ERP And SAP

 

SAP, an acronym for Systeme, Anwendungen und Produkte in der Datenverarbeitung (Systems, Applications, and Products in Data Processing), is a multinational software corporation headquartered in Walldorf, Germany. SAP is widely known for its enterprise resource planning (ERP) software and solutions.

History and Founders:

SAP was founded in 1972 by five former IBM employees: Dietmar Hopp, Hasso Plattner, Claus Wellenreuther, Klaus Tschira, and Hans-Werner Hector. They initially aimed to develop standard software for real-time data processing, focusing on business applications. The company's first product, called SAP R/1 (Real-Time Data Processing System), was released in 1973 and ran on IBM mainframes.

Over the years, SAP experienced significant growth and introduced new versions of its software, such as SAP R/2 and SAP R/3. The introduction of SAP R/3 in 1992 marked a turning point for the company, as it transitioned from a mainframe-based system to a client-server architecture, making it more flexible and adaptable.

What does SAP do?

SAP is primarily known for its ERP software, which integrates various business processes and functions into a single system, providing organizations with a comprehensive view of their operations. ERP systems help streamline and optimize business activities, including finance, human resources, manufacturing, supply chain management, customer relationship management, and more.

SAP's ERP software enables companies to manage their operations efficiently, improve decision-making, and enhance collaboration across departments. It provides a centralized platform where organizations can store and analyze their data, automate processes, and gain actionable insights.

ERP and SAP Modules: Within SAP's ERP software, different modules are designed to address specific functional areas of an organization. These modules can be implemented individually or integrated together based on the specific needs of a company. Some of the commonly known SAP modules include:

1. Financial Accounting (FI): Manages financial transactions, general ledger, accounts payable and receivable, asset accounting, and financial reporting.
2. Controlling (CO): Provides tools for cost accounting, budgeting, profitability analysis, and internal reporting.
3. Sales and Distribution (SD): Handles sales processes, order management, pricing, shipping, and billing.
4. Materials Management (MM): Deals with procurement, inventory management, goods receipt, and material valuation.
5. Production Planning (PP): Controls manufacturing processes, including capacity planning, bill of materials, work orders, and shop floor control.
6. Human Capital Management (HCM): Manages employee data, payroll, time management, recruitment, training, and organizational management.
7. Customer Relationship Management (CRM): Supports customer-centric processes, including sales, marketing, service, and customer analytics.
8. Supply Chain Management (SCM): Optimizes supply chain operations, including demand planning, logistics, warehouse management, and supplier collaboration.

These are just a few examples of SAP modules, and the company offers many more to cater to various industry-specific requirements.

SAP's continuous innovation and expansion into cloud-based solutions have further diversified its product portfolio, offering solutions for analytics, business intelligence, mobility, database management, and more. Today, SAP is one of the world's largest software companies, serving customers across industries and empowering organizations to thrive in the digital age.

I hope this post finds you all in good health and high spirits. Today, I am excited to announce the creation of the SAP Professionals WhatsApp Group, a platform aimed at fostering collaboration, networking, and knowledge sharing within the SAP community.

As the creator of this group, I firmly believe in the power of collective intelligence and the immense value it can bring to individuals and organizations alike. In today's fast-paced world, staying up-to-date with the latest trends, industry insights, and best practices is essential for professionals working with SAP technologies. This group aims to bridge the gap between industry experts, consultants, developers, and enthusiasts, enabling them to connect, learn, and grow together.

So, what makes the SAP Professionals WhatsApp Group unique? Let's explore some key features and benefits:

1. Open to All SAP Professionals: Whether you are an experienced SAP consultant, a skilled developer, a product manager, a business analyst, or an aspiring professional seeking insights into the world of SAP, this group welcomes you. By bringing together a diverse range of individuals, we create a vibrant community that thrives on shared expertise.
2. Knowledge Sharing and Problem Solving: One of the primary objectives of this group is to provide a platform for knowledge sharing. Members can discuss SAP-related topics, seek advice, and share their own experiences. From troubleshooting technical issues to brainstorming innovative solutions, our collective wisdom will help drive success in SAP projects.
3. Networking Opportunities: Networking plays a crucial role in professional growth. By joining the SAP Professionals WhatsApp Group, you gain access to a vast network of like-minded individuals, potential mentors, and industry leaders. Expand your professional connections, exchange ideas, and explore new opportunities.
4. Stay Updated with Industry Trends: The SAP ecosystem is constantly evolving, and staying on top of the latest trends is vital. Group members will benefit from curated updates on SAP news, product releases, upcoming events, and relevant insights. Engage in meaningful discussions around these topics and discover how they impact your work.
5. Exclusive Learning Resources: Learning never stops, and this group aims to foster continuous professional development. Discover and share valuable learning resources such as blogs, articles, tutorials, webinars, and online courses related to SAP technologies. Together, we can enhance our skills and stay ahead in this dynamic field.

