SAP Summit`08 Day - 2

SAP SUMMIT` 08

Day 2:

The day started with a talk on "Winning in a Competitive Scenario"

By Anil Kumble. He spoke about the insight of building a winning team, motivation and to be successful.

He added: "You can succeed whatever your strengths are. All you need to do is to create a doubt and be consistent. Even today, after 18 years of test cricket and over 600 test wickets, I am asked at press conferences - when will you spin the ball? I don't mind such questions, as I believe in playing to my strengths."

He said: we need to compete globally. Therefore, we need to ensure that we keep winning over a period of time. Leadership in adversity is something everyone should pay attention to. There are various aspects. We need to look at global players vs. local players. A classic example is Shane Warne, and how he led the Rajasthan Royals in the IPL T20. Next comes listening and decision making, backing your team members, and equanimity in challenging times. For a leader, it is a constant challenge to have players improving on their game all the time.

The talk was very entertaining and enlighting. He related Cricket to corporate and focused on team building aspects.

The Second day event was categorized by different industry specific areas. I am into Engineering Constructions & Operations, so I went for Track - 6 Meant for Engg Constructions and operations.

1st Presentation was given by A.Subba Rao of GMR group. He shared his Experience of SAP implementation at GMR, the hiccups, and Key findings.

He advised all companies who are planning to implement SAP to:

1. Budget sufficient Time for Negotiations, be it with Hardware partner, or network partner. On this I asked about negotiating with SAP for licenses, as they have the monopoly in the market. He replied to this saying, budget sufficient Time lines and to avoid management pressure to implement SAP. Some present there suggested to wait till quarter end for negotiating with SAP, to get the best deals.

2. He also laid emphasis on having a strict Timelines for implementing SAP. Having initial CFO meet with all the financial heads of the companies to understand the need and requirement. He suggested forming a Steering committee of Business process owners of the company having regular meetings on the development of SAP implementation.

The next to deliver the speech was Mr. Satish Pendse of Hindustan Construction Company.

HCC is now offering implementation service to construction industry with there expertise in developing a well knitted SAP for their company. He informed all about the benefits HCC is getting from SAP implementation, with hands on information available to take decisions.

He also informed that by having a system and process in place, they have overcome the attrition problem which some times give rise to putting a business to halt. With the process in place it becomes very easier for new joinees to mould to the process.

He also advised to have No Parallel Run with any other software from the date of Go-Live. His idea was not to revolutionize but Evolutize. He stressed on passing the idea of having an ERP to each and every personal within the company, as they will also understand about the importance of putting correct data in the system coz if they fail... Garbage in = Garbage out.

The Next session I attended was about Connectivity at Sites.

This was an important topic as for most of the infrastructure company the sites are remote locations, and these locations needed to be mapped with SAP to have real time data available.

There are three options available in the current scenario:

1. Using Central instance: Linking your sites to central hub with internet, VSAT, or any other solutions.

2. Interactive forms: This solution is developed with co-ordination with ADOBE solutions, in this kind of solution; data are fed to the forms and stored locally and then can be taken in pen drive to nearest internet parlour and then upload the data via e-mail.

3. Using Mobile infrastructure: Using Blackberry, or any other popular mobile phones to do the talking with SAP, and be able to take decisions on the move.

Now the most Important Session of the DAY, as it was about MARG.

Quintegra Solutions Limited, Our implementation partner presented their story with MARG, and demonstrated their ability to develop and innovate solutions as per business needs.

They have developed a solution called BPFx for REFX, which gives the power of Re sales in REfx without investing in additional hardware and licensing. It also helps in reducing time lines of implementation.

It was a long day attending sessions, I opted to go out, and as soon as I reached my hotel it started Raining. I thought to utilize this time to pen down my experience in SAP summit 08.

SAP SUMMIT 08 - MUMBAI - DAY 1

SAP SUMMIT`08

Day 1:

The grand event was hosted at Hotel Grand Hyatt, Mumbai. There were around 3ue was divided into two parts; one was the Stall section adjacent to a ground near Hyatt, where various IT companies including SAP have put their stalls demonstrating their excellence in various fields and their offerings. I went around each of the stalls, some were quite informative specially the ones which were offering industry specific solutions.

The other part was in the Hotel; here most of the Track sessions were scheduled, including the Keynote sessions, and inauguration session.

Th500 Attendees this year

The ven

e lunch was exquisite, really the Hyatt style. The time was now for the inauguration session.

It started with a welcome address by Ranjan Das, President & CEO, SAP Indian Subcontinent. He shared the statistics about SAP in India, and touched upon the growth story of SAP in India stating India as the fastest growing business region for SAP.

Then came the turn of Dr. Anbumani Ramdoss, Hon'ble Min. for Health & Family Welfare, Govt of India, who inaugurated the event by lighting the sacred Light. He is the youngest minister of the cabinet. He stressed upon the Rural Health care program, he also advised IT professional to maintain work Life balance, avoiding junk foods in IT companies, and late working hours. He told that the most valuable asset with India is its young manpower, but by deteriorating lifestyles, it will soon become a liability if not taken care properly. He informed all present about the intervention of IT in Govt. Sector, he informed about introducing ID card for each children in INDIA, which will contain there health information, periodic health checkups schedules. He also shared the vision of having a common hotline help number for Health service in India which will be a revolution in INDIA.

