White Papers
(including Podcasts)

Managing Information in the Enterprise: Perspectives for Business Leaders

by SAP (July 22, 2010)

With thousands or even millions of gigabytes of data, it’s no wonder that organizations can find it challenging to manage their information. According to recent Forbes Insights research, many organizations experience data-related problems – costing them millions of dollars every year.1

Because information is considered vital to business success – and can be one of an organization’s greatest assets – this performance gap is troubling. But fortunately, there is also good news: these problems can be overcome. Download this Forbes Insights report for an in-depth look at the data challenges that organizations face and what they’re doing to rise above them. Find out what you can do to address your organization’s most urgent data issues – and potentially save millions of dollars every year.

“What You’ll Learn”:

• Why organizations around the world value information and consider it a strategic asset
• How IT and line-of-business leaders frequently disagree about the source of data-related problems and potential solutions and why this rift can create increasing problems if not resolved
• Why fragmented data ownership is the biggest roadblock to success and why collaboration between business and IT is essential to solve information management issues
• What management can do to raise visibility of critical information management initiatives

The Business Value of SAP Testing Solutions

by SAP (July 7, 2010)

This IDC White Paper demonstrates how enterprise customers can achieve significant return on investment (ROI) for their SAP software quality management strategies by implementing effective automated testing solutions. To validate and quantify the business benefits of quality management using testing solutions (services and software) for SAP, IDC interviewed IT executives at a sampling of 10 SAP customer sites in North America and Western Europe. IDC asked a series of questions about SAP test management processes associated with SAP applications and the impact of testing products for SAP on capital expenditures and operating costs, IT staff time requirements, and application user productivity. See Table 1 for an overview of results.

This study identifies:

• The quantitative and qualitative benefits of SAP testing automation
• Four specific areas where customers benefitted from SAP testing solutions
• Customer challenges and opportunities

Extend the Reach of SAP Business Suite Aplications with Sybase Mobile Solutions for SAP

by Sybase (July 6, 2010)

Sybase, an industry leader in delivering enterprise and mobile software, and SAP®, a leading provider of enterprise software, are partnering to deliver SAP Business Suite software to a variety of mobile devices. This collaboration will change how users access critical business information anytime, anywhere. In 2009, Sybase and SAP announced their co-innovation partnership to extend SAP to mobile workers on a wide array of mobile devices, using Sybase Unwired Platform.

The first solutions built on this architecture are Sybase Mobile Sales for SAP CRM and Sybase Mobile Workflow for SAP Business Suite. Built to meet the needs of SAP customers, these recognized solutions are fully certified and supported by both SAP and Sybase, and leverage the proven mobile infrastructure strengths of Sybase Unwired Platform and SAP NetWeaver®.

By reading this white paper you will learn about:

• Why Sybase is the recognized solution to deliver SAP Business Suite to mobile devices
• Sybase Mobile Sales for SAP CRM helps professionals track opporunities and leads from anywhere, anytime
• With Sybase Mobile Workflow for SAP Business Suite, mobile workers can now receive and manage SAP alerts on their mobile device
• Sybase provides the tools to create custom solutions that mobilize any SAP package

Strategic License Management - Maximizing the Return on Your Software Investment

by Flexera Software (June 28, 2010)

Managing software effectively means treating it as a high-value business asset.

Until recently, effective software asset management tools that streamline management and prevent misuse have not been available. The resulting lack of visibility into how, when and by whom software is being used causes enterprises to over-license some applications and under-license others.

To help IT managers navigate through the software licensing maze, Flexera Software is offering this guide to the business and IT communities. It includes a five-step implementation plan and management tool selection criteria designed to help managers maximize the value of their software assets. With an effective license management strategy in place, managers will be able to:

• Increase productivity through global license sharing/pooling
• Optimize IT spending with usage-based purchasing
• Simplify license administration by centralizing licensing operations

Making the Case for the Private SAP® Cloud

by Fluid Ops (June 22, 2010)

There is significant hesitancy to leverage the latest virtualization and cloud management and automation technologies for enterprise application environments. Yet massive improvements in time and effort in the provisioning as well as administrating and monitoring of large multi-tenant SAP® environments are available out-of-the-box today. Entire enterprise application landscapes, often consisting of up to 10-15 systems such as ERP, CRM, SCM, portal and BI, can be provisioned to the end-user as a “Landscape-as-a-Service” (Laas) in a matter of minutes, alleviating SLA pressures and future-proofing enterprise app IT.

Read this white paper to learn of the core design concepts that empower private SAP clouds:

• use of the complete IT stack especially in view of storage-assisted cloning capabilities, to handle mission-critical enterprise app requirements
• one-click provisioning of complete multi-tier multi-system landscapes above and beyond single system VMs, with no post-configuration effort needed
• heavy use of standardized golden templates of e.g. ready-to-run SAP systems
• fine grained metering and billing capabilities in a self-service portal as an out of the box LaaS solution

SAP Safeguarding: End-to-End Application Lifecycle Management – Maximizing your Return on Investment

by SAP (June 21, 2010)

IT’s fundamental challenge is staying on track at its highest potential and at the most rational cost. In a subway system, train cars are linked together to transport passengers. In an IT system, data is linked together with end-to-end business processes. Both systems require a certain level of standardization. The subway system requires agreement about the tools that service the cars to schedule frequency. The IT system needs some degree of agreement regarding operating systems, applications, communication protocols, and networking technology.

This whitepaper discusses how SAP Safeguarding services can help you mitigate the risk of implementations and upgrades and maintain an IT infrastructure that advances your organization by helping you achieve high availability, flexibility to implement changes quickly, and low total cost of ownership.

• Learn how SAP Safeguarding for Operations can help to simplify operations to reduce the required skills and effort to run, optimize, and update your solutions.
• Gain a better understanding of how SAP Safeguarding for Upgrades can proactively identify potential challenges through an assessment services.
• Hear how SAP Safeguarding for Integration Validation offers the SAP expertise needed to reduce technical risk and cost associated with implementing new technology.

Sizing Server Platforms To Meet ERP Requirements

by Intel Corporation (June 18, 2010)

Intel IT has developed a quantitative model to assist with server sizing by analyzing the effects of various factors on the utilization of the primary server resources: compute, memory, and I/O. The model is based on the Intel IT approach to sizing servers for our ERP environment. Our analysis shows that four-socket servers, which provide greater headroom than two-socket servers, may be preferable in a number of situations.

By reading this whitepaper, you will learn how Intel IT:

• Implemented a decentralized ERP approach that offers several advantages, including lower server acquisition costs and increased flexibility and agility.
• Looked at various factors to determine our ERP platform selection and sizing decisions, including workload growth projections, maximum utilization target, the size of workload spikes, and the capacity of two-socket and four-socket servers.
• Developed a quantitative model that assists with server platform selection and sizing by enabling us to analyze the effects of these factors on platform utilization.

