In this guide, we will look at the various SAP for manufacturing systems and products from ERP to procurement and beyond.
SAP is a powerful platform for manufacturing companies and helps to run some of the worlds most successful organizations in various industries, from consumer products to industrial machinery, automotive, pharmaceuticals, medical devices and more.
SAP has multiple ERP systems available for different types of companies and scenarios, let's look at the options below:
For very fast growing scale-ups, medium and large manufacturers, the best SAP ERP product for manufacturing is SAP S/4 HANA Cloud. S/4 HANA is SAP's flagship ERP product and has matured and developed over numerous development cycles. S/4 HANA is the best SAP manufacturing solution for companies with £50M+ in annual sales, 200+ employees or ambitions to grow extremely fast.
SAP S/4 HANA can provide modular access to key functionality from supply chain to logistics, production, finance and accounting, inventory and warehouse management. SAP S/4 HANA can cater for almost any requirement in discrete, process or hybrid manufacturing scenarios with features to cover make to order, make to stock, configure to order, engineer to order and any hybrid business models.
It is used by manufacturing companies from automotive to pharmaceuticals, industrial products, food manufacturing, aerospace and defence and more. Manufacturers can also expand the core S/4 HANA capabilities with additional capabilities such as human resources, including time tracking, enablement, onboarding and more.
It provides various versions to cope with almost any requirement, from On-Premise to Private and Public Cloud Editions which make the solution more cost effective for medium sized businesses through to large multinationals.
SAP S/4 HANA is used by worldwide manufacturers such as Siemens, Nestle, BMW, Lockheed Martin to name just a few, as well as some of the worlds fastest growing manufacturers.
SAP also offers a wealth of other products, applications and services for advanced procurement and purchasing, ecommerce, analytics and more such as SAP SuccessFactors, Commerce Cloud, Ariba, Concur and several others.
Find out more about SAP S/4 HANA:
SAP for manufacturing doesn't need to cost millions of dollars or be difficult to implement. SAP offers SAP Business One as a lower cost, entry level ERP product which is suitable for smaller manufacturers on a tight budget.
SAP Business One is a mature ERP product, having been acquired by SAP over 20 years ago and has since received multiple product updates, partner extensions and innovations to cater for dozens of manufacturing niches and requirements.
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B1 can cater for the requirements of various manufacturing sub sectors from consumer products to industrial machinery, food and beverage, machinery and more.
As well as the core functionality provided by SAP, Business One has a whole host of partner add-ons and extensions which extend its core modules. This includes advanced manufacturing', warehouse management, ecommerce, marketing and many more.
Business One can cater for various manufacturing modes including discrete, process or hybrid manufacturing.
SAP Business One has users ranging from small businesses with just a few employees, through to the subsidiaries of multinational manufacturers such as Asahi, Panasonic and more.
Find out more about SAP Business One:
SAP Business ByDesign is a native Cloud, modern ERP for small and medium sized businesses and is often described as a 'suite in a box' which provides everything from sales and CRM to purchasing, production, finance and accounting, expenses, supply chain planning and project management.
This makes it a great fit for manufacturers that provide after sales services and need to maintain warranties, manage costs on projects as well as manufacture or assemble products.
SAP Business ByDesign is also a native Cloud ERP solution which means it runs easily on mobile and as a pure Cloud solution, with lower maintenance costs than traditional On-Premise or privately hosted ERP systems.
Find out more about SAP Business ByDesign:
SAP helps manufacturing companies across the industry to remain compliant, in a number of ways. Compliance can be enforced in SAP across finance, procurement, human resources, sales, marketing and beyond.
For example, if you need to ensure that your financial reports and accounting is compliant with local tax and accounting rules, then SAP provides out of the box localizations in almost every country around the world.
If you need to procure raw materials to manufacture your goods, whilst also ensuring you don't purchase them from the wrong suppliers, then products like SAP Ariba can help you to automatically perform background checks and trace the products from source.
SAP can help manufacturing organizations to create efficiencies across their departments by centralizing data, creating business insights to drive improvements and automating manual, administration heavy processes.
For example, SAP can be used to standardise purchasing, eliminate rogue spending and create industries of scale for direct and indirect procurement.
You can also automate highly manual tasks such as purchase order matching by implementing OCR scanning.
By centralizing data and processes into one system, you can easily report on information across your organization, rather than spending days on extracting and unifying data from seperate systems.
SAP makes manufacturing companies to be more scalable in several ways. By creating new efficiencies, organizations can serve more customers and generate more profits and revenue, without having to hire more people.
The localization and compliance benefits also mean that SAP can help your manufacturing organization to do business across borders and open new office locations and sites without having to worry about compliance with local accounting and business regulations.
The cost of implementing SAP within your manufacturing organization always depends on a number of factors including which SAP product you choose, the scope of your implementation project, integrations into other systems and various other factors.
You can learn more about SAP S/4 HANA implementation here.
Implementing any ERP system has various risks and implementing a product like SAP Business One, SAP Business ByDesign or S/4 HANA is no different.
Performing an ERP implementation in your manufacturing company is like performing open heart surgery. You need to build a new aeroplane whilst in flight.
Implementing SAP can take anywhere from a few weeks, to 3 months, to several years. How long it takes will heavily depend on which product you choose, the complexity of your project and several other factors.
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