Business Integration Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Business Integration - Essay Example Systeme, Anwendungen und Produkte in der Datenverarbeitung is a multinational corporation based in Germany that specialises in the development of business software solutions. The company name translates to Systems, functions, and commodities in Data Processing to highlight company products and services whose target is business enterprises. The products and services are geared towards the management of business operations and customer relations, which enhances productivity (Oslon and Kesharwani 2010). SAP is among the largest software companies globally known to provide products such as enterprise resource planning application (ERP), SAP business warehouse among others. A group of former IBM engineers started the company in 1972 in an effort to develop a software package that incorporated a company’s diversity with regard to supporting departments (Anderson 2011). This would see companies replace numerous business applications within the departments with a single integrated ent erprise system. The vision sought to minimise the enormous complexity and bulk associated with existing applications, and provide the businesses with real-time computing capabilities. Presently, the company continues to offer products and services beyond the initial vision owing to advances in the technology and globalisation. Moreover, SAP products have found home in millions of businesses serving thousands of customers in more than 100 countries. The proliferation in various business industries is aided through partnerships with various support partners such as Microsoft and other developers. Although SAP and its enterprise competitors are distinctly different from one another, each competitor actively participates to sustain the company. For instance, Microsoft provides the operating systems while Oracle serves as the largest database vendor. Among the benefits realised in such associations is innovation, which has seen the integration networking capabilities in SAP’s prod ucts and services. This is essential in the management of large corporations that have various departments concurrently running to fulfil company mandate. Over the years, SAP has receives awards and accolades for their contribution in business management and to the economy. The company boasts of more 60,000 employees who help generate about â‚ ¬16 billion in revenue and â‚ ¬2 billion in profits in the financial year ending 2012. As a software company, SAP commits its resources towards creative solutions for business management. Among the bestselling products is the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), a system consisting of configurable packages presented as software that integrates the best practices while conducting business. The information within the software framework is custom built to meet the needs of the organisation of interest; the packages include information ranging from business practice to academic theory to facilitate the smooth flow of information between vario us departments. This is the highlight of SAP ERP systems, which aims at improving the productivity through enhancing efficiency within the organisation. Organisations seek ERP systems for various reasons and among them are the desires to adopt better business practices, globalisation, increase flexibility, and centralise information among others (Hallikainen, n.d.). The software infrastructure also presents an opportunity for the business to sustain a competitive advantage in the evolving world of information technology in business. This is achieved by ensuring cooperation and integration of various departments in an organisation and is in line with information technology, a key aspect in relation to effective management (Bernroider & Koch, 2003). There are various applications offered by ERP system depending on the needs of the organisation, which include supply-chain management, human resource management, customer relationship manager, and accounting applications. Various applicat ions