My favourite part of SAP

I didn’t know what SAP was until around 2005.

There was talk in our office that we were going to convert our locally modified and managed accounting software to an “SAP ERP” system. It was all so mysterious.

Working in IT all of my career, I am accustomed to working in new systems, however all of the other systems were “homegrown”. Little by little, meeting by meeting, users were introduced to SAP. Key users were selected and I was hired as the SAP System Administrator for our site.

It’s been challenging at times but overall a very rewarding experience. We are a global organization, so SAP serves a network of thousands of users all across the world. We’ve come a long way from our legacy local software.

Back in the day, I was a programmer and remember making changes based on users wanting to eliminate a few additional keystrokes. Now, changes to SAP must be made formally into a data portal, accompanied by a valid business requirement, then approved or denied by a member of the global ERP team.

We have become a network of users working together, sharing information, finding best practice and ultimately working to develop an understanding of how to use SAP most effectively to run our business.

And that’s my favourite part of SAP: the continued learning on a daily basis, the continuous improvement of the system and the processes, and the satisfaction of a user’s “thank you” because you’ve made their day a little bit better!

This article by Cindy Adams took part in the joint contest, which SAP Expert ran together with Zinio.