Book key notes

The book is about a company who plans to implement SAP system at their base, and one of the manager Billy wants to prevent company to do this, as he believes it is not appropriate for them.

--Any software can not manage a company, they are only tools, managers manage companies.
--Current software was generally is usefull and with the adaptations made to it, it pretty well usefull.
--SAP system is not a big revolution for any company, but, they projected significant benefits, including better efficiency, some reductions in overhead costs, and much better information for running the business.
--SAP system brings integrated software that means all the systems talk directly to eachother. Some firms even integrated with their customers and suppliers. That means there is one number for inventory, only one for accounting, one for scheduling ...
--The information is real time , when updated, the new status is available for everyone.
--Deciding to integrate systems , to find out which numver will be used for sub systems (accounting..) will be a difficult process, and a lot of knowledgeable people needed. These problems can not be solved by SAP system.
-- In any software processes is run by people, if a job is not entered in MRP it is not there, that is same with SAP systems.
--Implementing an ERP for silly IT problems is useless.
--Integrating the organization, educating and involving people to use them is a managerial problem and can not be solved by software.
--There are a huge set of customization in SAP systems. and to configure it will need a huge work effort. That can not be copied from any other firm, as the processe will be different for all the companies.
--SAP has integrated data with similar interfaces for all of the modules it involves.
--SAP has a lot of processes and these processes are usually not how people are organized and they cut across functional areas.
--The SAP implementation can change the way people do things.
--One of the big jobs in using SAP then is to match the system to the organizationç That efford is called configuration.
--SAP has some simple process configurations which are called best practices.
--Entering the same data only once helps to improve quality and efficiency and reliability of the system.
--There are five major steps to implement SAP system, which are Project preparation, Business BluePrint, Realization, and GO live and Support.
--There is a client code at the system which can identify subsystems.
--There is an audit trail and this can be viewed only by authorized people.
--There is a three tiered client server architecture. There are server processes a dispatcher process which enable priority queue implementation for available jobs. All of the system must be configured by a knowledgeable team. These can lead to new computer hardware buy decisions.
--There is a ABAP/4 programming language in which anyone can implement new features. But this kills backward compatibility option of SAP system.
--Flexibility of the software is ended after configurated. As there is no updates for the configuration.


These are all known from the book, after this knowledge in hand Bill decided to integrate their own solution with SAP involving a team effort with education efforts involved. But company owner did not want to wait and Bill lost his job and company ended with a big chaos, they lost a lot of valuable perdonel and cıstomers.