SAP Basis Company was found by five former IBM employees- Dietmar Hopp, Hans Werner Hector, Hasso Plattner, Klaus Tschira and Claus Wellenreuther. It was founded in Germany in
the year 1972. SAP stands for systems, applications, products in data processing. In a year’s time the first financial accounting software was completed which was known as
R/1 System. R stands for real-time data processing. The full name of the parent company is SAP AG. It has subsidiaries in nearly 50 countries. SAP AG is the third largest
software maker in the whole world and it has nearly 27,000 employers all over the world and over 17,500 customers. It is listed in Frankfurt stock exchange and NYSE. Sap
delivers software to small and mid sized companies also. SAP solutions that are used in small and mid sized business are SAP business one, SAP business all-in-one etc.
These solutions are affordable, easy to use. SAP business one is specially designed for small concerns mostly for 10 to 100 employees. It covers the core operations to run
a successful business like customer relationship management, accounting, e-commerce, reporting and warehousing and partner management. Sap products and services integrate
an organization f
rom financials to human resources to manufacturing and sales and distribution. Because of this integration the companies can optimize supply chains,
strengthen customer relationships and make correct management decisions. More than 100 midsize companies implemented SAP R/3 solutions.
SAP R/3 is a software solution for client/server computing. This software can be used by a small grocer to a billion dollar companies. This software is generally designed
to meet the needs of the customer. SAP R/3 can be used on several databases like oracle, Adabas D, Informix, DB2 for UNIX, DB2/400 and Microsoft SQL SERVER 6.0. SAP R/3
software is used in many industries like insurance, banking, automobiles, oil and gas, public sector, manufacturing and material, services, transportation, aerospace,
defense, construction, pharmaceuticals and chemicals.
Most of the distinctive functional modules are financials and controlling (FICO), Human Resources (HR), Materials Management (MM), sales & Distribution (SD), and Production
planning (PP).The most difficult part in SAP R/3 is its implementation. Atlas copco has a different implementation of SAP R/3 from Proctor & Gamble. For example if a
company is running SAP and then acquires a new business where SAP is already being used. They may elect to keep both systems separate, migrate one into the other, or SAP Basis
migrate both onto a completely new instance. SAP has many layers. The Basis system (BC) includes the ABAP programming language, and is the base of operations and should not
be visible to higher or managerial users. The heart of the system is the application modules. SAP R/3 provides an implementation roadmap that is broken into five phases.
The five phases and their tasks include project preparation, business blueprint, realization, final preparation, and roll-out. SAP R/3 is a leader in ERP installations and
ERP sales. SAP R/3 is based on many hardware and software architectures which is being runner in most types of UNIX, Windows NT, and OS/400.