Top Functionality Strengths

1. General Ledger Accounting

Description General Ledger provides a comprehensive picture for external accounting and accounts. Records all business transactions (primary postings as well as settlements from internal accounting) in a software system that is fully integrated with all the other operational areas of a company to ensure that th e accounting data is always complete and accurate. Competitive Advantages SAP ERP is a real-time system. Customer Benefits to Point Out With SAP ERP, the postings made in subsystem (e.g., Accounts Payable or Accounts Receivable) are transferred to the general ledger in real time with no manual actions that need to be taken. This implies that, at any given time, reports generated on a department level or in a different geographical location always have the same results as the data is replicated instantly. With SAP ERP, organizations can have one version of the truth. With SAP ERP, companies can store amounts in parallel currencies (e.g., local currency, group currency and hard currency), so that the GL account transaction figures are also updated in the parallel currencies and exchange rate differences arise in all parallel currencies. With SAP ERP, accountants are provided with four additional periods for all the yearend closing adjustments, as well as the ability to close books as often as it is necessary. With SAP ERP, it is possible to control the behavior of an account, e.g., to make some fields obligatory or optional when postings are made. With SAP ERP, organizations can record non-monetary data for general ledger accounts (e.g., the number of employees), which further enhances analysis. With SAP ERP, companies have a truly multi-company system.

SAP ERP allows ledgers to be managed in parallel currencies .

SAP ERP has flexible accounting periods (12-16 accounting periods, weekly and daily accounting). SAP ERP organizes accounts into groups that share common characteristics . SAP ERP supports statistical key figures . SAP ERP can post documents to multiple companies in different currencies in one financial transaction.

2. Management Accounting (or Controlling)

Description of Topic Profitability Accounting helps users evaluate market segments, which can be classified according to products, customers, orders, any combination of these, or strategic business units, such as sales organizations or business areas, with respect to the company s profit or contribution margin. Comptetitive Advantages SAP ERP allows the creation of sales or profit plans . Customer Benefits to Point Out With SAP ERP, companies can effectively manage market opportunities due to the robust planning of individual market segments. With the ability to transfer sales plans to execution, they can avoid manual and error-prone work. With SAP ERP, it is possible to asses profit margins of economic activities. The typical questions that can be answered include:

SAP ERP allows the creation of profitability segments that combine the revenues earned with the cost incurred.

  
SAP ERP provides standard profitability reports , by customer, customer group, product, or product group, as well as numerous templates for the operating concern (e.g., organizational units).

Which products and markets generate the highest contribution margin? How do individual customers or customer groups affect the results? To what extent have the sales employees attained the set goals? With SAP ERP, organizations are able to make thoughtful product decisions, without the need to invest in additional software components or spend considerable amount of money

Description of Topic Cost Center Accounting records costs incurred during a company's operation by assigning them to cost centers (assigned to managers or organizational units). It plans, records, and then analyzes costs against the plan. Competitive Advantages SAP ERP provides object-oriented cost center planning capabilities . Customer Benefits to Point Out With SAP ERP, organizations can easily transfer costs and perform chargebacks between cost centers, as well as capture costs that do not have FI equivalent, e.g., managerial income or imputed interest. Many reports, allowing users to analyze the information that has been captured, are available out of the box, with no additional customization effort. With SAP ERP, organizations can use activities to measure the operating rate or the rate of capacity utilization for a cost center.

SAP ERP provides automated activity accounting.

SAP ERP supports statistical key figures , for a particular cost center and a particular With SAP ERP, organizations can record non-monetary data for cost centers (e.g., the planning period. number of employees), which further enhances analysis. SAP ERP's hierarchy allows users to post to cost center divisions . With SAP ERP, companies can streamline cost center processing by automatically distributing cost center group costs to individual cost centers according to the specified rules. With SAP ERP, organizations can maintain a cost center hierarchy that corresponds to organizational hierarchy, which makes all the adjustments easier to accomplish whenever a change in the ogranization occurs. V i SAP ERP, t ch c c th duy tr trung tm chi ph m ic p t ng ng v i cc c p b c trong t ch c, i u ny t o ra s d dng i u ch nh hon thnh t t nhi m v d x y ra s thay i b t k lc no trong t ch c. With SAP ERP, companies can maintain cost centers without affecting the General Ledger chart of accounts. This makes the postings much more flexible and the maintenance of cost centers more simple. V i SAP ERP cng ty c th duy tr trung tm chi ph m khng lm nh h ng n h th ng ti kho n k ton trong s ci. i u ny cho php vi c vo s ( k t s ) linh ng h n v n gi n h n trong vi c s a ch a trung tm chi ph With SAP ERP, organizations can easily combine profit center and cost center accounting. No additional adjustments need to be made when users post to cost and profit centers at the same time.