IDC Analyst Connection - The Road to BI Success

by SAP (June 17, 2010)

This IDC analyst paper outlines the benefits of business intelligence (BI) and helps organizations evaluate the effectiveness of their current strategy. This is a concise Q&A style paper, written from an end user perspective and authored by Dan Vesset. The paper provides practical advice about the benefits of an end-to-end strategy, IDC's methodology for assessing an organization's BI competency, and how organizations can get started.

Dan Vesset is program vice president of IDC’s Business Analytics research. His research is currently focused on the business intelligence and analytic applications markets, which encompass multidimensional analysis, end-user query and reporting, data mining, and other related business intelligence tools as well as supply chain and operational analytic applications.

What Readers Will Learn

• What are the benefits of a business intelligence solution
• What is the value of a BI strategy to a process that is composed of many incremental BI projects
• What are the factors to consider when creating a BI strategy
• What are the steps companies should take to determine their current levels of BI need or effectiveness

Data Management for BI – Strategies for Leveraging the Complexity and Growth of Business Data

by SAP (June 14, 2010)

Aberdeen's research validates the assertion that organizational data is growing rapidly in volume and complexity. The ability to make better informed decisions through Business Intelligence (BI) systems is directly related to the cleanliness, relevance, and timeliness of that data. Best-in-class companies are taking strides to reduce time-to-information, generate a common view of their data, and arm their business decision makers with a high degree of data quality in order to support enhanced business performance. This report is based on feedback from 216 global organizations.

• The key performance criteria in the Data Management Maturity Framework that distinguish “Best-in-Class” organizations from those in the “Industry Average” and “Laggard” categories
• Top strategic data management actions for organizations across the maturity framework
• Specific capabilities and technology enablers required for a successful data management strategy
• Required actions to spur data management performance improvements

Testing and Quality Management – Best Practices

by SAP (June 10, 2010)

In order to ensure you maximize the value of your application, a sound testing strategy is critical. Working with SAP, Aberdeen Group conducted a study to identify best practices in quality management of applications.

Empower Your Business to Succeed

Executives from 65 enterprises were asked:

• To what degree is testing important for your enterprise?
• What business impact does testing applications before going live have?
• What benefits did you derive from testing automated business processes?

The Road to BI Success

by SAP (June 9, 2010)

This IDC analyst paper outlines the benefits of business intelligence (BI) and helps organizations evaluate the effectiveness of their current strategy. This is a concise Q&A style paper, written from an end user perspective and authored by Dan Vesset. The paper provides practical advice about the benefits of an end-to-end strategy, IDC's methodology for assessing an organization's BI competency, and how organizations can get started.

Dan Vesset is program vice president of IDC’s Business Analytics research. His research is currently focused on the business intelligence and analytic applications markets, which encompass multidimensional analysis, end-user query and reporting, data mining, and other related business intelligence tools as well as supply chain and operational analytic applications.

Read this white paper to learn:

• What are the benefits of a business intelligence solution
• What is the value of a BI strategy to a process that is composed of many incremental BI projects
• What are the factors to consider when creating a BI strategy
• What are the steps companies should take to determine their current levels of BI need or effectiveness

Improving Organizational Performance Through Pervasive Business Intelligence

by SAP (June 8, 2010)

Read this IDC white paper and explore the growing body of evidence suggesting a direct link between investment in business analytics solutions and increased organizational performance. Review key market trends that point toward a more pervasive use of BI solutions. See how these factors have to do as much with BI and analytics technology as they do with the related professional services for BI strategy and solution development, deployment, and maintenance.

Read more...

Link ECM and ERP to increase customer satisfaction, productivity and ROI

by SAP (June 7, 2010)

ECM (Enterprise Content Management) systems have evolved to take control of more of the unstructured content within the enterprise – including scanned documents, physical and electronic records, faxes, emails, web pages, messages, images, etc.

Meanwhile, ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) systems have maintained control of the structured transactional data within the enterprise, such as the product data sheets, customer number and profile information, and other data that typically sits in fixed fields within a database or record.

Read this white paper to understand how to align document-centric business processes with ERP transactional data as part of your overall enterprise content management strategy, and how to best achieve higher return on investment from gains in productivity, customer service and knowledge access.

See how SAP® Extended ECM by Open Text enables you to boost productivity, improve knowledge-sharing, enhance customer service, and reduce compliance risk.

Learn the three key benefits of linking ERP and ECM systems:

• Improved productivity from linking document and transaction workflows
• Responsive customer service from immediate access to all related content
• Organizational synergy with universally accessible information for all stakeholders

Maintain a sustainable workforce with the power of SAP® Talent Visualization

by SAP (May 27, 2010)

What does the phrase “sustainable workforce” mean to you? To some, it simply means having employees that support green practices and social accountabil¬ity. But it’s more than that: A sustainable workforce focuses on driving profitability, compliance, and company reputation through sustainable, responsi¬ble business practices. This workforce must support the company’s objectives to capitalize on global trends and exploit business opportunities regarding social, environmental, and economic sustainability.

A sustainable workforce is very important, because it closely links with the sustainability and profitable growth of your business. With effective talent management processes and tools, an organi¬zation can ensure that it is equipped with the right employees to drive its growth well into the future.

Read this article from the April-June 2010 issue of SAPinsider and learn how to leverage the SAP Talent Visualization application by Nakisa to expand the power of SAP ERP Human Capital Management (SAP ERP HCM) and tap into its rich data for succession planning, organizational management, and analytics. The application’s easy-to-use visual interface transforms talent and organizational data into strategic information, enabling you to align your workforce with your business goals.

You will learn how to:

• Retain and engage top performers
• Analyze workforce information and confidently make tough workforce decisions
• Make better-informed decisions by viewing, updating, and analyzing talent inventory
• Review existing organizational talent and determine short-term and long-term strategies
• Transform talent and organizational data into strategic information via a visual interface

Lean Business Intelligence: Why and How Enterprises Are Moving to Self-Service Business Intelligence

by SAP (May 20, 2010)

When people look to you for answers, you want accurate facts at your fingertips. That can mean sifting through mountains of data – and even then, you may not find precisely what you need. Think how much extra value you could add to your business if you could always find the right information – immediately. To learn how you can find this real insight at the speed of thought, download “Lean Business Intelligence: Why and How Enterprises Are Moving to Self-Service Business Intelligence”. This practical white paper shows how business professionals can help increase productivity and make better use of their time and talents – whether they work in Sales, Marketing, Finance, Human Resources, IT or other areas.