Then there was a talk from Bill McDermott, President & CEO, SAP Americas, Asia Pacific & Japan and the followed by the implementation experience of Mr. V RS Natarajan, Chairman & Managing Director, BEML Limited.

The session was very informative. Felt great to attend the 1st day at SAP summit 08.

Then the crowd was entertained by a stage performance by Navin Prabhakar, a good way to end the evening, followed by dinner.

User Administration - R/3

User Administration T code for User maintainance - SU01. You can create a new user or copy the existing user master. The user master contain all data and setting that are required to log on to a client. Types of User:Dialog User, Communication User, System User, Service User, Reference User. User ids allow access to SAP applications. Each user must have a corresponding profile specifically assigned. In many situations, multiple composite profiles can be assigned to a user ID, depending on the roles an individual user is responsible. Authorizations are the key building blocks of SAP security. assigning authorization is the process of assigning values to fields present in authorization objects. In SAP, access to all system functionality is achieved through a complex array of authorizations. A Profile Generator T-code: PFCG is used to automatically generate and assign authorization profiles. The administrator can also create authorization profiles manually. Default User ids: User Ids Client Name SAP* 000 and 001 DDIC 000 and 001 EarlyWatch 066A User Admin must be fimilar with the tasks and responsibilities of admin for creation, managing and controlling access to the R/3 system and its data, and also various R/3 user types and its data.Must manage and create new user, groups and profiles using R/3 transaction.Be fimilar with monitoring active users. Transport client specific user objects between R/3 system or Clients.

SAP Vs Oracle- NetWeaver (SAP) Vs. Fusion (Oracle)

SAP Vs Oracle- NetWeaver (SAP) Vs. Fusion (Oracle) 1st of all there are various grounds on which we can compare an ERP package, But we can never say that any particular ERP (SAP Vs Oracle) is better than other. Oracle went on a shopping spree, gobbling up companies like J.D. Edwards, PeopleSoft, Siebel, Retek and others. Suddenly, there are two gorillas in the market, along with a whole bunch of customers who now find themselves under the Oracle umbrella. I believe SAP has done a better job of both articulating its roadmap for NetWeaver and delivering on it. To be fair, that is in part because they have been at it longer than Oracle. Fusion is barely a year old, whereas NetWeaver has been bandied about as a concept for almost three years. But I also believe that SAP's advantage in building out its own applications – as opposed Oracle's strategy of acquiring or partnering to build its applications portfolio – has allowed the market to see more clearly where SAP is going and what functionality will be available once the full force of NetWeaver's service architecture can be brought to bear on the market. Oracle's Fusion Middleware strategy is relatively well thought-out and well-defined, but the roadmap for Fusion Applications still has a lot of blank space in it – placeholders for as-yet unannounced acquisitions and partnerships. Oracle's workflow and business event system allows companies to configure business processes in a variety of ways, with the capability of sending e-mail notifications and alerts to practically anyone associated with the organization. SAP does not offer anything that is equally configurable or flexible. This means that, in addition to a strong services infrastructure, a vendor needs a large portfolio of services to assemble – the more the merrier. This is where SAP's next advantage comes into play. SAP's has experience in 28 verticals, and the software functionality to prove it. As NetWeaver unfolds, one of SAP's tasks will be to service-orient all that functionality and make it available as building blocks for the future. That's a non-trivial task, but one that, once done, provides SAP customers with an exceptionally large palette of vertical industry functionality on which to build their service-oriented future. Oracle, on the other hand, has always lagged in providing deep vertical functionality, a fact acknowledged by the vertical focus of their acquisition and partnering strategy. While there is some deep vertical functionality now in the Fusion playbook – Retek in retail was a major coup, and Siebel can provide some CRM-specific vertical functionality in the industries that it targeted – the scope of this functionality still lags behind that of SAP. And while Oracle is now vowing to fill in the blanks with more partner products, until we can evaluate exactly what those products can do and how many vertical industries they allow Oracle to compete in, SAP still has the vertical industry advantage. SAP requires on average four times more internal resources, and companies spend almost twice as much for SAP training Further, the SAP customisations and integration issues can increase consulting costs substantially. A company can install Oracle Applications and begin conducting its operations successfully in six months. If an organization is looking to sustain its competitive advantage and become a market leader in its industry, this means constant organizational change through streamlining business processes, reorganization and restructuring, and so forth. As economic history confirms, these activities are demanding in and of themselves. They become nearly impossible with an ERP system that is inflexible, difficult to implement and maintain, hard to use and unnecessarily costly. Oracle Applications, on the other hand, can be successfully deployed in a short time frame. It is flexible and highly configurable. It has a lower TCO than SAP. Working with Oracle Applications is easier than SAP, according to users who have seen both. Does Oracle really have a better offering than SAP? The answer is a resounding "Yes!"