SAP ERP's cost accounting integrates with organizational management . K ton chi ph c a SAP ERP h p nh t v i s i u hnh trong t ch c.

SAP ERP supports a separate hierarchy of cost centers . SAP ERP h tr cc c p ring bi t trong trung tm chi ph

SAP ERP can post to cost center and profit center at the same time . Cng m th i i m cc d li u c SAP ERP nh p vo trung tm chi ph v trung tm l i nhu n

V i SAP ERP t ch c c th d dng k t h p lin hon trung tm l i nh n v trung tm chi ph. Khng c n ph i c b t k s i u ch nh no khi ng i dng a d li u vo hai trung tm trn cng m t th i i m.

Description of Topic Profit Center Accounting determines profit for internal areas of responsibility. It calculates profits and losses using either a period accounting or cost-of-sales approach. Competitive Advantages SAP ERP natively supports the planning and analysis of the profitability of profit centers. SAP ERP allows the valuation of goods movements between profit centers, either at external prices, group-internal prices, or specially-defined transfer prices. SAP ERP enables the creation of profit centers according to product, geographical factors, and function. SAP ERP supports a separate hierarchy of profit centers . Customer Benefits to Point Out With SAP ERP, organizations can reduce the complexity of IT landscapes by avoiding the necessity to deploy third-party applications to measure the performance, or calculate an operating result of the profit cener. With SAP ERP, managers of individual divisions (or profit centers) can determine profits and profit margins of their own areas of responsibility and coordinate their activities accordingly. With SAP ERP, organizations can define structures of profit centers and assign objects to them, such as sales order, manufacturing orders, materials, assets, etc. With SAP ERP, companies can create as complex profit center hierarchies without affecting the structure of the General Ledger, which makes the maintenance of both profit center-related and GL-related structures much more simple. With SAP ERP, organizations can achieve usability advantages due to the flexible cost and profit center accounting, which does not require any manual adjustments in order to avoid double postings.

SAP ERP can post to cost center and profit center at the same time .

3. Financial Supply Chain Management

Description of Topic Credit Management is a program that provides credit checks, by using information from the payment history and credit risk analysis. It enables a company to manage the credit limits offered to customers and analyzes credit information, using both external and internal information to accurately adapt customer scoring. Competitive Advantages Customer Benefits to Point Out

SAP ERP supports automatic credit limit determination for business partners, with With SAP ERP, organizations can make effective credit decisions, which can largely SAP ERP's Credit Rules Engine. eliminate underpayments or non-payments from customers. SAP ERP allows external credit information to be processed and non-financial data to be captured to better assess credit risks. Wtih SAP ERP, organizations can monitor the performance of a credit department and individual credit clerks. With SAP ERP, companies can take numerous aspects into considerations in order to make thoughtful credit decisions. With SAP ERP, organizations can establish to what extent the Credit Management Department was able to prevent non-payment through credit decisions in the past, or to what extent strategic specifications could be implemented. There are a lot of preconfigured reports available out of the box. With SAP ERP, organizations can view customers' credit worthiness in an easy way, which supports optimal credit decisions. The best-paying customers can be more easily rewarded with better credit limits. With SAP ERP, international companies are likely to experience a lower r isk exposure due to robust currency conversion of credit limits assigned to individual business partners. With SAP ERP, organizations have a consolidated view of the credit limit granted to individual business partners on the corporate level, which supports better credit decisions. With SAP ERP, the system can trigger a workflow, when customers exceed their credit limit or when changes to the credit limit have to be approved by a superior. There is no need to leverage third-party applications to have workflow capabilities in place, which eliminates integration and upgrade issues.

SAP ERP provides credit ratings.

SAP ERP can manage credit limit in multiple currencies .

SAP ERP allows corporate credit limit to be distributed to individual subsidiaries.

SAP Workflow enables approval procedures to be implemented for SAP Credit Management.