To join the SAP Professionals WhatsApp Group, simply follow these steps:

1. Send a direct message to me, stating your interest in joining the group. We as a SAP community will validate your profile and share the group link.
2. Provide a brief introduction, including your professional background and your motivation for joining.
3. Please ensure your LinkedIn profile is up-to-date to help us maintain the quality and professionalism of the group.

A word of caution: This group is for professionals genuinely interested in SAP and committed to contributing positively. It is important to maintain a respectful, inclusive, and supportive environment for everyone.

I am excited about the endless possibilities that this WhatsApp group holds for all of us. Let us embrace this opportunity to connect, collaborate, and share knowledge, ultimately empowering ourselves and the SAP community as a whole.

If you have any questions or suggestions regarding the group, please feel free to reach out. I look forward to welcoming you to the SAP Professionals WhatsApp Group and witnessing the incredible impact we can create together!

Introducing the SAP Professionals WhatsApp Group: Unlocking Collaboration and Knowledge Sharing

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software is used to manage a company's day-to-day operations.

Accounting, human resources (HR), procurement, customer connections (CRM), supply chain, manufacturing, engineering, maintenance, projects, service, and other functions are aided by it. An ERP solution combines the functions listed above into a single piece of software, ensuring that the business runs as efficiently as possible and giving the organization with a single source of truth for better decision-making. In a nutshell, ERP software is a collection of tools that integrates an organization's value chain into a unified environment.

Difference between ERP and SAP

ERP stands for Enterprise Resource Planning and it’s a business process management system which automates and integrates all the core business processes of an organization into a shared database in order to streamline processes and information across the organization. SAP (Systems, Applications, and Products in Data Processing) can be referred to as the products offered by the company SAP AG. SAP is one of the largest providers of ERP software in the world.

2023 News:At its annual Sapphire conference, SAP is announcing innovations to modernize ERP. AI plays an important role in this, but what else on the roadmap? In any case, SAP promises that the innovations will give enterprise organizations “the tools they need to tackle the future with confidence.”

Looking at what is most important to SAP users right now, we can see that it is whether or not they are upgrading to the more modern ERP S/4HANA. Official recent numbers are not available, however the market indicates that a considerable percentage of users continue to use the older ERP system ECC. However, this method is based on outdated market standards and will be obsolete in a few years. Overall, SAP has lately made two significant advances to make modernization more appealing. First, RISE with SAP, a software package that assists businesses in modernizing their business processes. It includes tools for redesigning and migrating business processes to a modular software environment. It means that your organization creates processes to fulfill the market standards set and built by SAP for your industry. A variety of services to host SAP workloads on the cloud and apply process mining to optimize processes are also included in the bundle.

Following up from RISE with SAP, the ERP behemoth has released GROW with SAP. The distinction lies in the target audience and the services tailored to them; RISE with SAP is intended at enterprise organizations, whilst GROW with SAP is focused at midsize businesses. According to SAPPHIRE news, of these solutions, RISE with SAP will receive enhancements. This is because ERP announcements specifically target very large enterprises.

AI Built for Business

At the dawn of a new AI era, SAP is strengthening its commitment to embed powerful AI capabilities across its portfolio to help customers solve business-critical problems in the flow of work.

Customers can use SAP Business AI with confidence because it is built responsibly. Today, SAP is announcing a raft of advancements to SAP Business AI, including innovations that personalize customer engagement, make procurement more productive and expand organizations’ abilities to find and develop critical talent across their entire workforce.

SAP also draws on the strength of its rich ecosystem to benefit customers. Yesterday SAP announced the next step in its long-standing partnership with Microsoft. The companies will collaborate on integrating SAP SuccessFactors solutions with Microsoft 365 Copilot and Copilot in Viva Learning as well as with Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI Service to access powerful language models that analyze and generate natural language. The integrations will enable new experiences designed to improve how organizations attract, retain and skill their people.

