Homepage for SAP Professionals

What is SAP

SAP stands for Systems Applications and Products in Data Processing. Designed and developed by 5 IBM engineers during the 1970s as a standards based software alternative to custom built ERP software, SAP has come a long way. SAP has been in the forefront of ERP software ever since.

SAP develops ERP products to be used by companies to manage their enterprise. This includes managing their day to day operations, logistics, finances, month end, quarter end and yearly activities, reporting, HR etc. Although there are a couple of other ERP vendors who do the same, the key differentiator for SAP is the way in which SAP integrates all these operations and makes for a seamless system that is both easy to use and at the same time sophisticated enough to include all kinds of complex activities that are needed for any kind of enterprise. Examples of some of these activities could, be running Material resource planning, recruiting and managing an employee’s lifecycle, disbursing payrolls, recording all financial transactions and drawing balance sheets and P/L statements of the company etc.   Now imagine a single system that takes care of all these diverse activities and still keep them well integrated. continue reading…

SAP Job Market

SAP job market is currently in a state of flux just like any other IT job. Where there used to be 10 jobs there are 4 or may be 5. Post recession, the reasons are obvious – Lack of budgets, postponing new implementations, general market slump etc.

However, all is not lost yet. There are still jobs. And more are going to come up as the economy slowly takes roots again and boomtown comes along. continue reading…

Fundamentals of SAP pricing

This tutorials discusses Condition Types and Requirements in SAP.

Pricing is one of the core concepts in SAP SD and all SD consultants need to know pricing. Just as the name says, SAP SD Pricing is configuring the system to effectively determine the price of a product under different circumstances. The most easiest example to explore pricing is to take a simple grocery bill and expand on it.

Consider this as an extract of a grocery bill. You have purchased some items from the Produce section and some from the stationery section. Your Produce sub-total is 18.00 and your stationery sub-total is 10.00. You have been taxed 10% and your total comes to 27.00 as shown in the picture above.

Let’s just explore on how the pricing is calculated on line item No. 10 – Milk. However, they might not be shown on the bill but are internal to the company selling the product. Let’s explore how a potential bill could be created. As you can see from the picture below, there is a Base Price from the price list – 5.00 . And since the bill is for a retail customer , there is a retail discount of 1.00. So the sub-total for the line item 10 is 4.00. continue reading…

by Consultant Box

Since 1997, one of the most consistently difficult skill sets to find has been the SAP HCM (HR) master – during the down turn after the Y2k disaster when the SAP market sank, the SAP HCM consultants were in comparatively huge demand – but today in 2010 we find that more and more HCM specialists are available for projects – not, by any means all of them but even some of the most highly regarded are looking for new contracts.

The rates of pay on offer have reduced, but likewise the expectations – during 98/99 these consultants were commanding large rates and expense accounts above many others in the same industry due to lack of supply, but today things have changed. continue reading…

by Consultant Box

When creating a team to deliver a complex solution such as SAP, there is a very real need to have the most suitable and experienced people working at the highest levels, to bring together both the SAP solution knowledge and the clients business engineers.

SAP under former chief executive Leo Apotheker, focused on the importance of quality consulting to ensure successful and viable delivery of the SAP product – the, now famous, off record quote from Apotheker caused offence to many consulting houses by shifting the blame from SAP itself to its two global vendors – IBM and Accenture.

When apportioning blame it should be considered that the SAP solution has been implemented in most environments and has fitted into most global legal and accounting systems – however there are a comparatively high number of cases, where SAP implementations have failed.

Senior SAP consultants are often the individuals who are at the sharp end of issues between the three parties – SAP, implementation partner and the end customer. To this end, many of the senior consultants are starting to consider what issues may arise, when accepting positions within complex or failing projects. continue reading…

You are working as a SAP Security Admin and there they go again! Users call you up and demand to give them access so that they can change layout sets in transaction VA05.  The users are screaming: Give me SAP_ALL, Give me everything! I cannot work! The option to save layout is grayed out!

Well, first thought is, that you would not allow them to change global layouts (S_ALV_LAYO), but that may not be the case.

continue reading…

You have been working hard to get the experience you have now, but are hesitant to share it with other without getting the merit for it and others taking advantage of your hard work and just downloading it for free. Good ideas and good materials should be rewarded as the sweat you put into a solution can save others hours or weeks of going through the same learning curve. One solution you came up with can save others hours if not weeks of research! Don’t give it away for free. continue reading…