Description of Topic Dispute Management contains functions for processing receivables-related dispute cases. It supplements the logistics process chain (purchase order payment) in the stage between invoice and payment if there are discrepancies with the customer. Competitive Advantages SAP ERP allows creating and monitoring dispute cases connected to receivables. Customer Benefits to Point Out With SAP ERP, organizations can effectively manage disputes with customers (because of damaged goods, incorrect bill, discrepancies in payments, etc.) by summarizing all information related to the dispute in one central business object dispute case. Without an enterprise software solution, organizations must spend a great deal of time processing disputes manually. Estimates show that the average cost of an invoice dispute can range from $128 to $640 per invoice. With SAP ERP, the days sales outstanding (DSO) can be reduced by as much as 20%. With SAP ERP, organizations can streamline dispute-related communication, largely avoiding faxes, voice mail and spreadsheets to resolve, track and settle accounts receivable payments. This is especially critical for companies with complex communication structures and siloed functional areas. With SAP ERP, companies can effectively manage complex end-to-end business processes. When an exception (such as short pay) occurs, the system can initiate automatic steps to resolve the issue. The business process can span multiple system components, such as accounts receivable, sales and distribution, SAP CRM and SAP Workflow. delivery invoice

SAP ERP can manage dispute case-related correspondance .

SAP ERP supports order to cash with short pay .

Description of Topic Collections Management enables the tracing and collecting of outstanding receivables. It includes payment reminders, processing of promise-to-pay agreements, collection agent portal, collection strategies, collection controllin g, and dunning. Competitive Advantages SAP ERP provides numerous collection strategies . SAP ERP supports promises to pay. Customer Benefits to Point Out With SAP ERP, organizations can easily achieve consitency in collection processes by assigning collection tasks to collection specialists each time according to the same rules. With SAP ERP, companies have a solid knowledge about customers' payment behaviour, if they promised to pay in the past and whether or not the promise has been kept.

SAP ERP provides one-stop shop experience for all collections related activities.

With SAP ERP, collection clerks get a complete view on customers' payment behaviour, including information on collections, promises, outstanding balances, etc. This improves their productivity and the ability to make thoughtful decisions.

4. Project Accounting
Description of Topic Project Accounting monitors precise planning of the detailed activities involved in both large scale projects, such as building a factory, and small scale projects, such as organizing a trade fair. Helps the project manager ensure that the project is executed efficiently, on time, and within budget - which he or she achieves by ensuring that the required resources and funds are available as and when needed. Competitive Advantages SAP ERP provides project templates . SAP ERP provides project simulation capabilities. SAP ERP stores all project-related information in a separate work breakdown structureoutside of the General Ledger. SAP ERP provides a graphical representation of a project. SAP ERP provides easy maintenance of projects , with its unique SAP's Project Builder or Project Planning Board. SAP ERP provides robust resource scheduling capabilities . Customer Benefits to Point Out With SAP ERP, organizations do not need to define all project details each time a project is created, as far as project structure and billing types are concerned. With SAP ERP, organizations can simulate and save changes to a project, without affecting the operative project. With SAP ERP, companies can create as complex project structures as required without affecting the structure of the General Ledger, which makes the maintenance of both project-related and GL-related structures much more simple. With SAP ERP, organizations can improve their productivity by monitoring the progress of the project in a Gantt chart view. With SAP ERP, companies can easily plan and control their projects or create, change or display all project structure data in one transaction. With SAP ERP, organizations are able to achieve optimal commitment of available resources to projects, which improves project success rates.

5. Contract Accounting
Description of Topic Contract Accounting provides subledger accounting for processing large document volumes and fulfills the typical accounts receivable functions. It is an integral component of the SAP Financials solution and can be integrated with this and other solutions for additional tasks. Competitive Advantages SAP ERP can support contract accounts. Customer Benefits to Point Out With SAP ERP, companies can have a consolidated view of all the postings related to business partners in one contract account. They can also define procedures that apply when posting and processing the line items of a given contract account, such as payment and dunning. Contract accounting is critical for telecommunications, utilities, and insurance industries.

6. Production planning
Description of Topic Capacity Planning is a tool for determining available capacity (including facilities, equipment and labor), capacity requirements, and for performing capacity leveling. Competitive Advantages SAP ERP allows overloads and underloads to be leveled at work centers using various dispatching operations. SAP ERP supports capacity hierarchies. SAP ERP provides mass processing capabilities in capacity planning. Customer Benefits to Point Out With SAP ERP, organizations can generate a dynamic graphical overview with the possibility to adjust the assignment of capacity requirements to available work centers using an easy drag and drop technique. With SAP ERP, companies can map various production areas to their capacity planning needs. With SAP ERP, organizations can efficiently perform dispatching, deallocating, or changing operations on a large number of production orders.

SAP ERP supports pooled capacity . SAP ERP provides distribution strategies of capacity requirements . SAP ERP supports pegging of capacity requirements . SAP ERP natively supports finite scheduling , with SAP ERP's native capacity optimizers.