Reference from: https://news.sap.com/2023/05/sap-sapphire-future-proofed-business-age-of-ai/

https://news.sap.com/2023/05/sap-sapphire-icertis/

SAP and contract intelligence pioneer Icertis are delivering a new integration that connects AI-driven contract intelligence with SAP S/4HANA in order to enable more profitable and compliant procurement operations.

Icertis Contract Intelligence (ICI) for SAP S/4HANA (purchase side) is the next step in SAP and Icertis' combined product roadmap, as the businesses continue to change contract-driven operations by combining contract intelligence with SAP solutions.

Contract intelligence enables SAP S/4HANA procurement teams to streamline sourcing, negotiate better commercial terms, and increase compliance with regulatory and corporate regulations. By automatically recommending terms based on prior business interactions and tracking commitments to guarantee the goal of all agreements is completely realized, the ICI platform accelerates value and increases savings both pre- and post-signature. Artificial intelligence (AI) built in the ICI platform also reduces risk by detecting deviations from conventional terms, while specified norms and templates further decrease liability via contract self-generation capabilities that enable procurement teams to play a more strategic role in driving business performance.

Benefits and Advantages of ERP Tools

1. Data Security : Data has become a prized possession for businesses because it’s so critical to making the best possible decisions, and ERP software can help protect that asset. The fact that all this data is in one place, rather than spread across multiple systems with varying levels of security, increases the level of protection. It replaces spreadsheets and other documents sitting on employees’ desktops and being passed around via email. With a cloud ERP system, your information is typically distributed across multiple remote servers to establish redundancies and protect against a single point of failure, adding another layer of security. This is especially important if your company handles a lot of sensitive customer data. In another sense, an ERP system can increase data security by limiting who can view and edit data. Most systems have permissions that are easy to control, ensuring employees only see the information they need to and reducing opportunities for fraud or other nefarious activities.
2. Centralized Data : Much of the benefit of ERP can be attributed to the fact that all information from all departments is maintained in a single location. Without such a system, data is frequently dispersed across a business in numerous apps and spreadsheets, making it difficult for personnel to find what they need. Furthermore, this strategy frequently results in duplicate data in inconsistent forms, adding to the difficulties. An ERP system can also help with this by standardizing all of your vital data. Because it's all in one system, everything will be in the same format, so you won't have any problems running reports or analytics. Standardized data enables you to obtain all of the insights you require to make more educated decisions.
3. Compliance : Having accurate, up-to-date records that are easy to find and searchable can really reduce the work required to comply with any regulations your company must adhere to. Customizable reporting tools within the software also make it far easier to track compliance and adjust as necessary. This makes you much more auditable, as well, because all the information an auditor might need to review is easily accessible. Certain ERP systems can even support specific financial standards like GAAP or regulations like the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX).
4. Increased Productivity : There are countless ways an ERP system can give a major boost to productivity. One way is that it automates many basic, repetitive tasks, freeing up employees to work on other projects that bring more value to the organization.
5. Visibility : Visibility is another one of the broad, fundamental benefits of ERP — everyone having visibility into various aspects of the business is a powerful thing. It enables faster and better decisions because managers have all relevant context that can assist them. For example, if the purchasing team can see the status of in-transit purchase orders that have not yet reached the warehouse, they can factor that into the orders they’re about to submit to avoid excess or insufficient stock.
6. Collaboration : So many of the benefits we’ve already covered here facilitate collaboration. Visibility into the way other teams work and what information they’re looking at makes it far easier to work hand-in-hand and for staff to reach out proactively when they see an opportunity to help colleagues. No longer are teams operating on an island and using applications that only they have access to and that aren’t integrated with other back-end systems.
7. Accurate Forecasting : Your business can only be prepared for what’s coming if it knows what to expect. That’s where forecasting comes in: it uses a wide range of historical data and sometimes other inputs to predict future demand, revenue, expenses and other numbers. Forecasts are much more accurate once you’re running an ERP system because they’re based on more accurate and comprehensive information, since all that data is now in one place. More accurate forecasts mean you can make the appropriate preparations for what is likely to happen. If sales are expected to climb 30%, you can strategically purchase more inventory or, if you’re a services business, hire more employees with the skills where you expect increased demand.

AI "User Research" Conversation

 

n February 2026, Fireflies (#NotSponsored) asked if I wanted to create a Voice Agent. They said it could be used for user research.

Sure, I’d love to try that.

I used its default questions, of which there were only a few. Can you describe how you currently do this task or workflow? What parts of this experience are most frustrating? What parts work well for you today? How often do you run into issues here?