Read this white paper to learn:

• Why there is a growing interest in business intelligence applications across all industries, business functions, and geographies
• How knowledge workers in every department can overcome their most common business challenges when they have self-service access to critical information
• Where homegrown tools such as spreadsheets and desktop-based knowledge systems fall short – and why it’s essential for everyone to have a single version of the truth
• How to align business and IT objectives to balance efficiency and productivity gains with adaptability, innovation, and competitiveness

Optimize Accounts Payable with SAP® Invoice Management

by SAP (May 20, 2010)

With nearly US$1 trillion lost annually to fraudulent activities in the United States alone, and with a large percentage of corporate fraud stemming from companies’ own accounts payable (AP) employees, it’s no surprise that corporate forensic accountants are taking a much closer look at the business pro¬cesses that support AP departments.

Read this article to understand how the SAP Invoice Management applica¬tion by Open Text can help you optimize your AP Process with a 360-degree view of the complete invoice management life cycle and by enabling a securely handled end-to-end process.

A fully optimized automation program like SAP Invoice Management can enable organizations to curtail AP fraud occurrences while meeting compliance requirements and providing significant savings through improved efficiencies.

Learn how SAP Invoice Management can help your organization:

• Automate and optimize the invoicing process
• Ensure process compliance globally
• Reduce time spent on fraud detection

The Business Value of Performance Management: Best Practices from Ventana Research

by IBM/Cognos (May 14, 2010)

While technology for performance management has increasingly been deploying over the last decade, for many organizations it has remained a desirable luxury rather than an important strategic investment. In the face of extreme pressure to both be lean and deliver results, organizations are re-examining their priorities and moving performance management improvements to the top of their strategic planning lists.

View this white paper to understand Ventana Research's thoughts on the most strategic approach to managing and optimizing business performance and learn:

• Why unified performance management is essential
• The key points of system integration
• What to do and how to do it
• The risks of doing nothing

How to Transform Your Business: A Strategic Roadmap for Delivering Value

by SAP (May 13, 2010)

Download the white paper "How to Transform Your Business: A Strategic Roadmap for Delivering Value" now to learn how Business Transformation services from SAP Consulting can help to reduce costs while increasing business efficiency, effectiveness, and transparency.

This white paper explores the key strategic issues and best practices involved in transforming your business. Discover the steps you must take to innovate, translate business strategy into IT strategy, develop a road map for strategic business transformation, and obtain maximum benefit from your SAP investment.

Read this white paper to learn how to:

• Align business and IT to transform the business
• Reduce costs and TCO through optimization and best practices
• Translate IT and business goals into an actionable roadmap
• Strategically apply IT to achieve superior business performance and a sustainable competitive advantage

Leverage the power of efficient enterprise content management

by SAP (May 11, 2010)

In the past decade, the world has experienced unprecedented growth in the creation and use of digital media — including audio files, digital pictures, scanned documents, PDFs, presentations, emails, and videos. As organizations realized that these new information trends could help them increase market reach, encourage creativity, and enable collaboration across an increasingly globalized workforce, the busi¬ness world fully embraced digital media.

Managing all of this content that’s streaming through your enterprise — whether it’s a structured SAP trans¬action or an unstructured email — within one UI is critical for companies looking to increase communi¬cation efficiency, enhance business processes, and minimize legal and compliance risk. As our profes¬sional services industry example demonstrates, SAP® Extended Enterprise Content Management supports all of these business benefits, with the added bonus of being easy to learn and use.

You will learn how to:

• Manage all content including unstructured content from creation to deletion
• Easily and transparently demonstrate governance and compliance practices
• Increase content-centric process efficiency
• Increase the productivity of business users
• Minimize the risk associated with unstructured content
• Reduce costs and optimizing system performance

Improving Identity and Access Management in an SAP Environment

by Quest (May 10, 2010)

Splitting identity management between Active Directory and SAP® environments is frustrating, costly and inefficient – and also completely unnecessary! In this new Quest Software white paper, learn how to easily manage your Active Directory and SAP environments, how to eliminate redundant work (for both users AND administrators) and how automation makes security stronger and auditing simple.

Read it today to learn:

• Duplicating identity management tasks in an Active Directory and SAP environment is time consuming, frustrating and unnecessary
• Eliminate redundant work (for both users AND administrators) with a strong identity management solution

The Business Value of Duet Enterprise

by Microsoft (May 6, 2010)

"The Business Value of Duet Enterprise" is a white paper that describes the technical architecture and business impact of Duet Enterprise for Microsoft SharePoint and SAP. In contrast to its predecessors, Duet 1.0 and 1.5 which implemented specific business scenarios, Duet Enterprise is a foundation for interoperability and assembly of Microsoft SharePoint-based composite applications that make use of business content from any generation of SAP applications, from SAP R/3 to SAP ERP 6.0. Duet Enterprise comes with ready-to-use capabilities, tools and business content, which enable SAP application data and processes to surface in Microsoft Office and Microsoft SharePoint. The paper summarizes all the aspects of Duet Enterprise as well as covering how existing SAP and Microsoft tools for development and operations are utilized to build and operate composite applications.

The paper was created for Microsoft by CITO Research, a new research service led by Dan Woods, author of many books on SAP-related topics.

After reading this paper the user will:

• Better understand the new types of solutions that Duet Enterprise enables
• Organizations will have a thorough technical understanding of Duet Enterprise
• Organizations will receive guidance on SAP & SharePoint interoperability approaches
• Organizations will be able to clearly articulate the business value of Duet Enterprise

Leverage SAP® solutions to manage your customer relations better

by SAP (May 6, 2010)

With increasing competition there is growing pressure on organizations to increase revenue and improve profitability. But how do you make it happen? This is a very common dilemma being faced by companies today — setting a goal but not knowing how to achieve it. A sure-fire way to realize your revenue and profitability targets is to focus on your customer relationship management (CRM) strat¬egy, particularly your sales and service efforts.

SAP Paybacks and Chargebacks by Vistex, and SAP Incentive Administration by Vistex, can help you gain a holistic view of the entire process to identify, compute, administer, and settle all types of chargebacks, rebates, and incentives due to distributors and customers. While the SAP Workforce Scheduling and Optimization application by ClickSoftware is an end-to-end workforce optimization solution, helping you improve field service forecasting, planning, rostering, and scheduling to increase efficiency, meet service-level commitments, and boost profitability.

In this article there are three CRM-related questions for your organization to consider, and how these three SAP solution extensions can help boost revenue and market share.