With SAP ERP, organizations can cumulate the capacities either statically or dynamically. With SAP ERP, companies have the flexibility to choose how the system is to distribute capacity requirements between various operations (discreet or continuous). With SAP ERP, organizations can monitor, which production orders result in highest capacity requirements for selected work centers. With SAP ERP, organizations can achieve an optimal commitment of the available capacity, taking various contrains into account, such as machine setup, midtime setup, etc.

Description of Topic Sales and Operations Planning is a forecasting and planning tool for setting targets for sales, production, and other supply chains based on historical, current or estimated data. SOP supports high-level planning of complex planning hierarchies and detailed planning of finished products. A top-down or a bottom-up planning approach is possible. Competitive Advantages SAP ERP provides integration with financials and budgeting . SAP ERP supports aggregation and disaggregation down to the resource level(rough-cut capacity planning). SAP ERP supports what-if analysis in sales and operations planning . SAP ERP provides a planning t able with macros. SAP ERP supports evaluation of forecasts . SAP ERP offers forecast-generation capabilities . SAP ERP provides version management for forecast values. Customer Benefits to Point Out With SAP ERP, companies are able to effectively plan cash flow and other financial resources to support the sales and operation plans. With SAP ERP, organizations can determine the feasibility of their sales and operation plans in the early planning cycles. Finding this out during an MRP run is usually too late to make some major capacity adjustments. With SAP ERP, companies can experiment with various planning scenarios to make optimal and thoughtful business decisions. With SAP ERP, organizations have one single entry point for viewing, maintaining and adjusting forecast values, which streamlines planning processes. With SAP ERP, organizations are able to evaluate how good the forecast is comparing it to the real data. This gives them better control over the whole planning process. With SAP ERP, companies can better predict a possible rise in incoming orders with out the need to deploy specialized external forecasting tools. With SAP ERP, organizations can plan their data several times using different forecasting

techniques or with the exclusion and inclusion of events they expect to happen in the future.

Description of Topic Long-Term Planning provides support for long-term production planning and for carrying out simulations in short and mid-term planning. Competitive Advantages SAP ERP supports long-term production planning . Customer Benefits to Point Out With SAP ERP, organizations have comprehensive knowledge on how sales and operations planning will influence resources in the long run. It is possible for them to decide at an early stage whether extra work centers will be required to cope with bottlenecks, or whether additional machinery will have to be purchased to reach sales targets. With SAP ERP, organizations can easily experiment with various planning scenarios without the need to set up additional database for a new set of planning parameters (different forecast values and capacity constrains). With SAP ERP, organizations can calculate and compare the effects of various versions of the demand program, including capacity requirements, the activity category requirements of the cost centers and the purchased parts requirements.

SAP ERP supports carrying out simulations in short and mid -term planning.

SAP ERP can create demand programs that are used solely for simulative planning.

7. Quality management
Description of Topic Quality Planning enables the management of basic data for quality and inspection planning and planning quality inspections with the help of inspection plans and material specifications. Competitive Advantages SAP ERP provides catalogs for standardizing and evaluating quality data, inspection characteristics describing inspection criteria, and inspection methods . Customer Benefits to Point Out With SAP ERP, organizations achieve numerous benefits connected with robust quality management like customer satisfaction and higher retention rates through better product quality, as well as greater efficiency resulting from reduced product returns and improved

asset utilization. SAP ERP allows the planning of inspections for goods receipt and stock transfers, production orders, or predefined inspection points (e.g., shipping on delivery or in work centers). SAP ERP provides sample determination capabilities that define sampling procedures determining how the system calculates sample size, and sampling schemes containing sampling plans. SAP ERP provides Failure Mode and Effect Analysis . With SAP ERP, companies can focus on prevention and they can achieve continuous process improvement through collaboration and sustained quality control. With SAP ERP, organizations can attain efficient quality management processes supported by statistical methods, as well as achieve accepted quality levels (AQL). With SAP ERP, companies can locate and prevent possible defects and weak points in products and processes early on. They can also use FMEA methodology to identify weak points in Six Sigma projects. With SAP ERP, organizations can improve the productivity of quality technicians since they are able to view and process multiple task lists simultaneuously, such as routings, reference operation sets, and inspection plans. With SAP ERP, companies can hierarchically display related objects in a product structure and they can easily determine during inspection planning whether or not task lists or material specifications exist for a certain material.

SAP ERP provides a robust tool called SAP's Engineering Workbench .

SAP ERP provides a robust tool called SAP's Product Structure Browser .