These are not my favorite questions, but let’s see how the default questions go. One might imagine they would produce excellent results, especially if the bot was trained on using these questions.

Screenshot from the setup page. I’m not sure if this would have gone significantly better by uploading a knowledge base. Either AI can ask questions to meet the research goals or it can’t.

Here is how that spoken conversation went, transcribed by Fireflies. I spoke into my computer headset. “Fred” the Fireflies AI spoke with a male American voice, though I think there was a choice of voices in the settings. My commentary afterward.

User Research Agent <> Debbie Levitt Meeting Date: 3rd Feb, 2026–2:14 PM

Link to session (may or may not work without a Fireflies account): https://app.fireflies.ai/view/User-Research-Agent-Debbie-Levitt::01KGHT8NV1EB5E4ED9S2GXH1XN

Agent: Hi, Debbie Levitt. Thanks for joining. How are you doing today?

Debbie Levitt: Okay. How about you?

Agent: I’m doing well, thanks for asking. I’ll be asking a few questions to understand your experience and perspective. There are no right or wrong answers. Feel free to take your time. Sound okay?

Debbie Levitt: Sure.

Agent: Great. Thanks. Can you describe how you currently do this task or workflow?

Debbie Levitt: Yeah, it started when I was trying to buy a rack case for my DJ mixer and I had a lot of problems trying to buy the right thing that would fit my mixer.

Agent: Could you walk me through a bit more about what that process looked like?

Debbie Levitt: Yeah. I was using the website to try to find what would fit my mixer, but there were a lot of confusing terms like things that were measured in U, the letter U, and ra. These were terms I wasn’t familiar with. I could measure my mixer, but I didn’t know what it was in terms of U or ra, and it was hard to find the right thing on the website.

Agent: Got it. What parts of this experience are most frustrating?

Debbie Levitt: The parts I didn’t even tell you about yet. There’s an entire task in which I was trying to buy the right thing and ended up having to deal with customer support and they were trying to guess what would fit. It was really quite a long task and process that we haven’t really covered.

Agent: Sure, take your time. Can you walk me through what happened with that?

Debbie Levitt: Yeah. After I did some searching on the site, I ended up contacting customer support and I tried to ask them what would fit my mixer and even they weren’t particularly sure. They ended up writing me back with some suggestions and went back and forth a number of times until I selected an item which they confirmed would fit. And so I bought it. But when I got did not, it, let’s just say it was not as described or expected and I ended up having to return it. Even customer support admitted that it didn’t end up working out for me and they gave me a refund.

Agent: Thanks. So, just to make sure I understand, what were the most frustrating parts of that whole experience for you?

Debbie Levitt: Really? Everything. I’m not sure any part of that went particularly well. There were problems with all of it.

Agent: Okay. What parts work well for you today?

Debbie Levitt: I guess the only thing that might have worked well if I had to pick something was that this website did have a good variety of equipment. I had many choices, but of course I couldn’t tell which choices were right for me.

Agent: Got it. How often do you run into issues here?

Debbie Levitt: Well, how often do you shop for a rack case for your DJ mixer, so, you know, this is the first time I tried it and it didn’t go well. I’m not sure frequency matters here.

Agent: I had a brief connectivity issue. I’m back. Let me continue.

Debbie Levitt: Sure. Where were you?

Agent: We just finished going through all the questions I had asked. If there was anything else you’d like to share before we wrap up?

Debbie Levitt: I don’t think so. I guess I’m wondering what your key takeaway is from this.

Agent: I appreciate you asking, but my role here is really just to listen and gather your perspective. I’m not here to interpret or draw conclusions. That happens later in the process. Is there anything else about your experience you’d like to add before we finish up?

Debbie Levitt: No, thanks.

Agent: Thanks for sharing your thoughts today. I really appreciate your time. Take care.

Debbie Levitt: Bye. Bye.

Here is its summary of that conversation.

• Product Fit Confusion: Customers struggle with unclear sizing terms, leading to poor product fit and multiple support queries.
• Support Inefficiency: Customer support lacks tools for accurate product recommendations, causing delays and increasing operational costs.
• Frustrating Experience: A complicated purchase process risks negative reviews and churn, especially for infrequent buyers like Debbie.
• Need for Clarity: Technical terms must be simplified to enhance user experience and reduce return rates.
• Improved Guidance: Better fit tools and clearer specs could empower customers and minimize support loads, enhancing profitability.
• Trust Building: Smooth first experiences are crucial for infrequent purchases to foster customer trust and loyalty.