In this article, you will learn how to:

• Increase promotional sales
• Reduce payback rebate errors
• Reduce manual administrative work
• Reduce cost of goods sold
• Improve cost recovery cash flow
• Reduce working capital requirements

Automated Sales Order Processing for Order-to-Cash Performance with SAP® Solutions

by Esker, Inc. (May 6, 2010)

As a resource to help businesses gain efficiency and improve customer service in today’s competitive business environment, this white paper examines the challenges faced by SAP customers who are still manually processing sales orders. The paper explores a solution for overcoming these challenges by automating sales order processing to:

• Lower order processing costs by up to 70%
• Free up staff time by up to 65%, providing more time for customer service
• Increase the percentage of orders and line items captured electronically
• Gain immediate access to order documents
• Fulfill orders faster and collect payment sooner

• Removing sales order bottlenecks from the order-to-cash cycle
• Sales order workflow automation, including: capture, approval routing, exception handling, and reporting
• Order management benefits, including: increased speed and accuracy, a full audit trail for increased process visibility, order prioritizing and more

Manage complex software environments on a single platform

by SAP (May 5, 2010)

The greater complexity of today’s IT environments, along with a dramatic increase in network traffic, has made it much more difficult for most organizations to manage their software applications. Testing application performance in preproduction stages is essential to identify problems before they affect application users and to evaluate application service-level agreements (SLAs) properly. Otherwise, you risk a decline in employee satisfaction, lost revenue opportunities, reduced responsiveness to customer needs, a decrease in the effectiveness of IT staff, and, ultimately, damage to your reputation and brand.

Watch this demo to learn how SAP® Extended Diagnostics by CA Wily monitors complex IT environments 24x7 to detect problems proactively and resolve issues quickly – whatever their source. Such real-time intelligence can help you make the most of the Web-based applications and services that are mission-critical to your business and performance goals.

In this demo, you will learn how to:

• Maximize Web-based applications throughout their lifecycles
• Enhance capacity planning, trend analysis, and service-level agreements
• Foster collaboration among IT and business staff
• Support new applications and services

Implement Application Lifecycle Management best practices with SAP® Solution Extensions

by SAP (May 4, 2010)

Every IT organization today, wants to accelerate innovation, lower costs, and ensure high quality of ser¬vices. Yet, each of these goals presents challenges like judging the impact of business innovations, keeping the total cost of ownership low and ensuring quality in terms of functionality, performance, availability and security.

To overcome these challenges, many organizations are adopting a strategy to efficiently manage the entire life cycle of their applications: application life¬cycle management (ALM). This strategy enables them to oversee the life cycle of applications or solutions using a common frame¬work with set standards that allow them to manage and maintain quality during design, implementation, and operation. SAP provides not only best-practice processes, but also the tools you need to adopt an ALM strategy within your organization. SAP Solution Manager is the cornerstone of these tools. This application management solution is the core SAP offering that has the features and functions necessary to assist development teams in almost every phase.

Read this whitepaper to learn how the following SAP Solution Extensions enable better Application Lifecycle Management:

• SAP Enterprise Modeling by IDS Scheer
• SAP Central Process Scheduling by Redwood
• SAP Quality Center by HP
• SAP LoadRunner by HP
• SAP Extended Diagnostics by CA Wily
• SAP Process Performance Management by IDS Scheer
• SAP User Experience Management by Knoa
• SAP Productivity Pak by RWD

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 on Stratus ftServer Systems for SAP NetWeaver Environments

by Stratus Technologies (April 29, 2010)

Microsoft SQL 2008 running on a Stratus fault-tolerant server provides continuous availability and dramatically simplifies SAP NetWeaver environments. Eliminating unplanned downtime and reducing lifecycle management costs are universal requirements for today’s ERP infrastructure projects. The MS SQL 2008/Stratus ftServer platform eliminates complex server clustering. Plug-and-play simplicity speeds project implementation and provides a server environment so simple it could be managed by non-IT personnel.

Stratus Technologies is an SAP global technology partner. Visit the Stratus booth at Sapphire® NOW in Orlando (booth 3308) or in Frankfurt (booth 830). Visit us on the web at www.stratus.com/sap

What the reader will learn:

• Advantages of MS SQL 2008 compared to Oracle database
• Getting rid of server clustering protects sanity and uptime
• How to achieve greater than 99.999% uptime with a fault-tolerant server
• Save big by eliminating unneeded software licenses

Are Your Sales Reps Missing Important Sales Opportunities?

by Sybase (April 28, 2010)

Sales is the lifeblood of any business, yet most sales people spend precious little time actually selling. According to Yankee Group, reps spend 74% of their time on non–revenue-generating activities. The bulk of their time goes to sales prep, administrative tasks and travel and waiting. Sybase’s mobile CRM solutions for SAP® dramatically increase sales productivity through a carefully designed feature set and user interface that it is intuitive to sales people. They are built on an application development platform that is hardware independent, which means one application can run on multiple devices and multiple operating systems, including Windows Mobile, iPhones, RIM BlackBerry smartphones, Palm OS phones, and Symbian phones. Sybase’s mobile CRM is THE recognized SAP solution that increases sales productivity and customer satisfaction while reducing sales administrative time.

* Why do sales people spend 74% of their time not selling?
* What a 20% increase in sales productivity does for your business
* How Sybase’s mobile CRM solutions increase sales productivity and customer satisfaction while reducing sales administrative time

Read more...

Optimize your Supply Chain with SAP® Enterprise Inventory Optimization

by SAP (April 28, 2010)

Traditional approaches to inventory planning are largely based on rules of thumb rather than formal data analysis. For years, supply chain planners have used these outdated inventory management models, resulting in supply chain inefficiencies that their companies can ill afford in today’s ultracompetitive environment.

To boost efficiency, run leaner, and drive down the cost of supply, many organizations are exploring inventory optimization – a technique for improving operational inventory targets to address the realities of today’s highly complex, ever-evolving global supply chains.

Read this SAPinsider article to learn more about SAP Inventory Optimization by SmartOps, an SAP solution extension that can help you implement the best practices to streamline your organization’s inventory optimization processes while reducing the number of inventory turns and improving customer satisfaction.

In this article, you will learn how to:

• 3 best practices for enhancing existing inventory optimization processes
• Lower the high number of inventory turns
• Increase customer satisfaction
• Boost the efficiency of inventory optimization
• Reduce supply costs

Performance Testing for SAP® Applications

by Worksoft, Inc. (April 26, 2010)

Performance testing is not new to SAP(R) application customers. A variety of solutions have been developed since the early days of SAP, however, these performance testing techniques were often brute force - requiring users to be conscripted for nights or weekends to test the system while measurements were taken, often with stopwatches. This approach was costly and inefficient but plausible in an age when systems were monolithic and limited to internal users.

