tasty Baking
Company now enjoy the opportunity and ability
to match the performance metrics of their
best-in-class competitors of all sizes, while
increasing their ROI and shareholder value.
To these companies and hundreds more, SAP
has delivered ERP best practices in the form of
preconfigured building blocks or templates that
are rapidly deployable and flexible enough to
adapt to unique and/or differentiating business
requirements.
These captured best practices accelerate time to
value, because the SAP solution is preconfigured,
based on years of best-practices development.
Featuring the same underlying SAP software that
every major consumer products company now
runs, this new generation of pre-configured ERP
applications delivers system-wide access to a single
version of the truth –- a unified, consistent
view of the business. This, in turn, enables users
throughout the enterprise to identify concerns
early and pursue opportunities aggressively.
So, the next time someone in your organization
asks you to authorize a so-called best of breed
point solution, be aware that –– as a midsized
or small enterprise –– you can incrementalize
yourself into mediocrity. As its owner or chief
executive, stop and think about what will best
secure your company’s future and increase its
worth: Will it really be this bell or that whistle?
Or will it be real-time –– or near-real-time ––
information, one version of the truth flowing
everywhere at once?
It’s time for you, too, to revisit ERP software ––
its cost, its implementation, its best-of-suite
capabilities and its time to value. The fact is,
you will need an ever-stronger organizational
house to weather the winds of change –- and
there is just no way to build a safe, secure house
without a sturdy ERP foundation.
YOU NEED A STRONG HOUSE TO WEATHER THE WINDS OF CHANGE: An ERP solution is the foundation.
Why ERP?
“Small and midsize
businesses face the same
manufacturing challenges
as their counterparts in the
FORTUNE 1000:
increasingly complex
manufacturing and supply
chain compliance,
proliferation of product
variants, shorter lead times,
increased demand volatility,
demand signals coming
from multiple sources, and
managing — or adhering
to service-level agreements
(SLAs) as the provider of
— contract manufacturing
services.”
“Midmarket ERP
Providers Must Accelerate
SOA Adoption, Part 2:
Using SOA to Accelerate
ERP-Based
Manufacturing,” April
2006, AMR Research,
Colin Masson and Simon
Jacobson
Midsized and Small SAP ERP Adopters
- Increased operations integration
- Improved order-fill rates
- Reduced working capital
- Improved transportation planning, and reduced expenses
- Improved ease of compliance with FDA food-safety requirements
- Improved production yield
- Improved employee-skill tracking
- Increased timeliness and accuracy of management information
- Reduced manual labor for data
- Stabilized ERP platform to support growth
www.sap.com