Description of Topic Quality Control allows the updates of the quality level based on the inspection results or the vendor evaluation for the procurement process and the usage of control charts to control the characteristic values. Competitive Advantages SAP ERP supports Statistical Process Control . Customer Benefits to Point Out With SAP ERP, organizations have the ability to monitor, control and improve production processes. They can leverage control charts to detect systematic deviations of quality characteristic from target value (signals) against the background of inevitable, random fluctuations in individual measured values (interference). The control charts allow quality technicians to effectively control, analyze and document the processes involved in production and other quality-relevant areas. With SAP ERP, companies can reduce their appraisal costs, ensuring the constant quality of products and processes.

SAP ERP provides dynamic modification of inspection scope .

SAP ERP provides test equipment management .

With SAP ERP, organizations can track test equipment, ensure its guaranteed quality and test reliability, and forecast possible weak points in technical installations, which improves the safety of the production process.

Description of Topic Quality Notifications provides the notification and analysis of nonconformities, defects, and failures that are related to products, processes, or services. Competitive Advantages SAP ERP supports stability studies. Customer Benefits to Point Out With SAP ERP, companies can test how individual products will keep their quality over predefined periods of time under controlled environmental conditions. This is especially critical for all kinds of shelf-life tests. With SAP ERP, organizations' customers can submit quality-related complains in a selfservice mode, which in turn improves productivity of the employees handling customer complains. Online and real-time notifications can shorten the processing time and positively impact the customer overall satisfaction.

SAP ERP can record quality-related complains over the Internet .

8. Management of Internal Controls

Description of Topic Management of Internal Controls supports management in assessing and reporting the effectiveness of a company's internal control system, as required by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (particularly section 302 and 404) and other similar regulations. Competitive Advantages SAP ERP enables organizational hierarchies, an account group hierarchy, a central process catalog, and a management control catalog to be centrally defined. SAP ERP provides predefined and customizable management reports , ranging from a high-level overview to detailed analyses of the internal controls' status. Customer Benefits to Point Out With SAP ERP, organizations can achieve an effective and transparent management of internal controls. With SAP ERP, companies benefit from out-of-the box reports that can assess the effectiveness of disclosure controls and procedures, and monitor the control

effectiveness. SAP ERP provides robust scoping capabilities . SAP ERP supports automated control monitoring . With SAP ERP, organizations can efficiently determine all the relevant risks that need to be covered in order to comply with legal requirements. With SAP ERP, organizations can automatically detect exceptions as well as create a remediation case or global control risk dashboard alert and as a result reduce audit costs by reducing testing sample size. With SAP ERP, companies have a robust and efficient control management system at their disposal and can avoid the deployment of third-party applications with all the integration issues that may arise. With SAP ERP, organizations can reduce the complexity of the IT landscape by deploying one configurable system to manage internal controls on the corporate level. With SAP ERP, companies do not need to manually monitor when various control assessments need to take place, which can significantly improve internal control management processes.

SAP ERP provides tools to assess control and process design and efficiency .

SAP ERP delivers a library of configurable, automated key controls to monitor multiple target systems. SAP ERP provides scheduling capabilities .

9. Segregation of Duties
Description of Topic Segregation of Duties are a primary internal control intended to prevent or decrease the risk of errors or irregularities, identify problems, and e nsure corrective action is taken. Competitive Advantages SAP ERP supports access risk analysis and remediation . SAP ERP provides compliant user provisioning . SAP ERP does not support privileged-user access management . Customer Benefits to Point Out With SAP ERP, organizations can define and monitor Segregation of Duties (SoD) conflicts, proactively address SoD conflicts, and define and audit mitigating controls. With SAP ERP, companies can automate the user provisioning process, nor can they manage various types of business risks, or reduce the workload for IT staff. With SAP ERP, organizations' employees are able to perform emergency activities beyond

the limits of their normal roles, but within a controlled, fully audited environment.

10.

Payroll
Description of Topic

Payroll handles all payroll processes, supports current legal regulations and collective agreement specifications and ensures compliance with regulatory changes. Competitive Advantages SAP payroll solution supports current legal regulations in 47 countries out of the box. SAP ERP can support retroactive calculations . Customer Benefits to Point Out SAP ERP is suitable for global companies that would like to leverage one payroll solution across the globe, and effectively address such topics such as national currency, multiple languages, collective agreements, and reporting. With SAP ERP, organizations can avoid a lot of manual and error-prone work when there is a change in past earnings and payroll results need to be retroactively recalculated to reflect correct tax and earnings amounts.