A new performance testing approach is needed that addresses both the shortcomings of traditional tools and the modern interfaces and platforms that power today's businesses. In this white paper, you will learn about a new breed of performance testing solution that meets today's requirements for testing SAP applications as well as other HTML-based interfaces:

• Analysis of the historical challenges related to stress and load testing of SAP systems.
• An overview of today's issues & challenges related to performance testing SAP applications.
• Optimal selection criteria to consider when evaluating and purchasing testing solutions for SAP environments.
• Recommendation for a new breed of a cross, platform performance testing solution.

Gain competitive advantage through IT Operational excellence

by HP (April 22, 2010)

Maximize the business returns on your strategic SAP® investments

Your SAP solutions are increasingly critical for delivering the superior service levels today’s internal and external customers demand. That means your mission critical SAP applications must be:

• Available 24X7
• Optimized for performance and security
• Flexible enough to meet both business and IT needs, without risking unplanned downtime
• Able to recover quickly from unexpected problems

• Proactive services enhanced for SAP environments and tailored to your specific environment and business needs
• Onsite and offsite experts with knowledge of your SAP environment’s hardware and software, and their interrelationships
• Real-time integrated tracking between HP, SAP and the customer help desk, for seamless problem resolution

How to populate SAP® Solution Manager with RBE Plus

by IBIS America (April 20, 2010)

This paper will outline how SAP® customers can expedite SAP projects, with use of RBE PlusTM analysis and integration of process results into SAP Solution Manager. An RBE PlusTM analysis of a customer's existing SAP system will provide the as-is process structure, which is transferred into SAP Solution Manager, to jumpstart Blueprinting and Configuration activities.

RBE PlusTM analysis includes review of transactional data, and also, table and field data, in order to analyze master data, customizing data, documents, users and roles, and key technical data. As a result, SAP customers who use RBE PlusTM in combination with SAP Solution Manager, can take full advantage of extensive BPR content, roadmaps, and structures to achieve an expedited upgrade, saving time, effort, and resources.

You will learn:

• How RBE Plus and SAP® Solution Manager can help accelerate your SAP upgrade
• How RBE Plus can expedite and improve your SAP Solution Manager usage
• How RBE Plus works and what outcome you can expect from RBE Plus
• What additional RBE Plus services are available to manage and improve your SAP system usage

Improve Business Results through Secure Single Sign-On

by SECUDE (April 16, 2010)

According to a report, 35% of all incoming user helpdesk calls are due to forgotten passwords. The percentage will grow with the number of systems that must be password protected against unauthorized access; this will strain an enterprise’s IT budget.

SECUDE Secure Login relieves the helpdesk of this problem by providing a secure Single Sign-On technology. With Secure Login, users only need to authenticate once to access all SAP® applications and systems. Eliminating the need for multiple passwords to access applications significantly reduces helpdesk costs due to forgotten SAP passwords – a convenience for your users and a savings in your IT budget.

Additionally, the data-in-transit encryption feature of SECUDE Secure Login increases the level of security. Secure Login leverages SAP´s encryption technology for the SAP GUI–server communication (SNC) to provide for authentication, Single Sign-On, and secure communication.

In this white paper, you will learn:

• How SECUDE Secure Login Single Sign-On technology helps save costs and improves productivity
  
  
• How SECUDE Secure Login enables secure encrypted communication across all SAP systems
  
  
• How SECUDE Secure Login works in combination with SAP and other enterprise applications
  
  

Leverage SAP® solutions to increase pricing efficiency

by SAP (April 15, 2010)

When it comes to managing product, pricing, and partner data, few companies can afford to make mistakes. This is why organizations everywhere make data maintenance a top business priority. But as product and customer portfolios grow and the speed of business accelerates, keeping pace with data maintenance requirements can be a challenging proposition.

What’s needed is a way to put data maintenance responsibilities in the hands of business users to help organizations overcome these challenges. This is where SAP® Data Maintenance application for ERP by Vistex comes into the picture.

Download and view the two Demos to understand how SAP Data Maintenance application for ERP empowers users to manage product, pricing, and partner data in the SAP ERP application without reliance on IT experts. The result is accurate data and business transaction processing, improved productivity, less business risk, and stronger compliance.

In these Demos, you will learn how to:

• Improve productivity with automated mass-update tools and an intuitive interface
• Reduce business risk by increasing the accuracy and reliability of master data
• Increase business performance with actionable business insights
• Strengthen compliance with consistent, up-to-date data and a solid audit trail

Leverage SAP® solutions to manage your Business Applications’ Performance better

by SAP (April 13, 2010)

Whether you’re working to improve day-to-day IT operations, implementing or upgrading your SAP applications, or simply trying to make your users more productive, the pressure is on — you have to do more with less. And in this challenging economic climate, traditional IT approaches often cannot scale to meet seemingly endless business demands.

At the same time, IT budgets are being cut like never before — and sometimes without warning. When this happens, companies must systematically optimize their IT processes to reduce costs while still delivering expected services. What’s more, IT optimization needs to deliver near-immediate payback.

Read this article to understand three key starting points to help your business optimize its IT, increase ROI and lower overall TCO. Find more about SAP solution extensions - software offerings, sold and supported by SAP that can be deployed quickly and independently.

In this whitepaper, you will learn how to:

• Manage Data Growth with SAP Archiving
• Maximize System Performance with SAP LoadRunner
• Manage Business Process Performance with SAP Enterprise Modeling
• Improve Process Performance with SAP Central Process
• Go Live Confidently with SAP Quality Center
• Resolve Application Issues Proactively with SAP Extended Diagnostics
• Improve ROI of SAP Solutions with SAP User Experience Management
• Reduce Manual, Paper-based Overheads with SAP Interactive Forms

Accounts Payable Automation: An Investment in the Future

by ReadSoft (April 13, 2010)

Invoice processing is critical to the successful management of a company’s operations but is also very time sensitive and labor intensive. Best-in-class companies realize 91% lower invoice processing costs while using accounts payable automation solutions. This white paper exposes how streamlining payables through document process automation yields positive efficiency gains, increased visibility of processes and liabilities, tighter controls and faster cycle time. It examines how these objectives are achieved through invoice imaging, capturing data from those images and routing invoices (via workflow) throughout the organization for exception handling, coding and approvals.

Learning points:

1. Understand the effects accounts payable automation has on various departments in an organization, such as corporate management, IT and accounts payable.
2. Learn how you can process invoices more efficiently through document process automation technology and how it works from a technical perspective.
3. Review the benefits, such as lowered costs, decreases in processing time and better control of invoices.
4. Understand why utilizing such technology must resonate with your corporate SAP® investment through certifications and experience.

Leverage SAP® solutions to improve operational inventory targets with the stochastic model

by SAP (April 12, 2010)

Traditional approaches to inventory planning are largely based on rules of thumb rather than formal data analysis. For years, supply chain planners have used these outdated inventory management models, resulting in supply chain inefficiencies that their companies can ill afford in today’s ultracompetitive environment.