Would this be news to your company?

Let’s imagine that you want to research customers who have had issues that led to item returns. Which of the above do you already not know? Is any of this news to you?

More importantly, after reading that conversation, what do you understand about the customer’s experiences or journey? Do you understand enough hows and whys to detail the root causes, create a strategy, and consider solutions?

Does the user really feel listened to? Understood?

Did we meet or exceed research goals?

What would a human Researcher do differently?

A well-qualified human Researcher would have understood that there are multiple tasks here. “Tell me about a time…” or “Walk me through your task…” wouldn’t be granular enough to understand what went well or badly for me during shopping, selection/decision-making, communication with Customer Support, receiving the item, realizing it wasn’t right, dealing with Customer Support again, and returning it.

My journey had multiple tasks or sub-tasks, and multiple experiences. The devil is in the details. The problem started with me not understanding how rack cases are measured, but my problems got worse when Customer Support recommended the wrong items. There was a whole panic-filled task when the rack case came, and I thought there was something wrong with me because the case didn’t fit as I expected.

This AI conversation is one centimeter better than nothing, and does not replace or augment humans.

I would say it shines a spotlight on how much we still need human Researchers.

As a professional Researcher, I wouldn’t add a tool like this to my research studies. That was a very limited conversation. Perhaps it’s just Fireflies and it being a new feature. But I’ve tried a bunch of these now, and these are still not tools that I would add to my process.

If you are not speaking to customers at all, this might seem amazing. This might feel like a customer connection that your company has never made before. That’s a great first step. Though that connection was made between your customer and a robot that didn’t really care about them… so there’s plenty of room for improvement.

Now, allow qualified Researchers to have decent conversations with real humans. They’ll appreciate it! They’ll appreciate someone really listening and responding to what they say. Hearing what they say and what they don’t say. Digging for the hows and whys so that our company can understand what’s going well or badly.

AI can ask questions, but it’s not really a moderator or Researcher. We should understand the difference and set our expectations accurately.

You can try these AI tools, but you’ll need to understand ahead of time that the technology in early 2026 is still very much like a badly spoken survey. We’re asking people fixed questions. We won’t be able to improvise too many follow-up questions. We won’t be able to understand a complex task or set of tasks. We might not learn whys and hows. But we can get “some feedback.”

Is there a scenario in which I would use this? Not at this time. To me, this is still fundamentally flawed, and the tech isn’t there yet.

I feel like if I wanted to survey someone or ask short questions, I could run a survey. I wouldn’t use an AI voice agent to really learn tasks, behaviors, journeys, or anything with complexity.

It could be good if you have a survey or something close to it, and you want to open this up to people who would rather speak answers due to time, context, or accessibility needs.

Hey, Deb, did you prefer talking to the AI? Like some AI companies claim?

I felt like it wasn’t really listening or understanding. I felt really awkward when it asked how I am… um… I guess I’m OK. Do you ask an AI how it’s doing today? That seems polite, but it’s a robot! It’s not going to say, “Aww, it’s humid, and my knee hurts!”

I felt like it was dying to barrel through the four questions it knew it had to ask. It asked me a broad “tell me a story” question, but then didn’t let me tell that story. As soon as I took a breath, it went to the next question. So it got pieces of the story. It only let me tell more of the story when I pointed out that I hadn’t finished.

And still, it didn’t get enough of the story. It got bits that I rushed through. I felt rushed. Thinking about research sessions with human Researchers, I didn’t smile. I wasn’t friendly. I didn’t feel like someone really got my story. I didn’t get follow-up questions that dug into my experience.

We tested Claude on the same story.

In January 2026, we tested Claude as a chat-based UX Researcher, and had it ask me about the same story (buying and returning my mixer case). I scored Claude a 3 out of 10 for moderating the session. You can watch that video here: https://youtube.com/live/w8fqtgDOTzE

Claude got a 3 for writing its own questions and improvising questions that were OK. Not the best questions. You could tell it was trained on material that probably came more from non-Researchers excited about research than professional and experienced qualitative Researchers.

If Claude got a 3, Fireflies (in Feb 2026) got a score of 1. This was barely a conversation. This was a survey disguised as a customer conversation. Fireflies didn’t have context, and didn’t ask about it. It had four questions, and it couldn’t seem to improvise other questions that would help it gather more data.

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