The customization: Various levels, types...

hi everyone!


the lecture today was separated in two parts. The first one occurs in class and the 2nd one was in front of our laptop, confronting to this, now famous, SAP!

Firstly we worked about our case: Decathlon. How should we implement an ERP in Decatlon, these multinational companies present in 14 countries and havng 350 shops?
Even if the head quarter is in Lille, if the most of the shops are in France do we need to implement first an ERP in France?
Or should we implement only one module in each countries? what about he culture?
We did not find one good solution to our case and thanks to the whole groups we found out more than 6 solutions!! We are going to work more about and make lot of assumptions to take our decision

Secondly, we worked about the customization to know how we have to implement the ERP system. In fact, some characteristic can be changed but various levels are proposed. If you just do a module selection, it will means that there is almost no cutsomization. Only few things will be changed. The table configuration means that you change the modules and fially, the more customized possible is the code modification: these one were the "background" is changed to fit as closed as possible the needs of the users. These are the 3 diferent levels.

To customize more deeply, bolt-on's can be used too. Thus, you can add various application on the system to reach your needs.

I remember that thanks to Workflow programming you can change the orders of things and ABAP is the programming language to change things onSAP.

One of the key question was about the people needed to implement a SAP. ONly a consulting firm and a complete outsourcing, half from the company and half from consultant or only It department of the company?

For eachsolution, key people are needed to get the acceptance of the employees.

There is two type of customization: the code modification or the process customization. The process customization is when you adapt your business to fit the software.
The technical customization is when you change the software to be sure it will fit to your business.


in the practical part, I did not really understand the goal. I was just following the instructions but I do not know how to o it again!
However, now we know what SAP is! It seems more concrete even if each actions do not seems all the time really logical..

Tomorrow maybe we will nderstand more about and find out a solution for our case....