To boost efficiency, run leaner, and drive down the cost of supply, many organizations are exploring inventory optimization – a technique for improving operational inventory targets to address the realities of today’s highly complex, ever-evolving global supply chains.

Download this thought leadership whitepaper to understand how the stochastic multistage, multi-inventory model supports inventory optimization. The paper also looks at how the SAP Enterprise Inventory Optimization application by SmartOps uses the model to help supply planners execute more effectively in a highly collaborative enterprise environment that extends beyond organizational boundaries.

In this whitepaper, you will learn how to:

• View and synchronize end-to-end supply chain operations
• Manage supply and demand uncertainty
• Maximize profit and minimize assets
• Manage exception workflows efficiently

Maximize Performance and Lower Costs to Optimize SAP NetWeaver BW Systems with Archiving and Nearline Storage (NLS)

by Dolphin (April 1, 2010)

Rising data and query volumes take a toll on data warehouse hardware, software and administration. To maintain service levels, IT must either commit more of the IT budget to adding more storage, perform constant juggling or tweaking or both.

Meeting the demand requires systems that are fast, flexible and adaptable to enable standard and ad-hoc queries and drill-downs. Dolphin is at the forefront of applying ILM principles to SAP NetWeaver® BW Storage with Archiving and Nearline Storage - optimizing for both cost and performance, while reducing administrative overhead on the IT department.

This white paper presents a case study for BW archiving with NLS optimized for analytics using columnar database architecture, and discusses how a nearline storage solution makes it possible for IT departments can manage costs, reduce overhead and increase system performance for their SAP NetWeaver BW system.

Benefits:

• Reduced data volume and growth in online BW database
• Lower infrastructure and administrative costs
• Optimal BW performance with less cost
• Flexible and complete online access via BW for end user queries
• Improved query response without administrative overhead
• Lower Total Cost of Ownership

SAP System Monitoring - Ensure the Integrity of Your SAP Environment

by HP (March 26, 2010)

SAP BusinessObjects Risk Management The demands on organizations to secure and control their IT systems continues to grow, with increased focus on ensuring the integrity of the SAP® environment. With these new requirements come new challenges in terms of collecting and storing massive volumes of user activity and transaction data, as well as analyzing and interpreting complex log formats from myriad sources. Not only is it necessary to monitor this activity for compliance purposes, it is also critical for ensuring that operations run efficiently and securely.

View this whitepaper to gain enterprise-wide, essential decision support for security, risk management, and regulatory compliance designed to extend the value of:

• SAP BusinessObjectsTM governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) solutions
• SAP Business Objects Access Control
• SAP BusinessObjects Process Control

ITSmobile – Web-based SAP data collection solution

by PEAK Technologies (March 19, 2010)

Since the introduction of the Internet and Web Browser in the mid to late 1990s, a passion has developed for creating 'web–based' software. Experience and technology improvements have led to viable web–based data collection solutions for industrial environments that seem to equally delight and confound the user community.

ITSmobile is a relatively new solution that became available to SAP® customers in Q3 2007, and replaces the WebSAPConsole, which will no longer be supported for SAP systems based on SAP NetWeaver 7.10 or higher.

There are many factors involved when building web-based solutions for industrial environments. In order to help determine if RF transactions using ITSmobile will work as expected on any given mobile device, this white paper from PEAK Technologies and LXE will provide a basic understanding of ITSmobile and key considerations when building industrial RF solutions.

Key Learning Points:

• What are the key similarities and differences between ITSmobile and SAPConsole?
• Learn how to build an effective RF solution using ITSmobile
• What are the components of an ITSmobile RF solution?
• Why might companies need assistance with ITSmobile?

7 Definitions of Managed Services for B2B Integration

by SEEBURGER, Inc. (March 18, 2010)

Prospering in today's competitive global environment requires operationally efficient processes and supply chains. Recognizing this, many companies have adopted electronic tools to streamline their processes and trading relationships while leveraging their SAP® investments. A re-emerging trend in organization's search for greater efficiency is the use of managed services to provide B2B operations and the most advanced technology available to meet trading partner requirements and compliance initiatives faster.

By outsourcing B2B operations, companies can realize significant benefits, such as accelerated return on investment with tighter B2B collaboration providing real-time visibility and can even eliminate the sometimes prohibitive cost barriers to B2B integration. The key is to select a solution and vendor that best serves your organizations immediate and long-term needs.

Readers will take away:

• Benefits from adopting a managed services approach to B2B integration
• Different approaches to managed services
• Important factors to consider when selecting a managed services vendor
• Managed Services Customer Success Stories

Tackle this difficult economy and benefit from hidden opportunities

by SAP (March 15, 2010)

To address the challenges of an unstable economy, many managers are drawn into overly cautious modes of operation, focusing exclusively on cost-reduction measures. Embracing such a strategy is shortsighted and overlooks many hidden opportunities.

Workforce scheduling can be one of the toughest challenges. How can you be sure that the right people – as well as parts, equipment, and vehicles – are available for the right job, at the right time, and at the right cost? Efficient field service operation is not only a primary driver of customer satisfaction and loyalty, but it can also generate highly attractive profit margin.

Read this whitepaper to understand how a company’s revenue stream is typically derived from two sources: sales and service. And in a troubled economy with waning new product deals, service, consequently, is becoming increasingly important. The SAP® Workforce Scheduling and Optimization application by ClickSoftware can help address these challenges.

You will learn how against the backdrop of a waning economy, new opportunities are opening up, including:

• An ever-increasing demand from still-funded clients who wish to extend the life of their existing assets through Preventive Maintenance and other service means
• Existing and prospective clients who possess budget for, are interested in, and need additional service offerings.

Seven Ways to Gain Control of SAP Licensing

by Flexera Software (March 8, 2010)

Flexera Software applies its expertise and proven methods to help Procurement and IT asset managers more easily gain insight into the usage trends of enterprise applications. For SAP® Business Suite, there is FlexNet Manager, which centrally monitors and analyzes SAP license usage to help ensure accurate and appropriate licensing. This white paper describes seven methods through which Basis and Procurement management teams can more efficiently manage the lifecycle of their SAP Business Suite and make more informed software planning and purchasing decisions.

• More efficient approach to SAP lifecycle license management
• The importance of managing, planning and budgeting software spends more accurately
• The value of better understanding overall usage trends for more intelligent procurement decisions

Paper-Free AP with SAP® Solutions: Automated Processing of Vendor Invoices

by Esker, Inc. (March 8, 2010)

Learn about content-based recognition that automates vendor invoices into SAP applications regardless of format, overcoming the limitations of OCR and templates. Get the facts on touchless processing of MM invoices straight through to your SAP system, and electronic approval workflow to streamline exception handling for FI invoices.

