By Santosh Karkhanis
SAP will change everything. That’s the gospel according to everyone who knows anything about this integrated software system. What exactly is the beast? And why does the thought of it throw people into a dither?
Ask an information-technology specialist, and you’ll get something like: "SAP is a completely integrated, enterprisewide information system that replaces legacy systems with a series of software modules that communicate with each other seamlessly, replacing current business processes with best practices."
In layperson’s terms, SAP software is a total information system that weaves together all the data from manufacturing with all the data from inventory with all the data from purchasing with all the data from accounting with all the data from sales......ad infinitum. If your company makes jars of glop, SAP allows you to find out how much glop you’ve made, how much you’ve got on hand, who bought it, when they are picking it up, when they intend to pay for it, how much more glop they may buy in the future and so on... until you run out of questions about glop.