After reading this white paper you’ll know what to look for in a solution to:

• Cut vendor invoice processing costs by at least 40%
• Reduce invoice approval cycle time by up to 50% and free-up staff resources
• Gain 100% visibility for process management and spend analysis

Kickoff Your SAP® Upgrade Project with This Team Briefing PowerPoint® Template

by Panaya (March 5, 2010)

Do you have an SAP upgrade project coming up?

If so, you'll find this SAP Upgrade Project Team Briefing PowerPoint Template a valuable tool.

Use this SAP upgrade project brief PowerPoint template to:

• Review upgrade tasks and timeline
• Warn against upgrade risks
• Assign upgrade team member responsibilities

Leverage SAP® solutions to manage your Business Applications’ Performance better

by SAP (March 4, 2010)

Today’s complex IT environments, along with a dramatic rise in network traffic, have made it increasingly difficult for organizations to manage their software applications. Even in the face of this challenge, however, IT must work to enable solid application performance.

To help meet these requirements, SAP has identified select third-party offerings, called solution extensions, that enable IT to perform proactive and reactive application monitoring and measuring, as well as problem resolution to ensure enhanced application performance for your business processes.

Read this whitepaper to learn more about these 6 SAP Solution Extensions namely, SAP Extended Diagnostics, SAP LoadRunner, SAP Quality Center, SAP Central Process Scheduling, SAP Process Performance Management and SAP User Experience Management.

In this whitepaper, you will learn how to:

• Proactively Resolve Application Performance Issues with SAP Extended Diagnostics
• Maximize System Performance with SAP LoadRunner
• Improve Process Performance with SAP Central Process Scheduling
• Optimize Process Performance with SAP Process Performance Management
• Test Your Applications Before Go-Live with SAP Quality Center
• Optimize User Performance with SAP User Experience Management

Strategic Considerations for Evaluating Enterprise Performance Management Solutions

by IBM (March 2, 2010)

If you’re evaluating, or embarking on a project to select an enterprise-wide performance management (EPM) solution, download this paper to gain critical insight and key recommendations for finding the right solution for your company.

What is EPM? It’s a set of solutions that monitor performance and deliver metrics, plans, predictive analytics and flexible reporting capabilities to support better business decisions. These solutions are distinctly different than transactional applications that support day to day operational requirements. It’s a comprehensive platform of solutions and technologies that integrate organizational data from multiple sources and provide business users with support for decision making to improve business performance.

Finding the right solution can be somewhat confusing and the potential penalties for selecting the wrong one - rework, replacement, lack of business agility and IT credibility - are steep.

Companies must go the extra step to perform due diligence in evaluating respective vendor capabilities to support both near and long term direction of a strategic solution for the organization. In this paper, Kathleen Wilhide, founder of Better-Insight LLC, and a leading industry analyst in the EPM market, outlines essential considerations for identifying software that can help your organization find the best path to continual performance improvement.

Read more...

Funding for BI: It’s All About ROI, ROI, ROI

by IBM/Cognos (February 26, 2010)

Historically Business Intelligence (BI) investments have been justified via intangible values such as a single version of the truth or faster and more accurate decision making. These intangibles certainly provide value to the business but in today’s economy tangible or “hard” ROI is becoming more important in competing for limited funding.

Download this paper to learn the 10 steps to building a strong case for BI.

Read more...

SAP® certified Web Forms Solution - automated, integrated and price competitive

by Promenta (February 26, 2010)

If your organization acknowledges a need for business process automation with a desire to drive self-service and shared-service efficiency, then the myCommsCentre Web Forms™ solution is perfectly placed to compliment your existing and future solutions. Web forms are the vehicle to connect multi-step business processes, automate paper based processes, deliver surveys, newsletters and interactive functionality.

This document outlines a price competitive, flexible solution which is easy to implement and embed within your organization. A solution evaluation template is also included.

Learn how to:

• Replace paper based forms – no coding required
• Enhance self-service and shared-service processes with interactive web forms
• Extend web forms by plugging in your own business logic scenarios - email and approvals

Unique SAP® upgrade enables a global chemical manufacturer to meet regulatory compliance and maximize business value

by Genpact (February 25, 2010)

For a leading US-based chemical manufacturer, Genpact delivered a non-iterative upgrade from SAP 3.1i to Unicode-enabled SAP ERP 6.0 with SAP EHS Management functionality.

Genpact’s GenLean^SM enabled SAP upgrade approach, combined with its business process and technical expertise ensured that this first of its kind upgrade was successfully delivered in just 10 months.

In addition to achieving the strategic objective of remaining compliant and therefore ensuring business as usual, Genpact saved both time and significant client dollars for the fully supported SAP ERP 6.0 with SAP EHS Management.

Read more...

Fixing the SAP Upgrade Process: Nine Best Practices

by Panaya (February 18, 2010)

SAP® ERP upgrades are complex, resource-intensive projects that require detailed planning. This brand new 19-page report from Principal Analyst Josh Greenbaum at Enterprise Applications Consulting covers the key upgrade topics that make any SAP ERP upgrade a success:

• How to justify a technical upgrade
• How to justify a functional upgrade
• New approaches to the upgrade process
• Nine best practices for upgrade success

Leverage the power of efficient human capital management

by SAP (February 17, 2010)

SAP® Talent Visualization by Nakisa helps organizations identify and groom tomorrow’s leaders today. This 100% web-based succession management solution provides real-time, in-depth visualization and execution of succession plans to effectively align talent goals with business strategy.

Leveraging SAP’s talent management business processes and global talent pools, organizations can identify high-impact positions and inventory the workforce to develop the talent pipeline. Organizations can take proactive measures to ensure effective leadership continuity for the future.

Read this study to learn how Venezuela-based Poliolefinas Internacionales, C.A. (Polinter) chose the SAP Talent Visualization to automate its processes for workforce management. With the new software in place, Polinter can now cost-effectively provide timely and accurate information about its organizational structure and create the succession and employee replacement plans it needs to support its strategies for rapid growth.

You will learn how to:

• Identify talent shortages
• Review and assign potential successors within the organization
• Visualize talent by employee group

Leverage SAP® solutions to manage your Business Applications’ Performance better

by SAP (February 9, 2010)

Whether you’re working to improve day-to-day IT operations, implementing or upgrading your SAP applications, or simply trying to make your users more productive, the pressure is on — you have to do more with less. And in this challenging economic climate, traditional IT approaches often cannot scale to meet seemingly endless business demands.

At the same time, IT budgets are being cut like never before — and sometimes without warning. When this happens, companies must systematically optimize their IT processes to reduce costs while still delivering expected services. What’s more, IT optimization needs to deliver near-immediate payback. Read this article to understand three key starting points to help your business optimize its IT, increase ROI and lower overall TCO. Find more about SAP solution extensions - software offerings, sold and supported by SAP that can be deployed quickly and independently. Bullet points about what each reader will learn in this Whitepaper

In this whitepaper, you will learn how to:

• Manage Data Growth with SAP Archiving
• Maximize System Performance with SAP LoadRunner
• Manage Business Process Performance with SAP Enterprise Modeling
• Improve Process Performance with SAP Central Process
• Go Live Confidently with SAP Quality Center
• Resolve Application Issues Proactively with SAP Extended Diagnostics
• Improve ROI of SAP Solutions with SAP User Experience Management
• Reduce Manual, Paper-based Overheads with SAP Interactive Forms

Optimize Accounts Payable with SAP® Invoice Management

by SAP (February 1, 2010)

Get the most out of your SAP software with SAP Invoice Management

Learn how implementing SAP Invoice Management can enable you to improve your Accounts Payable processes with:

• Centralized visibility – get a consolidated view of all information relevant to a transaction on one screen
• Automated processing – Manage accounts payable processes automatically using configurable business rules from invoice validation through posting
• Exceptions handling – Automatically route exceptions to the person in the proper role while the process is logged and a comprehensive record is maintained in the software
• End-to-end process analytics – Monitor the invoice process from start to finish with a clear view of bottlenecks, cycle time, first-pass yield, and liability
• Integration with the existing environment – Implement the application quickly with the assurance of linkage with all relevant data and functionality in your existing SAP software

PCI-DSS Compliance in an SAP® Systems Environment

by Delego (January 18, 2010)

In an effort to combat fraud in the credit card payment industry, the major card brands came together to align their individual security standards by forming the PCI-SSC (Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council) and in December 2004 released the first PCI-DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard). A merchant who accepts even one credit card transaction must comply with the standard.

This white paper discusses the PCI-DSS requirements from the perspective of a company running an SAP® systems environment and focuses on the aspects related to an SAP landscape (and not to the overall security considerations of the company). This paper will also discuss methods to help you keep your SAP system out of the scope of any potential PCI-DSS compliance audit and should be considered important reading for any merchant in the SAP worldwide community.

Download the white paper to:

• Understand what PCI-DSS compliance is all about and why you, as a merchant, must comply.
• Explore ways to achieve PCI-DSS compliance with tools available in your SAP® system.
• Compare and contrast the different security approaches for PCI-DSS compliance available in SAP systems.
• Find out what third-party tools are available for SAP systems to aid in your compliance.

Automated Sales Order Processing for Order-to-Cash Performance with SAP® Solutions

by Esker, Inc. (January 14, 2010)

As a resource to help businesses gain efficiency and improve customer service in today’s competitive business environment, this white paper examines the challenges faced by SAP customers who are still manually processing sales orders. The paper explores a solution for overcoming these challenges by automating sales order processing to:

• Lower order processing costs by up to 70%
• Free up staff time by up to 65%, providing more time for customer service
• Increase the percentage of orders and line items captured electronically
• Gain immediate access to order documents
• Fulfill orders faster and collect payment sooner

• Removing sales order bottlenecks from the order-to-cash cycle
• Sales order workflow automation, including: capture, approval routing, exception handling, and reporting
• Order management benefits, including: increased speed and accuracy, a full audit trail for increased process visibility, order prioritizing and more

Achieve business process excellence by Measuring, Analyzing and Optimizing your business processes

by SAP (December 18, 2009)

Get the most out of your SAP® software with SAP Enterprise Modeling and SAP Process Performance Management

Learn how implementing SAP Enterprise Modeling can enable you to:

• Leverage IT assets and reduce TCO by rationalizing customization, making better use of existing IT resources, and reducing project times for SAP upgrades and implementations
• Improve process performance by finding and eliminating bottlenecks while standardizing core processes and making it easier to measure them
• Decrease process costs through improved monitoring and analysis
• Build an SOA-ready IT foundation with support for process analysis, planning

Planning Virtual Infrastructure for SAP® Systems Technology Concepts and Business Considerations

by EMC (December 11, 2009)

Embracing a virtual infrastructure strategy for SAP® systems will impact your business by delivering the most efficient IT for SAP with reduced total cost of ownership, including smaller data center facilities and carbon footprints. The transformation ushers in new data center models, management policies, and operation practices for addressing SAP performance and capacity issues, and ensuring business continuity. Planning Virtual Infrastructure for SAP — Technology Concepts and Business Considerations is an EMC Global Solutions white paper describing the technical and business considerations for planning a virtual infrastructure for your SAP landscape. The paper addresses a variety of key considerations for SAP infrastructure, specifically addressing example deployment options for the major layers of the infrastructure, including the host or compute layer, the connectivity layer, and the storage or information layer.

Understand:

1. The business and IT drivers that are influencing the change to a virtual infrastructure.
2. The importance of a documented IT blueprint for SAP to execute the change.
3. Collaboration across IT domains is critical to a successful transformation.

Learn how SAP® Enterprise Inventory Optimization leverages the Stochastic model to enhance Inventory Optimization

by SAP (December 3, 2009)

Traditional approaches to inventory planning are largely based on rules of thumb rather than formal data analysis. For years, supply chain planners have used these outdated inventory management models, resulting in supply chain inefficiencies that their companies can ill afford in today’s ultracompetitive environment.

To boost efficiency, run leaner, and drive down the cost of supply, many organizations are exploring inventory optimization – a technique for improving operational inventory targets to address the realities of today’s highly complex, ever-evolving global supply chains.

Download this thought leadership whitepaper to understand how the stochastic multistage, multi-inventory model supports inventory optimization. The paper also looks at how the SAP Enterprise Inventory Optimization application by SmartOps uses the model to help supply planners execute more effectively in a highly collaborative enterprise environment that extends beyond organizational boundaries.

Learn how to:

• View and synchronize end-to-end supply chain operations
• Manage supply and demand uncertainty
• Maximize profit and minimize assets
• Manage exception workflows efficiently

49 Do’s, Don’ts, and Customer Lessons for SAP® Upgrades

by Panaya (December 3, 2009)

Are you looking for advice on upgrading to SAP® ERP 6.0?

Are you tired of reading the same clichés everywhere you go?

Jon Reed of JonERP.com — an SAP mentor and recently recognized as a Top Contributor for SAP Community Network 2008-2009 in the Business Process Expert Category — has compiled the best upgrade tips from industry analysts, project advisors, upgrade consultants, and SAP users.

This white paper provides SAP upgrade lessons from real-life upgrade projects at leading companies, including an indispensable list of tips covering:

• Vendor selection
• Pre-launch planning
• Technical upgrade considerations
• Upgrade skills and training

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